The Standard Measure of Catholic Liturgy

Benedict XVI has prevailed: The Pope from the land of Luther will allow the Latin Mass again.

The re-admission of the old Latin rite of 1570 by Benedict XVI is imminent. It is hard to find an example of such a turnaround in the history of the Catholic world. The step will change the Church. The reclusive pope has put the sovereign decision on the agenda almost single-handedly, against enormous opposition. This is one of the reasons why many people did not expect him to avoid this conflict, but to try to decide unflinchingly according to his own opinion - including several cardinals who two years ago wanted to elect Joseph Ratzinger as a transitional pope and believed they could do so.

Even more so, many employees and dignitaries of the Roman Curia did not expect the German Pope to send such a signal. The catafalque, for example, on which John Paul II's body lay in state in St Peter's Basilica from 4 to 8 April 2005, has still not been put away in the cellar two years later. Instead, the bier has only been placed at the front right of the basilica, in a side aisle near the tomb of Clement X, behind the organ. Stacked plastic chairs stand next to it, with which the rows of seats in St Peter's can be quickly filled up if too many guests arrive. A plastic sheet covers the cloth of the catafalque, as if it were just waiting behind the organ to be brought out again tomorrow to offer the German Pope a last rest on earth. The bier behind the organ is not waiting, of course. But what are those waiting for who left it hidden in this baroque junk room?

That is a question that perhaps only irritates a few insiders. More disquieting, among other things, has been the observation that last December the Vatican authorities appointed new staff to the Camera Apostolica, whose activities are mainly limited to the period between the death of the Pope and the election of his successor. What should the new employees actually do there, apart from twiddling their thumbs in the quiet rooms and using the phones where no one calls them for internal gossip? The self-confident culture of Italian "menefreghismo", with its many examples of legendary practical sausage-making, can perhaps best explain why the forces of persistence that want nothing changed are so extraordinarily strong in the Vatican.

After all, what is more Italian than the Vatican? Ex-Secretary of State Sodano, for example, stubbornly refuses to vacate his official residence. Tarcisio Bertone, who is entitled to it as his successor in office, has to make do with a makeshift day after day. On Sunday, during Vespers in Saint Peter's, three canons lifted from the gallery of the Veronica pillar, again in a flash, the "Veil of Veronica" in a silver frame, which everyone in Rome now knows cannot show the old true picture. It is too big, it is not transparent, it does not correspond in anything to the old copies of the "vera ikon" (the true image). Dante would not have dedicated a single line of his "Divine Comedy" to this piece of material. So what? Against age-old traditions, small evidences in the Eternal City rarely stand a chance. One could misinterpret such events as a sovereign contempt for reality. But that is only partly true. The cantus firmus of many complaints among foreigners is that conditions are like in ancient Rome - and that is of course true in many respects.

For the power of ancient Rome actually also lay in tenacious and pure perseverance. In this milieu, Joseph Ratzinger was already a foreign body who was always a preserver and mover: a true conservative. He has now become even more so as Benedict XVI. The Pope from the land of Luther passionately opposes any leaden insistence, which today in Rome as in the rest of the universal Church is often and paradoxically not conservative, but an insistence on the liberal zeitgeist of the last 40 years.

So it is not in overdue personnel decisions, but in a passionate dispute over the old rite of the Tridentine Mass, banned by reformers, that the trial of strength between him and a large ideological wing in the Church has now come to a head. Now Benedict XVI is releasing the venerable ancient liturgy that Pope Paul VI abolished and replaced with an unprecedented stroke of the pen in 1969 (after it had evolved over centuries). For this step, he has not been impressed by petitions from French or German cardinals and bishops - and certainly not by various debates in the European feuilletons.

He would release the use of the Old Mass from the previously necessary - and mostly highly restrictive - approval of the local bishops everywhere where at least 30 faithful asked for it, it was already said in the "Corriere della Sera". It is the sovereign revision of a cultural revolution that the Pope has unflinchingly pursued in only two years in office. If nothing happens to him, his decree (Motu proprio) on the liberation of the Tridentine liturgy will come as surely as the Amen in the Church very soon, probably during the Easter period.

An accompanying letter to all bishops has already been prepared. The matter is decided. It will not be a system recovery, as one might imagine with a crashed computer. Benedict XVI is merely giving back to the Catholic liturgy its standard measure, against which the new "Rite of 1969", which has become disoriented in many ways, can henceforth be decisively realigned. A surprisingly cosmic finger-wagging prepared the decision. But finger-wagging is a Bavarian speciality.

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