Even as the UK’s Catholic Herald, once a fine publication for which I was pleased to write for many years, trashed the Traditional Latin Mass and, especially, the people who desire it (HERE), the usually left-leaning, progressivist UK bastion The Tablet, which has in the past been dubbed “The Bitter Pill”, has a strong piece in defense of the TLM (HERE).
What’s going on?
The CH offering was from a Msgr Barr, from a diocese long-known to terrorize their conservative priests. The Tablet article was from a layman in Ballarat, where the clergy long terrorized lay people.
From The Tablet…
[…]
I would like to say as a Catholic I feel regularly cut down by the Church. I have spoken of the horror of sexual abuse. I have also seen terrible financial abuse. Parishes that families help build and gave money to at great personal expense over many years sold off without much notice and for not much money. Pastoral programs launched to great fanfare with expensive publicity ending up being an expensive waste of time for little benefit. And now the extraordinary financial scandals coming out of Rome. But the most depressing thing of all is the contempt so many clergy seem to have to the quiet devotions of ordinary people. It is difficult not to think you hate us. We have done you no harm so all they only thing I can think of to explain this animosity is a distaste for vulnerable people and the obligation to care for them. Many people hate their job after a time but this is a devastating experience for the average Catholic when it is a priest who hates their job.
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 as Catholics. As ordinary people attending Mass we should be to bishops and priests nothing less than the face of Christ. I am not sure why we warrant such contempt.
[…]
Become a Custos Traditionis (HERE) and don’t forget the Novena to St. Ann (HERE).
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Why are there bishops and priests who hate the laity? Because they hate the Catholic faith itself, and they hate God. They are in the priesthood for some other reason than to save souls. We heard about this in the Gospel a couple of Sundays ago: a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
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They hate God. They hate the “rigidity” of the Catholic Faith.
They hate signs that point toward faithfulness to one and therefore the other.
Therefore, they also hate our large, young Catholic families who love the TLM.
Msgr. Eric Barr was the Vicar of Clergy/General. He was the architect of canceling almost all of the priests in Rockford. He states in his article that none of the “young priests” passed the Latin test. That is simply not true. I passed and Bishop Doran complimented me on my pronunciation. He also states that the young priests wanted to this due to clericalism. I was asked by my pastor to do it.
@Fr. Lovell
I keep hearing of liberal bishops saying that their priests don’t have strong enough Latin to celebrate the old Mass.
Canon Law requires a Bishop to ensure that his priests are trained to a good standard in Latin. These bishops condemn themselves with their own words.
[BAM!]
It’s not so much hatred as contempt.
Contempt for piety.
Contempt for tradition.
Contempt for orthodoxy.
Contempt for the rubrics.
Contempt for the Rosary.
Contempt for devotion to saints.
Contempt for fraternities & sodalities.
I don’t know if it is the echo of resentments that were inflicted upon/instilled in seminarians of the 1970’s or a manifestation of clergy feeling trapped in a life they no longer desire or believe in.
But it is very real.
I concur with Gaetano above. It’s contempt. Those who are not part of the Lord of the World’s nomenklatura are expected to shut up, queue up, and pony up.
Adding to Gaetano’s observation: Did you know that the one reliable factor that predicts divorce is contempt?
I’m given to understand it’s not just contempt for one’s spouse, either, but any contempt, especially if serious or persistent.
Gaetano,
Why did you omit contempt for Truth?
Good comments here.
I’m reminded of my youth in Central/Western New York when priests and our bishops looked down on the laity with sneering contempt. We needed to be brought up to speed, to get with the times, to embrace the dawning of the age of Aquarius. As a kid I knew there was something amiss but couldn’t put my finger on it because it was all I ever knew.
I ran across my mother’s old Maryknoll Missal from 1962 and I brought it to a priest to show him and ask what it was. The bile he spewed shocked me and I wondered why something as harmless as an old missal would send him into a rage. At the time I didn’t even know there was a difference between the old and new rites. I though the mass was the same but in English, which made the priest’s vitriol even more confusing. I’m still unable to put my finger on why the priests of my youth hate tradition so much. I can’t understand how the TLM sets them off. I can’t imagine the “bad old days” were really that bad. It seems like reverse nostalgia to me. Reverse nostalgia being the sense that our past was nothing but misery and sorrow. Far from a golden age, reverse nostalgia is looking forward to a utopia that can never be, and the only way to imagine the future golden age is to re-imagine the past as a Dark Age. It’s a mental illness.
I’m glad to report that my current bishop, Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, has shown a genuine love for the people of this diocese without discrimination. He treats everyone here with the gentleness and respect. You can see from his apostolic exhortations that he actively teaches us Truth. He’s a good man. In this latest scandal he has said that the TLM situation in our diocese will remain as-is, which is a pretty darn good situation.
matt from az, Gaetano, James M et al: Good comments.
Fortunately there were only several incidents, but this recalls the several priests (rare among thousands of priests) who called the police on mothers praying with their children in the pews (even in an otherwise empty church) who were not wearing masks. Less Fr. Modernist, More Fr. Kolbe.
Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. – 1 Peter 2:10