Processing "Traditionis Custodes" + Q&A w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

hello and welcome to pints with aquinas i'm father gregory pine coming at you from washington dc from the dominican house of studies here just across the street from the catholic university of america and um well i don't know that this needs any introducing in so far as all of you probably know the contents of it better than i uh but on friday the holy father pope francis published traditional custodes which is a modaproprio uh revisiting the motor proprio s'more pontificum of 2007 of pope benedict xvi and it envisions changes in the practice or in the kind of permissions i suppose given for celebration of the traditional latin mass or the extraordinary form or the old use as it is described in a variety of different names so i thought that for this episode we could just look at that a little bit and then look at the reaction to that a little bit and i can just admit to having only read a handful of things um and having kind of curated the things that i read so um yeah i think since that since that day many people have felt many things and as a result of which um we're kind of in a position where we're just trying to make sense uh one of what's at stake and two of how we envision it going forward and as a result uh yeah maybe now it's just a propitious time maybe now's a fitting time to just uh game that out a little bit so i wrote some things down so that way it would be more responsible in my describing of the topic and my management of time and then we have some questions from some patrons with which we'll follow on immediately and then i'll try to get as many questions in subsequently but i apologize if yours isn't answered uh just because i have a few already queued up from patrons and as a result i'm not i'm not sure how many i'm going to get to so having preluded sufficiently let's get to it uh when it comes to uh the traditional latin mass and the community that celebrates the traditional latin mass i think that the experience of that community as i've gathered just kind of in conversations i personally i celebrate the dominican rite in addition to the novus order and the dominican red is a form of the traditional latin mass but it's one that was codified in the dominican order in the 1260s so it anti-dates the tridentine rite by some centuries uh so it's kind of like in a certain way it's a it's a different thing and so i'm not gonna kind of set up this conversation as something yeah i'm not kind of like speaking in the person of the community affected by this so much because you know i'm i'm in an academic apostolate and i don't have care of a parish where the traditional latin mass is celebrated so yeah i just kind of take it with that approach but um just i think it's a good place to start it's just to start with the experience of those who are most deeply affected by it and just to organize our thoughts a little bit under three headings one i think a lot of people have felt misunderstood a lot of people have felt suborned and that a lot of people have felt dispirited so let's just take each of those and turn and try to do them a little bit of justice so misunderstood certainly the liturgy is one of those most sensitive and potentially neuralgic points of catholic life and you know we saw this during the pandemic that it can be very traumatizing uh it can be very um yeah bewildering when the liturgy is upset uh and when the liturgy is seemingly taken from an individual or taken from a community um and it seems like the way that the document describes the latin liturgy there's a specific concern over um doctrinal commitments you know which we'll treat in turn and of the kind of divisive tendency as it were or as it's been implemented and i think people who pertain to that community oftentimes don't you know don't entertain those thoughts or beliefs and don't you know entertain those practices or tendencies and as a result of which i think a lot of people when reading the document they don't recognize themselves in its texts and as a result of which they don't feel seen they don't feel known they don't feel loved and that can be yeah a very a difficult place to occupy the next is suborned uh so i think that a lot of people feel like their voice right in these matters have been taken from them and we'll describe a little bit more what it means to have voice in those issues or just kind of explore that topic a little bit but you know there was a survey that was circulated to bishops i guess last year and the results of those surveys were collected and collated and then this represents the fruit of that um but you know there's a survey circulated to bishops who have care of the church's governance but i think a lot of people wish you know that their voices had been heard or wish uh that they could have in some way contributed to that process or testified to their experience or felt a greater share or a greater participation in the deliberative process and not having contributed that many people feel suborned so i think that there's there's a kind of yeah there's a somewhat schizophrenic movement within the church wherein we speak often of the empowerment of the lay faithful you know lumen jensen speaks very coherently very cogently of the um come on father gregory think words you got this uh right so as the like the universal call to holiness and this fact or this reality that god is calling all to give expression to the graces and charisms proper to their state and yet here in the context of the sacred liturgy in which all participate by virtue of baptism there's this kind of strange feeling of disempowerment which is tough is very difficult and then the third and final thing is i think a lot of people feel dispirited um right so when you read the document you come to the last line and it says that it's effective immediately which for many if the contents themselves weren't sufficient for many feels jarring because it wasn't wholly anticipated certainly there were whisperings of it and pope francis made mention in a a gathering of italian bishops that something was afoot but it just kind of it arrived in our inboxes on friday morning and then we're just trying to make sense of it and it's just it's it's tough not to feel sad and i think especially you know here in conversations with people it comes on the heels of you know 2018 with certain clerical abuse scandals and on the heels of conversations with the german bishops on the heels of the question about eucharistic coherence on the heels of vatican corruption charges and i think a lot of people are just of the mind like why this right with all the things on the table why this so i thought that um rather than rather than just kind of stay here uh in this experience that we could discuss a little bit the substantive ways in which we can contribute to the conversation or we can host the conversation if not at the highest level certainly amongst our peers and our families and our churches so that we can uh please god you know make fruitful strides in the direction of fidelity uh and charity so i think we should just kind of take it uh at its face value and and asks of the document what's its point and what does it say that its point is uh it says that it wants to foster unity in the church through unity of liturgical expression in the roman rite and that it seems effectively it's doing going to do that by consolidating power in the hands of the bishops uh certainly uh some bishops already having conversations among themselves at the level of uh bishops conferences as to how they coordinate their efforts but it seems like the idea is that the bishop would have greater power for consolidating for coordinating the liturgy in his diocese with respect to these two forms of the roman rite so let's evaluate each in turn first fostering unity through unity of liturgical expression um so just to treat briefly the the present polemics the way in which this has been argued in you know popular media uh just in the in the past couple of days there's concern uh over certain voices in the tlm community who seem to threaten the unity of the church so how so well um there's a sense by some who would you know kind of style themselves as opposed to these parallel liturgical forms that difference of rep um difference of ritual expression sets up a kind of parallel church which church self-styles after the manner of more excellent more pure more holy more dot dot okay and then they'll they'll have this associated with certain doctrinal concerns so about the legitimacy of the papacy about the legitimacy of the second vatican council about the legitimacy of the novus ordo and i think that um with respect to these present polemics we have to ask ourselves is this true okay and then how do we assess it so is this true and how do we assess it because there's plenty of anecdotal evidence and in the internet where it's possible to search for what anyone says ever there can be a temptation to think like i found this that and the other article and as a result of which these are representative voices in the movement itself um but i don't know how indicative that is and certainly among latin mass going catholics or tlm tlm-going catholics there's no you know parallel hierarchy there's no um parallel synod whereby their opinions are consolidated and subsequently expressed as a public platform so you're always just going to have kind of anecdotal points or anecdotal voices weighing in on issues and those points are magnified uh or those points are made more visible by the following or by whatever means the person has at their disposal or at his or her disposal so i think that um just kind of bringing into focus the problem of evaluating like present polemics and of assessing you know are there real problems uh with this notion of a parallel church are there real problems with you know doctrinal ascent to present papacy to the second vatican council to the novus ordo um if there are real problems like how do we how do we evaluate that right and how would we garner consent among the faithful so in recent years there's been you know in the past few papacy's there's been an emphasis on synods bringing people together to hear their story right um to host conversations among people of this sort and maybe you know there isn't to be a synod on the highest level a synod of ritual expressions right or a synod of the two forms of the roman right but i think that we can experience or we can try to cultivate something of that exchange on a local level right so an example of which is and i might treat this in subsequent questions somebody just sent me an email and said okay i hear a lot about cross fertilization it's good that the two coexist so that there be some kind of helpful adaptation of both perhaps in a foreseen future but the person asked me a lot of things that you hear about the novus order that are good are things that are already present in the tlm so what's actually good about the novus ordo which i think is a great question and i may choose to um to answer that in what follows which i did in email form but i think that those are the types of conversations which it's actually helpful to have because um they help us to yeah have real genuine and substantive exchanges okay the next thing concerns the theological notion of unity right so unity isn't just something that we have immediate access to in the sense that it's like i know the word unity i know how to pronounce it i know basically what it signifies if i were to look it up in merriam-webster's i wouldn't be surprised by the definition and so i know how to go about bringing unity it seems to be the case well certainly in the 20th century that this big focus on unity is coexisting with diversity in the context of communion so when the council fathers choose to describe the nature of the church right in the document lumengencium which is the dogmatic constitution on the church of the second vatican council the first dogmatic constitution or conciliary document dedicated to the church kind of in deliberate fashion there was one drafted i think for the first vatican council but that council was interrupted in 1871. um so when it begins describing the church it begins by describing the church's sacramentality and the nature of the church's communion and in its description of the nature of the church as communion it highlights these parallel aspects of unity and diversity and certainly ritual diversity is something with which we are already accustomed in the catholic church insofar as there are something like you know 22 rights in six different ritual families uh in the church when you think about you know all these different rights that you've certainly heard of like melkite and maronite and siramalankar and etc right so we already have an experience of ritual diversity but oftentimes the historical reasons for that ritual diversity are as particular as are those particular churches so within the roman rite there have existed parallel forms or ritual diversity within the roman rite itself but it's typically been associated with locale or with communities so locale being like the ambrosian right which is celebrated in milan or the saram right which would improper the british isles um or local communities like religious orders so like the dominican right for instance uh or the benedict right or the carmelite right so when pope saint pius v consolidated the roman liturgy and the tridentine right which would have been promulgated after uh the council of trent right so the council of trent lasts from the mid 1540s to the mid 1560s over the course of three interrupted uh periods of meeting and the pope saint pius v reigns from 1566 to 1572 and he promulgates the right um and what he does at that time is he says if your right has not been in existence for an excess of 200 years it is hereby abrogated and consolidated in this right so there's a recognition that there already is a diversity of roman rights this one represents a consolidated form but it still allows for a kind of diversity within the church so like the dominican rite had been in use at that point for some 300 years so there you have it still exists today so i think that uh like having a sense for ritual diversity even ritual diversity within the roman rite helps us to understand a little bit better the present context but the situation since samoan pontificum is novel in the sense that you have a twofold expression of a universal roman rite foreseen as universal right so that is a kind of wrinkle and that should be part of the conversation and the question is how to conduct that conversation or in what way that conversation is to proceed so those are some principles um i hope to have answered some questions but i also hope to have raised certain questions not just in an evasive way but because i think that it's genuinely fruitful to have this kind of conversation okay next point consolidation so consolidation of the power kind of over who has the faculty to celebrate and who um right has the right at to kind of assist at um this concerns church discipline so while there are some doctrinal considerations to be sussed out this is effectively it seems to me a prudential matter a prudential matter which is conducted on the highest levels right so it's not just you know you could get vanilla ice cream you could get chocolate ice cream in that sense um but it's not a matter of it doesn't strike me as uh kind of like recontextualizing or redefining dogma so there are certainly you know in the in the contemporary church there are concerns about both doctrinal and disciplinary matters so you know like the the hubbub over amoris leticia you know concerns doctrinal matters it's not just disciplinary in the sense that you know it concerns um the normative practice of distribution of holy communion to those known to be divorced and remarried uh so that's that is a practice that is something that one is doing in sacramental praxis but it concerns the nature of the life of grace occurs this concerns the nature of um you know christian communion it concerns the nature of the purpose for which the sacraments were instituted and why they're administered so it's it's actually a doctrinal issue um uh you know like the the matter that kind of cropped up it's almost a year ago now uh where pope francis said something about same-sex unions not in terms of redefining marriage but in terms of some uh civil recognition for same-sex unions that would also be a prudential matter but that's even further as it were from the heart of the matter insofar as that's a matter of how the state could conduct itself so that's that's the church kind of speaking prophetically to the state and saying this that or the other thing is better or worse and and i think that uh many people are of the mind that the kind of encouraging civil approbation of same-sex unions is is imprudent so it would be a bad exercise of a prudential consideration right so here just kind of trying to suss out what's properly doctrinal what's probably properly disciplinary what's kind of more proximate to the doctrinal and what's kind of even further afield so this present example it pertains to to prudence and so far as it's a disciplinary issue and the organization of the liturgy is something that historically you know pertains to the holy father so we just talked about pope saint pius v and the consolidation of the roman liturgy in the years following the council of trent but then also you know think about pope paul vi and the novus ordo and what that entailed um so i think that there uh you know we want to recognize the legitimacy of that and somebody asked me the question whether or not you you have to see that liturgy is inspired by the holy spirit i mean inspired can be said in many ways but you have to see it certainly as willed by god insofar as it goes through the ordinary means whereby god makes himself known through his vicar in the context of the church's conciliar deliberation so we're bound to accept the legitimacy of the novus ordo not just the legitimacy but the fact of it being holy good sanctifying and in the present context in the present situation you know kind of normative for the celebration of the liturgy in the west but when you think about things in that liturgy that change there are some significant things i think the most significant of which would be the changing of the words of consecration when you think about getting to the very heart of the sacramental form of matter i don't know you can get any closer right um except perhaps by changing the eucharistic elements uh so there's there's real change that takes place in this and and paul the paul vi you know legitimately exercises uh his munis as the vicar of christ uh to do just that so here you know what we're what we're dealing with here in traditionalis custodes is it seems to me less shocking uh or less significant than what happens in you know 1970 and the promulgation of the new liturgy um so again again just kind of setting up the question uh so then what what is particular to this um i think that a lot of people find have found the liturgical life of the past 50 plus years to be bewildering uh or bemusing or you know perhaps even just simply confusing uh because of this this kind of note of rupture as it were that that we've kind of been talking around but not not necessarily talking to so the changes to the liturgy in in soccer soccer concilium which is the constitution of the second vatican council on the liturgy they're more significant or they're more sweeping than it would have gone on before so there had been changes to the liturgy uh in the last in the hundred years before the second vatican council you can think about like the addition of the lion or like of the prayers of the photo of the altar the the leonine prayers prayers and thanksgiving or you can think about kind of the the entrance of certain dialogical elements into the liturgy that might not have been present previously or reforms in the church calendar all right so saints get added saints get dropped it's it's a rather common occurrence less the calendar itself become overburdened with too many interruptions to the ordinary cycle so there's there's big changes afoot here in the the novus ordo but what's most disruptive i think to the life of the church is that the implementation of those changes it seems is very ideologically charged is it more ideologically charged than in past ages it's really hard to say because i don't have the historical wherewithal to make that assessment but because it corresponds with you know you think about the year 1968 in europe you think about the sexual revolution in the united states you think about i mean throughout the world but especially in our own experience here and then that corresponds with changes in the liturgy so it's a very uncertain time and as a result of which some of that uncertainty gets imported into the implementation of these liturgical changes and there's just that's a kind of lingering fear of rupture right which i think informs some of the fears of those who have difficulty you know with the new liturgy in one way shape or form so i think that that sometimes the tendency when describing these issues is to then politicize them and i'm not being naive and saying that there aren't political elements to these considerations because there almost always are but i think that we should be leery of um you know kind of falling into certain hard-line tropes of one sort or another just attacking this individual or attacking this community uh for reasons which are more politically informed than which events a sensitivity to the yeah the desires um the the deeply held values of those who are agents or actors in these considerations so i think that there is a good uh of order right there's a good to the practical order which is being sought provided that it's done virtuously and then it conduces to virtue but i think that we can ask you know given that this is a disciplinary matter given that this is a prudential concern we can ask whether this will in fact lead to unity um so i mean some people have asked will this be an impetus to a more reverent and worthy celebration of the novus order which i think is a good question um and uh you know we can talk about that because i know that there's a question from a patron about that um but i think that there are also considerations to be entertained about ecclesiology or about church membership um one thing that makes me nervous is this notion of continuity or this notion of rupture because rupture is something that we experience in the political process with great frequency but we like to think that it happens less frequently in the ecclesiastical setting um but you know people ask the question will the next pope just reverse the decision can it be reversed in a local will it differ from bishop to bishop what if my bishop approves of it now but what if he's 73 and he goes out of office you know he resigns at 75 and then the next guy's not on board you know like what is the experience in the priests and of the people in these situations um and and is that uncertainty or is that volatility in fact a good for the church for the good uh for the church's unity um people entertain the question of schism will this bring in will this force out based on doctrinal and liturgical commitments and i think that you know the church is always going to delimit bounds uh it's always going to draw a line in the sand but the question is whether or not the line should be drawn here or here or here or here and and we've seen a lot in the way of pastoral solicitude from saint john paul ii from benedict xvi and from francis with respect to sspx for instance wide permissions granted so as to encourage reunification to encourage the the cessation of a schism so i think you know that there there's also these considerations to be entertained um but then ultimately you know when we talk about when we talk about unity and consolidating the power of the liturgy in the hands of the bishops we can just ask simply is this is this going to generate christian communion is this going to generate union in the body of christ um that encourages each to contribute to the church in a way proper to his or her state so i think maybe just as a way to dovetail out of this discussion or conclude this discussion uh just to take that consideration a little further and revisit the three points that i use to introduce the experience of the community most affected by this document and then just kind of give some encouragement so steps forward for those who are misunderstood i would say just an encouragement not to give in to the caricature it's you know it's easy to feel hurt right it's it's natural to feel hurt um and to be angry and sad uh but not to i mean not to act out of the caricature that we're just angry and sad and we can only ever play the part of the angry and sad i think the tlm community can show itself to be intelligent to be balanced to be cooperative and engaged in a way that doesn't lead to them being burned by their facilitation of these discussions but we can actually show a real desire uh events you know like a genuine movement towards communion which will be enlightened to the nations um and it also can be an occasion for you to foster a deeper sense of your own kind of self-understanding and catholicity um so when traumatic things happen i think that you know sometimes i'll be on a live stream like this and people just say something simply like you know the catholic church can't get his act together i was thinking about it as a as a live option for me but i just don't i don't think it's for me anymore which can be really tough to read and i expansion i imagine i expansion i imagine even even more difficult to experience um so i think in these moments it's for us to tell the story of why we came and why we stay and to be encouraged by the witnesses of those who are you know who are faithful uh who are good um i was driving in the car with father patrick briscoe on sunday and he was just reading me some stuff and he said you know bishop tobin of providence said that he was going to assist in choir at the tlm to be held at saint mary's on broadway in providence rhode island uh the following sunday and just the thought of that just you know it's like i think all of us you know want pastors who love us we want pastors who are solicitous for our good and we can build we can build them up you know and we can be built up by them so that's like that's a reason that's a reason and so reason that we should we should repeat uh it's a story that we should tell um next for those who feel suborned i think that it's you know good to help i mean it's helpful to keep in mind the fact that the church is a kind of constitutional monarchy um and it's not it's not democratic right uh so we've entertained options uh whereby those in the church you know like who do not pertain to the hierarchy have tried to exercise control over the hierarchy you can think about gallicanism or for bronionism or josephism or you can think about like lay trusteeship and our own experience in the united states and it doesn't it typically doesn't go well right so it's not for us to change the nature of the church to make it democratic so that we can feel ourselves to have more of parity in like the decision-making process as it's currently outlined rather it's for us to exercise um our ecclesial gifts uh which are sometimes called moonera which is the plural for the latin munus uh to exercise our ecclesial gifts properly so this would be like your priesthood your prophetic nature you know your prophetic office your kingship so that means to think and to say and to do those things that are proper to your state which means to pray to fast to make vigil it means to instruct admonish to build up those in your care it means to engage with the hierarchy in fruitful ways it means to write to bishops it means to support the the priests the bishops the holy father you know who support you not just because they support you but to support them to build them up to make you know whatever to make whatever gestures or acts or you know uh things that you can muster right as a way by which to build up the church it's also you know people talk about sticking to locale versus the benedict option you know that's still a live debate and i don't intend to settle it in the course of a 15 second comment but it's a time for you to build up your community your community of whichever sort whether it's a community here in which you're rooted maybe it's your geographical uh parish or maybe it's parish to which you have kind of migrated because it's a thing in which you want to invest it's a place where you want to raise your kids you know so so build up the community to which you pertain and then third and finally for the dispirited i would say simply this that the lord has given you what you need to flourish the lord has given you what you need to flourish you have you are not responsible for what you have not been given synagosa often repeated or god lord i'm combining words now lord give what you command and command what you will right so the lord gives what he commands and he commands of you or he commands you to do what he wills so the concrete and particular circumstances of your life represent in a certain sense god's will for your life and your real life is found there it's not found elsewhere right so you're not being deprived of the things essential for salvation the lord has promised to give those to you and he is true to his word okay so uh it may be a temptation to kind of you know think about your position your role as that of a victim but whether or not that's true you remain a protagonist right you remain an actor you remain an agent you remain competent to seek holiness to seek peace right and to build up those with whom you live into whom you're sent so if at the end of this i've raised more questions than i have answered answers um maybe that's good maybe that's by design because i don't think that we're supposed to necessarily solve these issues yesterday so far as we're supposed to continue talking them out talking them through until such time as we you know have the answers or until such time as we behold the answers in heaven so that's my word of encouragement thanks for your patience thanks for listening i'm gonna bop over now and start answering some questions okay uh so nathan alex who's a patron of a patron of mats on the channel he says i'm a recent convert from protestantism and i'm trying to appreciate tradition but with the silence it's difficult to focus any tips on how to better participate yeah this is a good a good question which kind of bridges our approach to both the tlm and the novus ordo and i would say that uh in soccer sanctum concealing you hear this encouragement to participatio octuosa right which is sometimes related or sometimes translated as active participation i think a more faithful translation is actual participation which means it goes beyond habitual participation and moves into a kind of engaged intentional participation when saint thomas aquinas talks about participation in the liturgy he says that you gain access to the meaning basically by the words so you know provided that you show up and that you intend to assist worthily at mass you know you've you've kind of laid the groundwork for merit but then beyond intention you can also make kind of efforts at attention so you pay attention to the words you pay attention to what those words signify you pay attention to the realities that those words mediate and that can be like as simple as following along in a hand missile or just paying attention to the ritual gestures certain things are spoken aloud you know you can think about the presidential prayers as they're sometimes called you know like the collect the secret is not but then the post-communion prayer and then the different antiphons right so the introit the offertor and the communion and then the readings are proclaimed to be heard and then oftentimes they're read in translated texts and then they're preached upon so those would be things from which you would seek kind of most proximately to benefit but ultimately the the general movement of the mass is in ritual participation in the sacrifice of our lord jesus christ so the effort is to unite your sacrifice with that of his and you do that by desiring it by willing it by by choosing it as it were and that's something that may not necessarily have emotional feedback or kickback right but it's something that's real nonetheless so that's from nathan alex one of matt's patrons thanks to his patrons the next question is from patrick jobst uh what is the relationship with the recent mode of proprio and honestly the previous ones samoan pontifica mcclazier day with the papal bull quo primum from pius v in 1570. pius v is pretty clear that the trinity right is to last for all time so where does the impetus to limit it come in um it's a great question i think i haven't read cool premium so i'm under studying on this and if this betrays you know some ignorance my apologies but i would say that insofar as you know you take your cue from some of the distinctions that we sussed out at the top of the hour those between kind of dogmatic and then disciplinary concerns the celebration of the sacred liturgy that strikes me falls more properly within the disciplinary so you wouldn't you wouldn't change the essential features of the right insofar as our lord jesus christ instituted the sacraments with their form and matter and you know theologically it's debated as to how much of the liturgical setting but at least something of it so then the question would be how much of it is revisable and that's a theological opinion on which the church itself it doesn't seem to me has declared solemnly except that christ instituted it okay but yeah so that's that's something that's kind of still being worked out in the church's tradition and so uh pope pope saint pius v right he uh solemnizes the promulgation of this liturgy in particular fashion uh but he himself knows that liturgical expression has taken varied forms over the life of the church as it has kind of passed through 1500 plus years and so i don't know what is the nature of the act whereby he solemnizes it you know unto ages of ages so i think that they're helpful helpful considerations of the distinction between the dogmatic and the disciplinary the doctrinal and the disciplinary and then of the force of a promulgation of such sort and then what constitutes revision of the essential and what constitutes revision of the non-essential or accidental so i think that the answer is probably somewhere to be found in that aperture you're going to have to check in with somebody who knows this better than i do the next question comes from patron benjamin handleman who says what is the best way to approach our brothers and sisters who are so deeply disturbed by the moto proprio that they are encouraging schism short answer is i don't know but i was thinking about this and you know like one of the things that i said is uh you know that you tell the stories of why you came and why you stay and i think that um argument sometimes kind of breaks down in these settings insofar as argument breaks down in most settings because people don't really so much want to be taught or moralized at or nagged you know people need witnesses and so i think that it's for us to witness to the sanctity of the church um even at a time where where it may be difficult for some people to acknowledge that or to be on board with that and um you know i'm just thinking of like uh you know the parish where i grew up my parents perish celebrates mass in the novus ordo and i just think of the fidelity of the people there and the way in which that mass has made them holy uh so there's a woman at my parents parish who's been very sick for like going on two years now she has cancer um and my sister was just telling me the story that uh this woman was being walked up the main aisle of the church she was kind of like taking some help from her daughter um but the daughter was also occupied with kids and stuff like this you know so it's just like it's it's kind of a hilarious situation a hilarious liturgical procession to go up to receive holy communion and um you know when the priest was distributing holy communion this woman being sick and not especially sure footed at this point you know she she dropped the blessed sacrament it was during covid and you know like there's masks and she was supposed to receive on the hands and everything was what it was but she dropped the blessed sacrament um and so the priest you know like goes to pick it up but this woman was already bending down to go pick up the host which he consumed and then you know like at the height of kovatech he licks her hand and dabs the ground right to pick up particles of the blessed sacrament that had perhaps fallen and then licks her hand again right so this is a woman who has been you know worshiping in the novus order presumably her whole life i don't know um and here is a woman evidently uh who understands what it means to love the blessed sacrament who understands what it means to be devout uh you know to like take care of the eucharist and she learned that in the context of assisting at the novus ordo so it's like you know we have these stories to tell and we should tell these stories not in a moralizing way not in a nagging way right not in like a preachy way says the order of preachers member um but in a way that that reveals the beauty of catholic communion even at a time where it seems yeah vexed all right so that's a great question from benjamin handleman jack skian says while i think this moto proprio was imprudent to say the least one potential positive effect i think might come from this is much more widespread beauty and reverence in the ordinary form due to the importing of people from traditional parishes so if matt and father pine are there any unintended positive effects you foresee coming from this document um right so the one that you suggest it may be true it may cause something of the cross fertilization which pope benedict xvi envisioned in 2007 with the publication of um some more in pontificum i think maybe you know like well there are certain goods that are proposed by the novus ordo which i think are good right and they are distinct from what is proposed in the context of the tlm if not you know like different kind at least different in degree and i think that maybe now is the time to appreciate some of those things uh insofar as it can can heal wounds um so i think you know what what are emphasis of the nova disorder like what are we encouraged by the church by the second vatican council by the holy father to embrace and i think that a lot of those things we'll find very embraceable indeed so one is a much expanded lectionary uh the fact that you have different readings for every day is a big deal so for feral days you have a two year cycle for the first reading in ordinary time a one year cycle for those same readings in advent christmas lent and easter and then one year cycle for the gospel throughout the year but then for sundays you have a three year cycle so you read a lot of scripture in the novus ordo which is good and people might come back with the argument well is the mass necessarily the time to read all of scripture right those uh those are fruitful conversations to have but i think that there's this there's this emphasis on the fact that we receive from the altar of the word or the table of the word and the table of the altar you know um to confuse some metaphors there right so this is a good right our engagement was sacred scripture origin says that we should be attentive to the word um so much so that we should fear lest a word proclaimed drop from our hearing uh just as much as we fear that a particle of the blessed sacrament dropped from the altar okay um another thing is you know there's like simple changes which i think enrich the liturgy like a wider sampling of prefaces prefaces so in the extraordinary form you're usually just using the common preface you're using it often and a lot whereas in the the nova sorta you have many different prefaces six common prefaces in addition to a variety of other sanctorial prefaces which highlight different aspects of the church's theology the church's cult of the saints the church's liturgical sensibilities which i think are good and beautiful um another thing like the audible canon right again this will be debated by people but the fact that uh the people of god are invited into hearing right the words of institution uh that they are made present at the sacrifice in a way not unlike the apostles would have been made present at the sacrifice at the last supper is is striking um and again certainly it's debatable uh whether or not it is better or worse but i think that you can see what is being kind of outlined or what's envisioned in that change um and then maybe just one more like a like a wider permission for vernacular obviously there are permissions for the use of the vernacular in the extraordinary form um but not necessarily with the same care or the same attention and have done well uh the use of these translated texts it does something for comprehension which again is debatable as to what's cons what constitutes comprehension or what potentially threatens and over intellect intellectualization or an over physicalization of the sacraments but i think that you know there's the sense that we're being appealed to as rational animals and the novice order seeks to do that so i think that these are some of the goods that are being proposed and these are some of the goods towards which you know uh we we might profitably incline during this time uh as a way by which you know to kind of receive the church's teaching ends to interiorize it uh so is this a potential good thing that could come about i don't know you know i i fear that the mode of proprio might actually affect the opposite result um which would be further hurt further alienation alienization alien unknown alienation god love us um right but but these are these are some of the things which are which are at stake okay thank you so that's jack skin next from eric music uh again thanks to matt's patrons you hear so much from all sides in layman's terms what has just happened i'm in rural canada and it's pretty liberal here we don't have a tlm close enough to get to however we do go to one of these rare novus ordo that is reverent masses and is i'll say decent for the record if there was a tlm in the area i'd be there so the basic thing is uh in samoan pontificum the permission was given to priests and people to celebrate and to request the celebration of the extraordinary form uh in a certain sense irrespective of bishops now oftentimes that was coordinated with the bishop's office but there was a sense in which both you know priest and people were were invested with a kind of power um or invested with a kind of responsibility for for just that um and as a result of which you know many tlm communities cropped up throughout the world in addition to those that had already been envisioned or provided for by ecclesia day um so if you go online you can you can see a kind of mapping of these and a lot of them are in the united states it's something like 40 of those sites those worship sites are in the united states i think the next most concentrated area would be france which are two very different ecclesial situations um yeah but apart from that you know you have other places which which have it with some frequency but it's the united states and france are the most affected by it i want to say that the united states accounts for like 40 of the worship sites in which the tlm is celebrated and so then with this most recent mode of proprio traditionalis casotis those rights were abrogated okay so now um the priest does not ordinarily have the faculty to celebrate except by permission and the people do not have the right to request it except by special provision basically and that that's all coordinated through the bishop's office so maybe i should have started with that at the top by way of clarification but there you have it righteous okay so those are questions from some of matt's patrons so thanks so much for your support and now we're going to go to some questions uh from other folks so thanks guys for your patience i'm only going to answer i'm only going to get to answer a few of these so thanks for sticking with it and for your contributions nonetheless all right um let's just because we've devoted most of the time to traditionis custodis i'm going to skip through questions to isolate and identify those types of questions so that we can just kind of fill out the hour with just this so we won't necessarily appeal too terribly much to st times aquinas on pints of aquinas this particular time but still i feel like the ecclesial moment merits it all right so i'm scrolling hey servos gracias okay that's not about that um okay father if some exploit the mass to raise doubts about vatican ii does not justice warrant the holy father directly address and reconcile those doubts instead of restricting the entire church right so that's yeah i mean that's a that's a good question it seems that one of the holy father's principle focuses is the acceptance of uh the teachings and the liturgical changes of the second vatican council uh he wants to you know ensure i suppose or command a sense to um or excuse me he wants to ensure that those teachings are received um how how best does one go about this i think you see in the the past three pontificates different ways in which you know the holy father has gone about this so you can think about i think the pontificate of saint john paul ii as an extended apology for the second vatican council so chained john paul the second right was a council father at the second vatican council and he has a a very vested interest in many of its documents he was a principal collaborator in in many of its deliberations um but the way in which saint john paul ii chose to commend the teaching of the second vatican council was oftentimes to repeat it right so to preach it to testify to it in that way and then to draw out its implications so like for instance you can think about human evita comes in 1968 so it's not it doesn't pertain directly to the second vatican council nor does it actually have a kind of neat place into which it slots in the second vatican council but if you think about the theology of the body as a kind of apology for or theological exposition of humane vitae it makes makes much more beautiful sense but he does it by a kind of doctrinal accompaniment as it were which is one way by which to command ascent but then there's a recognition that even when you do that some people will still not be moved to ascent so the crisis with lefeve comes to fever pitch in the 1980s right during the pontificate of saint john paul ii so then the question becomes how do you ensure uh the unity the integrity of the ecclesial body when there's the threat of you know heresy apostasy schism these different uh kind of wounds that afflict the church and then there you will get into more kind of issues of disciplinary uh or even punitive considerations and i think that what we see here is that the father is moving more in the order of the disciplinary rather than of the kind of expository um and it's apparently his judgment that's the best way by which to address it uh and you can you can call into question the prudence of that move um so yes i i think it's yeah i think it's very legitimate i think it's it's on sound footing to to call into question the prudence of that move all right um so here we go austin sarabia says what advice do you have for traditional catholics making the transition back to the novus ordo the motoproprio states that the novus order needs to be recited as intended but most priests brush off anyone brush off anyone requesting this yes so i think that um there are different ways by which to approach it and i think at this point it's best to be innocent as doves and crafty as serpents so i think it's good to get involved in your parish right i think a priest is going to be less willing to receive the input from somebody who's not yet involved in his parish he wants to see that you have a vested interest in it he wants to see that you contribute to it at every level right so if you get involved in you know like prayer groups if you get involved in kind of faith formation groups if you get involved in you know like on exodus 90 kind of like a penance type group and you start building up the ecclesial community in that way i think that a priest will be more receptive to any suggestions or contributions that you have to make in the liturgical you know kind of zone so sacred music is one way in which you can beautify your mass and if you have talents that lie in that direction then now might be a time to offer them okay at the very least you're praying for you're fasting for you're making vigil for your parish you're contributing to your parish in the way that kind of best conduces to its ends but you're you're presenting yourself to your priest in such a way that you say like you know i'm docile i'm humble i'm able to receive rebuke and correction i'm able to receive formation and encouragement but i also have something to give and i want to give that because i am convinced that god has made me who i am right he has seen to it that i be baptized as i have so that i can testify to his glory in a way that is particular and unique and excellent and no less essential to the life of the church right so you want to make that known but you want to make it known in a way that can be received so innocent is doves crafty as serpents all right um doo doo doo all right paul pereira says hi father pine what are the limits of obedience for example if my pat if my bishop says no latin mass for my parish can i set up a big tent on my property and invite a priest to say ef mass for my family that's awesome um yeah great question so uh you would want to i'm assuming that your bishop would probably exclude the celebration thereof and so far as it's the logical terminus of its exclusion of the celebration of the extraordinary form at your parish one thing i would say is some of you for some of you your bishops have already come out and said what they anticipate for coming weeks but but some of them have also been a little more reticence to pronounce upon the matter until such time as they take counsel and discuss it amongst themselves so i think now is now is a time you know it's obviously last friday's news came as a blow but it needn't be the end of the conversation and i think that you know you now is a time to contribute to that conversation insofar as your voice is being um solicited and so far as your opinion is being solicited but also i mean beyond that it's time to make kind of make your your desires known and just to testify to how you've been built up how you've been encouraged how you've been formed by the liturgy in which uh you've come to worship for these past often in times 15 years and for some more um so i think that so getting back to your question about the limits of obedience uh you're you're bound by ecclesiastical law as a baptized person and your bishop is your ordinary and you are bound by his organization of liturgy in your diocese and unless his provisions are sinful which in this case i do not think that they are right i think we can say with some certainty that they are not sinful uh then you are bound by that so if you were to depart from that that would represent disobedience which is if done with contempt or done maliciously right is sinful um so that's embracing reality but i think it's what it is um yeah what do i think about this yeah i think that's that's the most straightforward read i think that just is the most straightforward read which is tough which is really tough but i think that's where we are um okay sam piasecki asks what is the best thing for someone thinking of becoming an fssp priest to do right now so i i don't know i don't know exactly how this affects fssp or like the institute of christ king sovereign priest or the cannons of saint john cantius or those whose charism is very much bound up with the celebration of the extraordinary form it seems like the prohibition that this be done in parochial churches that no personal churches be set up in addition to what are currently being offered seems to limit the growth and the range the scope of the activity of those communions or of those oftentimes societies of apostolic life or secular institutes right um so i don't know but i think that you want to call a vocation director uh in the fssp and ask him how this is affecting his community and what they foresee their next steps being and that you know just ask him candidly how you might best prepare for a vocation which you think involves celebration of the extraordinary form so that might be a good place to start um so patty leather asks father can catholic priests say the latin mass privately and diocese that have banned it can catholic laity pay priests to provide the service in private chapels so i think the faculty it's it strikes me this is my reading of the document and this could be wrong and this may be clarified but it strikes me that the the faculty to celebrate the extraordinary form for those you know diocesan priests to celebrate according to the 1962 missile um that that actually has to be conceded so they would have to kind of re-up for that faculty from their local ordinary and that those who are ordained from this point onward will have to seek permission from their local ordinary which permission will be referred to the holy see um so they they can't celebrate it until such time as the right is conceded and then you know according to the current dispensation of canon law and can catholic lady pay priests to provide the service in private chapels it strikes me that no um if it's prohibited by the bishop that strikes me as contrary to the bishop's intention even if it's not explicitly stated which i know is a hard answer um and it's just it's just tough yeah it's just what oh gosh okay um corty asks from what i can tell the mode appropriate was more or less a way to punish the sspx for not actually asking for permission after the olive branch was offered to them why involve the whole right though yeah i um i guess i don't understand the ecclesial implications as they pertain to sspx do terribly much from what i understand sspx is not what is principally envisioned in this because while ssbx right now has faculties uh to celebrate like weddings for instance marriages for instance i think those are conceited basically as a way by which uh to extend the mercy to the lay faithful who assist at their churches because it's not understood that they're back yet in full communion it's just that the longer the schism per doors and for those people who assist at their parishes perhaps not fully aware of the ecclesial situation that their lives are very much you know kind of confused confounded in the sacramental order yeah unless those priests do have faculties to validly celebrate the sacraments which they administer so i think it's a it's a different thing concerning the fs px okay okay so there you go subsequent clarification about that um okay so we have some questions from people about other things and yeah and i haven't yet found another one about the modaproprio um so maybe i'll just answer a couple of questions about other things all right guys um so yes couple of questions about other things advace on balance between the liturgy of the hours and missile and the bible so i think that when approaching these types of questions of catholic piety right you're in a certain sense informed in your practice by what the church proposes and then by what you incline towards because i think that you can trust your desires and so far as god is healing them and elevating them by the life of virtue so what does the church propose well certainly she proposes certain things as you know mandatory like the holy mass for instance uh specifically on sundays uh but then she proposes certain things as especially efficacious so you can think about how the church assigns indulgences to certain acts which indulgences might include so so plenary indulgences and in order to attain to a plenary indulgence or order to gain a plenary indulgence you would perform an indulgenced act and in the ordinary course there are four indulgenced acts which you can perform you know any day of the week any week of the year which would be reading scripture for 30 minutes praying the rosary in common praying the stations of the cross in a public church or oratory or making um a visit to the blessed sacrament of 30 minutes so there are certain things with the church says like these are most efficacious in the order of merit because they're most efficacious in the order of faith and charity so i think that we should preference those things in the ordinary course now for some people the stations of the cross just might not be your jam or the rosaries might not be your jam that's okay you don't have to force yourself to do those things if they don't comport with your own personal liturgical sensibilities because there should be freedom for expression and if you're to do all of those things for instance as a lay person that would command a lot of your time which time i don't think you necessarily have so you're going to be choosing among those things you know that you might choose the liturgy of the hour is an especially excellent one because while it's said by professor religious and priests and deacons right it's envisioned to be open to the recitation or the singing of of the lay faithful as well and it's it's good that the lay faith will participate in that so as to participate in the prayer of the whole church so those are some helpful considerations in order to answer what you just described all right [Music] okay um so there's some questions here about dominican life uh which dominican life i pertain to so maybe a word about that uh what should one study in college if they wanted to become a dominican priest says elijah albert if you want to become a dominic priest right you can study just about anything under the sun and i think that you know at least for my province in order to enter you just have to have a bachelor's degree for those who want to pursue the holy priesthood but your bachelor's degree can be in anything and sometimes you know you want to be solicitous you want to like prepare most adequately and in that case you know it's good just to go to good liberal arts formation because the most adequate preparation that you can have for the priesthood is being able to think and in order to be able to think it's not good that you specialize too early right uh i think about this in terms of sports like lebron james was a really good football player michael jordan was a really good baseball player and they continued to play those sports throughout high school and uh they ended up being really good basketball players i suspect in part because they developed their athleticism more broadly and i think that when it becomes you know when it's a matter of becoming a priest you want to be a good human being right because there's no substitute for a well-formed humanity you can't just become an expert in administration of the sacraments and preaching and you know whatever other priestly duties fall within your within your compass you know you want to be a good human being because grace builds on nature it doesn't you know kind of supply for its absence um so yeah i think that you should you should study those things that you want to study but maybe a good liberal arts program i can think of like thomas aquinas college has great liberal arts formation uh their campuses both in santa paula and in northfield massachusetts um but then you also have these excellent catholic studies programs like the ones that are at university of saint thomas in minneapolis-st paul or st paul or franciscan university of steubenville which is i studied um the humanities and catholic culture program there was awesome and i was super super grateful to have had that formation and well-formed by it okay boom at this point i think i'm going to lapse into silence so maybe just a couple of final notes on this here on this year issue i think it's a good time to continue the conversation um and a good time to encourage it among your friends among your family among the members of your church as a way by which to foster catholic communion and it's a way by which to grow in sanctity because when it comes to growing in sanctity it matters that you think well and it matters that you love well and it's you know easier to love well provided that you think well but in order to think well it's it's requisite of us that we have these kinds of arguments arguments in a civil fashion with substantive exchange where we're not just kind of bashing into each other angrily but we're actually seeking you know like not just dialogue for dialogue's sake but sussing out good answers right sussing out good solutions in the context of communal deliberation because we can benefit from the memory and experience of others we can benefit from the wisdom and knowledge of others we can benefit from the types of things that come about as a result of the exchange and i think that that's that's just the type of thing that we want to do um so if you haven't yet liked this here live stream please do so because it promotes it in the algorithm and it gets it out to more people uh if you haven't yet subscribed to pints of the aquinas please do so and then click on the bell and that'll force google to check out other things that you do or other things that points with aquinas does and then please do check out godsplaining which is a podcast which i contribute most weeks which is g-o-d-s-p-l-a-i-n-i-n-g godsplaining and there it's kind of like getting a contemplative view on all things contemporary so it's just trying to help us to draw out our relationship with god in things as broad ranging as you know struggling with scrupulosity to reading post-modern literature uh so that's something that i contribute to with four other dominican friars but do check that out as well so thanks so much for tuning in uh my prayers are for you please pray for me and you know pray for the church as she advances please god from strength to strength unto the praise of his glory all right until next time that's all and catch you later

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

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Length: 60min 28sec (3628 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021