A Reflection on the Legacy of a Steward
Francis,
Ecumenism,
and the Divisions within us
All are Welcome, Except All the Children
...
Francis
will die
— although we do not wish his death, nor the death of any man
— but it is, withal, the temporal end of every man, pontiff or layman,
commoner or king. Reflecting on this as Francis recently celebrated
his 87th birthday, we are moved to observe something
very simple about his stewardship over the House that the Lord has
entrusted to him.
For
10 years now, Francis has attempted to
“renovate”
a House that was not his, but only placed in his care as a steward.
The majestic facades, the incense-imbued silence within, dimly colored
with the stained-glass light of a late afternoon; the soaring spires
that proclaimed the great Triumph of the Cross abroad for all to
see — these were not his to depredate: they belonged to God and
to His simple servants who raised them to His glory through the
coppers they gave and through the rough, calloused, hands that engraved
every niche in stone by dint of a devotion every bit as indestructible
as the tip of the chisel the stone yielded to.
Some of these Francis and his bishops
simply tore down; others they emptied by
“consolidating”
them with other Catholic parishes who were equally bleeding parishioners
and sold them to Muslims whose adherents grew as exponentially as
ours diminished. Some were sold to Evangelical Protestants (especially
Hispanic), others to developers who gutted them and turned them
into trendy condominiums. And others are left simply abandoned and
ruined. This was part of the
“growth”
spurred by the innovations of Vatican II that was supposed to bring
the Church into the World but brought, instead, the World into
the Church.
And the faithful fled, seeing little
difference between the two.
Renovation
A far
more destructive
“renovation”
is much closer to the heart of Francis,
however, than the mere obliteration of what was symbolically holy
in the external presentation of the Church. And it concerns the
very heart of the Church: its Mass and its Liturgy.
These were the two greatest impediments to the holy grail
of Vatican II: Ecumenism. And inextricably bound up with
them were the Sacred Deposit of Faith, and Sacred Tradition.
They had been quietly but indelibly preserved in Latin despite nearly
70 years of experimentation in the Vernacular Mass that somehow
had promised, but could not deliver upon, an
“organic
evolution”
of worship into something ecumenically acceptable to all men in
all religions.
Perhaps the New Order of the Mass,
the
“Novus
Ordo”
constructed by Bishop Luca
Brandolini
and Anabile Bugnini,1
could still lend itself as the vehicle to a universal worship of
God under the auspices of Ecumenism: each religion to its own god
to be worshipped as the one, true god in Catholicism — but
not in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism, each of whom keep
their respective gods without conflating them with any
other god, especially the Catholic God. To use Francis’s
dismissive term for Traditional Catholics,“indietrists”2
are much too caught up in trifles like logic to enter emotionally
into the
“spirit” of Ecumenism where, apparently, the Law of Non-Contradiction
3
is not admissible and contradictory affirmations are compulsory.
All are Welcome ... Except All the
Children ...
Certainly,
this New Order of Mass, the Novus Ordo of Paul VI
— unlike the Latin Mass — has proven itself to be extremely versatile
and spontaneously creative, possessing nothing of that loathsome
“ridigity” so detested by Francis in the “Old Latin Mass.” We have
witnessed this spontaneity, this tossing off of the shackles of
customary ritual in nearly every Mass; so much so, in fact, that
we never quite know what to expect at a Mass the next town over
if a Catholic Church still remains there. It could be a “Charismatic
Mass” that could vie with, or even surpass in excess, any uninhibited
Protestant Revival Meeting. It could be a “Healing Mass,” or a “Children’s
Mass.” It may not even be in your language. It could even be an
“Ecumenical Service” with your local Protestant Minister, Jewish
Rabbi, or Muslim Imam. So many Masses we now have! Except Latin
Masses.
“All are welcome!” ... except Latin rite Catholics. ... the
unwelcome step-children of Vatican II ... the only children not
allowed to “walk in accompaniment” with Francis & Friends;
a “privilege” reserved to “other” Catholics, non-Catholics, and
atheists alike. Francis's own rigid insistence on the Novus Ordo
Mass to the exclusion of any Mass preceding Vatican II is, in fact,
completely understandable in light of his determination to fulfill
the Ecumenical pledge of Vatican II: not just the unification of
all Christians in spite of doctrinal, ecclesiological, and Confessional
differences, but more ambitiously, the unification of all believers
in some form of transcendental reality. This is a very, very, broad
category comprising nearly everything beyond sensibility, and even
sensibility is not categorically excluded. So understood, the term
becomes so broad as to become almost meaningless. It is much like
claiming to achieve an ultimate Hegelian synthesis that claims to
reconcile all contradictions but cannot explain how, and so becomes
unintelligible and therefore worthless.
This is becoming
too dense for the casual reader so I will not pursue it. Nor should
the casual reader regret the omission. Really, it is hardly worth
it.
For Francis
to scornfully dismiss those who are not persuaded that his ecumenical
agendum is the principal reason behind his effectively abolishing
and outlawing the Latin Mass (although he disingenuously — really,
quite dishonestly — states that it is to
“preserve
unity”
in the Church) is a failure in charity to acknowledge real and legitimate
issues among the faithful concerning the very unity he pretends
to seek while actively striking discord within it. For Francis to
claim that he is trying to preserve unity through this autocratic
move is both shamefully and manifestly untruthful. That the Latin
Mass, together with the theology upon which it has been articulated,
has been so forcefully repudiated by Francis is an indication of
how desperate a measure he is willing to resort to in order to implement,
or better yet, to force, an increasingly brittle ecumenical paradigm
on clergy and laity alike. Pieces of that ecumenical puzzle that
are not of Bergoglio's making either will not fit, or refuse to
fit, however much force he applies to them.
A Happy Failure
It will be a
happy failure that Francis could not, for all his intrigue and ill-designs,
bring to an end what faithless princes and kings, heretics and apostates
through 20 centuries had been unable to achieve: the destruction,
and the utter removal from living memory, of the inextinguishable
sanctity of the Latin Mass of All Times and All Places. .
It will be a sad epitaph for Francis
in many ways, and history will not look kindly upon his persecution
of the faithful in the very house given them and entrusted to him
to keep them.
It is all the more sad, not that he failed to keep them,
or even that he refused to keep them, but that he sought
to drive them out. Seeking to please men, he drove out the children.
It is a tragedy of great depth. It is also one that calls for deep,
even the most profound, prayer; prayer that must extend to the hand
that strikes, as well as to the stricken, for none of us is without
sin.
Listening to Christ, let us put aside
all contention, and remember not so much what has been done to us,
but rather what remains for us to do:
Love your enemies:
do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute
and calumniate you.” (St.
Matthew 5.44)
