If David Gibson's attempt to portray Pope Benedict XVI as a liberal was one of the silliest reactions to the Holy Father's recent overtures to traditional Anglicans, Francis X. Rocca's "The Pope Lets a Thousand Liturgies Bloom" (Wall Street Journal, October 23) is one of the best. As the "Anglican-use" liturgy that Pope John Paul II approved in 1982 becomes more widespread, many Latin rite Catholics who have never experienced other rites and liturgies may stumble across it. And that could have profound effects on how Catholics view the liturgical life of the Church.
Rocca points out that the extension of the celebration of the "Anglican-use" liturgy has parallels in Pope Benedict's revival of the Traditional Latin Mass, but rather than representing a splintering in the Church, "All these variations represent efforts by the world's largest church to maintain unity among its 1.1 billion members, while extending their ranks."
Yet, Rocca notes, "Benedict is hardly permissive when it comes to liturgy." A new English translation of the Roman Missal is in the works, and beyond providing a more literal and elevated text, it should have the effect of curbing some of the more egregious abuses in the celebration of the Ordinary Form of the Mass (the Novus Ordo). The Holy Father "has made clear his preference for tradition when it comes to music (Gregorian Chant) and the distribution of Communion (on the tongue while kneeling, rather than the more recent practice of receiving the host in the hand while standing)."
The key to understanding Pope Benedict's embrace of diversity in the Church's liturgies is offered by Tracey Rowland, whom Rocca declares "one of the pope's most informed and accessible scholarly interpreters." Benedict, Rowland argues,
is a genuine "liturgical pluralist," ready to countenance any rite that "can be traced back as an organic development of apostolic provenance." The key concept, Ms. Rowland says, "is organic development. What he's really against is your parish liturgy committee getting together and saying, 'let's do something different.'"
Rocca ends his article by stating that, "By sanctioning the current trend toward liturgical diversity, Benedict is leading his church forward in the spirit of its oldest traditions." This is perhaps the only part where those who have studied the history of liturgical development in the Catholic Church may disagree. While acknowledging that the Council of Trent led to reforms that standardized the Mass in the West for four centuries, Rocca glosses over the reason for doing so.
Partly, the promulgation of the Mass of Pope Pius V was, as Rowland notes, "to fend off the rising challenge of Protestantism," but it was also to curb recent (at that time) divergence within the Latin rite which threatened to sunder the uniformity of worship among Catholics in Western Europe. Those devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass may well view Pope Benedict's "liturgical pluralism" with some trepidation. While I think there is no reason to doubt the good intentions of the Holy Father, it is certainly possible to go overboard in the direction of liturgical diversity.
Thank you so much for your website; it is marvelous for keeping up to date with what is going on, in an unbiased way, in the church today. Pope Benedict is a wonderful man, and I hope that he lives for a long time. It gives me some hope for the future of the Church. Keep up the good work and God bless you all.
Did the Holy Father approach the Anglo-Catholics, or did they approach him? It’s my impression that the latter is the case and–speaking as a former Anglo-Catholic–I’m not in the least surprised they should have done so. There is no reason at all, apart from affection for the Book of Common Prayer and the magnificent musical tradition, lingering national feeling, and a suspicion that Catholic aren’t quite top-drawer, why Anglo-Catholics should not have simply become Catholics years ago.
By the way, “Roman Catholic,” the standard expression in Britain and to some extent in America, is an anti-Catholic marker.