Author John Casey (lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville and Caius Colleges) has written a remarkable article entitled "Rediscovering Traditionalism". It is quite long but it is filled with insightful assessments of what has been happening in the Church since the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. It also excavates some of the history of the last 40+ years in a way we have never before seen described. Here is a little sample...an astonishing anecdote.
"Nearly 25 years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the masses of the Archbishop of Cracow. [Karol Wojtyla] A year or two after that prelate had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends. The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad ad altare dei … to which our guest responded: Ad deum qui laetificat juventutum meum. ("I will go unto the altar of God’’ "To God who giveth joy to my youth.’‘) This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old "Tridentine’’ Latin mass, abolished in the early 1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor. Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, that’s no use to us anymore." His old altar boy replied: "No, Holy Father, and that’s why I no longer go to church." To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: "Don’t blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!"
No comments:
Post a Comment