Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Monday 9 March 2015

Let Me Spell It Out For You

I blame the MusicaSacra fora, for luring me to a blog that I had pretty much given up reading as just too whinily annoying.
One of the contributors, (at the annoyance, not at the CMAA,) seems to be up against it differentiating between the meanings of fairly simple words:
how the Prefect for the CDW under Pope Francis could argue the following is beyond me:
The Second Vatican Council never asked for the rejection of the past and the abandonment of the Mass of Saint Pius V, that formed so many saints, not even to leave Latin behind. But it is necessary at the same time to promote the liturgical reform willed by the Council itself.
Perhaps I am missing something.
How is it that Cardinal Sarah can hold: 1) the Second Vatican Council did not call for the abandonment of the Mass of Saint Pius V, and 2) nevertheless the Council willed liturgical reform? These two statements seem incompatible.
Really?
Well, okay. What you are missing is the meaning of the words, apparently.
 re-form
verb
verb (used with object)
to change to a better state, form, etc.; improve by alteration, substitution, abolition, etc.

a-ban-don
verb (used with object)
1. to leave completely and finally; forsake utterly; desert:
to abandon ones farm; to abandon a child; to abandon a sinking ship.
2. to give up; discontinue; withdraw from
Jokes about needing to get a new car because the ashtrays are full on the old one come to mind. (I am very old.) 
One might fix, repair/redecorate/renovate/remodel a house without abandoning it.

And I hope, despite the fact that things never turn out well for Jimmy Cagney's characters in old movies, that being sent to reform school didn't necessarily mean abandonment by his family? (Or were he and Pat O'Brien always streetwise orphans?

I don't know much about Cardinal Sarah's hermeneutic of the liturgy, but it seems to me that his deliberate choice to refer to the pre-Vatican II liturgy in this way is to remind us that all the interim revisions and tweaks were ALSO not an "abandonment" of the Missal as it was the day before.

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