In a March 6 message, Third Order Franciscan Father David Pivonka, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, told students, faculty and staff that he had been informed by Steubenville Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton that the school’s celebrations of Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal would be suspended.
Diocesan bishops must have Vatican authorization to allow the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Mass in a parish church, to establish a new “personal parish” for devotees of the old Mass or to allow its celebration by a priest ordained after July 2021 when Pope Francis issued rules restricting the celebration, he said.
The “sense of mystery” and awe Catholics should experience at Mass is not one prompted by Latin or by “creative” elements added to the celebration, but by an awareness of sacrifice of Christ and his real presence in the Eucharist, Pope Francis said.
“It’s a tragedy that there is this controversy today, the so-called ‘battles’ over liturgy,” he said, “because the Eucharist is, by its nature, the sacrament that unites the entire church.”
Responding to 11 questions it said had been raised about Pope Francis’ document restricting celebrations of the pre-Vatican II Mass, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments offered a few concessions to bishops but insisted the entire Latin-rite Catholic Church must move toward celebrating only one form of the Mass and sacraments.
Saying he was acting for the good of the unity of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has restored limits on the celebration of the Mass according to the Roman Missal in use before the Second Vatican Council, overturning or severely restricting permissions St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had given to celebrate the so-called Tridentine-rite Mass.
