Stories of Motor City Traditionalism

Thanks be to God, I was able to attend the Easter Vigil according to the Traditional Latin Mass last night.  It was a bittersweet experience, as it will be my last in the state of Michigan. Next month I'm moving to Ohio, or at least the Michigan suburb that is Toledo.  As I sat during the (very long!) chanting of the lessons, my mind drifts, as it does even when it is proclaimed in English. 21 years ago I had been in this position, albeit in dramatically different circumstances.

In 2001, there was no "approved" Triduum services in the Archdiocese of Detroit so far as I can remember.  If you wanted that experience, you had to drive an hour north to Flint, something I eagerly did. I was a 19 year old traditionalist, only recently finding the Latin Mass.  I experienced the Triduum services the only way one could in our diocese at the time: illegally at the small SSPX chapel. I didn't have any opinions on the doctrinal controversies, I just wanted to experience what the Triduum was like.

In 2022, a year after Francis made it his intention to eventually ban the Latin Mass, four months after the head of the CDW hinted at his intent to suppress Triduum services in the TLM, I know of at least 5 different Churches in the greater metro area that had at least one of the Triduum services, and that's not counting the SSPX, who are now in a far larger parish in a far better neighborhood.  All of these likely had at least 100 individuals, two of them likely 200+.  Traditionis Custodes and subsequent legislation have made life as a trad difficult in some areas.  In Detroit, nothing has changed, and that's a story worth talking about.

I want to make clear this is a story about Traditionalism in the Motor City, not the story.  I'm in no position to give the authoritative story.  I'm not sure anyone is for reasons that will become clear.  So this it the Kevin Tierney version.  This version has the advantage of being involved in this scene since 2001 and having conversations on both the side of the individuals intimately involved with its explosive growth, and some of those on the diocesan side.  It also has the benefit of a bit of distance.  I wasn't some leader of trads here, but I am one of the individuals most "leaders" know or have spoken with.  I didn't build things here, but I gave a few bricks.

While the story of the Latin Mass in the Metro Detroit predates Summorum Pontificum (whether it be the SSPX in Redford, or All Saints in Flint), it is with Summorum Pontificum that I have my first story about traditionalism here I think is worth telling.  (I have many stories of the Indult days, but none germane to the story I want to tell here.)  On Holy Thursday, I had a long gap between the time I finished lunch with a friend, and the time Mass started.  Rather than drive 30 minutes home to the suburbs, I stayed downtown and just went to pray in the empty Church.  During that prayer, a woman came up to me, informing me that several things needed to be done to help prepare for the liturgy, and someone was needed for the canopy.  "Do you mind?"  It was a statement she is sorry if that inconvenienced me, but I was going to help her.  During the time of setting up (this was about 2 hours before Mass), she got my story and why I was there, and I got the chance to quiz her about what her views were for organizing the Latin Mass there.  It was during this time I learned she had an intense disdain for the chattering class of traditionalism (not knowing at the time I was a blogger with a respectable audience) for all their talk on what needs to be done differently, rather than actually doing something.  She and her husband (a traditionalist who has far outgrown his importance to just Detroit) did all this work helping parishes flourish, while "those people" just whined and complained and a few other words I won't write in a family friendly organization.

The traditionalist scene has its intellectuals here.  Yet it is far more interested in lay faithful doing their part to make it work.  Contrary to the assumptions of many in Rome, the Latin Mass in Detroit is not the plaything of priests:  it is something demanded by the laity.  Several groups have sprung up to help support the laity in getting access to what they want.  I think of organizations like the local chapter of Juventutum (disclosure:  I used to pay dues even if you could never really call me a "member"), which would go to a parish in the suburbs without a traditionalist audience, and ask the priest if he'd be okay with allowing a Latin Mass there, giving everyone a chance to see that people in their community would show up if it was offered.  The head of that chapter had the crazy idea of just walking into a parish and asking.  It worked!

This brings me to a second story about Traditionalism in the Motor City.  In the days right after Summorum Pontificum, where I went on a tour of the Archdiocesan office with a Catholic author and his friends within the diocesan bureaucracy.  (You haven't lived until you see Papal Action Figures Wrestling in the headquarters of an archdiocese.)  Several of these individuals were involved in securing the Indult in Detroit, and favored Summorum Pontificum.  Yet they spoke with alarm at the trend of new parishes being approached asking them to celebrate Latin Masses.  Their idea was to keep things neat and controlled, wanting traditionalists to be filtered into one or two parishes.  This served two purposes:  it provided a powerful image of everyone crowding into one (or two) parishes, but it also allowed people to keep better tabs on what was happening.  We had to watch out for the "rad trads" my author friend told me.

Anyone who knows anything about the Latin Mass in Detroit knows that the exact opposite approach was taken instead.  The laity got several parishes to allow the Latin Mass with varying frequency, and from those small communities they were nourished into thriving communities over time.  Now there are 6-7 Latin Mass communities, all over 100 parishioners in the Metro Detroit area.  This decentralized nature makes it pretty hard to control, so the Archdiocese did the next best thing:  it tried to support it and nurture it. Has it been perfect?  Of course not. Has it meant trads never criticize the diocese?  When they deserve it, they get it.  Yet for the most part, its criticism done within the reservation.  The decentralized nature of things makes this arrangement possible.  I also think it is why Traditionis Custodes didn't touch anything here.  Trying to limit all activity within one or two parishes for an entire archdiocese works when there are only a few parishes.  When you have 6-7 different weekly masses, and 10-15 of lesser frequency a month across a 70 mile radius?  You're ripping people from their communities, tearing them from the pastoral bonds they've formed.  To suppress the Latin Mass within the Detroit area would require the coordination, alignment and cooperation of at least 4 bishops (in two different countries), intending to suppress the Latin Mass.  It is doubtful those Bishops would have been inclined to act, but I'm sure those logistical difficulties in such a suppression would make even the most committed of ideologues choose coexistence.

I'm sure there are those in the diocese who can offer you a better story with juicier details.  They might be more willing to cover some of the controversial stories, a few which even include this author!  In the end, I don't think they offer any meaningful insight as to how the Latin Mass communities of Detroit have flourished in the past two decades, and will almost certainly continue to flourish.

The Obedience Vibe

 I've been a traditionalist for over two decades now.  I have learned a lot in that time.  Yet I have had one particular difficulty I want to confront today:  that regarding obedience, or rather the vibe of obedience.

Obedience is something precious to the Catholic conscience.  Christ praises the obedience of the centurion, who understands the importance (and responsibility) of command.  The scriptures praise the obedience of children, want us to do likewise, and promise damnation for those who would abuse that power.  For the Catholic, the ultimate virtue (in popular discourse) is to be like Christ, obedient unto death to His Fathers command.

Given the importance of obedience, it is not surprising that a lot of debate occurs on its extent, especially for those of us in the more traditionalist orbit of things.  I remember vividly a discussion with a writer at the liberal Catholic blog Where Peter Is who went on a rather paranoid rant about how I, Kevin Tierney, and my brethren were very effective at leading a widespread rebellion against the pope and the Bishop in the Detroit area, since the Detroit area is a place where traditionalism flourishes. We traditionalists in Detroit (even though I have been out of that game for years since I moved to Livingston County) were apparently leading a massive disobedience to legitimate authority.  

My response (outside of laughter and yes, a bit of demeaning and mockery of the individual) was that he clearly lives in a world detached from reality, as the Detroit traditionalist scene was the perfect example of a scene that was traditionalism that operated within episcopal oversight.  There are few places w  Yet what matters to that writer (as everyone at WPI) was not truth, but the cause.  The cause requires them to believe that traditionalists are bad, ergo just look for something to tar them with.  What better charge than that of "disobedience?"

Yet in light of Traditionis Custodes, "obedience" is all the rage again.  Those who are critical of it need to act with "humble obedience to the Pope."  What does that humble obedience entail?  Nobody ever says, just that you have to be obedient.  We Catholics know that in order for something to be obeyed, it has to meet certain criteria, and I'd like to unpack them.

• A lawful command
• Issued by a lawful superior
• Within the domain of that superior.

A Lawful Command

This seems simple, the command has to be something that isn't inherently sinful.  A superior, even if he's a pope, can't command someone to sin.  While that is pretty universally understood, the less understood part is the whole command part.  Simply put, one does not obey vibes, sentiments or feelings.  Furthermore, when it comes to commands, obedience is always understood in a narrow sense, not in the broadest sense possible.  That's not religion, that's a cult.

In the situation of Traditionis Custodes, there is precious little that the laity must be "obedient" to.  Priests do have to obey their bishop regarding the celebration of the Latin Mass.  They had to obey their Bishop even in Summorum Pontificum.  Yet the laity are under no such obedience.  To the extent they have to obey anyone here, it is not Rome's desires, but that of the local bishop.  So if one wants to say to the Bishop that TC is a really bad idea that damages the unity of the Church, and for those reasons it shouldn't be implemented?  That's something well within their rights, and the Bishop's discretion.  This was precisely the approach traditionalists took, and a good majority of the bishops heeded.  The end result was the Pope begging people to please implement his decree now that outright suppression of the TLM has been explicitly abandoned.

The Pope clearly wanted to suppress the Latin Mass.  Yet he didn't actually do it, thinking that his desire would be sufficient.  It's not.  That's not disobedience, that's spirited participation in the life of the Church.

Issued by a Lawful Superior Within His Domain

This also seems simple.  The Pope is the lawful superior of every Catholic on earth.  Yet is it that simple?  And does that extend to those in his inner circle?  This is not an academic exercise.  The Congregation for Divine Worship, in a response to questions about Traditionis Custodes, put forth rules that, if taken seriously, would have forbidden Catholics from gathering in parish halls after Mass where a Latin Mass was celebrated, and the Prefect reserved to himself alone the authority to tell individual churches what Mass times they were allowed to print in their parish bulletin.

Is Arthur Roche a lawful superior of these individuals?  Certainly not.   He certainly has authority on complex matters of liturgical law, and the doctrinal questions that surround the Eucharistic sacrifice.  Yet on the question of what to put in parish bulletins, or when Catholics are allowed to gather for coffee, he has zero authority.  That would be the authority of the local Bishop.  Not surprisingly, there have been few if any instances of local Bishops barring the advertising of the Latin Mass, or of regulating parish socials for those who worship at the Latin Mass.  So even if a command is otherwise lawful, one need not heed it if the individual ordering it has clearly overstepped his authority.

Why Obedience When it Doesn't Apply

This one is a bit more speculative, but I think its something we should talk about.  When we think of saints, we overwhelmingly think of priests, bishops, and religious.  When we read the great Spiritual works such as The Imitation of Christ, we read the book of a religious, written for religious.  In that world, obedience to superiors is more than just an academic exercise.  They are part of a hierarchal command structure, where questions of obedience are a frequent if not daily occurrence.  Yet since these are the great classics, it is assumed that this is not only something every Catholic can learn from (true enough), but that their circumstances must also be ours.

The laity are not that.  When one reads books specifically written for the laity (such as Introduction to the Devout Life & The Spiritual Combat), one finds mention of obedience only very briefly, and it involves less esoteric aligning yourself with Rome's idea of what would be nice, and more of trying to follow your confessor or spiritual director even when it is tough and disagreeable, so long as it is possible.  That doesn't make what the former said "wrong", just that one needs to consider the audience, and understand that while one can learn from them, there is a risk in misinterpreting their scope.

The hard fact is that obedience rarely plays a substantial role in the life of most Catholics.  Are you going to Mass somewhere that satisfies a Sunday obligation?  Are you sincere in your desire to be united to the Catholic Church?  Do you make a good faith effort to understand bad decisions by leaders in the best light possible, even if that light is still pretty dark?  Congratulations, you are practicing obedience.  If not, then yes, we should have a sincere talk about obedience, but for what it is, what it is not.  Let those who continue to talk about obedience as a vibe continue to talk, and be ignored just like the idiot blogger I ignored.

Pope Francis' Strategic WIthdrawl on the 1962 Liturgical Books

In a decree on February 11th (released today), Pope Francis said the following:

The Holy Father Francis, grants to each and every member of the Society of Apostolic Life “Fraternity of Saint Peter”, founded on July 18, 1988 and declared of “Pontifical Right” by the Holy See, the faculty to celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass, and to carry out the sacraments and other sacred rites, as well as to fulfill the Divine Office, according to the typical editions of the liturgical books, namely the Missal, the Ritual, the Pontifical and the Roman Breviary, in force in the year 1962.

They may use this faculty in their own churches or oratories; otherwise it may only be used with the consent of the Ordinary of the place, except for the celebration of private Masses.

Without prejudice to what has been said above, the Holy Father suggests that, as far as possible, the provisions of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes be taken into account as well.

Given in Rome, near St. Peter’s, on February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, in the year 2022, the ninth year of my Pontificate.

A few simple sentences, but a lot to unpack. I think what we are seeing here is the beginning of a strategic withdrawal regarding Traditonis Custodes. Nobody is dumb enough to think that the Pope is going to abandon his decree less than one year after issuing it. Yet I do think he can read the room. The text left unclear the future of the FSSP, but CDW prefect Roche made clear that while he had no authority over the FSSP, the "principle has been established that ordinations in the Latin Church are conferred as directed by the Rite approved by Apostolic Constitution in 1968".  (Interview with Edward Pentin of National Catholic Register.)  How do you reconcile this decree with Roche's statement?  You can't.  So either the Pope disagreed publicly with the head of the CDW (unlikely), or they've had to adjust their approach.

For me, I think the final sentence, seemingly out of nowhere, is the tell:

Without prejudice to what has been said above, the Holy Father suggests that, as far as possible, the provisions of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes be taken into account as well.

That the Holy Father has to make this suggestion is evidence that, as a matter of general practice, the provisions of Traditionis Custodes are not being taken into consideration. Nor are the hateful and bigoted decrees of the CDW dubia.  There isn't "resistance" to TC and the Dubia, there's indifference and apathy.  The Pope is hoping that by showing that he is no longer seeking to eradicate the TLM, Bishops will be more likely to apply the restrictions.

At this point traditionalists will talk about how the Pope is "playing the long game" and thinking strategically.  That he will come around later to attempt to do the full scale ban.  I think this gives them credit as shrewd and tactful agents that they absolutely do not deserve.  I have no doubt they envision themselves as political geniuses.  Yet they are not.  Their machinations at the various synods ended in failure, and far from showing a better command of the Church, everyone is in agreement that there will be no "Pope Francis Catholics" after he dies, especially among the young.  His promises of grand reform have all mostly gone to the wayside, being hopelessly bogged down in a million small battles along the way.

Whether or not the Pope thinks he will get another shot, I think the upshot here is he will not get another shot.  There may be some attempts to further discriminate against and persecute people in the diocesan world who wish to offer the TLM, but the implementation of those decrees is left to the local ordinary, the very same individuals who have mostly reacted to TC/CDW dubia by finding something else to do.  Everyone was waiting for new decrees from bishops after the Dubia.  Outside of two or three, (and some of them an insistence they would not allow an infringement upon their authority) most Bishops simply did nothing.

Whatever the long term intentions of the Holy Father, this is a de-escalation, and should be welcomed as such.  Yet more is needed. This is not likely to be taken as a token of good faith and good will, because the Pope was mostly powerless to accomplish what he desired.  What will get a genuine thaw in relationships is for the Pope to genuinely change his mind on something, which is unlikely.

So for now before TC, tensions were at a 1.  Then they were at a 10.  Now?  A 7.  People are less likely to do something stupid at a 7 compared to a 10, but the situation hasn't cooled entirely, and probably won't for the short time Francis is left on the throne.  Still, that we are not spending his final hours in trench warfare is something we should be grateful for.

Was Sheen Wrong?

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

Attributed to Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, one could say that this quote not only captures the essence of the modern apologetics movement in the Church, but the Second Vatican Council as well.  I thought about this quote today because someone did something with this quote I had never seen: they mocked it.

Fulton Sheen is one of the biggest influences on my faith.  Thanks to organizations like Keep the Faith, I had his entire audio library.  Over a hundred hours of Sheen talking about this or that subject.  Not all of it was insightful, but much of it was entertaining.  Sheen was, without a doubt, the greatest Catholic orator of the 20th century, and in a century of oratory giants in America, he ranked up near the top of that as well.  He would appear on TV with a smile and gentle face, and it would quickly turn to a stern demeanor as his speeches reached their fever pitch.

Sheen used his considerable oratory talent to change how Americans perceived the Church.  He was the rock star of Catholicism in his age.  This quote was a bit of a mission statement.  Most of the objections to Catholicism came out of bias, bias Sheen was going to use the unique avenue of modern communications to smash.

In the eyes of the reformers at the Second Vatican Council (not entirely without merit), the Catholic Church was a moribund lifeless institution that lacked relevance in the eyes of the faithful: her rules and regulations stifling the creativity of pastors in reaching the people.  If the Church only embarked upon a bold process of reform, then those erroneous perceptions could be obliterated, and then the truth would win out, because there are no good reasons someone wouldn't be Catholic.  The last 50 years have been a gigantic PR offensive by the Catholic Church, following Sheen's path by saying "we're not actually like that.  Let me help you understand what we really are."

This narrative isn't entirely false, especially in 1950's and 1960's America. While you won't hear a lot of talk about it in history books (outside of the occasional reference to the Know Nothings and JFK's candidacy), Anti-Catholicism really was as American as Apple Pie.  Even the great social reform movements of the day had a distinctly anti-catholic (as well as anti-immigrant) vibe to them. Hence the need to ban alcohol, something that was consumed largely by those Irish, those Catholics.  We need to give women the right to vote, because god-fearing protestant wives need to be a counter against the foul immigrant Catholic, who won't let his wife vote anyways.  Laws that restricted funds to religious schools were meant explicitly as a way to curb the power of Catholics to educate children.  From that perspective, a lot of crazy things are said about Catholics, and it was a reasonable thought that if we dampened a lot of that crazy stuff, then we could reach people better.

That's not really what happened though.  While you still have a bit of Anti-Catholicism (especially amongst the political left, but also in certain portions of the right who would prefer Catholics stop caring about issue x or y so much) within American society, most of the paranoia and wild biases are gone.  Most people do not in fact view Catholicism as a cult anymore.  Catholics are not viewed as being stalking horses for a papal theocracy.  Yet is the Catholic Church really a stronger institution in 2022 than it was then?  

I'm not terribly interested in the "the Church at this or that time" was better argument, as its mostly fruitless.  We live in the here and now.  Yet I do think if we put too much stock in this line of thinking (that most of the obstacles to Catholicism will go away once we show people what Catholicism really is), we end up becoming a lot like what the Church is today:  insular and a hostage to forces greater than it, while we tell ourselves the fairy tales this is a sign of a stronger Church, a "creative minority" if you will.

The thing about this line of thinking is it only works with those on the island, so to speak.  To those who aren't Catholic, knowing Catholics aren't intent on founding a theocracy in America is a good thing, but does that really matter much to the thousand other (entirely legitimate) questions they have about Mariology, the sacraments, worship, and our hierarchal structure?

This also infantilizes non-Catholics:  reduces them to bumbling rubes whose objections are rooted more in the Black Legend than anything real or concrete.  Catholicism is not self-evident or self-authenticating.  It is rather a religion crafted throughout the centuries carefully, and through much debate (sometimes violence!) , with the goal of upholding the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.  That we have the promise of infallibility and indefectibility from the Holy Spirit does not make that journey inherently smooth.  Indeed, such promises exist as a reassurance to Catholics that amidst all the chaos, things will eventually work themselves out, not that they already have.  In the right setting that is comforting.  To someone struggling in their faith, or not practicing?  Probably less so.

Finally, to say this in 2022, post sex abuse, post-McCarrick and 50 years of crisis?  That's just daft.  A lot of people think they hate the Catholic Church because her bishops helped erect a criminal enterprise shielding abuser priests from justice, while Rome was indifferent at best, and complicit at worst.  They think this because...... her bishops helped erect a criminal enterprise shielding abuser priests from justice, while Rome was indifferent at best, and complicit at worst.  To the struggling or the non-catholic, they do not care about the ideological struggles of if John Paul II, Benedict, or Francis were better on abuse.

Removing the biases of individuals only goes so far.  If one really wants to succeed in giving a reasoned explanation of our hope, it requires admitting the obvious:  there are a lot of reasons to hate the Catholic Church, and some of them, especially actions by her members (including and sometimes especially the hierarchy) are good reasons, reasons Catholics should join in on.

Will this make people more likely to convert, knowing that a lot of their objections have at least some merit?  Probably not!  Yet I do think it will go a long way in establishing your credibility in dealing with non-catholics, and so much of that later conversion stems upon that credibility.  I prefer to give the Spirit a chance to act, rather than confidently asserting that everything will be good if only I set the person straight.

Fulton Sheen remains a tremendous influence on my faith.  Yet like all influences, sometimes you have to remember their flaws (which make their successes so beautiful), and admit that some things in your hero shouldn't be emulated.

To the Suffering Traditionalist

 My words today are not to those idiots and bad faith actors, nor are they to an increasingly feckless and irrelevant Rome, mad that the world does not operate the way they think it should.  That is the animus and impulse for this morning's Instruction from the Congregation of Divine Worship, which purports to regulate what mass times parishes are allowed to advertise and purports to ban coffee socials after a Latin mass, among other stupidities.  The Tiber will consume these men in their final moments soon enough, and then they will have to stand before God and answer for the cruelty and nastiness even non-trads can see.

Dispensing with them (giving them the amount of thought that we should), what can we do now?  I would like to remind you that your first responsibility is to your baptismal promises, which were between you and Christ, not between you and the Pope.  The gift of salvation in the Catholic Church is not something the pope gives us.  Nor is it something he can take away, even though he clearly wants you to lose faith.  The goal of this instruction is to burn down as much of the Church as he can on the way out, hoping that a few traditionalists are caught in the fire.  We do not need to give that to him.

Write to your bishops and priests.  Say what the Latin Mass means to you, what it means to others, and how it has helped you and your community develop a deep relationship with Christ, and how that enriches the Church as a whole.  Remind them of their sacred duty and obligation to shepherd the flock, and then ask them to shepherd the flock, by not implementing diktats they clearly are under no obligation to implement.  If they are not universal laws, then they are not binding.  If they are such laws, they can still be dispensed with if they would inflict harm, which they clearly would in most places.

The Pope can die a happy man if the Church burns, but traditionalists turn on each other in his final moments.  Do not do that either.  Be united to each other, within the bosom of the Church.  For those who feel the need to attend at the SSPX, it is clear that this is not out of a desire to separate yourself from the Church, and it is increasingly unclear in 2021 the exact way in which they are "separate" anyways.  I would likely not do it, but I have options.  Yet do not make such decisions lightly, and even if you go, go for the right reasons.

Reject all con-artists trying to monetize this anger, and reject the self-loathing trad who says we have brought this upon ourselves.  Sometimes God hardens the hearts of wicked men so that His will may be fulfilled.  He is clearly doing so now.  These wicked men make increasingly irrational and counterproductive moves, even if you favor their cause.  

Be responsible to your own station in life above all else.  Submit to your obligations as a spouse, a parent, a friend, family member, etc.  Let your prayer life be one not of stoic "thank you sir may I have another" but of joyfully suffering for the sake of Christ.  Joyful suffering is a  paradox, but that paradox comes in the joy of being chosen by God, and of seeing the rage and anger in the eyes of wicked men who understand we are chosen and loved by God, though they have rejected and hate us.

Be a part of your parish life, and make sure it is evident how your parish, and the diocese at large is enriched by your actions.  Make clear everyone knows that the Pope wishes to take this enrichment away because you have found Jesus Christ in a way that he cannot understand, and he hates you for that.  The demagogues at Where Peter Is and Rome will never understand that, but the average Catholic will see the injustice of that situation and will be swayed.  As will most Bishops.

Finally, we have served together for two decades.  We will serve together many more.  I am honored by all of your sanctity and heroic Christian witness, and I am honored that your suffering will reach God far better than these words will.  Far from defeat, this will be our defiance:  we will outlast these men in their final hours.  Let their final hours, rather than being of drawing closer to God, be spent fuming over how we have not been broken.  Let them be broken by our refusal to be broken, and pray that God may show them, in their increasingly last moment on the stage, how much they have broken themselves, for and over so little.

Be assured of my prayers, my solidarity, and most importantly, my willingness to talk and help you persevere.  People know my email.  They know I'm on twitter @catholicsmark.  Those DM's are open.

Finally, be yourself, beloved by God.  Let the Pope hate you for being beloved by God all he wants, and let him confront his powerlessness in shaking us from God's status as loved.

Rome's Tactical Retreat on Traditonis Custodes

 After the promulgation of Francis' motu proprio restricting the Latin Mass, everyone braced for a new war to begin on traditionalists.  Liberal blogs and pundits squealed with excitement over the idea of causing traditionalists even an ounce of spiritual discomfort.  Traditionalists braced for trench warfare with the Bishops   Everyone prepared to fight the Liturgy Wars over again, except now with added polarization and social media.

A funny thing happened on the way to this war, a war the Pope clearly wanted to wage:  nobody waged it.  Instead, even people who could normally be viewed papal allies (Cardinal Cupich in Chicago, Cardinal Nichols over in London) announced that they were "studying" the manner more in-depth (several months later they are still going to study it, they promise), while more conservative leaning bishops have outright dispensed their congregations from most of the document, following the example of Bishop Paprocki in Springfield.  (And done most extensively by Archbishop Sample)  Rome responded to this lack of enthusiasm (or contempt) with.... nothing.  The Pope made clear his will, demanded the law be implemented immediately, and then..... nothing.

Recently we got a little insight as to why nothing happened. An exchange of letters between Cardinal Nichols and the CDW Prefect Arthur Roche was leaked to the press.  Reading them, one gets the feeling these may have been leaked by someone in Roche's office.  While there may be a lot of parsing to go on, I think overall a few things are clear:

Once again, we have a Roman official making clear that taking the Pope at face value would be a very bad idea.  Traditionis Custodes was not ambiguous.  The questions asked were not a matter of "the text isn't clear" but "the text as written:  does ban everything actually mean ban eveyrthing?  How on earth am I supposed to implement this?"  Similar to the CDF telling people not to take the Pope's condemnations of Pelagianism as a doctrinally clear or reliable discussion on what Pelagianism was, we have a difference between the Pope, and the Vatican, with the latter trying to restrict the former. What makes this the spectacle it is, Roche was clearly the architect behind the desire to suppress the Latin Mass.  

Secondly, Rome admitted, at least in private, pretty early on that it messed up with the decree.  Here we see an explicit understanding of what was conveyed to the Bishops of Poland during their private visit:  attempting to implement the law as written would divide the Church and cause Catholics to leave.  While Francis intended this as a feature, not a bug of the motu proprio, more sober minded individuals have realized this could cause lasting damage to the Church.  Even among those who want to destroy the Latin Mass.

Third, the CDW has not issued any guidelines for interpreting Traditionis Custodes, and it is highly likely none will be forthcoming.  The CDW prefect essentially agrees that the implementation of TC should be slow walked if not outright paused, even if only "for a very brief period of time."  This was not so much a brief concession as it was an acknowledgement of reality.  By the beginning of August (when he wrote this letter), it was clear that the majority of the worlds Bishops were not going to implement the document.  This is Roche (and by extension, Francis) coming to terms with that reality, but taking credit for it.

Nobody is naïve enough to think that the Pope, seeing how unpopular his decree was, and how little it is being enforced, would consider the good of souls and repeal the legislation he promulgated in haste.  Even if he was so pastorally inclined to seek the spiritual good of traditionalists, it takes an act of near superhuman virtue for a powerful man to admit a mistake.  Yet he is not so inclined.  He clearly believes that we are the reason his pontificate has failed, and so we must be crushed.... even if not by him.  He thinks he is playing a long game where conditions will change, and a future pope will be able to carry out his legacy.  

In this he is likely mistaken.  Conditions will not likely improve to where the priests and bishops in Communion with the Pope will want to carry out an ideological purge of traditionalists.  The Latin Mass is an accepted fact of daily life in a lot of dioceses, even if it is not the life of the majority of worshippers in that diocese.  Most of the worlds Bishops simply do not view it a matter of dogmatic necessity that every Catholic in their diocese worship the exact same way.  Unless canon law is changed by the Pope, the chances are high that most bishops will just dispense their congregations from as much of legislation concerning this as they can. (Changing canon law in such a way would be a true bombshell change in the Church, something that would centralize authority in Rome like never before, transforming the Roman Pontiff into the largest micromanager in world history.)

Yet we in the end should be thankful for Rome recognizing reality and not simply just telling people not to implement legislation that 24 hours beforehand was instrumental to the survival of the Church.  Yet this tension cannot hold forever, and it will not.

The Incredible Shrinking Papacy

News out of Poland this week on the front of Traditonis Custodes.  The Polish Bishops had their visit to Rome, and during this time in Rome they had discussions regarding the motu proprio, and the in their view overly harsh restrictions the Pope wanted the Bishops to enact.  In their own words, they said (English translation courtesy of Christine Watkins):

The Tridentine liturgy was discussed in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The bishops asked questions, especially related to parish churches, in which the liturgy could possibly be continued, as well as extending the possibility of celebrating it, in accordance with the motu proprio “Traditionis custodes”, should such a need arise in Poland in the future. On the one hand, the congregation admitted that the matter was resolved too harshly and that instead of serving unity, in individual cases, it could lead to someone leaving the Church because his needs were not met. On the other hand, the will to interpret the motu proprio broadly was expressed – more in spirit than in the letter of the issued law.

“The general rule is that priests who under Benedict XVI had permits to celebrate the Tridentine liturgy should have them. On the other hand, new, young priests who would like to celebrate this liturgy must apply to the Holy See with a written request for permission to be biritual [celebrating the liturgy in two rites – KAI]. The Holy See wants this matter under control. He does not say ‘no’ to the Tridentine liturgy as such, but is cautious due to the fact that in some countries of the world it is associated with an anti-Vatican II ideology that rejects the Second Vatican Council, ‘said Cardinal Nycz.

I think it is beyond dispute that even Rome now realizes that Traditionis Custodes was carried out in a haphazard way that did a lot more damage than good.  Hence the walkback here to the Polish Bishops.  The second part is that they seem to realize that if the Bishops followed the law as it was promulgated, trying to obey the Holy Father faithfully, it would have the end result of driving souls from the Church and plunging them into schism, something those Bishops would then have to answer to God for.

Yet the "spirit" of the letter is nebulous as well.  There was nothing about being biritual in the original document, nor in the accompanying letter justifying it.  The Pope was clear:  a Church that continued to celebrate the Latin Mass was turning its back on the Second Vatican Council, so this was the first step.  Even the idea of a "biritual" priest who only celebrates in the Roman Rite makes zero canonical sense, to say nothing of doctrinal sense, as it would concede that the Novus Ordo and the Latin Mass are two separate liturgical rites, and the current desire by the Pope to destroy the Latin Mass (I'm sorry, "restrict") would run afoul of the very Second Vatican Council he claims to be implementing.  (The whole lawful rites and equal dignity thing.)

Yet I think we should look at this in terms of an overall trend.  Back in 2018, the Pope gave a series of speeches in which he compared his critics (and those he disagreed with on the more traditional end) as "Pelagians".  He continued to make the assertion, so much so that the CDF was required to send a letter to the world's bishops in which they were instructed not to take the Pope at his word:  his critics were actually not Pelagians.

Clearly, the comparison with the Pelagian and Gnostic heresies intends only to recall general common features, without entering into judgments on the exact nature of the ancient errors. In fact, there is a great difference between modern, secularized society and the social context of early Christianity, in which these two heresies were born.

You can read the texts Placuit Deo cites the Pope making:  it is clear he meant exactly what he said.  The CDF was just performing clean-up later.  From a dogmatic standpoint, this isn't really a problem for Catholics.  Popes are infallible:  they can still say stupid things.

Another example:  There was an extremely delicate issue regarding who would become a Bishop in a diocese in Nigeria.  Pope Benedict made a decision to appoint a Bishop that had zero legitimacy in the eyes of the local public, and the protests were so widespread he never took his ministry.  Pope Francis wrote a sweeping condemnation to the priests, demanding they submit to his will, accept their Bishop, or face suspension from ministry.  The Nigerian diocese held it's ground.  That Bishop was not assuming his seat. The suspensions never came, and in two months, the Pope dropped his insistence on the Bishop assuming his chair, as the Bishop "resigned."  In the more famous instance in Chile, the Pope launched a public attack on survivors of abuse, referring to them as liars who had committed a mortal sin in slandering the Bishop he chose for them, and not accepting him as their Bishop.  Within a month of those remarks..... he dismissed the Bishop and admitted that those victims were correct all along, and that he had actually slandered the victims.

What we see is a pattern of a Pope who tries to flex his muscles, and every time he tries, he makes the situation worse, only to be followed by a retreat:  first a small one, and over time a larger one.  In each case, the Pope's sweeping attempt at authority was ignored at best, and responded with outright hostility in other cases.  We also see that the Pope's words cannot be viewed as a reliable guide, whether it be in implementing Church law, Church governance, or the seemingly easy task of not going into a tirade on victims of abuse.

We are a long way from the days of John Paul II, much less a Pius XII, where the Pope was perceived as "God on Earth", and his judgements carried serious force, especially in internal Church affairs.  Instead, it is the era of the incredible shrinking papacy.  As someone who thinks on average that a less powerful papacy is a good thing, one should still have serious reservations about how we adopt a more realistic view of the papacy.

My proposed solution:  Stop viewing the primary end of governing the Church as spiting those people you don't like.  People will be more receptive of your laws and guidance, and your underlings won't need a second full time job of cleaning up your mess.

A Traditionalism for the People: Reading the Room

When you ask people what traditionalists advocate, you will first hear about the Latin Mass.  You may hear that they "oppose Vatican II."  (Whatever that means.)  Yet a third thing you might hear is that traditionalists advocate a Church that has little role for the laity.  We believe in a top down Church where the laity mostly exist to pay, pray, and obey.

In fairness, sometimes you hear about this among trads as well.  There seems to be a deep mistrust of lay leadership in the Church, with an inherent belief that "lay-involved" means "Liberal."  Like its political equivalent in the French Revolution, you had "the people" on one side, and "the authority" on the other.  This has mostly replicated itself in the Church.  When the Pope complains about clericalism, what he really is complaining about is "conservatives and trads are doing things I don't like."  If you don't think 100% the way Pope Francis does, you are a clericalist.  In our age of hyper polarization, some wear this as a badge of honor and lean into the caricature.

My problem is that doesn't really describe reality.  Traditionalism is a movement dominated by the laity, operates on a model far more decentralized than anything in the Church.  Your average Latin Mass community has a laity far more involved in governing the community than your average parish that celebrates the Novus Ordo, to say nothing of the parish dominated by a small graying clique promoting "Pope Francis study groups".

You will very rarely see a Latin Mass community willed into being because a priest just wants to start celebrating it.  It takes a lot of work learning how to say the Latin Mass on your own account, much less to find the servers willing to help, the musical talent for a lot of the traditional pieces of music, just to satisfy the priests own ego.  If a priest just moves to a new parish and decides to randomly announce that they will start celebrating the Latin Mass, the truth is that Mass will likely end within a few months.

Instead, what you often have is a group of lay faithful who want that Mass.  They meet with priests looking for a friendly locality.  They meet with their own pastors.  They find lay organizations to help them train servers.  They use social media to promote their Masses.  They often coordinate bringing in special priests for certain feast days.    Most of your day to day governance of a Latin Mass happens not by the priest, but by a married couple, and often by the female side of that equation.  (Every Latin Mass has a matriarch who makes it work.)  Since it is mostly organized from the bottom, there's very little episcopal oversight.  (Which can be a bad thing!)  The most successful communities happen when Bishops and pastors recognize and work within those existing communities, rather than trying to cultivate their own.

Almost every trad understands this is the way things are.  Yet there always seems to be a reluctance in leaning into that, lest we come across as wanting a "democratic" Church.  Yet this is a misunderstanding.  The Catholic Church's core elements come not from the laity, or even the hierarchy.  They come from Jesus Christ.  As such, her doctrine cannot change.  Yet the laity have a role in ensuring that the Church on earth remains ever faithful to her identity.  The Churches doctrines, absent her identity, are boring words on a piece of worthless paper.    It is here traditionalism thrives, in being a movement, primarily of the lay faithful, ensuring that the Church remains true to her identity, even if prominent individual leaders fall short.

In that light, we are less a movement of rebuilding a past, and more a movement that says we will have a say in what the future of the Church looks like, and that there is a differing alternative to the vision of the Church dominated by an increasingly out of touch and old hierarchy, and a pastoral bureaucracy that has long lost its touch with what the parish community actually wants.  We aren't preaching a revolution, but rather a rebalancing of the scales in the Church.

To continue thriving, we need to read the room and lean into what we actually are.

Bitter Trad Syndrome

 Engage in any discussion long enough regarding trads, and eventually the subject comes up, like clockwork.  "But why don't you stand up to the angrier trads?  SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT THEM!"  Sometimes, this question is asked sincerely.  A lot of the time, it is in bad faith.  What is meant is "why don't you spend more time telling people they aren't holy enough."  I have zero patience for those individuals, and they rise beneath my contempt.  Go ahead and ask the legion of them on social media who have asked that question dishonestly, and gotten a nasty answer from me.  Yet for the one in good faith, let's discuss this question a little more.

There's a lot of assumptions that are made in this, and those assumptions are why the answer you get isn't very satisfying at best, at worst, you're cursed at and shouted away.  (You may have even deserved it.)

First and foremost, I can't stress this enough, The Catholic Church is NOT a political party.  There are no membership dues, and you aren't expelled from the party, except for some very rare circumstances involving clear canonical crimes.   Being an idiot is not a canonical crime.  Believing crazy things is not a canonical crime.  What people often want when this is said is for those bitter trads to be told they are no longer welcome at that Church, and they should be shunned until they change their opinions/disposition.  That isn't Catholicism.

I'm reminded of the story of a group of parishioners who were furious Michael Voris (a dishonest grifter if there ever was one) was attending a parish more frequently.  Several parishioners were enraged, not wanting their parish to be "represented" by the likes of Voris.  They wanted the parish priest to take action against him, some even wanting the priest to say Voris and the other "crazies" weren't welcome there.  The priest responded in his usual somber voice "the crazy people need confession just as much as you do.  Well, after this discussion, maybe not as much."  Catholicism isn't a party or a book of the month club:  its a communion of sinners being transformed into saints.  If we start modifying Church law to where the priest can deny the sacraments to someone he (or the congregation) doesn't like, we're heading into very dangerous grounds.  It was precisely this rationale that was given to a pretty rabid anti-traditionalist priest several years ago that made him see the errors of his ways, at least on that point.

The second assumption is that you matter.  You likely do not.  At all.  I'll give you time to process being offended, because clearly you have not been told enough in life you don't actually matter that much.

You good?  Let's continue.

There's a pretty prominent rabid anti-trad blogger once who was in discussion with me, angry that I wasn't opposing bitter trads to his satisfaction.  He admitted that I've offered real correction on a lot of issues, but I wasn't offering enough correction on this or that social issue he felt was really important that trads weren't listening to enough.  After reading him go on and on for hundreds of words (all getting increasingly nastier at me), I responded with the simple question:

Who is X (his name), and why on earth should I care about him?

Are you a bishop?  Are you a pastor?  Are you part of that individual's family?  In this case, he was a bitter fool consumed by hate.  Why should I care what such a fool says?  In better circumstances, the individual making this request is still an "outsider".  Why should your outsider criteria be listened to for a single word?  Sometimes there are good answers to that question, but you have to approach it with the assumption you have to prove that answer.

If you understand we can't vote people off the island for being knuckleheads, and that you have to prove why your criteria matters, you will probably get a fair hearing from trads about the question of bitterness.  Now we can speak, and I hope you will allow the brief answer I give to start a conversation.

I don't look at bitterness as something that is unique to trads, or even something that trads exhibit in an atypical sense.  I can say that having pretty extensive experience in both communities.  I've watched bitter scolds in the Novus Ordo try to humiliate my wife for failing to keep a special needs child quiet, and I've watched bitter scolds in the TLM tell me to go to the Novus Ordo down the street so my son's stimming won't bother him.  I've also watched their bitterness increase when they learned in no uncertain terms that we weren't leaving, and in the case of the Latin Mass, I informed the elderly man (after standing up towering over him) that unless he had a plan for making me leave, I was staying right in the back of the Church.  I've even felt bitterness at times over the way my faith life has turned out.  Sometimes even intense bitterness.

Bitterness is part of the human condition, a realization that the world (or the Church) is not as you thought it should be, and that disconnect causes you stress and anxiety.  Those same bitter trads consumed by anger at the latest this or that of the Pope or some idiot washed up blogger tend to be the same bitter trads looking to nitpick every little thing going on in the parish.

I also see that bitterness among a lot of ex-trads, who saw this kind of behavior, and not only stopped going to the TLM, but now make it their passion and burning crusade to attack it (and their former brethren) at every step.  To both sides I offer the same cold but sincere advice:  I am deeply sorry that the Church is not as you think it should be, and that somewhere some Catholic attending whatever Mass he attends isn't as holy as you think they should be.  I don't mean that with crocodile tears, I am sorry for the hurt and anguish they often cause, and if I'm there, I'll offer whatever help I can.

Yet I sincerely believe that the best way to help that situation is to get people to accept that source of their bitterness, because once they understand that source, it is something that God can work with.  Maybe the Church should be what it isn't.  Yet what are we going to do to bring that about?  We also should be something we aren't.  Do we want people to react in the same way we do to their imperfections?  Sure, the Pope might indeed be everything bad you think he is.  This is exactly why we pray for him.  When Christ told Peter the devil meant to go after him and sift the flock by that attack, he meant he would exploit every weakness a shepherd has to scatter the sheep.  Christ told Peter his faith wouldn't fail in the end, he never said Peter would always do the wisest or smartest thing.  So we pray he does.

The way to counteract bitterness (whether the traditionalist or the bitter ex-trad) is through understanding.  What other tools do we have?  There are indeed more coercive measures, but as we pointed out above, its a bad idea to use them because someone is cranky.  The Church, even in her degraded state has understood in her wisdom not to employ such tools for that purpose.  Maybe consider my approach instead.

The Changing Landscape: Part II

When we last talked about the changing landscape of the Church, we talked about how a lot of the things that mattered before really don't matter as much now to people.  We should also consider that on some issues, there's been a genuine change of belief among people, and the benefits this could potentially have to traditionalists.

When we talk about these changes, we aren't really talking about doctrine.  For better or worse, people's opinions on doctrine are pretty set in stone.  In the Church of public opinion, Catholics in the West favor, by a pretty wide margin, changing the doctrine of the Church, in ways Pope Francis supports (communion for the divorced and remarried), and ways he absolutely does not.  (Women's ordination, a Church where decisions are made according to democratic vote, etc.)  So when we talk about the changes, we are talking about people's changing belief in how Catholicism is meant to work.

Since the pontificate of John Paul II (and in more embryonic stage before that throughout the 20th century), the Catholic Church, to the extent it has "worked", worked in a very top-down way of understanding.  The Pope was the "Gold Standard" of Catholicism.  He wasn't just Christ's vicar by virtue of office, he was the image of Jesus Christ on earth in the minds of many.  Asking if something was "Catholic" or "the right thing for Catholics to do" simply meant pointing to whatever the Pope was doing.  Or, as one writer put it in 2014 (a viewpoint she no doubt rejects today), it is our job as Lay Catholics to "be the kind of Catholic Pope Francis needs us to be."

Combined with this spirit was a belief (at least in theory) that it was the Pope's job to handle every matter of the Church.  Bishop's lost their identity as successors of the Apostles, and were transformed into the yes-men.  So a Bishop was measured by how in line he was with whoever the occupant of the Holy See was.    The lasting impact of a Pope came to be understood in how many Cardinals he selected, so that those cardinals in the future would become pope and carry out that pope's agenda.

That way of thinking is crumbling.  For better or worse, Pope Francis is no longer looked to as the ideal Catholic by a growing amount of the Church.  Bishops have recovered a bit of the backbone they have given up over the years in a variety of ways.  (But only a bit, as the McCarrick affair showed.)  While he may or may not be able to decide his successor, Cardinals are forming into camps not based  upon the pope that appointed them, but other factors. (Region, ideology, etc.)

This is different than Vatican II simply no longer being relevant.  To a growing number of Catholics, they reject the understanding of Catholicism that was the consensus understanding from roughly 1979-2013.  This is an opportunity for traditionalists to present an alternative, one not based upon a stale and dead consensus represented by a pope in his mid 80's barely listened to by anyone, and certainly esteemed by even fewer.  We have that advantage precisely because we aren't bound by thinking that everything about Catholicism has to be understood solely through the prism of 1965 and later.  The way out of the current crisis doesn't exist in the mind of the present pope, and likely doesn't exist in the mind of either his successor or his successor's successor.  The solution will likely come from outside the Vatican.  Yet today's Catholicism cannot conceive of a Catholicism that isn't solely understood through the texts of the current pope, and maybe his immediate predecessors.  That puts us at a natural advantage.