The Holy
Catholic Faith
Where is it And Who is Keeping it?
Has the Post-Conciliar
Church
Lost Custody of the Faith?
All
indications are that is has
The “Dark Ages” — that disdainful term
for the period in history following the collapse of the Roman Empire
in 476 A.D. until the 15th century (a period correctly
described as the Middle Ages) is understood by the secular world
to have lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.
Within the post-Conciliar Catholic
Church, however, it appears that the term extends well beyond the
15th century; indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According
to contemporary Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies,
the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion of the
Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings prior
to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently, and insufficiently
articulated or defectively understood.
The 1000 Years of
Darkness
Only
the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment
in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension, it alone
has provided the final, sufficient, and correct understanding
of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to that, according to
post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had essentially lived in darkness, specifically
the darkness of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where
the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,” Vatican
II saved the Church from Catholicism.
This argument — that God concealed
the “real” truth from us for either 1500 years on the one hand (concerning
Protestants) or for 2000 years on other (concerning Vatican II) does
not, of course, speak well of God’s munificence, truth, or goodness
— and that it is the very argument to be brought against Protestants
by Catholics, is good to keep in mind. Why would a good, loving, and
truthful God conceal the real nature of the Church, the Sacraments,
and true worship from us for so long?
Pay No Attention
to What You See!
We are told so many times that what we
see is no indication of what is real.
It is true in two venues: the political
landscape, which is really of not much interest to us here except
as a paradigm of our being told that what we perceive to be oppressive,
unjust, and despotic, is really a benevolent government open to all
its constituents. We are simply not socially-enlightened enough (“woke”
enough) to see it, you understand.
The other venue, of course, is the
ecclesiastical landscape, specifically the Vatican, and more
specifically the papacies of the Vatican II pontiffs and the various
Dicasteries under them. Within this crumbling landscape we are told
that all the dismantling, removal, renovation, and ultimately the detritus
following Vatican II has resulted in a more beautiful, vibrant, healthy,
and faithful Church, with pews filled at Sunday Masses; a Church brimming
with baptisms, confirmations, marriages, vocations, ordinations … a
chrysalis bursting in a renewal of all things holy and good!
We are simply too “rigid,” too “backward,” not “progressive-enough”
to see it. Because we do not “walk in Accompaniment with the Spirit,”
we are blind … you understand.
From Bergoglio’s dismissive perspective,
“looking back (indietrismo) is useless,”
1
and given Francis’s insolent
treatment of those who worship as our forefathers did for 200 centuries,
they are equally useless as well. They are impediments to his progressive
agenda; to use his words, they are “imbavagliando,” “gagging” the Church.2
His aggressively Modernist agenda set
in motion by Vatican II, apparently, is too far advanced for the possibility
of retrenching. It is “useless” to even entertain the possibility of
rapprochement with the Mass of the Ages and the 2000-year spirituality
inseparable from it; a Mass within which we immediately find sanctity,
solemnity, sacrality, holiness, heavenliness, beauty, spirituality,
form, sobriety, chant, mystery, the choir of angels; in short, all that
is egregiously absent within the bland, mundane, and very worldly
Novus Ordo
“Mass of Paul VI.”
What, Exactly, are We
to Understand by “Keeping — and Having Kept — the Catholic
Faith”?
The notions of Keeping, and
having kept, the Catholic Faith can only be understood as retaining
(keeping), and having preserved (kept), the one true holy Catholic
and Apostolic Faith that has been kept and practiced
for the 2000 years prior to Vatican II — even when the practice of that
venerable Faith has been unjustly deprived through ecclesiastical
duress. That unchanging and unchangeable Faith is kept in
the unwavering allegiance to it despite persecution and even
deprivation. It can be physically removed from us, but it cannot be
taken away from us.
Indeed, why do we keep anything at all?
We only keep what we want and value; what is good and beautiful. Understanding
this, we must ask, is there anything more beautiful this side of Heaven
than the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? … than the Faith bequeathed
to us by our fathers, by the Saints, by the Martyrs — the Faith that
has generated the greatest and most brilliant constellation of saints
and martyrs in the history of the Church?
It cannot be the case that Faith of the
Church for the 2000 years preceding December 8, 1965 (when the Second
Vatican Council was formally concluded) is no longer the Faith of the
Church now — for if the Faith is different then the Church,
which is the embodiment of that Faith, is different, and if the Church is different, the Church is no more.
This cannot be. Christ promised that this cannot be.
But it can be said that the
teaching of the Church is now vastly different from the teaching
of the Church for the 200 centuries prior to John XXIII and his five
successors, and most especially in what are presented to us as the “Conciliar”
documents of Vatican II, documents that vastly, even essentially,
diverge from centuries of incontestably authoritative Catholic teaching.
So much so, in fact, that in its latest
iteration under the papacy of Francis, we have begun to ask in earnest,
perhaps for the first time in our lives, “has the post-Conciliar Catholic
Church, or perhaps more accurately, the “Post-Catholic-Conciliar-Church”
— an increasingly different Church that first emerged from Vatican
II and has continued to diverge from it through every successive
papacy until that rupture with the past has culminated in a Church,
together with its hierarchy, largely lost custody of the Catholic Faith?
Loathsome
Since beginning
this article some days ago, some alarming news has begun to emerge from
credible sources that has necessarily changed the tenor of this discussion,
one which, much to our consternation, now concerns not simply
the nature of the custody of the Faith vis-ŕ-vis the papacy of
Francis and the disaffected ecclesiastical apparatus in the Vatican
under him, but concerning nothing less than the integrity*
of the Catholic Faith itself. It has come to our attention that under
the direction of Pope Francis, English Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect
of the Congregation for Divine Worship, together with other powerful
figures within the Roman Curia are preparing to completely abolish
— for all time — and with no possibility of reclaiming
— what they perceive as the threat posed by the celebration of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass in Latin — in other words, The Latin Mass, TLM,
as it has been celebrated for 2000 years which must yield
to the Novus Ordo (New Order) “Mass of Paul VI”
exclusively — a Mass now barely half a century (54 years)
in the making … and still in the making. In order to accomplish
this with absolute, clinical exactitude, Francis & Friends have determined
to stamp out the Latin Mass as something loathsome.
Such fear of something holy! As though the Mass of 2000 years can be
shackled and plunged into a dungeon of unfathomable depth, hidden from
sight, concealed as a destructive secret, and made irrecoverable to
memory! How can we begin to imagine such malice in the Church toward
those within the Church; how are we to begin to grasp the Church
promulgating such an evil law and with an iron fist as hateful
as the crushing fist of any petty dictator?
Too
Catholic (for Ecumenism)
The Latin Mass, however,
must go: apart from the many contrived and ultimately superficial reasons
for abolishing the Latin Mass, the principal reason is this: it is
an impediment to Ecumenism, the very corner-stone of
Vatican II. This is the real reason
behind the vitriolic, almost pathological animosity exhibited toward
the Latin Mass by the liberal, Modernist Church of Vatican II and its
principal proponent, Jorge Bergoglio: The Latin Mass is not amenable
to non-Catholics; it is … too Catholic, it bears within itself
the history, the memory, the devotion, the filial love of two hundred
centuries of generations of Catholics who cleaved to the Faith through
persecution and hardship and for many, to the point of the shedding
of their blood.
Dwindling participation
on the Novus Ordo (Vernacular) Mass, and an alarming increase
in participation in the (Latin) Mass, especially among young Catholics,
appears to be the principal motivation behind this draconian measure.
The belief that Traditional Catholics will become Vernacular “Paul VI
Mass” Catholics by heavy-handed decree; that they will be forced into
this free-form Mass by Procrustean measures, is nearly delusional. It
will not happen. I do not know what will happen, but I am confident
that this fiction will not occur. Schism may occur. Were this
the case, it would appear from several informed sources that Francis
himself would be the formal cause of schism, and hence the Schismatic.
This is not a shocking possibility.
Of course, we must ponder the question
on everyone's mind: the fearful question that wrenches our gut:
where do Traditional Catholics go from here — should the hammer fall on the Faithful?
Who is To Answer This?
Shall Canon Lawyers decide this … who are
part of the very ecclesiastical apparatus that is prejudicial against
the continued celebration of the Latin Mass? Even were Canon Lawyers
able to answer this (they are not), it is not theirs to decide,
for:
Ecclesiastical
law derives its formal authority from the supreme legislator
understood as the reigning Roman Pontiff who, in his person,
“possesses the totality of legislative, executive, and judicial
power.”
In other words,
since there is no superior above the pope,
3 Francis
is exempt from, and not subject to, Canon Law … and
will do as he has ever done: whatever he wills —
which, as a matter of record, has not always, or even often, been just,
or even good.
Francis alone,
then — temporally speaking — will determine where Traditional
Catholics go from here, and given
his outspoken animosity toward the Latin Mass that preceded Vatican
II for 2000 years, and his even greater contempt for Traditional Catholics,
it appears that he is prepared to offer us two options
only:
-
Go to the Novus Ordo (New
Order) “Mass of Paul VI”
-
The second option is intended to
be optimally coercive:
No Mass at all. Essentially,
“Attend the Novus Ordo Mass or leave the Church.”
What crime, we must ask, have these
Catholics committed in continuing to worship in Latin
(until Francis repealed Summorum Pontificum, three years ago
in Traditionis Custodes, 2021) as their Catholic Religion has
always worshipped up to a mere 70 years ago? Is this the
crime that will cause them to be expelled from the Church?
Who is prepared to call
the Tridentine Mass — the worship of God in Latin
—
a crime?
This Missal, This Mass (the Tridentine
Mass), promulgated in Quo Primum (Pope Pius V, 1570):
“Grant[s] to all priests
of the Latin Rite the right to celebrate the Roman Mass [0f 1570] in perpetuity.”4
Whether or not, under the iron fist and
the unbending will of Francis, matters come to such a destructive,
divisive, and unimaginably ignominious conclusion remains to be
seen. Perhaps it is rumor after all. By all accounts, we will know
by mid-July.
Why the Vatican has said nothing to quash these
rumors is a matter of ominous speculation.
Geoffrey
K. Mondello
Editor
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Feast of St. Paulinus, Bishop and Confessor
Printable
PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
_________________________
*
integrity: the quality or state of being complete, sound, unimpaired
or undivided, uncompromised
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity;
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/integrity
1
https://thedialog.org/vatican-news/pope-francis-reminds-u-s-catholics-being-backward-looking-is-useless/
2
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/06/14/pope-francis-traditionalist-gag-243151
3 “The First See
is judged by no one” (#1404, The Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church,
1983).
4 “We require
then that all men, everywhere, shall embrace and observe the teachings
of the sacred and holy Roman Church, mother and mistress of other churches;
and that at no time in the future should Mass be sung or recited otherwise
than according to the manner of the missal which we have published,
in any of the churches of the provinces of Christendom, of Patriarchal,
Cathedral, Collegiate or parochial status, secular and regular belonging
to any kind of order, monasteries, both of men and women, also the military
orders, and churches without cure of souls or chapels, in which conventual
Mass is customarily celebrated or ought to be celebrated according to
the rite of the Roman Church, either aloud with a choir, or in a low
voice.”
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5quopri.htm