And with all due respect, as I have followed your work in recent years, you are outstanding in your liturgical scholarship, and, yet, if one is going to actively refuse a liturgical change promulgated by a Pope and wishes to remain Catholic, opposition based mostly on liturgical grounds strikes me as skating on thin ice. The more solid …
And with all due respect, as I have followed your work in recent years, you are outstanding in your liturgical scholarship, and, yet, if one is going to actively refuse a liturgical change promulgated by a Pope and wishes to remain Catholic, opposition based mostly on liturgical grounds strikes me as skating on thin ice. The more solid ground being opposition based doctrinally on all that the Church had taught before. What I understand of Abp Lefebvre’s position is that he chose the 1962 Missal as a prudential decision when he was still trying to get the Vatican to “allow the experiment of tradition”. He also recognized the authority of the Pope over the liturgy - something that I believe you yourself also recognize, but with different limits and perhaps for different reasons. Abp Lefebvre never “made it personal” regarding the perpetrators of the liturgical change. His position is coherent, and it avoids arguements that could boil down to personal preference. Of course, you can disagree, but the heart of my comment is that I don’t see that you give the position its due in your footnote and that your charactization of their position in your footnote amounts to a charicature, and to that I would add that your response above, that Abp Lefebvre was led to “seize on the 1962 as a rock of safety” as though he was being swept away in a torrent I see as more of the same. My responses are to hopefully balance the picture somewhat. Should the SSPX re-evaluate wrt the 1955 Holy Week and/or incorporate liturgical rationale going forward? Perhaps, but the questions then become - where does one stop and at what point does principle become preference? Yours fraternally, Jim Sember
These are complex matters and I do not fault the Archbishop for landing where he did and with the reasoning he used. I would merely say that we know a lot more now about what happened and why, and the SSPX leadership should accordingly see the roots of John XXIII and Paul VI in (sorry to say it but it's true) Pius XII and Pius X. Not that those popes were not outstanding in many respects, but the way they exercised the papacy paved the way for the Council and its aftermath. Regarding the argument of "where does one stop," I have devoted an entire book to that -- "The Once and Future Roman Rite" -- where I demonstrate that the answer is not as arbitrary as one might think from the outside:
And with all due respect, as I have followed your work in recent years, you are outstanding in your liturgical scholarship, and, yet, if one is going to actively refuse a liturgical change promulgated by a Pope and wishes to remain Catholic, opposition based mostly on liturgical grounds strikes me as skating on thin ice. The more solid ground being opposition based doctrinally on all that the Church had taught before. What I understand of Abp Lefebvre’s position is that he chose the 1962 Missal as a prudential decision when he was still trying to get the Vatican to “allow the experiment of tradition”. He also recognized the authority of the Pope over the liturgy - something that I believe you yourself also recognize, but with different limits and perhaps for different reasons. Abp Lefebvre never “made it personal” regarding the perpetrators of the liturgical change. His position is coherent, and it avoids arguements that could boil down to personal preference. Of course, you can disagree, but the heart of my comment is that I don’t see that you give the position its due in your footnote and that your charactization of their position in your footnote amounts to a charicature, and to that I would add that your response above, that Abp Lefebvre was led to “seize on the 1962 as a rock of safety” as though he was being swept away in a torrent I see as more of the same. My responses are to hopefully balance the picture somewhat. Should the SSPX re-evaluate wrt the 1955 Holy Week and/or incorporate liturgical rationale going forward? Perhaps, but the questions then become - where does one stop and at what point does principle become preference? Yours fraternally, Jim Sember
These are complex matters and I do not fault the Archbishop for landing where he did and with the reasoning he used. I would merely say that we know a lot more now about what happened and why, and the SSPX leadership should accordingly see the roots of John XXIII and Paul VI in (sorry to say it but it's true) Pius XII and Pius X. Not that those popes were not outstanding in many respects, but the way they exercised the papacy paved the way for the Council and its aftermath. Regarding the argument of "where does one stop," I have devoted an entire book to that -- "The Once and Future Roman Rite" -- where I demonstrate that the answer is not as arbitrary as one might think from the outside:
https://www.amazon.com/Once-Future-Roman-Rite-Traditional/dp/1505126622/
(Incidentally, I see it's on sale at Amazon at the moment.)