Driving Them Underground.

Pope Francis brings in more henchmen.

The Catholic News Agency reports Pope Francis made significant appointments recently to the vast Vatican bureaucracy: among many others, Cardinal Blase Cupich as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life.

Both these cardinals have expressed enthusiastic support for Francis’s motu proprio, Traditionis custodes, which basically tears up Benedict XVI’s earlier encyclical, Summorum pontificum. The latter considerably loosened restrictions on usus antiquior, the traditional Latin mass, celebrated, albeit with additions and subtractions over the years, but essentially the same, for 1500 years.

Over 50 years ago Pope Paul VI, at the behest and with the assistance of revisionist Cardinal Archbishop Bugnini and others, chopped up and made mincemeat of the old mass, though by taking snippets from it here and there and inserting them into the new rite claimed it was essentially the same as the ancient rite of old. It was hardly that; the innovators were simply telling lies.

It should be noted there were no demands from the faithful or most clergy for the desecration, rather it was done by executive fiat. Though Benedict did some tinkering with Novus Ordo to make it more palatable, as well correct egregious errors, it is still a travesty compared with the old rite, though your Tatler will admit, grudgingly, it does “gets the job done” and attending an NO mass fulfills one’s obligation.

The traditional Latin mass after Benedict’s encyclical was making slow, but steady progress returning to Catholic churches worldwide, but Francis, if you read his motu proprio, makes it clear he not only despises TLM, but those attending and taking part in it. He is hell-bent on crushing it. The recent appointments to the cardinalate that share Francis’s revulsion to TLM, indicate he is serious about snuffing it out.

Francis will not succeed; there are too many priests and laymen who love the old Latin mass and will jump through all the many additional hoops now required of them. In cases where that proves impossible, it will be celebrated regardless. The best Francis may expect is TLM, like Catholic masses in England and Ireland long ago, will be driven underground (the return of priest holes?), further dividing our deeply troubled Holy Church.

Sancta Maria ora pro nobis.