The late Fr John Hunwicke’s thoughts on Celebration

5 July 2021

CONCELEBRATION

The Archbishop of Dijon has, apparently, revealed that PF intends to enjoin Concelebration upon all presbyters of the Roman Rite.

I had better be honest here.

(1) About three years ago, I concelebrated the Novus Ordo with a fine young priest who was being hounded out of his parish by bigotted 'liberals'. I did it as a sign of my solidarity with him, and I have no regrets. 

(2) Every year, pandemics permitting, I concelebrate the Chrism Mass, and do so with immense joy. If anybody wants to know why, I will reprint a series of articles on the History of Concelebration, which I wrote a few years ago.

Right. When you've calmed down, I will continue. 

I think it is a mistake to let crafty and manipulative liberals back us into a corner on this issue. 

Here are some observations.

In the Traditional Roman Rite, no presbyter can be ordained without concelebrating the Ordination Mass with the ordaining Bishop. If diocesan bishops were to ordain traditional ordinands, doing so in the Old Rite, then the 'test issue' of Concelebration as a sign of Unity would have been met.

Would it not be a an admirable sign of unity for clergy who favour the Novus Ordo, from time to time, to be ordained at a Traditional ordination?

If Traditional clergy take part in the Chrism Mass, sitting in choro, how is this not a manifestation of ecclesial unity? I regard the Renewal of Vows as unnecessary and, frankly, not a little bit silly, but would it be a matter of principle for traditional clergy to refuse to join in this rite?

Bishop Tissier, in his scrupulous biography of the Great Archbishop, refers to photographic evidence that Marcel Lefebvre did concelebrate at least once (and versus populum). Was this a terrible apostasy?

If a bishop ... even an Archbishop of Dijon ... were to celebrate a Solemn Pontifical High Mass in the Old Rite, with traddy priests deaconing, subdeaconing, serving, administering Holy Communion, would this not be a sign of ecclesial unity? Why is concelebration the only acceptable such sign of unity? How can the Archbishop of Dijon claim that concelebration is essentially required by the very nature of the Church, when, for centuries, Roman Rite clergy, once their own ordination was over, never concelebrated again? Does the Archbishop really believe that the Catholic Church did not exist until the 1970s?

In 1965, when the old Missal and the old Pontifical were still in use, Rome authorised a new rite of Concelebration and ordered it to be added to the (1962) Missal and the old Pontifical. Presumably, this was the Rite which Archbishop Lefebvre celebrated about nine months after Rome had authorised it. It was more traddy than the rite of Concelebration now in use. Would Traddy clergy be prepared to take part in it? Would Trendy clergy be prepared to take part in it? 

If traddy laity occasionally saw, in their own diocese, trendy clergy being forced to take part in traddy Pontifical Liturgy with the Bishop, might they not be more open to the idea that it really was 'unity' that the Bishop was keen on, and not just the humiliation of Tradition?

I shall not enable comments which simply express a dislike of Concelebration, or which argue that Concelebration deprives the Church of the fruits of many Masses. That is not what this post is about.

It is about not letting ourselves be fooled and wrong-footed by crafty men with dubious motives.

11 July 2021

Concelebration 1

Apparently, some errors about Concelebration that I dealt with years ago still survive. So here are some of my old pieces. My reason for repeating them is that I fear ...  I terribly fear ... that some Bergoglianite, anti-Tradition, prelates, are going to make Concelebration a kind of Test Question. And that, by using this trick, doing so, they will be able to drive out good priests with splendid missions. I am not concerned to defend the entire modern culture of Concelebration, or to defend such prelates. I am concerned simply to establish, by citing the Magisterium of the Catholic Church before Vatican II, that Concelebration is licit in the Latin Church, and is not contrary to the Rule of the Faith to which we are all subject. 

Conscience does not peremptorily demand that we should refuse ever to concelebrate.

If, sadly, we are to have to face new liturgical battles in the days ahead, we do not, in my vew, have to fight them with our hands tied behind our backs. 

We are not in conscience bound to hand the enemy this advantage.

There will be quite a number of these old posts! But I hope, at least on most days, to publish my usual daily offering!

Having written a rave review of Laurence Hemming's Worship as a Revelation, and repeatedly urged everybody to read it, I think I am entitled to pick up a particular observation and to explain why, in Magisterial terms, it is mistaken, misguided, and misleading. 

And I want to refute his apparent blanket disapproval of Concelebration. 

Having summarised the way, in the old Pontifical, that newly ordained priests, in their Mass of Ordination, said the Eucharistic Prayer with the ordaining bishop, he observes ‘This has nothing to do with concelebration - it is a formal demonstration of the way in which each priest’s future recitation of the most sacred prayer of the Mass is intrinsically linked to, and in concert with, what the bishop himself does, as the one to whom he is hierarchically tied, and so this action is a formal demonstration of how the priest acquires, and exercises, his right to say this prayer and effect the miracle of transubstantiation.’

I have no problems with any of this except with the opening clause. If Hemming is suggesting that concelebration is a modern fad which misinterprets the ritual he describes, then he is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The acid test is ‘May a priest accept a mass-stipend for what he does at his Ordination Mass? If so, then it is a Mass of which he is a celebrant. And the answer given before there is any suggestion of modern liturgical faddery is: yes he may. The most learned pope before our present Holy Father, Benedict XIV, took this view. So did weighty and reliable authorities such as Gasparri and Cappello. And, in future posts, I shall be taking this back to Innocent III.

When the post-Conciliar Ritus concelebrandi formally made this into law, it was simply repeating what was already the universal judgement of popes, theologians and manual-writers; what was part of the Ordinary teaching of the Western Church.

This is by no means all that I want to say about this subject, but I do feel the need to establish the authenticity of the notion of concelebration within the practice and teaching of historic Western Christendom.

12 July 2021

Pope Innocent III on Concelebration (2)

When we aren't Covid-depressed, we presbyters are faced at this time in the year with the question of whether to concelebrate the Chrism Mass; perhaps, also, the Easter Vigil. 

I intend, over the next few days, to investigate what the Catholic Church, and particularly the Latin Church, has historically taught about Concelebration. One of my reasons for doing this is a feeling I get ... that there are some, keen Traditionalists, whose concept of Tradition is "What people did in 1950". 

I violently resent the prohibitions now in place in one of PF's basilicas in Rome. I deplore the disappearance of the normative discipline of the daily Mass for each and every priest in the Latin Church. I think a lot of concelebrations are just plain silly, as well as highly indecorous.

But Concelebration does exist in the Great Tradition within the Latin Church ... and I think it is worth disentangling this Tradition from the malpractices of Bergoglianity.

For a number of years, before I came to believe that Concelebration should only be done rarely and under the presidency of one's bishop, I concelebrated each morning with my brother priests (except on those mornings when I said a Latin Mass in a different Chapel with those students and colleagues who liked that sort of thing). I was disconcerted by a concelebrating colleague who had a habit of edging his voice ahead of mine even when I was Principal Celebrant. Why should he, I fretted, snatch the Mass from me by consecrating ahead of me and leaving me without the substances of bread and wine to consecrate myself? So I developed a habit of getting a good head of breath earlier in the Institution Narrative so that I could keep in sync with him. 

I needn't have bothered. A Pope sorted this problem out for me 800 years ago. I wish I'd known!

Innocent III (1198-1216) takes it for granted that "from time to time many priests concelebrate" and adds "the Cardinal Presbyters of Rome have been accustomed to stand around the the Pontiff and to consecrate together with him" - a pretty blunt and authoritative indication from the Bishop of Rome as to the meaning of the Rites of his own Church. What concerns him is this very question of what happens if they don't keep their voices together at the words of Consecration. "Is the one who first pronounces the words the only one who confects the Sacrament?" His answer to this is that "Whether the priests utter them before or after, their intention must be referred to the instant at which the Bishop says them, with whom principally they are concelebrating, and then all consecrate and confect at the same time".

Some modern 'traditionalists' believe that all Concelebration is wrong.  Innocent III thought and taught differently. Look him up if you don't believe he really "counts" as a "reliable" pope.

I wonder if S Thomas Aquinas agrees with him? I'll answer that question next.

13 July 2021

Vandalism in S Peter's, and S Thomas on Concelebration (3)

Some readers may feel that the Church's worship is particularly under threat ... so why am I “defending” concelebration at this particular moment?

I can see the point. “Reliable sources” are convinced that the brutalisation of the Large Church near the Santa Marta is likely to come from PF himself, the Opicus Maximus. That would bring the ban into line with the habitual praxis of this man: failing to take overt responsibility for his own actions. 

As an Englishman and a member of an Anglophone Ordinariate, I also strongly object to to the Italo-imperialism of this action. With the ongoing onslaught upon the liturgical and doctrinal amd Magisterial use of Latin, our proper common language, we are effectively being told by PF and his crowd of gruesome bullies that, if you aren't an Italophone, you're a second-class Catholic. "Better a Second Class Catholic than a Bergoglian Syncretist" might be an appropriate reaction. Should we have "CATTOLICO DI SECUNDA CLASSE" added to our Celebrets?

I recently suggested a S Nicolas-de-Chardonnet response to the Ban ... and now Cardinal Mueller has wisely and helpfully pointed out that the Ban is, quite simply, unlawful; and so nobody is obliged to obey it. I am alive to the dangers of weaponising Liturgy ... but, in times of crisis ... why doesn't somebody just do this? What has happenned to the "Pachamama Out" Action Squad?

And yet ... I am convinced that we must think within the Great Tradition. So I do intend to continue with my series on Concelebration within the Authentic Tradition of the Latin Church. Because, while it has no place in anonymous notices tacked onto Sacristy doors by furtive figures in the middle of the night, concelebration does have an honoured place in the Traditions of the Latin Church.

S Thomas Aquinas, as his custom was, covers pretty well most of the problems of late C20 Christianity, and does so in a neat formulaic way. First, he crisply formulates an erroneous opinion; then disposes of it with Respondeo.

So first he states a propositio sometimes advanced in neo-traditionalist circles: That many priests cannot consecrate one and the same Host. He disposes of this - he was a good Catholic - by pointing to what the Church does. “According to the custom of a number of Churches the newly ordained concelebrate”. The problem of rogue concelebrants Jumping The Gun he disposes of in exactly the same way as Pope Innocent III (see previous post) had done: “And it is not true that by this the consecration over the same Host is doubled; since, as Innocent III says, the intention of all must be referred (ferri) to the same instant of Consecration”.

Having disposed of that little technical difficulty, he justifies the practice in itself: “Since a priest does not consecrate except in the persona of Christ, and the many are one in Christ, therefore it does not matter whether this Sacrament is consecrated through one or through many”.

There is no doubt that the practice of Concelebration has become unseemly since the Council. Those of us who are hermeneutic-of-continuity traditionalists will do well to rethink the way we use Concelebration. But the fashion in some circles of ridiculing all use of Concelebration, and of even denying that what the newly ordained do with their Bishop really is true Concelebration, is ill-informed and gives 'traditionalism' a bad name. We must avoid the temptation (as we defend our Holy Faith against the latest aggressions of Bergoglianism) to propose our own narrow circumscriptions of 'Tradition'.

The the lady has many things new and old in her treasury!

Innocent III was a Pope, and a learned one, and as Bishop of Rome was entitled authoritatively to interpret the practice of his own Church. And S Thomas Aquinas was no mean Doctor. Not that the story ends with them.

Next in this series: Benedict XIV ... probably the most learned pope ever.

14 July 2021

Benedict XIV on Concelebration (4)

Innocent III (Pope 1198-1216) made his views on concelebration clear enough; so did S Thomas (see earlier posts). But the former, it could be argued (Durandus did), was writing as a private theologian; and as for the latter, despite his eminence, Cajetan disagreed with him.

Benedict XIV (Pope 1740-1758), undoubtedly one of the half-dozen most erudite men ever to grace the Cathedra Petri, left nothing to chance. As well as in his monumental work de Sacrosancto Missae Sacrificio (Liber III caput xvi), he made his teaching about Concelebration very clear in two magisterial documents, the encyclicals Demandatam (12 December 1743; paragraphs 9-10) and Allatae (26 July 1755; paragraph 38).

The basis of the Sovereign Pontiff's teaching is his conviction that the Eastern and Western churches are at one in this matter so that the practice of the Byzantine East can throw definitive light on the significance of our Latin practice: "It was once a rite common to the Western and Eastern Church equally, that presbyters should offer the Sacrifice of the Mass together with the bishop [copious references follow] ... at the present moment the Rite of Concelebration has grown obsolete in the Western Church, except in the Ordination of Priests which the bishop performs, and in the Consecration of Bishops, which is carried out by a bishop with two other bishops assisting".

He points out that the obsolescence of Concelebration in other circumstances in the West is comparatively recent (temporibus haud ita ab aetate nostra remotis), and that previously the 'disciplina Ecclesiae Occidentalis' demanded (postulabat) that on major solemnities, when a bishop was celebrating, presbyters should celebrate together with (una cum) the bishop - and the words of Innocent III are one of a number of exempla that he draws in to support the assertion. Not that he believes Concelebration is necessarily confined to Concelebration cum episcopo. He had to deal with a request from Byzantines who desired to celebrate the Eucharist daily but who lacked enough altars to do so (Byzantine custom insists that every Eucharist be celebrated on a 'fasting' altar). He categorically refuses them permission to celebrate twice on the same altar and advises them instead to concelebrate "with a bishop or with another priest".

He insists that concelebrants should vest as celebrants and utter the words of Consecration "just as if they were saying Mass on their own [perinde ac si sacrosanctum sacrificium singulatim conficerent]". Benedict explicitly condemns the wriggle-argument that such priests are merely saying the Words of Consecration "materialiter et recitative", insisting that they utter them "significative". They are true celebrants, albeit secondary ones [etsi secundarii, tamen vere celebrantes].

It is a laudable desire to shape ones liturgical praxis by the authentic customs of the Roman Liturgy. But this does not require that a priest should decline to concelebrate the Maundy Thursday Masses with his Bishop and Presbyterium.

15 July 2021

Money and Concelebration (5).

Benedict XIV (1740-1758) concludes his argument that concelebrants are, each of them, true celebrants (pariter concelebrant) by dealing with the question of concelebrants accepting Mass-stipends. This is the acid test. You are stealing from the laity if you accept a Mass-stipend but do not say the Mass for the intention of the donor. So the question is: if a hundred priests concelebrate, can a hundred priests accept, each of them, a Mass-stipend for that same Eucharistic celebration? Now ... traddies among you had better hold on tightly to something fixed to the ground, because you are not likely to enjoy what follows ... the answer given by the Sovereign Pontiff is an unambiguous Yes. In other words, each concelebrant has precisely the same sacramental standing as a priest saying his own private Mass. Watch his lips: Each : one : is : saying : Mass.

It is not surprising that, for the next two centuries, manualists concurred with this weighty papal judgement. Benedict XIV, Prospero Lambertini, had an immense reputation, based equally upon his own erudition and his papal status. In the last expiring months of the Old Rite (which had at that point received only two or three trifling modifications), on March 7 1965, a Rite of Concelebration was promulgated for use with the old rite. In accordance with the actual words of the Council, the document was less than whole-hearted in its endorsement of daily Concelebration when all the concelebrants are presbyters, but the rite was intended to be used universally at Ordinations, Consecrations, Abbatial Blessings, in Councils, Synods, and Episcopal meetings, and at both Masses on Maundy Thursday.

As far as Maundy Thursday Concelebration is concerned, this is something which had not lost its last foothold in the Latin Church until our own time. The Rite of Lyons, which survived until the Council, provided that on that one day six presbyters had the right to sit with the Archbishop and concelebrate (honor sedendi et offerendi). This was but the last survival of a widespread practice of such concelebration in French cathedrals during the Counter-Reformation period.

So those 1965 provisions seem to me a thoroughly 'organic' liturgical development. They seem to me to draw, not as revolutionary liturgical subversives so often and so cheerfully do, upon dubious, improbable, and unedifying reconstructions of "what the Early Church did", but upon a broad consideration of the Latin Church's whole liturgical tradition; upon the Magisterium, and especially (when the meaning of the Roman Rite is concerned) that of Roman Pontiffs; and upon the consensus of reliable manualists.They seem to me to rest on the consistent and reiterated teaching of Popes and Doctors over the last millennium. They are not some load of rubbish dreamed up by archbishop Bugnini's generation.

And (paragraph 10) they concur with the judgement on Mass-stipends of Benedict XIV and those who followed him: Singuli concelebrantes stipendium legitime percipere possunt ad normam iuris.

The mature and settled inheritance, the auctoritas, of the Latin Church prescribes that, normally, each presbyter should celebrate ('presidentially') daily, and do so privately if he is not obliged to serve a pastoral need. This needs to be upheld and, where necessary, restored.

But the notion which one sometimes meets among traditionalists who have not informed themselves of the facts, that any form of concelebration is a treacherous sell-out to the 'Spirit of Vatican II', contradicts the traditions of the Latin Churches and the Magisterium of Popes Innocent III  and Benedict XIV and the considered judgement of S Thomas Aquinas ... and a lot of Counter-Reformation manualists.

17 July 2017

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (1)

Readers will be familiar with the document described recently by Professor Roberto de Mattei on the Rorate Blog, designed to intimidate those who work in the Roman Colleges into concelebrating, rather than celebrating 'private' Masses.

Many, including of course the admirable and indefatigable Archibloggopoios Fr Zed, have pointed out that this represents a direct and shameless attack on a right embodied in the direct enactment of an Ecumenical Council, in Sacrosanctum Concilium of Vatican II. This is a particularly unscrupulous example of the practice of citing Vatican II, or its Spirit, when it suits a writer; and of ignoring or misrepresenting its explicit mandates when they are inconvenient. But more about this in a later section of this series.

However, I do urge readers to take courage from this offensive, intolerant, and thoroughly nasty draft Working Paper, because it proves that They are worried. Indeed, They have every reason to be anxious. Young priests, and Seminarians, are overwhelmingly either in favour of Tradition, or are at least tolerant of it. Increasingly, one hears those cheerful gusts of laughter as the younger clergy reflect on the certainty that Age and our Beloved Sister Death will solve the problem of the bigotted generation currently in the ascendancy. As our late Holy Father Pope emeritus Benedict enigmatically pointed out to Bergoglio's new cardinals, God wins in the end. Indeed he does. We may have another decade or two to work and suffer through, until the Cupich generation is itself called to its reward, but it can prudently be predicted that the End is now in sight, that the light can finally be discerned, even if only dimly, at the end of the tunnel.

We should also take heart from the sense of panic manifested in that other recent repressive proposal, that Transitional Deacons, having worked in a parish, should need a positive votum from "the laity" before they procede to the presbyterate. This actually constitutes an attack upon the Sacrament of Holy Order, because it implies that men who felt a call to priestood might be marooned in a diaconate to which they had never felt permanently called. Would their oath of Celibacy be dispensed? Whoever dreamed up this piece of discrimination evidently believes that the Grace of the Holy Spirit for the Order of Deacon in the Church of God is a piece of rubbish that can easily and conveniently be dumped. Of course, saying this does not mean that one mistrusts the Laity. It means that one has the sense to realise that, under the current ascendancy, a faction of the Laity will be used ... abused ... as a manipulative tool for keeping out of the priesthood many young men who believe in priesthood. "My dear boy, I'm terribly sorry ... if it were just left to me ... but the Laity have spoken ... What did you say? How many of them? What percentage? Now really! Be reasonable! You can't expect us to conduct an actual vote, can you ...". Remember what happened at Maynooth last year when the 'formators' tried to chuck out almost an entire year because they didn't like their attitudes.

The last occasion on which I concelebrated a Novus Ordo  Mass was a couple of years ago; a keen and hardworking young priest ... not an Extraordinary Form type but what I think of as 'Wojtyla loyalist' ... was hounded out of his parish by a lay faction. Blame me if you will, but I felt compelled, out of priestly solidarity, to go along and concelebrate with him his last Mass in his parish.

It does not take much imagination to guess what such factions would do if given the power currently being discussed. Remember the Irish diocese in which, four or five years ago, even the diocesan Bishop was himself bullied by such people into abandoning his proposal to introduce Permanent Deacons. It was felt that this would reinforce the Patriarchy of the clerical state. The ultimate ambition, of course, is to introduce women priests or, failing that, to ensure that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is replaced by lay-led communion services ... or worse ...

To be continued.

18 July 2017

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (2)

I do not know whence this proposal ultimately arises, but it seems to me to bear all the hallmarks of the current regime. We have come to recognise the methodology of Bergoglian realpolitik. "Doctrine is not changed", and so a document like Amoris laetitia may even contain an explicit assertion of the indissolubilty of Marriage ... several hundred pages apart from rhe deft little footnote, or the crafty ambiguity, by which this doctrine may in practice be set aside. Episcopal Conferences may not have been formally given the right to attack the Sacrament of Marriage, but nods, winks, and private letters single out those Conferences which Have Got the Message.

This is a culture in which Cardinal Sarah has not been sacked, but he is publicly humiliated and neutered by having his colleagues and staff sacked and replaced by bergoglians ( I except from this generalisation Bishop Alan Hopes who, being a former Anglican, has sound and orthodox liturgical instincts).

So it is with the proposal that priests in the Roman Colleges should be bullied into forgoing their canonical right to celebrate individually the Holy Eucharist. Summorum Pontificum is not set aside, but it is circumvented.

Not that this document explicitly mentions Summorum Pontificum, or indeed the Extraordinary Form. It is far too cunning to do that. But this is what it is all about. Consider:  
since Concelebration is permitted in the Novus Ordo, but (except at Ordinations) forbidden in the Classical Roman Mass, 
and since the readers are repeatedly told that the young men must be intimidated into prefering Concelebration, 
what we have in this draft document is, in practical, political terms, a major initiative to prevent the use of the Extraordinary Form by "student priests".

Doubtless it is hoped that the provisions of this illiberal document will spread, particularly in places under the watchful eye of rigidly bergoglianist bishops.

To be continued.

20 July 2017

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (3)

Today: a couple of dogs that failed to bark in the night.

(1) Dog A is the CDW, still nominally under the direction of the disgraced not-sufficiently-bergoglian Cardinal Sarah. There is no evidence in the Working Paper which we are considering that the CDW was consulted. Yet the Working Paper is exclusively about a liturgical matter! Here we have another example of bergoglian method: the dodge of not entrusting something to an actually relevant dicastery. There would, you see, be the terrible risk that they might not come up with the right answer. After all, the Holy Father told Sarah to change the rules concerning the Maundy Thursday pedilavium and Sarah did nothing until, a year later, Bergoglio kicked him. Sarah then did as he was told but made it public that he was acting under duress. Just so, Amoris laetitia was presented to the Press by the Graf von Schoenborn and not by the (then) Cardinal Prefect of the CDF. Far, far safer! Gerhard is so, so off message!

(2) Dog B is the Divine Office. True, the Working Paper we are currently considering is, according to its explicit heading, concerned with Concelebration. But the closely connected question of the common recitation of the Divine Office cannot be irrelevant here. The Institutio Generalis de Liturgia Horarum makes clear (paragraphs 9 and 20) the great desirability of the common recitation of the Offoce. And it draws upon the same advice of Sacrosanctum Concilium which the Working Paper on Concelebration mentions. Why does the Congregatio pro clericis not allude to this?

I think the reasons for this deafening silence are practical and obvious. Any attempt to force student clergy in Roman Colleges to celebrate (ex. gr.) Lauds, Vespers, and the Office of Readings and Compline in common would probably lead to a general insurrection. The Offices in the Liturgy of the Hours are short and the daily pensum could probably be got through by an individual, moving his lips silently, in less than a total of twenty minutes. The Office need cause very little interruption to the working life of a priest or student. But if one had to stop what one was doing, go to chapel, and sing the texts, they would take up very much more time. I'm not denying that this might be a good thing ... I haven't forgotten the view of S Benedict that the the opus Dei should take priority over everything ... I'm simply saying that the students, being only human, might not all embrace it with equal enthusiasm ... I mean, they would cut up rough.

So ... the drafters of the Working Paper decided to let that potentially irritable Sleeping Dog lie. After all, Who Cares? Our priority, they mused, is to put a stop to this pernicious practice of all these disgraceful young priests getting out of bed early and slipping off before breakfast to access an altar on which to celebrate that Extraordinary Form which the current pope so dislikes; which encapsulates an entire attitude to Priesthood and to life which he fears and loaths.

To be continued.

21 July 2017

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (4)

You will have been asking: does this Working Paper forget to mention the explicit words of Sacrosanctum Concilium, of the liturgical books, and of the Code of Canon Law, which secure to a presbyter his right (facultas) of celebrating a private (singularis) Mass?

Not a bit of it. To be fair, it grasps that problem very firmly and with both hands. It quotes it, gives the references, and then this is what it says (the highlighting is in the original draft):

Il criterio fondamentale che giustifica la celebrazione individuale nello stesso giorno nel quale la Chiesa o la comunita propone la concelebrazione e quando il beneficio dei fedeli lo richieda o lo consigli.

(The fundamental criterion which justifies individual celebration on the same day on which the Church or the community proposes concelebration is when the benefit of the faithful requests or advises it.)


Yes. I thought that would take your breath away. I really do not think it necessary for me to labour the nastiness of this ... and its cleverness in seeking to prevent young priests from saying their daily Mass. It completely perverts the plain and contextual meaning of the Council, the rubrics, and Canon Law.

Another anxiety: papal and curial documents like to build up a 'position' by citing previous documents, regarded as precedents. If the Congregation for Clergy gets away with this cheap dodge, there is every risk that their enactment will be littered around in the footnotes of future repressive documents until we are told that it has become the Church's settled position.

I will merely add that the Working Paper does not deal with another right canonically secured to every presbyter of the Roman Rite: that of celebrating a private mass daily in the Extraordinary Form (vide the opening sections of Summorum Pontificum). If the Working Paper had taken up this question, doubtless its conclusion would have been just as clever and equally nasty.

I have one more piece (5) about this a nasty document put together by a nasty group in pursuance of a nasty plot. After that, my final piece (6) on this subject will throw the windows wide open to the clean fresh air of the wholesome paradosis of our wonderful Western and Latin Christendom. It will contain extensive quotations from somebody whom I consider one of the great theologians of the last century, whom I knew and whose teachings greatly influenced my own vocation to the Sacred Priesthood. So hang on there: something good is on the way

To be continued.

23 July 2017

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (5)

A little more about Paragraph 57 (2) of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

"Salva tamen sit semper sit cuique sacerdoti facultas Missam singularem celebrandi ..."

[Abbott: "Nevertheless, each priest shall always retain his right to celebrate Mass individually ..."] 

I dealt last time with the Hermeneutical Miracle, the Circaean Touch in the iniquitous daraft Working Paper, whereby this Conciliar mandate is metamorphosed into meaning "A priest may only withdraw from concelebrating in order to serve the needs of the Laity". I want to emphasise this morning that the Suppressio veri and Suggestio falsi involved here are so shameless as, in effect, to constitute barefaced lies.


Vatican II is clearly preserving here a right which the clergy had before the Council. While permitting Concelebration, with the limitations made clear in Paragraph 57 (Maundy Thursday, Councils, Ordinations and abbatial Blessings, other occasions to which the Ordinary has explicitly consented), it is also preserving an existing right. As Canon 902 in turn puts it,

" ... integra tamen pro singulis libertate manente Eucharistiam individuali modo celebrandi ..."

["... for each and every priest, the freedom remains intact of celebrating the Eucharist in the individual way ..."]

Notice manente. The liberty remains. Notice integra. It remains intact. In other words, the pre-Conciliar freedom is not abrogated. It is preserved, it is set in stone.

Not even the dodgy group which put together this disgraceful Working Paper could go so far as to rewrite History and to claim that, before the Council, 'private Masses' were forbidden or discouraged. They were an integral part of universal priestly culture in the Latin Church. They were vigorously defended by Pius XII (Mediator Dei) in 1947, who explicitly condemned the very errors now resurrected by the draft Working Paper (I will quote him in my final piece).

And, less than two decades after the teaching of Pius XII, the Council, followed by the Novus Ordo Missal, and, a few years after that, the Conciliar Code of Canon Law, all carefully and unambiguously preserved his right to every priest of the Latin Churches. How decisive and repeated does the Magisterium of the Church have to be before the wayward and the heterodox take notice of it? Why are curial departments so cluttered up with the wayward and the heterodox?

But what the H**l: if one is part of a Vatican culture engaged on the exciting and far-reaching project of subverting the Sacrament (and Natural Institution) of Holy Matrimony, one is hardly going to draw the line at telling a few lies in order to put a stop to private masses and the Extraordinary Form.

To be concluded.