Motu Proprio Date

[Taken from Closed Cafeteria]
My Austrian friends just emailed me. Kath.net/Die Welt (Klaus Badde) report (my translation:) that the motu proprio liberating the Tridentine Mass for the entire Catholic Church has been given to about 30 bishops from all over the world in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone. The bishops had been invited to Rome for that purpose.

At the end of the meeting, in which the motu proprio was introduced together with a letter of explanation by Pope Benedict XVI., Pope Benedict met with the bishops. The document is about three pages long, the accompanying letter about four. From Germany, Cardinal Lehmann (the head of the German bishops conference) had been invited. The circumstances of the procedure make clear that the Pope was very interested to personally inform the bishops, in collegial manner, of the content rather than have them learn about it from the media.

The publication of both documents will take place on July 7th. It emphasizes the unity of the Roman Rite which will consist of an ordinary and an extraordinary form which are supposed to inspire each other. The ordinary/regular form will continue to be the new rite of 1969. The extraordinary form will be the Missal of Bl. John XXIII. of 1962.

Paul Badde is the Vatican correspondent of the German newspaper Die Welt and has written several books on Catholic topics.

Update: The French paper La Croix (The Cross) also writes that the motu proprio has been given to a group of bishops, under the headline "Motu proprio about the Missal of St. Pius V. unveiled to bishops". Rorate Caeli has a partial translation

On Wednesday, June 27, in the afternoon, Cardinals and Archbishops from different countries assembled around Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, to take hold of the contents of the motu proprio aiming to liberalize the use of the missal in Tridentine rite, said "of Saint Pius V".

"It is a kind of internal publication to the Church," it is said in the Curia. The "external" publication, that is, the official one, should take place soon, by way of L' Osservatore Romano, the daily edited by the Holy See. The text, written in Latin, will be accompanied by a letter of Benedict XVI, in several languages.

Before this meeting, the Bishops ignored the entire final content of the text. In fact, after the last known meeting of the Ecclesia Dei commission, charged with the rapprochement with the integrist [sic] movements, on December 12, 2006, the decisions were taken with the utmost discretion.

Safeguards to guarantee the last word to the Bishop

The Pope, who wishes to ease the access to the rite of Saint Pius V, had asked the Ecclesia Dei commission to work towards a solution since 2006. With a double objective: favoring the return of integrist communities to the Catholic Church, but also to encourage the attachment of Catholics to a liturgical tradition mishandled, in his eyes, after Vatican II.
...

The motu proprio should predict safeguards to guarantee the last word to the bishop, in case of a disagreement between faithful and priests on this matter.

Here the German article:

Das Dokument, mit dem Papst Benedikt XVI. die alte tridentinische Liturgie aus eigenem Willen (lat.: „motu proprio“) für die gesamte katholische Kirche wieder freigibt, ist am Mittwochnachmittag rund 30 Bischöfen aus aller Welt in der Sala Bologna des Apostolischen Palastes von Kardinalstaatsekretär Tarcisio Bertone übergeben worden.

Die Bischöfe waren eigens dafür nach Rom eingeladen worden. Am Ende der Begegnung, in der das Papier zusammen mit einem erläuternden Begleitbrief vorgestellt wurde, kam auch Benedikt XVI. selbst zu der Vorstellung. Eine Diskussion der Entscheidung war jedoch nicht mehr vorgesehen. Das Dokument stellt auf knapp drei Seiten lang eine Epochenwende der katholischen Messfeiern dar.

Der Begleitbrief umfasst gut vier Seiten. Aus Deutschland war Kardinal Karl Lehmann, der Vorsitzende der deutschen Bischofskonferenz, zu der Übergabe eingeladen. Alle Umstände des Vorgangs machen deutlich, wie sehr dem Papst daran gelegen war, dass die Bischöfe den brisanten Inhalt „in einem besonderen Akt kollegialen Entgegenkommens“ von ihm selbst und nicht aus der Presse oder anderen Medien erfahren sollten.


Die allgemeine Veröffentlichung beider Dokumente ist für den 7. Juli vorgesehen. Die Erläuterungen des Begleitbriefs halten noch einmal ausdrücklich die Einheit des römischen Ritus fest. Der eine Ritus wird sich jedoch ab jetzt in eine ordentliche und eine außerordentliche Form gliedern, die sich fortan gegenseitig befruchten sollen.

Die ordentliche Form wird weiterhin der neue Ritus sein, den Papst Paul VI. 1969 mit einem beispiellosen Federstrich verfügt hat. Als außerordentliche Form bleibt nun aber auch der lateinische Ritus erlaubt, den Papst Johannes XXIII. zum letzten Mal 1962 im offiziellen „Missale Romanum“ niederlegte, dessen Grundzüge zum letzten Mal im Konzil von Trient (1545 – 1563) festgelegt worden waren.