With the latest attack on the roots of our Catholic identity the Church is one step closer to becoming a punchline. Wherein Fr. Z rants.

From Le Figaro via National Catholic Register… with my emphases and comments… by the great Robert Card. Sarah.

On the Credibility of the Catholic Church

Doubt has taken hold of Western thought. Intellectuals and politicians alike describe the same impression of collapse. Faced with the breakdown of solidarity and the disintegration of identities, some turn to the Catholic Church. [If there were ever a time for the Church to be coherent in her messaging….] They ask her to give a reason to live together to individuals who have forgotten what unites them as one people. They beg her to provide a little more soul to make the cold harshness of consumer society bearable. When a priest is murdered, everyone is touched and many feel stricken to the core. [If you didn’t know, a priest in France was recently murdered by an (illegal?) immigrant who also set fire to the Cathedral of Nantes last year.]

But is the Church capable of responding to these calls? Certainly, she has already played this role of guardian and transmitter of civilization. At the twilight of the Roman Empire, she knew how to pass on the flame that the barbarians were threatening to extinguish. But does she still have the means and the will to do so today[It’s not looking good.  Not when people like Jeffrey Sachs are on the Vatican short list and the body of Chinese Catholics have been sacrificed to Mammon.]

At the foundation of a civilization, there can only be one reality that surpasses it: a sacred invariant. Malraux noted this with realism: “The nature of a civilization is what gathers around a religion. Our civilization is incapable of building a temple or a tomb. It will either be forced to find its fundamental value, or it will decay.”

Without a sacred foundation, protective and insuperable boundaries are abolished. An entirely profane world becomes a vast expanse of quicksand. [This is why there cannot be a “state Church”.] Everything is sadly open to the winds of arbitrariness. In the absence of the stability of a foundation that escapes man, peace and joy — the signs of a long-lasting civilization — are constantly swallowed up by a sense of precariousness. The anguish of imminent danger is the seal of barbaric times. Without a sacred foundation, every bond becomes fragile and fickle [At this point you should be chanting Lex Orandi… Lex Credendi… Lex Orandi… Lex Credendi…. Save The Liturgy… Save The World…Save The Liturgy… Save The World….] 

Some ask the Catholic Church to play this solid foundation role. They would like to see her assume a social function, namely to be a coherent system of values, a cultural and aesthetic matrix. But the Church has no other sacred reality to offer than her faith in Jesus, God made man. Her sole goal is to make possible the encounter of men with the person of Jesus. Moral and dogmatic teaching, as well as mystical and liturgical patrimony, are the setting and the means of this fundamental and sacred encounter. Christian civilization is born of this encounter. Beauty and culture are its fruits.  [Change the setting and you change the encounter.]

In order to respond to the world’s expectations, the Church must therefore find the way back to herself and take up the words of Saint Paul: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and Jesus crucified.” She must stop thinking of herself as a substitute for humanism or ecology. These realities, although good and just, are for her but consequences of her unique treasure: faith in Jesus Christ.

What is sacred for the Church, then, is the unbroken chain that links her with certainty to Jesus. A chain of faith without rupture or contradiction, a chain of prayer and liturgy without breakage or disavowal. [What was that, again?] Without this radical continuity, what credibility could the Church still claim? In her, there is no turning back, but an organic and continuous development that we call the living tradition. The sacred cannot be decreed, it is received from God and passed on.

This is undoubtedly the reason for which Benedict XVI could authoritatively affirm:

In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”

At a time when some theologians are seeking to reopen the liturgy wars by pitting the missal revised by the Council of Trent against the one in use since 1970, it is urgent to recall this. If the Church is not capable of preserving the peaceful continuity of her link with Christ, she will be unable to offer the world “the sacred which unites souls,” according to the words of Goethe.

Beyond the quarrel over rites, the credibility of the Church is at stake. If she affirms the continuity between what is commonly called the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, then the Church must be able to organize their peaceful cohabitation and their mutual enrichment. If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, if one were to declare them irreconcilable, one would implicitly recognize a rupture and a change of orientation. [NB] But then the Church could no longer offer the world that sacred continuity, which alone can give her peace. By keeping alive a liturgical war within herself, the Church loses her credibility and becomes deaf to the call of men. Liturgical peace is the sign of the peace that the Church can bring to the world.

What is at stake is therefore much more serious than a simple question of discipline. If she were to claim a reversal of her faith or of her liturgy, in what name would the Church dare address the world? Her only legitimacy is her consistency in her continuity.

Moreover, if the bishops, who are in charge of the cohabitation and mutual enrichment of the two liturgical forms, do not exercise their authority to this effect, they run the risk of no longer appearing as shepherds, guardians of the faith they have received and of the sheep entrusted to them, but as political leaders: commissars of the ideology of the moment rather than guardians of the perennial tradition. They risk losing the trust of men of good will.

A father cannot introduce mistrust and division among his faithful children. He cannot humiliate some by setting them against others. He cannot ostracize some of his priests. The peace and unity that the Church claims to offer to the world must first be lived within the Church.

In liturgical matters, neither pastoral violence nor partisan ideology has ever produced fruits of unity. The suffering of the faithful and the expectations of the world are too great to engage in these dead-end paths. No one is too much in the Church of God!

There is great depth here.

Card. Sarah gives voice to something I have written about for many years now, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s “Emancipation Proclamation” Summorum Pontificum.

I think Benedict had a Marshall Plan for the Church in the “modern world”.  (BTW… the young Ratzinger was a critic of Gaudium et spes).

After the devastation WWII these USA helped to rebuild Europe in order to foster trade and support a bulwark against Communism.  In the wake of the devastation caused by a hermeneutic of discontinuity after the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict tried to revitalize our Catholic identity as a bulwark against the dictatorship of relativism.

The renewal of our Catholic identity requires a realigning of the Roman Rite.  How we pray has a reciprocal relationship with what we believe.  This realignment requires the Traditional Roman Rite.  There is no way around it.  We have to renew our liturgical worship in order to be who we are within Holy Church, so that we can have an impact, as Catholic disciples of the Lord, on the world around us.

The Traditional Roman Rite is an antidote to the secularization of the Church.

Find a bishop or priest who resists, forbids the Traditional Rite, and you find a priest or bishop for whom the Church is an NGO.

If we don’t know who we are, no one will pay attention to us or what we might have to offer in the public square.  If we are incoherent, for example giving Communion to radically pro-abortion Catholics, why should anyone pay attention to anything we have to say on any other issue?  Bishops have squandered out moral capital for decades.

Given the demographic disaster that we face, the sinkhole opening up under the Church, we have to face the fact that changes are necessary. Great swathes of “Catholics” will soon disappear.  Those left will be of a traditional leaning together with converts from Evangelical backgrounds and well-rooted charismatics who are enthusiastic about their Faith.  There will be some frictions, but these groups will find each other out of need.  The result, I predict, will be amazing.

The Traditional Latin Mass is the key to the future.

It must become widespread and frequent and beautifully executed.  All attempts to sideline or repress it must be met with firm, humble resolve and resistance.

We need all the devotions and other rites as well.

WE ARE OUR RITES.

With the latest attack on the roots of our Catholic identity, Traditionis custodes, the Church is one step, one giant leap, closer to becoming a punchline.

The revitalization for the Church through a restoration of our Catholic identity will require nearly heroic courage from priests.  An alarmed Enemy is fighting back and fighting hard.

Priests will need to work harder than ever to acquire tools that they were systematically cheated out of in their formation.  They will be intimidated.  They will fear that they can’t do it.  At first they may have to quietly seek out instruction and then lock their doors to practice. Samizdat. They can do it, but it will take hard work and support from others.  Graces will be given in this undertaking, because the connection of the priest and the altar is fundamental to the Church’s life.  No other thing that the priest does is more important.

Priests must also be willing to suffer attacks from libs, many of whom are not malicious but who are blinkered and nearly brainwashed.   There is a parallel, I think, between the way some people in the Church perceive every wafting word from the Umbilicus Mundi in Rome and the way some people wear their COVID masks while riding alone in their cars or riding bicycles.   There is a parallel between the way some people would jail those who don’t want “the jab” and the animus of some in the Church for the Traditional Mass.

It all goes to demonstrate how important it is that we shed unhealthy papalotry and preserve our liturgical worship.

The near future is going to require nearly heroic courage and a spirit of sacrifice from lay people who must support their priests and encourage them in projects that they will be reluctant to undertake.  Lay people must also be ready to engage in their parishes and with their priests on a new level.   Remember what  Fulton Sheen said:

“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”

Remember, friends, that we are our rites.  As the Church prays, so do we believe and live.

Be a CUSTOS.  HERE

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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22 Comments

  1. JMody says:

    A burst of loosely-related thoughts –
    1) Actually, in the dealing of two rites, there are three options, (a) abolish the old, (b) allow them both, or (c) apologize and abolish the new. Benedict tried (b), because (c) would cause LOTS of turmoil, and the experiment revealed something “terrible”. Now Francis is trying (a), which is just as the article says calling into question the basic Truth/credibility of the Church/faith etc. Nobody is ready to try (c) yet, but that’s essentially what “Quo Primum” was — banning everything newer than 200 years of consistent practice.

    2) The “terrible” truth revealed by Benedict’s option (b) is that option (c) will assert itself naturally, and soon. Recall Kenneth Jones’ “Index of leading Catholic Indicators” and the assorted pieces written by David Sonnier analyzing the data. The Catholic Church is in a state of natural decay, and will peter out or die off by about 2070-2100 EXCEPT where the liturgy and sacraments of 1962 missal are used, which are the only areas growing – the ONLY ones. I find it fascinating to reflect on how that math, Pope Leo’s vision of satan being granted 100 years to try destroying the Church, and the conclusion of the “V2” Council as well as imposition of the new missal all align at around 2065-2070.

    3) The motu proprio Tantrum de Custodibus appears to be nothing more than a desperate attempt to mandate the growth of the NO — if the bad-traddies are growing, I’ll make them come to the new mass and then the new mass will grow. There is clearly not ONE calorie exerted toward anything like introspection, considering evidence, drawing rational conclusions, or listening for th voice in the night or the whisper after the storm. Nope, but those so disposed see justification to outlaw ANYTHING that might be derived from the older form … well where does that stop, and how do you say with a straight face that this isn’t ironclad proof of a new religion, not merely a “pastoral council”?

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  3. Fr. Charles A. F. says:

    Yes, the immigrant from Rwanda who murdered Fr. Olivier Maire was had been issued with an injunction to leave French territory—but these are only enforced, I believe, in 13% of cases.

  4. Son of Saint Alphonsus says:

    “Priests will need to work harder than ever to acquire tools that they were systematically cheated out of in their formation.”

    Father Z., I’m a little uncertain as to whether you wrote that or Cardinal Sarah did, but either way it spot-on. I would go further and say in my experience we were de-formed. It was traumatizing. I am trying to educate myself in the Truth of the Faith that was denied and ridiculed in my philosophical, theological, and spiritual formation. It’s exhausting but I will not, cannot give up. My salvation depends on it. I’ve been “cancelled” but that’s okay. Had that not happened I would most likely be damned. Were I still engaged in parochial ministry I would very likely be leading souls to Hell. I don’t think I am properly prepared to preach or hear confessions. God is good and He has willed this trial for my salvation and that of others. But I want to say above all, stay close to Our Lady. Had I not done so….I shudder to think. As Saint Alphonsus said, who is devoted to Mary will never be lost. Oremus pro invicem.

  5. Sportsfan says:

    I wonder what a Vatican headed by the pope formerly known as Cardinal Sarah would look like?

    It would look much different than the clown show we are witnessing currently.

  6. Toan says:

    Francis, in citing lex orandi in the letter introducing TC, implies that the EF offers a different “credendi”, or creed, from the OF. That thought has been nagging at me lately, so it’s super refreshing to see this article from Card. Sarah clarifying the matter.

  7. BillG says:

    “…if the bishops, … do not exercise their authority …, they run the risk of no longer appearing as shepherds, guardians of the faith they have received and of the sheep entrusted to them….”

    ” It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”

    Could almost be quotes from Archbishop Lefebvre, who insisted, despite great costs, on passing on what he received. But no, they are from Cardinal Sarah and Pope Benedict XVI.

  8. HvonBlumenthal says:

    One of the many successes of your blog, Father, is the high quality of comments you attract.

    I particularly like and agree with JMody’s here.

    However, shouldn’t that be Tantrum Custodum? 3rd declension, genitive plural?

  9. Christ_opher1 says:

    If the overall goal is to use the N.O. to empty the churches, the objective will be reached where we currently reside in France during the next 10 – 15 years.

    This is simply due to the age demographic of the congregation and lack of families with children attending mass.

    I remember reading that the reason for the banishment of the extraordinary form was because of division, but this excuse is completely untrue. We have been fortunate enough to attend from time to time the mass in the EF form and the priest protects the congregants from becoming full of themselves by keeping the altar space sacred him and the alnclusivity of the N.O. I experience more division because of the competition by the

  10. Christ_opher1 says:

    If the overall goal is to use the N.O. to empty the churches, the objective will be reached where we currently reside in France during the next 10 – 15 years.
    This is simply due to the age demographic of the congregation and the lack of families with children attending mass.

    I remember reading that the reason for the banishment of the extraordinary form was because of division, but this excuse is completely untrue. We have been fortunate enough to attend from time to time the mass in the EF form and the priest protects the congregants from becoming full of themselves, haughtier by keeping the altar space sacred, the priest and the altar servers deliver the holy mass, not Doris who has been hearing voices and feels that she has a special mission to be something more than a congregant and clicky, clacky Bob with his synthesizer and adapted lyrics are nowhere to be seen, thank God.

    Due to the inclusivity agenda of the N.O. I have experienced more division because of the competition created within the congregants for special roles and these little clubs who dominate or “walk together” with the priest make it difficult for new people to attend the mass unless this false hierarchy gets their backsides kissed.

    If this is a double post, sorry I was editing the first post and accidentally clicked on send.

  11. Grateful to be Catholic says:

    “If she affirms the continuity between what is commonly called the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, then the Church must be able to organize their peaceful cohabitation and their mutual enrichment. If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, “If she affirms the continuity between what is commonly called the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, then the Church must be able to organize their peaceful cohabitation and their mutual enrichment. If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, if one were to declare them irreconcilable, one would implicitly recognize a rupture and a change of orientation.” And declaring them irreconcilable is exactly what is intended by TC. Fortunately his Eminence tells the Bishops that it is ultimately their responsibility to maintain and preserve continuity. But the real knot is that there has been a rupture and the two are irreconcilable. So what must be maintained is the pre-rupture Rite.”

  12. Simon_GNR says:

    I hope that Cardinal Sarah lives long enough, and in good enough health, to become our next Pope. It’s a long shot, given how many of the current voting cardinals have been created by Pope Francis in his own image, but we can but hope. I think it’s over 600 years since there was a Francophone pope, but perhaps Robert Sarah will be the next.

  13. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    HvonBlumenthal,

    Could ‘custodibus’ be used in an ablative of means, or would they have to be considered agents and the preposition ‘a/ab’ be added?

  14. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    “If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, if one were to declare them irreconcilable, one would implicitly recognize a rupture and a change of orientation.”

    Is it just a question of what one would mean by ‘radically’ and ‘declare’, then? What if one were to (1) allow the novel one to fall into desuetude, and (2) declare there was nothing improper about that?

    And, what, for example, happened to the Quindena Paschalis of 1955 when things were revised in 1962 (e.g., the Bea Psalter Latin translations were replaced by those which had preceded them), or to the 1965 Roman Missal in its totality?

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  16. bartlep says:

    Watch this.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdbwNMYKhw0

    First of a trilogy on the TLM. First episode released today — excellent!!
    PF and Comrades lose—we win!

  17. Pingback: MONDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

  18. Senor Quixana says:

    Have mercy on me, dear readers, for I am going to write something you do not want to read but tell me if it is not true.

    While I would be excited to see the good Cardinal Sarah on the balcony when the white smoke goes up the next time, he pays lip service to the “mutual enrichment” idea that only one side of the divide has any interest in.

    There are more than a few on the Novus Ordo side who would like to see some more Latin in the mass to tie it more closely to its history and to emphasize the universality of the church and to have some more of the dignity of the TLM. On the TLM side, I have never seen anything but ardent defense of every comma and most arcane gesture. Some, not all, on the NO side do hope for some enrichment from the TLM, but no one on the TLM side dares even speculate that there might be something to improve in the TLM. There is not even much recognition that there was a strong liturgical reform movement in the church long before Vatican II and it was not led by a bunch of wild-eyed latin haters, but by people who realized that the mass had become something the laity sat through while they prayed their rosary, not something that had more than a passing connection to them. I have not seen even one member of the TLM community suggest 1 thing that should be modified in the TLM, not 1 item that might be adopted from the NO to make enrichment mutual.

    Benedict XVI liberated the TLM so those who love it could have it and could be more integrated into the broader church community, but there is little to suggest that integration is what the TLM side wants. Instead, the TLM side seems to be attempting the camel’s nose approach getting itself into the tent and pushing the NO side out. There is never acknowledgment of this as the strategy, but there is an assumption that that is the way it will work. (It will not.) There does not seem to be much development of modes where there is a TLM in each deanery (or other types of subdivision) celebrated by priests who value the NO but who celebrate the TLM to serve the community and improve their celebration of both forms by celebrating both. Rather we have seen the development of priests who will serve the TLM community only and refuse to lower themselves to celebrate the NO.

    I should like to see some mutual enrichment because I see how both versions could be improved, but only 1 side seems open to that, and that only grudgingly and it is not the TLM side. It almost seems like a lie to speak of it. A nice-sounding thing we have to pretend to be interested in but have no intention of doing.

    The whining about marginalization has to stop too, Yes, the TLM community was marginalized for too long, but it has not acted like it wants integration. I have seen no evidence to support the notion that it wants integration, merely a fairer separate but equal setup. (Maybe that is the way to go: an east and a west diocese in the US, separate clergy, and 1 physical church donated from each Roman rite diocese to start off with. The Ruthenians get by that way.)

    As I wrote at the beginning, please be merciful dear friends, but show me that I am wrong

  19. TonyO says:

    @Senor Quixana:

    I agree that the traditional community tends to be very hard-core fixed in not changing a single comma of the 1962 missal. But there are exceptions. Fr. Z, our dear and excellent host, himself has mentioned a few changes (if my memory serves).

    I too would be happy to see the TLM used so much more widely that most parishes – even ALL parishes – have at least one TLM per Sunday. With some changes. For example, I believe that the Laast Gospel reading was a relatively late addition to the Mass, and it was either (take your pick) excessive (one more prayer element added without need), or put in the wrong location. For another, I think it is really very easy to justify having the people say their own “Lord I am not worthy…”, instead of the priest saying it. For that matter, the people should be saying the creed, also: it starts with “I believe…” and it is SUPPOSED to represent what each one of us affirms interiorly, AS WELL AS what we attest to out loud to others. How can we do that if it is always the priest / altar boys who say it on our behalf? And obviously, adding Old Testament readings to the cycle of readings does no harm to readings already there.

    The problem is not fundamentally one of the traditionalists having ALWAYS been rigidly opposed to changing even a comma in the missal: the mass got updated several times after the time of Pius V, without enormous rancor. At this point, the trads are resistant to changing even a comma because the 1969 change was so radically different and UNNECESSARILY different in ways that not only didn’t carry out what VII said, it contradicted VII. And with that event in our past, traditionalists were burned and now are defensive about the 1962 missal: they don’t want ANYONE to get their hands on it who is happy with the Novus Ordo, or even anyone who thinks the changes in 1969 were justifiable. If they could get a pope who is actually a traddie himself, who first said “let’s reform the reform and get a mass like VII asked for” while leaving the 1962 mass alone, and then after 20 years of that (lets imagine this pope having a long reign) said “we are going to enrich the 1962 missal like Benedict XVI asked for” by adding Old Testament readings, I don’t think most traditionalists would object.

  20. WVC says:

    @Senor Quixana (I enjoy your name, btw)

    I suggest that the entire framework of your question/idea is what is flawed. The idea that liturgy is something we ought to “change” or “improve” or “tinker” with is exactly the problem.

    I actually agree that, for better and worse, the Tridentine Form of the Mass crystalized something that was meant to be a living, growing thing. But it was an emergency response to a cataclysmic crisis, and I’m not one to question the prudence of what Pius V and those of the counter-reformation thought best. I also appreciate the desire for a return of liturgical growth that preceded Vatican II or even the type of growth as actually called for in SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM. The problem is everything done to the liturgy after the council was a travesty. No need to rehash any of the well covered ground, but it was an absolute unmitigated travesty conducted by men who foolishly thought what was needed was for them to refashion, tinker, and alter something that was not some sort of machine or automaton but which was an actual living thing.

    Authentic changes to the liturgy grow over time, within communities, and in small steps, and often even those small steps meet with necessary and healthy opposition. One prunes a tree, one doesn’t take a chainsaw to it and then build an artificial one in its place with aluminum poles. And even when one prunes prudently, one is aware that it can take many, many years to grow a new branch to replace the one that was removed.

    This is why nobody (with any sense) is calling for any changes to the Traditional Mass. In our current age, with our current leaders, it would just be another travesty. They have no more respect for the liturgy now than they did then. Perhaps less. What we need now, more than ever, is LESS changes and LESS tinkering, not more.

    That being said, already one with a keen eye can see that small changes have happened to the Latin Mass over the past few decades, and these are what one would call authentic growth. In some places, like the USA, people kneel when the holy water hits them during the Asperges. This is actually NOT traditional. It doesn’t even really make sense. I’ve had a very fine monsignor scold the congregation (mildly, albeit) for doing this, but that didn’t stop everyone from still doing it. Other changes, here and there, some based on adherence to the Red Book, others due to a living tradition handed on my older folks who remember what the Mass was like, do exist, and that’s perfectly fine. Because these are variations that are naturally occurring, not artificially constructed.

    My druthers are pointless, as I have no influence on any of these proceedings, but I don’t think any officially promulgated changes to the Latin Mass should even be considered until its use is wide spread (as in over 50% of the entire Church is using it as the primary Mass) and has been ongoing for no less than 100 years. It’s not until you have at least two generations of devout Catholics growing up with a liturgy do I think you can possibly expect to have men with an adequate appreciation for that liturgy be in a position to ponder what prudent changes can or should be made.

    [steps off soap box]

  21. Semper Gumby says:

    “At the twilight of the Roman Empire, she knew how to pass on the flame that the barbarians were threatening to extinguish. But does she still have the means and the will to do so today?”

    Faithful clergy, religious and laity will labor on, some known only to God.

    “Moral and dogmatic teaching, as well as mystical and liturgical patrimony, are the setting and the means of this fundamental and sacred encounter. Christian civilization is born of this encounter. Beauty and culture are its fruits.”

    A lesson the world is about to re-learn yet again, apparently the hard way.

    “She must stop thinking of herself as a substitute for humanism or ecology.”

    A civil war is underway in the Catholic Church, between Christians and pagan ideologues. Been here before too.

    “The sacred cannot be decreed, it is received from God and passed on.”

    True, though the Cult of Personality and Rule by Decree is ever a temptation to certain people in the hierarchy.

    “Her only legitimacy is her consistency in her continuity.”

    Which is why the Gospel, Tradition and the Faithful are being attacked by ravenous wolves in the hierarchy and disordered laity.

    “…commissars of the ideology of the moment rather than guardians of the perennial tradition. They risk losing the trust of men of good will.”

    That process is already underway. Numerous bishops should repent.

    “In liturgical matters, neither pastoral violence nor partisan ideology has ever produced fruits of unity. The suffering of the faithful and the expectations of the world are too great to engage in these dead-end paths.”

    Yes, but then there is Pride and Vanity. Repent, miscreant bishops. Life is short, Eternity is long.

    God bless Card. Sarah.

    p.s. Thanks for the chuckle JMody and HvonBlumenthal: “Tantrum Custodum.”

  22. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Senor Quixana concludes, “please be merciful dear friends, but show me that I am wrong” – well, I don’t know how often or widely you are wrong, but you are certainly wrong in my experience, which was of years of an Apostolate where every Sunday was sung, in Latin, with chanted Propers, ad orientem, an NO Mass in the morning and a TLM in the early evening, where we attended the morning as more convenient as a family with school-age children. I am not sure who else tended to go to which one, but I never heard of priests or acolytes who avoided one in preference of the other.

    I suspect that is unusual (and, bizarrely, to my thinking, I have heard lay people vociferous about only attended sung Latin NO Masses who spoke scornfully of the TLM), but I wonder how unusual?

    TonyO,

    However odd, I’ve never attended a low TLM, but both the spoken ‘dialogue’ and sung TLMs I know include everyone at the appropriate moments taking part in the Ordinary, Creed, Domine non sum dignum, and Confiteor. Is that unusual? I hope not! Of course, the Propers are usually Old Testament texts, and a great way to have even more is to sing the Offertory and Communion verses (as we do in the schola I now sing in). Is that unusual? Again, I hope not!

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