Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

To Re-Traditionalize the Rite of Paul VI

Here is a fascinating interview – translated from French — with Fr Claude Barthe, a French Catholic priest, ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre and now regularized.  Journalist Daniel Hamiche interviewed him for  Monde et Vie 832.  An excerpt, but it is worth reading the entire interview.

I think first of all that it is totally unrealistic to believe that we can wave a magic wand so that all Masses are celebrated according to the former usage in every parish in the world. However, I note – with many others, some of whom are very high placed – that the missal of Paul VI contains an almost infinite possibility of options, adaptations and interpretations, and that a progressive, systematic or systematically progressive choice of the traditional possibilities it offers, makes its “re-traditionalising” possible in parishes, and quite legally (according to the letter of the law, and its spirit). This is a simple fact: of many parish priests (I have already compiled a quick list for France, which I am careful not to publish, but which is impressive) practicing this reform of the reform, often in stages, and in the vast majority of cases also celebrating the traditional Mass.

4 Replies to “To Re-Traditionalize the Rite of Paul VI”

  1. interesting and I know what the author is saying is true because I've witnessed it. However, it is the myriad of options which has contributed to the problem to begin with.

  2. Interestingly, this is also Professor Dobzsay's argument: that the very freedoms of the Mass of Paul VI can be used to recover tradition.

  3. So it seems that for the moment, rather than hope for changes in the Ordinary Form, the key is to find traditionalist priests and help tradition-friendly seminarians.

  4. "So it seems that for the moment, rather than hope for changes in the Ordinary Form, the key is to find traditionalist priests and help tradition-friendly seminarians."

    Surely this–rather than new rubrics handed down from on high–is the organic way that Pope Benedict plainly favors. And, at the present time, while so many holdovers from the post-Vatican II years are still in positions of influence, it also is the feasible way.

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