David Anders Called to Communion EWTN 2021-07-16 about 36 minutes in
Jack Williams: During the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI he issued a motu proprio that was establishing certain conditions under which one could celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form, and he put that out to human beings . . .
David Anders: You qualify
Jack Williams: And anything you put out to human beings runs the risk of maybe not being implemented just the way you thought it might be implemented. And that has indeed happened. Our current Holy Father, Pope Francis, has issued a motu proprio today that sort of tightens up, really probably what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind from the beginning . . .
David Anders: Yup
Jack Williams: And, to that end, we have a question from Bradley and he asks, “What is Pope Francis’ new motu proprio about, what is it, what is it not, people are already politicizing it and what am I supposed to believe?”
David Anders: Yeah, thanks, so what is a motu proprio? Motu Proprio means “by his own authority”. So the first thing you should believe about any motu proprio is—the Pope has the authority to do it. Okay? So you ought not to politicize what the Church determines is something you should submit to and obey. That’s the proper response to anything issued by the Church’s authority, which is to say, the Pope is the Pope and I’m not, and so I will obey the Pope. That’s the first and only response you should have, ultimately, to obey the Pope. For the sake of the unity of the Church, which is why we have a Papacy to begin with, this falls to the Pope’s competence and authority. This particular motu proprio, what it does, under “Summorum Pontificum,” Benedict’s motu proprio, priests had more or less an unregulated right to celebrate the Mass in the Extraordinary Form, the Latin Mass. And the reason that Pope Benedict did that, and Pope John Paul II too had granted limited authority to do that, ultimately was in the hopes of reconciling those schismatic Catholic communities that had gone off to do the Latin Mass and had left the Church. And they thought, Well, if we have a more open and easy celebration of the Latin Mass it may help to reconcile those folks who are in schism with the Church. Well, it did not work out that way. And what Pope Francis draws attention to in his motu proprio and the accompanying letter, is that in some instances the perpetual maintenance of the Latin Mass, a sort of alternate form, not necessarily extraordinary but, what has for some people become quite ordinary, celebration of the Latin Mass. It has actually fostered, in some cases, disunity and encouraged, in some people, not everybody, but in some people the attitude that the ordinary form is somehow not valid or that Vatican II was illegitimate. And you don’t have to spend too much time running around in those circles to account for that sentiment. No, it’s not characteristic of everybody but it’s definitely out there. So what Pope Francis has said, he’s not eliminated the Latin Mass, he said, it’s at the discretion of the Bishop. And he put some specific rules in effect to find out what that discretion is and how it is to be implemented and one of the conditions for the ongoing celebration of the Latin Mass that Pope Francis has pointed to is that, if you want to celebrate the Latin Mass you had darn well better believe in the legitimacy of Vatican II and the validity of the Novus Ordo rite. For the sake of the unity of the Church.