Archbishop Piero Marini, former papal liturgist, has graciously assured us that Summorum Pontificum will not stand in the way of the liturgical trainwreck he and his pals have engineering for some time now:

Liturgical renewal launched by the Second Vatican Council is an “irreversible path” and has not been affected by Pope Benedict XVI’s concession on wider use of the Tridentine rite, a Vatican official said.

“The pope’s decision has so far not produced any change in the celebrative practice of our ecclesial communities. His gesture was only one of service to unity,” Archbishop Piero Marini, who arranged papal liturgies for more than 20 years, said in an interview April 25 in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

“Therefore let’s look ahead and let’s continue with enthusiasm the path undertaken by the council,” he said.

 A word of advice to Archbishop Marini: I’ve tried this approach with cake. Just telling myself it won’t add pounds has done nothing to stem my ever-expanding girth.

Marini goes on:

The pope’s decree “does not intend to introduce modifications on the current Roman Missal or express a negative judgment on the liturgical reform desired by the council,” he said.

And yet, as the Holy Father explained: 

For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The “Ecclesia Dei” Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal.

Sounds like the Holy Father thinks maybe there will be some changes. Perhaps he even wants those changes, seing that he is ”Convinced,” as he wrote in his memoirs, “that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is, to a large extent, due to the disintegration of the liturgy.”

Marini, however, thinks that the motu proprio applies only to “disaffected Catholics” for the purpose of maintaining unity.  While unity is an essential reason why the motu proprio was needed, it is not simply for “disaffected” Catholics that the decree was issued. We return again to the words of the Holy Father’s explanatory letter:

Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them. Thus the need has arisen for a clearer juridical regulation which had not been foreseen at the time of the 1988 Motu Proprio.

The young people who have fallen in love with the classical rite are not ”disaffected”, though they can certainly become so if they are treated as outcasts within the Church they hold so dear. If this happens, it is primarily a failure of charity on the part of those who have treated them this way, and a failure of orthodoxy on those who have barred their legitimate requests for the ancient and venerable Mass of the Church. Because they love the ancient liturgy is no cause for scorn from their Catholic brothers, let alone their bishops (like Marini) and priests.

And Marini clearly sees the extraordinary form as something from the past. Let’s return for a moment to his thoughts:

Liturgical celebration cannot be separated from the life of the church, the archbishop said, and this means “the church of today, not the church of yesterday or of tomorrow.”

Apparently Marini never actually read Summorum Pontificum or it’s explanatory letter. In the letter, the Holy Father asserts: 

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.

It’s not about the Church of “yesterday”. It’s about the Church of perpetuity. It’s not just some project of ongoing liturgical “reform” (particularly when “reform” is a thinly veiled code word for “experimentation” and “unwarranted change”).

The Holy Father has cast the anchor of Tradition over the out-of-control barque of the Church, and things are changing now - for the better. Real reform is happening. I think that terrifies bishops like Marini.

It’s sad.

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