The Mass is at 7:00 PM.

On the teaching of Latin at the Academy of St. Gregory the Great in Pennsylvania, a traditional Catholic high school:

In the same way, the Latin course at St. Gregory’s was taught according to the Direct or Nature Method. Here, as with the natural world, the object of study was approached with respect for what it truly is, rather than with an eye to its seeming mastery by confining it within the limits of a predatory rationality. Thus, since Latin is a language, and language is first a spoken and heard phenomenon that is assimilated as it unfolds within the dramatic story of our lives, Latin was presented to the students in that way. Contrasted to this is the standard, although not traditional, method of Latin instruction in which the language is reduced to the spatial world of a text, and the text presented for decoding with aid of a dictionary.

Source: History and Vision of St Gregory the Great Academy

at direction of our media, other statues are rising:

After months of discussions, Trier (in Germany -SC)city council voted on Monday in favor of accepting a 6.3-meter (21-foot) bronze representation of the revolutionary socialist thinker Karl Marx. Council members in the southern western German town voted by a majority of 42 to 11.

The debate over the gift began last year when China announced that on the occasion of Marx’s 200th birthday on May 5, Beijing would present the economist’s hometown with a bronze statue.

“Trier accepts controversial Karl Marx statue from China”

There the statue of the “economist” has stood since 2018. in an allegedly “Catholic” region of Germany.

The Traditional Mass: History, Form and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite 

By Michael Fiedrowicz.

Translated by Rose Pfeiffer

Angelico Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2020

A wonderful addition to any Roman Catholic’s library is the new translation of Fr. Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional Mass. For the moment, it is the definitive handbook on the Traditional liturgy: what it is, how it arose, what it means and how to celebrate it. Perhaps most astonishing is that the author is a professor at the Theologische Fakultät (School of Theology) in Trier, Germany. He has published extensively in the field of patristics.

The first thing we note with pleasure is that the author is committed to the Traditional Mass. He writes as a passionate supporter, not a distanced observer, let alone an adversary. And he views the Mass as a whole: the texts, the music, the ceremonies, the readings all taken together. It is quite a contrast to most pre-conciliar authors (even Adrian Fortescue) who seemed to reduce the Mass to a jumble of rules and texts arising from historical accidents. Fiedrowicz does not hesitate to draw on the riches of the symbolic and allegorical interpretations (especially of the medieval liturgists) to demonstrate the unity and meaningfulness of the Mass. And of course he devotes many pages to the theology of this Mass.

Equally surprising – but so very welcome – is that Fiedrowicz approaches the Traditional Mass as a living rite of the Church (which, after Summorum Pontificum, it fully is – at least on paper). The author in fact draws heavily on the experience of the post – Vatican II, post-Novus Ordo era. It is heartening to see prominently among these sources the works of Martin Mosebach, who has so often appeared in this blog. Or those of Michael Davies, who fought for the Traditional Mass for so many years. Like Mosebach, these authorities are often not “official” liturgists at all. Certainly that is no detriment if the author’s purpose is not to win plaudits in academia but to describe and even advocate a cause very much alive. For Traditionalism has had to develop largely outside the domain of the Catholic academic establishment. 

Yet there is another reason Fiedrowicz cites the witness of artists: Mosebach today; Huysmans, Gertrude von Le Fort, Ida Görres and especially Claudel in years gone by: “ People of aesthetic sensibility, much scorned and suspect, are the recipients of a terrible gift: they can infallibly discern the inner truth of what they see, of some process, of an idea, on the basis of its external form.”1) Fiedrowicz discusses in his book the necessary link between the sacred and the beautiful

Fiedrowicz systematically outlines the case for the Traditional Mass, covering virtually every issue and objection a Catholic Traditionalist needs to consider and address. Most importantly, he shows that the Traditional Mass is in direct continuity from its earliest manifestations in the Fourth Century (and before) to its formalization at the Council of Trent. Fiedrowicz then illustrates “organic development” by looking at those additions that were made and how they proceed from the basic structure of the liturgy. He makes the case for Latin, as a “Sacred language,” the Traditional liturgical seasons and for celebration ad orientem. He explains the meaning behind the orations and the cycle of readings. There is even a lengthy discussion of all the various names for the Traditional Mass: the “classical rite,” the “Tridentine rite,” etc.! And in a very sensible and very un-German manner he sees this terminological issue as having secondary importance. Do I need to state that our author’s conclusions on the liturgy accord with what the advocates of Catholic Tradition have been writing over the last 50 years? The Catholic Mass, however, clearly summarizes all these positions is in one volume; in that respect it is a unique compendium.

Let me end this review with an observation I also made concerning the first English-language edition of Martin Mosebach’s Heresy of Formlessness. After considering the facts and conclusions so ably and compellingly presented by Fiedrowicz, is the Traditional Mass not a prerequisite for any real Catholic recovery? Do not the arguments Fiedrowicz presents inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Traditional rite should be made a rule one more for the entire Western Church? That it should no longer remain an option reserved for some kind of elite or subculture but become once more a common treasure accessible to all? So I would conclude! In the meantime, before that happy event occurs, I would highly recommend this book as the best systematic treatment of the Traditional Mass available today.

1. Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass at 214, n. 60 quoting Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness.

Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church

By Aldo Maria Valli and Aurelio Porfiri

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Chorabooks, Hong Kong, 2019

To comprehend the great events and trends of our time do we not turn first to the witnesses, even the direct participants,  for the most immediate and elemental insights? Didn’t Whittaker Chambers’s Witness and the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn bring about a long term change in the world’s understanding of communism –  regardless of what the American establishment and the European intelligentsia had been pontificating? The same holds true for the Church of today.

Witnesses of what is going on in the Church whose testimony I value have come from many perspectives and schools of thought. The witness of Catholic novelists (e.g., Alice Thomas Ellis, Martin Mosebach) has proven over the years to be particularly valuable. Then, we have the testimony of the “conservatives,” politically right-wing yet stalwart defenders of the Catholic establishment until confronted by developments that could no longer be swept under the rug (Mgr. George Kelly in the 1970’s, Philip Lawler and many others in the age of Bergoglio).  There are even those who started out in the camp of Catholic progressivism and moved to Traditionalism (Malachi Martin).  We have the “searchers,” the outrageous, the atheists and even the dedicated enemies of the Church who nevertheless offer important insights ( M. Houellebecq, M. Onfray, O.Fallaci, F. Martel).

Finally we encounter in Uprooted Aldo Maria Valli – a Catholic journalist, (born 1958) – and Aurelio Porfiri, a writer and musician (born 1968), cradle Catholics who have recently emerged from the heart of mainstream Italian Catholicism. For years they were closely associated with the ecclesiastical establishment.  Aldo Valli worked as a journalist for Avvenire, the mouthpiece of the Italian episcopal conference, and even was on close terms with Cardinal Martini, archbishop of Milan, the patron saint of Catholic progressivism. Aurelio Porfiri performed widely as a church musician. This slim book is a dialogue between them on the state of the Church and how they came to their current views of it.

Now for the not totally insignificant minority of Italian Catholics who still practice their faith, loyalty to the Papacy was and is of preeminent importance. Each Catholic country has, after all, its own personality. In complete contrast to France or Germany , but like pre-1988 United States Catholicism, being a Catholic in Italy was synonymous with loyalty to the pope, the hierarchy and the establishment. For until recently, the controversies among Catholics on the right over liturgy, pro-life witness and the state of the Church made no impression in Italy except for a tiny elite (Count Neri Capponi, Augusto del Noce). Only the far left of the Church could speak out loudly and distinctly. Both Valli and Porfiri speak emotionally of  the cult of the papacy and of the prior individual popes they had known who had meant so much to them even in their private lives.

Under Bergoglio, this state of mind ended. Indeed, Valli speaks of a “conversion,”  of the falling of a “veil” that had obscured his vision. In the case of Valli, reflections on Amoris Laetitia led to a sudden break with the ultramontane culture. Porfiri,  a church musician, had had a more gradual development of his views based on what he saw and heard week after week. Once he had the experience of a choir singing more traditional church music and asked himself: “Why has this music been forbidden to us”?  In both cases, our authors  suddenly realized that within the one institution of the “Church” there were in fact two entities: one modernist, the other still Christian. This insight led them to a re-evaluate their understanding of a whole series of topics.  Their exchange of ideas makes up the bulk of Uprooted. Let me quote from it!

The first topic they have to address is the ultramontane papacy. “The reigning popalatry was largely born with Pope John XXIII.” (From the opening of the Second Vatican Council) “the Pope was no longer simply head of the Catholic Church but a media personality whom the mass media bent to the logic of emotions and entertainment.” (With Pope John Paul II) ”…we had a pope who was praised more and more in his personality and less and less followed in his faith.” “…the consequences are devastating. Emotion prevails over reason, images over words…the World Youth Days were the triumph of this sort of narration. And yet while all this was happening, the churches were emptying, the faithful were falling prey to relativism imposed by the prevailing culture, traditions were being abandoned….” Then there is the cult of obedience associated with ultramontane papalism. “The insane papism we are witnessing in our days is the child of ignorance and manipulation.” (The cult of blind obedience) “means there is an absolute identification between the faith and the institutional church, which instead is meant to be at the service of faith.”

The liturgy? Aldo Valli speaks of  the innumerable “sloppy liturgies” with their “sentimental songs and music, liturgical abuses, exaggerations, excessive focus on the celebrant’s personality, misinformed laity, a lack of respect towards Our Lord, the absence of a sense of the sacred, contempt for silence, no reverence and all getting progressively worse over the last few years.” All features almost universal in the liturgical life specifically of the Italian Catholic Church! “In the course of a few decades we Catholics have allowed ourselves to be despoiled of a spiritual, religious and liturgical inheritance which was guarded and handed down for centuries and centuries.”

On the Church today: “Sometimes, even often, I no longer feel at ease in the Church, I feel like I am out of place and frequenting Catholic circles does me no good. I feel uprooted. …I understand that if you want to be accepted…you must uncritically embrace the narrative of a Church that is now liquid, as Vittorio Messori has said. But I don’t feel this way, it is not for me, I prefer a self-imposed exile living at the margins of official Catholicism, where what is exalted is charismatic and. Pentecostal religiosity, emotionalistic in the extreme, and clearly coming from a Protestant background. This is not the Church in which I feel my faith grows and becomes stronger.” Do I need to mention that both authors have paid a steep professional price for the positions they have taken? For the “Church of Mercy” is unforgiving!

Regarding clerical sexual abuse: “many maintain it is a question of discipline, when in fact it is a question of faith!”  “[O]nly if I believe in God who became man and died and rose for me, for the forgiveness of my sins, can I live in the light of divine law.” Both authors have very strong words about the current state of the Catholic clergy – both their lack of faith and their lack of knowledge –  and the terrible responsibility of these priests for the disastrous situation in which the Church finds itself.

An interesting chapter deals with homosexuality in the clergy and  the famous “gay lobby.” The authors perceive its influence in the recent “Synod on Young People” and in “a certain type of religious sentimentalism, deprived of virility and extremely feminized.” “Responsibility for this must be identified at different levels, from seminaries up to the highest levels of the Roman Curia.” Here the thoughts of our authors seem to confirm what Frederic Martel describes in his In the Closet of the Vatican – obviously from an entirely different perspective! 

There is so much more! Almost every sentence of this short book seemed to me a succinct summary of a feeling or an impression most of us have undoubtedly experienced. As I have noted, our authors have paid personally for “daring to name these things with a raised voice.” And they confess they are unable to offer any immediate solution for the Church. They do have a chapter on the positive role of social media –  indeed,  in the last ten years, Traditional Catholic Italian sites have achieved worldwide prominence.  But nevertheless Valli and Porfiri have to ask themselves the stark question: “Will we die as Catholics”? But, by telling the truth, by becoming witnesses, have they not gone far in laying the foundation for recovery at some time in the future in some way unknown to us?   For is not truth the prerequisite, the indispensable foundation,  for  everything else?

In the first half of 2020, life in the “ developed world” world came to a shuddering standstill. The pleasant cocoon surrounding the populations of Western Europe and the United States seemed to disintegrate and apocalyptic hysteria seized the upper hand. The media and forces of the establishment, for their own reasons and based on murky data, seized the opportunity to whip collective fears into a fever heat. Suddenly a culture devoted exclusively to money, sex, pleasure and bodily health had hit a road mine. The denizens of the global society without limits had to confront limitations – even, at least in their own minds,  the possibility of imminent death. Overnight a quasi-totalitarian regime was imposed, in which the state was empowered to regulate, in the greatest possible detail, public, business, religious and even personal life. (Here in Connecticut, for example, the governor devoted considerable efforts to deciding whether beauty salons can use blow dryers ). We are slowly re-emerging “from under the rubble” of the pandemic. Yet within days a new crisis has been ignited. 

As we have done almost every year since 2013, we will reflect upon the current status of the Catholic Traditionalist movement; its successes, failures and outlook. What are the next steps for Traditionalists seven years into the pontificate of Francis? Although we confine our efforts to the United States, of necessity these reflections will stray from the narrow confines of the “American Catholic Church” as appropriate.

Regarding the Church, we can only record the abysmal failure of the hierarchy, of the Catholic institutions and of the Pope. In the greatest domestic crisis in decades, the clergy have been silent, the state discontinuing  their “services” as “non-essential” – with their own concurrence. Nor did we see a wave of discontent about that among the laity, as, depending on the location, churches were locked, masses were suspended and some or all of the sacraments were withheld. Catholics died in hospitals and nursing homes alone without the presence of their family or clergy and bereft of prayers or the sacraments. The hierarchy took its direction from the media, the government bureaucrats, the scientists and, to the extent avoidance of liability was involved, the lawyers. Right now the dioceses of the New York area are issuing page after page of regulations on the resumption of masses and the sacraments, which are obviously more concerned with avoiding legal exposure that the good of souls.

The permanent damage of these days will be enormous. For in all honesty, is not sheer inertia the greatest force propping up the post-Vatican II Church among the laity ? How many of the minority which still regularly attends Mass will return after this interruption of months? And how many others will remember with resentment the passivity of their shepherds? At a minimum, an institutional decline that has assumed record levels under Pope Francis will only accelerate.

But where does Catholic Traditionalism itself stand? Before the grand shutdown, celebrations of the Traditional Mass had been growing by leaps and bounds both in quantity and quality. The movement had been successfully passed on to a new generation of priests and laity. Monasteries such as Silverstream or Norcia – situated outside the US but closely linked to US Traditionalism – were flourishing, overcoming incredible  obstacles of all kinds. At home, the celebration of the Traditional Mass had moved into cathedrals and basilicas. It seemed that each year brought new accomplishments. In the New York area, early 2020 saw not just one but two solemn pontifical masses celebrated by cardinals. Just recently even the New York Times had to acknowledge -viewed from their perspective of course – the new popularity of Catholic Tradition among younger “weird” Catholics. Meanwhile, Traditionalists assumed more and more the role of leaders of the overall Catholic right as their conservative allies (and erstwhile adversaries) fell into ever greater confusion and intellectual chaos in the face of the unshakably radical course of Pope Francis & Co. indeed, a sign of the maturity of the Traditionalist movement today is its independence  from the need of Vatican favor. If 15 or 20 years ago Traditionalist events such as the annual Chartres pilgrimage felt compelled to insinuate – falsely – in words and images that Pope John Paul II supported their endeavors I doubt anyone would make the same claim today for Francis!

Yet the great coronavirus panic largely brought the celebration of the Traditional Mass to a halt. We have seen the vitality of the movement, however, in the high number of Traditional Masses that have been streamed in these dark days. And Traditional priests- at least some of them- have been more willing than the others to bend the rules to keep at least some semblance of the sacraments available. Let’s also not forget that – even if it happened outside the United States – it was the  French Traditionalists, not the indifferent French hierarchy, which obtained in court the reversal of state measures restricting the celebration of the Mass in that country.  Nevertheless, Traditionalists too will face fallout arising from their conduct during the pandemic.

More regrettably,  the last year has seen an outbreak of bitter infighting among Traditionalists themselves on a national, regional and local level. Once more the FSSPX has become a target. A well-known Traditionalist parish in the Northeast has been torn apart by intramural conflict among clergy and laity. Conflicts have erupted routinely on all kinds of occasions. Some of this is a natural consequence of growth, as Traditionalists deepen their interaction with each other,  the rest of the Church and the world and encounter new and unanticipated points of friction. But much of the current agitation arises from sheer stupidity and inability to subordinate individual wishes and grievances to the common good of Catholic Traditionalism. 

The institutional adversaries of the Old Mass have hardly been inactive either. As the Traditional Mass gains greater visibility in the “Catholic public square,” the machinations and maneuvers of the Catholic establishment  against Traditionalism continue and even intensify. In some cases, perhaps unsurprisingly, the instigators of anti-Traditionalist vendettas were not the clergy but the aging laity of the Vatican II generation. Here a Traditionalist professor is forced out of a “Catholic” college; there a Traditionalist priest is dismissed from his parish and made chaplain of a nursing home.  Diocesan clergy committed  to celebrating the Traditional Mass are subject to all kinds of harassment and chicanery,  while certain priests who only occasionally celebrate the Tradional Mass continue to demand that they not be identified or photographed.  There were still instances where the Traditional Mass, even a Nuptial Mass, could only be celebrated on a semi-clandestine basis. (N.B. This was before the imposition of the current restrictions!). 

We have previously spoken of the hostility of the current pontiff to the Traditional Mass  – I don’t think anyone doubts that. Recently, however, speculation has revived once again that Bergoglio might be considering imposing restrictions of some kind on its celebration. This fear has been prompted by the circulation by the Vatican to the worlds’ bishops of a tendentious questionnaire on the status of the celebration of the Old Mass. Also, certain bureaucratic moves and restructurings (e.g., the abolition of the Ecclesiae Dei commission) in the Vatican lead some to think that a clique adverse to Traditionalism is consolidating its power. Curiously, some of the more recent developments took place after the release by the Vatican of optional new prefaces and saints’ commemorations for the Old Mass – a move seen at least by outraged progressives as an unacceptable acknowledgment of that Mass’s continued vitality. 

One might puzzle over the timing of such a hypothetical papal intervention. For the state of the Church and of the Vatican under Pope Francis is anything but good. As we have set forth above, regardless of what anyone is publicly saying, the Church will not emerge unscathed from Coronavirus.  Numerous Vatican scandals continue to seethe. All objective statistics regarding mass attendance, reception of the sacraments, vocations etc. show a Church in catastrophic retreat across the world. Concerns are mounting over the German “synodal path,” an initiative, after all, originally instigated by Francis, with worldwide ramifications. And the tensions over Francis’s “Amazonian” synod triggered not very well disguised opposition in the form of essays written by Cardinal Sarah and more importantly, the “pope emeritus.” I would be very surprised if those essays hadn’t played a role in temporarily putting the brakes on the seemingly triumphal progress toward married priests and women clergy.

It would not seem a propitious moment to set off an ecclesiastical civil war. But, as I wrote in 2014,  a moment like today, where Francis is confronting setbacks on other fronts,  would likely be the perfect occasion to launch an attack on Traditionalists. For, in addition to distracting from his other difficulties, such a move would certainly win the applause of most hierarchies and ecclesiastical bureaucracies – especially those of  Europe – as well as  of the secular media. But will it happen? Possibly, but the Traditionalist movement has had to live over the years with various threats from the Vatican, both known and not so well known, and by the grace of God has thus far survived them.

Yet what will be the outcome of all this? Will Traditionalism survive only as a Roman Catholic version of Anglo-Catholicism? Does not Pope Francis increasingly give the Church an “Anglican” face: a bureaucratic superstructure entirely focused on the secular, devoid of any specific spiritual and moral content, but to some extent tolerating the existence of “minorities”- the African churches, the Traditionalists – still loyal to a different and older morality, liturgy and theology? If so it would be a tragic and futile conclusion of a sixty – year struggle.

At times the temptation has indeed been great for Traditionalists to play the role of “High Church Catholicism”: preserving the Traditional Mass, often presented as a special event, but otherwise quietly accepting the present state of the Roman Catholic Church and of that of the society to which the Church in turn has conformed. Such Traditionalists, going beyond requisite and commendable prudence, have restrained their commentary on the pressing issues of the day. They have at times practiced self-censorship as the price of admission to the churches and institutions owned by the establishment.

But, by its very nature, the Traditional Mass rejects confinement within such a straitjacket. This liturgy can never be a private option or merely a psychologically beneficial ritual. By constantly recalling and representing the presence and active role of God, by making visible and vital once more the riches of art and history and by insisting on the role of reason, the Traditional Mass can never be a pliant servant of modernity. This Mass leads souls to contemplation yet paradoxically – or not?- inspires them to external works, setting off shock waves in art, politics and ecclesiastical life. Do we not see this in the “direct action” of Alexander Tschugguel (tossing Pachamama in the Tiber) in response to the highly symbolic adoration of fake idols in the Vatican? Or in the continuing active participation of Latin Mass congregations in the US pro-life movement? Or in the apostolic voyages of men such as Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Zen or Bishop Schneider, who take uncompromising public stands on the crucial issues of Church and society, regardless of the popularity of these opinions? Or even in one prominent Traditionalist blog’s transition from the futility of covering the day-to-day nonsense of today’s Church to a more immediately relevant, unapologetic advocacy for Donald Trump? 

It is now the time to advocate openly for Catholic truth in liturgy, morality and theology. As we have said, this may well lead in the short term to conflict – even a dramatic showdown – with the forces controlling the Catholic institutions. But to shirk this confrontation will mean only to involve Traditionalism in the overall collapse of the Catholic establishment. After this crisis, Traditional Catholics will need to work ever more diligently and learn to cooperate closely among themselves – despite the recent difficulties!. They will need to continue supporting the prayer of contemplative monasticism and the intellectual life of scholarship. They must maintain the commitment to liturgical excellence and completeness which happily has been so widely achieved today. And they will continue to foster vocations as priests and religious. 

They cannot shy away from the conflicts that will inevitably arise with a disintegrating hierarchy and secular society . They must take in stride being called mentally ill (Pope Francis) repressed homosexuals (Frederic Martel) “enemies of the Pope” (the establishment Catholic news media) and, of course,  “fascists” (everywhere in Europe), and know that it cannot be otherwise. As Pope Benedict so bitterly experienced, the old order will not go down without a savage fight. It will be a struggle in which the opponents of Catholic Tradition will continue to enjoy the full support of the secular world. Yet when they look at the numbers, Traditionalists are increasingly confident that the future is on their side, regardless of whatever drastic challenges the immediate future may bring. And for the vital majority of Traditionalists, the scope of their mission is no longer, as in 1970,  “saving the Mass” for a few,  but restoring integral Catholic Tradition in all its glory to the whole Church.

Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi gallery in Florence, told the press on 27 May that he thought many religious works of art currently in Italy’s museums and stores should be returned to the churches from which they came. He went on to suggest that one of the most famous early medieval works in his gallery, the Rucellai Madonna by Duccio, painted around 1275, should go back to its original home, the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, from which it was removed in 1948.

… [T]he Rucellai Madonna’s absence from Santa Maria Novella takes away an essential part of its history and meaning.

“Devotional art was not born as a work of art but for a religious purpose, usually in a religious setting”, he told The Art Newspaper. He went on to say that, returned to the building for which it was created, it would be seen in the right historical and artistic space and the viewer would potentially be led to recognise its spiritual origins.

SOURCE: The Art Newspaper (Thanks for the reference to The American Conservative)

Strange: writers, critics and philosophers of various schools have been making the same points for years. Indeed, it is a sure sign of a society’s decadence when its art – preeminently religious art – is removed from life and enclosed in museums. Of course, according to The Art Newspaper, representatives of the Catholic Church had doubts about Schmidt’s idea….

Musings on Pentecost with no Sermon

By Father Richard Cipolla

I will celebrate Mass on this feast of Pentecost alone in my private chapel as I have been doing for many, too many, weeks now.  Even though I know I am not alone at Mass, for the whole Church is present at every Mass, it is spiritually difficult to not offer Mass with the presence of the people, for they assist me in a real way in the Offering of the Holy Sacrifice. I wrote no sermon for today’s Mass of Pentecost.  And in musing on this yesterday,  I remembered suddenly one of the verses of Eleanor Rigby:

Father McKenzie,
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near

I got up very early this morning and went out to retrieve the newspaper. I still get the Sunday NY Times. I know some of you are shocked by this, but I believe I have to know clearly and understand those forces in this world that have set themselves against the Truth of Christ and his Church. As I walked back to the house I was struck deeply by the deep blueness of the sky. Its depth and beauty gave me great joy, and I thought of Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur”, with which I shall end these musings.

 I glanced at the Sunday Review section of the Times. I saw that it was blank except for script towards the bottom of the page in jagged and lopsided letters. It said: “The world is broken.” The world of the Times is indeed broken. But we have always known that God sent his only begotten Son to repair the world of sin and death by the Sacrifice of infinite Love on the Cross. But we also know that in a real sense today that the Church is broken. The pandemic has shown how broken and ineffectual the Church really is. The abandonment of Tradition after Vatican II is the source of the brokenness. Its Christ- given mission to evangelize the world has been abandoned. And the heart of this abandonment is the ruthless abandonment of the Mass of the Tradition. 

But the darkness of this world is no match for the infinite Spirit of God who is Love. And so I close in the real hope that we will be at Mass together soon at the altar in our churches, the only place Mass should be celebrated.  And I leave you as a Pentecost gift Hopkins’  wonderful poem.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Paix Liturgique, Letter 746 (May 19, 2020)

(The decision by the highest French court of appeal in administrative law lifting restrictions on the celebration of Mass that had been imposed because of the coronavirus) prompts Paix Liturgique to make a few reflections:

It is because the faithful of the “extraordinary form” liturgy have requested it that the bishops of France, like Msgr. Aupetit, archbishop of Paris and Msgr. de Moulins Beaufort, president of the episcopal conference, will enjoy earlier than anticipated the right to celebrate Mass in the midst of their people. So it is: the initiative didn’t come from the bishops, or even from the “ordinary-form” Catholic associations, but from Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass – and also from that “bad boy” Jean-Frédéric Poisson. 1) In doing so, these Catholics never lost sight of the fact that they were not asking for “permission,” but were simply utilizing the procedural rules in force in France to loosen the vice-like grip of an illegitimate secular legislation

In asserting the freedom of the Mass, these Catholics of the Traditional Mass had been long used to a struggle that has continued for more than 50 years. De facto prohibited after the promulgation of the liturgical reform which followed the Second Vatican Council, the Tridentine Mass continued despite everything. It was celebrated by a substantial number of priests, which was subsequently multiplied because of the work of Msgr. Lefebvre and of the “recognition” which it was finally accorded by the Roman authorities. These Catholics have defended the freedom of that Mass with their feet (and frequently, with their cars, by driving many kilometers to attend it)and have paid with their person and their own money to defend the priests who celebrated it.  All this without any “disobedience” but, on the contrary, in total submission to the obligation on every Catholic  to confess one’s faith. A faith which, from the point of view of the liturgy, is expressed by the true religious Credo which is the Traditional Mass – in contrast to the new Mass which seriously blurs the expression of the sacramental sacrifice, of eucharistic adoration, of divine transcendence and of the sacerdotal hierarchy.

In the present circumstances of an eclipse of divine worship which will have lasted more than two months, a certain number of priests saw to it that the sacraments were still administered and the Mass said, under conditions the media called “clandestine.” These priests are in the majority “Traditionalist” priests, but also priests of parishes which are predominantly strongly “classic” and close to the Traditionalist world. They did this at the request and with the support of the faithful who regularly attend the Tridentine Mass. Very modestly, that can be explained by the strong theological understanding of the holy sacrifice of the Mass instilled in them by the liturgy which they practiced and which they knew so well.

The consequences of the health crisis will assuredly be most painful for the Church, especially in France. Such a resignation from their duties by the majority of the pastors, such an abandonment of the faithful involving the most precious good of all, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, cannot have anything but disastrous consequences. Much worse than the terrible economic and social crisis, which is brewing,  is the aggravated religious crisis which we are going to enter. Religion, especially in France, but also in Italy, Germany, and in many other places, will be even more marginalized. What is even more terrible, she has voluntarily accepted to let herself be marginalized. Let’s not at all pretend that the Traditional Mass is going to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire”; but we think that it’s possible that it will play even more a role as the last resort for a Catholicism in accelerated decomposition. The living expression of the centuries-old faith of the Church, it is in particular able to express that the religion of Christ is called to be that of the whole society. It is, in itself, and, one must hope, in the convictions of those who are attached to it, totally the opposite of a marginal and “locked down” act. It is destined to be, it wants to be, the celebration by Christ the King of the worship offered individually and in a body by the members of the terrestrial city on the road towards the celestial one.

Paix Liturgique (Thanks also to Le Forum Catholique)

Translated by Stuart Chessman

1. Jean-Frédéric Poisson is a Christian French politician whose “offenses” include speaking out once in favor of Donald Trump.

by Aldo Maria Valli  from Radio Roma Libera

Translated by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

 

The pandemic of the corona virus has brought us suffering and uneasiness, but has contributed to the ripping off of many masks.

 

One mask that has been ripped off is how the government has acted in the current crisis, just as we have been accustomed to see how government has acted in the last few years: the politics of superficial declarations, of disputes that are continual and meaningless. of continual electoral campaigns, of the quasi- theater only good for talk shows but in the end all fatuous and empty.

 

When confronted with an alarming situation, for each individual and for society as a whole, the apparatus of the government has shown  itself to be what it is: A debased theatrical event, or more to the point, a backdrop of paper mâché, before which dull and dreary figures of actors recite the lines of the farce that is the struggle for power that totally ignores the authentic functions of government, that is, the management of the res publica.

 

What should a government do if it does not operate to guarantee the safety of its citizens?  And what should it do to guarantee the safety of its citizens if it does not recognize that reality, to do what has to be done to give to the country a solid foundation and to confront in a timely fashion crises that arise?

 

In this case, instead, we have found ourselves in the presence of a government totally unprepared, that facing a situation of crisis has not been able to do anything other than to flounder like a ship in the midst of the sea.  No one, as it has now been seen, had prepared at all to confront the imminent danger, even as the first signs were readily apparent.  And the so-called Intelligence Community?  And those who are in place to meet emergencies?  And those in charge of crisis management?  Nothing at all.  A medical doctor, Professor Pasquale Bacco, who conducted a study on the diffusion of the Coronavirus in Italy, has said that he had advised the authorities already in the month of October 2019, but his warnings were not heeded as something important.

 

The strategy that was adopted was the “lock down”, shutting down everything, like hiding in a hole in the ground.  The simplest and immediate reaction.  Like primitive man who ran to find refuge in a cave to flee a ferocious animal.  The quality of a government shows itself in times of difficulty, and what we have seen is the non-existence of a government in the full sense of that word.  In fact, it placed itself in the hands of a techno-scientific committee.  It gave up its power and responsibility of governing and decision-making to a body that has nothing to do with governing.

 

Another mask that was ripped off is that of science as a panacea, as the grand resolver of every problem. The mask was ripped off of science as the certain answer, as absolute and incontrovertible Truth.  It makes me think of the words of an Italian politician who in the columns of an important daily newspaper accused scientists of being able to only offer hypotheses and no solutions.  “You have to give us answers that are certain!” shrieked this politician, showing his profound ignorance of the nature of science.

 

To be fair, serious scientists admit that facing a new problem they are able to only begin to do studies, looking at data and verifying hypotheses. Their answers, if and when they are announced, will be the fruit of this long and patient work.  Science knows above all that it cannot answer questions without verification.  Science is not a magic wand.

 

Another mask that has been ripped off is that of the false friends of liberty.  Those, confronting a situation that is complicated and dangerous as the one in which we find ourselves, do not know what to do except to put a bridle on anyone who does not think like they do, on those who do not accept as fact those explanations that are given, on those who do not accept the dominant opinions. We are seeing just how these enemies of freedom operate.  They organize frameworks against those that they proclaim to be “fake news” and then claim to decide from on high what is true and what is false, humiliating immediately any sign of questioning and branding as provocative anyone who does not fall into line with the narrative adopted by the majority.  Before this situation of danger due to the pandemic, these people who see themselves as important emptied out their mouths with demagogic hymns to democracy and freedom, but now, confronting a situation that is objectively difficult, they reveal themselves for who they are:  third-rate censors and inquisitors ( I called them third-rate because the true inquisitors at least had education).

 

With respect to information, another mask that has been ripped off is that of journalism that says that it is on the side of the man in the street, but in reality engages in psychological terrorism.  The journalist talks of service but, giving in to sensationalism, actually frightens the public.  It is that type of journalism that takes pleasure in alarming situations and stokes the situation, because they profit from  the number of their readers and the number of copies of their newspaper that are sold.  Instead of helping people to conduct a rational analysis of the situation, their only purpose is to stir up emotions.

 

Another mask that has been ripped off (and here we move on to the ambit of religion) is that of the happy clappy clergy who are all “peace and love”, all “we love each other”, and “it is not true that God punishes”, and “we do not judge” and “enough with dour expressions on faces” and “life is beautiful” and “faith is joy.”   These clergy, all ”Laetitia et Gaudium”, are always ready to polemicize against those who tell us that the life of faith in reality is also tragedy and battle, it is choice and judgement, because Jesus said that he came to bring the sword and not peace, because truth is not negotiable, and therefore to defend truth one needs to be ready to defend it, because the problem of death and of the eternal destiny of the soul is not something that can be avoided. But now, facing the danger of the pandemic what are we supposed to make of these discourses on peace and love, that avoid taking into consideration death, judgment, hell and heaven?  Right now, faced with the objectivity of suffering and restriction, what are we supposed to make of religion that is reduced to sociology and vague words of consolation, a religion that has forgotten transcendence and what is ultimately important?  Strange, but not too strange, for it is exactly these clerics, who are all ”peace and love”, who are those who seem most terrified of the virus, those least disposed to open up the churches.  Before all of this, they always laughed and smiled. Now they are terrorized.  A while ago they were jabbering about the “Church going out of herself”. Now they prefer to hide in a hole in the ground.  Now, instead of helping us to make sense of pain and death, instead of bringing us closer to God, they ask for obedience to the State and lock down our Lord, treating him as a bringer of plague, whom one must approach with a thousand precautions and as a sign of distrust, as if the Eucharist were not the Viaticum that sustains us and strengthens us, but rather a danger in itself.

 

If and when we get out of this situation, will we have learned anything?  Will we be less disposed to allow ourselves to be seduced by the hallucinations imposed by the guardians of thought?  Unfortunately, nothing lets us imagine that we will have learned anything.