When it comes to those he disagrees with, Pope Francis’s approach is to avoid direct confrontation, preferring instead to ignore them and get on with his job. But in the case of Cardinal Robert Sarah he has made an exception.
Last week the 71-year-old Guinean prelate unilaterally announced that priests should start to turn their backs on the congregation and face east to say Mass - something which liturgical traditionalists often call for as it is how the priest celebrates the Old Rite Latin liturgy.
This is all part of an agenda described as a “reform of the reform” which would make the Mass ordinary Catholics attend on Sunday more like the one celebrated before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. It means more latin, more chant and less participation from the congregation.
Soon after the cardinal made his remarks, however, the Vatican released a statement saying there will be no changes to this part of the liturgy and, crucially, that this had been “expressly agreed” during a recent audience between the cardinal and the Pope. It added that the phrase “reform of the reform” should be avoided.
It is highly unusual for the Vatican to publicly slap down a Prince of the Church, yet not entirely surprising given how Cardinal Sarah has operated since his appointment to lead the Holy See’s liturgy department.
There have been a series of incidents that reveal the cardinal is part of a faction making life difficult for this Pope: take, for example, the fact it took Cardinal Sarah’s department more than a year to implement Francis’ simple request that women should be included in the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual.
Among Rome’s conservative circles Sarah is often put forward as a future Pope, with Benedict XVI devotee, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, comparing the cardinal to the 5th century North African Pope Galasius (he made this comparison on the eve of Francis’ visit to Africa).
Away from the liturgy, Sarah has written books opposing any change to Church teaching on communion for the divorced and remarried while during the synod on the family last October compared “western homosexual and abortion ideologies” to Nazism and Islamic terrorism. It is hardly the language of the Pope and his desire for a more merciful and compassionate Church.
All this has left people wondering why Francis appointed the cardinal to his current role. At one level appointing a conservative has neutralised the liturgy wars, whereas putting a more liturgically progressive figure into the job during a radical papacy could have made divisions worse.
For his part, Francis is not someone who obsesses about the liturgy: he celebrates his morning Masses facing the people in a simple, modern chapel in the Casa Santa Marta, while is happy with the use of Latin for big papal celebrations.
And given all that is on his plate, the last thing he needs now is a fight over the liturgy. So despite his aversion to taking people on face-to-face, his handling of the Cardinal Sarah matter shows this Pope will use his authority if necessary.
What do you think?
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Your posts display an appalling ignorance of liturgical history - so common from those self-appointed guardians of the truth (Weren't the Scribes and Pharisees just that?)
You lament Communion in the hand as an aberration from Vatican II which is, in your mind, responsible for every evil in the world, including a heretical Pope Francis. Please do your basic homework before posting such utter junk - totally risible. Who said (before Vatican II) "When you receive communion place your hands so that they make a throne for the Lord" and who said "Be careful that no part of the host falls to the ground through your neglect"?
I humply suggest you engage on a course on liturgy before you post such utter junk - all you manage to do is to make yourself a laughing stock and further undermine your crass opinions.
Tradition as G K Chesterton once wrote is giving a voice to previous generations and we abandon it at our peril.
In view of this contributor's enthusiasm for papal teaching, can he or she confirm that if we replace the word 'Francis' by 'Benedict XVI' or 'John-Paul II' or 'Paul VI' it still applies? Since Francis has not revoked one jot of his predecessors' doctrinal statements, we can assume that they all still apply.
And your comments are not judgemental? I genuinely admire your passion which is missing in so much of the modern church, even if I believe it to be misguided but the only example of intemperate judgement in this debate appears to come from you.
May Our Lord grant us all peace.
Not afraid of anything traditional! The trouble is that "conservatives" have little sense of litugical history - for them Trent is normative, but if you wanted to be really authentic, start reading Justin on the celebration of the eucharist. Traditional didn't start and stop with Trent!
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Taking Communion in the hand - What? Just like the Apostles did?
The use of Latin is, somehow, more dignified and sacred than the vernacular? Why not Aramaic which the Lord spoke at the Last Supper? Or Greek, which was the language of the Early Church and the language of Sacred Scripture?
The essential thing is the dignity and reverence we give to the Mass, whatever Rite is used.
Catholics should be more concerned with spreading the Good News and be more involved in the Corporal Works of Mercy in this Year of Mercy than Yah Boo arguments about one Rite being, somehow, 'superior' to another. Jesus was always against elitism.