Pope makes complete overhaul of Vatican liturgical congregation

October 28, 2016

In a stunning move, Pope Francis has replaced all of the members of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, the body in charge of liturgical questions.

It is routine for the Roman Pontiff to appoint a few new members to each Vatican congregation, rotating out members who have served for several years. But on October 28 the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has appointed 27 new members to the Congregation for Divine Worship, completely transforming the membership of that body.

The new appointments give a distinctly more liberal character—as well as a more international complexion—to the congregation. The changes seem likely to curtail the work of Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation, who has been a leading proponent of more reverent liturgy and of “the reform of the reform.”

Among the prominent new members of the congregation will be Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Beniamino Stella, the prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Probably the most controversial new appointment is that of Archbishop Piero Marini, who clashed frequently with liturgical conservatives during the years when he served as master of ceremonies for papal liturgies under St. John Paul II. The only American prelate named to the congregation is Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, New Jersey, who chairs the US bishops’ committee on liturgy.

The more conservative prelates who have been removed from the congregation include Cardinals Raymond Burke, Angelo Scola, George Pell, Marc Ouellet, Angelo Bagnasco, and Malcolm Ranjith.

 

*sobbing*

 

It was a priest that posted this with the comment, "This is the most depressing news that I’ve heard out of the Holy See in a long time."

 

Me too

 

I was not alive during Vatican II but that was a revolution.
I think we are seeing the second stage of that revolution now.

 

And revolutionaries are often ruthless.

So much for the year of mercy.

 

Lutz decided Maria 23 Sept.
The instant has come when a man who is Christian and Marian will be unjust towards his brothers.

Batten down the hatches. Who knows what we are facing. Pray pray pray

 

I'm not trying to be naive here but why? Where is any goodness in this? What is going to happen to our Mass? So very upset.

 

http://motheofgod.com/threads/some-not-entirely-random-thoughts-on-amoris-laetitia.9830/

 

Just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the members of the Congregation who have been removed would be a bigger stumbling block to introducing changes in line with Lutheranism than their replacements. Cardinal Sarah will be be left with a choice of signing off on the changes and promoting them or stepping down. After he steps down, he will be damned with faint praise.

 

https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/10/28/new-parlor-game-debating-popes-greatest-resurrections/

New parlor game: Debating the Pope's greatest 'resurrections'

• John L. Allen Jr. EDITOR

Italian Archbishop Piero Marini, former liturgical Master of Ceremonies under St. Pope John Paul II, named Oct. 28 by Pope Francis as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. (Credit: Youtube.)

I’d like to suggest a new parlor game: Debating the greatest “resurrections” under Pope Francis, i.e., figures whose careers once appeared to be over and who are now back. Friday's nomination of Archbishop Piero Marini as a member of the Vatican's liturgical department is the latest example.
Vatican-watchers are a bit like baseball fans in their near-maniacal obsession with the details of the game: Cataloguing the nine ways to reach first base without a hit, for instance, or dissecting the various gradations of papal authority (an “apostolic exhortation” versus a motu proprio, and so on.)

In that spirit, I’d like to suggest a new parlor game to amuse all those who enjoy reading Vatican tea leaves: Debating the greatest ecclesiastical “resurrections” under Pope Francis, i.e., figures in the Church whose careers appeared to be effectively over before March 13, 2013, and who are now back in the limelight.

The thought occurs in light of the Vatican’s announcement on Friday of new members appointed by Francis for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the top office for liturgical policy, including Italian Archbishop Piero Marini.

For anyone around during the John Paul II years, Marini is a very familiar figure, having served as the Polish pope’s Master of Liturgical Ceremonies for twenty years from 1987 to 2007.

That time overlapped with the run of Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship from 1996 to 2002, and the tensions between the two men were the stuff of Vatican legend.

While Medina was a stickler for tradition, Marini is an innovator fired by a progressive reading of the Second Vatican Council. Legendarily, he would approve flourishes during the pope’s own Masses that would never have passed muster on Medina’s watch in a local parish.

To this day, I recall being in Mexico City with John Paul II in 2002 for the canonization Mass of Juan Diego, and watching a female Mexican shaman perform a dancing purification ritual on the pontiff with a bit of shrubbery during the Mass - in effect, the witch doctor exorcised John Paul. (Marini later explained that the ritual is part of traditional Mexican religiosity, arguing there’s a time-honored thrust in Christianity to “baptize” such expressions of popular faith.)

I couldn’t help calling a guy I knew in Medina’s office, whose thundering verdict on the whole thing as he watched it unfold with mounting horror on TV was, “Marini must go!”

By 2007, it appeared just that had happened.

There was a new pope, Benedict XVI, who brought a lifetime of reflection on the liturgy to the papacy, and who was obviously moving in a different direction. Marini was appointed to run the Vatican’s office for international Eucharistic congresses, and was seen as having no real authority anymore.

In September 2015, however, Francis appointed Marini head of a liturgy committee with the Congregation for Eastern Churches, and on Friday made him a member of the congregation that was once his nemesis in Divine Worship.

At 74 it’s not clear how active Marini will be, and of course as a simple member of the congregation he’ll hardly be running the show, but in any event he once again has what the Italians call voce in capitolo … his voice is in the mix.

Who else belongs on a list of this pope’s resurrections? Here are four representative examples.

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras: Considered virtually a pope-in-waiting for much of the 2000s, critics of Rodriguez said he played with fire during a 2009 coup in Honduras, vacillating at a time when his people needed strong leadership. Then in 2011 Lesley-Anne Knight, a Zimbabwe-born lay woman, was denied permission by the Vatican to stand for a second term as secretary general of Caritas. Rodriguez was the Caritas president and lost a noisy showdown with his fellow Salesian, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then the Secretary of State, in a bid to save her. It seemed Rodriguez was finished, but today he’s the coordinator of Francis’s all-important “C-9” council of cardinal advisors and, in some ways, virtually the Church’s “vice-pope.”

Cardinal Pietro Parolin of Italy, Secretary of State: Parolin was once known as the real brains of the Secretariat of State, the go-to guy for getting anything done. Yet in 2009 there was a perceived falling-out between him and Bertone, and Parolin was sent packing as the pope’s ambassador to Venezuela. He was called back to Rome by Francis in August 2013 to take over the Secretariat of State, and his influence and responsibility has steadily expanded ever since.

Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany: For much of the 2000s, Kasper’s progressive stance seemed out of sync with Vatican concern about the integrity of Church teaching, and he often found himself frozen out of the decision-making loop. Yet when Francis wanted someone to set the stage for an all-important meeting of cardinals in February 2014 to discuss the family, including Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, he chose Kasper to give the opening address, and ever since the influence of Kasper’s thinking on Francis has been obvious.

Monsignor Battista Ricca of Italy: Prior to Francis’s election, Ricca’s once-promising diplomatic career had seemed to end in embarrassment, and by March 2013 he was running a residence for clergy in Rome. Yet the new pope brought him back from the dead, making Ricca his personal delegate to the troubled Vatican bank, and even a rather vicious cycle of reports on Ricca in the Italian media about supposed past gay dalliances was not enough to erode the pontiff’s confidence.

Those are a few solid picks for Francis’s risens, but it’s hardly a complete list.

Perhaps we should create an annual award - we could call it the “Lazarus Prize” - for the churchman whose career, which once seemed dead, has most thoroughly come back to life that year. Yesterday’s nomination of Marini is another good reminder that we’re unlikely to run out of candidates as long as Francis is around.

 

Such a complete expulsion of the conservative side shows a lot of 'rigidity' and lack of mercy on Pope Francis' part.

Were the 'creepy' clown incidents a rehearsal for our new Mass?

In fairness, might Marini have learned something from the Eastern Churches and might that have been Francis' intention. Although he is somewhat on the informal side, Pope Francis hasn't struck me as an out-and-out liturgical radical.

To be honest, I watched a Latvian Lutheran service on a hotel television recently (to pass some time and it was the best thing on), and it seemed liturgically more conservative, if I recall correctly, than many Novus Ordo Masses. Now, I am not for a moment attributing any sacramental validity whatsoever to these services, but considering the benefits of the ex-Anglican Ordiniariate liturgy, there is no certainty that change need be for the worse. At least there has been no movement heretofore against Benedict's Motto Proprio.

I'm trying not to take the pessimistic line all the time. I'm usually proven wrong.

 

As far as I can find, there has been no assessment of the 'politics' of the replacement clergy as compared with their predecessors. A reference to the "complete expulsion of the conservative side" indicates a mind already made up.

 

This pope has pulled the welcome mat out for any traditional catholic. He has lost his faith.

 

A reference to not being able to assess the replacement clergy as opposed to their predecessors because one has seen nothing in writing is utter and complete hogwash, below even you.

 

What an extraordinary comment.

 

Oh no....more liberalism ! Can't take much more...dear God....enlighten us. What to do?

 

It is hard not to feel a real rage sometimes . But as St James tells us, 'The Justice of God is not served by the wrath of men.' So I must stay calm. It is the utter hypocrisy of it all that really gets to me.