Now that Cardinal Gerhard Müller has been removed from his post at the Vatican, the main target of the circle around Pope Francis is Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship.
Their latest coup is the release of a letter of “correction” aimed at Cardinal Sarah and signed by Francis. Published on Sunday, the letter was celebrated as a just humiliation of the cardinal and accompanied by calls for his resignation.
Earlier this fall, Pope Francis issued 'Magnum Principium' (MP), a document granting bishops’ conferences greater latitude to make their own translations of sacred texts and liturgy. Cardinal Sarah replied with a letter that offered a narrow reading of the document, preserving as much as possible the power of Rome to guard against mistranslations (such as the desire of German bishops to translate
pro multis as “for all,” rather than as the correct “for many”). Pope Francis has now publicly declared that Sarah is wrong, and that MP has indeed reduced Rome’s power of oversight.
This is a calculated humiliation of Cardinal Sarah — and not only of him. Of Pope Benedict XVI, too, since he is the great champion of the “reform of the reform,” an attempt to correct the liturgical innovations that followed the Second Vatican Council. And of St. John Paul II, who in 2001 issued the document' Liturgiam Authenticam', which Francis has sought to gut with 'Magnum Principium'.
[The third of his frontal assaults against JPII's Magisterium - after 'Familiaris consortio' and 'Veritatis splendor'.]
Cardinal Sarah suffered a similar humiliation a little over a year ago, after he urged bishops and priests to celebrate the Mass ad orientem, facing east, according to the ancient practice of the Church. This was another effort to advance “reform the reform.” The cardinal stated that he had talked with the pope about the topic, and that the pope had given his assent to the proposal. If so, the Vatican made no acknowledgment of this fact in its note of blunt denial.
An earlier humiliation occurred when the pope eliminated most of the existing members from the Congregation for Divine Worship and replaced them with people who are more hostile to Sarah and his liturgical views.
And there is the matter of the “Ecumenical Mass,” a liturgy designed to unite Catholics and Protestants around the Holy Table. Though never officially announced, a committee reporting directly to Pope Francis has been working on this liturgy for some time. Certainly this topic is within the jurisdiction of the Congregation for Divine Worship, but Cardinal Sarah has not officially been informed of the committee’s existence.
According to good sources, Sarah’s #2 man at CDW, its secretary Mons. Arthur Roche — who holds positions opposite to those of Benedict XVI and Sarah — is involved, as is Piero Marini, the right-hand man of Monsignor Bugnini, chairman of the liturgical commission that devised the Novus Ordo Mass.
To those names, add the Bergoglio-appointed CDW Undersecretary Corrado Maggioni, and a layman, the extremely “progressive” liturgist Andrea Grillo. Recently, Grillo harshly attacked Benedict XVI after the pope emeritus wrote in the preface to one of Sarah’s books that with Sarah, “the liturgy is in good hands.” And Grillo attacked Sarah himself, calling him “incompetent and inadequate.” If Grillo behaves so uncouthly, it must be because he is sure of being protected by friends in high places . . .
Now, we know that the pope is not greatly concerned with liturgy, and he probably doesn’t care much about this subject. But his general ideological orientation is nontraditional, and he tends to side with the part of the Church that calls itself progressive while seeking a return to the 1970s: the bishops of Germany, Belgium, and England.
Some of these figures are now asking for the head of Cardinal Sarah. But this is unlikely to happen. It was Francis who appointed Sarah Prefect of Divine Worship in November 2014. If he wants to replace him, he must wait at least two years, when Sarah’s five-year term will come to an end.
[Don't be too sure of that - the pope as supreme monarch in the Church can always terminate without cause. I don't think Bergoglio would allow a Curial tenure provision to get in his way.]
So the self-styled reformers who make up the “magic circle” for the liturgy must patiently endure the presence and activity of the cardinal, who is not afraid to fight, even alone.
[They really may not have to wait long, with this authoritarian caudillo-pope.]
Of course, the progressive party in the Vatican has another motive to attack Cardinal Sarah. In December, Pope Francis will reach age eighty-one. Cardinals are already thinking of a future conclave. One of the men viewed as most
papabile is Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, who seems to be distancing himself from some of the more questionable aspects of Pope Francis’s reign.
[As much as this hypothesis has now seems embedded as a Vagiven among some Vaticanistas (Sandro Magister started the ball rolling), the only basis for it appears to be that Parolin is politically well-placed in more ways than one!]
And another is Cardinal Sarah himself, who is known for his holiness of life and lack of interest in any form of power or coercion, even in the Church. Moreover, Africa is the continent where the Church is growing most dramatically, and where faith is often practiced to the point of martyrdom. Nothing could be more fitting than for the next pope to come from that continent.
And so we come to the great irony of the campaign to discredit this quiet and long-suffering churchman. Cardinal Sarah is attacked precisely because he is seen as having the makings of a pope.
Cardinal Sarah publicly refuted by the pope on his
commentary to the motu prorio on liturgical translations
by Steve Skojec
October 24, 2017
In a new open letter rebutting points made by Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments (CDW), Pope Francis has made clear that he is not in agreement with the African cardinal’s commentary on his recent liturgical moto proprio, Magnum Principium (MP).
This public “calling out” of the cardinal responsible for overseeing the Church’s liturgy is being celebrated by some progressive elements in the Church as a “rebuke”, leading to calls for Sarah’s resignation.
In my own analysis of MP, I argued that
its delegation of liturgical translations to episcopal conferences was the “antithesis of authentic liturgical development” that represented an “intentional balkanization of the Church’s ‘ordinary form’ of the liturgy” which would “undoubtedly only weaken it further”. In essence, whereas ‘Quo Primum’ united and standardized the liturgy in the Latin Rite, MP represents a liturgical Tower of Babel moment.
I also speculated on the lack of Cardinal Sarah’s signature on the document, which instead bore that of the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, Archbishop Arthur Roche: "I don’t know if it’s standard practice for the secretary of the CDW to add the explanatory note on a papal motu proprio on liturgy, but the prefect of that congregation’s name — Cardinal Robert Sarah — was conspicuous by its absence. And it is hard not to wonder if it is because he wanted nothing to do with its contents."
[My even more basic question was whether he was consulted at all about MP, before, during and after its promulgation, or was he never even asked. Of course, Cardinal Sarah did not commit the tactical mistake of addressing his commentary on MP directly to the pope, because if he had not published it independently as a commentary, no one would have heard about it.
And unlike Cardinal Mueller who sought to interpose ‘hundreds’ of questions/objections to the draft of AL that was sent to him and which questions/objections were apparently simply ignored by the pope and his ghostwriters, Cardinal Sarah has thereby been able to openly identify the major issues in MP and to ‘rectify’ them by spelling out the correct interpretation of the Bergoglian amendments to canon law on liturgical translations.]
An Associated Press story on the Summorum Pontificum Congress — published just a week after the release of the motu proprio — suggested an alternative reason for his missing signature, claiming that
Cardinal Sarah had been “effectively sidelined by his deputy”, Archbishop Roche, who “signed the explanatory note to Francis’s new law allowing bishops conferences, rather than Sarah’s office, to have final say on Mass translations.” [ [It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to have concluded that!]
In a commentary published earlier this month on several websites in various languages (viewable here in English), Cardinal Sarah appeared to assert his authority while pushing back against interpretations of MP as an unfettered opportunity to decentralize the Mass with varying regional texts.
The National Catholic Register‘s Edward Pentin wrote that Sarah’s commentary had the effect of “reassuring the faithful that the Vatican will continue to safeguard any changes or new liturgical translations to ensure they remain faithful to the original Latin.” [Something that the pope disavows in his letter although it says so textually in the amendments he made to Canon 838.]
Pentin also noted that Cardinal Sarah reasserted “that the ‘authoritative text’ concerning liturgical translations remains 'Liturgiam Authenticam“, an instruction issued by the CDW in 2001 “that aimed to ensure ‘insofar as possible’ that texts must be translated from the original Latin 'integrally and in the most exact manner.'”
Now, Pope Francis’s October 22 open letter to Cardinal Sarah has refuted several key points of Sarah’s commentary, including [and most especially] the idea that the Vatican would have the final say on liturgical translations proposed by bishops’ conferences.
The pope also said that a number of websites had “erroneously” published the commentary in his name, and requested that Sarah take responsibility for contacting those websites — as well as “all episcopal conferences, and … the members and the consulters of the Dicastery" — to see that they receive his own clarification. It is unclear who the commentary is believed by the pope to have been written by, since it appears under Sarah’s signature.
[That’s what I found deliberately sarcastic about the pope’s letter – the claim about ‘erroneously’ – and since it was the concluding paragraph of the letter, it underscores the tone of overweening condescension that characterizes the letter, which does contain a few errors of fact that no one has so far pointed out. It made me wonder why Fr Z in commenting on the letter, it was, in effect, unexceptional and nothing to fuss about.][/dim
Veteran Vatican watcher Marco Tosatti says the pope’s response is being “celebrated as a just humiliation of the cardinal” and has been “accompanied by calls for his resignation.” Though some, like priest blogger Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, have proposed a less inflammatory interpretation of events, Tosatti sees this not merely as an isolated incident, but part of a larger pattern] [Skojec proceeds to cite from Tosatti’s First Things article.]
In a commentary on the matter at his website Crux, John L. Allen, Jr. suggests that the reason the pope moved so quickly to address Sarah’s “interpretation” of MP - when he has avoided answering other public criticisms such as the dubia -is because of Sarah’s standing as “the Vatican’s top liturgical official” who is in charge of “the department charged with putting the document into action.” [Naaah, that’s being downright disingenuous! He had to answer it for the simple reason that it’s out there in public as independent commentary addressed to everyone who reads it. (Sarah was wise to choose three media outlets in Italian, French and Spanish to disseminate his commentary). Allen's reasoning is even more absurd considering that ‘the Vatican’s top liturgical official’ was apparently overlooked in the choice of who wrote MP’s accompanying commentary. It would have been as if, when the Vatican published the official version of the Third Secret of Fatima in 2000, Cardinal Bertone, and not Cardinal Ratzinger, was asked to write the accompanying commentary.
Besides, I continue to think that the one and only reason Sarah has been kept in his position till now is pro forma politics - because he is the only remaining African head of a curial dicastery (Cardinal Turkson’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace having been absorbed into the larger Dicastery for Integrated Human Development).]
“This is a pope, after all,” Allen writes, “who said in a 2016 interview that he ‘doesn’t lose any sleep’ over critics of his decisions, and has made not engaging those criticisms almost a principle of governance.” Nevertheless, Allen concedes that “this is hardly the first perceived gap between Francis and Sarah, and likely will reinforce the longstanding question in some quarters of why the pope doesn’t simply make a change.”
It seems fair to question, too, why Cardinal Sarah himself doesn’t make that change. Like Cardinal Müller before him, Sarah has been sidestepped and isolated as pertains to matters within his competence. Like Müller, he has had changes made to the dicastery he heads up without his consent. And like Müller, it seems likely that eventually, he’ll be phased out entirely. It appears that he has already been rendered irrelevant — a strategy Allen previously reported the pope has admitted to using when it comes to dealing with “difficult personnel choices.”
Perhaps it’s time for the forthright African cardinal to do what Müller failed to before it is too late: take a stand and resign in protest rather than allowing himself to be further co-opted by an agenda not of his making. [ [Frankly, I think he should. He gains nothing by being a figurehead for the pope to ignore and bypass as he pleases.]
Not surprisingly, Cardinal Sarah has become a much sought-after speaker at gatherings organized by orthodox Catholics, and here, he speaks out on immigration and Europe's apostasy to a Polisch conference...
Cardinal Sarah: every nation has a right
to distinguish between refugees and economic migrants
24 Oct 2017
Every nation has a right to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants who do not share that nation’s culture, Cardinal Robert Sarah has said.
Speaking at the Europa Christi conference in Poland on Sunday, the African cardinal noted that Poland rightly refuses to accept the “logic” of migrant redistribution that “some people want to impose”.
In comments reported by Polish magazine Gosc, Cardinal Sarah added that while every migrant is a human being who must be respected, the situation becomes more complex if they are of another culture or another religion, and imperil the common good of the nation.
World leaders cannot question the “right of every nation to distinguish between a political or religious refugee” who is forced to flee their own land, and “the economic migrant who wants to change his place of residence” without adapting to the new culture in which he lives.
“The ideology of liberal individualism promotes a mixing that is designed to erode the natural borders of homelands and cultures, and leads to a post-national and one-dimensional world where the only things that matter are consumption and production,” Cardinal Sarah said.
The cardinal said European nations must take part of the responsibility if they have destabilised the countries that migrants are travelling from, however that does not mean changing themselves through mass immigration.
Cardinal Sarah also lamented the secularisation of Europe, saying the continent has been in an unprecedented civilisation crisis for the last two centuries, beginning with Friedrich Nietzsche’s words “God is dead, and we have killed him”.
“Europe has since then been in an ongoing crisis caused by, among others, atheistic ideologies, and is now plunging into nihilism,” he said.
Cardinal Sarah said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many nations regained their freedom and democracy, it seemed that a new, positive period had begun for Europe.
However, the European Union decided not to revert to the continent’s Christian roots, but instead began to build its institutions on abstractions such as the free market, equality of individuals, and individualist human rights.
The was a mistake, Cardinal Sarah said, because all laws should be based on the concept of human dignity, which can only come from God.
“Europe, built on faith in Christ, cut off from its Christian roots, is now in a period of quiet apostasy,” the cardinal added. [Except one cannot call it 'quiet' when it is blatantly open in the rejection of any mention of Christianity in the EU Constitution and the continuing and increasingly pro-active anti-Christian (often also overtly pro-Muslim) diktats from the EU whose bureaucracy appears to govern the continent over and above its member state.][Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/10/2017 07:39]