I call your attention… no. Wait.
To those who don’t like the Traditional Latin Mass… to those who don’t like me personally or what I write or defend… to those who don’t understand why there are Catholics who aren’t just “RAH RAH RAH!” about everything being done these days…
I call your attention to this video. It is an excerpt from a longer interview between Matt Fradd and Brian Holdsworth.
It doesn’t touch on every possible point we might be concerned about today, but it gets to the heart of them.
At a certain point, all of this goes beyond arguments.
What people on the progressivist side of things have to realize is the hearts are being hurt, bruised, broken.
Is that really what you want? Is that your goal?
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As another Albertan, I agree with Holdsworth entirely. There is a precipitous decline in believers yet the Church finds the growing community one to be scorned. The Catholic schools in our area help arrange first communion prep with the local parish. 10 years ago the number of students registered for first communion was about 120. That’s what we were told. This year the registrants is a total of 4 at the same few schools. A precipitous decline. My daughter is making her fist communion but we are doing it through the Latin Mass community, the registrants at the Latin Mass alone is over 20. One parish has more growth than one entire region of a very large province. It’s hard to understand the actions from Rome. When we first arrived in Alberta we checked out the local parish, attendance was ok. I took my son this past Sunday as the flu was running through our home and I was shocked to see attendance a quarter of what it was just two years ago, oh and we heard a homily on how great Karl Rahner is. I expect many regions of Canada that the Church will collapse and have very minimal presence at all. East coast Canada is done for by all accounts. I really wonder when it will dawn on many that something is wrong, things are dire, the future doesn’t look to have any growth. So let’s place conditions on the one thriving global community in the Church. Make it make sense.
Second to last time we were there, once in the summer, the homily was on Rahner. Out of necessity I had to go. Otherwise, outside of adoration I too represent the decline of that parish.
From my perspective, that is exactly what they want. Their goal is drive us out.
From my perspective, that is exactly what they want. Their goal is to drive us out.
There are virtually no people in the TLM who “take things too far”. What does that even mean. I have never encountered anyone in the church who “took things too far”, because I have no idea what that means. Is that people who kneel? Is that people who say the St. Michael prayer after Mass? And so what if we even had people who “took things too far”. I can see absolutely why that is a problem in other religions but how is that a problem anywhere in the Catholic church. Answer: it isn’t a problem. Our real problem is anemia. It is a fabricated problem used by Rome to achieve a goal and in our quest to be thought reasonable we concede it again and again in conversations. We ought not coddle that made up problem. It is vapor and gas. When we say things like that we help them, and worse, we buy into their definition of us, which is entirely false and fabricated for a purpose. We care too much what they think of us. What the world thinks of us.
If we have to wait for every single Catholic who attends the TLM to have their feelings hurt by realizing Rome intends to end their TLM in particular, this is going to be a terrible, long process and Catholics, if there are any left, will get around to comprehending reality long, long after we’re all gone and the TLM is a memory.
Yes, he means it. Yes, he means for it to disappear. For you. For me. For everyone. His reasons are his own, only God knows them, but his intent is crystal clear.
Yes,it is to break people’s hearts. A woman told me that the traditionalists have ruined her church and they should be punished. And this was said to me IN A CHURCH. So,yes it is….
I saw the following comment by a priest at the YT link for this video, Fr. Z. It’s rather lengthy (and, ahem! forthright) so if you don’t want to post my “comment” I understand:
frjimomi 30 minutes ago (edited)
I was raised in the Tridentine Mass and saw it suppressed in my later 20s. It was painful, but, now as a priest for almost 50 years, I love the Novus Ordo and have never celebrated of been inclined to celebrate the Latin Mass. I have absolutely no problems with it, nor do I have issues with the people who prefer it. Though I’m Sicilian-American, I have relatives who are Ukrainian Greek (Byzantine) Catholics and Carpatho-Russian Orthodox, so I’m still open to liturgies that are traditional and unchanged. Having written this long intro, let me say that Francis’ “Traditionis custodes” was an ugly jolt. In spite of my personal indifference toward the Latin Mass and knowing a few afictionados of the Latin Mass who’ve annoyed me with their holier-than–though, cloyingly pious attitude, the majority are just fine Catholics trying to live an authentic Catholic life as individuals, families and community. But, the holier-than-thou group’s outright hostility and dismissal of the canonical legitimacy of Pope Francis that unnerved me, but they were few among the crowd.
The day Francis ascended the Chair of Peter, the US news commented that he was known to have an explosive temper, and this motu proprio proved it. I was not the only priest who saw it and was deeply disturbed by the angry and even mean spiritedness exhibited in Francis’ attitude. It was neither fatherly (il papa) nor pastoral; it was almost vengeful, an proclivity the world’s seen when he’s even directed this anger at participants of general audiences. Beneath the smiles and quips seems to be a raging volcano about the spout the destructive lava of his wrath. In a word, the motu proprio was seen demonstrate a mean-minded, punitive attitude by many pro-Francis priests and Church commentators, obviously myself included.
He has the unsavory attitude toward cloying virtue signaling, which is tiring, not unlike the ever petulant and self-righteous Greta Thunberg. He has called out people by name, directly, questioning their being truly Christians. He’s done this openly to President Trump over many issues and has been openly critical about the sincerity and validity of the faith practiced by US Catholics. I’ve been around since Pius XII and have never heard such reprobate condemning by a pope. As the late Cardinal George lamented about Francis, he remains completely ambiguous and opaque on critical issues, shooting from the hip without regard for collateral damage by his not-so-friendly gunfire from the hip. My question to him is “How do you lead a flock of some 1.2 to 1.4 billion souls with ambiguity and maintain community cohesion and coherence.” Rather, when presented with valid “dubbia” about his pronouncements in encyclicals, his response is either petulant silence or attack. He said he was no at all concerned about a possible schism. What about Jesus’ prayer that “they all be one?” He doesn’t speak in paradoxes; he pontificates in contradictions.
While he rightly call for a compassionate and listening Church, he’s unapologetically closed and condemnatory to his perceived “enemies.” For fifty years I’ve worked with, assisted and defended the undocumented immigrants that arrive at our borders. I’ve defended their right to migrate and explained the Church’s teaching of the issues to news reporters and journalists from various countries – even PBS. But, he calls for a dangerous and destructive chaos. If there is a murderous terrorist attack in the US (like in Israel and Europe) because of unbridled immigration, will he and Biden take responsibility for their incomprehensible irresponsibility? Will he ask us to forgive and forget, as he seems to be asking the Israelis? John Paul II wrote in his encyclical, “Evangelium vitæ,” that national leaders and parents have no right to be pacifists. In other words, they have the right and duty to protect their nations and families with proportional force.
Last, he’s more controlling than any pope during my lifetime., and a father who controls tends to be an abusive father. The abusive father always tries to act well during public situations, but there is a rage underneath. In private he berates and injures his dependent family members. There is no insight into himself, so he accuses and beats his family who “force” him to hurt them spiritually, emotionally and/or physically to teach them according to a perverse pedagogy. It’s never his fault but always his family’s and never an apology , because they just refuse to learn. It’s an attitude of “I own you; you’re completely mine, and I’ll do with you as I wish.” Thus, there is a violation of boundaries. You must be whom he wants you to be: gay, fine; Latin Mass Catholic; no way.
It’s funny, but as Brian was (justifiably) complaining about not being free to talk forthrightly about the goods of the Latin Mass and publicly play it up, he self-censored his own discussion here at the point where he was just about to criticize JPII and Benedict for not taking better steps to correct for what was going wrong during their own pontificates.
Manifestly, they should have corrected for the abuses going on in the Novus Ordo, and should have forthrightly trumpeted a return to all of the values inherent in the Latin Mass (even if they wanted to retain the Novus Ordo), that goes without saying. Beyond that, probably their biggest failure was in not even trying to address the method by which bishops and cardinals are selected. The Church now has had some 60 years in which priests are formed, bishops are trained, and cardinals are selected, under a paradigm and a set of criteria which looks for (A) a mentality that says “whatever the left-leaning theologians say was “the spirit of Vatican II” really was what VII and the Holy Spirit meant, regardless of what was in the documents; (B) refusal to look upon homosexuality in the seminaries (and priesthood) as a problem at all; and (C) a bureaucratic mentality of avoiding outspokenness as a way of avoiding publicity or criticism. This paradigm and these criteria have created a bishopric that is spinelessly rolling over for the pink platoon and pretending that all is pinky keen in the Church, as morals, attendance, and piety plummet into an abyss. They have reigned over the final destruction of Christendom, and rather than being sad about the loss, they praise it as “better”. Inarguably, JPII and Benedict, having 34 years to work on the problem, not only didn’t succeed in solving the problem, it appears that they didn’t even tackle it, leaving it to only get worse over the decades.
@francophile
She really believes being orthodox should be punished?
“What people on the progressivist side of things have to realize is the hearts are being hurt, bruised, broken.
Is that really what you want? Is that your goal?”
I see what you’re doing here, Fr – turning the weapon of sentimentality against its principal users, but I don’t think it’ll work here because I think the response of progressives would be, “YES! We want you crushed, despairing, suicidal even. We HATE you and we want you destroyed.”
It’s as if an Israeli civilian, unarmed and defenceless, says to the Hamas terrorist, “do you really want to hurt me, to cause me pain, to shoot me dead? Really?”
It’s a question that is answered in action.
[Sure. It is answered in action. However, even if for rhetorical purposes it could be amusing to compare the church iconoclasts and progressives with Hama terrorists, surely that is not the right way to view even the church iconoclasts. I am not using “sentimentality” as a device. Real people are really being really hurt through real cruelty. As a priest I hurt with and for them. Someone must stand for them.]
“What people on the progressivist side of things have to realize is the hearts are being hurt, bruised, broken.
“Is that really what you want? Is that your goal?”
Yes Father, these past 43+ years have convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is indeed their goal. I’ve met too many mean spirited devotees of the “spirit of V2” from the teacher (personally protected by the principal) who stated her personal goal was the destruction of the Faith in her students and their families, to the priests (protected by their bishops) who preached that the Eucharist was only bread and that miracles were just metaphors, or snatched Rosaries out of people’s hands and dashed them on the church floor, to the bishop who demanded all First Communicants in his diocese receive on the hand – or else! The notorious catechisms which undermined my siblings’ faith, the Masses that were so bad my Dad had to check the sign to see if it was really a Catholic parish, the shattered statues, the gutted churches, the love of ugliness and banality. When they saw how much pain these things caused others they did not even pause but doubled down. Their goal is to radically change the Church and they know that means those who love the Church will get hurt – and they don’t care.
Man that guy hits home for me. I spent several years defending Francis to the evangelical husband of my wife’s sister. No more, I just shrug my shoulders and tend to not be too polite about him. Each day I ask God to open Francis’s eyes or close them forever, please.
BTW, if the walkity together thingy ends up approving gay relations, will the “followers of frankie” go to hell or is the passage true “What you declare bound on earth is bound in heaven, and loosed on earth loosed in heaven” true??
to listen to the “people” that should know it’s all good
francophile,
I wonder what that woman’s opinion is on Humanae Vitae, Abortion, Communion to Divorced and remarried Catholics, and women “priests”. There are a lot of fans of the Novus Ordo who don’t want anything challenging or controversial at Church. Or to put it another way, they don’t want anyone there who disagrees with them
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@BeatifyStickler
The simplest explanation is envy. Rather than ask, ‘How is it that the traditional liturgy seems to draw balanced, faithful believers into the parishes at the same time the newer practices are losing so many?’, the response is rather like that of one threatened by a spider on the wall. Lash out in fear and anger. Direct your ire to the object of envy since that’s easier and less painful than turning one’s gaze inward to those failings which need remedy.
At best, the temptation is to treat the symptoms, not the cause. At worst, the temptation is towards scapegoating.
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Last, he’s more controlling than any pope during my lifetime., and a father who controls tends to be an abusive father.
It is this, more than anything else, I think, that may put paid against any effort to push for a cause for canonization (of course pushing now would be putting the cart before the horse). There are too many cardinals who have had their feathers ruffled, I suspect, by the controlling and petty-minded guy in charge.