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.