On Traditionis Custodes, Nero and Today's Three Chapters

 I always viewed with skepticism claims that Pope Francis would severely restrict the Latin Mass.  Not out of any great esteem of the Pope, but with a frank understanding that doing this would accomplish little good, introduce a thousand nightmares, and plunge the Church into a new era of nastiness.

It is clear that I was mistaken.  The Pope has decided to do something that would accomplish little good, introduce a thousand nightmares, and plunge the Church into a new era of nastiness.  Some brief and uncensored thoughts:

1.)  There will be two sets of voices traditionalists should ignore.  The first is the voice (almost always an author or podcaster) who will do the self-loathing gimmick:  what happened was our fault, and don't forget to buy my book or subscribe to my podcast where I can tell you these hard truths!  It's 2010 Taylor Marshall all over again, where an individual tries to portray themselves as the bold truth teller telling trads truths they don't wanna hear, even if their audience for the point is 100% not traditionalists.  Saying that they brought it upon themselves seriously overthinks it.

Put bluntly, we could be perfect saints, and what happened today would still happen.  We could be a worse variant of ourselves, and this would still happen.  We should not think ourselves so important as to think what we do or don't do has any influence on anything.  The Latin Mass was restricted because Pope Francis wanted to restrict it.  He did not want to restrict it because of some vague concepts of a divided Church, as the Latin Mass is not the marker of that division.  The Pope has made clear he views traditionalists as barely human, let alone faithful Catholics.  He mocks them in private, engages in frequent diatribes against them in his public homilies, viewing us the source of all ills in the Church, from the increasing polarization to the indigestion he had after breakfast.  Those close to him repeat ideas such as that the Francis pontificate is a failure because he didn't purge us from the start, despite traditionalists.... having zero power in the Church.

It bears repeating:

• It was not Traditionalists who caused the blowups at the two synods on the family
• It was not Traditionalists who encouraged rampant financial corruption, where the Vatican now has its former number two guy indicted for serious financial crimes.
• It was not Traditionalists who protected Theodore McCarrick and tried to obscure knowledge of his career as a sexual predator.
• It was not Traditionalists causing a serious lapse of ecclesial unity in Germany.

Even accepting the premise as true, it involves a rather sick and sadistic pastoral theology that the treasures of the Church should be abolished or restricted from all because people aren't holy enough, rather than realizing the Latin Mass should be a powerful tool to encourage holiness.  Instead of doing the hard work of actually trying to be a halfway competent pastor, the Pope just throws his hands up and says "being a shepherd is hard.  Hopefully this goes away."

We should also ignore those who have taken their eye off the ball, as traditionalists more focused on the latest political speaking gig rather than promoting the renewal of the Church via emphasis on Tradition, most importantly the sacred liturgy in the Latin Mass.  I wish to remind my brethren who do this that as we focused on various debates about vaccines and Donald Trump, the enemy in Rome never slept.  Let this suffering focus the mind, not to "prove to them that we are better", but to remind them that the more we are focused on those things, the worse it will be for them.

2.)  The document, as written, will almost certainly fail in the short to medium term, and eventually be suppressed with far more fanfare than its attempt to restrict the Latin Mass.  It is clear that diocesan bishops were not informed of its contents or when it would be released, it is full of sloppy language, and riddled with ambiguities.  While some will try to say "it was deliberately ambiguous", the totality of the evidence suggests, as with most things of this pontificate, it was a haphazard and incompetent, not the product of serious minds.  Over time, that will be its undoing.

3.) Far from a moment of strength, it is a moment of supreme weakness.  That it was released on a Friday with no advance notice to the Bishops clearly demonstrates they were not doing this on behalf of the Bishops.  As Fr. Reese noted in an otherwise sympathetic view of Francis, finding young Catholics seminarians who are fans of the Pope is like finding a unicorn:  they don't exist.  The Latin Mass is one of the few areas of the Church in the West that has provided growth and stable parishes.

Outside of us, the Church under Pope Francis is at war with itself, and with him having mostly lost control of the Church.  This isn't a strong pope issuing a firm decree in an attempt to guide the Church to holiness:  this is Nero blaming Christians for the fire to hide his own incompetence.  The only difference is that in this case, Nero actually started the fire.  The Council's relevance is not called into questions because of traditionalists, but because an obsession with Vatican II is shockingly out of touch with the problems facing the Church today.  The Church is essentially the American political system of the 1850's:  desperately trying to argue over old dead issues rather than deal with what is tearing the country apart.

4.) How should we Catholics act?  So far, in the United States the attitude of the Bishops seems to be "Pope Francis has issued this dec..... I'm sorry, where were we?  Oh, right, yeah, what we did before, keep doing."  How long that will last is anyone's guess.  So if you have the Latin Mass, continue to have the Latin Mass.  Fight for it to be preserved.  Do it with respect, but with a firm will that the Church understands that your pastoral needs are not the playtoy of prelates playing ideal saint simulator, but require serious attention, and that it is the job of Fathers to provide for the needs of the faithful.

If you don't have the Latin Mass, and for whatever reason you cannot attend the Novus Ordo (awful liturgy, a clear understanding people like you are not welcome at that parish), look for an Eastern Rite.  Look for one you can stomach while fighting for the Latin Mass.  I will not say go to the SSPX, but it is clear that they will benefit from this with new attendees.  The Church has avoided saying definitively the status of the SSPX, and what the faithful can and cannot do at their chapels.  This makes that something which will have to be answered, and barring explicit orders not to go there or receive their sacraments, one can hardly fault those who do, as Rome has long understood that attending their Masses is not in and of itself "fomenting schism."

5.)  There is an obscure time in the Church that I think is instructive to today, known as the "Three Chapters" controversy.  One can read the particulars at the link I mentioned, but the blunt reading of it is of an incompetent pope ignorant of the facts bumbling his way into creating a schism, supported by a civil authority who was more concerned with political peace than religious truth.  They then condemned the schism they themselves created through their incompetence and arrogance.  The schism lasted beyond their death, and the approach of the Church and the next several popes was to more or less admit the Pope didn't have a clue what he was doing, what he did was bad, but rather than ignite a lengthy debate over the precedent of condemning a dead pope, they more or less memory holed his pontificate and his rationale behind what started the controversy of the Three Chapters.  (Vigilius was not a bad man, he was just woefully unprepared for the Petrine office, and it showed.)

I think that will more or less be the era of Francis.  Hopefully in his incompetence and arrogance he does not provoke a schism, but future generations will not look upon him kindly.  I think, in what are clearly the final days of his life, he understands this, and that motivated his attempt to "make it right" in a way that will most certainly make it worse.

6.)  Finally, while we cannot read souls, we can judge actions.  This is an action of violence and cruelty, not just on "the rad-trads online", but hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more Catholics around the globe.  They are not "Traditionalists", but they have no problem with the Latin Mas, and even find solace in it.  They will feel attacked and spat upon by the pope, and they have good reason:  he did attack them, and he did spit upon them.  God will remember that.  He will call the Pope to account for the damage he has inflicted upon the Church with this act.  What that means beyond that is not known, nor should we care.  Yet we should pray he repents of this evil, and barring that, take comfort in God's judgement and justice, and pose the question if Rome feels a similar comfort in God's justice, or if their feeling is one of desperation instead.