I’ve got a rare treat for everyone today. We’re actually going to hear from someone intelligent.

Professor Luc Perrin has graciously taken time out of his busy schedule to discuss his thoughts on Summorum Pontificum.

Luc Perrin is a lay professor of Modern Church history at the Faculty of Catholic Theology (State University Marc-Bloch of Strasbourg, France). He’s the author of several contributions on the traditionalist question, among them “L’Affaire Lefebvre” edited in 1989 by Le Cerf and the short biography of Archbishop Lefebvre in “Universalia 1992″ (Encyclopedia universalis).

Professor Perrin enjoys scuba diving, charades, and watching roller derby in person.*

To express my gratitude for Professor Perrin’s generosity, I promised I would say something nice about the French, so here we go:

They are not the English.

I will be posting the Q&A in parts.

DT: What do you think this all means, in the grand scheme of things?

[DT: They also have a taste for jellied eels, a strange people.]

However I can say that going forward with the motu proprio, instead of surrendering to the numerous oppositions, whether from several episcopates (the French, the Germans, the president of USCCB, Belgian cardinal Daneels, British cardinal Murphy O’Connor etc.) or within the Roman Curia, is a turning point in itself. John Paul II had backstepped several times : he waited 6 years before granting the 1984 indult, he surrendered in appointing “quiet” presidents of PCED from 1991 to 2000, he surrendered again in 1986 keeping secret the proceedings of his ad hoc cardinalice Commission [DT: Of which the former Cardinal Ratzinger was a part. This commission decided the Traditional Mass was never abrogated, among other things], he did another time in 2001 when SSPX had the 2 preconditions and he did once again in 2003-2004 when a document was rumored to follow on Ecclesia de Eucharistia. S.P. is evoking this directly:

“Long deliberated” indeed! It’s even longer than what is written in the motu proprio because in 1971, a draft was rejected within CDW to grant a sort of freedom for TLM according to Abp Bugnini’s memoirs. Pope Benedict himself took his time : nearly two years before the first “rumor” was made public before the October 2005 Synod and during this assembly, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos asked for such a freedom.So what the motu proprio means first, “in the grand scheme of things”, is that this pope has opted to be … a pope instead of the spokesperson for an ecclesial conservative establishment. It means alsothe pope can move on to the next steps to make his crucial December 22, 2005 speech a reality and not only wishful thinking. Reforming the Church to bring along a comprehension of Vatican II “in the light of Tradition”, like Abp Lefebvre loved to say, is a hard work and a perilous, long road. But it’s the road to survival for the Church. The CDF Note on the deviant - but taught everywhere in Catholic universities and seminaries - interpretations of the “subsistit in” issued with the motu proprio is another step. Bringing a new life to the episcopates should be another priority : the dynamism of the Church is very often impulsed or positively chanelled by sound bishops who are genuine fidei defensor. In this field, a serious correction of course is necessary.

Trads can easily understand this : with sound and dynamic bishops, Summorum Pontificum would have not been necessary, only at the symbolic level for the status of TLM. [DT: To officially state the TLM had never been abrogated.] Bishops everywhere would have been “generous” - as asked by John Paul II in 1988 - in granting TLM chapels, personal parishes and priests.

Stay tuned for more Q&A with Professor Perrin.

* I totally made this up.