I had been told beforehand that this diocese’s episcopal delegate for the traditional Mass, Fr. Michael
Hall, had been interviewed for March 19th.’s Sunday programme in a piece about
the Roche Rescript. (It is available here: Sunday - 19/03/2023 - BBC
Sounds at 5:10 into the programme). It was a short report and featured
Father Hall, a south of England You-Tuber, Austin Ivereigh and Cardinal Roche
himself.
The whole thing made for sad and
disturbing listening as Fr. Hall explained that he didn’t feel as if he could really
look to the Holy Father as his spiritual father because of things he had said
about traditional Catholics and that he felt as if Francis hates him and people
like him.
An internet search of remarks
made by the Pope about those attracted to the old Mass would certainly bear
this out. “Restorationism has come to gag the Council”; their problem is
“precisely their non-acceptance of the Council”; “Dogma and morality is always
in a path of development”; “You cannot do theology with a ‘no’ in front of it;
“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, for traditionalists it is the dead
faith of the living”; “'Self-absorbed neo-Promethean Pelagians”; “Traditionalists
safeguard the ashes of the past whilst ‘touting’ tradition as the guarantee of
the future”.
Thus, it seems we have been cast
as prostitutes looking for business.
Perhaps most tellingly on June 14th. 2022, the Jesuit publication America
reported, “Just last week, in a meeting with Sicilian clergy, Francis told the
priests that it wasn’t always appropriate to use “grandma’s lace” in their
vestments and to update their liturgical garb to be in touch with
current times and follow in
the spirit of Vatican II.”
These remarks were also echoed in
the Sunday broadcast by Cardinal Roche who claimed that the theology of the
Church has changed and that a distant priest no longer represents all people
because now it is not only the priest who celebrates the liturgy but all those
who are baptised with him.
The Cardinal
admitted that this was an enormous statement to make.
My understanding had been that
pastors were to ensure “the faithful were fully aware of what they were doing,
actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by it.” (Sacrosanctum Concillium.) In
anybody’s wildest imaginings this could not mean that they were to be eventually
regarded as concelebrants. Could it?
The enormity of the statement is
undeniable for nowhere in the documents of the Council have I ever seen or had
my attention drawn to such a statement. Is the Cardinal perhaps referring to
what Pope Francis above calls the spirit of the Council?
I am assuming that this “spirit”
permits the abomination of idol worship in the figure of the Pachamama?
Pachamama (Earth Mother) is a goddess revered by people of the Andes and is
also an Earth Mother in Inca mythology who is a fertility goddess who oversees
planting and harvesting and is able to cause earthquakes. As an ever-present
and independent “deity”, she apparently has the power to sustain life on earth.
The Holy Father with Pachamama in
the foreground in the Vatican gardens
Perhaps the spirit of the Council
is the permission for those living in irregular situations to avail themselves
of the reception of Holy Communion by way of a discursive footnote in the document
Amoris Laetitia. To me this makes a mockery of the heroic struggles made by people in irregular relationships both now and in the past to live up to the Teaching of the Church in regard to this matter.
I repeat, “The theology of the
Church has changed”, according to Cardinal Roche. Do we have evidence of this
statement yet?
Cardinal Hollerich SJ the Primate
of Luxembourg who is the Relator General of Pope Francis’ Synod stated with
regard to the Synod, “We must learn to cope with multiple expressions of faith.
Today one can no longer proscribe a single practice, nor can we as bishops.”
Spoken like a true liberal. I have been unable to ascertain the situation
facing the old Mass in Luxembourg.
This very much reminds me of
comments made to me by Bishop Terry Drainey a few years ago at the Oratory in
York. He said that there could be no problem if people genuinely worshipped God
by attending a Solemn High Mass or standing on a chair waving their arms in the
air. More likely to do the former myself, I couldn’t disagree with him. I know a lot of
good arm wavers and have known many Charismatics who were as devoted and
obedient to the traditional teaching of the Church as any traditionally
orientated Catholic I have known.
It has been pointed out countless
times by people far more intelligent than I am that the strength of the unity
of the Church is in its diversity and not in uniformity and rigidity. There are 24 Rites and Uses in the Church. Is
Cardinal Roche’s intention to kick these venerable Rites into line with his
vision of Nu-church with its new theology by picking them off one at a time
starting, say with the Ordinariate Use with the excuse that if they really want
to be Catholics they’ll have to start singing from the same hymn sheet?
It certainly looks as if what the
Pope and the Cardinal are saying is that the Traditional Mass, the
Extraordinary Form, is no longer compatible with the spirit of Vatican II.
In his slot on the Sunday
Programme Mr. Ivereigh said that it was very clear in the Pope’s letter to the
bishops that traditionalists represent a movement to undermine Vatican II. He
wishes not to suppress the old Mass but to regulate it by putting it back into
the hands of the bishops.
I wondered if this clip of Mr.
Ivereigh referred to Traditiones Custodes and not the Roche Rescript as the
rescript has done exactly the opposite to what the pope appeared to have
originally intended.
Cardinal Roche’s Rescript
snatches away the power of the bishops to “regulate” the celebration of Mass in
their respective dioceses according to the books of 1962. Cardinal Roche is as
keen to remind us of the Council as the Pope is to have us kowtow to its spirit
but the Council’s document Lumen Gentium (27) stopped the bishops from being
mere vicars or lackeys of the pope by stating, “bishops have the sacred right
and duty before the Lord…to moderate everything
pertaining to the ordering of worship.” To all intents and purposes Church
teaching from as late as the 1960s is now being sacrificed on the altar of the “hermeneutic
of discontinuity and rupture” in the mere name of the spirit of the
Council. Confusion reigns. Who is undermining the Council now? Goodbye to the
concept of collegiality.
Pope John XXIII who convoked the
Council said its primary purpose was that the sacred deposit of Christian
Doctrine be guarded and taught more effectively. At its close Pope Paul
VI said that John's great purpose had been achieved. There was apparently never
any intention of new theology.
In Traditiones Custodes
the Pope begins by stating, “Guardians of the Tradition, the bishops in
communion with the bishop of Rome constitute the visible principle and
foundation of the unity of their particular churches. Under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel and by means of the
celebration of the Eucharist they govern the particular churches entrusted to
them”.
He goes on to say that his
predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI granted and regulated the faculty to
use the Roman Missal edited by John XXIII in 1962 to facilitate the ecclesial
communion of those Catholics who feel attached to some earlier liturgical form.
In 2020 there was a consultation
of the bishops and apparently as a result of this “consultation” , the results of which, in our open Church, have never
been revealed, the pope imposed a list
of restrictions in Traditiones Custodes decreeing for example that there
should be no authorisation of establishing new groups and that no priest
ordained after the publication of that document should be allowed to offer the
traditional Mass without recourse to Rome for this permission. I wonder how
many priests have requested and been granted such permission.
Bishops as the guardians of tradition
were now free to dispense with permitting the celebration of Mass according to
the books of 1962 if they so wished. Some like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago and
others did use this document to axe Masses but by and large most bishops were
happy to allow the status quo to continue in their sees. Very strange if the bishop’s
consultation had hinted at widespread disobedience and sedition against the
Council. Liturgical peace was shattered in such places as old wounds were
reopened and now fester again.
Some bishops posed dubia and in
his responsa, Cardinal Roche added further restrictions saying for example that
celebrations of the 1962 Mass were not allowed to be advertised on parish
bulletins and newsletters.
Possibly in reaction to the fact
that the bishops had in effect generally ignored Traditiones Custodes it
came as no surprise when the Congregation for Divine Liturgy and Discipline of
the Sacraments published the shocking rescript in February of this year which
knuckled down on what had gone before it by further attempting to stamp out the
old Mass. Under canon 87 (i) a bishop, remember, a custodian of tradition whose
duty it is to moderate everything pertaining to the ordering of worship now had
the rug pulled from under his feet as this right in canon law was withdrawn Is the Code of
Canon Law so delicate that one Prefect can sweep it away so swiftly? The permissions
given by bishops in their own dioceses to their priests saying the old Mass in
their parish churches and chapels were nullified by the stroke of a pen. Bishops
were being expected to dust off their liturgical jackboots.
In one conversation I had with
Bishop Stock he told me that he knew well enough that there were no seditious
groups lurking in the wings to question and undermine the Council. Indeed, few
of the priests who offer the Mass in this diocese are even hardly old enough to
remember it and they all say the new Mass dutifully without murmuring or
rancour. Why should they? One Leeds parish priest told me that by celebrating
the old Mass privately it had enriched his experience of saying the new Mass
and deepened his understanding of it.
Perhaps Pope Benedict saw the
dangers of where the nebulous spirit of the Council was leading when as early
as 1990 he wrote, “The liturgical reform in its concrete realization has
distanced itself even more from its origin. The result has not been a
re-animation but devastation – they have produced a fabricated liturgy.” (Revue
Theologisches)
In 2000 in his Spirit of the
Liturgy, “Anyone who now advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy
or takes part in it is treated like a leper. All tolerance ends here. In doing
this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one
trust her at present if things are that way?
He had already decried this
attitude in 1997 in his Salt of the Earth as being “downright indecent”.
Ratzinger’s predecessor Pope John
Paul II wrote in 1988, “The souls of those who feel bound to the Latin
liturgical tradition must be respected everywhere through a broad and generous
application of the directives already issued by the Holy See for the use of the
Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.”
The week before on the Sunday
programme Cardinal Roche had spoken about the role of priests who the pope had
said needed to have the smell of the sheep. It would now appear that this
doesn’t apply if those souls smell of the old Mass or grandma’s lace. The
journalist at the BBC made reference to women attendees at the old Mass wearing
mantillas.
Instead, the spirit of Vatican II
has now opened up another can of worms with the ongoing synodal process. The
German Church has voted to adopt “implementation texts” related to same-sex
blessings, lay preaching during Mass and other controversial issues. These two former
things are explicitly forbidden at the moment, but I haven’t heard much, if any
condemnation from Rome since the majority of German bishops voted for these
things. I suppose now in Germany if I were a gay Catholic who wanted my civil
partnership blessing and to celebrate it with a traditional Mass I would get
the blessing but not the Mass. It beggars belief.
Who knows where the synodal path
will lead? It seems that the new “theology” will manifest itself in time but I
do know that Christ never told Peter that he was the rock on which He would
build his synodal cafeteria Church. It very much looks as if this confusing
papacy of mercy and decentralisation is as totally merciless and centralising
as one could imagine for a persecuted minority of faithful souls. Pastoral
sensitivity is really a thing of the past for some but there is always the
danger that this marginalisation and persecution of some of these people of God
will backfire and lead to increased devotion to the Mass which nourished so
many Catholics in times of persecution over the centuries. Nobody has succeeded
in stamping it out yet. Perhaps Vatican III is in the not too distant future.
Indeed, what greater comfort
could there be when in Psalm 42 at the start of most Masses the priest says,
“Do me justice, O God, and fight my fight against a faithless people; from the
deceitful and impious man rescue me”. Never has this psalm’s verse been so
resonant.
Cardinal McElroy has called for radical
inclusion of marginalised groups in a very different context and certainly not
our context. I feel as if I am part of a such a group these days and I want, like Fr. Hall
to feel included in the Church I love.
My fear is that the beatings will
continue until morale improves.
