Continuity with the past

Alberto Carosa on Cardinal Burke’s recent lectio magistralis

The renewal and reform of the sacred liturgy is brought about not through rupture with the past, not through revolution, but in continuity with the past, through respect for the sublime beauty of the Sacred Liturgy celebrated uninterruptedly along the Christian centuries: this was the message of Cardinal Raymond Burke at his lectio magistralis in L’Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, on 24 March, with the title La Chiesa e la Società contemporanea – La Sacra Liturgia: Segno eminente della presenza viva di Cristo (The Church and contemporary Society – Sacred Liturgy: eminent Sign of the living presence of Christ).

His lecture, amply based on his recent book Un cardinale nel cuore della Chiesa (A Cardinal in the heart of the Church), was organized by the local chapter of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George for Abruzzo and Molise, and the Giuseppe Sciacca Foundation in the person of its president professor, Don Bruno Lima (Cardinal Burke is also its honorary president) in conjunction with the Missa Est association, a local group for the celebration of the traditional Latin liturgy. Missa Est is a member of CNSP (Coordinamento Nazionale del Summorum Pontificum - National Coordination of Summorum Pontificum), a free federation of Italian lay and religious associations that in their areas are involved in various ways in the application of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI and the related interpretative note Universae Ecclesiae of 2011. In turn, CNSP is part of CISP - Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum - the international organization which oversees the annual thanksgiving international pilgrimage to Rome to celebrate the Motu Proprio of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who with this 2007 apostolic letter intended to liberalize the celebration of the traditional pre-Vatican II Roman rite of the Mass.

The conference took place in the Sala Rivera of the Palazzo Fibbioni, one of the finest palaces in L’Aquila, currently housing also the City Hall offices, in the presence of a packed audience with a number of representatives of local civil, military and religious authorities, including the head of L’Aquila archdiocese, Archbishop Giuseppe Petrocchi.

As explained by Don Bruno Lima in his introduction, the event was essentially motivated by the intention to present the book authored by His Eminence, whose lecture was in fact largely based on its content.

Starting from and based on his personal experience, the Cardinal's lecture touched on various topics of particular relevance in today's ecclesial and social life: clergy formation, secularization and ethical relativism, family, bioethics and youth education.

But most of all, the event offered the opportunity to deepen the Catholic doctrine on fundamental issues regarding the Sacred Liturgy as the highest expression of Christian life.

“My book is a personal contribution to the attempt to identify the certainties of the kingdom of Christ for the men of today, who appear disoriented and as lost in the whirlwind of the events that cloud their consciences”, the senior prelate said. He then went on to recall when, at the age of 14, he entered his diocesan seminary in the US, where the formation there was characterized “by a strong rigor combined with an intense life of prayer which had its fulcrum in the sacred liturgy celebrated with great dignity and beauty.” In such context, he noted, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary came naturally from the centrality of the encounter with Christ in the sacred liturgy.

But this situation came to an end following Vatican II, whose texts were arbitrarily used by some ecclesiastics as a tool to start denting the immense spiritual heritage built up by the Church over almost two millennia. “It was above all the sacred liturgy that suffered the disastrous consequences of such an attitude, that behind an apparent desire for good concealed in reality reprehensible purposes”, the Cardinal observed. “Since then an ever more frequent practice of abuses of every kind has been introduced”, which in vain the following Supreme Pontiffs sought to curb.

Every aspect of the life of the Church was affected, starting from the formation given in the seminaries. The sacred liturgy was trivialized and the perennial teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals came to be questioned.

In other words, Cardinal Burke said, this was the hermeneutics of discontinuity or rupture referred to by Benedict XVI in his Christmas greetings to the Roman curia in 2005.

As a result, “the secularization of culture unfortunately also penetrated the life of the Church and was the main difficulty that I had to face in the exercise of my episcopal ministry”, he lamented.

In the ecclesial context, he pointed out, the consequences of this mentality can be overcome by resorting to the hermeneutics of reform in continuity, according to the message given by Pope Benedict XVI.

Therefore, “to save the spiritual identity that distinguishes us, it is necessary to return to metaphysics by directing social and ecclesial life in a theocentric and therefore objective perspective”, he argued. “In other words we must return to the recognition of the law of God, of the kingship of Christ, expressed through the worship of God in spirit and truth, in obedience to the perennial teaching of the Church and to human and Christian virtues as the rules of daily life.”

Source of photos http://premiosciacca.it/2018/03/24/burke-cardinalenel-cuore-della-chiesa-aquila/

With this in mind, “it is necessary to give due weight to the sacred liturgy celebrated with dignity. It is always true that the law of worship postulates the law of faith Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (the law of praying establishes the law of believing) according to the words of Saint Prosper of Aquitaine (c.390-c.455).”

At the same time, he pointed out that the law of worship relates to the moral law. “The promotion of the two forms of celebration of Holy Mass according to the only Roman rite favored by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI is an important component of the continuity process with the possibility of a mutual enrichment of the current two forms of the Roman rite”, Cardinal Burke said. But especially the usus antiquior, he maintained, “can enrich the novus ordo with more vivid expressions of the divine action of the sacred liturgy.”

Sacred liturgy, in fact, constitutes the highest and most perfect action for mankind to perform on earth and the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, promulgated by Benedict XVI on 7 July, 2007, enabled the re-appropriation of the thousand-year old great liturgical treasure of the Church, the Cardinal stressed, contributing to correctly addressing the interpretation and implementation of the sacred rites and thus comprehending their right significance.

That’s why, Cardinal Burke said in conclusion, “I rejoice that in this diocese every Sunday there is a Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in compliance with the pontifical motu proprio and in full communion with His Excellency the Archbishop Monsignor Giuseppe Petrocchi”, an initiative promoted by the Missa Est association, registered at the Commission Ecclesia Dei as a coetus Summorum Pontificum , and with the sacred Constantinian military order of San Giorgio being in attendance of the aforementioned celebration at least once a month.