Two things.
First, Swiss Bishop Vitus Huonder has released the third in a series of videos about the undeniable crisis in the Church.
It is in German with subtitles.
Put down or put aside other things. Click. Fold your hands and watch this attentively. No. Really. Resist the temptation, beaten into us now, to succumb to our shortened attention spans… which is a tactic of the Devil, for sure. Am I wrong?
I juxtapose that with this.
It seems that every time Francis goes somewhere he gets together with Jesuits. I suppose it is too much to hope that he will suppress them. Yeah, that’s not going to happen for a while yet.
Also, it seems when he gets together with Jesuits he has to insult people who desire the traditional sacred worship of the Roman Catholic Church.
Bp. Huonder put a question via video to Francis. It seems that putting questions to Francis is a legitimate thing. (So long as it isn’t from certain people or a certain kind of dubia…. that’s when the rules about frankness, dialogue and accompaniment change.)
Here was the question put to Francis by a Jesuit in Hungary:
The Second Vatican Council talks about the relationship between the Church and the modern world. How can we reconcile the Church and the reality that is already beyond the modern? How do we find God’s voice while loving our time?
Here was the answer. Ask yourself how much the answer truly responded to the question.
I wouldn’t know how to answer that theoretically, but I certainly know that the Council is still being applied. It takes a century for a Council to be assimilated, they say. And I know the resistance to its decrees is terrible. There is unbelievable restorationism, what I call “indietrismo” (backwardness), as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:39) says: “But we do not belong to those who shrink back.” The flow of history and grace goes from the roots upward like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. But without this flow you remain a mummy. Going backwards does not preserve life, ever. You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age. But this is a change from the bottom up. The danger today is indietrismo, the reaction against the modern. It is a nostalgic disease. This is why I decided that now the permission to celebrate according to the Roman Missal of 1962 is mandatory for all newly consecrated priests. After all the necessary consultations, I decided this because I saw that the good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward. It was necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors.
“I don’t know how to respond ‘theoretically’… but this is what I have done practically. I’m restricting the TLM, etc.”
So, he can’t describe the reason for doing it “theoretically”, which I think is code for “theologically”. He just wants to do it. It is his will. That’s enough.
Note that this time Francis said that the people who want the TLM were diseased, they have “nostalgiac disease”. That would make them … “sick”?
He again used the ridiculous description “backwardism”. Contrast that with the situation you heard in Bp. Huonder’s video.
In one telling comment, however, he said:
“I know the resistance to its decrees is terrible. There is incredible support for restorationism, what I call ‘indietrismo’ (backwardness), as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:39) says: ‘But we do not belong to those who shrink back.’”
The implication is that people who want tradition are cowards (ouk esmen hypostoles).
But don’t bury the important part: “incredible support for restorationism”.
Hmmm… maybe if there is incredible support for it, it could be a good idea?
“Incredible” can mean “a great number of people” are for it or it maybe can be “unbelievable”, in that, “I don’t understand why how many… I don’t believe it….”
That line from Hebrews is in a chapter comes just after a description by Paul of how believers were persecuted and the need to persevere. So, the sense of Hebrews is that the ones who were being persecuted were not cowards who were timidly falling away. The people who want traditional worship are the ones being persecuted, really and actually. Cherry picking is a problem.
Since he made this mistake another time, inexplicable was his mention of Vincent of Lerin. Francissaid: “You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age”. I note that the reportage was from Antonio Spadaro (SJ) who once flew as high as Peter Pan and now is just one of the Lost Boys in the Vatican Neverland. Spadaro, I believe, still maintains the website in honor of the Italian homoerotic writer. HERE
QUAERITUR: How much of what Francis said to the Jesuits is boilerplate pulled from the old files?
This must be asked because the use of Vincent of Lérins in support of Francis’ (?) position, if he really has a position that is his own and isn’t that of someone else, seems to undermine what Francis claims.
What did Vincent of Lérins really say? Allow me a slight editing choice from “he” to “you”… which doesn’t change the sense at all!
“….he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who set light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time; [Here start reading aloud…] but that whatsoever new and unheard-of doctrine you shall find to have been furtively introduced by some one or another, besides that of all or contrary to that of all the saints, this, you will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, ‘There must needs be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you:’ as though he should say, This is the reason why the authors of Heresies are not forthwith rooted up by God, namely, that they who are approved may be made manifest; that is, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith.” Commonitorium 20.48
As you read this and reflect on how sick in the head you are, how nostalgically diseased you have become, consider that in a parish in New York a display was set up claiming that God is “trans” and “queer”. Think about what Germans are doing. Think about Pachamama. Think about the equivalence of all religions.
But, no! The Latin Mass needs snuffing out.
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What to think about it? We are in uncharted waters! Diabolical disorientation! The smoke of Satan is choking the Church, and the pope is pumping the bellows! How can we reconcile this with the petrine ministry?
Let’s analyze modernist logic vs. my status as a relatively ypung Trad.
I spend $25 at one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants for a creme brulee. When it arrives, it is lathered in spicy marinara and Velveeta.
I explain to the waitress this is not proper. Chef Ramsey then comes out to castigate me, explaining he knows better simply because of his status as a master chef.
His business folds because down the road, Chef Marco Pierre White serves the traditional…that is, proper…dessert.
Ramsey becomes head of a French culinary school. He demands that creme brulee be redefined. He also drills into his students’ heads that anyone who likes a real creme brulee is simply nostalgic for something his/her Grandma made. It is vile to go to Chef Marco’s restaurant and have such a regressive dessert. These people are not gourmets, they are regressive rebels!
Meanwhile he gets upset that the French are speaking out against his failure. He doesn’t view his putrid invention as a failure for he’s Gordon Ramsey. Culinary artists must not follow those hard headed Frenchman. (Being half French myself, I admit I can be quite hard-headed. But I digress.)
In concluding, I must be some kind of rebel. The creme brulee was altered before I was born, thus I must be a fool for not loving the Velveeta slathered monstrosity.
Or we can be realistic and acknowledge that my taste buds actually function.
Hebrews 10:39 (RSV2CE): But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls.
Wondering how those who like the TLM are “too divisive” and “going backwards” but literal schismatics with at least questionable Christology over hang-ups at Chalcedon (and Florence) can be enrolled in the martyrology.
Wishing I was still there to sample that rabbit!
-Eamonn
The Holy Father really has a knack for picking names and insults that make it feel so cool to be “rebellious.”
Amazing that Francis’ comments were the direct opposite of what Lérins was stating. The message is God allows heresies so that the faithful may recognize heretics. What heresies is he referring to specifically? Why those new, modern ideas that are not based in tradition.
Thank you Fr. Z. It almost seems right our the liberal left playbook if Francis were an American. Almost to a fault any quote from Francis seems to have an actual meaning of the exact opposite of what he says.
Indeed, quite a brazen abuse of St. Vincent there. Here’s what he actually said about progress:
“But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged n itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.”
I absolutely love how Bishop Hounder makes the critical point smoothly, calmly, rationally, forcefully and explicitly: it is NOT a matter of privilege or special grant, the faithful have a right to the rite of their fathers before them. He is a treasure to the Church, and thank God for him.
If anyone needed help seeing the truth: the way Francis has willfully turned St. Vincent of Lerins’ dictum on its head is the evidence for which is the right path. Vincent spoke of the kind of change that is organic development, that is solidly and manifestly true to the prior teaching and practice. He did not promote change as such, for change as such is neither good always, nor bad always, but is good or bad according to its particulars. And clearly the weird changes being foisted by Francis and his cadre are not changes from the root and vine of the faith, but extraneous to those authentic sources of Life.
I suppose “change” is in the eye of the beholder. From the perspective of someone born after the council and the liturgical reform, their only experience is of that, and thus can honestly see those holding on to what has been a status quo as the ones refusing to change and clinging to a failed and moribund paradigm.
That being said, not every change is good. Within organisms (to keep with St. Vincent’s analogy) change can be a terrible thing, and sometimes that organism has to “restore” something to return to health. If someone loses mastery of their appetites (for example) they will certainly change, but with that change may come severe complications, lack of health, etc., and a “going back” to a previous state is not only not a bad thing but a necessary thing. Change that is for the good of an organism (and that I suspect St. Vincent has in mind) has to be in conformity with the organism’s teleology. Otherwise “change” will be employed in the service of ideologies that see history as an inevitable progression forward.
I am also reminded of the admonition to the church in Ephesus to remember their first love, repent and do the works they had previously done. Make restorationism great again!
Of course the underlying factor is that there is not so much an upsurge in restorationism as much as it is that the members of the faith who are not restorationists are increasingly unlikely to show up. In the West at least the devout tend to fall somewhere on the conservative to traditionalist spectrum. I take the Holy Father to be typical of those who were not super radical but who supported the changes in Church practices in all sincerity and cannot quite understand why they did not quite catch on. Why was the Western church not reunited and revitalized as hoped for? Watching a spiritual project flounder is depressing enough. Having the faithful sour on that project is incredibly frustrating. Perhaps it simply needs more time…a good century or so to take root.
Then again, maybe those conservatives to traditionalists may be running things in the future. I’ve often thought that the current situation resembled the iconoclast controversy in the east in terms of the dynamics. There were two waves of iconoclasm. The first was the initial, revolutionary phase. There was then an iconodule partial restoration. There was then a second iconoclast phase but this time it lacked the vigor and strength of the first phase. In the end it finished not with a bang but a whimper for what amounted to a lack of interest. Iconodules took over at last with little fanfare or opposition.
I’m old enough to remember when people said it took 40 years to implement a Council.
Apparently, full implementation now takes a century.
This conversation makes me wonder about the secret China-Vatican agreement. Is this agreement the Pope’s way of being sure that the underground Church in China doesn’t go backwards and will get with the modern program of the CCP? China is the senior partner in this agreement. The modern Church often acts like King Solomon did under the influence of his foreign wives.
EC:
If you’re referring to the Coptic martyrs, Pope St John Paul II and the Coptic Pope at the time signed a common declaration of faith on Christology back in the 1990s.
It took me a while to get round to this, but only because I had been in too much mental and physical fatigue in recent days.
It’s a lovely video, and seems like the conclusion to this brilliant series.
Gaetano, resistance against Trent lasted about a Century, though frankly in the so-called “spirit” of the Council, after Vatican II, resistance against Trent has been powerfully rekindled.
pjthom81, I’d say that a properly traditional Catholicism isn’t really “restorationist”, as that would imply simply doing away with an Ecumenical Council. No, what’s needed, as Benedict XVI wisely proposed, is that Vatican II needs to be taught and understood from a solid basis of Catholic Tradition, not as it is all too often propagated nowadays, as if it were in opposition to Trent and all of the previous Councils — which both of the extremist factions seem to suppose that it is, either positively or negatively.
Mass according to the Traditional Roman Rite is perfectly compatible with the teachings of Sacrosanctum Concilium ; and, as should be, but all too often isn’t due to rampant abuses, the Mass according to the Novus Ordo. The latter should be Latinate and reverent.
But it is hard when we have a Roman Pontiff who is tearing down the very things that are mandated by the Council as if this were being done in the name of the Council !!
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Bishop Hounder’s words are a holy balm for our broken hearts, broken because of the actions and words of many clergy who do not want to love us nor want to be our shepherds.
My priests at our FSSP parish truly love us and aren’t afraid to nourish our souls with solid Catholic sermons and offer daily confessions.
They also fully support home schooling families.
They want us to love God and neighbor and become saints.