No Latin Masses for Cardinal Martini

ROME (CNS): Although he loves the Latin language and would have no technical difficulty even preaching in Latin, retired Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, Italy, said he would not celebrate the Tridentine Mass.

The 80-year-old cardinal, writing in an Italian newspaper on July 29, said he admired Pope Benedict XVI’s “benevolence” in allowing Catholics “to praise God with ancient and new forms” by permitting wider use of the 1962 form of the Mass.

However, he wrote in the July 29 edition of Il Sole 24 Ore, his experience as a bishop convinced him of the importance of a common liturgical prayer to express Catholics’ unity of belief.

A document released by Pope Benedict on July 7 allowed for wider use of the Tridentine Mass. The Tridentine Mass is the Latin-language liturgy that predates the Second Vatican Council; it was last revised in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal.

The cardinal, a widely respected biblical scholar, said the first reason he would not use the old Mass is because “with the Second Vatican Council there was a real step forward in understanding the liturgy and its ability to nourish us with the word of God, offered in a much more abundant way than before”.

The old Mass has a one-year cycle of Scripture readings, while the new Mass uses a three-year cycle of different readings for Sundays and a two-year cycle for weekdays.

Cardinal Martini said his second reason for not going back to the old Mass was that it would be symptomatic of “that sense of closure that emanated from the entire kind of Christian life that people lived then”.

The cardinal wrote, “I am very grateful to the Second Vatican Council because it opened doors and windows for a Christian life that was happier and more humanly livable”.

Cardinal Martini’s third reason was the need for unity in prayer within each diocese and a practical concern for bishops already struggling to find and assign priests in a way that makes the Eucharist available to as many people as possible.