“The Thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice…and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice…Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop…” CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter XXIII
The Papacy of Francis has not been without controversy. “In October 2020, while being interviewed for the documentary ‘Francesco’ about his life, Francis made a full-throated endorsement of same-sex civil unions…setting off global shock waves. ‘Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,’ the pontiff said…’What we have to have is a civil union law; that way, they are legally covered.'” Shortly thereafter, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, described by USA Today as “the Vatican’s Orthodoxy office,” stated that “(t)he Catholic Church and its priests cannot bless same-sex unions because God ‘cannot bless sin…(t)he blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit…there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.'”
Francis’ statements on homosexual unions is an outgrowth of his long history of leftist social activism. “Pope Francis has made his social and economic tendencies clear since the early days of his pontificate… (f)or the Holy Father, inequality is the ‘root of social ills,’ though he fails to explain precisely why a society of unequal wealth but a relatively high standard of living would somehow be less reflective of Gospel values than a society that shares equally in poverty…(in) his message to the Popular Movements in Bolivia (in 2015), Pope Francis demanded rights to land, labor and lodging—one can only imagine how expansive a State’s apparatus would have to be to guarantee all of these, certainly one that would leave precious little space to individual initiative; criticized corporations, banks, free trade agreements and austerity measures as part of an ‘anonymous influence of mammon’; and rushed to the defense of ‘Mother Earth’…which he saw as ‘being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity.’”
The social activism of the Pope has not been well received by more traditional Catholics. As described by Victor Codina, SJ, writing in America, “At present, there is a strong group opposing Francis’ church: laypeople, theologians, bishops and cardinals who would like him to resign or promptly disappear from the scene while they wait for a new conclave to change the current direction of the church…(t)he criticisms of Francis have two dimensions, one theological and the other more socio-political, although (as we will see later) there are instances where these dimensions converge…(overall) opposition to Francis is opposition to the Second Vatican Council and to the evangelical reform of the church that Pope John XXIII wanted to promote.”
This last point is crucial to understanding the current controversy involving The Socialist Pope.
On July 16, 2021, Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Letter entitled Motu Proprio. “In order to promote the concord and unity of the Church, (the Pope writes, “with paternal solicitude towards those who in any region adhere to liturgical forms antecedent to the reform willed by the Vatican Council II, my Venerable Predecessors, Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI, granted and regulated the faculty to use the Roman Missal edited by John XXIII in 1962. In this way they intended ‘to facilitate the ecclesial communion of those Catholics who feel attached to some earlier liturgical forms’ and not to others.”
“At this time,” the Holy Father continues, “I have considered it appropriate to establish the following…It belongs to the diocesan bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the whole liturgical life of the particular Church entrusted to him, to regulate the liturgical celebrations of his diocese. Therefore, it is his exclusive competence to authorize the use of the 1962 Roman Missal in his diocese, according to the guidelines of the Apostolic See….(t)he bishop of the diocese in which until now there exist one or more groups that celebrate according to the Missal antecedent to the reform of 1970…is to determine that these groups do not deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform, dictated by Vatican Council II”
In discussing Motu Proprio, David Gibson, the Director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, writes that “the outcry from Catholic conservatives and self-styled ‘Traditionalists’ over Pope Francis’s decision to restore restrictions on the unreformed, pre-1970 Latin version of the Mass has been so angry and anguished that it has obscured several important realities about this controversy. Those realities are critical to understanding this drama of near-schismatic proportions… the pope has not prohibited priests from saying Mass in Latin… What Pope Francis has restricted is the rite that was codified after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) called for the liturgy to be updated and renewed, and in 1970 – four hundred years after the Tridentine missal – Pope Paul VI promulgated a new missal, the one nearly all Catholics around the world follow at Mass in their own language. Priests can still celebrate ‘the Latin Mass,’ just with the new format and formulas which express a different ecclesiology and theology than the older version.”
Gibson also denies that in outlawing the Pre-Vatican II version of the mass, “Pope Francis is throttling some burgeoning traditionalist revival of a superior form of Catholicism that will reinvigorate (the) church…(t)he idea that Catholics are pining for the Tridentine Rite is the trend story that never dies. It is the line that (traditionalists) have been feeding everyone for decades, and it was amplified by church leaders like Pope Benedict XVI, who in broadening the use of the old rite in 2007 said that his move was prompted by ongoing requests from around the world and that ‘even young people’ were drawn to it.”
People across the world are facing this issue or a side effect of this medication that restricts flow of blood to india levitra the penis. Smoking causes dental plaque and tartar super active viagra http://secretworldchronicle.com/category/podcast/ to surface fast while tobacco products triumph at flaunting a foul mouth or a bad back. There’s however one blood test called prostate -specific antigen test (PSA) for find over here 100mg viagra effects ruling out prostate cancer. Vigrix Plus combines several natural constituents including Indian Ginseng, Rosemary extracts, Oats, potency wood, Maca, Ginkago and Caltrop among other herbs viagra sale without prescription which are all friendly to the bloodstream as it quickly mixes up in the blood for relaxing the muscles and dilating vessels size to increase the amount of blood.Yet, contrary to Gibson’s words are the words of Pope Francis himself. “Pope Francis explained his reasoning for the motu proprio in a letter to the world’s bishops, saying that the expansion of the Latin Mass after Summorum Pontificum did not result in a unified Church. Summorum Pontificum was Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter which recognized the rights of priests to say the Traditional Latin Mass, and stated they did not need the permission of their local ordinary to offer it. That 2007 document, Pope Francis said, ‘was exploited 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.'”
In other words, the Pope is throttling a traditionalist revival by prohibiting the use of a mass form that predates Vatican II.
Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Steven P Millies describes the situation with precision. ” To
non Catholics — and many Catholics — the decision may seem on first glance to be a technical, even obscure action not worth very much attention. But it sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic Church. As a scholar who studies the Catholic Church’s relationship to the
world, I believe the move may be the most important action Francis has taken in an eventful papacy… (t)he Mass is the central act of Roman Catholic worship. During the earliest centuries of Christianity, there was widespread variation in the Mass. Local irregularities thrived at a time before printed books…(b)ut after the Reformation of the 16th century split the Western Church in two, the Roman Catholic Church regularized the form and the language of the Mass. At the Council of Trent, a gathering of Catholic bishops in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563 prompted by the rise of Protestantism, the Mass was codified…(f)rom that time, the ordinary celebration of the Mass followed a precise format…and was always celebrated in Latin. This Mass held firm in Catholic life for 400 years…until the Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965. Also known as Vatican II, the council was convened to address the position of the Catholic Church in the modern world…(a)mong other changes…the Mass was to be translated into local languages.
“(B)efore long, some Catholics began to express misgivings about the new rules regarding Mass, fearing that it changed too much by upending centuries of tradition. One of them was French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who refused to conduct the Mass in anything other than Latin, saying, ‘I prefer to walk in the truth without the Pope than to walk a false path with him.’ On another occasion he commented: ‘Our future is the past.’
“Many people prefer the Latin Mass purely for its beauty, and not all of those people are uncomfortable with Pope Francis’ leadership. But many traditionalists are, and their views are not confined to prayer and Mass. The worldview that many in the traditionalist movement share with someone like Archbishop Lefebvre…is very uncomfortable with the modern world. It does not fit with Francis’ vision of a Catholic Church aligned with open societies and on the side of the oppressed. Traditionalists opposed to Pope Francis have found a refuge inside communities that celebrate the Latin Mass. It has insulated them from the direction in which Francis has been trying to take the church. Restricting the traditional Latin Mass as he has, it seems that that Pope Francis is challenging traditionalists to be part of the same church as he is.”
Returning to Fr Cordina’s views, the convergence of the two strands of opposition to Francis, the theological and the socio-political, have united in the prohibition of the Pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. As described by Steven Millies, traditionalist Catholics tend to be politically conservative. From his endorsement of gay civil unions, to his calls for socialist economic reforms, the Pope has alienated these socially and politically conservative Catholics for years. Now Francis has found a way to alienate these Catholics theologically as well.
Photo: The Vatican