The Editor
Messa in Latino
April 24, 2020
Dearest Friends,
After publishing the translations of the
CDF’s letter to the Episcopal Conferences and the attached questionnaire on theapplication of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, we would like now
to add some further updating on this complex and delicate matter. MessainLatino.it, in fact was given some [background]information
that we judge reliable.
1. It would seem that in the decision to effect the
survey on the application of the Motu
Proprio, and in the successive wording of the questionnaire, the ‘Section
IV’ Office of the CDF (which corresponds to the former Ecclesia Dei Commission) was never
consulted, not even indirectly.
The former Commission had been simply informed about it (we don’t know whether
it was after the fact);
2. The question whether the operation is a prelude to
an attack on the Motu Proprio is circulating in the Vatican. The most prevalent
answer given to this question would be “not right away…”:
3. Regarding the Holy See’s internal dynamics, it
would seem that the appeal-letter* by Prof. Andrea Grillo against the recent
integrations of the 1962 Missal, which were spoken about on the web over the
last few week was followed up, in the sense that an inquiry was initiated,
involving all the Congregations mentioned in the appeal-letter (the CDF, the Congregation
for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments) as well as the
Congregation for Catholic Education.
4. Nevertheless, the probable ‘breeding ground’ for
this questionnaire would be the same one wherein the ideas of Prof. Andrea
Grillo [Rorate note: the most famous liberal liturgist in Italy] are formed and spread. It is not by chance that Grillo welcomed this news with great satisfaction on his
Facebook page :
[Translation
of Grillo’s Facebook entries: “By July all the bishops consulted by the Pope with a questionnaire on
Summorum Pontificum. [Is this] the end of the state of exception? Now
theologians and liturgists will have to clarify in detail the vices of the
state of liturgical exception. It will be a precious service.”]
Connecting the reading of this questionnaire with this
information, we cannot stifle the fear that it fits the type of surveys that are to
deliver an already fabricated result, agreeable to the drafters [of the documents];
and that this result might consist in the “ascertainment” of the failure of the Motu Proprio (a failure that would be placed on the level of
liturgical reconciliation, of the mutual enrichment of the two forms of the
Roman Rite, and, above all, on the pastoral level and priestly formation…).
If all this is so, given that Summorum Pontificum, instead, has gathered together a very vast population of the faithful, and has been a great pastoral and vocational success, we would be dealing here with a colossal mystification of reality, perhaps destined to substantiate a reductive intervention on the scope of Summorum Pontificum, and of a return to the indult method. If not worse…
If all this is so, given that Summorum Pontificum, instead, has gathered together a very vast population of the faithful, and has been a great pastoral and vocational success, we would be dealing here with a colossal mystification of reality, perhaps destined to substantiate a reductive intervention on the scope of Summorum Pontificum, and of a return to the indult method. If not worse…
What can we say in the face of all this? May the People of Summorum Pontificum make known to those concerned immediately, that if this is the way things really are we are on to
them. And the S.P. people will do everything to avoid behaving like the foolish
virgins [of the Parable - Mt. 25].
The Editor.
*a letter signed by some well-known scholars, like Padre Augé and also a significant number of Prof. Grillo’s students - currently subject to his academic authority.
