Father Z’s thoughts:
Today, 16 July, is the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. During the Amazonian Synod (“walking together”), it was at her church in Rome, near the Vatican, that the shrine to to the demon Pachamama was set up.
Today, 16 July, is the anniversary of the Great Schism in 1054, when a Bull of Excommunication (not a Pachamama bowl) was lain on the altar of Hagia Sophia.
Today, 16 July, the Manhattan Project for the first time successfully detonated a nuclear weapon. Today is the anniversary of the first nuke in 1945.
In each of those cases, it took a long time to weigh the implications.
It also takes times to absorb and weigh the implications of legislative documents.
That leads me to my first reaction to the Motu Proprio, Traditionis custodes, which effectively insults the entire pontificate of Benedict XVI and the pastoral provisions of John Paul II and all the people they have affected.
Speaking of nukes, while this is quite awful, it is also good in that the line has been drawn. For all the cant about “unity” – which apparently is something to be forced not fostered – the divisions are now clearer.
Traditionis custodes. One wonders if anyone in Rome thinks through the titles of documents (Amoris laetitia… The joy of sex…). This one just screams the maxim of Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Without the whole sentence in Latin we can only guess at the meaning: “Overseers of betrayal…” is one option. “Protectors of surrender…”?
Because it takes time to weigh the implications – questions are flooding my mailbox and phone – I note the following at the end:
Everything that I have declared in this Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu Proprio, I order to be observed in all its parts, anything else to the contrary notwithstanding, even if worthy of particular mention, and I establish that it be promulgated by way of publication in “L’Osservatore Romano”, entering immediately in force….
“entering immediately in force”
There is no vacatio legis. There is no period of time between the promulgation and when it goes into effect. There is no period during which questions can be answered, changes can be arranged, plans can be made.
BAM.
Now people are writing to me to ask what they are supposed to do on Sunday. Priests are asking if they fulfil the obligation to say the Office with the Breviarium Romanum. The questions multiply even as I write. The first fruit of Traditionis is chaos.
Hence, I am forced to remark that the vulgarity of this document is matched only by its cruelty.
Even those who have been inveterate critics of Benedict’s provisions, who may even go so far as to hate not just the traditional forms of worship, but the people who want them, ought to be horrified by the brutality of his document.
If something so harsh can be done to one group, it can be done to you.
There is a great deal more to say. However, I will leave you with this counsel.
Fathers… change nothing, do nothing differently for now. It is not rational to leap around without mapping the mine field we are entering. Keep Calm And Carry On.
Lay people… be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.
Go here to read the rest. Heckuva job Conclave of 2013, heckuva job.
Optimistic take? They rushed this out because Francis is on his deathbed and they needed to get it out ASAP. Pretty interesting coinky dink that the “Francis is in the hospital” stuff is happening simultaneously. Sic semper tyrannis.
I think that’s what’s happened. Just a weak Pope and leader who lacks clarity in his communication with no affinity to the TLM or tradition for that matter. That document he put out is not the thought process or words of Pope Francis. He doesn’t think or write like that.
His name is on it. He owns it. Smoke of Satan has enveloped this guy.
He is anything but weak. For how long will people apologize for him? The buck stops with him and it actually does read like something in his character. He has long been known to be tyrannical, my way or the highway kind of guy. Just research some of the opinions of him while he was in BA. No, I am afraid he is 100% on board with this – if anything, he probably does not believe it goes far enough.
Not to mention what he has done to some of the traditional/contemplative orders a few years back. Can’t blame a recent illness on that.
Something to consider: denying communion to politicians who support abortion really does increase unity, in that it calls the politicians back to the teachings of the Church. But this action is never described as increasing unity. Somehow “unity” is a word that only comes up when it involves the Church becoming more secular and modernist.
Tomorrow morning (Sunday) 3 friends & I are driving for 1 -1/2 hours to attend a TLM by the SSPX in a basement of a home in Hamilton – we do this every fortnight, which is as often as the priest can drive down from Auckland.
Our bishop is a modernist, & I think not too friendly toward the TLM – despite the fact that 3 of our priests say the TLM weekly, but not on Sunday with his approval. There are a further 3 young priests who are learning it and wish to use it. One of those priests is being transferred to our parish next week, & I was going to approach him to tell him that I have about 30 or so people who prefer the TLM, and that I would serve as his acolyte. I am now a little concerned how this will affect that eventuality, but will continue to support the SSPX anyway. For the past 5 years (ecept last year – Covid) 3 of us have driven 5 hours to Wanganui, and stay to celebrate the Traditional Easter rites from Holy Thursday till Easter Sunday, and will continue to do so as long as we can.
This is almost a ‘Viva Christo Ray’ moment.
The regime is flailing and it knows it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZYgg3BpmM&ab_channel=olemalaler
Springtime is surely near.
“Lay people… be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.”
Excellent advice.
The perpetrators desire a reaction.
Give them none, knowing that Jesus Christ Is Risen and He Will set things straight in due time.
Pray the Rosary.
This is almost a ‘Viva Christo Ray’ moment.
Precisely Don!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QUb_StcVzg
This is the attempt of the Pope, may God forgive him, to outlaw Traditional Catholicism. The implications of this extend well beyond the Traditional Mass.
My own parish, which is the cathedral, has hosted a regularly scheduled Sunday TLM since before Summorum Pontificum. In the last few years, weekday Masses have oftentimes been TLMs.
The number of TLM attendees has been steadily growing in my parish. We contribute to the cathedral’s upkeep, volunteer in various parish and parochial school organizations— heck, I even volunteer to lector at the 8am NO Masses because those are hard to staff. In short, it’s been my parish for decades, and I and my fellow TLM-goers are parishioners just like everyone else.
Now we’re told that this unity we have in our parish is … bad for unity?
I wonder how this Motu Proprio is going to be implemented in parishes like mine, where the TLM has been a solid contributor to the parish for years.
By the letter of Francis’ law, we (and the time and treasure we bring) are to be cast out to cling rigidly to our ‘outdated’ Mass in a catacomb somewhere?
I cannot imagine either our bishop or our parish priests letting that happen. This Motu Proprio is ordering my parish to mutilate itself in the name of ‘unity’. It’s madness.
The Catholic churches have probably lost half their congregants due to the year and a half lockdown. The people who were most faithful in attending, despite the fortified trenches their bishops dug in their path to discourage them, were the adherents of the TLM. Now that’s being rubbed out, I suppose with the expectation that with nowhere else to go, people will HAVE to attend the Loser Mass and keep the fraud going. Expect beaming announcements soon of how attendance is back up at these Loser parishes.