Imagine the pain and sorrow of learning the church you attend and love has been burned to the ground by arsonists. And you will not be allowed to rebuild.
That’s about how Traditional Catholics have felt over the past week.
A week and a day have passed since Pope Francis released his Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes. The document has been panned by all quarters except the pope’s sycophantic cheering squad that hates the Church’s timeless teachings. Some of those reactions:
The first fruit of Traditionis is chaos. Hence, I am forced to remark that the vulgarity of this document is matched only by its cruelty.
Moves against the Latin Mass seems to me typical of a clerical hate towards the laity. I do not understand it. Those who attend the Latin Mass love the Church. We love God. We try to live good lives…I’m not sure why we warrant such contempt.
in the Bergoglian document, as many have noted, sarcasm and hatred for the ancient Rite shine through. A hatred such that it cannot be contained.
Francis’ letter to the bishops comes off as judgmental and mean-spirited, reeking with a hermeneutic of suspicion. It is highly ironic that the Pope intent on extending “mercy” to gay activists and adulterers (that is, the divorced and remarried) should not exhibit one ounce of pastoral solicitude for faithful Catholics.
I could post many more such quotes, but they are sadly similar reusing the same adjectives to describe the pope’s shameful dictate:
- Hateful
- Angry
- Violent
- Mean
- Cruel
- Vengeful
- Divisive
- Heartless
- Rigid
In short, Francis’s actions perfectly contradict everything he has preached against since becoming pope. One can only assume the pope emitted ten-times his fair share of carbon molecules in drafting the screed.
Last Friday, a group of men from the Traditional Latin Mass oratory I attend gathered at the church to say the Rosary for Pope Francis, the bishops, the priests, and the laity who will suffer under this cruel punishment. (Yes, Francis will suffer for his crimes.)
Among those gathered was a young man whom no one knew. (The rest of us play softball together on the Oratory’s men’s team.) Let’s call this man Steve.
Steve, we learned, recently moved from Chicago to St. Louis exclusively to be near the Oratory. He and his wife had trouble finding a Latin Mass in Chicago. COVID had made his job completely remote, and his wife is a nurse who can find work anywhere. So the couple packed up and moved to be nearer the Mass of the Ages in an Oratory whose rector is a remarkable and holy priest, the epitome of an excellent pastor.
We still don’t know the fate of our parish. The archbishop could, like Francis, say, “you’re done. Get out of here.”
Where would that leave Steve and his family?
Did Pope Francis bother to ask himself? Will our archbishop bother with such human questions? Or will hatred for the Church’s ancient traditions blind them to the human suffering imposed by Traditionis Custodes?
As we await the answer, I’ll leave you with these words of Raymond Cardinal Burke in his swift filial correction of Francis’s cruel letter:
It must be remembered that, from a theological point of view, every valid celebration of a sacrament, by the very fact that it is a sacrament, is also, beyond any ecclesiastical legislation, an act of worship and, therefore, also a profession of faith. In that sense, it is not possible to exclude the Roman Missal, according to the UA, as a valid expression of the lex orandi and, therefore, of the lex credendi of the Church. It is a question of an objective reality of divine grace which cannot be changed by a mere act of the will of even the highest ecclesiastical authority.
Please pray for us. Let us restore our Church.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam