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Marie5890
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That is interesting. I had never even thought of that. Thanks.
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choliks
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I know sir. And your point sir, if I may ask?
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nlh1302
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I found these images of Pope John Paul II celebrating a Divine Liturgy with the Ukrainians in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1996.
caeremonialeromanum.com/2010/05/pope-john-paul-ii-celebrating-ukrainian.html
I don’t think the question is whether it’s appropriate for the Pope to use the Eastern Rites, but rather whether he has enough knowledge of the rite to celebrate it competently. If Pope Benedict prepared well, I can’t see why he couldn’t do the same.
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Thomas_Redd
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The Pope is an “ordinary bishop.” While there may have accumulated some customs here and there around his mass, the mass is the same for the lowliest parish to the high altar of St. Peter’s. The fact that he now sits in the Chair of St. Peter confers no “sacramental” distinction.
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JReducation
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Maybe I didn’t phrase the question as clearly as I thought. There is nothing wrong with a pope celebrating mass in any other form or rite. I was thinking of what is appropriate for the congregation at hand. For example, how appropriate is a Byzantine Rite mass for a Latin congregation? How appropriate is an Extraordinary Form mass in a diocese where the norm is the Ordinary Form?
At the end of the day, it’s really up to the Holy Father and those planning the liturgy to make that judgment call.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Te_Deum
Guest
The Pope is not an ordinary bishop, the See of Rome is not an ordinary diocese. Although the Holy Father and His Grace Cardinal Burke have no scramental distinction, the office of Peter’s Successor carries with it the great honour of being the visible head of the Church with the charism of infallibility etc.
Although the Holy Sacrifice is the exact same on Calvary, in Poland and in Los Angeles, we have rituals and liturgies for a reason.
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PiousTemplar
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Shall we make a petition for a Tridentine Mass from the Pope? Get thousands to sign it? 
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PazzoGrande
Guest
That sounds like an idea. Maybe we can make a Facebook Like page thing too? It’s easier to do this virtually than it is to do it by paper if you want worldwide participation.Shall we make a petition for a Tridentine Mass from the Pope? Get thousands to sign it?
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PiousTemplar
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If there are any IT guru’s on here, we should set up a website for it!
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Te_Deum
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I’m sure it would be a great exception to the petitions for him to “allow” homosexual “marriage”, contraception etc…
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TrueLight
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Do we really need a whole website? I think a Facebook page would be a lot better.
And that gives me an idea. I need to get petitions for something and a Facebook page is an excellent idea.
Personally, I feel our Pope is Orthodox, but not necessarily an EF advocate. I do not feel he wants to see a return to the Usus Antiquitor. I think he knows there are Catholics who want the form and he is making provisions for all his faithful followers.
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PazzoGrande
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Hey, welcome to the Church! 1.1 billion of us but we’re happy to have a new member of the family!
(Isn’t related to the discussion, but, eh… I began the thread, I can abuse it if I want
)About the Facebook Like page thing, even though I had that idea in an earlier post, second thought, there’s the strong possibility that they won’t pay attention to a Facebook campaign.
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JReducation
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Actually, this is not quite so. The See of Rome is a rather unique see. It is an ordinary diocese, but it is also the Primacial See as Baltimore is to the USA and it is the See of Peter. However, it does not get any preferential treatment in the day to day affairs within the Italian Episcopal Conference. It has the unique atribute of existing in two countries, Italy and Vatican City. Therefore, it is governed by two Vicars General, one for Rome and one for Vatican City. Unknown to many people, there are several parishes in Vatican City. Interestingly, the diocese has never been elevated to the status of an Archdiocese. The pope is not an Archbishop.
It has six suburbicarian sees and several dioceses and terriories connected to the Metropolitan See of Rome, each with its own bishop. The arrangement is similar to, but not quite the same as, our state episcopal conferences in the USA. I don’t know of any that has suburbicarian sees. What makes it unique is its legal organization. Much of this is a remnant from the former Papal States.
I don’t know how much they actually look at things like FB. Also, as I said in an earlier post, the Holy Father is not promoting the Tridentine Form. If he were, he would not have used the term “extraordinary” to describe it.Hey, welcome to the Church! 1.1 billion of us but we’re happy to have a new member of the family!
(Isn’t related to the discussion, but, eh… I began the thread, I can abuse it if I want
About the Facebook Like page thing, even though I had that idea in an earlier post, second thought, there’s the strong possibility that they won’t pay attention to a Facebook campaign.
I saw an interesting interview on Life on the Rock with an FSSP priest and a young woman from Juventutem. They made it very clear that their mission is not to promote the Tridentine Form, but to educate those who want to be educated in it and to expose those who want the exposure.
There werey very careful to emphasize this point. The priest was very insistant on the term “extraordinary”. Several times, he gently said that it’s not for everyone, but it was a good thing to have this program (Juventutem) to help expose those who wanted the exposure and to educate those who wanted the education.
They interviewed one of the founders of Juventutem, a French FSSP priest whose name escapes me. He was delightful. What got the attention of those who were watching, especially clergy and religious was how he explained the vision and mission of the FSSP and Juventutem. He spoke about preserving the historical tradition alongside the OF and of the importance of not running a competition between the two.
The other priest, whose name was Fr. Joseph Lee, FSSP, that’s the one in the studio, was very good in explaining how this all works together, the EF and OF. They did speak about the abuses in the OF and the need to clean those up. There was no argument there from anyone. I think that what made the dialogue so palatable was that it was not marketing and it was not bashing the OF. They were critical of those who introduce “creativity” into the OF and they defended the beauty and solemnity of the OF when it’s celebrated correctly.
One was left with the sense of curiosity about the EF, rather than a sense of doom and gloom about the OF. I think that this is what people need to learn, if they want to introduce others to it. Avoid marketing it. Avoid telling people how superior it is to the OF. The FSSP priests made this very clear. “It is not superior,” they said. It is historical and it is different. It is part of our patrimony. But as far as mass is concerned, it does what every mass around the world does. When you put it this way, it does not trigger defensiveness in people. It provokes curiosity.
I know this experience, because in my own community, many men had never seen it. It was introduced to us by the FSSP. It triggered enough curiosity that we asked for permission to try it. After we did, on several occasions, it was decided that it was not what we would celebrate daily, but it was not something that we wanted to store in a closet either. It is used sparingly.
The Franciscans of the Immaculate liked it so much that some of their houses use it as the daily mass. The reason that the Franciscan communities became so open to it was because we were curious. Had anyone told us that our Ordinary Franciscan Form mass was bad, sacrilegious, banal and that the only reverent form of worship was the Tridentine form, it would have met with resistance. That’s not how we were exposed to it.
We were exposed to it as this historical mass that is part of our Catholic heritage just as much as any other rite: Mozarabic, Carthusian, Dominican, Carmelite or Ambrosian. Everyone was like, “OK, that’s cool. Let’s try it.” Because my community is very young, only three of us actually saw it back in the 1960s and no one ever celebrated it. Therefore, we were even more curious.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Te_Deum
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The strange legalities of the Diocese of Rome’s situation doesn’t really change anything. The See of Rome is not an ordinary diocese, the Bishop of Rome is not an ordinary bishop. Does Baltimore have the benefit of never being able to fall into corporate heresy etc.?
Which means nothing. He’s a Patriarch, the Successor of Peter, the Supreme Pontiff, visible head of the Church.
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JReducation
Guest
Neither does the Diocese of Rome.
He is the successor of Peter, the Supreme Pontiff, the visible head of the Church, the Bishop of Rome. He is no longer a patriarch. Pope Benedict eliminated that title from the Latin Church.
When he governs the Diocese of Rome, he governs as its bishop, not as its pope. They are two separate offices. He is the pope of the universal Church, not the pope of Rome. That is a very Protestant mindset, not a Catholic one. It has never been a Catholic mindset. Rome has a bishop. The Church has a pope. It just happens to be the same person.
A good way to understand this is an older parent. My father’s father is my grandfather. It is the same person, two different roles. A father and a grandfather are not the same thing. The diocesan Ordinary and the pope are not the same thing, even if they are the same person.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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TrueLight
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Hi Br. JR,Neither does the Diocese of Rome.
He is the successor of Peter, the Supreme Pontiff, the visible head of the Church, the Bishop of Rome. He is no longer a patriarch. Pope Benedict eliminated that title from the Latin Church. Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
I don’t mean to go off on tangent, but what is the significance of the Pope eliminating the title of Patriarch from the Latin Church
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MarkThompson
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This article explains it rather well. According to a Vatican communiqué:
The title “patriarch of the West” was adopted in the year 642 by Pope Theodore. Thereafter it appeared only occasionally and did not have a clear meaning. It flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries, in the context of a general increase in the pope’s titles, and appeared for the first time in the Annuario Pontificio in 1863.
. . .
The title “patriarch of the West,” never very clear, over history has become obsolete and practically unusable. It seems pointless, then, to insist on maintaining it. Even more so now that the Catholic Church, with Vatican Council II, has found, in the form of episcopal conferences and their international meetings, the canonical structure best suited to the needs of the Latin church today.
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TrueLight
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Thanks Mark. It helps somewhat. It contains more of the same ambiguous language I’m used to seeing in Church documents.
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JReducation
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Actually, it’s quite clear. Being a younger Catholic, it may seem less clear to you, but you’ll get used to this kind of language, especially with thinkers like Pope Benedict.
What he’s saying is several things.
The West, is not really the West. Back in the day, the West meant the Roman world. Today, the West means any westernized country, including countries that are not in the West, such as Australia. At the same time, the West excludes developing nations such as the African nations and some South American nations. It includes non-Roman nations such as Canada and the USA. In this sense, it’s meaningless, because the way that the Church used it and the way that the modern world uses the term West are not the same.
Secondly, it’s not an old title. It sort of crept into Latin Catholicism. It became a formal title in the 19th century.
Third, it’s actually a hindrance to unification with the Orthodox. Each of the Orthodox Churches has a patriarch. But the patriarchs are equals. If the pope is also a patriarch, that kind of muddles the waters. Is he an equal or is he the Prince of the Apostles? How does one say that all of these other Fathers (Patriarchs) are the sons of this Father, who is their peer?
Then there is the practical part. The Patriarch is the unifying authority Let’s say that the Chaldean Patriarch is the person that unifies the Chaldean bishops. However, in the Latin Church, we have Bishoips Conferences that serve that function. They serve to bring the bishops together in a fraternal communion to work together.
The Eastern Churches are much smaller. They don’t need national conferences of bishops. A Church like the Melkite Catholics has less bishops than Italy. I think it’s Italy that has the largest number of bishops in the world. Having a Western Patriarch does not serve the same function. We have too many bishops. They are much better served united into smaller national conferences of bishops and in some cases, such as Brazin and the USA, we even have state conferences. The whole idea is to bring these men together.
Given all of this, there is no logical reason to keep the Patriarch of the West alive. The fact is that there is no true West and there is no way that he can unify the bishops into a fraternal body, because of sheer numbers. There was no long tradition of it in the Latin Church. That’s it in a nutshell.
Also, I learned a long time ago, never to impose a title on someone who does not want it.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Te_Deum
Guest
Actually the infallibility of the Roman Church is much more than a mere theological opinion. The proposition that “the Church of the city [diocese] of Rome can fall into error” is one of the theses of Peter de Osma, formally condemned by Pope Sixtus IV as erroneous and as containing manifest heresy.
With all due respect Brother, you cannot accuse me of a Protestant mind-set. The pope is the pope of the universal Church precisely because he is the Bishop of Rome. It is the bishop’s of Rome who are the successors of Saint Peter etc.
It is a matter of manifest Catholic doctrine that the episcopate of the local Church of Rome and the visible primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church militant are not actually two episcopates, but constitute only one episcopal function.
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