The recent session of the Synod on the Family has been
likened not a few times by commentators as an attempt at a mini-Vatican III. And this appellation has some validity, for
the past year or more has seen the re-appearance of such personages as Hans
Küng (albeit not in vigorous form),
Gustavo Gutierrez, and, at least in spirit, Karl Rahner, and, in the
flesh, the indefagitable Cardinal Kasper,
all examples of those who seemed to be disappointed that Vatican III did not
follow closely after Vatican II to accomplish unfinished business: to get the
Church firmly on the same tracks as the choo-choo train of post-Enlightenment,
modern, and post-modern secularism, whose fuel is anti-dogmatism and radical
individualism.
It would seem that Kasper and his cohorts—and Kasper
certainly believed that the Pope supported them—thought that while there might
have been some bumps in the road, what they wanted in terms of changing
pastoral practice with respect to divorced and remarried Catholics and with
respect to civil unions and gay unions would in the end win over the day. On what did they base their optimism? Perhaps their cockeyed optimism was based to
some extent on their belief that they had Pope Francis behind them. But even if
this were not true, they were banking on the tactics used at the Second Vatican
Council where the major fruits of that Council were brought about by the
cleverness of the “stage-managers”, those in charge of procedural matters, who
gleefully spoke about their accomplishments after the Council. And
once those fruits had been incorporated into official documents with built-in ambiguity,
they were disseminated through a press that at that time—like the press of
every time—rejoices in the thought that the Catholic Church has seen the light
of the modern liberal world. Those of us
who are of a certain age remember the series of articles in the New Yorker
during Vatican II that were written by a priest who signed himself as Xavier
Rynne, a classy pseudonym for a Redemptorist priest who carefully filtered what
was going on at the Council through his own lens, a lens that would refract the
facts in a way he knew would please the readership of that sophisticated and
worldly periodical. He is credited with
first using the terms “conservative” and ”liberal” to define those opposing forces in
the Church that were evident in the debates.
That is not a good legacy to leave behind.
So it seemed evident to Kasper et al. that they could do the same sort of thing with the
Synod. They had the stage-managers, but
they turned out not to be as zealous and crafty as those at what Cardinal Marx
called “the Council”. But there are three important differences
between the Church and the world of 1968 and that of 2014, that they did not
take into account, and they did not do so because of their severe myopia that
shuts out reality, even within the Church.
The first differentiating factor is that most of the bishops
and Cardinals present at the Synod were
the offspring of St. John Paul II. They
were molded in the image of the Polish Pope who was determined to return, after
the post-conciliar confusion, to doctrinal continuity and to clear teaching, at
least on the part of the Papacy, within the Church, a task that was
co-shouldered by his Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Joseph Ratzinger. The stage-managers and Kasper himself,
through their peculiar vision of reality, assumed that the bishops were all
chafing under the stern hands of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and were just
waiting for an opportunity to show their true Council Colors and finish what
Vatican II had started. But in many cases, perhaps even most cases, that was
obviously not true. Many of these men really believe in the teaching of the
Church as embodied in her Tradition. And they pushed back, and hard. But, as has been correctly pointed out by a
number of commentators on the Synod, there remains the depressing fact that
over 50 percent of the bishops did not stand up to the attempt to change Church
teaching by the pastoral back door.
The second factor that the managers failed to take account
of is the ubiquitous presence today of the Internet. Gone are the days when secrecy
could be strictly imposed by edict, when information could be meted out in
carefully controlled dribbles, when one had to wait for days or even weeks to
find out what is going on. We certainly
know that the Internet is used all too often negatively for reprehensible purposes. But it is also the source of instantaneous
information and seemingly endless debate about every issue under the sun. We did not have to wait for the next issue of
the New Yorker to let sophisticated men and women know, even Catholics, what
is really going on at Councils and Synods.
The Internet is also making the Vatican Press Office more and more
irrelevant except as where one hears the particular spin that those in charge want
to put on a piece of information.
The other differentiating factor is less obvious to many
Catholics, for most Catholics live in a post-conciliar world that assumes that
whatever happened in the years after “the Council”, including and especially
the liturgical life of the Church, must be the will of God, an attitude
engendered by the ever-encroaching growth of hyper-papalism that exceeds even
the Ultramontanist dreams of Cardinal Manning in the 19th century,
and by the long standing tradition of a non-thinking laity. This second factor is that most young priests
and most young men who are in seminary today, and most young women and men who
are in the Religious Orders that are growing, want to know and love the
Tradition ever more deeply. They are
quite different from the priests who were ready to adopt every
(non-Council-mandated) liturgical change of the post-conciliar era. They would never tear down reredoses and high
altars. They would never rip out communion rails. They long for something to sing at Mass that
is not some sappy retread of 1970s sacro-pop.
And—this is the heart of the matter—so many of them have discovered the
Traditional Roman Rite of Mass, a.k.a. the Extraordinary Form. Bugnini says somewhere that to complete the
liturgical revolution the Traditional Mass had to be blotted out for two whole
generations. That did not happen, thanks
to Benedict XVI.
The rediscovery of
Catholic Tradition by young priests and by young men and women as a whole
especially by means of the Traditional Mass and by the beauty in art,
architecture and music that it gave birth to has gone nearly unnoticed by not
only those of Kasper’s generation and their contemporary stage-managers but
also by the great majority of ordinary Catholics, who have been kept in a time
bubble for the past fifty years. But it
is real, and it is there, and this despite opposition from bishops who are
willfully blind to the power of the Traditional Mass and its necessary role in
the New Evangelization of the Church and of the world. This is not, as detractors would have us
believe, mere aestheticism or romanticism or conservatism. For a love for the Tradition always gets down
to the bed-rock of doctrine, praxis and faith, gets down to a real love for the
person of Jesus Christ that then enables the person, priest or lay, to practice
his faith with love and mercy towards his neighbor.
Cardinal Burke celebrated a Pontifical Solemn Mass in the
Traditional Latin Rite in St. Peter’s just last week on October 25 as part of the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage. There are photos of the Mass on many sites on
the Internet. I suggest that everyone
look at those photos. You will see so
many young priests and seminarians present, some serving the Mass. The choir that sang the chant for the Mass
was made up of seminarians from the North American College, which is
quasi-amazing. These priests and
seminarians have found a pearl of great price and, with the help of God, they will
give all that they have to make that pearl their own in their ministry in the
Catholic Church.
***
The Traditional Mass cannot be stage-managed. This is the heart of the opposition to it
among bishops, especially in Europe. It
is Tradition itself that manages the Mass of the Ages, and whoever celebrates this
Mass, Cardinal, bishop or priest, must submit himself to the Mass, must submit
himself to the Sacrifice that he is offering, and in that submission realizes
his ministry as a priest of God.
Fr. Richard G. Cipolla, DPhil
