Confirmation of What Has Been Suspected All Along?

Many have speculated that this is the direction in which Pope Benedict wants the Roman rite to be reformed.

CNS: Pope's 'reform of the reform' in liturgy to continue, cardinal says

The pope's long-term aim is not simply to allow the old and new rites to coexist, but to move toward a "common rite" that is shaped by the mutual enrichment of the two Mass forms, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said May 14.

In effect, the pope is launching a new liturgical reform movement, the cardinal said. Those who resist it, including "rigid" progressives, mistakenly view the Second Vatican Council as a rupture with the church's liturgical tradition, he said.

Will there be resistance among traditionalists? Or will they be allowed to keep the EF as long as necessary?Will the 3-year lectionary be discarded in favor of a modified traditional one-year lectionary that incorporates a third reading, a lesson from the OT? Many agree that the traditional Roman rite would be enriched by the addition of more prefaces and other prayers, as well as new saints on the Roman calendar. Will the calendar itself be reformed, so that it is more like the old calendar? (Dates of various feasts were changed for one reason or another.)

Cardinal Koch said "Summorum Pontificum" is "only the beginning of this new liturgical movement."

"In fact, Pope Benedict knows well that, in the long term, we cannot stop at a coexistence between the ordinary form and the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, but that in the future the church naturally will once again need a common rite," he said.

"However, because a new liturgical reform cannot be decided theoretically, but requires a process of growth and purification, the pope for the moment is underlining above all that the two forms of the Roman rite can and should enrich each other," he said.

Cardinal Koch said those who oppose this new reform movement and see it as a step back from Vatican II lack a proper understanding of the post-Vatican II liturgical changes. As the pope has emphasized, Vatican II was not a break or rupture with tradition but part of an organic process of growth, he said.

One single form of the Roman rite, to be developed "organically" rather than be legislative fiat through the work of a committee? It will be difficult for this mutual enrichment to occur if Summorum Pontificum is not really being observed in Roman-rite churches.