maandag, januari 21, 2008

De stem van Guido Marini


Mons. Guido Marini heeft aan Radio Vaticana een interview gegeven over de ware betekenis van de H. Mis versus Deum zoals opgedragen in de Sixtijnse Kapel door Benedictus XVI.

Hier is de link

Hij komt ook te spreken over Summorum Pontificum en andere, recente liturgische handelingen tijdens de Kersttijd, waarover wij uitvoerig bericht hebben.

Hier is de vertaling:
Vraag: "Mons. Marini, er zijn er die, volgend op het debat na de publicatie van het Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, in enkele handelingen van Benedictus XVI het verlangen gelezen hebben om de conciliaire liturgische hervorming te verlaten. Wat antwoordt u op zulke speculaties?"
Antwoord: "Er zijn zeker speculaties en incorrecte interpretaties van zowel het Motu proprio als van geheel het magisterium van Benedictus XVI inzake de liturgie. De liturgie van de Kerk, zoals geheel Haar leven trouwens, bestaat uit continuïteit: ik zou spreken over ontwikkeling in de continuïteit. Dit betekent dat de Kerk voortgaat op Haar historische weg zonder haar eigen wortels en Haar levende traditie uit het oog te verliezen. Dit kan ook, in enkele gevallen, vereisen het hernemen [il recupero] van kostbare en belangrijke elementen, die gedurend deze weg verloren zijn gegaan, vergeten zijn, en die het voorbijgaan van de tijd minder schitterend heeft gemaakt wat betreft hun authentieke betekenis. Het lijkt mij dat het Motu proprio precies in deze richting gaat: herbevestigen met grote duidelijkheid dat in het liturgische leven van de Kerk er continuïteit is, zonder breuk. We moeten dus niet praten over een terugkeer naar het verleden, maar een ware verrijking van het heden, in het licht van morgen."

De gehechtheid aan de Hervorming van de Hervorming en de Buitengenwone Vorm van de Romeinse Ritus kan ook in onze contreien op heel wat weerstand rekenen en zelden is het mogelijk om tot een heldere, rationele en open discussie te komen. Naar de motieven voor deze weerstand is het vaak raden: angst voor polarisatie, voor besmetting door 'traditionalistische' gedachten, rancune over het verleden, etc. Mijn indruk is echter dat het vaak neerkomt op onwetendheid.
Maar zoals Mons. Marini getuigt, kan een rustige en doordachte argumentatie mensen van goede wil overtuigen.

vrijdag, januari 18, 2008

Vaticanum II, gelezen in het licht van de traditie

De lezing en uitvoering van Vaticanum II in het licht van de traditie, een werk nauwelijks begonnen, sijpelt door in de 'mainstream' cultuur. Immers, het katholieke geloof gaat samen met een bepaalde opvatting van onze huidige cultuur 'in via';
Getuige hiervan het artikel in de Catholic Herald

A breath of fresh air is wafting through St Peter’s

James MacMillan
Friday January 18, 2008

There is a bewildering array of American Catholic blog sites these days. Some are liberal, but the overwhelming majority seem to express an ever-more confident Catholic orthodoxy on matters of faith, morals and liturgy. Many of the posters seem to be young, and take an apparent delight in winding up that generation of post-Vatican II Catholics still moaning about not getting their way in the contemporary Church.
One particular American blogger, Fr John Zuhlsdorf, has recently hailed what he calls “the return of triumphalism”. Ever since Vatican II this has been a taboo word in the Church, but he sees it as a good thing. Is this yet more evidence that we are moving into a new, more confident era for the modern Church? That Catholics are more and more prepared to stand up for their identity and their core values? That liberal secularists and liberal Christians have failed in bullying orthodox Catholics into submission? Is it really time to become assertive about the faith in the public square?
To be honest, there is nothing particularly serious, scholarly or analytical about Fr Zuhlsdorf’s site. There is, however, a knowing lightheartedness in appearing to indulge some guilty pleasures. He is in raptures about recent liturgical developments in St Peter’s, and that “more and more, Pope Benedict’s intentions are being clarified in regard to the Church’s traditional liturgical expressions”. There is great enthusiasm for the increased reappearance of Gregorian chant, flappable excitement at the use of the correct, ornate vestments, and at the good taste of medieval images of Mary chosen for the ceremonies. The Holy Father is hailed for his “dedication to formal liturgical ceremony and also popular devotion, which is also of great importance in the life of the Catholic people. They strengthen each other, and the Holy Father understands that.
“He is giving a good example as Bishop and chief pastor of Rome to his city and to the world… his way of showing the bishops and priests of the world how this is to be done”. Confident, assertive, provocative stuff.
It is not just in the liturgical sphere that we see a new impatience with the comfy laxness of the previous generation. For many years successful professional Christians have sought to ingratiate themselves with their liberal secular associates by playing down the parts of the Church’s teaching that caused most offence. Nevertheless there was more at stake here than just their incorporation into trendy sophisticated company.
Secular liberals have gladly gobbled up all these concessions and now want more – the complete obliteration of religion from public life. In the process liberal Christians have lost the respect of their secular peers. They gave no indication of intellectual rigour or ethical integrity in their eagerness to ditch bits and pieces of the faith. Their faith has been caught in a cruel light – their Christianity is bland, sentimental and anaemic.
History will look back unkindly on the generation of Vatican II Catholics who were handed such a precious pentecostal gift of grace – a unique opportunity to purify the Church, only to squander it disastrously. They bent over backwards to accommodate the zeitgeist, rather than open a generational heart to the Heilige Geist. This is not what John XXIII foresaw when he inaugurated his great reforming council. He would have been horrified to see how many Catholics fell prey to the trendy nihilism of the 1960s, duped by a destructive iconoclasm which has eroded so much of the West’s culture and morals.
This is the basis of the new positivist impulse among young Catholics, disdained and dismissed by some of their elders as conservative and reactionary. In the new generation, we need to rediscover the optimism that lay at the heart of Vatican II. We need to confront the radical dissatisfaction that led many 1960s Catholics to turn away from or against the Church. We need to challenge their disdain for tradition and that smug superiority that many Catholics of a certain age display towards the deep pieties of the ordinary, “old-fashioned” faithful. Catholic liberalism has had its day, and the legacy of Vatican II requires us to understand the pernicious, corrosive effects of the pick-and-mix tendency. The recent experience of our sister faith communities in the Reformed tradition has shown that those who strive to make their churches “acceptable” to the prevailing, but probably transitory zeitgeist, have triumphed. There are those, within and without the Catholic Church, who have been encouraged by this and are forever pushing in the same direction. They see no problem in being fully communicant while urging the rejection of the most precious doctrines on faith and morals. This rejection can sometimes cover the divinity of Christ Himself, can involve a campaign to legitimise abortion and euthanasia (there is an organisation in America called Catholics for a Free Choice), and the defeatist acceptance of the sexual hooliganism which has so harmed the position of marriage and the family in modern life.
The western world’s love affair with self may have taken off in the 1960s but it will only get worse. The Catholic Church must provide a counter-cultural challenge to this, and offer the alternative of Christ’s own way.
It is not triumphalist to say this, but it requires the Church to be happy and confident in its own skin. Catholics need to know what it means to be Catholic – to understand what our core values are, and to feel they are not just worth defending, but worth proclaiming from the rooftops. The young generation of Catholics are right to be assertive about our beliefs in the public square. If we do not speak boldly and honestly to power in these contexts, if we run scared in the face of the new anti-religious elites, we will be expelled from the public square, never to return.
Perhaps American bloggers like Fr Zuhlsdorf know this. Our British reserve can make us cringe with embarrassment in the face of such brash self-confidence, but we may have to develop our own ways of being assertive.
We can begin with the liturgy. Nothing signals the weakened state of the modern Church more than the contemporary practice of Catholic liturgy in hundreds of churches throughout the land. A breath of fresh air is wafting through St Peter’s, and in his own gentle way Pope Benedict is inviting the universal Church to taste the beauties and spiritual sustenance of true Catholic worship. I am convinced that from the liturgy everything else will flow. We British don’t flap with excitement, but there may be good reason for us to pray for Christ’s Church with a warm glow of expectation and confidence as we look with hope to the future.

maandag, januari 07, 2008

Concelebratie?


Epifanie 2008

Ik heb de indruk dat concelebratie minder frequent voorkomt? Er zijn vanzelfsprekend heel wat problemen met de wijze waarop concelebratie vaak voorkomt en de nuttigheid hiervan. Zie het artikel van Rudolf Michael Schmitz.

Zoals Sacramentum caritatis nr. 61 vaststelt:
De grote concelebraties
61. De synodevergadering heeft grondig overwogen wat de waarde is van deelname aan grote concelebraties, die plaats vinden bij bijzondere gelegenheden en waarbij, behalve een groot aantal gelovigen, ook veel concelebrerende priesters aanwezig zijn. [181] Enerzijds is de betekenis van deze momenten zeer herkenbaar, in het bijzonder als de bisschop de viering leidt, omringd door zijn presbyterium en de diakens. Anderzijds kunnen bij zulke gelegenheden problemen optreden wat betreft de waarneembare uitdrukking van de eenheid van het presbyterium, in het bijzonder bij het Eucharistisch Gebed en bij het uitreiken van de heilige Communie. Er moet worden vermeden dat deze grote concelebraties verwarring veroorzaken. Dat kan door op gepaste wijze voor coördinatie te zorgen en de plaats van de eredienst zo in te richten dat priesters en gelovigen tot volle, werkelijke deelname in staat worden gesteld. In ieder geval moet men voor ogen houden dat het gaat om uitzonderlijke concelebraties, die beperkt moeten blijven tot buitengewone situaties.


Zie ook dit bericht over Piero Marini hier:
He also evoked the problems of dealing with large numbers of concelebrants and of the distribution of Holy Communion to huge crowds. It was clear that he found none of the attempted solutions to be satisfactory. If I understood correctly, he mentioned in passing that Pope Benedict has recently approved a document that limits the number of concelebrants to as many as can be clearly seen to be in relation to the altar, that is to say, no more than the sanctuary can hold. (I was making a note of something else when he said this, so I may have missed something; he might have been advancing his own opinion.) Some of the expedients adopted for the distribution of Communion were downright weird. At one outdoor Mass, concelebrants were bussed to communicants; at the World Youth Day Mass in Paris, enormous quantities of hosts were consecrated at private Masses celebrated in tents around the edges of the site the day before, and distributed from these “eucharistic tents” during the papal Mass.

LA CONCELEBRAZIONE EUCARISTICA
del Sac. Rudolf Michael Schmitz
In merito alla pratica, oggi molto diffusa, della concelebrazione giornaliera o quasi, due questioni meritano la nostra attenzione. Innanzi tutto occorre appurare se nella concelebrazione si attui una o più volte il Sacrificio della Messa. In base alla soluzione ottenuta, occorre esaminare se la frequente concelebrazione sia più o meno utile al bene della Chiesa. (zie hier)

vrijdag, januari 04, 2008

Pauselijke staf

De recente liturgische wijzigingen in de liturgie van de Heilige Vader willen, naar het woord van Guido Marini, ook visueel de continuïteit van de Kerk aanduiden.
Er is in de blogosfeer heel wat discussie over de pauselijke staf van Paulus VI. Naar mijn mening gaat deze niet goed samen met de klassieke paramenten zoals deze nu volop in gebruik zijn. De huidige staf lijkt, zoals blijkt uit volgende foto's, het resultaat van eerdere pogingen te zijn.










Er is echter een valabel alternatief zoals Johannes Paulus II liet zien, één dat bovendien een grotere traditie heeft.

Kerst in het Vaticaan