00 20/02/2015 23:11
How wonderful to hear JMB/PF talk about the liturgy in this way! My only caveat is this: Is it possible to feel that wonder when the Mass celebrator preaches the kind of homilettes that JMB/PF favors at his morning Masses in Casa Santa Marta? My earlier caveat, of course, when it was announced that the 'ars celebrandi' with emphasis on the homily, would be the topic of the Pope's meeting with the clergy of Rome this year was this: It seems to me - at least from the disjointed mix of paraphrase and direct quotations by which RV and OR report these homilettes to the world, and without even going into the polemical content of most of them - that they lack the first prerequisite for a good homily - preparation. As skilled and consummate a preacher as JMB may think he is, the Casa Santa Marta homilettes are far from the 'print-ready' texts that came so easily and naturally to Joseph Ratzinger.

Pope tells Rome’s priests
the liturgy should inspire
feelings of wonder
He recalls being told off by Cardinal Ratzinger
that a document he wrote on 'ars celebrandi'in 2005
lacked 'the feeling of being before God', and "He was right!"
by Carol Glatz

Friday, 20 Feb 2015

The liturgy should help the faithful enter into God’s mystery and to experience the wonder of encountering Christ, Pope Francis has told priests of the Diocese of Rome on Thursday.

People should feel the wonder and allure “that the apostles felt when they were called, invited. It attracts – wonder attracts – and it lets you reflect”, the Pope said during an annual Lenten meeting with Rome pastors in the Paul VI audience hall.

Sitting behind a table and talking off-the-cuff, glancing occasionally at a few pages of notes in front of him, the Pope led the priests in a reflection on the homily and “ars celebrandi”, the art of celebrating the liturgy well.

The Vatican press hall mistakenly broadcast via closed-circuit television the first 15 minutes of the encounter, which was meant to be closed to the media at the Pope’s request so that he could speak more freely with his audience, according to Fr Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman.

While the annual meeting had always been open to news coverage, Pope Francis has preferred private meetings with local clergy during his visits to different parishes in Italy, the spokesman said.

Priests who attended the two-hour meeting said the Pope spent about 40 minutes after his talk with a question-and-answer session – a format used frequently by St John Paul II in meetings with priests and seminarians and by Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of pontificate. [What is Glatz saying? B16 used the q&A format for all of his meetigns with the clergy of Rome, except the last one which took place two days before he stepped down as Pope - when he chose to given an awesome extemporaneous 45-minute lectio magistralis on Vatican-II from the viewpoint of perhaps the most authoritative still-living participant in that event.]

Pope Francis told the priests that “the homily is a challenge for priests” and he said he, too, had his own shortcomings – pointed out in a reflection he prepared for a plenary meeting of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments on “ars celebrandi” in 2005.

As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was a cardinal-member of the congregation. After he presented the reflection, he said, Cardinal Joachim Meisner “reprimanded me a bit strongly over some things”, as well as then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who “told me that something very important was missing in the ‘ars celebrandi,’ which was the feeling of being before God. And he was right, I had not spoken about this,” he said, adding that both cardinals had given him good advice.

[Dear Pope Francis, thank you for this manifestation of genuine humility!... It's really surprising that JMB/PF recounted the above! Since that 2005 document that he prepared was distributed beforehand to the priests he met yesterday, they could then personally check out the deficiency that Cardinal Ratzinger noted. It would have been better if JMB had prepared a note updating the 2005 lecture to correct its 'shortcomings'. Is it a measure of the infamous Jesuit 'disregard' for liturgy that a distinguished Jesuit cardinal, writing on 'ars celebrandi' missed pointing out that liturgy must make the faothful feel they are in the presence of God?]

“For me the key of ‘ars celebrandi’ takes the path of recovering the allure of beauty, the wonder both of the person celebrating and the people, of entering in an atmosphere that is spontaneous, normal and religious, but isn’t artificial, and that way you recover a bit of the wonder,” he said.

Sometimes there are priests who celebrate Mass in a way that is “very sophisticated, artificial”, or who “abuse the gestures”, he said.

If the priest is “excessively” focused on the rubrics that indicate the movements and particular gestures during Mass and “rigid, I do not enter into the mystery” because all one’s energy and attention are on the form, he said. [I respectfully beg to disagree! A priest is expected to master all the rubrics and gestures of the Mass, which are not imposed on the liturgy, as it were, but are integral to it - gestures and rubrics flow from the prayers and complement them. Therefore, they have to become 'second nature' for the priest celebrating the Mass, in the sense that he does not have to 'think' about his gestures which, having mastered them well, come naturally to him in consonance with the prayers he is saying.]

The other extreme, he said, is “if I am a showman, the protagonist” of the Mass, “then I do not enter into the mystery” either. [The enduring validity of the traditional Mass, which developed organically over decades and centuries is that, unlike the Novus Ordo, it allows no opportunity for 'showmanship' or 'creativity'. Rites and rituals are not meant to be improvised - that is why they are rites.]

While the idea is simple, “it is not easy” to elicit this sense of wonder and mystery, he said. But nonetheless, he said, the celebration of Mass is about entering into and letting others enter into this mystery.

The celebrant “must pray before God, with the community”, in a genuine and natural way that avoids all forms of “artificiality”, he said.

Concerning the homily, the Pope again suggested clergy read Fr Domenico Grasso’s Proclaiming God’s Message: A Study in the Theology of Preaching and Fr Hugo Rahner’s Theology of Proclamation, adding that what distinguished Fr Hugo Rahner from his theologian brother, Fr Karl Rahner, was that “Hugo writes clearly”. [Obviously, he did not see fit to refer to the CDW's new Direttorio Omiletico, meant to be a concise Scriptural and exegetical guide to the Bible readings for the Sunday Masses over the three-year lectionary cycle. It ought to have been given out to the priests of Rome along with the copy of Cardinal Bergoglio's 2005 paper on 'ars celebrandi'.]

Before the Pope’s talk, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar of Rome, said he and his audience were ready to reflect together with the Pope on what French theologian Fr Louis Bouyer called the danger of the ‘nausea of the word’ in the liturgy caused by an inflation of words that are at times repetitive, a bit trite, obscure or moralistic and that do not pierce the heart.”

The cardinal said they try to preach well, but are always looking for improvement.

“A good homily leaves its mark,” he said, while a homily “that is lacking does not bear fruit and, on the contrary, can even make people give up on Mass.”

“We want our words to set people’s hearts on fire” and want the faithful “to be enlightened and encouraged to live a new life and never be forced to suffer through our homilies,” he said.
[I suppose, since Glatz does not report it, Cardinal Vallini did not cite JMB/PF's homilies as an example to follow! Because if he did, then he would have been flagrantly remiss if he did not also refer to Benedict XVI's homilies. After all, qualified commentators have called B16 the best Pope-homilist since Leo the Great who lived 1500 years ago!]


Pope holds 2-hour meeting with Roman Clergy,
speaks briefly on homiletics, engages in
in open discussion with 'his priests'
by Salvatore Carnuzio


Rome, February 19, 2015 (Zenit.org)- While many newspapers have reported solely on comments regarding 'married priests', there is much more to Pope Francis's address during his annual meeting with the clergy of Rome today.

The Bishop of Rome spent almost two hours with hundreds of priests, speaking briefly on homiletics and the Ars celebrandi (the art of proper celebration). However, he spent most of the time engaging in an open discussion with the clergy saying: "I am more interested in your questions." The Pontiff's intentions weren't on giving a lecture, but in conversing directly with "his priests."
[But this was always the format of Benedict XVI's meetings with the Roman clergy. With the clergy, he discussed pastoral concerns. But the seminarians of Rome, he gifted with a lectio divina that would have been the highlight of any seminarian's academic year!]

After the opening greetings given by Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Vicar General of Rome, the meeting began with discussions on an address given by the Holy Father to the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on the theme of the Ars celebrandi on March 1st, 2005.

The text was distributed to the participants and was republished today by L'Osservatore Romano. Still, the centerpiece of today's audience were the questions by several priests, including some not programmed, to which the Pope did not hold back and was ready to respond. Furthermore, in order to allow for more freedom to speak, the Holy Father requested that no television cameras be present in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

However, some excerpts of the Pope's discourse were released thanks in part to several priests who spoke to the press following the meeting. Some even managed to record the Pope's words. In addition to several phrases reported by a few Italian news agencies this morning, the 78 year old Pontiff touched upon the theme, for example, on the "traditional rite" with which Benedict XVI granted to celebrate Mass.

Through the Motu Propio Summorum Pontificum, published in 2007, the now Pope Emeritus allowed the possibility of celebrating the Mass according to the liturgical books edited by John XXIII in 1962 What a convoluted way to say something simple: "according to the 1962 edition of the Roman Missail"] - even if the "ordinary" form of celebration in the Catholic Church remains that established by Paul VI in 1970.

Pope Francis explained that this gesture by his predecessor, "a man of communion", was meant to offer "a courageous hand to Lefebvrians and traditionalists", as well as to those who wished to celebrate the Mass according to the ancient rites.

The so-called "Tridentine" Mass – the Pope said – is an "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite". Thus, it is not a distinct rite, but rather a "different form of the same rite".

However, the Pope noted that there are priests and bishops who speak of a "reform of the reform." Some of them are "saints" and speak "in good faith." But this "is mistaken", the Holy Father said.

He then referred to the case of some bishops who accepted "traditionalist" seminarians who were kicked out of other dioceses, without finding out information on them, because "they presented themselves very well, very devout." They were then ordained, but these were later revealed to have "psychological and moral problems."

It is not a practice, but it "happens often" in these environments, the Pope stressed, and to ordain these types of seminarians is like placing a "mortgage on the Church." The underlying problem is that some bishops are sometimes overwhelmed by "the need for new priests in the diocese." Therefore, an adequate discernment among candidates is not made, among whom some can hide certain "imbalances" that are then manifested in liturgies. In fact, the Congregation of Bishops – the Pontiff went on to say – had to intervene with three bishops on three of these cases, although they didn't occur in Italy.[This excerpt just about wiped out any goodwill I was feeling that JMB/PF owned up to a major deficiency in his cpncept of 'ars celebrandi' back in 2005! I hope a full transcript of what he said will be published by the Vatican - because this way, it seems as if he is equating being traditionalist to being 'psychologically imbalanced and therefore unfit for priesthood!Isn't this usually a problem for latent or known homosexuals who are psychologically unfit for priesthood ?

During the beginning of his address, Francis, spoke on homiletics and the Ars celebrandi, calling on the priests to not fall into the temptation of wanting to be a "showman" on the pulpit, perhaps even by speaking in a "sophisticated manner" or "overt gestures." However, priests shouldn't also be "boring" to the point that people "will go outside to smoke a cigarette" during the homily.

To this end, the Holy Father – in the few minutes of his speech that was broadcast in the Holy See Press Office – recalled three personal anecdotes that occurred in Buenos Aires that dealt with "the challenges" of delivering homilies.

For example, when several friends enthusiastically told him that they found "a Church where the Mass is done without a homily", as well as another occasion where a niece complained of having heard "a 40 minute lecture on St. Thomas's Summa Theologica" instead of a homily.

In short, the homily – the Pope highlighted – is pronounced with the intention of helping the faithful to enter "into the mystery of faith."

"If I am an excessive columnist and rigid, that is not good. And if I am a showman, they do not enter into the mystery," he explained.

The Pope said that he understood this concept well after several years, during a plenary in 2005, where following an address, he was corrected by both Cardinal Joachim Meisner and the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for not having said that in the Ars celebrandi, one needed to above all, "feel in front of God."

"And they were right," the Pope said, "I did not speak about this."

During the open time for questions, Fr. Giovanni Cereti, a theologian at various Pontifical universities, spoke. Fr. Cereti is the author of the book "Divorce, Remarriage and Penance in the Primitive Church", in which he states that in the first millennium, people in adultery were readmitted into the community after a period of penance and were able to receive communion while in a new marriage.

Today, Cereti (who has received dispensation after he married) asked the Pope if in the future, married priests can be readmitted to celebrating Mass after obtaining dispensation. "It is a problem that does not have an easy solution", the Pope said. However, the Holy Father said that the he and the Church have the question at heart.

The issue, he continued, is also being looked into by the Congregation for the Clergy, who have conceded to the practice of dispensation only in rare cases of former priests who are elderly and have asked to celebrate Mass, in private, before dying. Regarding the problem in itself however, the Pope stressed: "I am not sure if it can be resolved." [Why this should even be a question puzzles me. Unless I completely misunderstand what laicization means, a priest who has been laicized can no longer carry out any priestly function, and he is no longer 'in persona Christi'. How then can he be allowed to celebrate Mass, dispensation or no dispensation?]

I just realized that although I made a passing reference to JMB/PF's newest potential beneficiaries of pastoral 'mercy', namely , that he told the Roman priests Thursday that 'married priests' are on his agenda (which the ZENIT report above also references in its opening paragraph), I had not actually posted a news report about it. Here's the one from ANSA, the Italian news agency.

The problem of married priests
is on the agenda of Pope Francis
Translated from


VATICAN CITY, Feb. 19, 2015 (ANSA) - The episode happened Tuesday, February 10, but the Pope only made it known today during his meeting with the Roman clergy. During his morning mass at Casa Santa Marta, he spoke about married priests.

Present at the Mass were seven priests celebrating 50 years of their priestly ordination, but also five priests who had left the priesthood to get married.

One of them, don Giovanni Cereti, pointed out at the meeting yesterday, that in the Eastern Churches, married men can be ordained priests, whereas in the Roman Church, tens of thousands of priests who had gotten married are not allowed to celebrate Mass. [Call me a curmudgeon but I cannot believe this is being made an issue! They chose to leave the priesthood - why should they be allowed to celebrate Mass?][/dim

To which Bergoglio responded to everyone's surprise: "The problem is on my agenda".

It is a new opening for this Pope which follows those considered at the synodal assembly on the family last October which 'focused' on remarried divorcees, practicing homosexuals and unmarried cohabiting couples.

A few months ago, news reports in Brazil said the Pope had written his good friend, Claudio Hummes of Sao Paolo, it was reported that the Pope to start rethinking priestly celibacy in relation to so-called 'viri provati' [older men, married, who have led exemplary lives) to whom some priestly functions may be entrusted). But later, Fr. Federico Lombardi said "there is no letter whatsoever from the Pope to Cardinal Hummes on the said subject", but, he added, "it is true that on more than one occasion, the Pope has called on the Brazilian bishops to propose courageously pastoral solutions that they consider appropriate in order to meet the great pastoral challenges in their country". [dim=9pt[The news from Brazil said that the Pope had proposed 'trying out' if the concept of viri probati could work in Brazil's Amazonia region which is geographically vast but where communities are spread out at great distances from each other, aggravating the problem of having enough priests to minister to those communities.]

The Pope urged Roman priests on Thursday to 'recover the fascination of beauty... the wonder that attracts and keeps you in contemplation, which is generated by an encounter with God". He spoke at length about the ars celebrandi which, he said, represents 'a true and proper challenge' for every preist.

[The rest of the story recounts the Pope's remarks about liturgy and ends with his recollection that Cardinal Ratzinger had reproached him in 2005 because a document he wrote on the 'ars celebrandi' "lacked the sense of feeling that one is before God".]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/02/2015 13:42]