Well, CAT, I’m no expert on this, but didn’t Pope John Paul 2 create the FSSP as a church-approved order intended to teach young seminarians to carry on the Latin tradition? They spend years learning to do the TLM.
Your argument seems to be that a priest has to love both masses equally, but I think our church has offered them this option, and to tell priests otherwise is wrong.
Let’s put this into plainer terms - a young medical student is extremely talented and has his heart set on becoming a heart surgeon - and he’s going to be an excellent one and save many lives. Then he happens to say out loud, “I am repulsed by Gastronomic surgery! I cannot stand the bowels and all their twists and turns! But I love the beauty of Heart,. In fact, Heart surgery makes me want to be a surgeon, and Bowel surgeries make me want to never be a surgeon!”
In this case, is it fair? Sane? or even valid ? to tell him he should NOT BECOME A SURGEON!?
Wouldn’t that be a serious loss to the medical world?
If both specialties are valid, why would you withhold him from one ? And why would you affect all those lives that could have been saved had he followed his CALLING?
So, now that we’ve seen it in plainer terms, your telling that young man NOT to become a priest (in his own specialty) is a serious loss to Holy Mother Church, is it not?!
Is it not second guessing our pope and judging that you know better?
The two do not compare AT ALL. Yes, the young surgeon WOULD be a loss. In the case of the two forms, NO, the priest who cannot celebrate BOTH would not be a loss (see the example of Cardinal Martini, who dissed the EF. He’s equally WRONG). And since the Servant of God Pope John Paul II formed the FFSP, HH Pope Benedict has said that priests cannot refuse to say the newer form.
(From my post, #23, quoting the cover letter to the bishops for the MP):
"It’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask. The poster to whom Cat was responding is as in the wrong as Cardinal Martini, the retired and very liberal Archbishop of Milan, who said that he would NEVER offer the EF. Not acceptable.
It also seems VERY contrary to the cover letter which HH Pope Benedict XVI issued to the bishops of the world regarding the Motu Proprio, contrary to his expressed desires. If the young man cannot bring himself in line with that, I certainly hope that it will be discerned by those in authority that we don’t need that kind of priest in the Church at all.
"I now come to the positive reason which motivated my decision to issue this Motu Proprio updating that of 1988. It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to unable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us,
but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!" (2 Cor 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.
There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion,** the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness."**
Priests are priests of a RITE, though some are bi-ritual. Both forms are part of the Latin Rite.
) because I wanted to relate my story of my first TLM to those who have long been going.
)
