Manilio Sodi, SDB, is virulently opposed to Pope Benedict.
The Italian blog Messa in latino reports that Sodi has been on Italian radio a couple times recently running down Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
The good news is that its August and virtually no one heard him talk. It hardly makes much of a difference what he said.
Sodi – editor of an influential liberal liturgical journal – is over the top in his comments. He demonstrates how uninterested in he is being as thoughtful or objective about an important liturgical issue as a scholar ought.
In tortured Italian, Sodi remarked in the radio:
The Pope’s Motu Proprio published three years ago was intended to enable some groups of people who were attached to the previous rite to celebrate with the necessary peace and serenity according the the Missale published in 1962. What was underscored in the ambit of the Motu Proprio was the fact of rapprochement with stable communities, that is communities which remained faithful and always attached to this form of celebration.
There is another radio spot as well, rather more condescending but pretty much more of the same.
This is Sodi’s line and the line most liberals adhere to: Summorum Pontificum, just like Ecclesia Dei adflicta before it, was intended strictly for those who cannot make the transition to a more enlightened liturgy. The Motu Proprio does not intend to expanded the use of the older form or expose to the traditional forms anyone except those who are either old, and therefore nostalgic, or who are already trapped in rigid groups of regressivists.
Sodi is afraid of the growth in numbers of younger people who are interested in traditional liturgical worship. His worst nightmare.
I am sure you readers can post in the combox below the evidence to the contrary. It might be a good exercise to review this, in light of the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.
The bottom line is that Sodi doesn’t like the Pope and what he is doing. He fears the effects of Summorum Pontificum. He perceives the Pope’s Motu Proprio to be an attack on his life’s work.
What Sodi is doing is a perfect example of what the Brit’s call "special pleading".
