The Funniest Part Is the Title.

'Guardians of tradition'! As the French would say, 'It is to laugh'. What 'tradition'? An ever-mutating 'tradition' going back 50 years?

From Dyspeptic Mutterings

By Dale Price

Imagining the present pontiff as a guardian of any "tradition" save that which began with him getting the white hat is bleakly hilarious, in fact.

You can say trads misbehave and don't always conform well to the Roman church, and thus don't deserve to worship.

Such is often accurate--I've seen it myself. But you're still a Jansenist for saying so.

And an inconsistent one at that--there is no shortage of Catholics attending the "reformed" liturgy who quite publicly and consistently deny the validity and legitimacy of giant swaths of genuine tradition, along with spitting at the power of their bishops to do anything about said denials. 

Some even wear collars, hold public office or are the clericalized laity staffing local Catholic-for-tax-purposes-only institutions. But no gimlet-eyed clerical commissars are being dispatched by papal directive to uproot and suppress their spiritual lives.

Such as they are.

He's an abusive, bad father who likes other children more than his own. The faithful have a right to the liturgy of their grandparents and likewise have the right to protect themselves accordingly. One only has to look at the fate of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate to imagine the "lively pastoral charity and sense of ecclesial communion" heading their way.

And note Article 4 in particular: the long-term goal is clear. The powers that be intend to choke out the existence of the worship at the center of the Catholic faith which existed worldwide not quite sixty years ago.

And so much for collegiality and the power of bishops to manage their dioceses without being "franchisees of Rome," to quote a progressive from the dark days of JPII. Quite the micromanager when it suits him, our pontiff.

Unless you're having a national synod which repeatedly states its intention to replace the Faith with the Zeitgeist. Then, well, you know...it's complicated and needs the soft touch.

I don't attend the Latin Mass much these days--the last time was late summer (?) 2020, and the trads infuriated me that day, but that's a story for another time. But I have had family figuratively slapped in the face by NO priests and attendees (e.g., "you need to take your baby out"), too. But the functional burial clubs which celebrate the Mass of '70 will be spared "lively pastoral charity" as they continue their long hospice.

The bottom line is that even given my gritted teeth anger at trads, the moment an Archbishop of Detroit suppresses any of the Latin Masses going in this diocese, that's the last time it sees a dime from me.

And bluntly, this action makes me question what Rome teaches about itself in the catechisms. Lex orandi, lex credendi, eh?

Whither the Catholicism of 2021?