Okay, Br. JR. Then would you say it was prohibited? And if so, how does that change the OP’s question?
Same result. You now had to request permission to celebrate a TLM.
It was prohibitted for practical reasons. The Church wanted to transition to the New Order. Which, by the way, it was never the intention of Pope Paul to call it the NO. It was simply the New Order of the Roman Rite.
We have to understand, the Tridentine Form was not the only form that was prohibited. I understand that it’s the most common form in the Latin Church and that most laymen don’t know any other form. But every form that was not the new form was prohibited.
Not only were forms prohibited, so were rites. The Dominican, Carhtusians and Carmelites were asked to surrender their rites. It is true that they were not ordered to do so, but Pope Paul did ask. Since the three orders are Pontifical, they surrendered their rites. The Carthusians have celebrated the same rite for almost 1,000 years. The Dominicans and Carmelites for 800 years.
Then there were the forms: Franciscan, Augustinian, Salesian, Spiritans and Benedictines. These were surrendered voluntarily when asked to do so.
The glitch was in the transition. Aside from the fact, that many people inserted things into the new form that was not intended, which we’re not going to discuss, because the topic is boring. That’s how much it gets discussed on these threads.
There was another glitch that happened very innocently. The plan was to recover the rites of the religious orders as well as the old form of the Roman Rite and introduce them again as exceptions. That’s where Pope Benedict gets the word Forma Extraordinaria.
This never happened. Pope Paul VI died. Canon Law was incomplete. Pope Paul had dismantled it with the intention of rewriting it, but he died in the process. Bl. John Paul came to power in 1978 and had to finish the work on Canon Law, which he finished around 1981 and promulgated in 1983. There was the issue of Communism that had to be dealt with. The Church became aware of the power of youth. By 1978, when Pope John Paul came to office, it was obvious that the young had taken over. Commerce, politics, entertainment and even our military organizations submitted to them In many countries, the voting age dropped and the number of young adult politicians increased. There was need to step up the outreach to the young, who now had control of world affairs, but were out of control. There was the growing concern over the Middle East. The Vatican knew that if the Church did not begin to talk to the Jews and Muslims, the Christians in the Middle East were going to be caught in the middle of a horrible massacre.
It was obvious that Pope John Pau II had his work cut out for him. The form of the liturgy was not high on the list of priorities, because we had a mass and sacraments. Whereas, people’s rights, the rights of the unborn, the youth, the Easter Churches were all in serious danger and in need of the pope’s attention and protection.
The reintegration of the old form as the extraordinary form was put on the back burner so long that bishops forgot that it was there. It is important to keep things in perspective. The Holy Father and the Roman Curia was involved in matters that had no alternatives. The question about the Tridentine Form was on hold, but the people were not without the mass and the sacraments. If these other issues were unattended, lives and souls would be lost.
The Tridentine Form was not going to stop the Communists, protect Eastern Catholics, bring Jews and Muslims to the table with the pope, go out to the young, stop abortion, deal with the ordination of women and address the Church-State relations in many countries. It is MY OPINION that the pope, bishops and religious superiors went into “triage mode”.
We can debate whether it was the best way to proceed and if we had $1.00 for every opinion, we could end world hunger. It’s a useless debate. It only serves to let people vent.
The real discussion is how to fix the damage that has been done to the OF and where to find priests who want to celebrate the EF. And I should add to this list, we have to stop the competition. No one goes to heaven for attending either form of the Mass. Only the perfection of charity can lead us to heaven. Every form and every rite of the mass is the celebration of perfect charity. We must focus on the love of the Father.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
