At 01:37 PM 7/27/99 +0000, Christopher Crockett wrote:
>Rubén Peretó Rivas wrote:
>
> >...I was speaking from Southamerica: here is very difficult to attend
>the traditional liturgy: just hidden priests in hidden chapels; the bishops do
>not give the permission.
>
>As an Outsider, I'm curious to know, what, precisely, is the rationale behind
>actively trying to supress the use of the old liturgy?
>
>Since it seemed to be valid enough to be used for more than a few years,
>I assume that it can hardly be thought of as "heretical"?
>
>Obviously a certain percentage--perhaps a substantial minority--of the
>(decreasing in number, btw) faithful--lay and clergy--feel strongly
>enough about it to defy their shepards and attend/support/long for such
>services.
>
>Surely the reason doesn't have anything to do with certain tendancies toward
>the arbitrary and self-serving abuse of patriarchal power in the hierarcy of
>the Church which occasionally reared its ugly head during the Bad Old Days?
>
>There must be at least a fig-leaf's worth of theological cover for
>supression(?).
Although I cannot speak to the Latin American situation, let me offer an
apologia for Rome's initial resistance to permitting the celebration of the
Tridentine mass. I was a seminarian in the late 70s (MA Theology, Catholic
University of America) and a priest for most of the 80s. At the time, many
of the clergy and laity who resisted the liturgical reforms of the Second
Vatican Council also resisted the ecclesiological reforms as well. The
Tridentine mass became the rallying point not simply for resistance to
liturgical change but also to changing Catholicism's then even more
male-dominated clericalism. The connection between liturgy, doctrine, and
discipline was not lost on Paul VI, a far more radical pope than most give
him credit. Some years' distance from those struggles for reform and a
more conservative papacy have mitigated the significance of the liturgical
"suppression."
TL
Thomas L. Long
[log in to unmask]
http://users.visi.net/~longt
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|