B
bones_IV
Guest
This is interesting.
Daily Telegraph, by Damian Thompson reports:
The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away. This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they covert en masse.
The liberal cardinals don’t like the sound of it at all.
Twice the pride, double the fall.
Ever since the shock of Benedict’s election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is in the thick of it.
Many of these bishops and Cardinals from the hippy generation are fadding fast and retirement is coming very soon for them.
“Pope Benedict is isolated,” I was told when I visited Rome last week. “So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely.” Yet he is ploughing ahead. He** reminds me of another conservative revolutionary, Margaret Thatcher**, who waited a couple of years before taking on the Cabinet “wets” sabotaging her reforms.
That’s a compliment as far as I’m concerned.
Benedict’s pontificate moved into a new phase on July 7, with the publication of his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum.
With a stroke of his pen, the Pope restored the traditional Latin Mass - in effect banned for 40 years - to parity with the modern liturgy. Shortly afterwards, he replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies who turned many of John Paul II’s Masses into politically correct carnivals.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was most displeased. Last week, he hit back with a “commentary” on Summorum Pontificum.
How much longer do we have to put up with these kind of statements? Embarrassing.
According to Murphy-O’Connor, the ruling leaves the power of local bishops untouched. In fact, it removes the bishops’ power to block the ancient liturgy. In other words, the cardinal - who tried to stop Benedict issuing the ruling - is misrepresenting its contents.
Either Jesus Christ gave the Pope the power to bind and loose or He didn’t. Not kind of or sort of. Cardinal O’Connor needs to understand that the Church is not a democracy.
Alas, he is not alone: dozens of bishops in Britain, Europe and America have tried the same trick.
…
This month, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, a senior Vatican official close to Benedict, declared that “bishops and even cardinals” who misrepresented Summorum Pontificum were “in rebellion against the Pope”.
Ranjith is tipped to become the next Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in charge of regulating worldwide liturgy. That makes sense: if Benedict is moving into a higher gear, then he needs street fighters in high office.
…
I say give this Archbishop the cardinal’s hat.
Last month, the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a network of 400,000 breakaway Anglo-Catholics based mainly in America and the Commonwealth, wrote to Rome asking for “full, corporate, sacramental union”.
Their letter was drafted with the help of the Vatican. Benedict is overseeing the negotiations. Unlike John Paul II, he admires the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is thinking of making special pastoral arrangements for Anglican converts walking away from the car wreck of the Anglican Communion.
This would mean that they could worship together, free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers’ conservatism and would rather “dialogue” with Anglicans than receive them into the Church.
The liberation of the Latin liturgy, the rapprochement with Eastern Orthodoxy, the absorption of former Anglicans - all these ambitions reflect Benedict’s conviction that the Catholic Church must rediscover the liturgical treasure of Christian history to perform its most important task: worshipping God.
If the Anglicans want in the Church, and the Eastern Orthodox are warming up to the idea of Peter’s Primacy then Benedict XVI is doing something right. :extrahappy:
Daily Telegraph, by Damian Thompson reports:
The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away. This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they covert en masse.
The liberal cardinals don’t like the sound of it at all.
Twice the pride, double the fall.
Ever since the shock of Benedict’s election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is in the thick of it.
Many of these bishops and Cardinals from the hippy generation are fadding fast and retirement is coming very soon for them.
“Pope Benedict is isolated,” I was told when I visited Rome last week. “So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely.” Yet he is ploughing ahead. He** reminds me of another conservative revolutionary, Margaret Thatcher**, who waited a couple of years before taking on the Cabinet “wets” sabotaging her reforms.
That’s a compliment as far as I’m concerned.
Benedict’s pontificate moved into a new phase on July 7, with the publication of his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum.
With a stroke of his pen, the Pope restored the traditional Latin Mass - in effect banned for 40 years - to parity with the modern liturgy. Shortly afterwards, he replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies who turned many of John Paul II’s Masses into politically correct carnivals.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was most displeased. Last week, he hit back with a “commentary” on Summorum Pontificum.
How much longer do we have to put up with these kind of statements? Embarrassing.
According to Murphy-O’Connor, the ruling leaves the power of local bishops untouched. In fact, it removes the bishops’ power to block the ancient liturgy. In other words, the cardinal - who tried to stop Benedict issuing the ruling - is misrepresenting its contents.
Either Jesus Christ gave the Pope the power to bind and loose or He didn’t. Not kind of or sort of. Cardinal O’Connor needs to understand that the Church is not a democracy.
Alas, he is not alone: dozens of bishops in Britain, Europe and America have tried the same trick.
…
This month, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, a senior Vatican official close to Benedict, declared that “bishops and even cardinals” who misrepresented Summorum Pontificum were “in rebellion against the Pope”.
Ranjith is tipped to become the next Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in charge of regulating worldwide liturgy. That makes sense: if Benedict is moving into a higher gear, then he needs street fighters in high office.
…
I say give this Archbishop the cardinal’s hat.
Last month, the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a network of 400,000 breakaway Anglo-Catholics based mainly in America and the Commonwealth, wrote to Rome asking for “full, corporate, sacramental union”.
Their letter was drafted with the help of the Vatican. Benedict is overseeing the negotiations. Unlike John Paul II, he admires the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is thinking of making special pastoral arrangements for Anglican converts walking away from the car wreck of the Anglican Communion.
This would mean that they could worship together, free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers’ conservatism and would rather “dialogue” with Anglicans than receive them into the Church.
The liberation of the Latin liturgy, the rapprochement with Eastern Orthodoxy, the absorption of former Anglicans - all these ambitions reflect Benedict’s conviction that the Catholic Church must rediscover the liturgical treasure of Christian history to perform its most important task: worshipping God.
If the Anglicans want in the Church, and the Eastern Orthodox are warming up to the idea of Peter’s Primacy then Benedict XVI is doing something right. :extrahappy: