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Many of you will have already read (and if not you can follow the link the Ephemeris at the left) that reports have gone out that the Holy Father will soon be changing the prayer for the conversion of Jews in the Good Friday liturgy. The prayer will not be omitted, and it will still be for the conversion of Jews. But it will probably leave out the reference to “blindness” (and, for any who were wondering, I’m pretty sure it won’t re-insert the adjective “perfidious.”)
Many traditional Catholics are upset about this news, seeing it as a capitulation to the evil forces of liberalism etc etc. They’re looking at it all backwards. In fact, this should be seen as an exciting development. The Holy Father is affirming in the most basic and practical way that the Traditional Latin Mass is a living liturgy. It can gradually change and grow as time and circumstance demands. This is how liturgy has always been. The fact that the Holy Father is taking pains to rewrite one of the prayers is a sign to everyone that this Mass cannot be regarded as a fossil. It is a part of the Church today, living and nourishing her faithful.
Jaroslav Pelikan was once quoted as saying that tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Traditional Catholics walk perilously close to this line at times. In their eagerness to preserve the Church’s traditions, they sometimes adopt a mindset wherein a custom or liturgical form is valued merely because it is older. That’s not entirely silly, because of course we aren’t always in a position to appreciate the full significance of many old traditions; that being the case, it is sensible to keep them at least until powerful reasons compel us to do otherwise. Even so, we must keep things in perspective, because there is a danger here too. If we cling to old rites and customs merely for the sake of tradition, we risk losing sight of the actual purposes for which they were originally brought into existence. If we love these customs merely because our fathers loved them, we cease to understand what it is that our fathers really loved. Where they were gardeners, we become museum curators, and thus the tradition dies through the very efforts we make to preserve it.
Those who resent the Holy Father for changing the prayer should consider whether they might suffer from such an ailment. It is true, of course, that decades of insanity have taught faithful Catholics to be suspicious of changes in liturgy. But this is not the action of some isolated pastor, or, worse, parish liturgical committee. This is the work of the Vicar of Christ, a man who certainly has the authority to make such a change, and who has demonstrated amply his deep understanding of both the meaning of the liturgy and the needs of the faithful. This is the appropriate way for such things to be done. There is nothing frightening or scandalous about changing a prayer; prayers have been changed often, for a variety of reasons. The prayer will still be part of the liturgy, and will still be for the conversion of Jews, not merely for their welfare or some such thing. There can be good reasons for deciding that the wording of a prayer, which may have been fine at one time, is problematic in another. Fr. Z had a nice post reflecting on this point. Really, there’s no reason at all to be upset about this, unless the anger stems from the perception that 1) the liberals might be happy about the change, and 2) it’s a change.
After all he’s done for us, I think we owe the Holy Father a little trust. He is exercising his authority in a wholly appropriate way, and in so doing, he is proving to Catholics everywhere that the liturgy we love really is the living faith of those who have gone before us. Let’s not fight to show them how dead it can be.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Well spoke! Well spoke!
Of course the Pope has the authority to make such a change, and of course it doesn’t matter very much to the sense of the prayer whether the word blindness remains or not. But the whole thing still leaves me with a queasy, uncomfortable feeling, because the question arises: why is it thought necessary to make such a change?
Perhaps an example will make the point clearer: on occasions when I am forced by circumstances to attend a novus ordo Mass, the priest will often omit the word “men” from the Nicene Creed, or sometimes will even say “for us men and women”. Naturally, this doesn’t bother me for dogmatic reasons; I can proclaim that Christ came down from Heaven for us, without necessarily using a word that denotes it was for humans He came down for (which should be clear in any case). But why does the priest do this, since clearly no idiot would really imagine that the female sex is excluded from “nos homines”? The answer is that he has listened to bossy liberals too much, or has such a fear of them that he is ready to distort a timeless prayer - albeit in a harmless enough way - in order to kow-tow to their liberal agenda. It is his fear of raised liberal eyebrows, not his theology, that disturbs me.
I feel the same way about these rumours now. To be sure, when the motu proprio was announced there was a certain amount of discontented grumbling about the Good Friday prayers, mostly from the usual suspects, be they the ADL (who insist on seeing sinister anti-semitism behind every tree) or the media, hoping to sell newspapers with headlines like “Jewish groups concerned at Pope’s decision”. One far-left paper I read in Germany whinged that the Pope had “set Catholic-Jewish relations back by decades.” (To such accusations, the marvellous kreuz.net wryly asks “What, do they need our prayers or did Christ not die for them too?”) But surely the Pope is not going to capitulate to these people? Give them confidence by showing that he takes their snarls and threats so seriously that he will alter a timeless liturgy to accommodate them? His capitulation to far-left forces in the Sapienza in Rome recenty was a disheartening example of apologetic conservative timidity, and I fear that changing the wording of this prayer will be another.
The overwhelming problem with the Church today, in my view, is that too many of her ministers have a paranoid fear of secular censure and a fanatical desire to show how relevant and “with it” they can be. I don’t need to make that point on a traditionalist website. But if the Holy Father stands firm, as I pray he will, and refuses to change an ancient prayer over a matter of window-dressing (for what are unbelievers for whose conversion we are praying if not “blind”?) he will earn the respect, if not the affection, of many secularists. By capitulating he will gain neither.
John 9:24-25
Brian,
Well, the first point I wanted to make was: we don’t know exactly what the Holy Father’s motivations are, and at this point it would be better just to trust him.
But also, I don’t think stubbornness is always the key to respect. The Holy Father will hold firm when it really counts. But refusing to change a prayer (and hey, it’s largely a matter of interpretation, but I can see how the wording might seem offensive to some. What’s the big deal if he just changes the words so that it says the same thing, but in a way that doesn’t make some people feel gratuitously belittled?) isn’t necessarily going to make people admire you. You might do better sometimes to show that you know when to hold firm, and when to show some flexibility.
Personally, I thought the handling of the Sapienzia case was brilliant. Again, this is one of those things where you don’t necessarily need to hold firm — I mean, it’s just a speech, and he’s not obliged to give it if he doesn’t want to or if it seems imprudent. I think it’s fitting that the pope should in effect remind the university that having him speak is a privilege, something they should be excited about. By giving the left what he wanted, he made them look incredibly bad, rallied tons of support to the Vatican, and left the Italian government with a public relations disaster on their hands. Universities all over the world sneered at Sapienzia, and rushed to offer the pontiff invitations to speak at their schools.
Part of being a leader is knowing when to dig your heels in, and when to give a little. You get more respect that way than by just seeming stiff as a board. I’m not in the least worried that our Holy Father is going to sell the whole farm. So relax!