A Traditionalism for the People: The Changing Landscape

Whether something must change is always a different question for how that change could take place.  The former relies on necessity, the latter conditions.  If, as I previously suggested, the John Paul II era of Catholicism (from his pontificate up until 2017) was ultimately a failed proposition, that does not mean it did not have a substantial impact on the layout of the Church, as well as substantial ramifications for what a traditionalism for the people should be.

1.)  The Halo of Authority is GONE

Since arguably the time of Pius IX (and maybe before that in certain embryonic forms), the clerical authorities in the Latin Church have taken on a seeming impeccability, not just infallibility in limited cases.  No longer did was it simply accepted the Holy Spirit prevented Popes (and councils) from doctrinal error in certain circumstances.  Now, whatever those Popes, bishops and priests did was the will of God itself.  The choosing of the Pope was an act actively guided by the Holy Spirit.  "Religious submission of mind and will" (a general deference to the understanding those in authority have a wide berth normally when it is exercised) became a requirement to agree not only that what they were doing was right, but that there was no other possible way to look at the issue.  From this, a certain quasi-divine cult of personality arose around the hierarchal Church, especially the papacy.  Far from discouraging this, the John Paul II era used it as an integral tool in attempting to solve the crisis.

It was under the charisma (and constant visibility thanks to technology) of John Paul II that Catholics began to view the Bishop of Rome as the model for Christian activity.  This was a reminder that far from being someone who betrayed the revolution at Vatican II, John Paul II viewed himself its implementer, using a very post-concilliar understanding of the papacy to dramatically increase his power and perceptibility.

The biggest problem with this approach is, even under the best of circumstances, it was never sustainable.  John Paul could have been succeeded by the two greatest popes in history, and this perception of authority would never be sustainable.  We could be free from scandals, and eventually that personality cult would fade, and the papacies ability to personally mold and shape the faith of a billion souls would wane.  Instead, we got two popes who were at best average (and that's being very generous with the present), and we got a lot of scandals, having a visibility in the Church they just didn't have, even during the time of John Paul II.

As a result of this, that previous understanding of authority is gone.  The moral legitimacy of Church authorities rises below the sewer.  They have the hardest of difficulties even asking for basic funds to keep the Church operating, so convinced many are it will be spent either to settle abuse lawsuits, or used for wasteful (if not criminal) ends.  Far from being a source of unity, Church authorities are a source of deep division.  If you are hoping for some white knight to ascend the papal throne and fix everything, or for everyone to rally around this or that courageous bishop/cardinal, I've got news for you: its not happening.

2.)  The Rise of the Ecclesial Warlord

When I took an extended break in 2014, I warned of a rising trend in the blogosphere, that of the Catholic Warlord:

This tendency towards warlordism is especially tempting for the blogosphere. Most Catholics don't read blogs. The ones who read blogs are normally hyper-educated individuals with a lot of free time. The people who write blogs are normally hyper-educated individuals with a lot of free time. When hyper educated individual is praised by hyper educated individuals as someone being used by God to shine light into darkness, there's a real chance a feedback loop will occur. That feedback loop is really hard to kick. If there's one thing warlordism enforces, it's that you don't go outside unless you are being kicked out of the enclave.

Seven years later, the blogosphere is mostly dead.  Yet this tendency has rapidly accelerated, especially as the central authority of the Church has collapsed under the pontificate of Francis.  To the extent people "follow" Pope Francis, they actually don't follow him.  You follow your favorite interpreter of Pope Francis, whether that be the guys at Where Peter Is, Massimo Faggioli or Austen Ivereigh.  Or maybe you understand the Pope through the prism of Taylor Marshall, One Peter Five, Michael Voris, or someone else.  You trust the likes of bishops such as Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal Burke, Athanasius Schneider, or your favorite internet priest to look at Pope Francis and get through the misunderstanding and present things as they are, for good or ill.  Yet to be blunt:  nobody cares what the Pope actually thinks or says, unless they can use him as a weapon against those they don't like.  (Weapons can be used defensively as well)

These bishops aren't your bishop of old either.  They have global footprints in social media, and often not only have top notch communications teams, their communications teams are far savvier than those in Rome.  Even those who are friendly (or at least neutral) to the Pope have been able to carve out (intentionally or not) a very devoted presence.  None of them have an ability to command as much theoretical respect or authority as a John Paul II, but thanks to today's factionalized landscape, they don't need to be.  It's a lot easier to have an army of 500 facing multiple armies of 1,000 (whose loyalty to each other is quite dubious) than it is to be that 500 facing one single army of 50,000.

Until we have a central authority who can exercise effective control or governance among a large swath of the Church, this situation is not likely to change.  This is the landscape we find ourselves in, even if it is one we do not want.  We have to be able to speak to these smaller forces, form coalitions, work to achieve small goals, etc.  

3.)  This Landscape Favors Traditionalists

With the collapse of central authority (and a central identity) during the pontificate of Francis, everyone in the Roman Rite is trying to figure out how to adjust to this new reality.  Everyone but traditionalists.  Even with our divisions and nuances, we've been playing this game since the mid 1980's, and we've gotten increasingly better at it. Traditionalists have been able to build coalitions with as diverse of groups as Eastern Catholics and the Charismatic Renewal.  Stuebenville, Ohio and Ann Arbor, Michigan, both historically charismatic hotbeds, also have (or are near to) large and highly organized traditionalists communities, and there is a ton of overlap between them.  (We would jokingly refer to "the charismatic delegation" from Christ the King in Ann Arbor coming to visit the Latin Mass in downtown Detroit during feast days.)

As time went on, those connections and coalitions began to form, and ultimately paid big dividends.  For better or worse, a lot of Catholics no longer felt the Pope was a common source of unity and shared identity.  Even if they had generally fond feelings of him, they found they could no longer use his example the way they could in the days of John Paul, and to a lesser extent, Benedict.  That gave traditionalists a pretty good opportunity to use those previous connections and relationships as a way to either win converts, or (just as important), allies who would rally with us in common cause.  We speak to an audience that is often not one that sees eye to eye with us on everything.

To be blunt, who is Where Peter Is and their clerical allies speaking to?  They are speaking mostly to those who are already in total agreement with them.  If you get them unguarded, they'll even admit that, in lamenting how successful traditionalists have been in having a large influence beyond their small numbers.  They have their small enclave, and they've left us a wide playing field, and that reality was why so many Bishops felt fine mostly ignoring a directive from Rome to crush the Latin Mass.

This is the landscape of 2021.  It is pointless to spend time debating over if this is what Christ would have wanted.  It obviously is not, but it is the reality that exists.  Everyone, from the Pope to the pewsitter, helped create this environment.  If we want out of it, we must use this landscape to our advantage:  to show as many people as possible (most who will not become traditionalists) that God wants us to play a part in what is to come, and this part can be very appealing to everyone, not just the Latin Mass attendee.

Traditionalism Must Adapt

When I started pitching ideas for A Traditionalism for the People, I did so because I felt there is a unique opening in the Church today, an opening that traditionalists could exploit for their own benefit, and as a dose of sanity to an increasingly insane Church.  However, in order to do that, we need to change the way we approach a lot of things.  I do not think this requires a change of belief (though in some areas, it would do us well as I hope to show), but I do think it requires us to start framing issues and asking questions in a new way.

To the extent traditionalism has factored into debates about the Church, it has been through the prism of staving off a massive crisis.  While we talk of the "Crisis in the Church" since the Second Vatican Council, I actually think we are talking about two crises.  If one has read the previous narrative I outlined on Traditionis Custodes, you know where this is going, yet I'd like to offer a small recap.

The first crisis came about in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, particularly the troubled pontificate of Paul VI.  Pope Paul began his pontificate looking to eagerly implement the Second Vatican Council, and ended his pontificate unable to hold together a rapidly collapsing Church.  The Church was held together by his successor John Paul II, and the Church collectively breathed a sigh of relief amid all the talk of the "New Springtime."  The dark days of revolution were over, the chaos of Paul's pontificate no more.  Most importantly, there would be no counter-revolution.

There was a lot to this vision, and a lot of people subscribed to it, if just for the hope it offered.  I'd submit it was out of this pontificate the lines of discourse were drawn.  The pontificate of Paul VI was a battle between revolutionary factions (be they "liberal" or "conservative") for who would define the Church's future.  The battle during John Paul II's pontificate was over two points:  whether the revolution was truly over, and what to do next.  

When traditionalists entered the discussions, it was normally on these points.  We argued against the need for further revolution, but offered a stark dissent from our more conservative brethren on the question of "what to do next?"    Behind the cult of personality around John Paul II and his force of nature charisma, serious problems were brewing in the Church.    The cracks that were blown open during the Revolution after the Council weren't going away, no matter how much John Paul and his devotees wished otherwise.  While conservatives were basking in the New Springtime and calls for a "New Evangelization", traditionalists played the role of bitter scold, pointing out any New Evangelization would be mostly fruitless without tackling the corruption in the Church, whether in the practical denial of her doctrine by individuals (lay and cleric alike), or the widespread moral corruption.

While we had this debate, the abuse scandals exploded in the United States and Europe  I submit it was this point, more than anything else, that "ended" the First Crisis after the Council.    Debates about the liturgical reform didn't matter as much when there existed a vast criminal network, overseen by bishops (both liberal and conservatives) who had protected abusers for decades.  After the Dallas meeting, Catholics of all stripes wanted to believe these debates were over, each for their own reasons.  So we put the abuse issue to bed, and returned to our usual debates.

Perhaps, more than anything else, the pontificate of Benedict XVI could be viewed as a return to those usual debates, our "holiday from history", to borrow an old saying about America during the Clinton years.  Yet the abuse crisis was the first sign of a crisis that couldn't be answered by any faction, liberal, conservative, or traditionalist.  These crises accelerated throughout Benedict's pontificate (if under the radar), and exploded during the Pontificate of Francis.  I am going to sidestep the endless debates about how much Francis caused these problems, and settle on the fact he proved himself utterly unable to manage them.

I believe that the failure of Francis to manage these successive crises/scandals has led to the second division of the crisis since the Council.  The day traditionalists long feared has arrived:  The New Springtime is dead, and we are now heading into the cold winter.  Episcopal fraternity is dead, as bishops now openly feud in the public square, and factionalism envelops the Church among the bishops and laity.  The sunny optimism of John Paul II has given way to the bitter scolding of Francis, whose homilies and statements are full of jeremiads against various groups in the Church.  What is common in all of them is barely anyone listens to them, much less their intended audiences.

While we traditionalists may wish to say that we can tie everything back to debates about Dignitatis Humanae or whether the Church of Christ "is" or "subsists in" the Catholic Church, this crisis is different.  This crisis revolves around discussions about the limits of papal and episcopal authority, the role of the laity as participants in the governance of the Church, not just "participate in the life of the Church."  Gone is that weird moment in time where we can debate whether the Church needs to look "outward" or "inward."  The latter is now a necessity, not a mere option.  We may have gotten some things wrong along the way, but overall, traditionalists won the debate.  The seeming strength of the Church under John Paul II was a house of cards that has now collapsed.  When it is rebuilt (by whoever does the rebuilding), the debates surrounding subsitit and various other controversies surrounding Vatican II are not likely to factor into their vision.    We must adapt ourselves to this changing reality, lest we join the Pope and his increasingly aged revolutionaries in the waters of irrelevance.

A Traditionalism for the People

In the wake of the Popes (initially unsuccessful) attempt at suppressing the Latin Mass, I've seen a lot of talk about how traditionalism needs to rethink itself, sometimes even reinvent itself.  Some of this is useful and helpful.  While we like to think of a Church that moves "in centuries, not years', the reality is that the landscape we inherit in 2021 is radially different than the Church of 1962.  I would even say the landscape is dramatically different than when I began writing back in 2001 as a newly minted Catholic.  If we cannot address that landscape effectively, we are no better than Pope Francis, who has completely and utterly failed to confront these new realities, bitter at a world and Church that does not behave like he thinks it should.

Yet I think a lot of these attempts are doomed to failure.  Before exploring better options, lets look at what I think will not work.

Signaling too Hard

The first impulse tries too hard.  It looks at a lot of online elements of traditionalism, is embarassed, and overcompensates.  Its not enough to conclude that the Council doesn't teach heresy. Indeed, we have to think it is an "essential guidance for Catholics in the modern world".  This is something very few non-trads actually believe, much less trads.  Nobody goes "how should I live my life as a Catholic" and starts a deep dive into the Second Vatican Council's decrees.  That's just not how real people work.  No Catholic would seriously dive into the decrees of Trent or various other pastoral councils to figure out how to live their lives.  The majority of Catholics throughout history have never read a word from an ecumenical council, or a word from a papal document.  There's nothing wrong with that.  If we want to reimagine traditionalism, we need to stop lying to our audience.  Nobody is looking at how to renew their lives in 2021 by doing a deep dive on Vatican II.  We can say that while still holding the documents don't teach error or depart from Catholic teaching, and in some cases might even offer something useful.

Yet we do this because we feel we have to fit in.  A lot of online theologians try to act like the ideal Catholic life is centered around a the Summa, the Ecumenical Councils, and papal encyclicals.  They then gather with other online theologians and talk about what the ideal Catholicism would be.  Speculative theology is fun, but its not something you build a movement around.  Its not something you build renewal around.  Its a fun book of the month club for eggheads.

Restoring..... What Exactly?

There is another bad impulse that needs to be countered, though I sincerely think this impulse has been on the wane.  Traditionalism has always had a certain restorationist and counter-revolutionary current to it.  We will end the "crisis in the Church" when we abandon what came after the Council, or 1969, or whatever.  We will then "return to tradition" and go back to renewal.

Like the first approach, there is little attachment to reality here.  One can appreciate a lot of the good that came in the pre-concilliar era, and think that the modern approach that everything before 1962 doesn't matter to Catholics today is silly, and cuts off the Church from an awful lot of her intellectual and spiritual heritage. We could revert back to 1962 and have the flourishing external Church of that era, yet we would pretty quickly wind up in more or less the same situation.  We could move back to the era of St. Pius X, and within 60 years we would probably still be at the Second Vatican Council.  We should not look at traditionalism as an attempt at recreating a particular ideal time.  Like the first example, this is a book of the month club for eggheads.  True restoration comes in not only applying the wisdom of previous eras to today, but in understanding what didn't work from those previous eras, and how many of the problems today find their embryonic form in earlier eras.  

So What Then?

If we've examined what's wrong with other attempts to reimagine traditionalism, what should we focus on instead.  I think both failed approaches have the same root:  they attempt to transform renewal into a mere intellectual exercise and discussion club.  These have their uses.  In a certain sense, this writing is the product of those discussions.  I will even be going to dinner with some local trads this weekend, where I will likely be pitching them on this very topic.

If we want true renewal, we have to understand how limited this stuff is, and we need to be able to offer the Church something more.  We have to offer to traditionalists a way to deepen their faith and their commitment to renewal, and we need to offer the Church at large an authenticity and uniqueness that is sorely lacking, in both the lay and clerical state, from the smallest to the throne of St. Peter itself.  If I were to offer a few foundational ideas, they would be:

- The Primacy of an individual AND communal relationship with Jesus Christ

- The Centrality of the Sacred Scriptures

- A spirituality focused on Interior Renewal

- The Right Ordering of the temporal in our lives, and in society, towards the Gospel (without it necessarily being a political program)

- The Sacred Liturgy is the Primary Means of Mediating this experience in your life, especially in the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass, though not exclusively so.

What don't you see in this list?  You don't see:

- What to think about Pope Francis or any Church leader, lay or clerical

- What to think about this or that Ecumenical Council

- Who you should vote for in the upcoming election

The Catholic Church exists, as a divine institution founded by Our Lord, for the purpose of guiding us along the path to heaven.  She guides in a sense of fixing the boundaries, and major points along the way.  Outside of that, there isn't a lot of direct control.  Indeed, the Church has put herself in a bad position many times when she overthinks her Divine Mission, and attempts to supplement that Divine Mission with human programs or ideological goals often lead not just to ruin, but to irrelevance.

I don't propose scrapping a lot of the other ways to reimagine traditionalism.  They have their uses, even the ones that try too hard.  But I do think that first and foremost, we should have a Traditionalism for the People of God, offering something to Catholics that they have often felt lacking from the Church:  a reason to care.

To the few hundred people who read this, and to the 50 or 60 fans, I hope that last sentence gets your attention.  We will explore this theme in future writings:  the biggest threat to the Church is not that she can preach a false message, but that she preaches something nobody cares about.  I'd say that's exactly what is happening right now, and that is what we need to reverse course on.

Traditionis Custodes: Now What?

We're at the end of our series on building a narrative to understand Traditionis Custodes, and more importantly, the muted reaction of Bishops so far to the document.  Outside of a Bishop in Puerto Rico, there really aren't a lot of cases of bishops enthusiastically using the document as it was clearly intended by the Pope:  to suppress the Latin Mass.   Even left leaning prelates like Cardinal Nichols have dispensed congregations from the restrictions on barring the Latin Mass from parish Churches.  While only anecdotal, its not uncommon to hear of attendance at the Latin Mass increasing since the Motu Proprio, and (as was entirely predictable) the SSPX parishes being the chief beneficiary.  This is all encouraging, and should cause some individuals to try to understand a lot of what has happened before in light of these realities.  This narrative was an imperfect attempt to do it, and I hope it has brought understanding.

What comes next is a bit tougher.  Nobody can read the future.  The Pope could die tomorrow, and this would all become basically a dead letter.  (Controversially, I think there are quite a few bishops on all sides of the ideological spectrum who, while not wishing that scenario, wouldn't view it the end of the world either.)  Yet I think some things are pretty clear.

1.)  The Pope knows time is not on his side.

If anyone can agree on anything here, it is that this document was clearly rushed out the door.  Few if anyone outside of bishops in Italy were consulted about the move.  Even senior members of the Curia closely allied with Francis were left in the dark.  Key bishops in the countries where the Latin Mass flourished were unaware of what was coming.  As more and more bishops are basically setting aside the document stating that life continues more or less as before, Rome has been muted.  I don't take this as a sign of "failure" so much as lack of planning.  They had no clue what was going to happen next, because their clearest priority was getting it out the door.  Something clearly spooked the Pope and his advisors that the chaos was necessary to getting the document out as fast as possible.  The likeliest and easiest explanation is the fact that Francis spent a lengthy stint in the hospital, far longer than anyone anticipated.  He's in his 80's, has one working lung, and had a death scare.  He had to act now because time is not on the side of the Revolution he is trying to now become the avatar of.

2.)  The Papacy itself is now at a crossroads

As our narrative detailed, since John Paul II the office of the papacy has increasingly become the avatar of Catholicism, and the person of the pope synonymous with not just Catholic doctrine, but Catholic practice.  There were reasons John Paul did this (which we covered), but the simple reality is that this model of Catholicism was never sustainable.  Modern communication not only increases someone's visibility, it increases the visibility of opposition.  In the age of Twitter and the 24/7 news cycle (something in its infancy when he died), John Paul II's papacy would have been impossible. Francis used a lot of the initial favorable media coverage to build a brand as the great leveler, the visionary who was going to point the Church on a bold new (even if grounded officially in Catholic doctrine) path.  Those who did not want that path understood they were not alone in ways that just weren't possible in previous eras.

Another way the old model is dead is that it is very tough, in a polarized age, to punish a dissident.  Whether its Fr. James Altman or German clerics, Church authority coming down in a heavy handed matter, while it might thrill partisans, probably won't accomplish much on the ground.  Local German clerics have a lot more influence over their flocks than Rome does, and Fr. Altman responded to being removed from his parish by raising a quarter of a million dollars in a weekend.  Even suspending him probably won't do much good at this point  You need legitimacy among the crowd these individuals are targeting in this environment, and Francis, functionally, has none.  He is the Pope who reigns in Rome, but he does not rule there.

The Pope could respond to the motu proprio mostly being ignored by attempting to compel bishops to crack down harder on the Latin Mass.  He might prevail on a few voices, but the general result is he will just increasingly make it worse.  He would have to change canon law in a blatantly pretextual fashion, or start removing Bishops from their sees because they won't crack down on their flock hard enough.

3.)  The Imperial Papacy is Dead.... and Good Riddance

I had a discussion with an old trad blogger, one of the first.  He reacted "Imagine if we had a pope who was willing to use the kind of power Francis did.... but for good?  For Tradition?"  The majority of Catholics today had their formative years during the John Paul II era.  Their view of the papacy is colored by his pontificate, for good or ill.    It is natural to see a Pope like Francis, and wonder what a Pope "on our side" would be able to accomplish if he acted in a similar fashion.

The reality is that a Pope who acted in a similar fashion, but for our side, would likely find the exact same frustration as Francis has, but for our side.    Even if you take out all the negative scandals of this pontificate, you still have a pontificate that finds it hard to corral bishops in line.  He hasn't met with the College of Cardinals, as a college, in years.  In the age of social media, the Pope really is one voice among many, and he probably isn't the most influential voice for hundreds of millions of Catholics.  A "good" pope might change this at the margins, but its not going to change drastically, because the issues at play are far bigger than this pontificate.

I submit we should look at that reality and say one word:  Good.  Arguing over whether or not a decentralized Church is a good or bad thing is besides the point:  that decentralization is a reality.  Further attempts by Francis to centralize everything have either led to further decentralizing, or paralysis of authority.  This is something my ultramontane friend failed to understand, and something I think all ultramontanes fail to understand.  Authority becoming more and more centralized just means that it becomes more and more paralyzed.  When you centralize everything in a network, you centralize a single point of failure.  When the papacy is bad, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  When the papacy is helmed by an ineffective leader, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  When a pope is diminished in his capacity by age or health, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  (The health issues of Pius XII and John Paul II led to constant infighting and factionalism in Rome, factionalism that profoundly impacted later both the Council and many of the crises of the Church after JPII died.)

How far one wishes to take this discussion is a legitimate point of inquiry, and we should absolutely resist any attempt to turn the Church into a democratic institution, or go the route of national Churches.  Yet traditionalists can no longer sit on the sidelines.  In the post-francis world, and especially in a world where the revolutionary generation finally dies off, we will have to rebuild.  Let's not waste our time rebuilding something that should stay dead.

4.)  The Divisions of the John Paul II Era are Dead.... and Good Riddance

I legitimately think that when Francis enacted the motu proprio, he and his advisors figured that we could just return to the world that existed from 1988-2007 with the Latin Mass:  something tightly regulated on its way to extinction, and using "conservatives' to fight traditionalists.  This was the world of Fabian Bruskewitz, First Things, The Wanderer, as well as priests and clerics who viewed the Latin Mass as a threat to the established order, so therefore it had to be contained, if not outright eliminated.

That world no longer exists.  As detailed elsewhere, to the extent the civil war between traditionalists and conservatives was waged, it was a war traditionalists won, mostly without firing a shot.  Those who will be fighting traditionalists are those who not only can't appeal to traditionalists, they can't appeal to anyone else either.  The person who views the 1970's as the glory days of the Church is a rare breed, even among more liberal Catholics.  Conservative Catholics were just as horrified by that age as trads were.  John Paul II offered a way out of the chaos of the 70's, but also appealed to those who held strongly conservative views on morality and anti-communism.  What does Francis have that can possibly appeal to these individuals?  What would a successor steeped in the revolution have?

None of this is to say that the revolution is truly over, or that the Pope is out of options in his crusade to make traditionalists suffer.  It is just that those options will put the Church through considerable pain, without much long-term reward for him and his ilk.  At this point, the goal is to make everyone realize that considerable pain is unnecessary and counterproductive.  Our first step is negotiating a peace for the Church to hold to.  Whoever can accomplish that will dictate much of the post-Francis world, and likely the post Traditionis Custodes world.

Traditionis Custodes and the Permanent Revolution

We are almost two weeks into life after Pope Francis' motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which attempted to suppress the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. In the document I wish to briefly explain what it wanted to do, and why it wanted to do it, and, most importantly for our discussion, what was required to make it work.

As mentioned before, you will hear a lot of gaslighting from people who say that the motu proprio "restored control over the liturgy to the Bishop." Some of these people believe that the motu proprio actually did this, so they have to create an alternative reality where before the MP, it was liturgical anarchy. Others are people operating in bad faith. To help dispel the notion, let us remember what Summorum Pontificum said:

Art. 5. §1 In parishes, where there is a stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition, the pastor should willingly accept their requests to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962, and ensure that the welfare of these faithful harmonizes with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the guidance of the bishop in accordance with Canon 392, avoiding discord and favoring the unity of the whole Church.

What does canon 392 say?

Can. 392 §1. Since he must protect the unity of the universal Church, a bishop is bound to promote the common discipline of the whole Church and therefore to urge the observance of all ecclesiastical laws.

§2. He is to exercise vigilance so that abuses do not creep into ecclesiastical discipline, especially regarding the ministry of the word, the celebration of the sacraments and sacramentals, the worship of God and the veneration of the saints, and the administration of goods. 

The Bishop always had control over how the liturgy was celebrated in his diocese. Summorum Pontificum gave power to priests to respond to the wishes of the faithful to celebrate the Latin Mass, but it was still regulated by Bishops.  A priest could not simply abolish the Novus Ordo at his parish. As mentioned in the first article, Summorum was a peace treaty, an attempt for everyone to live in peace in a diocese, so liturgy was not setup against liturgy.  The Bishops primary goal was to use his power to regulate that harmony.

Traditionis Custodes is radically different.  The Bishop is no longer to be the guardian of that peace, so much as an agent of force in establishing liturgical conformity, as Francis lays out in his letter explaining why he felt the need to issue the decree

Responding to your requests, I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite. I take comfort in this decision from the fact that, after the Council of Trent, St. Pius V also abrogated all the rites that could not claim a proven antiquity, establishing for the whole Latin Church a single Missale Romanum. For four centuries this Missale Romanum, promulgated by St. Pius V was thus the principal expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, and functioned to maintain the unity of the Church. Without denying the dignity and grandeur of this Rite, the Bishops gathered in ecumenical council asked that it be reformed; their intention was that “the faithful would not assist as strangers and silent spectators in the mystery of faith, but, with a full understanding of the rites and prayers, would participate in the sacred action consciously, piously, and actively”.  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. 

All the talk about how bad traditionalists allegedly are is clearly a pretext.  "A single and identical prayer" is the goal he wants, and he feels that his predecessors ruptured that by allowing the Latin Mass.  This is an error he intends to correct.  In case anyone doubts this point:

While, in the exercise of my ministry in service of unity, I take the decision to suspend the faculty granted by my Predecessors, I ask you to share with me this burden as a form of participation in the solicitude for the whole Church proper to the Bishops. In the Motu proprio I have desired to affirm that it is up to the Bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the liturgical life of the Church of which he is the principle of unity, to regulate the liturgical celebrations. It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum. 

He is asking the Bishops to "shoulder the burden" of forcing everyone in the Roman Rite to worship in the exact same way.  How are they to shoulder the burden?  According to the motu proprio, the Roman Pontiff:

1. Restricts the right of the diocesan bishop to decide how he should use his parishes.
2. Restricts the right of the diocesan bishop to decide who is fit to celebrate the Latin Mass if they are ordained after a certain date.
3. Restricts the right of the diocesan bishop to establish groups to meet the pastoral needs of the faithful.
4. Tells the Bishop that they are not competent or trustworthy enough to decide on these matters, therefore Rome must make the decision for them

This is a document where the pope attempts to make bishops enact a radical conformity throughout the Roman Rite, and there is no intention that it stops there.  The only reason Eastern liturgies and the Anglican usage is not included in this goal of conformity is not a doctrinal or theological principle:  it is a political concession.  The diocesan bishop is no longer a shepherd of his own diocese in communion with Rome, he is a middle manager who exists to carry out the directives of his boss. Or to use the French Revolutionary language, bishops are transformed into representatives on mission, whose goal is to enforce conformity, by any means necessary.  This is the truest act of Revolution by Francis:  an attempt to force the entire Roman Rite (and later the entire Catholic Church) to abandon unity in diversity, and instead bask in the revolutionary conformity of the Second Vatican Council.

It is easily the most expansive reading of papal authority since Quo Primum, and perhaps larger.  Yet something weird happened on the way of the Pope demanding Bishops embrace his revolutionary spirit:  most of them shrugged.

Certainly a few bishops have made the decision with gusto.  A Bishop in Puerto Rico went even further, using this motu proprio as a pretext to ban not just the Latin Mass, but several items involved in the celebration of the Novus Ordo.  Yet outside of this, most bishops simply ignored the Pope's motu proprio to the greatest extent possible:

1. Several bishops and bishops conferences wrote warm letters of support to traditionalists, informing them that their pastoral needs will still be served
2. The reaction of almost every bishop has been to extend faculties for saying the Latin Mass, in many dioceses indefinitely
3. Following the lead of Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, bishops began dispensing the faithful from having to observe the more revolutionary aspects of the decree:  regular parishes could still celebrate the Latin Mass, and it is almost certain you will see dispensations regarding newly ordained priests having to get clearance from Rome to celebrate it.  (Or the "consultation" will simply be he is celebrating it, deal with it.)

The Bishops didn't do this because they are crypto trads. Rather they deeply resented the Pope attempting to restrict their authority to be shepherds of their flock, and used all the tools canon law provides them to defend their privileges.  If the Pope wants to continue his personal vendetta, he will have to substantially change canon law to do so.

It remains up to Pope Francis to respond.  His clearly desired will that Bishops crush the Latin Mass and force every Catholic in the Roman Rite into uniformity was rejected by the individuals he expected to carry out the task.  I wish to repeat:  you will see some bishops restrict it.  Yet as we will explore next, the popes will has been thwarted.... for now.  What comes next is unknown, but we must plot a way forward in that world.

How We Got Here: Pope Francis' Revolution. Sort Of.

 There is a lot of commentary on the ideology of Pope Francis.  On the one end, there is a meme that shows John Paul II saying "this is what we believe", Benedict saying "this is why we believe it" and Francis "Now do it."  In short, Francis is in perfect harmony and continuity with his predecessors.  On the other, some of his most devoted advisors (like the now disgraced plagiarist Fr. Thomas Rosica) who openly laud the fact that Francis has reached such an advanced spirituality he is no longer bound in the way his successors were.  You will find everything in between this.

As interesting (and as clickbait worthy) that discussion is, I don't want to have it.  Put simply, Pope Francis is idiosyncratic ideologically.... as are most human beings. The ideological labels of a short period in time never accurately capture a man, and Francis is a man who is as known for his inconsistencies as he is his ability to apologize when he (often) screws up.  (He has apologized for his personal statements and behavior in a way his predecessors probably should have emulated!)  Instead, we will focus on the general narrative we have attempted to build.  As with all narratives, they can be imperfect and lack nuance, but I think this one holds, and will continue to hold.

When Jorge Bergoglio ascended the papal throne, he had a choice.  He could roll back his predecessors caution, and continue the revolution that had been viewed as stagnant since the middle portion of Paul VI's pontificate.  He could have chosen to continue to govern in the mode of Benedict, in moving beyond the Second Vatican Council.  There were ample issues to cover if he chose to do that.  While John Paul and Benedict honed in on dragging the Church towards concluding the revolution, several scandals reached a fever pitch.  Some began before the Council or its immediate aftermath, others were decidedly modern.  These had a potential to shut down the Church in her mission just as much as ideological incoherence over what an ecumenical council meant.  Both required a lot of resources.

Faced with the fork in the road, Francis took it.  He tried to be a Pope of both the revolution, and of the post-revolution.  He promised a dramatic opening of the Church towards the way it approached a post-Christian culture, promising change in how the Church approaches divorce and homosexuals.  What was that change?  It was "mercy."  What did "mercy" entail?  That was the beauty of it, everyone could impart their own understanding of mercy.  His revolutionary instincts became clear when he at first permitted discussion of if the divorced and civilly remarried could receive the Eucharist, something Church law and the Magisterium unambiguously prohibited.  That permission became a clear evidence that he wanted to change Church discipline, while ostensibly upholding Church teaching.  (Again the details of how this tension would be worked out were never explained.)   When the Bishops of Africa (followed by Eastern Europe and the United States) pushed back, the Pope lit into them with a searing condemnation of his brother bishops as "False Christians" at the close of the second synod on the family.  The Pope and a contingent of Bishops engaged in rather open warfare at the Synod, and what happened was.... the status quo.  (Sound familiar?)

The Pope also attempted to be the Pope of the post-revolution, promising sweeping ethics reform and financial transparency.  He prepared to wage war against "the establishment", and would even say that "the people" were on his side.  Within one year of that promise of bold reform, the individual he brought in to investigate corruption was gone, and "the establishment" looked stronger than ever.  This continued until the issue fell out of the Pope's hands, when journalists uncovered a pretty massive corruption scandal at the highest levels of the Vatican.  As of now, one cardinal has faced criminal indictment for this scandal, and several other clerics in the Vatican, all close allies of Pope Francis, are implicated.  For all the talk of sweeping reform, the status quo reigned, until it imploded.  Pope Francis, while attempting to take credit, had nothing to do with it.  All he could do was react, attempting to pass the same sweeping reforms he rejected in the beginning of his pontificate, but which now appear to outsiders as far too little, far too late

He also showed a remarkable continuity with his predecessors in utterly bungling the sex abuse scandals.  Whether it was going out of his way to protect close allies (only to later abandon them) like Gustavo Zanchetta and Theodore McCarrick, or his unprecedented attacking of abuse victims as liars seeking attention, or the mysterious case of a Bishop in Honduras closely connected to his closest advisor (said advisor has essentially retired for medical reasons going on 4 years now), even close allies have been forced to admit the Pope's handling of abuse was sub par.

Pope Francis was also impacted by a trend that continued to accelerate from the pontificate of Benedict:  people cared less and less about the Second Vatican Council.  By July of 2021 the Second Vatican Council had been finished for 56 years.  The amount of people who can intelligently remember the concluding days of the Council is declining, and rapidly so.  It is hard to say those who lived before the Council can accurately even describe what the "pre-concilliar" Church was like, as almost all of them were children, and time blends together the past.  The group of people who continue to wave the Bloody Shirt of the Council is increasingly small, gray haired, and of increasingly limited mobility.  As this generation passes, we are beginning to see the first generation who grew up under the peace of Summorum.  They still most likely didn't attend the Latin Mass, but they know someone who has, might know where one is being celebrated, and overall aren't very concerned with them.

Furthermore, it isn't even clear that the issues of the Second Vatican Council matter as much anymore.  Since 2014, there has been a great debate in politics throughout the world attempting to define the balance between international institutions and national sovereignty: a debate the Council Fathers, to the extent they were familiar with it, would have viewed it settled.  The Middle East is a dramatically different world.  Dignitatis Humanae implicitly assumed a state indifferent to Christianity, rather than in many areas of the world (and increasingly the West) hostility towards it.  Gaudium et Spes can't really tell us anything.  The ecumenical movement with Protestants the Council praised as a vanguard of the future is mostly dead.  None of this is the fault of the Council.  No sane Catholic reads everything that occurs through all time through the prism of any one council, especially one that was primarily concerned with addressing the pastoral issues of the era it was held.  This isn't even to say the Council was worthless.  Just that for more and more people, it is the same to them as Trent or Vatican I:  a historical occurrence that is nice for research and study, but not necessarily relevant to their everyday lives.

I would argue this should be the way we understand the Church leading up to the motu proprio, and how it helps us understand the muted to hostile reaction it has received not just from laity, but the bishops as well.  What specifically provoked that hostility also helps us understand that reaction.

How We Got Here: The Peace of Summorum

 As mentioned yesterday, Benedict's promulgating of Summorum Pontificum, in addition to loosening most restrictions around the Latin Mass, might also be viewed as the Bishop of Rome declaring the revolution after Vatican II completed, and now an attempt to return to some sort of normal governance in the Church began.  While most histories of revolutions focus on how the old order is overthrown, revolutions are at their messiest when they try to establish a new order.

Because that new order lacks the legitimacy of time and tradition, it often requires the use of force to implement, a force that is not meant to be the norm.  The flip side of this is conformity to the new way is rigidly enforced.  The truest sign a revolution is over is when those in power are comfortable enough to not attempt to enforce that rigidity.  (This will become very important later.)  In this sense, Summorum (along with various other moves towards traditionalists regarding how to interpret the Second Vatican Council) as one of the first post-revolutionary documents of the Church since the Council.

While it seems weird to say it now, nobody really knew how this post-revolutionary order would look.  The final decade (at least) of John Paul's pontificate, and the beginning of Benedicts, involved nasty public spats over the liturgy, and a Vatican increasingly unable to reign in the worst of abuses, despite a CDW decree devoted to abuse and a papal encyclical on the Eucharist.  Even those who had a love of the rich Roman liturgical tradition were pretty starkly divided.  Now that Summorum allowed both forms to stand on its own, what would be the vehicle for liturgical reform going forward?  Would it be the Novus Ordo, in a "Reform of the Reform?"  Or would it be the Extraordinary Form?  Perhaps the more precise question is, who would drive the discussion about liturgical reform in the Church?

A funny thing happened with this debate:  there wasn't a debate.  Even those who backed a "reform of the reform" more or less accepted that going forward, the Extraordinary Form would dictate how to think about liturgical reverence, even in the Novus Ordo.  It wasn't just "using latin" in the Ordinary Form:  the sacred music used was often the same music used for pieces of the Latin Mass.  You would not hear "Mass of Creation" at a conservative Novus Ordo, you would have the musical pieces of a Missa de Angelis.  A lot of the priests who wanted the Novus Ordo done with reverence celebrated the Latin Mass freely.  The liturgical reform became less about "what do we change to get back on the path to tradition", but "how can we unlock the richness of liturgical tradition to lift souls to God?"  

Outside of the liturgy, a similar paradigm shift occurred.  During John Paul II's pontificate, you had liberals, you had conservatives, and you had traditionalists.  The nastiest fights happened between traditionalists and conservatives.    With Benedict, those lines blurred.  Conservatives who attended the Novus Ordo dropped a lot of the strident objections they had to traditionalists.  The average person who sat in the pews felt "well the pope has allowed it, so that's fine by me", and even started becoming friends with those who went to the Latin Mass.  People who attended the Novus Ordo nonetheless began intermingling with traditionalists, in some cases marrying them.  There were always differences, but those differences mattered less.

It is for this reason people talk about Benedict's pontificate being a "turn to the right."  John Paul II viewed himself the guardian of the legacy of the Council.  By the time Benedict became pope and talked about a "Hermeneutic of continuity" between Vatican II and the past, most were okay with that, even traditionalists.  There was once a priest who, convinced traditionalists were skeptical of the Second Vatican Council, decided to have every priest who celebrated the weekly TLM give homilies on the Council and how to understand it, for an entire year.  The project was abandoned by two months.  It was not abandoned because people rejected the teaching:  it was rejected because everyone was bored.  The documents simply weren't relevant to their lives.

This was the point a lot of people missed, but I think it becomes increasingly important:  Vatican II started losing relevance to the lives of Catholics.  During the entire pontificate of John Paul, it was believed as an article of faith that you had to read the documents of the Council to understand what was going on in the world, and how to fix it.  Yet as Benedict's return to normal order continued, people just stopped thinking that.  There was no "turn back the clock" movement, but just a general "well, the last four decades were chaotic, hopefully we can move on now."  A lot of problems had arisen that Vatican II offered precious little on.

The final major change relevant to us is that the demographics of the Traditional Latin Mass underwent a profound change during the pontificate of Benedict.  Before 2007, the Latin Mass was mainly the playground of the old.  There were a few people in their young 20's such as this author, but most were 50 and older.  A large minority were 70 and older.  Post Summorum, the demographics shifted dramatically towards the younger.  The average age of your Mass attendee went from in the 50's to the 30's.  Masses became packed with young children and young families  The Latin Mass became primarily a movement centered around youth, and the laity.

These three changes happened without a lot of fanfare or even attention, but I submit they become very important the day Benedict abdicates the papacy, and when Jorge Bergoglio ascends it, for reasons we will talk about next.

How We Got Here

Something interesting happened over the weekend.  The Pope issued a clarion call for holy war to be waged upon the Latin Mass, and issued a motu proprio that was, by his own admission, the first step towards its gradual abolition.  The funny thing that happened is very few bishops were eager to take up the call to begin the purge.  This no doubt surprised traditionalist and Rome alike.  I think understanding why requires a bit of unpacking.  Obviously this could all change if Rome applies extra pressure, yet I'm skeptical it will.  I also think in unpacking this, we trads can confront some realities we need to examine as to how we got here.  We do have a hand to play in this current situation, but its not in the way most think.

First, we get to smash a trope some of our friends across the way try to deny.  For the purposes of telling this story, let's get the obvious out of the way:  There was a revolution in the Church surrounding the Second Vatican Council.  Whether you buy the "good revolution" at the beginning (when most of the original schema were voted down" as opposed to the "bad revolution" of 1965 (when the council was implemented in a way far beyond what the Council mandated), or you think the revolution didn't go far enough, a revolution occurred.  What came out of the Council, for better or worse, was a new way for the Church to operate that was fundamentally different than what came before it, even if there were some developments in the immediate years before the Council one could cite as precedent.  Like all revolutions, chaos erupted in its wake, and the debate became less about how to reform the Church, and became more about who to blame for the chaos.

I think this is the world we need to consider when Karol Wojtyla ascended the papal throne as John Paul II.  He had essentially inherited a Church on the brink of anarchy.  If he didn't step in and DO SOMETHING, the entire project was going to fail, the revolution would be over, and there's a real chance you get the inevitable counter-revolution. (In 1978, that was still at least somewhat a possibility.)  Along with allies like Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul II took it upon himself to be custodian of the Second Vatican Council, and by extension, custodian of its revolution.  This also meant ending the revolution upon terms agreeable to him.  

To achieve this, John Paul II centralized the Church on a level unimagined by his predecessors.  Whether through canon law, motu proprio's, papal encyclicals, or sheer force of personality, everything in the Roman Catholic Church became identified with the person of John Paul II.  In a thought-provoking essay, Arturo Vasquez compared John Paul II to Napoleon Bonaparte, and I think that is correct:

I need not enter into details concerning the tumultuous events of the Second Vatican Council and the 1960’s. In my interpretation, the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI were the revolutionary period parallel to the 18th century timeline, with perhaps the Roman Curia playing the part of Robespierre collectively. Paul VI ruled the Church as an indecisive and conflicted figure, especially after the debacle of Humanae Vitae. If his court represented the Jacobins, Bonaparte came in the form of a prelate from Poland, the now sainted Karol Wojtyla or John Paul II. Even though he eschewed the tiara and other traditional marks of Papal authority and gravitas, his rule by charisma and geopolitical power-plays invoked the famed French general who conquered Europe and crowned himself emperor. Such a regime had the character of authority but was based on the previous revolt that congealed into the rule of one figure who survived the political tumult. The papacy of John Paul II was marked by a revolutionary impulse that continued under the guidance of an authority figure who displayed characteristics of a traditional mentality (Marian piety, conservative sexual morality, anti-communism) while carrying out the plan of the Revolution (reformed Canon Law, ecumenism, liturgical “creativity”, continued promotion of progressive prelates, etc.)

It is this centralization that I think matters more than anything else for our story.  By the time he died, John Paul II had arguably saved the revolution, or at the very least, bought it considerable time.  The impending collapse was staved off, a surge in pride for Catholic identity occurred, and he was succeeded by his top lieutenant, as Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI.  While some look at Benedict as someone who represented "a turn to the right", I think that's inaccurate.

I think Benedict looked to end the Revolution, and return the Church to normal governance, or at least normal governance of the Church no longer suffering dramatic reversals depending on the occupant of the papal throne.  In that regard, he governed as a more academic (and more reserved) version of John Paul II, yet as John Paul had in mind saving the Revolution, Benedict was concerned with its end.

Part of that end regarded the Latin Mass. When Archbishop Lefebrve broke with Rome and consecrated 4 bishops against the Pope's wishes, there was a real worry a far greater schism could take hold, due to the status of the Latin Mass.  If it remained inaccessible outside of the Society, the Society would soon have a very powerful source for Catholics to rally around.  To save the Revolution, John Paul II promulgated Ecclesia Dei Afflictica, taking the existing Indult for the Latin Mass and encouraging Bishops to offer it more generously.  When Benedict became Pope, it was time to look at that.  He could do one of two things:  make the Latin Mass a permanent part of the Church, or suppress it.  This question isn't academic:  as Cardinal Ratzinger, he at one time espoused the idea that there could only be one form of the Roman Rite in use, that's what made the Latin Mass so dangerous.  

Yet that was as Cardinal Ratzinger.  As Benedict, he wanted to end the revolution.  To suppress the Latin Mass would require a pretty strong revision to canon law, and would require a theological vision of the Church (to make war on its ancestry) that Benedict was never very comfortable with.  It was that desire to make war on their ancestors that made the original young revolutionary Benedict break with his more radical colleagues.  (He signed on for revolution not to burn, but to build.)  The Latin Mass had grown for almost 20 years within the Church, and would have required a lot of resources to suppress.  If it must survive, it had to fit within a new theological vision.

That theological vision was Summorum Pontificum. It envisioned an idea of two different uses of the Roman Rite, in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form. Later added was Anglicanorum coetibus, establishing provision for an "Anglican Use" form of the Mass for Anglicans who wished to enter into the Catholic Church's communion.  This theological vision even began to grasp with a fundamental question:  the Roman Rite had grown from being the Mass of Rome to the Mass of 5 continents, and most of South Asia as well.  As this occurred, legitimate debates regarding how to incorporate such a vast cultural expression into one Roman Rite for everyone emerged.  The consensus was:  you can't.

Since Friday morning, you've heard a lot of historical revisionism about how this theological vision had failed, but its worth noting that as recently as the Amazonian Synod, there was talk of having a liturgy for indigenous people  using the same principles as the Anglican Ordinariate.

We're going to stop here for now with that narrative, but I think there's a few things we should come to terms with.

1.)  The Revolution of Vatican II was almost entirely successful.  There is no going back to the way things were done before. For the most part, even most traditionalists really don't want to.  If they could, it's now 2021, nobody really has any idea how it was "before" anyways.  This doesn't mean Vatican II was good or bad, just that the revolution it inspired isn't going anyway.  What comes next in the Church, even if it is a turn "to the right", will be within the framework and memory of the Second Vatican Council.

2.)  Summorum Pontificum was not so much a grand victory for traditionalists as it was a favorable surrender.  Trads accepted the revolution was over, and in return got quite a bit.  They got their Latin Mass mostly unrestricted.  What was required to be accepted for Vatican II was reduced substantially, and in many cases, a pretty traditionalist interpretation of the documents (such as with religious liberty) was deemed acceptable.  It was not just terms for the Latin Mass, but terms by which they would be re-integrated into the larger Church.  Benedict got peace.  By peace I don't mean freedom from criticism or debate, but an understanding those debates took place along lines dictated by the Church.  (His attempts to reconcile the SSPX can be considered along the same lines.)

3.)  As we will explore next, trads embraced their reintegration into the Church about as well as could be expected, and were far more effective than could be expected.  We will pick up the narrative tomorrow to see what happened after Summorum Pontificum.

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.

Mistakes Priests Make Engaging Traditionalists

I know this is going to come across a bit harsh.  I don't have that big of an audience anymore (kinda tough when you disappear every 12 months to do other things!), but I still do have quite a few priests who read.  Some of them celebrate the Latin Mass, or they have congregations where several have asked for a more generous offering of the Extraordinary Form.  These priests mean well.  They are trying to do their best to be shepherds with the limited resources they have.

So it is not lightly that I say a lot of their approach should be thrown out the window.  A lot of the present attempts to engage traditionalists are just bad pastoral care, and often rooted in a poor approach.  I am well aware of the need of traditionalists to grow in holiness and spirituality, even if I reject the self-loathing trad hungry for mainstream cred genre of traditionalism currently occupied by the likes of Michael Warren Davis.  We can talk about that later if you want, and we can talk about it for hours.  For now, I'd like to offer a bit of friendly (even if biting) correction to some of our spiritual fathers, with the hopes of helping them to become a better spiritual father.

Mistake One:  There is no "Traditionalist"

By this I don't mean there's not a pretty coherent worldview that those who claim the label traditionalist adhere to.  They certainly do.  They have an attachment to the Latin Mass.  They are generally skeptical of Vatican II and the popes since.  They reciprocate the pope's seething disdain of them.  That might tell you what they believe.  It doesn't tell you anything about who they are.

That's right, I'm writing a column about how to engage traditionalists and my first point is there isn't a "traditionalist approach" to engagement.  (Look, be glad I got it out of the way early!  If you stick with me, I can offer something better, I promise.)  Belief doesn't tell you about their background, their pastoral needs, their struggles, etc.  It offers a sliver of insight into who they are, but it's a very narrow sliver.  

Mistake Two:  The Traditionalist Cosplayer  

When trying to reach out to traditionalists, a priest may say something of the following.

"I love the Latin Mass.  I think it's beautiful.  I wish it were more available."

When you see this kind of talk, show a bit of pity and grace towards this priest.  He has no clue what he's talking about, but he's likely trying in good faith.  As ,mistake one makes clear, I can't speak for all trads.  But I do think many will read this and nod their head in agreement.  

The truth is:  we don't care that you love the Latin Mass and think it's beautiful.  If you aren't offering it, we also don't care you think it should be made more available.  Yes, we think the Latin Mass is beautiful.  That's why we're attending it.  We don't need to be told that.  Instead, whenever we hear those words, we instinctively wait for the "butttttt" that is going to come after it.  If you say this, you aren't a traditionalist.  We know you aren't, and we know that you know that we know.

Mistake Three:  Thinking You Deserve the Benefit of the Doubt

There's a difference between saying something exists legally, something is the ideal, and something is reality.  Authority is one of those tricky things where those often given the benefit of the doubt are the ones least likely to think they deserve it, but view that benefit as something to be cultivated and earned.  You are likely an outsider to those people.  Even if you celebrate Mass for them on Sundays.  As a rule, outsiders tend to be less forgiving of mistakes.  When you combine this with the general reputation of the clergy being in the toilet throughout the Church in the West (even among the Ordinary Form/mainstream Catholicism) if you go into a situation expecting the benefit of the doubt, you will not get it.  I wish it were not so, yet it is so.

Mistake Four:  Looking for an Excuse

When the pastor at an Ordinary Form parish deals with an annoying parishioner, is that a sign the Ordinary Form produces rotten Catholics?  (Shut up with the snickering in the corner, trad reader.)  Yet this is the standard the Latin Mass and those who attend it get.  A Catholic doing something stupid is evidence the Latin Mass (or its community) is some poisonous agent that is going to wreck souls.  The truth is simpler:  Traditionalists are just like everyone else, only more so.  We have bad Catholics, just as you do.  We have the same struggles, the same need for spiritual guidance.  Yet often enough that spiritual guidance is lacking because of a lack of trust or relationship.

How to do it Better

There's a retired Bishop. He's a lib.  A well meaning lib, but a lib nonetheless.  Yet when he found out traditionalists were in his community, and celebrated Mass at a church nearby, he figured he would see what all the fuss was about.  He joined us after at a social.  He sat down a round table, introduced himself, and took everyone's names, names of their children/spouses, who he could pray for, etc.  He asked why we were there.  He also said he could give his opinion on the Latin Mass, but that wasn't why we were there, and he wanted to know why we were there.  So he asked for our reasons.  Some gave deep theological answers.  Some talked about beauty.  Others were frank that the Novus Ordo down the street sucked, and they wanted something better.  He asked what we were skeptical about with the Church today.  He admitted he was surprised when nobody at the table mentioned Vatican II.  He then blessed an expectant mother, asked us to pray for him, and then went to the next table, where he did the same thing.  When the Latin Mass was celebrated elsewhere and he was in the area, he did the same thing.  He even learned how to celebrate the Mass himself, and went out and did the work so traditionalists could have access to the Mass and the sacraments.  Nobody cared that his first few efforts were pretty sloppy.

Now this doesn't have some happy ending where the Bishop becomes a trad.  He still did some lib stuff that outraged people.  Yet when he did those things, those he built a relationship understood it was wrong, but even good men make mistakes.  Most importantly, he didn't feign outrage when traditionalists were themselves mad over things he did.  He tried to understand it, but we didn't live rent free in his head.  You could respect that.  That didn't interfere with him still doing pastoral outreach when he could.

Maybe you can't celebrate the Latin Mass.  Maybe we annoy you.  (I annoy me sometimes.)  Yet you can still be a shepherd, even if that work is occasionally messy and dirty.  Don't look at it as you doing others a favor.  Look at it as a chance to answer your calling to be a shepherd to lost sheep.  Is that going to solve everything?  Certainly not.  But I am a firm believer this approach will give you the tools, credibility, and growth to solve something, and we desperately need solutions for something in the Church today.