How Do You Solve a Problem Like Pope Francis?
Nine years into Pope Francis's pontificate, we are finally getting clarity into his mindset.
At a recent talk he gave to a group of Jesuits, he came right out and declared that traditional Catholics are the number one problem in the Church, because, allegedly, they reject Vatican II and want to go back to older times.
This talk coincides with a new decree that he made; namely, that Bishops no longer have the authority to Institute communities of Diocesan right within their own dioceses, but rather they have to submit a request to a pope-appointed committee, no doubt made up of leftist bishops and lay people, and only then if the committee approves can the bishop have that community set up.
This move is to stymie new traditional communities from forming. For example, here in Tyler, Texas alone, two different communities of priests are attempting to form, both are traditional, one is an Oratorian chapter of Saint Philip Neri, and the other is a group of Canons of Saint Augustine.
Looking back over his pontificate, early statements that he made about traditional Catholics being “Neo-pelagian,” which basically accuses them of thinking that works will save them apart from God's mercy and grace, as well as his recent motu proprio “Guardians of Tradition,” now all make more sense.
The Pope thinks that Catholics who follow the Tradition of the Church are the problem. He paints all of them with the same broad brush and claims that they reject Vatican II.
In fact, this is not the case, and I encourage you to scour all the documents of Vatican II and try to find where it says that the Latin Mass should be abolished and abrogated, that all Masses should be celebrated in the vernacular, ad populum instead of ad orientem, that Sacred Music should be removed from the Mass and replaced with campy pop tunes.
Go ahead; I’ll wait.
But I'll save you many hours because you won't find any such language. In fact you'll find the opposite in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the main document that has anything to do with such matters.
So it's not really about Vatican II after all. Rather it's about what the Pope thinks is the spirit of Vatican II.
I am not a canon lawyer, so I can't go into detail on what a particular bishop's options are if he wants to Institute a religious community in his diocese without asking mother-may-I to a bureaucratic committee in Rome. But from what I understand this is a large over-reach.
What can we do? Same thing that we always do: pray, pray for the Pope, and for the Church, and be faithful to your duties in life.
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