Monday, September 01, 2014

Orthodox Novus Ordo?!

Yes, in Greece they're experimenting with this.

Lots of the Eastern Riters really are Novus Ordo. I have a colleague who is an Eastern Riter and he very much hopes that the Eastern Rite (sic) someday soon has its own version of the Novus Ordo, stripped down and updated. May God spare them...

Oh, yes, THAT. Thank God the rank and file, the ethnics (such as the old latinized Greek Catholics the krazy konvertzy look down on), don't think like that.

One such Orthodox convert:

Benedict moved beyond his authority when he established the Indult (sic) for the use of what is now called the Extraordinary Liturgy Form/Tridentine of 1962. Since by RC dogma, the bishop is the "king" or ruler of his diocese. Benedict XVI over ruled all of them when he said that the Bishops need not be consulted about whether the EF could be used in their diocese. This went against the parameters established by his immediate predecessor. And, he over ruled completely the suppression that Pope Paul VI placed on the celebration of the EF.

Orthodox who are really Novus Ordo. You'd never guess it from Orthodox liturgy but it's out there, babe. So what about when some Catholic diocesan bishop or one of your Finnish ones starts ordaining women and/or having gay weddings?

How does one follow the other?

American Catholic liberals hate the Pope's office because it's Catholic, so they preach "collegiality" AGAINST him doing something Catholic like freeing up my traditional Mass. Some Orthodox, the ecumenical kind, join in, and it's fashionable in intelligentsia Orthodox and Greek Catholic circles to say how much better the Novus Ordo is and that conservative Catholics who take refuge at Greek Catholic churches are ignorant and dumb.
The hardline Orthodox online take a swing at you fair and square; the nice ecumenical ones stab you in the back.

3 comments:

The question is whether Benedict XVI exceeded his authority in the Indult over riding the local bishop's prerogatives granted by his predecessor. And if Pope Paul VI suppressed the Tridentine liturgy how could Benedict ignore the position of Pope Paul VI?

Suppressing a traditional liturgy formed by centuries of immemorial custom is so foreign to Orthodoxy as it is to traditional Western Catholicism that it boggles the mind to hear an Orthodox take that line. Maybe in this your phronema is really a distortion of our view on the Pope, not the East's view of liturgy and customs.

"whether Benedict XVI exceeded his authority in the Indult over riding the local bishop's prerogatives granted by his predecessor"

What "prerogatives," exactly, did his predecessor grant? And in any case (and apart from ex cathedra dogmatic definitions) whatever prerogatives, exemptions, privileges or faculties one pope may grant, another pope may alter or revoke (no pope can bind his successors in such matters); that is what "papal primacy" and "universal jurisdiction" means, or one of the things that it means. A pope may be unwise in undertaking such actions, but it cannot be demonstrated that he "exceeded his authority."

"And if Pope Paul VI suppressed the Tridentine liturgy how could Benedict ignore the position of Pope Paul VI?"

It has always been a matter of doubt in Canon Law whether Paul VI "suppressed" the Tridentine liturgy, and he did grant, at Cardinal Heenan's request, an indult for it to be celebrated in England in certain circumstances. But even if he did "suppress" the Tridentine liturgy, Benedict XVI did not "ignore" Paul VI's action, but annuled and reversed it, as any pope may any act of a previous pope that does not involve the definition of dogma or the anathematization of error.