I sent a message via the USCCB website to the Secretariat for Divine Worship as no mention was made whatsoever of the Gregorian propers. There is, in addition to the funeral, a proper Mass for the election of a pope in the gradual (remember that for Rome, 1908 is still the official edition), which may be sung instead of the Mass of the Holy Spirit (in Paschal Time, as on Pentecost minus the Sequence). There is also a Mass for the coronation of a pope which should be used on the day of, and on the anniversary of, the day where he officially becomes pope in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

I note that there is no permission for red vestments.

@CatholicZ09 So, the octave of paschal tide is basically completely omitted. Is that what I am understanding?

Yes, Liam’s understanding is correct. Tuesday, for pre-55 people as Saint Mark is on Monday. I believe Wednesday in England as Saint George is also transferred.

This is all rather confusing to me. I direct music for a basilica, so we have a special connection to the pope, so I need a place to find simple and clear rules about what I can sing if it’s during the octave.

Yeah. +Vin acted ultra vires. Pre-1960, before the octave became flat with everything I class, while the rubrics don’t allow these other Masses of the dead, celebrating a Mass of the announcement or of the third day following burial would be less bad; the following days up until Saturday inclusive being privileged semidoubles allow for votive Masses pro re gravi, so departing from the Mass of the day is less serious than on the former holy days of Monday and Tuesday. But it is still currently illicit. And AFAICT only the Mass of the dedication on the day itself intrudes on the octave in the 1960 rubrics other than for funerals. This Mass of the announcement of death is II class in the 1960 system, so it must wait until Monday (Tuesday in England and Wales; Wednesday, pre-1960, with Saint George and Saint Mark, or Saint Mark and Saint George, on Monday and Tuesday excluding this Mass).

I found the USCCB document (and the similar one from the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical commissions) very distressing. Apparently the Big Two are now the officially recognized purveyors of Catholic liturgical music, which began in 1970. Given the Holy Father's strong preference for the Missal of Paul VI, it's only fitting that his death be commemorated with the flower of that liturgical tradition.

@Jeffrey_Quick

Why not use the Missal of Pope Francis, Ordinariate!

God have mercy on his soul.

May he rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon him.
He will be on the prayer list at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Eduard Habsburg reports that the tomb is right next to the confessional of a Hungarian Dominican who hears confessions in the major languages (I assume German, Hungarian, Czech and maybe even Polish, at least) of the former imperial lands.

Perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here, but can anyone tell me why the Marian antiphon is Salve, Regina instead of Regina Caeli?

It’s a part of the funerary rites of clerics now.

While it is customary to not speak ill of the dead, the Romans also have the "damnatio memoria". Francis made one hell of a mess and the next Pope will have much to deal with, that is,if he dare to clean up the filth of the various dicasteries.

All I can say as I said previously, is “God have mercy on his soul.” And you all might want to say a rosary for him.

Question: now, when I get to the end of my rosary, and I pray the prayers for the intentions of the pope, how does that work out with the empty seat?

Maybe Francis was a shining example of the Peter Principle.

The idea that in a hierarchical organization, people tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence. This means that employees are promoted for their good performance in one role until they reach a level where they are no longer competent for the tasks they are now required to do.

Supposedly, one of the reasons for electing Francis was his financial expertise. In fairness, he did clear up some of the financial mess in parts of the Vatican. As I can attest, there are many priests and bishops out there who have no clue when it comes to handling money. I personally witnessed a pastor who managed to accumulate $2 million in debts in a medium sized parish. It was never clear where some of the money went. Francis did call in experts from the fields of business and finance to work on the disastrous financial management that has gone on in the Vatican for years. I give him credit for that. However, turning things over to bean counters does not always end well when they get into other areas.

And then he promptly impeded the work! Cardinal Pell complained about it before his death.

Its also good to remember the way he was formed. He grew up in a very rough time in Argentina. He was going off of the principals he knew. At the end of the day- he made mistakes, just like most people do- lets pray for his soul and live theological hope for the future of our church.

For all his extensive and relentless talk about marginalization and accompaniment, he had no qualm with casting aside faithful clergy and other sons and daughters of the faith who practiced it by the 1962 Missal. He employed disgraceful canards in describing them. Fiducia supplicans, TC, Amoris Laetitia? May he rest in peace, certainly, but these errors cannot be casually set aside.

I agree wth @tomjaw it doesnt change anything to criticize, even if the criticisms are true. What Christ asks of us now at present is prayers for His soul, mercy and charity in our thoughts toward the late Pope knowing that he did not receive the formation we received, and then theological hope for a better future in the church and that the Cardinal Electors would be docile to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. It is prayer and sacrifice which shall change the Church- not our words, and especially not our negativity. Lets not be Debbie Downer Liturgists- no one likes that. It is the Paschal Season- and our vocabulary should reflect the Joy and Hope of the Crucified one who has risen from the dead and washed His Bride, the Church, purified her in his blood and water- if we want to attract souls, we have to think and speak like people of hope and joy.

So all my usual prayers for the dead have been directed towards the marginalised souls, that have no one to pray for them.

Someone told me many years ago that it was a good idea to pray for the most forgotten and abandoned souls. Always seemed like a good idea.

They say not to speak ill of the dead, but on the other hand, we can’t speak contemptuously of the reigning Roman pontiff even if it accords with our feelings, even if he needs such a blow on earth.

I don't know, in the past some have driven popes out of town and done far worse than speak ill of them. Maybe it is because I am an easterner, but we don't need to forget popes are human, not demi-gods.

I guess I’m just not seeing, particularly in this thread, a lack of charity. And even so: this has been a hard twelve years. It’s not that anything goes, but more would go than usual. I have a problem in my own life where I try not to let people onto it unless it’s absolutely necessary. Somehow in three or four months of knowing some people, they hadn’t clued in until I said something.

But people who aren’t clued in, who have perhaps some of the technical skill to understand why there are problems, poo-poo it, even as I beg them to please just trust me in being discreet and that they are not helping matters in trying to patch things over or in being deferential in the problem at hand. Others get overwhelmed because I don’t want to address it head on, because I hope that people can get it together without me telling them how to do their job. And yet, it doesn’t happen. So when we do come to blows, it’s not fun!

Mutatis mutandis, the pope is like that.

@tomjaw which is what I mentioned below. In religious life when we give fraternal correction we have certain principles on how to give it- time, place, charity, if it will be well received, if the person receiving it will understand why its given- if the person giving it is not doing it because of emotion, etc, Its not an easy thing to do but I think its worth it for all parties

Bishop Barron has criticized the pope in recent days. He is not a TLM person.

I don’t think that we tolerate discussion of validity or liceity of the Pauline rite itself. Gosh, what a throwback to 2014, when the question turned on the meaning of authentic: everyone can get behind a Latin NO with everything sung, and with only very limited or no vernacular, a celebration as close to the rubrics of the old Mass as possible as valid and licit, but the question with the Franciscans of the Immaculate was about the authentic nature of the rite, where there is substantial disagreement going back to the time of the reforms and their implementation. It wasn’t something that began in March 2013! It has very little to do with the late pontiff other than the fact that he decided that reopening wounds which Benedict attempted to heal seeking reconciliation at the heart of the church was the way forward. Obviously, this is distressing, particularly as Francis consistently mischaracterized Benedict’s reasoning, which the man had given in his own letter to the world’s bishops accompanying the motu proprio Summorum pontificum.

Indeed, Francis said:

Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite, in particular the Roman Canon which constitutes one of its more distinctive elements.

The same Canon was omitted at his own funeral as the deceased bishop of Rome.

Pope Francis’s real motivation was the abolition of the TLM. This is clear from his letter to the bishops.

St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity. This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

His stated one, unity, was not possible given that he stoked division. Further, he deplored liturgical abuse, did absolutely nothing to improve the situation, did several things to further sever us from the tradition (women acolytes and lectors, women included in the Mandatum — the second of which was another element where disrespect of the law led to being rewarded), and essentially ignored the rest of the liturgy. Desiderio desideravi only mentions the Mass.

This is solemn nonsense, for example.

To doubt the Council is to doubt the intentions of those very Fathers who exercised their collegial power in a solemn manner cum Petro et sub Petro in an ecumenical council, [14] and, in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church.

I don’t live in a world frozen in 1965. There are people who otherwise prefer the reforms, or at least some aspects of them, which concede that we went way too far.

Anyway I resent the above comment very deeply, particularly since I’m the last TLM guy to have commented negatively in such an open way. I did my best throughout the last pontificate, despite deep reservations held from the moment that the man walked out on the balcony without the proper attire of a newly elected Roman pontiff, to accept that which was good, ignore that which was ambiguous or distressing, and to combat that which was to be rejected. I put my money where my mouth is too. Sung Mass and Vespers every Sunday (Vespers, from September to May/June anyway). Mass during the week for major feasts including the full (this year, solemn) Triduum, complete with Tenebrae. We celebrate the NO when we must in the most dignified way possible (ad orientem when it’s not the bishop, who unfortunately wants the forward altar), with the exact same music that we would employ at the TLM. I have a diocesan pastor in a diocesan parish. I’m not the bad guy here. Indeed, I need to get on Father’s radar that since the octave impeded the Requiems ordinarily done at the announcement of a death and at the three and seven-day marks, and that the novemdiales are impeded for us for reasons outside of our control, that we should certainly do the month’s mind, which will be a liturgically-free day (either on April 21 or 22, since one can count inclusively or exclusively)

I’m not going to pretend that things were rosy the entire time; progressives didn’t under John Paul or BXVI, and here we are. No one is even trying to be as gleeful or nasty as they were. We want a good holy pope who respects the law, something like what Cardinal Pell described:

The Pope does not need to be the world’s best evangelist, nor a political force. The successor of Peter, as head of the College of Bishops, also successors of the Apostles, has a foundational role for unity and doctrine. The new pope must understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ and Catholic practices. It does not come from adapting to the world or from money.

4. The first tasks of the new pope will be to restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition. Theological expertise and learning are an advantage, not a hinderance for all bishops and especially archbishops.

No worries. I am obviously frustrated but didn’t particularly take issue with what you said. It’s the comment above my last which made me have quite enough.

Cardinal Pell also mentioned the contempt for contemplative life. May we be freed from this.