Continued from Part 1

His Emminence Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass yestereday evening at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Stamford, CT for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In this post we cover the first part of the ceremony, the vesting ceremony. In Part 2, we will cover the Mass itself.

Contine to Part 2

Today the Pope issued his Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes (“TC”) (with an accompanying letter) on the Traditional liturgy. I think I owe you an initial reaction. After all, in 2007 this Society sponsored the first Mass in the New York Archdiocese pursuant to Summorum Pontificum (as opposed to the indult regime). I want to address general principles and leave up to others more qualified the discussion of the legalities (to the extent Canon Law can be said to exist anymore) or even the validity of aspects of this Motu Proprio.

 The Motu Proprio TC abrogates Summorum Pontificum both in its theory and operative provisions.  Insofar as diocesan clergy are concerned, it resurrects a regime similar to the 1984 Indult Quattor Adhinc Annos in its most restrictive interpretation. So, for example, the Traditional Mass is not supposed to be celebrated  (in the future?) in parochial churches;  new Traditionalist groups are not to be authorized and those that exist are to be examined whether they deny the “legitimacy” of the Novus Ordo, etc.

Noteworthy is the uniquely radical style of TC. Entirely absent is the nebulous and effusive verbiage that characterize Francis’s other documents (like Amoris Laetitia) with their endless talk of “accompaniment,” “mercy”  and, of course, “tenderness.” In TC,  the language is succinct, harsh and adversarial. The reasoning is often transparently dishonest. What are we to say,  for example, of the passage in the Motu Proprio quoting St Augustine for the proposition that remaining in the Church “with the heart” is a “condition of salvation” – after the unrestricted ecumenism of the last 60 years? Or of Francis’s insistence on “unity” and “communion” as almost exclusive criteria of Catholicism, when every day the fundamental tenets of Catholic theology and morality are challenged – often with the express or implicit support of the Pope (e.g.,  the prohibitions of divorce, abortion,  homosexual behavior)? 

Clearly, Francis and his episcopal allies want a war in the Church. Considerations of the past  – reintegrating the FSSPX, accommodating the just desires of certain of the faithful –  don’t apply anymore. Traditionalists, as such, are declared to be enemies of the Church, who:

 exploited (the indults and Summorum Pontificum) to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.

The ultimate goal is their annihilation:

It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum. ….

Indications about how to proceed in your dioceses are chiefly dictated by two principles: on the one hand, to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II… 

I could be mistaken, but I know of no recent instance where a whole, worldwide class of Catholics – including by 2021 Cardinals, bishops, priests, laity and religious orders  – has been similarly publicly denounced and anathematized. The specific contempt for Pope Benedict is palpable – his motivation for promulgating  Summorum Pontificum is misleadingly described in a way directly contradicting the previous pontiff’s repeated statements. Is this document in part personal revenge for the derailing of the “Amazonian” synod – and for the “Pope Emeritus“ and his allies acting as a brake for the last nine years?

Why is the Pope doing this? After all, Francis and his allies control the Vatican, the mainstream religious orders, the Catholic press and educational system worldwide and certainly the majority of most hierarchies? How could these nefarious “trads,” whatever they may be advocating, undermine this structure? How, given these disproportionate resources, can Traditionalists  be jeopardizing the “unity” so desired by Francis?

I think the answer has nothing to do with supposed “divisive”  activities and positions.  The real problem is not traditionalism, but the manifest, catastrophic failures of the Vatican Council, the Novus Ordo and the ultramontanist organization of the Catholic Church.  The sin of the Traditionalists is that, by their very existence and even more so by their success, they bear witness to the fact that (a)the current “Conciliar” regime is in discontinuity with its pre-Conciliar predecessor; and (b) this regime is in rapid disintegration.

The response of Francis is not to make the case once more for the Council and the Novus Ordo, but to declare them identical with the will of God. He does not attempt to convince the critics of their errors but uses coercive measures against them. In so doing he carries ultramontanist  centralization to a new extreme: external unity is the absolute value, “groups” (of the laity) need to be supervised and vetted by bishops, priests need, indirectly, permission from the Vatican to celebrate the Traditional Mass…

I think the strong-arm measures of TC will only increase the focus on Traditionalists, while exposing even more the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy the so-called Conciliar Church.  As I have written before, there is, humanly speaking, a great benefit of these experiences: the truth. For I doubt anyone who reads TC and its accompanying letter can deny that a radical crisis has engulfed the Catholic Church.

I am truly sad for the overwhelming majority of Traditionalists – the families who over the years have found a sense of beauty in the liturgy and an environment conducive to raising their families,  handing  down the faith and even evangelizing those outside of the Church.  If the reader examines our posts and our photographs over the last 14 years, he can get a sense of this vast new activity. These people know nothing of the alleged offenses of priests and agitators denounced by the Pope.  It is indeed a great cross for these faithful Catholics to be subject to such reprehensible calumny by the leadership of the Church.

My advice to all Traditionalists would be to carry on as before. Pope Francis may have declared war, but there are many different ways to fight.  After all, did not Archbishop Bergoglio and most of his episcopal colleagues, in their complete disregard of Summorum Pontificum over the last 14 years, give us the best example?  If the Francis and his bishops want to create martyrs, close parishes and even excommunicate – let them take the initiative. At the St Hugh of Cluny Society we intend to continue and even redouble our support of the Traditionalist movement. Maybe it will take different forms – maybe we will have to shift once more to an underground form of organization. But the fight for the whole of Catholic Tradition  – in Liturgy, theology and morality – will go on! 

The entire Traditionalist world seems to be waiting with trepidation for whatever Pope Francis will be doing to Summorum Pontificum and the celebration of the Latin Mass worldwide. It’s noteworthy that the entire process has been conducted in secrecy by the Vatican and certain episcopal initiates. That those reported to be in the forefront of the anti-SP effort – such as Cardinal Parolin or, for that matter, the Pope himself – do not necessarily enjoy the best of reputations or authority at this very moment is no hindrance to their ability to initiate global liturgical changes. And on this issue, (as opposed to, let’s say, the German Synodal Path) papal power in the eyes of the European Church establishment is unlimited. Consider the statements of Professor Georg Bier in the online publication of the German Catholic Church :

As a matter of principle it is possible for the Pope to completely abolish again this form of the Mass ( the Traditional Mass -SC). The Pope as supreme legislator can always decree whatever he deems to be most beneficial for the Church... (According to the author, however, for tactical reasons abolition of the Traditional Mass is unlikely -SC). There will be at most moderate restrictions – but as a matter of principle the Pope has all possibilities. 1)

In Bier’s view, both Summorum Pontificum and the document Pope Francis is crafting are governed entirely by material and political considerations and tactical expediency. The passage in Summorum Pontificum which seems to expressly limit the authority of the Church to abolish the Traditional Mass is dismissed by Bier as a “dodge” or “trick” by Benedict to preserve continuity with his predecessor – no theological issue here.

Reading these words today, I was struck once again by the link between centralized ultramontane absolutism and liturgical, moral, and theological experimentation (the latter, of course, taking in 2021 a reactionary, defensive form!). The totally arbitrary and unlimited Papal authority described in the quote above contrasts with the historical role and self-understanding of the Papacy in the “greatest of centuries” (the 13th) or in the Counter-Reformation. In my view, the Catholic Church’s dysfunctional structures and organizational principles continue to exercise a highly negative influence, blocking true reform and spiritual development

Two recent articles, dealing with issues arising in unrelated contexts, have neatly identified this highly problematic situation for the Church. First, Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society, has this to say in his review of Una Voce: the History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003 ( by Leo Darroch):

The first (episode Shaw considered – SC) is the interview and associated correspondence which took place between de Saventham (the head of Una Voce International – SC) and Archbishop (later, Cardinal) Giovanni Benelli, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in 1976…. . De Saventham summarised Benelli’s position in a letter to him following the meeting:

Your Excellency has urged us to espouse as a matter of conscience the new forms of the Church’s public cult… Although the character of irreformability only attaches to definitions, promulgated ex cathedra in matters of faith and morals, [you asserted that] the assent due to the acts of the Sovereign Pontiff ought equally to express itself in humble obedience to those of his acts which merely concern the discipline or other nondoctrinal aspects of the government of the Church. For there also, you said, it is the same one and indivisible charisma which guarantees that all these acts cannot but be ordered towards the true and certain good of the Church. Consequently, you could only consider as reckless and irreconcilable with a proper ecclesiology all demands or initiatives which implied that the utility of such and such an act of government duly promulgated by the reigning Pontiff or under his authority could be a subject of discussion or even contestation.

Cardinal Benelli did not dispute the accuracy of this summary. What it amounts to—as Dr de Savanthem goes on to explain at some length, though not in these terms—is an extreme Ultramontanism, the view that imbues the reigning Pope’s prudential decisions with something close to infallibility, and his wishes with a force approaching that of Divine Law. 
The prevalence of such attitudes in a Rome is part of the explanation of why things were so difficult for Una Voce in the 1970s and later.

Second, Bronwen McShea considers a case of excessive Vatican intervention in local artistic issues in the 1920’s but draws broader conclusions ( “When Rome Policed Art,” First Things (August 2021):

(After the Council) [T]he new generation of churchmen, once in power, redirected the Church toward a warm embrace of the modern world. The irony is that in doing so, through the decrees of Vatican II and in the ­Council’s aftermath, they preserved and strengthened centralized mechanisms of ecclesiastical control, not just over doctrine and worship, but also over cultural judgments and sensibilities. Rome and the clerical hierarchy were suddenly airing out a Church that supposedly had been stifling and stale inside for many centuries. Now, “openness” was not optional: ­Dialogue became the order of the day. The modernized engines of ecclesiastical governance were revved up for aggiornamento, which the laity and lower clergy would get, whether they wanted it or not. Even Maritain, late in life in The Peasant of the Garonne, would rue this turnabout.

Much as they had with theology and the liturgical reform, the bishops oversaw a rushed, coordinated aesthetic revolution. Old-fashioned crucifixes, paintings, statues, stained-glass windows, and even sacred vessels were cast aside for modern ones—beautiful, well-crafted, and elegant in some cases, but ugly, kitschy, and blasphemous in countless others. Vatican-­issued and chancery-stamped statements, more revisions of canon law, an­d conferences paved the way. Ordinary Catholics stood by—­bewildered, often—as the styles of art that had been ­forcefully opposed by their mitered shepherds just a few years before were now promoted by them. All manner of Expressionist, Cubist, Fauvist, and Abstract works began to populate cathedrals and small-town ­churches. Sacred spaces were bulldozed, whitewashed, and reconstructed. And a great deal of fine artwork—crafted lovingly and donated by the laity of past eras—disappeared overnight.

….

In view of the complex history of which Servaes (the Belgian artist referenced by McShea’s article – SC) was a part, it is worth considering whether more mature modern approaches to sacred art would have developed organically, in creative dialogue with the wider culture and ancient traditions, had Vatican bureaucrats and their defenders in the early twentieth century behaved more, not less, like their Tridentine-era predecessors. Vatican I and Vatican II both effected highly centralized, Rome-driven reform. They may appear in some respects antithetical, but they ran on the same rails. The centralizing impulse of the age seduced Rome into censoring experimental artists in ways that Tridentine and medieval Church officials had not imagined necessary or even possible. Then, by the mid-twentieth century, mortified by the Church’s cultural marginalization, the hierarchy tried to reverse it with an even heavier hand—f­oisting a sloppy and destructive aesthetic revolution on the Church to accompany the dramatic liturgical and theological reorientations.

1. Bier, Georg (“Professor for Canon Law and the History of Canon Law at the University of Freiburg”) as interviewed by Christoph Hartmann, “How the Pope could limit the celebration of the pre-Conciliar Mass,“ Katholisch.de (07/14/2021) (in German)

Here are some very special Traditional Masses scheduled for this coming weekend.  Mark your calendars!

Friday, July 16 in Stamford, CT: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke will celebrate a Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Stamford on July 16 at 6 pm for the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel. The Basilica’s schola will sing Mozart’s “Sparrow” Mass.  We recommend parking in the Bell Street Parking Garage, 114 Bell St. Parking fees are suspended for the Mass.

Saturday, July 17 in Our Lady of Mount Carmel in New York:  10th Annual Traditional Mass Pilgrimage to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 448 E. 116th St, New York.  10:45 am Penitential Procession, 11 am Missa Cantata and Benediction.  We recommend parking at the nearby Costco shopping center at 117th St. and Pleasant Ave.  For a full schedule of all traditional Masses and other events to celebrate the feast see our post:  https://sthughofcluny.org/2021/06/feast-of-our-lady-of-mount-carmel-2.html

Sunday, July 18, Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Newark, at 3pm a Solemn Pontifical Mass  will be celebrated for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel  by the Most. Rev. Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, Bishop Emeritus of Paterson. The mass is to be followed by a procession through the streets of the Ironbound accompanied by Italian Festival Band. When the procession returns the Feast will be open in full swing so that all may enjoy the typical fanfare. Parking is available in the back two lots and the church is easily accessible through Routes 21, 78, 1&9, NJ TP, etc.  For more events at this church in connection with the feast  see our post https://sthughofcluny.org/2021/07/solemn-pontifical-mass-for-feast-of-our-lady-of-mt-carmel-in-newark.html

Sunday July 18, Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in New York,  Solemn Mass for the Patronal Feast of the Most Holy Redeemer, at 3 pm, Fr. Sean Connolly, celebrant.  173 E 3rd St., New York.

Also on Sunday, July 18, there will be an opportunity to participate in an Italo-Greek (or Italo-Albanian) liturgy, 12:30 PM,  Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church, 288 Vanderbilt Ave., Staten Island NY, Text messageto (516) 606-4914 if you plan to attend.

Solemn Pontifical Mass

On Sunday July 18, 2021 at 3pm a Solemn Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form will be celebrated by the Most. Rev. Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, Bishop Emeritus of Paterson. The mass is to be followed by a procession through the streets of the Ironbound accompanied by Italian Festival Band. When the procession returns the Feast will be open in full swing so that all may enjoy the typical fanfare. Parking is available in the back two lots and the church is easily accessible through Routes 21, 78, 1&9, NJ TP, etc. 

Street to be renamed in honor of Msgr. Ambrosio

Prior to the mass at 1:30pm at the corner of Oliver and Adams Streets, a Street Renaming ceremony is to take place designating the stretch of Oliver Street between Adams and Van Buren the “Rev. Msgr. Joseph F. Ambrosio Way.”

Fundraiser to restore altar rail

In this same light and with permission of our Administrator, Rev. Danny S. Rodrigues we will undertake a project of restoring the altar rail using marble from a closed convent. The total cost of the project will be $15,720.00. The link attached below can be used for making contributions or checks can me made and mailed to the rectory care of Eric Lavin / Business Manager / Pastoral Associate Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel – 259 Oliver Street Newark, NJ 07105.

Above all, please support this endeavor with your prayers as it is only through prayer that we are able to accomplish this great endeavor for the “Little Cathedral of Down Neck.”

www.parishgiving.org

Today’s Traditional Mass at St. Emery Church in Fairfield, CT. Traditional Mass will be offered there every Sunday at 12:30 pm and every Wednesday at 6 pm. Deo gratias. Photos by Sean Kulacz posted on Facebook.