Tag: newman

Letter to Pope Francis regarding the Mass

Published on by Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti 3 comments

Preamble
This letter to Pope Francis was first written for La Voie Romaine 1 in order to bear witness to the beauty and effectiveness of the traditional Roman rite and to bear witness to the shock caused by the motu proprio, Traditionis custodes , published on 16 July 2021 by Pope Francis.

Holy Father,
I was waking up from a terrible nightmare: I dreamed that you were limiting access to the traditional liturgy, so I thought it was important to reveal to you how much the Mass of Saint Pius V has marked my existence without my being the least prepared for it. Do you know that it is difficult for me to write Saint-Père, because I had no father. I have one, like everyone else, but I didn't get it when I should have. So he left me before I was born. I found it later, but you understand that I didn't get it at the right time. I didn't have the good times that a child knows with his father. I didn't know him when the need arose, and the need arose at all times since absence created it I didn't have a father to guide me, like a tutor, to share my likes and my dislikes, to marry my views or influence them.

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Benedict XVI in Paradise!

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"Is it morning or evening?"
My breath would catch, then it would resume. As if giving a sign of a defect. He let me go. The pneuma was leaving me. I sighed that I was ready. My God I love! But, the breath came back, the air of nothing, as if he had gone out to run an errand. The memoir is out.
I knew G. was coming. I hoped that my last strength would last until his return. I was waiting for him to go into agony. I felt no tension. I think everything went quickly afterwards. Time is rushing. I heard different sounds that don't seem to all belong to the same universe. It gave me a vague torpor like you feel when you're comatose. Sounds coming from several dimensions. G arrived with two sisters, my little memories who had taken such good care of me all these years.
I heard perfectly what was being said. The soul has ears, doesn't it? I gauged which witnesses would be present during my judgment. I questioned my angel, but he did not answer. Was he already called to pave my way? I could hear G. speaking to me in his melodious voice to reassure me, but I couldn't answer him. This is certainly what decided him to bless me and offer me the last sacrament. My voice no longer came out. I understood that this time, she would never go out again. My voice on Earth died out at that moment. It started like this. She had betrayed me before, however this time, I understood that it was final. I no longer exerted any force to make her change her mind. I felt that parts of me were becoming independent of me. I wanted to repeat: my God whom I love! I say it without a voice. From the look, G. understood me. The soul has ears. G. knelt down the moment I felt like I was slipping. I remembered myself, as a child, slipping on a pool of freezing water and finding myself on my buttocks, spinning on my own. My eyes closed on this delicious memory of mom and dad laughing at the bursts of my fall, my very dear brother was also laughing at their side, then he helped me to get up. My dear parents who had given me life in a difficult time and who, at the cost of great renunciations, had prepared a marvelous home for me with their love. Everything happened very quickly. I left my body. I understood that the soul was the real I. I still felt my limbs. It was strange. I felt someone coming. Everything was going very fast. A person was approaching. He was familiar to me. How did I know? It was like a new sense that preceded all my lost senses. I knew who was coming even though I didn't see anyone, besides my vision was blurring, it was getting confused, but I knew, I felt that someone was standing in front of me.

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Christian testimony

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When I started this blog, very quickly the idea of ​​writing on the liturgy came to me. Not to claim specialist status, but to share my experience about what is at the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two paths that had to merge: It was necessary to tell the mass (and its benefits), and then entrust the journey that had revealed it.

Part 1: Which mass for which Church? - In front of the church

priests in cassocksDuring 1987, I thought my time had come. My life was falling apart. Life never falls apart, it will take me a few years to figure it out; either it stops, or it is transformed. My life was therefore transformed, violently, intensely, it offered me the enantiodromos as the Greeks say. The enantiodromos is this road which splits, which separates, which becomes two, and confronts us with a choice. The enantiodromos allowed me to understand what freedom was. It was an unprecedented situation, I was about to realize it. This crossing where life takes a completely unexpected turn marks the passage from childhood to adulthood. This moment has no age. I mean you can experience it at any age. What you shouldn't do is not live it. Not understanding what differentiates the freedom experienced in childhood from the freedom chosen in adulthood. Because the choice made, we become another; the experience reveals to us and gives a framework and foundations to the personality.

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Newman and Socrates

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The links between ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity are numerous. The most famous of the Greek precepts: Gnothi Seauton , "Know thyself", inscribed in Delphi retains a certain mystery. Another end of the sentence has stuck with us: “But not too much”… Know yourself… But not too much! Plato leads Socrates to reflect on the Delphic formula in the Philebus :

SOCRATES: In short, it is a species of vice which takes its name from a particular habit, and this part of vice in general is a disposition contrary to that recommended by the Delphi inscription.

PROTARCHUS: It is a precept: know thyself, that thou speakest, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Yes, and the opposite of this precept, in the language of the inscription, would be not to know oneself at all.
"Know thyself" in order to improve yourself, to erase in you what hinders your development. Not knowing himself is already a fault for Socrates. "But not too much", because man so easily believes himself much more than he is, son of Adam, man is the plaything of his presumption. “But not too much” so as not to take yourself for a god.
This is one of the foundations of Greek culture, the idea of ​​knowing oneself, the idea of ​​wisdom, of advancing in wisdom, but also the feeling that if you dig too deep, surprises can arise, and not necessarily good. The Greeks were very aware of man's weaknesses, his shortcomings. The Greeks are even, with the Christians, those who have most highlighted the possibility of human weakness, it is also what makes them so close to us. The weakness of man is expressed in their gospels, the tragedies. Pity and terror are the two pillars. Know yourself… but not too much.

The path of God passes through our humanity…

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Extraordinary passage from Blessed Cardinal Newman :

By sinning, by suffering, by correcting ourselves, by improving ourselves, we advance towards the truth by the experience of error; we achieve success through failure. We do not know how to act well except after having acted badly. […] We know what is good not positively but negatively; we don't see the truth all at once to go towards it, but we throw ourselves on the error to experience it, and we discover that it is not the truth. […] This is the mechanism by which we achieve success; we walk towards the sky backwards; we aim our arrows at a target and think that he is most skilful who misses the fewest.