At 6:00 PM Rome time this evening (March 7, 2015), Pope Francis celebrated a special Mass of commemoration of the first vernacular Mass of Pope Paul VI.
The celebration took place at the Church of All Saints, Via Appia Nuova–the very same church where, fifty years ago today, Pope Paul VI offered a prototype of the New Mass in the vernacular.
In his homily, Pope Francis recalled the Gospel account of the cleansing of the temple, and Jesus’ famous remark, “Do not make My Father’s house a marketplace!”
“This expression, according to Francis as reported by Vatican Radio, did not just refer to those doing business in the temple; it refers to a certain type of religiosity. Jesus’ gesture is one of ‘cleansing, of purification.’
“God is not pleased with material offerings based on personal interests. Rather, Jesus is calling us to ‘authentic worship, to the correspondence between liturgy and life – a call that is true for every age, and also for us today.'”
What does this mean? After 50 years of liturgical chaos in the Church, with a New Rite of Mass that even Pope Benedict himself finally admitted has been utterly “trivialized”, with massive defections from the Church, an unprecedented clerical sex scandal, with Mass attendance throughout the whole world now at record lows–does Francis really mean to suggest that our half-century old liturgical nightmare is cause for celebration and that those who long for the old Mass are motivated by petty personal interests that would have caused Jesus to drive them from the temple? In the context of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the vernacular Mass who is it that Francis believes to be guilty of this “certain type of religiosity” condemned by Our Lord? Why does he bring these people up?
Perhaps this is not what was intended. But if not, then, given the context of this homily, what is Francis getting at?
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