I meant to share this video from the always-wise Brian Holdsworth yesterday, which was the 18th anniversary of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, but travel plans and an uncooperative router intervened. The title is “A Plea to Pope Leo For Reform”, and essentially, he lays out a very good case for why Summorum Pontificum needs to be restored, and likewise, some good food for thought as to what the future of liturgical reform in general should look like.
If I may be so bold as to summarize his argument, it basically runs as follows. Improvements in the human person do not happen at once; they require slow and steady work. If you are unhealthy and out of shape, you cannot simply decide to be healthy and in shape from one day to the next. You need to not just exercise and eat better, but get in the habit of exercising and eating better. Likewise, if you want to be smarter, you cannot simply decide to be smarter; you need to develop the habit of doing things that will make you smarter (read more good books, waste less time on scrolling through videos, etc.) And if you try to change your habits all at once, and go directly to he desired end-result, you will fail disastrously; he likens this to trying to get in shape by going from lifting 40 pounds in the gym one day to lifting 200 the next.
What this means (and this is the part which really made me take notice) is that even if the post-Conciliar liturgy were indeed a vast improvement on the traditional liturgy in every way, as some contend, it was nevertheless brought with it such an unprecedented amount of change, and was implemented at such an unprecedented speed, that it was never going to have the desired effect. Mr Holdsworth makes the analogy that it was like moving the pin in the weight machine from 40 to 200 from one day to the next, and the result has been a failure.
And here, by the way, he also makes a very wise cautionary note for those of us who love the traditional rite, and pray to see it restored to its rightful place in the Church, namely, that this cuts both ways. If, as we believe, it is the traditional Roman Rite that is superior, circumstances within the Church have nevertheless now changed in such a way imposing it all at once would be similarly imprudent, and lead to a similar failure.
This, in turn, is why Pope Benedict’s vision, that the liberation of the traditional Roman Rite, and his hope that it would gradually improve the general condition of the liturgy in the Church as a whole, were so wise. So I thank Mr Holdsworth for this very good observation, and urge all our readers to continue their prayers for the hastening of the day when the Summorum Pontificum regimen is restored as it should be.
