Traditionalists and the "Gay Lobby" in front of "Traditionis Custodes"

Reflections by Massimo Battaglio

In Turin there is a newspaper called "The draft". Everyone writes a little, from the representatives of the Communist Refoundation to the group of "Madamin" (who support the candidate for mayor on his right). The important thing is that they complain. And among the most common ones there is one of those Latinomans who have it with Pope Francis. He is in charge of continually criticizing anything in the local Church, he judged too "progressive".

Since in these days there is nothing to say (who are the no-vax? What is the reform of justice? A League councilor shoots on a Moroccan, so what? And the bill, this stranger?), our He finds a lot of time to argue on the Motu his own "Traditionis Custodes" and his application in Piedmont.

Nothing bad. We have always theorized a church that discusses, it is treasured of everyone's opinions and passions and in the end it comes to the summary. Therefore, the opinion of the Latinomans is also precious. Except, his article today concludes as follows:

"It is said that the gay lobby, well present in the diocese and in the Piedmontese curia, is in seventh heaven since traditionis custodes repays them, with its hardness towards traditionalists, of the" suffering "that they must bear in view of a church finally in step with the times".

Now: I know only one "exponent" of the "gay lobby" so "present" in the Turin diocese that they have expressed himself on the matter. It's me. And therefore, feeling called into question, I just have to reiterate my position, not as a liturgist but from a person who goes to Mass, fully satisfied for the decree of Pope Francis.

Two words would be enough for me: it was time. And not so much because I see you a blow against the traditionalists (also) but precisely because, having witnessed some of these liturgies of the antic (as a child in ordinary form and more recently in one of these nostalgic conventicles), I can only appreciate the cleaning operation that the Pope wanted to do.

Jesus did not speak in Latin

If the mass is the renewal of the sacrifice of Christ announced with the last dinner and consumed on the cross, it is absurd that it is celebrated in Latin, because Jesus, Latin, did not speak it. He broke the bread by addressing the Apostles in Aramaic dialect; He offered his last cries to his father in the same language. "Eloi Lama Sabachhani" It is not Latin, nor Greek and not even literary Jewish: it is precisely that vernacular that we spoke in Jerusalem among ordinary people.

God takes on the languages ​​of his people. It does not have a favorite language. Indeed, on the day of Pentecost, he gives his own the ability to express themselves in the languages ​​of the peoples who will meet:

"Do they speak are not all Galilei? And how is it that we feel them to speak our native language? We are parts, medium, elamies and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadòcia, Ponto and Asia, Frigia and Panfilia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cirène, foreigners of Rome, Jews and Prosylites, Announce the great works of God in our languages ​​"(Acts 2,7-11).

If, at a certain point, the Church decided to take Latin as an official language, it was not because he felt the need to own a sacred language but because he recognized, in Latin, the quality of universal language, it happens more or less by everyone. And he did not choose the most cultured and more noble language on the square (in that case he would adopt the Greek) but rather the most practical: the one used in trade and politics.

Therefore, the Latinomans are wrong twice: for a historical and a symbolic motif. The historical reason is that the Church did not choose a magical language but an understandable language. The symbolic reason is that Jesus chose to speak the mother tongue of his apostles to mean that the spirit would live in them, not in a place far from them, and precisely of them and their culture would have served.

Mass is not a magical rite

The Missal of S. Pius V, completed a few years after the proclamation of the dogma of transubstantiation, had two great concerns: to create a uniform rite for all Catholicity and underline, in every step, the repetition of the Eucharistic miracle. And that's okay. But miracle is not magic! I think I understood that the author of the miracle is the spirit, not the "priendos magnus" who washes his hands three times, he performs thirty -three inchini and eventually gives license to our Lord to embody himself in bread and wine.

Nor transustmentary is the only miracle that occurs during mass. I seem to remember that there is another one: the one for which the spirit itself descends into the assembly through the consumption of its body donated to each faithful as a sign of communion. In the Eucharistic celebration, the word of Jesus concretizes:

"Where two or more are gathered in my name I am among them" (Mt 18.15-20).

Among the supporters of the ancient rite, however, one of the topics brought to defense of the sacred bow is precisely "that aura of magic".

Well, dear Latinomans: magic, you see it. My grandmother, when he attended the only type of mass he had available, to magic, never thought. And thank goodness, because, I remember, the magic has always been condemned by all the councils, including that of Trento.

Mass is not theater

Another heavy historical heritage of the Missal Tridentine (which is not at all the "Missal of all time" but a synthesis, even rather dated, of different liturgical uses spread over time and space) is in my opinion its theatricality. And in fact, it was conceived at dawn of the Baroque period, when you lived a very strong link between reality and its representation.

Many parts and many gestures proposed there are typically baroque and adopt the language of metaphor and hyperbole. For example, the priestly vestments have nothing substantially common with the clothes of the ancients but they are a scenic translation. The same goes for the shape of the altar, which has nothing to do with the canteen of the first Christians but looks more like a pagan era. The reading of the Word of God also becomes, with the Missal Tridentine, more a commemorative gesture, than a moment of collective listening, prolonged and updated.

Today, all this is unbearable. And not so much because we move in a different symbolic universe but because we know that not everything is representable, that representing something does not mean making it true and that the theater is only fiction.

Going to mass to attend the mimesis of a priest who pretends Jesus Christ, for us men of the twenty -first century, has something blasphemous.

Mass is a word in action

I made a short count of the readings proposed with the new and with the old rite. Today, given the three -year scan of the festive and biennial cycle of the weekday, those who attend the precept put only can listen to about 700 readings. By attending every day, we reach 1300. With the latinomani rite, which always included two readings distributed in one liturgical year, 700 was the maximum while the minimum precipitated to 120. Much of the New Testament and almost all the old remained obscure for the great majority of the faithful.

How can a Church be called "based on the word" that, of the word, has an almost decorative concept?

Latinomans argue that mass is also adoration and silence. Which, in my opinion, is only true up to a certain point, since the term "praying community" (which is not postmodern but rather ancient) is not synonymous with "adoring community" (indeed!). But in any case, silence is obtained by avoiding our noise, not removing the word to God!

Conversely, the response to the Word of God cannot be reduced to a silent university that everyone says "in their own heart" (that is, making their own facts and thinking, when it is good, of his girlfriend).

The assembly, which is the body of Christ, must express itself, presenting to God "the joys and hopes, sadness and anxieties of today's men" (GS1). And he must do it with all the means at his disposal: the singing, the variety of offers, the prayer of the faithful.

If Latinomaniacs don't like plastic prayer intentions that are sadly fashionable today, they strive to compose better, not to abolish them. They are an essential part of the Lord's dinner. Abolish them for five hundred years in the name of the perfection of the rite was a serious mistake.

What does all this have to do with the "gay lobby"?

Ah I don't know. I didn't pull it out. On the contrary: I know Fior Fior of very passionate gays not only to the mass but also of the Vespers in Latin (as well as to the jokes of "The Devil wears Prada").

I often literate and it has a lot of fun. Which shows that traditionalism itself is not even the prerogative of conservatives and reactionaries. There are also Latinomaniacs of large views, as far as a little sketching is a bit of me.

Whoever causes the LGBT community the major "suffering" are not the worshipers of the time it was. On the contrary: to the discountedness of their positions, we made the tara, which lets us sleep peacefully.

Who rests us, and often disappoints us, are rather those Catholics fake-planning players, all social, all beaten in young people, who do nothing but re -propose old wine in new ones. Or worse still, they disappoint us those who show themselves forward in everything (for example in the subjects of ecology, globalization and social equality), only to condemn us to counterbalance their progressiveness.

These yes, who hurt us.