WE BEG YOU, HOLY FATHER, DO NOT LEAVE US ALONE!
Letter from Maranatha to Benedict XVI (see
also this)
Most Holy Father,We are humbly writing to you, wishing to inform
you of what lies deep in our hearts.
First of all we would like to thank you for the teaching which
you have lavished on us, in audiences, homilies, letters and
encyclicals that for many years now have been accompanying our
spiritual growth. This has been of great benefit to us, and we
believe to the whole Church, especially in these times of big “crisis”.
Indeed your teaching represents liberation from the spiritual
horrors of modern times, a true refuge and a good relief for the
soul after having been indoctrinated by such an amount of false
sagacity and personal interpretations, elevated to false dogmas.
Thanks to you, people are beginning to find some relief and
solutions to the spiritual malaise which for many years has been
hanging over the Church and which we had felt sorrowfully. A
malaise which was due to a confusion and inability to separate
between truth and falsehood, between what is just and what is
erroneous, more and more difficult to distinguish and to
perceive, even for the pastors themselves.
However, we wish to inform you of something which lies in our
hearts, and which we have experienced after the 7th of July of
2007, in the simple ordinary life of a parish.
In particular, we would like to bring to your knowledge what has
become of our lives, as has become the lives of many others,
after the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
Thanks to this and to the liturgical sensibility of your
Holiness [which is near to the heart of those, like us, who do
not see anything “evil” in the liturgical expression of the
Faith which has given spiritual nourishment to so many Saints in
the passing centuries] we had obtained, even by so many
sacrifices, sufferings and humiliations imposed on us by our
Bishop, the celebration of the Holy Mass of all Ages, in an
oratory outside of our parish. The joy of discovering the Holy
Mass, loved by our parents and which we thought was lost forever,
has somewhat made up for the big disappointment in noting that
this sacred liturgy has not found any place within our so
much-loved parochial community.
In the article 5 § 1 of your Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum,
your Holiness gives a great gift to the whole church, when you
reaffirm the importance and central position of the parish and
of the parochial community. This unity is formed and comes into
existence by way of the liturgy, for which there has for many
years been a demand that the justice sees to it that it is shown.
The liturgical tradition has for almost twenty centuries shown
with clarity that it has not been “excommunicated”, but always
has been valid, legal, legitimate and sanctifying. Summorum
Pontificum has indeed been a great act of justice.
The extraordinary riches of this document reside, we believe, in
the fact that the Mass has finally returned to the parochial
life of every day and is no longer relegated only to the hands
of private persons and associations, to whom most certainly we
owe the merit of having conserved this treasure.
True tradition lies not only in words and gestures that were
codified in the antiquity and then during centuries handed over
by the Church.
Tradition is also the bond of one’s own blood with one’s own
land. The roots that sink down in one’s own community, that is
where one truly experiences the mystical meaning of the
tradition: not a law or a rite, but a communion in the spirits
who, united and living, not even death has had the power to pull
apart.
In the parish our ancestors, our parents and our descendants are
all united spiritually with us, like one people, living and
gathered together in front of the sacrifice of Christ. That is
the meaning which we give to the notion “local church”.
It is with great sorrow that we discover the tragic choice that
has been imposed upon us: to choose our roots to be maintained
but (at the price of the) humiliation of our liturgical
sensibility, or else to nourish this sensibility by uprooting
our bond to the parish, and forcing us to become fugitives,
exiled, relegated in chapels, without a parish, without true
peace of mind.
Often these chapels become “mass centres”, gathering persons
from many parts of the region, all on the run from their
respective parishes. However, they do not have any possibility
to sanctify themselves there, neither in the parish, the place
where this should manifest itself.
This exclusion from the life of the community and the parish is
a true “ghettoization” and moreover the real cause of the
division, which we did not wish to happen but had to endure!
It is almost as if Tradition was an infectious disease of which
one must keep clear in order to avoid getting into contact with
any still unaffected Catholics. How great is our wish to
participate in the Holy Mass of all Ages, celebrated in our own
parish by our own parish priest, in the same way in which we
attend the Holy Mass in its sacred Ordinary form!
And yet it is relegated far away from us, almost as if it was a
by-product of the Catholic liturgy, of inferior dignity, and
worthy of being frequented only by Catholics of an inferior
class! Nothing to say of the many problems encountered by us
when making available to priests in the whole world the Missal
of the Blessed Pope John XXIII with all the explanations and
spiritual comments on every gesture of the Holy Mass. There were
many problems and sufferings that we had to encounter, both from
our parochial community and from the Diocese.
Not even to take into account the slander endured by us every
day, the mockery, which we at first did not understand, the
hostility, and sometimes outright improper reactions from
priests, either absolutely unwilling to celebrate the Holy Mass,
which according to them – and in this opposing Your Holiness’
wish – should not be celebrated in a way considered by them
henceforward obsolete and superseded, or because there is nobody
in the parishes who is at all disposed to teach them the
“ars
celebrandi”.
It is almost as if our love for the Sacred Liturgy of all times
and our obedience to its law which invites us to reach out for
the treasures of the traditional cult, instead of being
appreciated by the clergy as a manifestation of the Christian
spirit, is represented as something ignoble, impure and polluted.
As a consequence of our fidelity to Your Holiness and to Christ
we are being made to feel as lepers, kept at a due distance and
being abused!
There are moments when the parish priests, with their continued
accusation, critics and calumnies, make us feel as outsiders in
the parochial community and even outsiders of the Church. If we
would not participate in the Mass of all Ages, those persons
would certainly not reprimand us in this wicked way.
The result is that NOW, thanks to these continuous and subtle
persecutions, we feel, in spite of ourselves, that it is WE who
are far from the Church. With aching pain we feel that our
mother, the Church, has expelled us, turned her back against us,
and humiliated us. The void this makes us feel is terrible! In
other words, the distress that we feel when noting that many
priests and many bishops interpret (our) Catholic faith and (our)
divine liturgy, which is the final expression of that faith, as
not being in “continuity” with its millenary tradition (something
which Your Holiness has explained more than once), but in open
and incurable “discontinuity”. Thereby they are really making of
us a banner to be shown defiantly to the world.
It is terrible to learn each day, in a tangible way, that in the
same Church it is impossible to have the freedom to fully adhere
to all what the Magisterium teaches us, without being subject to
a snorting and a condescending attitude!
This is completely absurd. We are only Catholics, sons and
daughters of the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, obedient
to the Vicar of Christ and to his laws, faithful to his teaching
and desirous to participate in the same Sacrifice of Christ that
materializes in the ordinary, modern, form as well as in the
extraordinary and older form of the one and only Catholic Mass (of
the Roman Rite -- CAP).
We feel as if we had been left alone, at the mercy of people who
hate us. When the Motu Proprio was promulgated, its
implementation was constantly being obstructed, in some cases
even arbitrarily hindered, with intimidations, arrogance,
defamation, retaliations, either against us laymen or above all
against the priests who would like to offer this mass to the
People of God.
No really effective measures have been taken, in order that our
Catholic Church ensures the peaceful cohabitation of the two
forms of the same Sacrifice, with reciprocal enrichment.
Instead of receiving this torrent of insults and humiliations
from Christians and also from the same pastors, who ought to
excel in their obedience towards you, we prefer to almost go
back into the catacombs, where the Christians were real brothers,
and the enemies, on the other hand, could be easily identified.
The Church of that time, humiliated and hidden as it was, still
seemed more united and faithful than the one we see in our days,
torn to pieces in its interior by various currents, factions,
religious or non-religious interpreters, heretics, independent
and fanciful malevolent people.
Judging from the continued testimonies which we receive on our
webbsite for many months now, we may be sure that what we are
experiencing is not an isolated case.
We have chosen to make public our letter of concern, which we in
humility have chosen to address to you, in order to gather in
the same spirit the invocations and sufferings from many other
Catholics finding themselves in the same conditions as us,
having endured the same vexations and humiliations.
We would like you to know the reality. In the same way, we would
also like the faithful, who do not know the traditional liturgy
of the Church, realize that as matters stand today, there is a
problem regarding peaceful cohabitation inside the universal
Church, and this for sure is not the fault of those who love the
Tradition.
We ask you with all our heart, Your Holiness, to take the
appropriate measures, which only you are in a position to take,
in order to see to it that the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum
becomes applied in every parish.
With your permission, Your Holiness, (we ask you) if you could
help us, in a natural and simple way, without unnecessary
discrimination, to obtain those fruits of sanctification in our
parochial community. Please permit the faithful to really be
able to chose, without having to meet with repercussions,
humiliations and heavy burdens.
We are sure that we are joined in this request also by our
brothers in Italy and in the world, experiencing the same
affliction, but sometimes not having the possibility to express
their discomfort. We ask it of you in the name of HISTORY and
also in the name of future generations, as well as in the name
of the true unity of our Church.
WE BEG YOU, HOLY FATHER, DO NOT LEAVE US ALONE! We pray that the
Holy Spirit, with the intercession of Blessed Virgin Mary the
Immaculate, keep you in good health and give you strength and
courage to ever more efficiently guide the Church, helping us to
celebrate the Mass according to the Traditional Liturgy in our
parishes.
The 1st of July 2009, on the Feast of the Most Holy Body and
Blood of Christ, with the expression of our high esteem and
respect, we remain, Your Holiness,
your most devoted servants in Christ,
Paolo and Giovanni
Gandolfo Lambruschini
Many thanks for the
translation to Natasja Hoven of Katolsk Observator, with some
editing by Rorate. The remaining rough edges in some places will
be edited shortly.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2009
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