Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect
of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments
(CDW), has announced that he’s setting up a commission aimed at
overhauling the liturgical reforms that followed from the Second Vatican
Council.
And in an effort to give the project added momentum he’s reiterated
an earlier call to all priests around the world to start celebrating
Mass
versus orientem (towards the East)—that is, priest with “his back to the people,” as was the norm before Vatican II.
“I can say that when I was received in audience by the Holy Father
last April, Pope Francis asked me to study the question of a reform of a
reform [of the liturgy] and of how to enrich the two forms of the Roman
rite,” said the cardinal on Tuesday
at a conference in London .
“This will be a delicate work and I ask for your patience and prayers. But if we are to implement
Sacrosanctum Concilium
[Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] more faithfully, if
we are to achieve what the Council desired, this is a serious question
which must be carefully studied and acted on with the necessary clarity
and prudence,” he told the conference’s mostly neo-Tridentinist
participants.
He then made “an appeal to all priests” to “return as soon as
possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned
together in the same direction…when we are addressing God.” He said it
was “permitted by current liturgical legislation” and was “perfectly
legitimate in the modern rite.” He urged the priests “to implement this
practice wherever possible” and suggested that the First Sunday of
Advent (November 27) “may be a very good time to do this.”
He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures completely out of context to drive home his point.
“Dear Fathers,” he said, “we should listen again to the lament of God
proclaimed by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘they have turned their back to me’
(2:27). Let us turn again towards the Lord!”
This is just the latest effort to keep fresh the divisions in the
Church that Benedict XVI inadvertently fomented in 2007 when he issued
Summorum Pontificum.
That document made it possible for the near-unrestricted celebration
of the pre-Vatican II liturgy throughout the world. And in doing so it
empowered a tiny minority of Catholics, many of them reactionaries and
Vatican II skeptics.
These “retrodox” Catholics—some notoriously sympathetic to the
Lefebvrist schismatics (Society of Saint Pius X)—gained so much
prominence in the Church that they became the tail wagging the dog.
Sadly, Cardinal Sarah is an enabler of this group.
**********
So what gives?
Did Pope Francis really “ask” Cardinal Sarah to set up a commission
on reforming the Vatican II liturgical form? Or was it, in fact,
the cardinal who initiated this development by asking the pope’s
permission to form such a study group?
We still don’t know.
But as the saying goes, there is a grain of truth in every joke. And thanks to
a quip the pope made
on his return from Armenia last month, we know something of what he
thinks about setting up commissions; according to his aside, they are
often used as a way to kill an idea or proposal.
Is that what Francis is doing by allowing a CDW commission to start
looking at how it can make the current Mass more like its unreformed,
Tridentine version? Because, make no mistake, that is the objective of
Cardinal Sarah and his cohort.
Or is the pope merely allowing the rigid ultra-conservatives (“those
who say no to everything”) to “do their work” while he—without looking
over his shoulder—gets on with doing his own, as he suggested
in a recent interview ?
One thing is certain though, if this is more than just “busy work” to
keep the CDW prefect occupied until his seventy-fifth birthday in June
2020—and if it really does lead to some sort of “reform of the
reform”—then the fault will rest with no one but Francis.
After all, the Jesuit pope appointed the Guinean cardinal as head of
the Church’s worship office in November 2014 after an unprecedented
three-month vacancy. Francis had sent the previous occupant, Cardinal
Antonio Cañazaris, back to a head a diocese in his native Spain.
There is evidence that he wanted to replace the man known as “Little
Ratzinger” with Archbishop Piero Marini, an unflinching supporter of the
post-Vatican II liturgical reforms and former papal master of
ceremonies.
But people in the Ratzinger camp ominously warned Francis not to do
it, some alleging that it was even the former pope himself who
intervened to block the Marini appointment less it unleash a “war” in
the Church.
“I reject conflict,” Pope Francis
said in the recent interview
concerning the opposition he faces from ultraconservative bishops and
Vatican officials. He also added that he does not like to fire people
(“chop heads off”), but prefers to wait until they reach the retirement
age and then remove them.
So is there hope for Vatican II Catholics that the pope will firmly
resist any attempts to roll back the clock on the reforms that were
begun by the Council, either in liturgy or other areas of the Church?
Because there are those in the Roman Curia, like Cardinal Sarah, who
might not “say no to everything” the pope is doing to renew and reform
the Church, but are clearly trying to move it in another direction.
What’s the pope to do?
Read on…
**********
According to well-placed sources at the Vatican, Pope Francis had
planned to roll out a number of major personnel changes in mid-May,
including the naming of a new prefect for the Congregation for Saints.
But it has been nearly two months and he has made no big appointments
in the Roman Curia. One reason, it’s said, is that the pope has run
into a similar pushback to the one he faced over the transition of
leadership at Divine Worship.
The thinking now is that the “big changes” will come sometime in September, after the traditional summer hiatus.
And just as importantly they will come once World Youth Day
(WYD)—July 25-31 in Krakow—is out of the way. Because that is when the
pope is expected to make Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko, a curia veteran of
thirty years and outgoing president of the soon-to-be defunct Pontifical
Council for the Laity, the new Archbishop of Krakow.
Francis had assured the current archbishop, Cardinal Stanisław
Dziwisz, that he would not be replaced until after hosting the
international Catholic youth gathering and the papal visit.
So it will be one Stan replacing another—the seventy-one-year-old
Ryłko taking over from the seventy-seven-year-old Dziwisz, both
spiritual sons of Pope St. John Paul II, the man who ordained them to
the diaconate, presbyterate, and episcopate.
The Krakow appointment is expected to set bigger wheels in motion at
the Vatican and, if you permit a bit of midsummer night’s dreaming
(albeit a bit late), this is how it could shake out.
As all but confirmed, the pope will replace Cardinal Angelo Amato
SDB, seventy-eight, as head of the saint-making department with
Archbishop Angelo Becciu, sixty-eight, currently deputy Secretary of
State (the
Sostituto). And Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the fifty-eight-year-old nuncio to Lebanon, will be called back to Rome as the new
Sostituto.
Cardinal Ryłko’s old office is being merged with the pontifical
councils for the family and health care. It is believed that Francis
wants to bring in a bishop from Latin America to head this new
“dicastery” (which, in spite of opposition, he wants to be a
congregation rather than a pontifical council).
The man rumored for the job is Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga
SDB, one of the pope’s closest allies and a member of his kitchen
cabinet (Council of Cardinals or C9). Although he is already
seventy-three, he is energetic and charismatic. He could be of great
moral and tactical support to the pope by being based in Rome.
There is a major post in Germany that needs to be filled and the man
who might be the perfect candidate for the job currently works at the
Vatican.
The ancient and historically important Diocese of Mainz needs a new
bishop since the retirement several weeks ago for eighty-year-old
Cardinal Karl Lehmann. He may not be the local priests’ and people’s
preferred choice, but Cardinal Gerhard Müller fits the bill.
You want credentials? The sixty-eight-year-old, who is currently head
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and often at odds
with Pope Francis doctrinally, is a priest from Mainz and did his
doctoral work under Cardinal Lehmann.
Going back to head his home diocese could hardly be seen as a
punishment, at least not to him. And it would be a generous offering to
the universal Church if the folks and clergy of Mainz were to welcome
him with open arms, even if some might see it as a penance.
This would allow the pope to call Cardinal Christoph Schönborn OP
from Vienna to take over the CDF. The seventy-one-year-old Dominican is
known as a “student” of Joseph Ratzinger, but he has shown creativity
and flexibility in supporting the more open theological openings Francis
has sought to bring about. In short, he has been a unifier and a
healer.
Finally, what is to be done with Cardinal George Pell? The head of
the Secretariat for the Economy is part of a compact group of senior
Vatican prelates who are, at best, lukewarm to the reforming spirit the
pope is trying to implement.
He, too, is now seventy-five and could be retired. But,
unprecedentedly, he announced that Francis had told him he would be
staying in his current post for the full five-year term to which he was
initially appointed in February 2014.
That raised eyebrows, especially because the pope has never confirmed
that—at least not publicly. There is still a chance that Cardinal Pell
will be replaced before 2019.
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