For what it's worth, here is an article by the (in)famous Fr. Cekada, which discusses the legislation on this topic at page 11. The article goes on to suggest there is something to the idea that the prayers were maintained in America, but not in Europe.
An excellent contribution sir. This is an example of what Cathinfo is all about, teaching. I printed it and read it all last night. Here's some snippets:
Only a handful of priests resisted the post-Vatican II liturgical changes at first, but not everyone retained the Leonine Prayers.
I suspect this was the case in France, since at the St. Pius X Seminary in Ecône in the 1970s we never said the prayers publicly. (I recited them publicly after my first Mass in 1977, an act considered rather daring at the time.)
Most priests in America who first resisted the changes were well-known as dedicated patriots and vocal anti-Communists. These few stalwart men kept the Leonine Prayers alive when no one else in America did. It is to their eternal credit that they handed down the practice to a future generation which would see the prayers at long last bear fruit. Vatican II (1962–1965), of course, had refused to condemn Communism, while Paul VI after his election in 1963 began to take the first tentative steps toward building what would come to be known as the “Vatican-Moscow Axis.” Since the Leonine Prayers were a reminder that Moscow was conducting a persecution, they were among the first things to go. In 1964, even before the Council closed, the Vatican issued a liturgical instruction which contained the memorably brutal phrase: “The Last Gospel is omitted; the Leonine Prayers are suppressed.”
The intention Pope Pius XI decreed in 1930 for the Leonine Prayers, as we noted above, was the freedom of the Church in Russia — that “tranquility and freedom to profess the faith,” as he said, “be restored to the afflicted people of Russia.
On 1 October 1990 the Soviet Union enacted a law on freedom of conscience and religious organizations. It was a lengthy and detailed statute, running in translation to nearly 500 lines of miniscule print. The law’s stated purpose was to guarantee the rights of citizens “to determine and express their attitude toward religion, to hold corresponding convictions and to profess a religion and perform religious rites without hindrance.”
The recent developments in Russia should be cause for a little less gloom and a little more optimism about our prayers.
We traditional Catholics, after all, are the ones who kept right on saying the Leonine Prayers for our persecuted brethren in Russia. We may not have understood exactly what the Church’s intention was for these prayers, but God certainly did. And in His providence He granted His Church’s petition and our own. Here, then, is something we traditional Catholics can point to as some welcome good news — and as a concrete confirmation of the power of the Church’s prayer.
Topic: No Leonine Prayers at Sanford Florida Priory Masses (Read 4625 times)