Ten years ago Benedict XVI released one of the most momentous texts of his pontificate. Summorum Pontificum lifted restrictions on the so-called Tridentine Mass. The motu proprio decreed that there are two legitimate forms of the Roman Rite: the Ordinary Form (post-Vatican II) and the Extraordinary Form (pre-Vatican II). The two forms should be “mutually enriching”, rather than antagonistic. This was the German pope’s blueprint for ending the “liturgy wars”: the bad-tempered debates that have consumed so much energy since the 1960s.
How has Benedict’s vision fared in the past decade? That was the question Cardinal Robert Sarah grappled with in an address to a liturgical conference in Germany last weekend. The cardinal did not deliver his speech in person, however, seemingly because of arcane Vatican politics.
The Guinean cardinal may be prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, but he has been discouraged from speaking freely since he urged priests to celebrate Mass facing east at a talk in London last summer. He received a rare public rebuke, delivered via the Vatican press office, and was ordered not to use the term “reform of the reform”. His congregation was packed with new members who rejected his liturgical vision and he appears to have no part in a new commission on liturgical translation.
The cardinal had reportedly confirmed his attendance at the German liturgical conference three times. But after the ad orientem controversy, he withdrew. So last weekend his text was read out by a representative. The address revealed that the cardinal has refined, but not in any way diluted, his thinking. He believes that the “liturgical movement” launched by Pope St Pius X is continuing, uninterrupted, to this day. Two high points so far are the Vatican II constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium and Summorum Pontificum.
But reckless liturgical innovation has, he said, resulted in “disaster, devastation and schism”. This can only be corrected by “the mutual enrichment of the rites” – a term from Benedict XVI’s magisterium that is more precise than “the reform of the reform”.
Cardinal Sarah’s address earned both instant acclaim and condemnation online (as his speeches tend to). Some commentators accused him of attacking Vatican II, when it was clear that he was only criticising its faulty implementation.
Why would otherwise intelligent observers make such a simple mistake? One wonders if they have an unconscious urge to close down discussion. Perhaps they worry that open liturgical debate could lead to a major course correction that would cast their conception of the Church into doubt. This may also explain their deep animus towards Cardinal Sarah himself.
But debate cannot be suppressed for long. The liturgy is, as Sacrosanctum Concilium says, “the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed”. It is not a marginal concern reserved for ecclesiastical anoraks. Ten years on, Benedict XVI’s generous vision of “mutual enrichment” is far from realised. It is being held back by fear, suspicion and an aversion to rational discussion. But true liturgical renewal, like spring, cannot be held back for ever.
The men who spoke out
Earlier this week the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, was received in private audience by Pope Francis. The Prince has been on a tour of Italy, and a visit to the Vatican is a usual part of these royal tours, at least since 1903 when King Edward VII called on Pope Leo XIII, becoming the first member of the British Royal Family to do so since the Reformation.
Prince Charles and the Pope have one great interest in common: both have been passionate defenders of the rights of Christian communities in the war-torn Middle East. Yet although both have sought to give the plight of these ancient communities a higher profile, their advocacy has had little impact in places such as Iraq and Syria, where Christianity is now facing extinction. But both men can at least say that when no one else spoke, they did; their words have served to highlight the shameful silence of many others in the West.
Prince Charles’s track record on religion is one that is likely to make him warm to Pope Francis. Going back several decades, the Prince has spoken impatiently about the divisions between Christians, and though an Anglican, he has shown a marked leaning towards the insights of other traditions and indeed other faiths. In addition, as someone in a second union with a divorced and remarried spouse, the Prince is perhaps the sort of person that the Pope had in mind when writing his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
In December 1936, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, King Edward VIII, had to renounce the throne in order to marry the woman he loved, the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, who had two living ex-husbands. A couple of generations later, and Prince Charles’s second union has now ceased to be controversial: the Duchess of Cornwall is widely accepted, even in the Vatican, and may well become Queen in due course. How things have changed.
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