Post #54

Within the next weeks, it is likely there will be a new document issued from the Vatican, a motu proprio, meaning a legal document under the pope’s authority.  It may be addressed to the whole Church, to part of it, or to some individuals.  In this case, the expectation, as John Allen points out is that it is expected to encourage the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Vatican's office for liturgical policy, to focus on promoting what he describes as a “new liturgical movement".  In his article, Allen quotes from Joseph Ratzinger's book Milestones to give some meaning to this phrase, “new liturgical movement".

More than one commentator has suggested that Ratzinger wants to abandon the progress made in Vatican 2 and return the church to the days before Blessed Pope John 23rd said, "I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in."  Instead, it appears that Ratzinger wants to go back to old liturgical practices but put the idea in some new packaging so that it will appeal to those who long for the old days.  There is ample evidence to suggest that as Ratzinger draws his cronies around him (witness recent papal appointments) he is clearly turning the wheel back rather than forward.

Eugene Cullen Kennedy is emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago and an astute observer of things pontifical.  In this excerpt from a recent column, Kennedy develops his comparison between Ratzinger and the 18th century monarchs/dictators who wanted to preserve the old and ignore the new.

Excerpt from National Catholic Reporter: Frock coats and fiddle back vestments

"Pope Benedict XVI struggles to renew and restore the hierarchical or monarchical model of the church. Sure that the problems are not the clogging rust from the corroding hierarchical structures, he has announced the creation of a new Vatican department dedicated to tackling what he calls "a grave crisis" in which Europe and North America are facing "the eclipse of the sense of God."

Meanwhile the victims of sex abuse by clergy are the counterparts of the masses waiting for the tsar to respond to their suffering as they wait in St. Peter's Square for the pope to respond more fully and effectively to theirs. Benedict seems unsure of what to do as criticism mounts for his seemingly passive management of the problem as a German archbishop or a top Vatican official. One of the central parts of his program is the restoration of the hierarchical forms that are falling like space debris all around him. Having given Archbishop Lefebvre and his pre-Vatican II longings considerable leeway, Benedict now advocates traveling back in time to undermine Vatican II's monumental liturgical reforms, claiming that he is just restoring "continuity" with the imagined glory of a a Gone With the Wind age of Catholic life.

He is calling for fiddleback vestments instead of frock coats, and the team the Vatican has sent to investigate the American nuns -- who are a true glory of the Church -- may want them to slip into the armored suit habits of irretrievable times. Meanwhile, as victims of the sex abuse scandal still wait below his windows, weeping as uncomforted as Rachel, this week the pope made a trip [2] to the small central Italian city of Sulmona, to venerate the relics of Pope St. Celestine V who, Catholic Culture.Com reports, resigned from the papacy five months after his election in 1294. Benedict also blessed a new fountain [3]at the Vatican in honor of St. Joseph, to whom the pope is said to have great devotion. He also announced plans to move shortly to his summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo."

Sources include:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/bulletins-human-side/frock-coats-and-fiddle-back-vestments
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/what-benedict-means-new-liturgical-movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motu_proprio
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/catholic_stories/cs0117.html
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pope_John_XXIII