Pope relaxes restrictions on use of Tridentine Mass

Published: 2007-07-09

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a long-awaited overture to disaffected Catholic traditionalists, Pope Benedict XVI relaxed restrictions on the use of the Tridentine Mass, the Latin-language liturgy that predates the Second Vatican Council. The pope said Mass celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal, commonly known as the Tridentine rite, should be made available in every parish where groups of the faithful desire it. He said that while the new Roman Missal, introduced in 1970, remains the ordinary way of Catholic worship, the 1962 missal should be considered "the extraordinary expression of the same law of prayer." "They are, in fact, two usages of the one Roman rite," he said. The pope's directive came July 7 in a four-page apostolic letter titled "Summorum Pontificum." The new norms will take effect Sept. 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. An accompanying explanatory letter from the pontiff to the world's bishops dismissed fears that the decree would foment divisions in the church or be seen as a retreat from Vatican II. The pope said the new Mass rite undoubtedly would remain the church's predominant form of worship.

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