Benedict Brought Peace To The Church With “Summorum Pontificum”

OPE BENEDICT XVI brought peace to the Church by his 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. In the letter accompanying it, he said:

“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.”

The fact is, for a long time, Catholics have had to accept a great injustice. On the one hand, certain bishops were admitting all kinds of inappropriate things (especially secular music) into the liturgy, owing to catchwords like “inclusivity, pastoral considerations, cultural sensitivity, ministerial creativity, and avoidance of rubrical rigidity.” On the other hand, Catholics who ardently desired sacred and traditional liturgy were often not allowed to have it. As László Dobszay put it, describing a similar situation:

“If the right is given to African tribes to include their pagan traditions in the liturgy, I think the same should also be given to the rite of a thousand year-old Christian Church, based on a much older Roman tradition.”

Seeing this gross injustice, Pope Benedict XVI set things right. There’s not really much I can add to Professor Dobszay’s quote, except to point out that people who distorted the Council’s true teachings could only do so because the internet didn’t exist yet. With the advent of the internet, granting full access to the actual documents, distortion has become much more difficult. To give just one example, are you aware that some bishops banned Latin in their dioceses after the Council, in spite of §36 of Sacrosanctum Concilium? Somebody published a list of dioceses which did that, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. Regardless, priests who lived during that period have assured me this actually did happen.

YESTERDAY, OUR HOT WATER HEATER BROKE. And our car wouldn’t start, so here I am riding my bike on the absolute coldest day of the year. As I’m riding, stray dogs leap out at me and sometimes cause me to tumble. My temptation is to turn around and get even with those dogs. But what good would that do?

That’s like the Church. I see petty snipers everywhere. They get their digs in against the Church whenever they can. Like my mother used to say, “Any old stick will do to beat the Church.” But, Pope Benedict XVI didn’t focus on the “stray dogs.” He focused on something positive: bringing peace to the Church.