The traditional liturgy is alive

Below is the interview that his father Vincenzo Nuara released last December Radici Cristiane.

Interview with Father Vincent Nuara OP

The traditional liturgy is alive

by Salvatore Russo

Nuara Father Vincent, founder of Friendship Summorum Pontificum Priests and laity of the Youth and Tradition, was the organizer of the conference "A great gift for the whole Church." We interviewed him on the value of the rediscovery of ancient Roman Rite.

Father Nuara, last year the conference dedicated to the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum has had a major impact on the media. This means that the theme of the liturgy is more important than you could imagine?

It is surprising but true. In the liturgy the Church says what she believes in, what it is and teaches how to be united with her Lord and Savior. The interest generated by the traditional liturgy, especially after the Motu Proprio, has grown significantly, as this ancient liturgy has a very pronounced appeal to beauty, the sacredness and mystery. The man of today, and in particular young people, they feel overwhelmed by a liturgy that has spanned centuries of Christianity, which was the glory and the strength of the Church in difficult times and persecution, as it joins the human and divine in synthesis through the beautiful language of symbols, gestures and rituals of sacred formulas that are the perfect expression of the faith of the Church, in a unique relationship between lex ago andi, lex credendi.

After one year, what are the signs that they understand that interest continues to be high

Masses increase, there are many believers who claim this liturgy to their pastors, the debates: live at all levels, we organize conferences and seminars on the topic everywhere. Furthermore, we understand how the faithful are tired of a liturgy that wants to be repetition and recurrence of everyday life, which means to gain "understanding" or to be "owned" comes to the sloppiness and platitudes.

The man of all time knows that there is a dividing line between earth and heaven, between the human and the divine that boundary should be respected and makes a difference ... By the way this liturgy expresses the full what is True, Good and Beautiful and announced by the Church for two thousand years.

One of the fruits of the last conference was blackening the birth of the Society "Friendship Priests Summorum Pontificum." We can talk ò interest arose among the priests for Mass according to the ancient rite?

The interest of the priests, especially the young, is quite high. The Society of spiritual "Friendship Priests Summorum Pontificum" is spreading spontaneously because priests feel the need to recover the roots of their vocation, their identity, to understand their true mission.

The priests are the first to realize that a certain liturgy did not work and is in a crisis like the theology that has produced it, as did the priest himself losing her own identity and has made many of the faithful "smooth" the faith Catholic.

Certain theology, in stressing the exasperatingly common priesthood of the faithful to the ministerial right of the priest, has weakened the force of that power which has always been in the Church. In past years we have witnessed the clericalization of the laity and the secularization of the clergy: it is a product of this thinking widely.

In the ancient liturgy of the priests that find their place in their identity, clarity of faith, their real mission, the deep sense of being for God, for the Church, for men according to the Tradition Ecclesiae. Also the priests who start know and celebrate this liturgy are combined with ease and enthusiasm to the study of dogma and the perennial Magisterium of the Church, "St. Thomas for having teacher" (cf. OT 16) - which for many is something completely new - and discover the beauty and depth that satisfies the mind and spirit.

It seems that many of these priests are very young. What causes this phenomenon?

Young people are the first to understand the changes and differences and their desire for beauty, inner peace, which are in the world, and evangelical radicalism. Many are approaching out of curiosity, others because the present liturgy no longer satisfies them, others because they realize that something is not working ....

Others, because a bad campaign of opposition to the traditional liturgy, in their training environments, has had an opposite effect: they want to see with their eyes and understand. Prohibit, forbid only for bias, for ideological alignments never produces good fruit, and these young people want to know the ancient liturgy also because they feel the need for roots.

The Church has lived two thousand years, was born forty years ago and its roots are very recognizable in its liturgy ever.

Ò What can we say about the speakers at the conference this year?

The intellectual and spiritual stature of the speakers this year was a great force in the conference and for the fruits of grace which I am sure in the faith, it will be for the good of the Church.

His initiative is characterized by strict obedience to the Pope and the likely support his action ...

Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia. A Catholic can not live without working in the Church's awareness of this Christian truth. The Truth is in the Church, there is no truth outside of it and there is no Truth without Tradition.

But there is not even ecclesial Tradition, without Communion, and this must be lived primarily with the Vicar of Christ, the Pope who guides the Church in the name of Christ himself. In addition, each service in the Church requires humility, docility to the teachings of the Pope and unconditional obedience: this is the strength of the Catholic Church ever since.

Which fruit is expected from the work he is doing?

I expect that the efforts of these years will serve to achieve peace, harmony, unity in the Church according to the Holy Father's desire for a reform of the liturgy of the Church that off again as a center of Christian life and a new season of propagation Catholic faith through the ancient liturgy. I also hope that the traditional liturgy purchases equal dignity and freedom in church life without prejudice and waste: the SS. But Virgin will help us.

What about the public Pontifical Mass in St. Peter?

It was a historic event which will prepare, hopefully, the road to another event. After forty years, was celebrated for the first time in San Pietro a Solemn Pontifical Mass in the ancient Roman Rite by an archbishop, the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, E. S Msgr. RL. Burke is a great grace of God, is the sign of a new season, is a source of consolation and hope. The traditional liturgy is alive more than ever, the Church has not forgotten.

And greet the Holy Father's Angelus?

The Holy Father with his greetings to the participants at the conference gave the seal to the grace of those days, to the great commitment and work. Amid an almost absolute silence of the media, the voice of the Holy Father came from heaven like confirmation: of this I believe we were all deeply and infinitely renewable graziamo, assuring him that not only leave you in this wonderful work.

Roots of the Christian n. 50, December 2009

Print this article