The following is a translation of the fourth part of Fr.
Stefano Manelli’s Pastoral Report to the Franciscans of the Immaculate titled
“The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum
for the growth of the Religious Life," issued after the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum. The first parts are
available in Italian on Chiesa e
postConcilio. Fr. Manelli, in his Introduction,
using St. Ambrose’s image of the Church as the moon that reflects the light of
Christ the sun, speaks as follows:
Mindful of the words and thoughts of the holy Archbishop of Milan let us now turn our attention to the real situation of the Church in which we live. Let us say first of all that it is certainly not difficult to admit that today the splendor of the Bride of Christ is passing through an eclipse of perhaps singular proportions in her two thousand year history. This crisis, that embraces the entire inner life of the Bride of Christ, according to the Holy Father Benedict XVI, ‘depends in great part of the collapse of the liturgy’ that happened not in the Council but in the post-Conciliar time.
Father
Manelli goes on to offer concrete numbers that show the precipitous decline in
the major religious orders. The main
part of the Pastoral Report, using patristic, medieval and post-Tridentine
sources, lays out clearly the relationship of the Religious Life and the
Liturgy, the Religious Life and the Mass, and the Religious Life and the Divine
Office. Part 4 deals with the
consequences of the liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council.
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The Motu Proprio
“Summorum Pontificum” for the growth of the Religious Life
Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, F.I.
Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, F.I.
(Founder and Minister
General of the Franciscans of the Immaculate)
4.
What happened in the decade of the 1960s?
Until the decade of the 1960s, the
liturgical patrimony that characterized every single Religious Order remained
nearly unchanged, save for the appropriate marginal modifications regarding,
for example, the liturgical calendar, which has always been enriched or trimmed
under the watchful supervision of the official Church. In those years the Church still enjoyed an
extraordinary fecundity of religious vocations, an accompanying growth in the
Missions, and a solidity and maturity of the Christian life of the people of
God.
What happened, instead, from the ‘60s and afterwards? In effect, it happened that after the celebration of the Second Vatican Council, which was an assemblage the likes of which the Church had never had in her past, there was an expectation of liturgical reform. In the actual carrying out of the reform, rather than go about the reform with the purpose of a hoped for increase and growth in the Christian life, the process of reform took a very different turn, which, when one looks at the facts, has negatively affected the Church, and, even more, has negatively affected above all the framework itself of the Religious Life (especially in the West).
More devastating—let us note this
again—has been the negative influence of the Novus Ordo on the Religious Life, as already referenced above (with
respect to the devastating losses in nearly all the Orders and Religious Institutes). And here we cannot fail to mention as well
the sadness caused by the closing of so many monasteries and religious
houses, as well as the closing of the
greater part of the seminaries for priests and brothers, with the consequence
of an aging clergy, the drop in the Missions without a turnover of
missionaries, and the continual increase in the number of towns that even in
Italy remain without a pastor, again
because of lack of vocations.
And if we want to ask ourselves why
the negative influence of the Novus Ordo
has been such a problem for the Church and has been even more a problem above
all for the Religious Life, the answer is very simple: because the whole Church lives from the Liturgy,
as even Vatican II taught, and as Pope John Paul II said in his letter to the
bishops, Dominicae Coenae of February
1980, when he spoke of the “close and organic bond between the renewal of the Liturgy
and the renewal of the whole life of the Church. The Church does not only act in the liturgy,
she also expresses herself in the liturgy.
She lives by the liturgy and receives from the liturgy the strength for
her life.” (75) And Pope Benedict XVI
affirms that in the liturgy “the Christian finds the Church as such, putting
into action her essence, as She who believes and the mediatrix of Grace. All the rest is secondary.” (76).
The Religious Life, then, has been
subjected even more to the negative influence of the Novus Ordo, because it is above all a life that is “liturgical”, as
explained above, and as a consequence, the Religious Life has not been able and
is not able to be shaped by the Liturgy in its most vital foundations. It is with the liturgy that the Religious
Life has a relationship of simbiosis and synergy, whether in times of fecundity
or times of barrenness. One could also say that the Liturgy and the Religious
Life stand or fall together. This is the
perennial supernatural dynamic of the Religious Life grafted on to the Liturgy
and the Liturgy grafted on to the Religious Life.
As a consequence, a Liturgy well
grounded, stable, and solid is proven and assured as such above all by the
vitality and fecundity of the monastic and religious life; and, in turn, a
monastic and religious life that is solid and fruitful in growth, is proof and
guarantees in the most secure way the authenticity of the Liturgy of the
Mystical Body of Christ. But a monastic
and religious life that is in the devastating condition of in reverse gear, so
to speak, of not walking forward, as is the case today, can only be a testimony
to a Liturgy that lacks that foundational consistency and “vital force”,
according to the precise expression of Pope John Paul II.
74.
If one looks at the reality of the situation regarding the people, it is
by now obvious to all that the attendance of the people of God at Holy Mass on
days of obligation, in the past 40 years, in our Italy, has literally fallen
from a precipice: from an average of 60% in attendance at Mass that was the
average in the ‘50s to 9-10% today (this is without speaking of the median Mass
attendance in Europe of 5%!). And what
does one say about the collapse in the number of those going to the Sacrament
of Confession, of the delaying of or refusal to baptize children, of the
striking increase in marriages that are only civil, of the frightful increase
in contraception and abortion (without even speaking of homosexuality or
pedophilia)? But it is easy when
discussing this phenomenon to feel the obligation to oppose this line of
thinking with the counter argument that it is not the fault of the Liturgy if
society has taken this disastrous path.
To offer that argument, however, shows a rejection and a putting down of
what is the great salvific mission of the Liturgy in the world. We must not forget that the threefold basis
of the true Christian life is built on the three “Lex”: Lex orandi, Lex credendi, Lex vivendi. The link between these three
laws is ab intus, from within. One cannot stand without the others.
As a consequence: a soild Lex
orandi (namely, daily prayer that is constant and faithful; liturgical,
Eucharistic, Marian; vocal, mental, affective, contemplative), is the matrix
for a solid Lex credendi. A solid Lex credendi (namely, to believe all the truths of faith that the
Church sets forth to be believed; to receive the Sacraments, to follow the
Magisterium of the Church, in obedience to the Pope), is the matrix for a solid
Lex vivendi. A solid Lex
vivendi(namely, living a life of Grace, avoiding sin, combatting vices,
practicing the Christian virtues in familial obligations and those owed to
society) is the matrix of a Christian life that is holy and sanctifying!
But if the Lex orandi is not genuine and solid, what does one find? One finds
the fruits according to the gospel teaching of Jesus: “A good tree cannot bear
bad fruit”. (Mt. 7,18). One sees the
poisonous fruits of a faith that is confused and fragile, of a faith perhaps
syncretistic or distorted to the point of denying the truths of the Catholic
faith concerning the Most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, most holy Mary, the
doctrine of Hell (closed or nonexistent), the Eucharist, Confession, etc…One
sees the poisonous fruits of a Christian life that is disordered and misled by
the passions and the world, that gives assent to moral deviations (divorce,
abortion, euthanasia, contraception, concubinage, homosexual acts, indecent ways
of dressing, pornography, etc…..)
One finds, more and more in the
social sphere, the profanation of Sunday (against the Third Commandment) in
mass culture, the shocking fall in Mass attendance and practice of the
Sacraments (Confessions, Communion, but also Baptism for infants), while at the
same time there is a proliferation of drugs, discos and gay bars, with crowds
of people at stadiums, at “festivals” of all sorts, in theaters, slaves to the
TV, suffering from the disease of hedonism with all of its terrible costs. Poor society, poor humanity!
75.
John Paul II, Dominicae Coenae, 1980
76.
Benedict XVI, Davanti al
Protagonista. Alle radici della liturgia, Ed. Cantagalli,
Siena
Translation and Introduction by Father Richard G. Cipolla
