Then the Pope's restriction of the Latin mass: Another sadness!
I understand the clerical frustration with the Latin mass community. They are a counter-culture, in tension with the mainstream Church establishment and often defiant and dismissive of it. They can manifest the spiritual immaturity of all renewal, alternative movements: distrust of the system and authority, arrogance, self-righteous indignation, stubborness. There can be a schismatic, propensity there: there always is in enthusiastic, intense religious sub-communities. It goes with the territory. Clergy can make a reasonable argument that they will benefit from discipline, boundries, regulation and "holy obedience?".
At the same time, they are fervent in their love for Christ in the Tridintine mass, Tradition, Thomism, Catholic customs and piety. They preserve the splendor of the old mass as mainstream liturgies have become often insipid. They are reverent, pious, protective of much that is best in our past as so much of that has been forgotten and discarded. They are good Catholics, in an offbeat fashion. I like them. I am friends of the local community. They have been good to our Magnificat Home work. As a group they are quirky, interesting, intelligent, informed, often sophisticated, interesting, full of life, love and faith. They are currently hosted in a poor, inner city parish. That pastor, in negotiations with myself, bemoaned: "Nobody gives much money! Not that groupand not that groupand not that group!You know who gives money? The Latin mass community!
Every alternate Catholic community, including all the renewal movement, is a child of the Church; and each struggles like an adolescent with obedience, trust, loyalty. Each is prone to spiritual indignation and pride. But the underlying cause of such separation and resentment is: the feeling of being unloved. Now that may or may not be caused by the authority figure. But in this case, I fault the Pope. I am in the corner of the traditionalists.
How I prefer the affectionate, sympathetic embrace of them by Benedict. Francis has a blind spot here: he is blind to their love, loyalty, and genuine piety. He is defensive, arguably paranoid, as he sees them as an assault on his configuration of the Vatican II Church. He sees only rigidity, separateness, reaction, formalism and an offensive piety. He is admirably transparent and candid: he hates them. He is NOT a loving father...not patient, long-suffering, tender or affectionate.
There is irony here: the liberal branch that he represents prides itself on "inclusion" and "diverstiy" but typically is intolerant of and even "canceling of" disagreement from the right. It is analagous to Biden's current effort to repress vacine criticism on Facebook: his authoritian heavy-handedness verifies and intensifies the already pandemic suspicion of the establishment (medical, political, media). It further polarizes and divides: feeding distrust and resentment. I fear that Francis' heavy handed repression will have the same result: increased distrust and division.
In this case, I must say: Francis is a bad father, a bad pope. The truth will set us free: in his betrayal of the persecuted Church in China, in his destruction of the John Paul Institute in Rome, and in his repression of the traditional mass...we are facing a form of child abuse. To deny this would be to be an ennabler. It is what it is.
We live in dark times. In our mega-Archdiocese of Newark we are now ordaining maybe one local candidate a year. We are Israel in the desert, wandering around with no promised land in sight. We are in exile, in Egypt or Babylon, bereft of homeland and temple and priesthood. We are in some kind of corporate dark night of the soul. Are we Job being tested by Satan? It helps to be clear who we are and where we are. So we can bring it to the Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment