Latin Mass advocates never satisfied, says frustrated cardinal

By CINDY WOODEN
Catholic News Service
Rome

Rather than being grateful, some people have reacted to Pope Benedict’s wider permission for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass with further demands, said Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos.

The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, spoke Sept. 16 at a conference marking the first anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, the document by which Pope Benedict expanded access to the Tridentine rite, the Mass rite used before the Second Vatican Council.

Castrillon, whose commission works with communities using the old rite, said his office continues to receive letters requesting the Tridentine rite be used not just at one Mass a week but at every Mass, and that such Masses be available not just at one church in a town but at every church.

He said he even got a letter demanding that Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major be dedicated exclusively to the celebration of the Tridentine-rite Mass.

Such people, he said, are “insatiable, incredible.”

“They do not know the harm they are doing,” Castrillon said, adding that when the Vatican does not accept their demands immediately “they go directly to the Internet” and post their complaints.

The cardinal and officials in his office have been saying for more than a year that they were preparing detailed instructions responding to questions about how to implement the papal document.

Castrillon said his office had completed its work on those instructions and passed it on to the pope, who will make the final decision about their publication.

The pope’s 2007 document was also seen as a major step toward reconciliation with the followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Lefebvre was excommunicated when he ordained four bishops against the express wishes of Pope John Paul II.

But the process of reconciliation broke down in late June when Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St. Pius X and one of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre, failed to meet four conditions for moving the process forward.

“The Eucharist should never become a point of contrast and a point of separation,” Castrillon said at the Sept. 16 conference. “What is more important: the mystery of God who becomes bread or the language by which we celebrate the mystery?”

The cardinal said the Mass — in whatever language it is celebrated — must be a service motivated by love and “never a sword” used against other Christians.

By making it easier for priests to celebrate the older liturgy and for the faithful to have access to it, he said, the pope “was not just exercising his task of governing, but was exercising his task of sanctifying” the people of God.

“When we are before the greatest expression of love for humanity — the Eucharist — how can we fight?” Castrillon asked.

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