Should Latin mass be brought back?

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Perhaps where you are, Benson, that is the case.

But here in the Pittsburgh area, its pretty tiny, particularly with regards to families with children.

This is a huge metropolitan area, a couple of million people probably 1/2 Catholic, and we have just one parish with the Latin mass.

From their website:“Over 100 children from 34 families take part in the St. John XXIII Parish Catechism program each Sunday from September to May. We have a full and accredited series of religious instructions for children in grades K through 12.”

Not a lot of participation for a huge diocese.

Not denigrating Latin in any way, just pointing out the reality that it isn’t a major factor at this point in time
 
Augustinian said:
But here in the Pittsburgh area, its pretty tiny, particularly with regards to families with children.
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That’s too bad. The “Latin in Patton” billboards are pretty clever, though. Thankfully, in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Allentown, traditional Masses are better attended. Harrisburg and Allentown are also blessed with having FSSP apostolates. The one in Harrisburg is right down the street from the Cathedral.
 
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Really, it is delusional.

I remember the day when the group came to Rome that became the Fraternity of Saint Peter. It will be thirty years ago. In thirty years, they have less than 300 priests. For the entire world.

In my diocese, as a group requested special attention, we had far more immigrants from Africa who were Catholic and needing pastoral care than those who were vetus ordo adherents.
 
And you know as well as I that they are deliberately kept out of certain dioceses where they would be welcome to minister. They also have bursting seminaries that turn away dozens of qualified applicants a year.
 
Don_Ruggero said:
It will be thirty years ago. In thirty years, they have less than 300 priests. For the entire world.
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The FSSP seminaries are packed to the brim. They are to the point where they regrettably have to reject or “wait list” candidates because they don’t have enough room. Remarkable men those seminaries are ordaining. There are currently over 90 men studying for the priesthood at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Nebraska for the FSSP.
 
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It is sort of like how you can complain all day long about how chant is inaccessible and bad. If you do you are a good Catholic. But if you say you don’t like rock music at Church you are an inconsiderate person who doesn’t care about the wants, needs, and tastes of your fellow parishioner.
 
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Really? Well you seem to have been culpably out of touch then.

Perhaps if you saw it as an important duty as a member of the lay faithful to faithfully keep yourself abreast of the teachings of the Holy Father and to be attentive to his every utterance as well as what is published by the Holy See, you would not have been caught so unaware.

Martin Luther was proclaimed by Rome as “Witness of Jesus Christ” during our commemoration of his 500th birthday in 1983. Or did you forget? Or are you to young to remember?

This came shortly after we marked, with our Lutheran sisters and brothers, the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession…in 1980.

Our joint journey “From Conflict to Communion” with the Lutherans began 50 years ago. Did you also miss that?

The difference between the 1980s and today is that we have advanced so far in the journey we began 50 years ago that we co-preside at liturgies of common prayer, not yet involving a shared Eucharist, using texts co-published by the Holy See and the Lutherans.

Looking back, perhaps, somehow, you managed to overlook Ut Unum Sint, Saint John Paul II at the World Council of Churches, his landmark visit to the Lutheran Church in Rome, his visits to Germany and places associated with the Reformation. His declarations concerning the execution of Jan Hus. His apologies for the failures and culpabilities of the past by Catholics at the Great Jubilee 2000 on that unforgettable day. Surely you echoed the words he uttered that day? Let me remind you:
One of the characteristic elements of the Great Jubilee is what I described as the “purification of memory” (Bull Incarnationis mysterium, n. 11). As the Successor of Peter, I asked that “in this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters” (ibid.). Today, the First Sunday of Lent, seemed to me the right occasion for the Church, gathered spiritually round the Successor of Peter, to implore divine forgiveness for the sins of all believers. Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!

This appeal has prompted a thorough and fruitful reflection, which led to the publication several days ago of a document of the International Theological Commission, entitled: “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past”. I thank everyone who helped to prepare this text. It is very useful for correctly understanding and carrying out the authentic request for pardon, based on the objective responsibility which Christians share as members of the Mystical Body, and which spurs today’s faithful to recognize, along with their own sins, the sins of yesterday’s Christians, in the light of careful historical and theological discernment.
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The remote plans for the joint commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation began in earnest with Pope Benedict’s visit to Germany after his election in 2005 and spanned the intervening years. Did you not engage yourself in such a historic milestone?

From Conflict to Communion, which will guide us forward, was a work spearheaded by two remarkable ecclesiastics. As they finished it, Benedict brought to Rome and they received there the red hat – Gerhard Muller as Prefect of the CDF and Kurt Koch as President of the PCPCU. Surely this is not news to you? The document was written also while Benedict was Pope.

Perhaps you missed Pope Benedict’s pilgrimage to Erfurt in 2011 in order to walk in the footsteps of Martin Luther and pay tribute to him.

But then all of this…all of it…is simply the fruit of Unitatis Redintegratio of Vatican II, which completely and finally recalibrated, long overdue though it was, our relations with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters just as Nostra Aetate did with our relations with the Jewish and Islamic peoples…since we are all descendants of Abraham and all worship the God of Abraham. Surely you are aware of that?

Perhaps you did not know that Pope Pius XII had prepared a letter of resignation that would execute should he be kidnapped and taken hostage by the Nazis – so the Church would avoid a situation like when the Pope was a hostage of Napoleon?

Perhaps though you were not knowing of the consideration of Pope John Paul II to utilize the provision of Canon 332.2 in the 1983 Code of Canon Law to resign the papacy…and who was it that did all the requested research and evaluation for Saint John Paul on this topic? The Cardinal Prefect of the CDF…Cardinal Ratzinger who, at a moment of time and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit that was his in the position he held, exercised that prerogative to resign the papacy.

And no one gets to second guess that since, as Canon 333.3 makes clear: “No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.”

The decision for the possibility of married men as clerics was decided by the world’s bishops gathered at Vatican II and is articulated in Lumen Gentium and subsequently discussed in repeated synods of Bishops.

Pope Francis’ seminal encyclical on climate change and environmental conservation reminds me of Pope Leo XIII invention – profoundly unsettling at the time – on behalf of the working class when the papal states had been stripped from the Successor of Peter and Western civilisation saw the Church as irrelevant.
 
Catholics are NOT supposed to hang on every utterance from a pope. That is not Catholic teaching.
 
I also notice how every writer who agrees with you gets all these superlatives and editorializing adjectives, as if they were the very voice of God.
 
But seriously, Don Ruggero…when Summorum Pontificum came out, did you go around saying how thankful you were for the great gift Benedict was to the Church? Did you urge everyone to read SP and to obey every word? Did you praise it as strongly as you praise what Francis has done?
 
Don_Ruggero said:
Well you seem to have been culpably out of touch then.
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Culpable for what? I will never assent to the absurd notion that Martin Luther is a “Witness of Jesus Christ”. What a mockery of Christ and His Saints such a sacrilegious idea is! Pope John Paul II also kissed a Koran and placed a Buddha on top of a tabernacle. Am I “culpable” for not assenting or approving of those actions? Of course not. I stand with the popes and the saints and continue to pray for the conversion of the Protestant Heretics, that they return to the Fold of the Catholic Church, outside of which their is no salvation. Anything short of this, like making it seem that there is no need for Protestants to convert to the Church, is a grave sin against charity.
 
Again, if we must hang on the words of every pope, I’d be curious to know if Don Ruggero was publicly as supportive and gushing in his praise of Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum as he is on certain other papal texts…if not…why not?
 
Do you declare then that you do not accept the following canons:
Can. 331 The bishop of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal Church on earth. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.
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Each Pope has jurisdiction over you, personally, at this very moment…immediately…should he choose to exercise it, which is at his whim. As his power is supreme, no other authority under Heaven can overrule or outrank it.
Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power offer the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them. Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care.
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His jurisdiction is over every diocese with its bishop and every gathering of Particular Churches with their synods and he can confirm, set aside, overrule, and replace what they decide. He can change their constitution by a simple decree.
§2. In fulfilling the office of supreme pastor of the Church, the Roman Pontiff is always joined in communion with the other bishops and with the universal Church. He nevertheless has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising this office.
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As head of the College of Bishops, it is he…and he alone…who decides if he will allow the College to act with him or if he will simply act using his own personal power and authority…which of the College collectively and in all their parts cannot equal. Regarding the College of Bishops, the Head is always free to act without the Body but the Body can never act apart from the Head.

Should he wish, he can remove any bishop from governance…or even deprive him of the clerical state…as he can any Cardinal.

I am surprised at you. The faithful often quote from Matthew’s Gospel: “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church”. In this pontificate, we know that the Lord has said “you are Francis, and upon this rock I will build My church” for as quoted above

“The bishop of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal Church on earth”

Do you give obsequium to this?
 
But again, Don Ruggero, the question is…when Benedict released SP, did you go around telling people publicly how impressed you were with this wise edict, and how wonderful it was, and how amazingly blessed we were to have such a pope? If not…why not?
 
He is far more than the Servant of Tradition. Far more.

Remember what Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in the face of schismatic act of Marcel Lefebvre and his misguided followers:
  1. The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. /…/ But especially contradictory is a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops. It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his Church
The measure of our fidelity to Tradition is precisely our adherence to the person of the Vicar of Christ on Earth and, with and under him, the Church’s living Magisterium.
 
So again, Don Ruggero…just how loudly and publicly did you praise and extol Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum? Did you tell people how wise the pope was, and how blessed we were to have the edict? Did you tell those who disagreed with it that they were, say, out of union with the Holy Father?
 
Very simply, Pope Benedict is not someone remote at all the years, across the years of my own life and work. I cherish him very much. But his expectations were too optimistic. He would say that himself today. He would have done well to have remembered the treachery of Lefebvre against the Saint of God, the Blessed Pope Paul VI…He himself was a spiritual son of the Blessed Paul VI. And he would have done well to remember the maxim that the fruit does not fall from the tree.

His Holiness had the hope that his actions would elicit the return of the schismatic bishops. Those more realistic had, it must be said, a much clearer vision.

I knew in 2007 they would not return. It was evident.

It is like Lefebvre…who was clearly understandable and recognisable for what he was when his own Religious Congregation had to rid themselves of him as superior general.

Anyone who remembers how he called the divine wrath upon himself in his attacks in 1975 and 1976 against the Blessed Pope Paul VI, saint of God that he was, could not be surprised that he would consummate his treachery by schism.

It is simple as beholding the tree that results from the seed plainly evident almost two decades before. It came to its perfect fruition.

It is a shame. I could like to think back to him of his days in France and his extraordinary work in Africa before the Council, especially regarding the provision there of a native hierarchy. Of course, what overshadows those years of his success are the years after the Council. Tragic.
 
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