Archd. Of Guadalajara – The 'Traditionis Custodes' Spiritual Segregation Continues

More on the situation in Guadalajara. The Cardinal Archbishop weighs in 'in the spirit of Traditionis Custodes' limiting even the FSSP's House of Formation.

From Fr Z's Blog

Perhaps this news will give rise to a new wave of spiritual Cristeros, namely, Custodes Traditionis.   Please, everyone, I implore you to consider doing this, joining this informal confraternity.

With this news, let us now invoke also Bl, Miguel Pro and the holy martyrs of Mexico to soften the hearts of those in Mexico who will implement and then enforce the cruel Traditionis custodes.

In Guadalajara, Mexico, there has been a bad, and confusing, development.  The Cardinal Archbishop of the place is slamming down on the Vetus Ordo in the wake of Traditionis Custodes, Francis’ Plessy v. Ferguson to Benedict’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Card. Robles Ortega issued a decree – you won’t find it on the dioceses’ truly cruddy website – for their implementation of TC.

NB: I was sent an English translation.  I didn’t find the original or this translation on the truly cruddy website.

Low points and oddities.

The Cardinal body slammed the faithful there who are desirous of Tradition, and he put fetters on the FSSP, too.  By the way – if the English is accurate – the document gets their name wrong, calling them the …

You know… I am not going to quote the translation on the weird variants in the text because I am not entirely sure that there are not canary traps either in the original (which we haven’t seen yet) or in the translation.  Let’s just say that one variant for naming the FSSP might be an ironic Freudian slip of some kind or it could be an accidental conflation of their name with the parish where they serve.

In any event, if it’s in the decree this is sloppy for something that will affect a lot of people lives in a seriously upsetting way.

The decree says that Masses at that quasi-parish, St. Peter in Chains, can continue but with readings only in the vernacular.

They can’t add Masses and, once COVID winds down, the number of Masses will be reviewed.

That’s little ironic, since officialdom wants the pandemic to last until entropy cools the planet or the Lord returns.

For the other places, daily Masses can continue at Our Lady of the Pillar, on weekdays only one Mass in the Chapel of Christ the King and on Sundays and Tuesdays at the parish of St. Francis Xavier of the Hills.  I don’t know the geography of that area.  One wonders how far O.L. Pillar and St. Francis Xavier might be from each other.

As Job cried, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!  That’s “¡Viva Cristo Rey!”, I guess.

As for inside the House of Formation of those in the FSSP, present in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, Masses will be regulated, here it comes…. by the Congregation for Religious in Rome.  These are the same pastoral ambassadors of love who tenderly regulated the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and who are sure to be putting forth soon an Instruction for the formation of all the new entrants into traditional communities now under their umbrella, rather than under the CDF’s.

That was one of the scariest results of TC, by the way.   That, and that regulation of liturgical issues will be under the Congregation for Divine Worship.

The decree further stipulates that people can’t go to the chapel of the Fraternity’s house.

Next, the quasi-parish of St. Peter in Chains is canonically suppressed.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Priests of the archdiocese must now be authorized on a case by case basis…. back to TC now from TJC.  Both older and newer priests must formally declare that, I will summarize these rather than quote because of possible canary traps in the text.   That’s how bad things are now, I think.

So… summarized, the priests who want to use the Vetus Ordo must formally declared that

a – they don’t deny the validity of the Novus Ordo and the Council and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs,

b- they recognize that the “only” expression of the Roman Rite is in the books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II (which seems false, because clearly the Vetus Ordo is the Roman Rite and always will be… it can’t be anything else, but I digress),

c – they are obliged to use the Novus Ordo and, if they don’t have explicit permission, they can’t use anything other than the 1962 Missale Romanum for anything, because – as the decree claims – all other provisions of Summorum were abrogated.   Not sure about that.

This loyalty oath business is deeply insulting and also – I suspect – indicative of a potential double standard of treatment of priests.

Will priests who are so poorly trained that they don’t know how to celebrate Mass with the 1962MR, who can say only the Novus Ordo, be required to take a loyalty oath about the Magisterium and that they will hereafter always stick to the rubrics of the Novus Ordo as they are written?

I’m thinking about the probability that in Mexico all the Novus Ordo Only priests are, even now, following the Novus Ordo rubrics precisely and not changing any texts.

Later, under the business section, in the part where he gives his little peroration he says –  again I don’t want to quote exactly because of the possibility of canary traps – that it is his, the Cardinal’s, duty to ask everyone commit to celebrating the liturgy with fidelity to the books.  He says that there is a healthy liturgical tradition there now and it is like a beautiful garden to be tended and not treated with laziness which degenerates into abuses.

Again, will all the Novus Ordo Only priests have to take a loyalty oath? 

Will they be disciplined if they stray from the rubrics and official text of the Novus Ordo Only books?   (And there’s the problem of the language “only” expression of the Roman Rite, because we don’t have a Latin document of TC so we can figure out the ambiguity between the possible meanings of the vernacular versions – German, Spanish, English, Italian.)

It might be understandable to imagine that this Cardinal might drop the weight of the world on a priest who continues without his extra-special motu-inappropriate super-double-top-secret permission to say what is not unjustly called “the Mass of ages”.

How bad will the double-standard be?

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Here’s a helpful suggestion.

Perhaps the faithful of Guadalajara might start documenting with their phone cameras how the Novus Ordo is being celebrated in the diocese, and share those video and audio proofs on social media, so that we can all be edified and motivated to do our very best.

¡Hagan lío!

Mind you, I am working with a translation that was provided.   The official version will eventually be extruded into public view and we will have to double check this.   I don’t have a strong reason to think that the translation was off base.  However, little items in it seem just a tad bit … off.

UPDATE:

The Spanish.