From a reader on this 2nd Sunday of Lent. (Note: because of the blog migration Early Tuesday 2 March, comments posted after 0600 EST 11 UTC) will not migrate. That’ll give you time to “think before posting”.)
Wanted to pass this along, but it’s probably par for the course.
Our homily today at our TLM in ___ was Cardinal Sarah’s letter about the SSPX announcement. It felt like being gut punched listening to it.
We are having Mass in an old gymnasium, kneeling on a hard wood floor, folding chairs, etc. Every Mass a low Mass now. No sacraments available in traditional rite except Eucharist. Hearing Cardinal Sarah’s letter felt like being sucker punched. How much more do we need to endure just to attend Mass in the way my grandparents did?
I don’t know how much more I can personally endure being at a diocese TLM. It really feels like we are hated and unwanted. If anything Cardinal Sarah’s letter makes me want to attend at the SSPX. They only have chapels, but at least they WANT us. They preach about the day’s gospel and how to better ourselves. Not “obedience uber alles”.
I feel bishop Schneider’s letter is much more representative and comforting. Rome’s answer is to hope we all die off or go away. They say they don’t want a “split”, yet they do everything possible to bring that forth.
I pray for the SSPX every day. They, and the ICRSS and FSSP seem to be the only prelates in the church who actually care about people attached to tradition.
Sorry to complain, but I feel Cardinal Sarah’s letter does nothing but push people attached to tradition away from the church. It reads as mean spirited and “obedience above all”.
I hurt for all of you. It is hard to watch people suffer so needlessly.
It’s all so senseless.
Let us all pray to the Guardian Angels of the key figures in this dreadful stand off as well as to Mary, Queen of the Clergy, to intercede with her Divine Son, the High Priest, to open hearts and minds.
Holy Angels, defend us.
Mary, Queen of the Clergy, put your mantle over us and help your children.
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Totally agree with Cri de Coeur. There is no subsitute for that old time religion. We must polititely express ourselves to Pope Leo. Ask him to lift all restrictions on the TLM, fire Cdl. Fernandez, laicize him and put him out on the street. Fernandez just shut down a traditional Argentinian order, (not even TLM!) the Miles Christi. We are mad about this!! Also, Pope Leo needs to initiate an inquisition among the Roman curia looking for Freemasons and sodomites. Those men who are revealed need to be laicized and put out on the street. Millions should come to the Vatican and demand the ouster of Fernandez, and if Pope Leo does not, then we take action, and extract Fernandez, and throw him in the Tiber. Let that be a warning to Pope Leo! We are sick of the McCarrick Cabal ruling the Church. No money for Peter’s Pence either!
It is the enemy of souls that wants to suppress a valid Mass.
With the rather stark difference between +Bp. Schneider’s letter and +Card. Sarah’s letter, a few observations.
Let us first leave aside the Chinese question. The two situations are not similar. Let us also leave the Ukrainian consecrations of the 1980’s? alone. As they are dis-similar to the current situation.
For those who see Bishop Schneider’s letter as the solution, I caution that it is not. It opens the door to those who do not share the same love of tradition, to engage in the same tactic. I suspect those who are cheering on the SSPX would not be cheering on the Jesuits if they were engaging in the same.
Cardinal Sarah’s letter points to something that is unfortunate, but fundamentally important. Fidelity is sometimes painful. Remaining within means that sometimes we don’t get what we want. Sometimes, we’re reminded that we must trust in God’s Providence and pray for those in positions of authority.
It’s easy to self-segregate, to be around like-minded individuals, to avoid that which we don’t like. It is much harder to have to step outside of our comfort zone (spiritually and liturgically). It is also much harder when we are forced to, for no real reason at all.
Perhaps, this is a period of trial for the Church and her faithful.
It should be rightly difficult to imagine a Cardinal, a collaborator of the Pope, encouraging an action which breaks an ecclesial bond. (I’m not including the current Chinese or the Ukrainian situations of the 1980’s in this, as those are two very different situations with external political forces at work.)
I think Bishop Schnieder and Cardinal Sarah are coming from very different places by virtue of age, lived priesthood and place within the hierarchy.
@Chicagiensis_Indianapolitana
“sometimes we don’t get what we want”
And here’s the fundamental problem. This is not a mere matter of preference. It’s not “what we want.” It’s the entire validity of Sacred Tradition that’s riding on this question. It’s the entire essence of the Catholic Church that is being disputed. It is, truly and without hyperbole, a question of whether the Church exists as it has always done or if Vatican II truly did usher in a new age of “Sola Papem” wherein the entirety of the Catholic Faith rests solely upon the whims, words, and wishes of the current Pope.
This is not a small thing, and all the “just trust in Jesus” language ignores EVERY historical example where saints risked all, fought hard, and strove with all their might to defeat threats, internal and external, to the health, welfare, and good of the Church.
Because the end state of this whole “fidelity” argument is that when Pope Francis tells you to bless homosexual unions the only “catholic” response is “yes sir.” And this is absurd.
If the Sacred Liturgical Tradition of the Latin Rite can be cast aside by the Pope, then ANY Tradition can be cast aside by the Pope. Then, in essence, Tradition holds no authority whatsoever. This is not a fight over ice cream flavors, it’s a fight to preserve the Catholic Church.
@ Chicagiensis_Indianapolitana:
1. Re. your “Let us first leave aside the Chinese question. The two situations are not similar. Let us also leave the Ukrainian consecrations of the 1980’s? alone. As they are dis-similar to the current situation.”
You seem to concede that someone’s “situation” can justify their consecration of bishops without papal approval. So the question is really one of whether or not the SSPX is in one of those justifying “situations”. Agreed, not identical to the Chinese “situation” or the “Ukrainian” situation. But why exclude outright the possibility of a third “situation” in the case of the SSPX. Rather, let’s evaluate it on its merits.
2. Re your “I suspect those who are cheering on the SSPX would not be cheering on the Jesuits if they were engaging in the same”
Prominent church people (no names, no pack drill for now) have already (for the last 60 years or so) been “engaging” in some pretty horrific stuff with apparent impunity. It’s not hard to conclude that the SSPX is the target of special (adverse) treatment. Or am I being hasty … could it be that anyone who loves the TLM and/or questions the logical nightmare of Vatican II is an actual or potential target, while just about everyone else gets a free pass?
As for the rest of your message, to those of us who have found adherence to Tradition by no means “easy”, it may very well be received as sanctimonious victim-blaming. What would you have had Athanasius do?
My respectful recommendation is that you make more of an effort to understand the other side in this dispute.
“Sucker punched” – really?
“Cardinal Sarah’s letter does nothing but push people attached to tradition away from the church. It reads as mean spirited and “obedience above all”. — really?
I would suggest that everyone who “feels” remotely similar to “Cri de Coeu” read Cardinal Sarah’s letter again and again. Do so with less feeling and more thought. If we must use the analogy his argument is not a sucker punch but an utter KO of the SSPX position. What’s particularly striking is how kind he is in the process.
“How much more do we need to endure just to attend Mass in the way my grandparents did” – whatever happened to take up your cross daily? In other words we are all called to carry our crosses for as long as God asks us to. Further more we are not asked to endure our crosses but to embrace them. Catholics see suffering as a gift. As my mom used to say – “offer it up”.
It should be rightly difficult to imagine a Cardinal, a collaborator of the Pope, encouraging an action which breaks an ecclesial bond.
@Chicagiensis:
One aspect of the question is whether what the SSPX is doing, or proposes to do this summer, really does “break an ecclesial bond”. Their position is that it does not. Apparently you don’t agree, from your words which simply assume the break.
But consider as an hypothesis: what if they are right, no bond is broken by such an action? If consecrating the priests as bishops does not break the ecclesial bond, then what they are doing takes on a whole different cast, doesn’t it? They would be preserving tradition in the face of Church machinery that (a) opposes tradition, but (b) hasn’t managed to cobble together the moxie and forthrightness to simply BAN the tradition, even though that clearly is what they want.
The latter point demands we ask a question: if the pope and his cohort are right to be so insistent that we all give up the traditional mass in toto, WHY haven’t they issued a papal bull or even higher decree stating in black and white that said mass is hereby abrogated? Perhaps (probably?) because of what Benedict said in his Motu Proprio: the old mass never was abrogated, and the old mass “cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful”.
If the old mass cannot be forbidden nor considered harmful, but at least one pope (possibly two) considered it harmful, what does that say about efforts to resist such popes’ efforts to sideline it and smother it? Does it suggest that efforts to resist may be upright and praiseworthy?
And finally, given the state of disarray and rebellion in the Church to sound papal teaching and decrees since Vatican II , including within the Novus Ordo (communion in the hand in disobedience to explicit law, girl altar boys in disobedience to implicit law, nearly complete loss of gregorian chant in express defiance of Vatican II itself, complete disregard for JPII’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and 100,000 more abuses) with nary a wave of the hand from the Vatican to repair any this, not even to merely decline to promote to the bishopric and cardinal’s hats the people who promote these, is it not the case that one more disobedience to an ill-founded papal decree not to consecrate a bishop might NOT inherently constitute a break in ecclesial communion?
I don’t go to SSPX chapels, and I almost certainly would not face down a pope threatening excommunication if I consecrated a bishop. But I don’t take lightly the claims of SSPX on this issue either. I suggest making an effort to consider the complexities and nuances that color the problem with shades and difficulties. It’s not easy, not simple, not straightforward.
I think “Cri de Coeur”’s cry illustrates two things:
1. There are a lot of Bishops who outright hate the preconciliar church and anyone who wants to worship in the same manner as the Church worshipped before the 1964-69 liturgical changes.
2. As long as these Bishops are in control, things will just get worse and I am sure they will not care how much suffering they cause. So what we really have is a pastoral problem, shepherds who only want a particular type of sheep in their flock and will not shepherd any others.
In addition it is important to recognize that we need all sorts of people involved in any struggle for justice. 1. Those who work within the system and resist however they are able within the system. This would be the FSSP, ICKSP and diocesan priests who offer traditional sacraments. Think of Black attorneys that used lawsuits to protest Jim Crow laws in the USA.
2. Those who protest the injustice from the outside or not within the laws of the system in order to eliminate the hypocrisy in the system. This would mainly be the FSSPX. (Here the hypocrisy in the system is not punishing open heretics who push for mortal sins to be made legitimate, such as clergy who advocate for homosexual marriages and support legalization of abortion while openly humiliating Bishoos who openly support Church teaching.) Think of sit-in’s and technically illegal protests by civil rights groups during 1945-1969 and afterwards whose purpose was to extend rights held by Whites to Blacks.
3. Those who do nothing but silently pray for justice. Here I am thinking about what two unknown White women told Black college students who were protesting not being able to eat at the snack bar in a drug store. They told the students “sit down for your rights. We are praying for you.” One of the protesters told an NPR reporter years later that that was when he knew they would eventually win. I would take those who hold Cardinal Sarah’s position more seriously if they said they were praying that traditional Catholics have their rights and rites restored, rites that Pipe Benedict XVI said cannot be legitimately taken away.
(I think that the book “The Banushed Heart” reports that Cardinal Sarah tried to persuade Benedict XVI to require 100 people to ask for a VO Mass before a priest could offer it. Maybe it was someone else but I am too lazy to reread that excellent book.
No button to proofread the post?
~Chicagiensis_Indianapolitana
“I suspect those who are cheering on the SSPX would not be cheering on the Jesuits if they were engaging in the same.”
They already effectively are. The foxes in the hen house are appointing foxes to the episcopate rather than chickens. They are only getting approved because there are foxes in charge in high places that convince the chickens that foxes mean no harm. But if there were not foxes in charge, they would do it anyway — see China and their different type, but nonetheless still, foxes.
Besides the “Rome chooses everything” is only a juridical model. It wasn’t always that way, doesn’t always have to be this way. If we returned to an earlier model, local churches that repeatedly elevated foxes would die off, as they historically did. There isn’t a worry there! Right now, the current model creates a “too big to fail” and “too big to turn the ship around” dynamic. Quite toxic.
~ML
This is not said in offence, but both Card. Mueler and Card. Sarah are “company men”. Very obvious if you have read their writings, especially Card. Sarah’s books. One has to read what they write, understanding that they have that as part of their worldview. It is also obvious from Card. Sarah, he believes that things should be different, but will not support anything that is against “the company”, which gives an interesting push-pull dynamic to his writing.
Further, there is a mistaken notion out there regarding one’s cross, offering things up, and suffering when it comes to the Liturgy. Certain bishops act as if the liturgy is THEIRS rather than Christ’s. Certain laity go along with this attitude and either say that we must support bishops who act in their name rather than His Name, or that we must simply suffer it because “obedience” and “crosses”.
In all things suffer insults, ignomies, and hardships as an offering to make up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings — this is true and the perennial teaching of the Church. What is forgotten about is the exceptions — except where this leads to harm, especially spiritual harm, to your charges, and above all, especially when this would cause one to deny and blaspheme against Christ.
Aside: The book Silence by Endo is a dreadful book.
HERE IS THE RUB: Can the Mass lead to spiritual harm and blasphemy? No? Ok then, one should have no problem with letting the SSPX have bishops and TLM because the Mass cannot lead to spiritual harm. Yes? Then one must allow the SSPX to have bishops because TLM is the known quantity that doesn’t cause harm (proven by history and its congruence to the deposit of faith) — the NO is the “unknown quantity” here, not TLM.
” I would take those who hold Cardinal Sarah’s position more seriously if they said they were praying that traditional Catholics have their rights and rites restored, rites that Pipe Benedict XVI said cannot be legitimately taken away.”
That seems sensible to me. I just read the article at EWTN summarizing Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Sarah. To me it seems that Cardinal Sarah fears schism as the greater evil. I’m not equipped to gainsay that…
…but I am torn. I don’t want schism either, but I absolutely don’t get the apparent antipathy toward the TLM the same way I find myself frustrated by the apparent reluctance to draw/mention/acknowledge the distinction between the sojourner and the thief, the plunderer, and the invader, other than the occasional faint “countries are allowed to have borders” lip service. I recognize the obligation conferred by Leviticus 19:34, but at the same time I’m going to advance Ruth as the exemplar and ideal of the sojourner: “…your people will be my people, and your G_d will be my G_d” (Ruth 1:16).