Reports on Conference on Summorum Pontificum

There are two reports that I have found on the recent Summorum Pontificum conference held in Rome.

La Croix are carrying a report Rome prêche la réconciliation autour de la forme extraordinaire, that makes reference to the interventions of two cardinals and two bishops during the conference. It needs a bit of a health warning - what has been highlighted by the journalist may need to be placed in the wider context of each cleric's full text when/if that becomes available.

According to this report, Cardinal Koch was anxious to counter three false oppositions:

Il entreprit ainsi de mettre à mal plusieurs faux « dualismes » : la messe est tout à la fois la commémoration du sacrifice du Christ et le repas partagé par l’assemblée des fidèles, et non l’un ou l’autre ; le prêtre est bien le représentant du Christ devant l’assemblée, celle-ci participant pleinement à la liturgie, l’un n’excluant pas l’autre ; le célébrant devrait pouvoir se tourner, à certains moments de la liturgie, vers l’Orient, sans pour autant se détourner du peuple.

We must respond to several false "dualisms": the Mass is at one and the same time the commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ and the meal in which the assembly of the faithful takes part, and not one or the other; the priest is truly the representing of Christ before the assembly, which takes part fully in the liturgy, the one does not exlude the other; the celebrant must be able to turn, at certain points of the liturgy, towards the East, without for all that, turnining himself away from the people.

Sur ce dernier point, le cardinal suisse fut largement applaudi, le public étant séduit par deux de ses exemples : « Personne ne s’offusque qu’un conducteur d’autobus ou un guide de haute montagne tournent le dos à leurs clients ! »

On this last point, the Swiss cardinal was stronlgy applauded, the audience being taken by two of his analogies: "No-one would argue that a bus driver or a mountain guide turned their back on their clients".

Mgr Schneider's argument in favour of the restoration of the minor orders - by reference to the Levitical priesthood and the sacrality of Holy Orders - seems to be out of step with the provisions of Universae Ecclesiae which insists that it is ordination to the diaconate that marks incardination into a religious institute.

ZENIT are carrying a report that largely covers the intervention of the Secretary of the Pontifical Council Ecclesia Dei, before including some coverage of the interventions of others. What is of interest here - though, again, the full context of this would need to be gained from the full text of the different interventions - is the extent of the discussion of "mutual enrichment".

According to Mgr Pozzo:

Now, both forms of the Roman liturgy "are an example of reciprocal increase and enrichment," he stressed. "Whoever thinks or acts otherwise, stains the unity of the Roman rite, which must be tenaciously safeguarded."...
In each form there can be "accentuations, underscoring, assertions more marked in some aspects in regard to others, but this does not affect the essential unity of the liturgy," the priest explained.

The ZENIT report suggests that Cardinal Koch's contribution centred on a discussion of the implications of Summorum Pontificum for the Church's ecumenical engagement.

For his part, Cardinal Koch said that the Motu Proprio "will mean steps forward in ecumenism" only if both forms of the one Roman rite are not considered as "an antithesis" but "as mutual enrichment."

Cardinal Koch also suggested that there is a programme of liturgical reform on the part of Pope Benedict XVI:

He explained that the Pope "believes that a new liturgical movement is indispensable today," which in the past he himself described as "a reform of the reform of the liturgy."...

He noted that "Benedict XVI knows well that in the long term we cannot remain with a coexistence between the ordinary and extraordinary forms in the Roman rite, but that the Church will again need in the future a common rite."

"However," he said, "given that a new liturgical form cannot be decided in an office, as it requires a process of growth and purification, for the time being the Pope stresses above all that the two forms of use of the Roman rite can and must enrich one another mutually."

What is essentially offered to all the faithful, and should receive the attention of all the faithful, as a result of the provisions of Summorum Pontificum, is the "richness of the Liturgy" (cf n.1 of Universae Ecclesiae). The agenda of "mutual enrichment" means that this should not be exclusively identified with attachment to the extraordinary form. The notion that a (re-)unified singularity of form is the ultimate purpose of a Papal project of liturgical reform is in a certain tension with the notion of "two forms of the same Rite" that underlies the idea of Summorum Pontificum as it will be lived in the forseeable future. However, that the two forms should move closer to each other does seem to be in the intention of Summorum Pontificum.