19th Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum – Thoughts on how this might end.

What a day that was. I was still at the “Sabine Farm”, like Horace away from Rome’s summer heat. The days were bright and full of hope. A friend stopped in to share a bottle of “The Widow”. What a day.All this madness will pass one way or another.

Today is the 19th anniversary of the release of Summorum Pontificum, the saintly Pope Benedict XVI’s “emancipation proclamation” for those who desired what they ought to have had all along: freedom to use the Church’s traditional Roman Rite.

That endured – although hampered by those who hate those who love Tradition – until it was shut down, again an act of hatred of those who love Tradition, under the cruel document Traditionis custodes and subsequent incoherent burpings of dyspeptic micromanagement from what is now called the “Dicastery”.

Traditionis custodes is to Summorum Pontificum what Plessy v Ferguson was to the Emancipation Proclamation.  If that trend holds, who shall issue the parallel to Brown v. Board?

They won’t win.  Too much is at stake.  Too many people are now involved with traditional sacred liturgical worship.  Too many people hardly involved in anything are dropping away.  Too much information is available on the internet.

The other day Card. Koch suggested that it was time to rescind TC.

So, it is going to end, someday.  I foresee different possibilities.

First, perhaps Pope Leo will give more than 15 minutes of personal attention to this issue which he, more than likely, knows little about. It wasn’t an issue in S. American, nor among the Augustinians to any extent. It is very complicated and it will take both desire and effort to get up to speed.  Therefore, he would do well to find a few “coaches” who could guide him through the theological questions the SSPX raises and through the canonical realities. Will he? I suspect most of his energy is directly toward things that the UN would be interested in. And “unity”.

Second, people will simply, in larger and larger numbers, ignore the cruelty and will take matters into their own hands without – NB – without malice or any sense of separation or schism from legitimate authority legitimately exercised.  Home chapels and perhaps even purchased places, plenty of cancelled priests to help, lots of willing and happy hands, ready to build the ark and ready to turn it all back to normal when the storm ends.

Third, the chaos born of ignorance (like the ignorance about the Explanatory Note) will continue. Leo indicated to the French bishops that they should be generous (yeah… right). Meanwhile, in these USA bishops are being anything but generous with a new spate of repressions of the people who desire the ancient forms. Coincidently, they are the sort of Catholics you would think bishops would want to support and foster. It seems that bishops or their mandarins are not able to figure out what the Explanatory Note is and ISN’T, leading to bishops frightening and confusing their flocks.

Forth, do I think that, in the wake of 1July, a new Summorum Pontificum is in the offing? No. Nor will there by another Pontifical Commission.

Fifth, the Lord will return.

Sixth, in lieu of the Lord returning, there may be an extinction level cataclysmic event, such as a massive meteor that strikes the planet.