Rorate Caeli

Cardinal Sarah intervenes on the debate over Summorum Pontificum

Cross-posted from FIUV.org


A series of Tweets sent but Robert, Cardinal Sarah, @Card_R_Sarah, at 12pm on 8th July 2021 (translated from French).

History will remember Benedict XVI, not only as a great theologian but also as the Pope of Summorum Pontificum, the Pope of liturgical peace, who built an ecumenical bridge with the Christian East by means of the Latin-Gregorian liturgy.

 

He will be remembered as the Pope who had at heart the desire to find again the Christian roots and unity of Europe. He opposed meaningless secularism [laicisme] and the disintegration of European culture.

 

Following the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, despite difficulties and resistance, the Church embarked on a path of liturgical and spiritual reform, which, though slow, is irreversible.

 

Despite intransigent clerical attitudes in opposition to the venerable Latin-Gregorian liturgy, attitudes typical of the clericalism that Pope Francis has repeatedly denounced, a new generation of young people has emerged in the heart of the Church.

 

This generation is one of young families, who demonstrate that this liturgy has a future because it has a past, a history of holiness and beauty that cannot be erased or abolished overnight.

 

The Church is not a field of battle where one plays to win by trying to harm the spiritual sensitivity of one's brothers and sisters in the faith.

 

As Benedict XVI said to the French bishops: “In the Church there is room for everyone,” because we know how to treat each other with respect and live together, praising the Lord in His Church and remaining in the one true Faith.

 

The liturgical crisis led to the crisis of faith. In the same way, respect for the two forms of the Latin liturgy, ordinary and extraordinary, will imbue us with a missionary impetus for evangelisation, and we will finally be able to escape of the “tunnel of crisis”.