ROME (CNS): Rather than being grateful, some people have reacted to Pope Benedict XVI’s wider permission for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass with further demands, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos said.
The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, spoke on September 16 at a conference marking the first anniversary of “Summorum Pontificum,” the document by which Pope Benedict expanded access to the Tridentine rite, the Mass rite used before the Second Vatican Council.
Cardinal Castrillon, whose commission works with communities using the old rite, said his office continued to receive letters requesting the Tridentine rite be used not just at one Mass a week but at every Mass, and that such Masses be available not just at one church in a town but at every church.
He said he even got a letter demanding that Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major be dedicated exclusively to the celebration of the Tridentine-rite Mass.
“They do not know the harm they are doing,” Cardinal Castrillon said, adding that when the Vatican does not accept their demands immediately “they go directly to the Internet” and post their complaints.
The cardinal and officials in his office have been saying for more than a year that they were preparing detailed instructions responding to questions about how to implement the papal document, which said the Mass in the new Roman Missal, introduced in 1970, remained the ordinary way of Catholic worship.
Asked about the status of those detailed instructions, Cardinal Castrillon told Catholic News Service that his office had completed its work and passed the draft on to the Pope, who would make the final decision about its publication.
“The Eucharist should never become a point of contrast and a point of separation,” Cardinal Castrillon said at the September 16 conference.
The cardinal said the Mass – in whatever language it is celebrated – must be a service motivated by love and “never a sword” used against other Christians.
