Sandro Magister's latest column, "'Placet' or 'Non placet?' The wager of Carmen and Kiko" (www.Chiesa, January 13, 2012), reports:
The founders of the Neocatechumenal Way aim to obtain definitive Vatican approval for their "convivial" way of celebrating the Mass. The document is ready. But it could be modified or blocked in extremis. The verdict on January 20.As New Catholic points out in "Bugnini and the Neocatechumenal Way" (Rorate Caeli, January 13, 2012), Magister's report states that Annibale Bugnini, the architect of the Novus Ordo Missae in the 1960s, "congratulated himself over the way in which the first communities founded by Kiko and Carmen celebrated the Mass," pointing out that it was he, "together with the co-founders, who decided to call the newborn movement 'Neocatechumenal Way.'"
The question, of course, is whether the "NeoCat liturgy" will obtain papal approval. Does anything surprise one these days?
Update 1/22/2012
- "Vatican approval for Neo-Catechumenal Way only applies to non-liturgical catechesis" (CNA, January 21, 2012)
- "The Holy See did NOT approve NeoCat liturgical variants for Mass" (WDTPRS, January 22, 2012).
It is time for you to be obedient to the Pope. Doctrine is like the immutable laws of nature. But Liturgy is like motor cars. You can drive a Toyota, a Ford or a Peugot. They all work in accord to the laws of nature - mechanics, physics, chemistry. Similarly with liturgy. Liturgy is just a form. Liturgy is a pastoral form. Well done to the clever Pope.
ReplyDeleteYou sound like a Pentecostalist or a Charismatic, for whom forms of worship are nothing more than that: accidental forms. That is not a traditionally Catholic view. The traditionally Catholic view calls liturgy theologiae prima, and dogmatic theology, theologiae secunda. Lex orandi, lex credendi meant, not in the first instance that our worship reflects our beliefs, but that our beliefs reflect our worship.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, it is this pope who has called the liturgy resulting from the post-Conciliar construction of Bugnini and the Consilium a "banal on-the-spot product" of liturgical experts. In fact, his criticism is far worse. He writes in his Preface to Msgr. Klaus Gamber's Reform of the Roman Liturgy:
"What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it -- as in a manufacturing process -- with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product."
Remember, the Novus Ordo was not a product of the Council, but produced AFTER the Council by Bugnini's team of liturgical technocrats with the mis-begotten approval of Pope Paul IV. This is doubtless why Pope Benedict XVI issued his motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum.
It's true that the Novus Ordo is no less valid or legitimate than the TLM, and in that sense is comparable, as you suggest, to the alternatives of driving a Toyota, Ford, or Peugot.
But just as one can also make comparisons between positive and negative features of Toyotas, Fords and Peugots, so one can also compare and contrast positive and negative features of these liturgies.
The Pope realizes that there's no easy fix for the liturgical crisis of the last 50 years, so he offers the Summorum Pontificum Clever Pope indeed.