![]() There is a real danger of one developing. There’s not a “movement” yet, but Francis’s ham-fisted move on Friday made it a lot more likely that one will develop in short order. These days, they like mostly to haunt internet commboxes on websites they themselves own and operate. Sure, there are angry and maladjusted people with strange theological notions and dubious political ideas out there, but they’ve been around since dirt was the next big thing. Right now, there is no schismatic Traditionalist movement to speak of – none that really threatens the unity of the Church. It is more like amputating a finger to treat a hangnail than it is anything else. ![]() It also strikes one not quite as a solution without a problem, but more like a drastic remedy for a relatively minor annoyance. ![]() ![]() One of the most head-scratching things about Francis’s new new law, however, is that it flies directly in the face of Francis’s own old new laws. Pope Francis himself notes that his new law flies directly in the face of Benedict XVI’s older but still newish law. Speaking to the Catholic Herald on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject, one Vatican official summarized the matter this way: “The motu proprio explains the reasons for the suppression pretty well: the nature of the dialogue with the SSPX has changed the kind of oversight and promotion needed for traditional communities is different, now that they are firmly established, in their own right, in the life of the Church.” “rogress has been made in communion,” wrote Nicola Gori for L’Osservatore Romano at the time, “and therefore the current motu proprio offers an implicit recognition to the Pontifical Commission which has carried out its tasks with its efforts and activity.” Traditionalists howled at that, while cooler heads – including this wizened Vatican Watcher – saw little to justify the alarm. Things were going so well that, by 2017, he had decided to fold the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which dealt with the SSPX and other groups and persons and congregations devoted to the older liturgical forms, into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pius X and eventually “performed a schismatic act” when he consecrated four bishops without Rome’s permission, to carry on his work.īy the middle of the last decade, the movement toward canonically regular expression of substantial unity between the Vatican and the SSPX – which appeared geologically slow at times, even well into the 21 st century – had made such progress that Francis first temporarily and then indefinitely granted SSPX clerics faculties to hear confessions, and also granted conditional faculties to them to witness marriages.īasically, Pope Francis used gradual, piecemeal legislation to make SSPX structures at least minimally functional as communities. It has punished the Catholics who were loyal sons and daughters of the Church through long decades of needless suffering.īenedict’s liberal reform achieved significant détente, which allowed Francis to advance even greater rapprochement between Rome and Écône, where Archbishop Marcel LeFebvre founded the Society of St.It has vindicated the Society of Saint Pius X – the SSPX – the chief Traditionalist outlier in the Church, whose leaders for years warned that Rome could not be trusted.Whatever else Pope Francis’s decision has done, it has done two things: Traditionalists and other Catholics devoted to the older form of worship are mostly shocked, though they are also hurt and insulted. Moderates in the Church find the pope’s claims of necessity unconvincing, while they doubt the prudence of the measures almost to a man. Defenders of Pope Francis’s decision to abrogate his predecessor’s liberalization of the Traditional Latin Mass have been long on the sad necessity of the move, but vanishingly few of them have touted its prudence.
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