Summorum Pontificorum: An Eastern Perspective

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, celebrated by both Christian East and West. It is also the third anniversary of the papal decree, or moto proprio, of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, entitled Summorum Pontificorum. For those with an aversion to Latin, or to recent history, that was the decree permitting Roman Catholic priests to celebrate or serve the Gregorian Liturgy, or the Mass of St. Pius VI, after its suppression for forty years by the late Pope Paul VI.

Many Roman Catholics and Protestants have written about the matter since then, debating the whethers and whys and wherefores, almost ad infinitum, and certainly ad nauseum. I have held my peace about it for three years, largely because it did not concern me. I am an Eastern Catholic, and as singer and assistant choir director, for the past score of years, I have quite happily served the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on most Sundays, the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great on the Feasts of the Nativity and the Theophany of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Sundays of Great and Holy Lent, and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of Saint Gregory Dialogos (aka Pope Saint Gregory the Great) on weekdays of Great and Holy Lent.

In short, the fact that a Pope of Rome had allowed priests to say the Old Mass in Latin was of as much (or as little) concern for me as if the Archbishop of Canterbury had allowed his priests to say the Sarum use of Mass, or the Coptic Pope had allowed his priests to say the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

But as the discussion has continued, I have noted that those talking about the matter have failed to speak about things that appear rather obvious to me, perhaps because of my own perspective, and the perspective of Eastern Christians, whether Catholic or Orthodox. In that spirit, I would like to add that perspective to the discussion.

I remember well, four or more years ago, reading the comments in conservative RC weblogs and newspapers, and that the rumors were that this indult had been considered and would be granted by His Holiness, Real Soon Now. With every announcement, and every disappointment, more and more of the RC faithful took up the biblical, psalmic, and prophetic cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?”

And in the fullness of time, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millenium, His Holiness, Benedict, Pope of Rome announced and pronounced his decision, and his great gift to His people. What is more, His Holiness proclaimed that this edict would go into effect on the fourteenth day of the ninth month, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Life Giving Cross.

And curiously, most of the RC commentariat has either overlooked or ignored the significance of those two dates. The nearest that I saw anyone of that number observe the fact, it was the magazine of the Latin Mass Society, where the editor commented in his editorial that this was a lucky day, and the gamblers at Las Vegas took what advantage they could of it. But for one who has been steeped in the ways of the East, though, these numbers, and those days, shout out their meaning, unequivocally, and without any doubt.

Any one who has been open to the voice of the Holy Spirit (Who has spoken through the Law, the Prophets, and the Scriptures), knows that the number Three expresses Fullness in the Old Testament, and the Holy and Life Creating Trinity in the New Testament. And any one who has that same knowledge knows that in both the Old Testament and the New, the number Seven signifies the fullness of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are basics in the language of Scripture. One does not need to indulge in numerology or practice the gematria of the Kabbalists to know these things.

And any one who knew these basics, and that includes anyone who has been at the Divine Services of the East and has also paid some attention while there, knew that when His Holiness chose this day to proclaim his decision, His Holiness was asking the blessings of the Holy and Life Creating Trinity upon his decision, and the fullness of the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit. And we nodded to ourselves and said in our hearts: “His Holiness knows what he is doing.”

And when we heard that this good promise of His Holiness would be fulfilled on the fourteenth day of the ninth month, we knew two more things. Fourteen is compounded of Two and of Seven: the numbers of the true witness of Man and the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It is the number of the name of David, the Psalmist. And Nine is the number of the order and ranks of the Bodiless Ones, the Angels of God. The first thing we knew from His Holiness' decision was that he sought the blessings of the Psalmist and of the ranks of the Angels upon what he was doing.

But far more important than that, we knew that His Holiness had chosen the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross to fulfill his plans. And to explain the meaning of that, let me tell you a story.

In the First and Second centuries, after the death and glorious Resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it was the custom of the pious to visit Golgotha, the place of Christ's Crucifixion, and the place of His entombment nearby in the grave that Joseph of Arimathea, Christ's uncle, had placed His Body after His crucifixion. In order to stop this practice, the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. Ordered that Golgotha be razed and filled with stone, and that a temple to Venus be built on the spot.

So things stood until nearly two centuries later, in 326 A.D., when the Emperor Constantine commissioned his mother, Saint Helena, to build cathedrals on the places of Christ's Birth and Crucifixion. The temple to Venus was in its turn razed, the site excavated, and it is even thought that St. Helena by a miracle found the cross upon which Christ was crucified.

The point of this story is that by his choice of dates, His Holiness Benedict XVI chose to restore the use of the Old Mass on a Feast day when holy things that had been long been lost had been recovered. While I admit that the sane generally do not find portents beyond need, the wise and those who know can at least take note of what is done, and when it is done.

I hold no brief on whether the Old Mass should have been permitted or not, save to suggest that it might be better to permit the pious to pursue their pieties than not. For those who do not wish to do a thing, let them not do it. But it strikes me as illiberal to try to prevent others from doing that with which they do not agree. It is odd that those who consider themselves to be liberal appear to wish to do this.