Make this go viral. Use my social links. Do it. Let’s use our collective power. We still have it, don’t doubt.
Transcript:
Maybe this has happened to you. I know people that this has actually happened to. You may know someone as well. It’s hard to believe at first, but imagine someone coming up to you and says, “Here, drink this.” And all your hair is going to fall out. And you will vomit so violently that at first you’re afraid that you’re going to die. And then you’ll be afraid that you’re not going to die.
Well, why would you do that? Well, if you got the explanation and said, “Well, because I’m your oncologist and if you drink this, there’ll be these horrible side effects, but you’ll be cured of cancer.” Well, that explanation makes all the difference, doesn’t it? But if someone offered you that drink, offered really no explanation, and just said, “Because I said so,” that would make taking the medicine rather hard, wouldn’t it? So, you know the old song, “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way.” I want to suggest that an explanation can make bitter medicine easier to take. Doctors know this. I wonder—I just wonder—if senior members of the Catholic cadre of the people who should-really-know-better club also know that too.
Stay with me. I’ve got a story to tell. Hi, I’m Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host every day here at The Catholic Current, coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let’s take a closer look. Glad you’re here.
Some people have been asked to take some bitter medicine recently—our friends in the dioceses of Charlotte, Knoxville, and other places where the synodal church, the welcoming church, the accompanying church, the church that provides quiet space and prayer rugs for Muslims in the Vatican library, says, “But not for you. Nothing for you, or nearly nothing for you, because what you love is bad for you and we’ve got to take it away. Think of the children.”
And you say, “Well, wait a minute. We love this and it’s good for us.” “Well, but some of the people who agree with you, they tweet mean things.” “Well, I didn’t tweet mean things.” “Anyway, it’s for the best. What are you, a Protestant? Stop asking questions.”
Now, this may sound like madness, doesn’t it? It sounds abusive. “Oh, Father, there you go exaggerating again.” But you know, I’m not. If you read the letter that came out recently from the Cathedral Basilica of Knoxville, Tennessee, it really does accuse people who have a devotion to the traditional Latin Mass of idolatry and acting like Protestants. Harsh words. But what I noticed in Charlotte and Knoxville and other places—there’s not really much in the way of explanation.
Hard things are easier to accept if we have the why. If someone says, “You’ve got to go to the gym.” “I don’t like going to the gym.” “If you don’t go to the gym, you’re going to have a heart attack and die.” All right then, I’ll go to the gym. “Take this medicine that’ll make your hair fall out.” “Why?” “Because if you don’t, you’ll die of cancer.” Okay. Having the why.
But I keep looking and looking in recent literature for the why. I’m waiting for the synodal, listening, accompanying, inclusive, welcoming church to sit down with folks and say, “Listen, we know you love this old thing, but let us tell you why removing all the references to St. Michael the Archangel is better for you. I know that the Scripture readings are different. You get more in the new one—except for the readings we chose to leave out. And gosh, it really is just the same. And you could add a little Latin if you want—except that when you compare the two books, it doesn’t seem to be really the same.”
So step by step, there are radical differences that people are being asked to accept without question. And they’re being asked to accept it by the champions of dialogue and listening and collegiality and accompanying and inclusion and welcome. And candidly—it’s just confusing.
Teachers are meant to teach. Teachers really ought to teach not only the what and the how, but also the why. And if the only thing that the teachers can offer is, “Because I said so, and it’ll be better for you. Don’t you want to be like everybody else?”—I can understand why it wouldn’t ring true to people. [In Italian we say, “Buonismo”… “BE GOOD! Just go along a GET ALONG…or else.”]
And if you have hair that looks like mine—if it looks this gray—you may remember many years ago when we were all a lot younger and people started innovating liturgically beyond what the big red book on the altar permitted. We were told that unity doesn’t mean uniformity, you know. But now the advocates of unity are saying, “Yeah, it really does mean uniformity.” And who knows—maybe it actually really does. But could we have an explanation? Could we have a step-by-step walk-through? This is why the differences between the old and the new make the new so much better that you must not have access to the old.
And here’s an explanation that I know lots of people who write to me have said: “Hey Father, when I look at the older form of the Mass, I know that it’s correlated with beautiful music and beautiful churches and vocations and monasteries and poetry and great art. And when I look around in recent years, I see ugly churches and ugly music and loss of vocations and bad art and really a near complete collapse of reverence.”
And I hear people rush in and say the magic words: “Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation.” Yes, yes, yes—fine. No one is saying correlation equals causation. So, pace. [QUAERITUR] But how about this—what would you want to be associated with? Something that undeniably generated beautiful art and cathedrals and music and saints—or something else?
This is just a handful of the questions that have been tearing at people’s hearts for a really long time. And those who are meant to teach, to sanctify, and to govern—it seems, at least from the people who speak to me—that those people seem to be more inclined to govern in the form of “Because I said so,” and not so much teaching—showing “This is what the differences are, this is the why of the differences, and these are the benefits of the differences, and these are the harms that come if you’re not on board.” [“SHUT UP!”, they explain!]
Those explanations haven’t been forthcoming as far as I can tell. But you know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I have a blind spot. I’m certainly fallible. So, I’m going to offer you an invitation. On Friday, 5:00 p.m. Eastern, on October 24th, on The Catholic Current coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network, I’m going to put on my professor hat. I’m going to go old school—professor—and I’m going to get out my red pen, and I’m going to take the document recently produced by the Basilica in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I’m going to go through it line by line and analyze it as a professor. And then, if we bump up against the end of the broadcast time, I’m going to continue the audio and podcast without commercial interruption. [I suggest that you make popcorn.]
If you’re listening on broadcast, that’s great. I suggest that you get a link and download that document so you can follow through with me line by line at home, and we’ll see if the explanations have been there all along—or maybe they haven’t been given just yet.
In any case, think on these things today. Take them to prayer. Talk about it with those you love. Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
Thanks for watching today. I release new videos on Mondays and Wednesdays. Check out the archives for more videos. You can listen to my podcast at stationofthecross.com, and you can find my written work at heraldofthegospel.org. See you next time.
UPDATE:
And this
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Nice work, Fr. McTeigue, thankyou.
The very first that St Thomas says about law in his treatise on the subject is that it’s something that pertains to reason. Just as reason directs action towards some good, so does the law. He considers, and rejects, the argument that law is something that pertains to the sovereign’s will alone: it “needs to be in accord with some rule of reason”. If the sovereign’s will were not in accord with reason, it “would savor of lawlessness rather than law”. A law, to be a law, must be in accord with reason, and like reason it must direct those subject to it towards the good. Otherwise it is no law.
Of course, someone could easily say “who is to decide what is in accord with reason?”, and that’s a legit question. But it’s a question that will inevitably involve the kind of discussion that Fr. McTeigue is suggesting. Nobody, or at least no Thomist, can say that the will of the sovereign, simply because it is the will of the sovereign, is morally binding. Nor can anyone say that a bishop or Pope does not morally owe an explanation for his actions, or that anyone who asks for an explanation is dissenting.
Most Catholics these days have a nominalist conception of law (“one will vs another!”), and that’s one reason we’re in such a hole right now. Books could be written on how this happens, although John Lamont makes a good start in his two-part essay on the Rule of Law in the Catholic Church, which I recommend everyone go away and read if you haven’t already.
Every time I read or listen to Fr. McTeigue I think “ah! right! this is how Jesuits got once upon a time many good things done! and were beloved! Now that makes sense!” (and I say this from the depth of my Dominican heart).
The “why”, the explanations for suppressing the use of the 1962 Missal are there to read. Some examples:
1. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/08/two-views-on-liturgical-reform-joseph.html
2. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/authors/john-cavadini-mary-healy-thomas-weinandy/
(Read especially the articles “Papal Responses to the Emergence of the TLM Movement” and “The Way Forward from the Theological Concerns with the TLM Movement”.)
3. https://www.hprweb.com/2020/01/the-gift-of-the-liturgical-reform/
4. https://quaerens.blog/2025/03/19/john-fr-baldwin-sj-where-is-god-in-the-liturgy-a-way-forward-for-reform-and-renewal/
I will look forward to Fr. McTeigue’s exegesis of the Knoxville pastoral letter. But his claim that the “why” for suppressing the use of the 1962 Missal isn’t anywhere to be found is easily rebutted. It’s there. I get that some people don’t like the explanations or don’t agree with them, but the explanations are there, and I believe they make sense and are correct.
I want to watch this! I hope I don’t forget.
The prayer rugs in the Vatican library really makes the point doesn’t it that it’s about us as people who love the traditional Mass.
I have only rarely attended the TLM over the years, but have no hostility towards it. But the hatred and venom that liberal Catholics expend on denouncing it and those who favor it never ceases to amaze me. I, too, have been struck by the hypocrisy of those who declare the need to be open to all things and to walk with the marginalized, but constantly denounce conservative Catholics. I have become convinced that they only walk with “sinners” when they do not actually believe that the action in question is a sin. But they have no doubt about the sinfulness of the conservatives and have no interest in walking with “that kind of sinner.”
They should just come out and say it….
“We made a mistake by allowing SP to be implemented and the cat is out of the bag, but we want to pretend like it never got out. Catholics have discovered their liturgical inheritance/patrimony and are laying claim to it and we don’t understand why. We don’t want to allow it because we don’t believe as they or our predecessors in the faith believe, because we are superior in thought and hierarchy. Because it’s the synodal age, and if you’re traditional (even when you’re not invited to participate) then you’re synodaling wrong.”
Additional explanation, published today:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith-and-reason/2025/10/22/pope-leo-latin-mass/
One excerpt, in case you can’t get past the paywall:
“First, it does not appear that Vatican II or Paul VI intended for there to be two expressions of the Roman Rite. Rather, the council called for, and Paul VI carried out, the reform and renewal of the Roman Rite. This is why the Tridentine Rite was “never judicially abrogated,” as Pope Benedict noted. To abrogate it would have been to say that there were two rites, one no longer allowed and one allowed. There really is only one rite in its unrenewed and renewed versions.
That is why Francis quoted Paul VI in speaking of a single prayer. It is further why Francis stated that “[w]hoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite.” What traditionalist Catholics sometimes call “The Mass of the Ages” is the Vatican II Mass, because it is a singular rite, periodically reformed in the history of the Roman Church and reformed at Vatican II.
The council fathers (including the future Pope Benedict) clearly believed that the Tridentine Rite needed reform and renewal. The aim was not to have two rites; it was to deepen and enrich the one rite of the Roman church.”
[The commentary above is irrelevant. Paul VI immediately said that the older form of Mass could be celebrated by older priests and also in England and Wales.]
I’m convinced that Godfrey is not human, but rather a specially coded “Spirit of Vatican II” bot powered by AI trained on content from the Fishwrap, America Magazine, NPM periodicals, and despair.
@Godfrey, you say “What traditionalist Catholics sometimes call “The Mass of the Ages” is the Vatican II Mass, because it is a singular rite, periodically reformed in the history of the Roman Church and reformed at Vatican II.”
There is a big difference in the reforms that occurred periodically in the history of the Church up to Vatican II and what happened in 1969-1970. The former were minor changes that did not affect the majority of the Mass. If a 12th Century St. Francis of Assisi were to show up at a Mass celebrated according to the 1962 Missal he would have no trouble following it. The changes allegedly following the reforms proposed by Vatican II was more of a complete rewrite of the liturgy to the extent that only a small portion of it is in common, and that it is really a new rite rather than a reform of the old rite. It is more a revolution than a reform. This is demonstrated by the number of things specified in Sacrosanctum Concilium that were ignored in the new mass, such as the retention of Latin and Gregorian Chant plus the provision that things should not be changed unless the good of the Church required it.
As far as Ive understood the rationale for why Leo et al are suppressing the TLM, they’ve stated it previously clearly enough. They blame the existence of the TLM for “division” and they claim to want “unity”. This has been repeatedly parroted. But there was no division until Francis started actively persecuting faithful Catholics while simultaneously elevating all manner of creepy clergy and laity and causes. When all manner of weird made up Masses can exist except….one. The original, the one with all the growth and perhaps worse, for them, the higher amount of reverence and fidelity to God and tradition. This is intolerable to these men, including Leo. People like Godfrey are likely easily led and want to run with the cool kids, the ones in power with frankly, their boots planted firmly on the necks of fellow Catholics who werent doing anything but attending the same Mass as their grandparents had. Its human nature to want to identify with the power structure, but really, cant any of our fellow Catholics give one da– about tradition, or ask aloud why their fellow Catholics are being persecuted and treated so poorly? Are catholics that indifferent to the pain inflicted as long as its not their particular boat being tipped over? Yet we’re all about mercy. Are we? No.
Bottom line. They are going to do it. No appeals will stop this destructive train. This has been the goal a long time and they want it done. Its close now, they’re exhilirated. Its out there, being implemented now, by vile toady bishops. The most you can get is a delay, but its going, diocesan TLMs first.
The amusing part of all this is they want “unity”. They want your money and not to have to answer why churches are empty, or sold to muslims like the gorgeous St Ann’s in NY.
What have we to do with the ghastly, frankly abusive and heretical men that people the Vatican and chanceries. They inflict this on the people, betray God by destroying the Mass and dare to ask for unity and accuse US of division? That’s an absolute farce and an insult. Its not just its being done at all, its the obvious enjoyment they all get out of the doing. There are psychological categories for such people.
Godfrey, the majority of the explanations you give amount to “because Vatican II said so.” The rest are debatable and only address minor issues or are essentially personal preference or matters of emphasis, and therefore not prudent to change against the weight of tradition. Finally the lack of explanation in the article is referring to statements by the bishops who are restricting the TLM directly to the people affected, not to academic journals that most people don’t read.
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