Sunday, July 01, 2007

Traditional Mass:reaction


This rather shocking German woodcut, which I think is Lutheran origin, appeared in the Jerusalem Post in an article on the restoration of the Traditional Mass.
What is being restored is 1962 the Missal of the Blessed John XIII. Pius XII had alredy removed the one prayer in the whole Missal which might have been understood as being anti-Semitic. It occurred on Good Friday, and used the word "perfide" when speaking of the Jewish people meaning, unbelieving or resillient to belief, it spoke of Jews not believing in Christ and therefore being in darkness. Pope Pius changed the prayer to speak about praying for the Jewish people, who first believed in the one God, which is what we use in both the Traditional and Modern forms today.
It seems extremely odd and dishonest that Anti-Semitism is being used to attack the forthcoming Motu Proprio. I understand the wretched Tablet did that last week. It seems to be something Cardinal Walter Kaspar raised a month or so ago, was he the first?
Can any shed light on the origin of this story? It seems pretty disgraceful and lacking in any foundation except for ignorance and poor research.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's been a great shame to see so many of the UK 'papers report on the supposed 'anti-Semitism' issue, the Indpendent yesterday for example.

Anonymous said...

We are no longer praying for the conversion of the Jews but for the conversion of the Jesuits.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the woodcut is not Lutheran (although Luther might have approved it for his tract "On the Jews and their Lies." It is an image of the "martyrdom" of the bogus child-martyr, "St." Simon of Trent. It appeared in Hartmann Schedel's Nuremburg Chronicle, printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. This bogus local cult of an infant supposedly murdered by Jews for his blood was promoted by the local Franciscans until Pope Sixtus IV sent the Bishop of Ventimiglia to surpress it. But through Franciscan pull at the Roman curia, the papal decision was buried and they revived it. It took until 1965 to finally get it surpressed. Deo gratias.

Anonymous said...

Fr. Ray

It was John XXIII who removed the word "perfide" from the Good Friday prayer in March 1959. This was most certainly for ecumenical reasons.

No Jewish convert to the Catholic church has ever disagreed with the correct understanding of what "perfidious" means. The new Good Friday is a travesty in this regard as it does not pray for their conversion in the explicit way that this traditional rite does.

Anonymous said...

How sad and immoral to do this. However, I suppose this group or individual really "feels" the righteousness of their case. I wish whoever did this would also avail of the facts in order to determine "the knowledge" of wheher their position is righteous or not.

Looks like Catholics need to re-label themselves and seek dialogue with this group. They may be more open to us if we called ourselves someting else - lets see now, how about BBOOOOGYMAAAAAN.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous

St. Simon of Trent is indeed a saint. This is certified fact. He was beatified and canonised in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. Hence why his feast day was March 24th and is recorded in the martyrology.

Anonymous said...

Why draw attention to this nonsense? The simplest experiment to test how much the Tridentine Rite is in demand would be to establish an FSSP parish in a central part of England and see how it succeeds. Judging by their parish in Edinburgh, the response is likely to be low. Even St Bede's, Clapham Park, has modest congregations in comparison with its neighbours. The immigrants who are filling our churches won't be interested and the lapsing British and Irish will be indifferent. Other parishes in London which offer the Rite on Sundays do so to thinly attended congregations. The generation that originally lapsed after the introduction of the Novus Ordo is long dead. Those who were young in 1969 and still yearn for it are in their late sixties. Those that still want it will soon die of inanition, especially the young who have newly discovered it. The present status quo is likely to continue indefinitely. The Bishops of England and Wales have nothing to fear. Only the conservatives will be disappointed but they won't be able to complain as their dream will have come true in all but results. Silence will come down on this scene with a thud. The past has gone without recall.

Physiocrat said...

There was a letter to the Times on this subject about three weeks ago by a Dr Geoffrey Alderman.

I checked the texts and there is of course no reference at all to Jews in the Tridentine Mass.

But I was left wondering if he was referring to the Judica Me verse from Psalm 42 (prayers at the foot of the altar), with which the old rite Mass begins.

However, Dr Alderman is a respected academic and ought not to have fallen into such a mistake, but on the other hand, there is a resurgent mood of paranoia around.

Physiocrat said...

even in the more rigid Orthodox precincts of the Jewish world, where many prominent rabbis were quick to reconcile the Torah with the truths of science. "It is the power of the Torah that all theories can be included," wrote one Montreal-based Orthodox rabbi in the summer of 1925, at the time of the Scopes trial. A few years earlier, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, chief rabbi of pre-state Palestine, assured his followers that evolution, "more so than all other philosophical theories, conforms to the kabbalistic secrets of the world."

Anonymous said...

Gretel,
Are you also Gladys and Hermione?
Why not be yourself?

Anagnostis said...

The real story is the shocking near-dispensationalism of the Novus Ordo Good Friday petition for the Jews(and the Marxish vacuities that follow it). Every year these hit me like a train. Their presence in the liturgy of the Catholic Church, on the occasion of the most solemn commemoration of the sacrifice of Calvary, is a standing scandal.

Lex orandi, lex credendi anyone?

Anonymous said...

I've no idea who Gladys and Hermione are. Who are you, Justin?

Anonymous said...

Gretel Kung,
How very charitable of you.

Anonymous said...

Gretel

You obviously have not been to the London Oratory or St. James' Spanish Place where the rite is offered every Sunday. In St. James, it is the mass with the highest attendance - even more than the Solemn Latin Novus Ordo.

Have you ever the reason for apparent lack of interest in the present situation maybe because an increasing number of Catholics don't attend ANY rite of mass nevermind the Tridentine Mass? Mass attendance in Scotland is at an all time low - St. Andrews FSSP church probably does far better than the average church in Edinburgh.

Anonymous said...

There seems to be a lot of negativity and misinformation about the impending Motu Proprio, the Jerusalem Post quotes the Independant.
Therefore I think we ought to be asking what is the Catholic Media Office doing about ensuring accurate information is given about the Traditional Mass and Pope Benedict's decision.


*************
Gretel,
I am Justin McIntyre an occassional parishioner of St Mary Magdalen and Spanish Place, I have a house in town and a mother in Portslade. I am psychologist and father of four; so who are you

Anonymous said...

At least there is now a level field, so to speak. We can see what happens. For myself, I wish for a dignified liturgy - no dancing, PLEASE, hymns with words that are prayerful AND theologically accurate, and, more that anything else, I wish to kneel to receive Our Lord without feeling like a freak [don't have the courage or the balance to do this without an altar rail to hold on to :) so just bow at the moment] and have a priest pray for my soul as I do so. If nothing else comes of the MP, maybe some of the glow of the 'extraordinary rite' will rub off? Of course, as someone else observed, if we have as much of the extraordinary rite as we do of the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, we shall be fine!

Amette

PS Gretel - never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit - it is His Church, not ours, and it is He who will decide how this initiative flourishes. Remember the words of Gamaliel in Acts 5:39, "...if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail,but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"

Anonymous said...

An worse story.

Anonymous said...

Nobody wants to be themselves "for fear of the liberals" whose conversion we shall praying for on Good Friday instead of the Jews.

Anonymous said...

With no reference to their previous ill-informed article, the Jerusalem Post has printed what amounts to a retraction:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183053079059&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

And Andrew, get your facts straight and, before you post, consult a scholarly source rather than the internet--which suddenlyl seems to have discovered the "canonization" of this bogus martyr. See for rexample, the Acta Sanctorum 3 (March III), pp. 493-500; and the standard reference work on Italian saints: Biblioteca Sanctorum, vol. 11, p. 1186. If you cannot read Latin or Italian, you can get the same information in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, p. 266: "St." Simon was never canonized.

What happened in 1588 was that Pope Sixtus alllowed the Simon's traditional cult in the city of Trent to continue at the request of Abp. Medruzzo. This is not a canonization, it is not even a beatification. It was permission of a local cult, without any claim for its authenticity. That he got into the martyrology is not even proof of his existence, much less martyrdom--it is merely a sign that somewhere (in Trent) he had a cult. Check the new (2005) martyrology and you will find he has been deleted.

Dr. Peter H. Wright said...

I see the Jerusalem Post refers to a certain "Cardinal Lefebvre"...

Fr Ray Blake said...

Anon.,
The worst, reall is shocking, especially for some thing bearing the banner of an American University.
I have always had difficulty taking some of them seriously.

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