Adam's Ale Blog On Fr. Pecklers S.J.

The New York Times (Thursday, June 28th) sited the Rev. Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit scholar at the Gregorian University in Rome as worrying that relations between Catholics and Jews may be harmed by the move.

He sites as an example the Good Friday mass, which includes a prayer for the conversion of the Jews. If this were in fact a true concern, Fr. Pecklers and those who agree with him should be the first to rejoice that motu proprio has come out. In a more complete way the rite will become part of the living tradition of the Church once again rather than a historical anomaly that we keep alive. The rite, now that it will have to be taken a bit more seriously, will become susceptible to natural evolution. We know this is true from when it was still the universal rite of the Latin Church. The Holy Week services changed quite a bit in the 1940s.

Pope John XXIII added, “We honor Joseph her husband” (sed et beati Joseph, eiusdem Viriginis Sponsi) to the canon of the mass. Now those parts of the mass that might be found objectionable to modern sensibilities might be more subject to change.

The charge in this article is also made that clergy will be overburdened, but that is in the paragraph just before it states, “there seems to be no widespread demand for it.” So which way is it guys?

Let’s be frank, most priests cannot even say the mass anymore. New churches are not designed for the rite and our grand old dames have often been so severely wreckovated that it would not even be possible to say the mass there anyway.

Link to Adam's Ale (here)