Irresistible Force

An article in the blog ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP which took on the notion of "mutual enrichment" caught my eye. This partly because of a recent personal reflection I made concerning Pope Benedict's use of that term in setting the Vetus Ordo free for unrestricted use by priests, encouraging them and bishops to generosity in responding to requests for celebrations according to the 1962 Roman Missal.

The blog entry would have the challenge of the two forms mutually enriching each other likened to squaring the circle. I do not think that is the case. Whether Benedict would agree or not, I think he has set the stage for the needed "reset", for that restoration of the Roman Rite which would enable the organic development of the Divine Liturgy which we were deprived of by the committee which hijacked the process after the council.

We can see how irresistible this movement is among the young and not so young, when caught by surprise by the rightness and beauty of the Old Mass rediscovered and celebrated as it ought to be.

Mutual enrichment must not per force lead either to a common compromise rite or to the continuance of the Novus Ordo. If nothing else, these forty plus years of options and worse are an eloquent statement on what organic development is not and cannot be.

I don't think that my own longing for the Vetus Ordo is either idiosyncratic or a minority report with an ideological background. I am not necessarily convinced that a benevolent acceptance of the old celebration as a part of seminary formation would yield a hundred fold, but it could bring on some essential discussion about rediscovering for our day and time the breadth of Catholic life which has been so sorely missing over the last decades.

Were the Mass of the Ages, the Holy Sacrifice, once again there as the source and summit, a much more natural and complete life of devotion and prayer among us would find the same anchor of reference and sense as we find it having in the writings of the saints over the course of the centuries.

For now, I'll just double dog dare bishops and seminary rectors to loosen up and examine intellectually and practically what a restoration could mean for integral and vibrant Catholic living in the 21st Century.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI