He may well get his wish.
PopeWatch: Schism
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
After all the lies and gaslighting we have been through over the past two/three years, those who claim that Pope Francis is not truly “The Pope” may in fact be right.
According to Papal Nuncio, Christophe Pierre, he is a “gift of the Holy Spirit”. And I always thought there were only 7, I guess I was wrong.
That would require bishops who would take them in.
The SSPX certainly will, but theymn they are going to have to decide if they are going to run another round of episcopal ordinations. None of them are spring chickens, and it’s been 35 years.
More interesting would be an enterprising Orthodox bishop who decided to authorize a TLM-based Western rite. That would be intriguing to those tired of even minimal bowing and scraping to the Roman CEO.
Probably wouldn’t happen, though. The Orthodox are a bit twitchy about the TLM authorized at Trent, though on ecclesial and sacramental grounds.
“and not sacramental ”
Sigh, coffee.
Somewhere in the Gospels Jesus tells us the only sin that cannot be forgiven is sin against the Holy Spirit. He was responding to the pharisees saying He drove out demons because He was of the devil.
I actually don’t know what I will do if His Holiness suppresses the TLM. I go intermittently and regularly attend the NO. About half of my Catholic friends are Traditionalists and we have been active in our parish throughout our marriage. (It’s the parish where I have made all of my sacraments and in which my grandparents and father were buried.)
If the Pope suppresses the FSSP, preventing us from worship as we are called to do, what are we to do? Do we leave for the SSPX and become precisely what we are accused of already being? We always had the power to reject Vatican II and the Papacy but we didn’t exercise it because we are Catholic. Do we now abandon our faith because the Vatican openly declares it does not want us?
Do we become Orthodox or joing another catholic church within the broader umbrella?
I have long prayed and subordinated my anger. I choose to believe that His Holiness doesn’t really hate us, that he is just misguided and misled, that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t allow such an evil to come to be but what if it does?
I don’t have an answer and have this deep in my gut feeling that we are reaching a terrible moment of decision.
Pope Francis has rejected the title and job of “Vicar of Christ” The priest prays “in persona Christi” at he Offertory of the Mass. Transubstantiation is predicated on Jesus Christ being the chief celebrant at the Mass.
“In persona Christi” in the Sacrament of Penance is Jesus Christ forgiving our sins. Without Jesus Christ our salvation is naught, the papacy is naught, the Catholic Church is naught,
“I am with you for all time” Jesus Christ.
Derelict priests and bishops who do not act “in persona Christi” have already damned themselves.
When hell freezes over, they will get cut on the sharp edges of frozen brimstone.
Among the “accomplishments” of the Francis pontificate will be to have done more to swell the ranks of the SSPX than Abp. Levebvre could have done in his wildest of wild dreams.
An Open Letter to Archbishop Nelson Perez:
I sent this email to my archbishop this afternoon:
“Your Excellency,
My family and I attend St. Joseph Church in Downingtown. It is my home parish, the one in which I have received all of my sacraments and in which grandparents and father are buried. My children attended St. Joseph School and Bishop Shanahan High School and my wife and I are La Salle University graduates.
We are happy and faithful Catholics and active in our parish life. More than half of our friends are people we met through our Catholic communities and I am greatly troubled by the Church’s efforts to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). If fully suppressed, I don’t know what to do and it weighs heavily on my mind.
I attend the TLM once a month. I would go more often but maintaining a full relationship with my home parish is important to our family. I feel drawn to the TLM, even though I know the Novus Ordo to be valid and often beautiful. Whatever the legitimate complaints against the NO, I have not seen liturgical abuse in my parish.
It seems clear to me that the Spirit is active and alive among the regularly attending TLM families with whom we have regular relationships. These families are wonderfully prayerful, faithful, and honorable. There ARE objections to Vatican II but they are faithfully addressed within the canons and catechism of our faith.
Rejecting these faithful Christians, pushing them out of the Church, and condemning them as heretics for continuing practices which are entirely within the text and context of Vatican II is utterly unchristian. Personally, I don’t know what to do here. What does one do when one’s own Holy Father has declared an unholy war on faithful Catholics to whom one owes a duty of faithfulness?
I respectfully ask that you take this message of brotherhood to your fellow bishops. It seems that many fail to recognize that quite a large number of regular parish Catholics have deep roots in, and fraternal concord with, our TLM sisters and brothers communities and that this suppression of them directly attacks us as well.
Sincerely,
David Spaulding
St. Joseph Parish
Downingtown, PA”
I’m going to withhold my panic until I see them building another papal palace in Avignon.
Don L, if today’s breaking news from the Anglican church are in any way a harbinger of larger things to come, your wait may be shorter than you think.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/20/anglicans-reject-justin-welby-as-head-of-global-church-amid-anger-at-same-sex-blessings
It’d make for a rough couple of years, but I hope nobody loses his faith over this.
My parish, where I had already been attending for years, began hosting my city’s Latin Mass Society long before Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum.
At first there was one Sunday TLM, but it grew so popular there are now two. As it stands now, on Sundays my parish offers four NO Masses— three in English and one in Spanish, and the two TLMs. Francis and Cardinal Roche seem intent on ending arrangements like my parish’s, erasing 1/3 of our Mass schedule— and 1/3+ of the Sunday collection.
For years I’ve been making my Sunday Obligation at one of our TLMs, but helping out at NO Masses as a lector, especially at the early Mass that’s harder to staff. And of course no matter which Mass one attends, we are all supporting the same parish school, the same St. Vincent de Paul Society, and the same Knights of Columbus…
I’m guessing there are some attendees at either Mass that have a dim view of the other, but I’ve never once heard such an opinion voiced. It seems to me that arrangements like that in my parish, with TLM and NO side by side, would be the simplest, most peaceful, least disruptive way to foster tolerance and understanding between the two groups.
That’s why I cannot understand why Francis and Roche insist that arrangements such as ours are to be forbidden, that TLM communities must be booted out and forced to meet in a gym somewhere. That’s going to bring Latin Mass-goers around to loving the Novus Ordo?
Either Pope Francis has zero understanding of human nature, or he simply doesn’t care if traditional Catholics get with his program, drop dead, or just disappear. What a peach of a shepherd, that one.
Well, dear faithful beloved of the holy Latin Mass of the centuries, how do you like this Vatican’s huge middle finger to you?
Nice, right? Francis, et al, are laughing their asses off.
From the “never thought I’d see the day” file, Vladimir Putin (!) actually speaks more truth than the Pope:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0g_MpIzWU
I actually don’t know what I will do if His Holiness suppresses the TLM.
Unlike his two predecessors, Francis is begging for widespread noncompliance. (His predecessors received widespread noncompliance while doing nothing to provoke it). There’s a (perhaps apocryphal) story that Benedict in a meeting pointed to the door and said his authority did not extend any farther than that. Welcome to our world.
Welcome to the catacombs.
Remember that Pope Francis does not get the last word. The Vicar of Christ is limited. Let his age remind us of that.
As noted above by Pinky; let us hope nobody looses his faith over this.
Amen.
We have the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail over Holy Catholic Church. And they won’t. Hold Fast.
Gold is purified in fire.
Well, he’s somebody’s vicar, I’m not sure whose.
G. Poulin.
The prayers for those whom you dislike or those who have a hatred towards you are prayers that change hearts. I can’t imagine looking on those who just crucified me with this sentiment from my heart; Father. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Yet that is our quest. Imitation of Christ.
You want a life changing Lent?
Pray from your heart to love Pope Francis and Joe Biden and Nancy, Chuck et al. To love them because God loves them.
That’s hard homework…but it’s worth our efforts. Aim higher as the Saints have done and see what God will do.
Agian. I’m practicing..and far from attaining that imitation of perfection, yet we were commanded to be Holy as the Father in heaven is Holy. That’s a homework assignment that takes many of us every day of our existence to complete.
Blessings.
David Spaulding, Please let TAC know when your bishop responds to your respectuul, heart telt letter.
Ater reading about what was done to the Poor Clares, I do wonder what will happen to traditional orders, monastics and cloistered.
Bergoglio and Aviz allegedly share a deep dislike for monastic and contemplative life. Last year, Bergoglio had some Carmelites thrown out of a cloister in Pennsylvania…after denying them the TLM.
Should the Institute of Christ the King Soverign Priest be suppressed by Roach and Bergoglio, I will go to the FSSPX parish in Pittsburgh, St. James in the West End. The FSSPX bought the closed down parish building from an art dealer, restored it and rededicated it. If that parish were not available, and for many losing their TLM is inevitable, I would likely go Eastern Catholic. I have no more tolerance for bad novus ordo observances and I do not belueve that Vatican II called for that. Bugnini’s lies and participation in the creation of that missal are well documented.
Donald, I have thought that PF has been trying to provoke schism all along. I can’t think of a thing he would be doing differently. He is the tool of the devil & is doing horrible damage. It is horrible beyond belief.