Online Petition for Protecting the Latin Mass

With gratitude to Bellator Dei for graphic

Dear Reader,

There are rumours and reports of renewed threat to the Latin Mass.

How credible these are is impossible for me to judge. However sources I consider reputable such as The New Liturgical Movement and Rorate Caeli are promoting a multinational, multilingual appeal for a petition to the Holy Father.

Thus I think the threat is serious enough to recommend for your consideration of this online petition to protect the Tridentine rite .

And one thing I am clear of: the Latin Mass is tragically threatening to many in the hierarchy of the Church. Enormous pressure was put on the Pope to delay, dilute or otherwise impede the original Motu Proprio on the Latin Mass – most especially it seems from France.

And the battle within the Church continues.

Consciously or unconsciously, the power of this Mass can be sensed.

At least, this helps to explain to my mind, the otherwise absurd opposition to the Latin Mass – the Mass of all the Catholic Church across the world before Vatican II …

Why, why, why all the opposition, unless its enemies somehow realise that it matters?

Yes this opposition would be completely absurd, without the recognition (again whether conscious or unconscious) that the Tridentine Mass is not without consequence – a consequence that must be fought tooth and nail, even if it means outright defiance of the Holy Father …

I cannot unpack this much further now. My energies must be very with the new series on Valentin Tomberg (starting here).

However as I have mentioned elsewhere at this site, including recently to Edwin, Valentin Tomberg was also gravely concerned by the direction of the Church after Vatican II. He spoke of the need to save it from going towards the “abyss”.

And in the only public words we have from Valentin Tomberg (in Lazarus Come Forth) on Vatican II, he indicates something relevant to this situation with the “sacred language” of Latin as he puts it:

“The Council for which Pope John XXIII prayed did in fact fail” …

“It happened that the “second Pentecostal miracle” hoped for and prayed for by the Holy Father – the proclamation by the World Council of a deepened, elevated and expanded treasure of Church revelation – was replaced by a policy of “keeping in step with the times”.

The Council did not reflect the timeless inspirations of heaven, but rather the earthly needs, complaints, wishes and demands of the age.

It became a sort of religious parliament with a “progressive left”, a “conservative right” and a “moderate center”.

Thus people spoke of a “democratisation” of the Church, now breaking through.

The “world” remarked with satisfaction: the Catholic Church is moving closer to us; yes, just a little while and it will be part of us – the Council exudes a “fresh wind”, the wind of a free and modern spirit!”

And he continues: “A fresh wind did indeed blow from the Council. It blew up such problems as the abolition of the celibacy of priests suddenly become pressing; the problem of mixed marriages with those another faith; the problem of acceptability of the “pill” and other methods of contraception; the problem of “demythologisation” of the Holy Scripture and of tradition; the problem of the Mass, in the sense of abolishing Latin as the liturgical and sacred language and the substitution for it of many other languages … [My emphasis in italics].”

Dear Reader, if you care about the crisis in the Church and are convinced as I am, that this crisis has very much indeed to do with the liturgy, I urge you to go to this petition and consider in your heart whether you can sign it:

http://www.motuproprioappeal.com/

And if you do sign it, please ponder also whether you see fit to share it and make it more widely known.

Background material to this petition can be found here:

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Instruction

The series on Valentin Tomberg will shortly continue and we will certainly look at why Valentin Tomberg believed that in order to save world civilisation from tragic degeneration, it was necessary to preserve TRADITION.

Finally I am gratified to note increasing numbers of folk reading this series. Please know that any comments you have would be most appreciated.

From Amazon USA:

Some of these can also be found in our Amazon UK store here.