Folia Theologica 20. (2009)
Barbour Hugh: The Cosmology of Catholic Worship: Pre-Socratic Sacraments? A Consideration by a disciple of St. Thomas Qauinas
26 BARBOUR, Hugh see in the continued insistence of the Church, even when allowing or even encouraging concélébration, that priests retain the liberty to celebrate individually, a call to make more generous use of this faculty rather than treating as an exaggeration the concern for the multiplication of Masses? The argument from Eastern antiquity has been well refuted by that most vigorous of proponents of the Eastern perspective, Fr. Robert Taft,15 and even today if one visits the monasteries of Mount Athos, one might encounter four or five liturgies celebrated in the monastery each day at various altars, without any thought of concélébration, but with a clear interest in multiplying celebrations for the various intentions of the faithful. This point is the most neuralgic of all. No where does the distaste for the repeated, individually applied, sacramental order show itself in the Church today than in the attitude found far and wide which prohibits, obstructs, views with suspicion, and looks down upon the practice of daily individual celebration by priests.16 The Primate of Hungary, Erdő Péter, has acknowledged in his authoritative commentary on the canons regarding the celebration of the Mass in the Navarre Exegetical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, that among the motives leading the editors of the current code not to recommend, but merely to render possible concélébration the concern for the lessening of the number of Masses for the benefit of the living and the dead.17 The sacrifice of Christ in the Mass is precisely an application meant to be multiplied throughout time of the universal power of the Cross, thus to assert that the multiplication of this offering is a matter of little import is to fall into a kind of crypto- Protestantism which reduces the power of the Cross to an intentional bond, albeit by the ministry of priests, not the mere faith of believers. If we object that "after all the sacrifice of Christ is one" as a reason for 15 See"Ex Oriente Lux? Some Reflections on Eucharistic Concélébration," in Robert F. Taft, SJ, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding, Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2001, pp. 111-132. 16 Cardinal Philippe in the intervention quoted above foresaw such effects: "Sane dictum est libertatem celebrationis individuális servandam esse, sed reapse instantia superiorum et confratrum necnon difficultates externae ac vis consuetudinis illam libertatem impediment. Insuper concelebratio nimis frequens vel quoti- tiana inducere potest quemdam despectum Missae sic dictae 'privatae.' p. 265. 17 See Péter Erdő, Commentary on canon 902 in Marzoa, Miras, Rodriguez- Ocana, Commentario Exegético al Codigo de Derecho Canonico, vol III, Pamplona, pg 598.
