Thursday, January 18, 2007

Martin Mosebach interview on Motu Proprio

Thanks to Credo ut Intelligam for providing for the NLM an unofficial translation of most of the Martin Mosebach interview with Die Welt:

Die Welt: Would the liberalization [of the 1962 Missal] not be a step backward for
ecumenism?

Martin Mosebach: A readmission of the old rite would mean great progress in the ecumenism towards [Eastern] Orthodoxy, because the Latin and the Orthodox rites are connatural with each other. But many Protestants are fascinated by the old Latin rite as well, because it makes our differences more clear.

Die Welt: Are there any objections against the liberalization of the old mass? [NLM: by this question, it doesn't sound as though it intends to ask whether some as objecting, as clearly there are some who object, but rather whether there is a reasonable reason for objecting, or possibly.]

Martin Mosebach: None. The new Mass which originated from various thrusts for reform after Vatican II and which Benedict XVI has called a fabricated (gemacht) one, which has ousted an organic (gewachsen) one, exists with the lifelong illusion that it has been desired by the Second Vatican Council. The opposite is the case.

Die Welt: What encourages you to think you could turn back the clock?

Martin Mosebach: It is not about turning back the clock, in fact, this is not possible. It is about a renaissance, not about a restoration. In European history, renaissances have always been avant-garde movements. If the old Latin rite would be readmitted for the future, it would be celebrated in a totally changed environment which would have nothing in common with the pre-conciliar epochs. It would stand in a world which frantically changes in unforeseeable ways as counter-cultural, as a
pole around which time would orbit. It would have something comparable to the thought [work?] of St. Augustine and St. Benedict who both prepared the order of future centuries, in the middle of the downfall of the Roman Empire.

(Martin Mosebach was interviewed by Paul Badde)

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