The whole purpose of being a priest is to offer the Mass:
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who remarked on EWTN’s The World Over last week that the Secretariat of State had neither the legal nor theological competence to make such a decision, told the Register March 22 that it will have the effect of making clergy working in the Vatican “more like functionaries and with less priestly identity.”
The directive, which he said was a “merciless, authoritarian document, imposed without consultation or synodality,” represents a “secularized understanding” of the Mass as religious entertainment, disregards “the Catholic spiritual tradition of the priesthood to celebrate the Mass every day,” and is further proof of the “self-secularization of the Church.”
“It’s all very superficial,” he said, adding that it is “absolutely obvious that this document has been made by anonymous men in the background who don’t know anything about Catholic theology.”
Go here to read the rest. Priests should ignore this and simply celebrate the Mass at any available altar in Saint Peter’s. Force the powers that be at the Vatican to have scenes of Swiss Guards dragging priests from the altars. Have videos made from phones recording every moment. Obedience is an important priestly attribute, but sometimes obedience asks too much.
A couple more potential martyrs like him and Rome will reopen the colosseum and bring in the lions again.
I suggest setting up portable altars in the square outside, facing the East, and offer the Mass and see how many gather.
It’s disturbing to think that the Church is led by men who think that the fewer Masses said,
the better.
I used to think that when this pontificate finally ends, things could get better in Rome. But Francis has stuffed the Vatican full of so many of the worst sort of clerics, I can’t help but think the next Pope might well be worse than this one.
Edward Pentin, keep up the good work!
This madness is completely unnecessary and very deliberate.
This is when a 25th amendment would come in handy for the Vatican. How can a sane Pope allow this most serious insult to his priests?