Against the Robots

Dear Father,

It is with great pleasure that I bid you farewell. Not that I am happy that you are leaving the Notre-Dame du Lys chapel, but because I am happy to have met you and that you are continuing your priesthood by showing the example of the priest according to Benedict XVI.

Yesterday, for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, you celebrated your last Mass according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. In this small, devout chapel, where you arrived in 2009 when the Diocese of Paris began to assume responsibility for the chapel and appoint priests to serve it. And even though you had already been ordained a priest for almost ten years, you learned to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missal! A fine lesson in humility! You adapted to the two-thousand-year-old form. To respond to the request of your superiors, but also to that of a group of staunch faithful devoted to the Extraordinary Form.

You had to learn everything. Like a young priest fresh out of seminary. With the same enthusiasm. While it is fairly easy for a priest trained in the Mass of Saint Pius V to celebrate a Mass of the Ordinary Form, it is a little more perilous and complicated to go back.

And if I say of you that you are a priest of the Benedict XVI generation (even though you were ordained under John Paul II), it is because you embody the modern priest that our beloved Pope so fervently desires. One who is able to move from one rite to the other. One who knows how to enrich himself and be enriched by both forms of liturgical celebration. And it is precisely in this sense that Jean-Michel Guénois's analysis is accurate*. There will likely be no further texts after "Universae Ecclesiae," as the Figaro journalist indicates, but it seems clear from reading the various texts published by Benedict XVI or his close collaborators, from seeing the Holy Father set the example during the Eucharistic celebrations he leads, that this is more of a prescribed path to be followed without fail and an integral part of the new evangelization. This path has only one objective: the enrichment of both rites by both rites. I cannot say whether Benedict XVI's deepest desire is for the two rites to one day be united, but it seems clear to me that he wishes them to be enriched.

Dear Father Fazilleau, you are the first diocesan priest I have had the honor of knowing to celebrate the Tridentine Mass (I have, conversely, known priests from the Society of Saint Pius X or Saint Peter who became diocesan). As you told us at the end of Mass: “It has been an immense pleasure for me to discover the Extraordinary Form. I thank you for being so kind to me when, at first, I was struggling to master it. When I meet a young priest now, I tell him to learn the Extraordinary Form, because this rite is the heart of the Mass of Paul VI, and knowing it greatly enriches the way one celebrates Mass.”

It was a great pleasure for us too. We wish you all the best in Poitou, where I hope you will find a group of faithful requesting the Mass in the Extraordinary Form so that you can continue to celebrate both forms.

Please accept, Father, the expression of my respectful sentiments.

Emmanuel Di Rossetti

* Article by Jean-Marie Guénois: Mass in Latin, Benedict XVI will go no further

Discover: The Notre Dame du Lys chapel .

By example! A Eucharistic celebration by Benedict XVI in Venice on May 7-8 began with this request :

"In respect for these divine mysteries which we are celebrating in communion with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, let us gather in silent prayer; therefore, let there be no more applause, not even during the homily, and let there be no more use of flags or posters."