Ask Father: Not One Word About Card. Cupich's "The Gift of Traditionis Custodes"?

Fr Zed shares his thoughts on Cupich and his 'gift of Traditionis Custodes' letter.

From Fr Z's Blog

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Card. Cupich, who is a trusted advisor of Pope Francis, issued a document the other day called “The Gift of Traditionis Custodes”. I take it you don’t see it as a gift, but I notice that you didn’t react to it. Not even a word?

Here’s one word:

Contempt.

Eccles did a good job for us all. HERE

At Rorate, Fr. Richard Cipolla had posted a public response to that decidedly deficient essay.

Before making other observations, let’s review to get some context.  He was rector at the Josephinum, which was … interesting. In his pastoral care, as Bishop of Rapidopolis Cupich banned children from receiving their 1st Holy Communion at a Vetus Ordo Mass and forbade them from being confirmed. I’m sure those parents and children and confirmands remember his gifts. Cupich locked people out of the church so that they couldn’t celebrate the Triduum. And let’s not forget his abject grovel when the McCarrick (who lifted Cupich up with his own hand) scandal was breaking, as he said that Francis had more important things to worry about, things like the environment and protecting illegal aliens, accusing people of not liking Francis “because he’s Latino.” His interview was on video. Remember his slippery speech in England, recounted by Fr. Hunwicke HERE.

With the exception of an occasional “and” and “the”, just about everything Cupich wrote – actually I’ll bet a shave and a hair cut that that theological bright-light Fr. Louis Cameli wrote it with touch-ups from a certain catholic coyote – is wrong.

This blunder of discontinuity, typical of whom I suspect are his ghost writers, lept off the screen.

“No one would think of arguing that the earlier forms of the Code or the Catechism could still be used, simply because the word reform means something.”

While the 1983 Code supersedes the 1917 Code (CIC 1983 can. 6 §1., 1/), the 1917 Code is still helpful in understanding the 1983 Code.  There is nothing, zero, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that says that abrogates or abolishes or forbids the reading of the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent or any other catechism.    

Just because there was a new Catechism issued in the 20th century, that doesn’t mean that the Roman Catechism ordered by the Council of Trent is no longer useful and true.

“Reform” does not mean “obliterate the past and make up something new”.  Sacrosanctum Concilium is crystal clear on that point.

Unless, of course, your ecclesial view does not include anything before the 1960’s.

For these people reform means damnatio memoriae.  If they could, they’d hold a book burning.

Another item which proves that the writers and the signer have not the slightest clue what they are talking about – because they are ignorant of the Roman Rite apart from their isolation cell of the Novus Ordo.

“Accompaniment may take the form of visiting with the faithful who have regularly attended Mass and celebrated sacraments with the earlier rituals to help them understand the essential principles of renewal called for in the Second Vatican Council. It must also involve helping people appreciate how the reformed Mass introduces them to a greater use of scripture and prayers from the Roman tradition, as well as an updated liturgical calendar of feasts that includes recently canonized saints. Accompaniment may also mean creatively including in the Mass reformed by the Council elements which people have found nourishing in celebrating the earlier form of the Mass, which has already been an option, e.g., reverent movement and gestures, use of Gregorian chant, Latin and incense and extended periods of silence within the liturgy.”

He leads off with flattering “accompaniment”, like a pinch of incense to the genius of the divine emperor.  It’s nearly breathtaking in its unctuous, faux pastoral croon.

People who don’t celebrate the Vetus Ordo really should be telling those who do about their engagement with the Scripture which the Church presented to the faithful for scores of generations in an unbroken line back to, in many euchological forms, the time of Gregory the Great (+604).

And that “accompaniment”… “creavity including …. elements” which those people like to keep them moving in the right direction.

“There, there!”, crooned the prelate as he accompanied the grieving widow across the grass to the newly opened grave. “The Church is here for you.  We are here for you.”  He twinkled his fingers at the teary-eyed babe she clutched under her unreformed black chapel veil.

Then he gave her his firm pastoral shove.

“Certain elements can now be added for her accompaniment”, he murmered.  He tossed in a handful of dirt, to encourage the others.   The stony earth didn’t have that usual rattling sound as it landed, due to the fact that the coffin was not only not closed, but the gagged woman and child inside wasn’t dead yet.

Never mind that the very things that he wants to toss like dirt in pastoral accompaniment are mandated by the Second Vatican Council and even still in part in the rubrics of the Novus Ordo.

The fact is that people are attracted to the traditional Vetus Ordo for more than just the externals of vestments, a more solemn ars celebrandi, pretty churches, a certain kind of sacred liturgical music, ad orientem worship (which is theologically significant, as are those other things).  The content of the prayers is different. They contain riches…. let’s use the word “elements”… which were systematically removed from the orations of the Novus Ordo, “elements” without which one’s Catholic identity is placed in the hazard.  Sine quibus non.

No.  Just no.

Contempt.

It is the attitude of Cupich and others, from the top down, that sparks reactions of consternation, sadness and fury.

Watch this serious “¡Hagan lío!” video and then ponder whether Cupich and Co. have truly promoted “unity”, something truly for the good of the Church.

ACTION ITEM! Be a “Custos Traditionis”! Join an association of prayer for the reversal of “Traditionis custodes”.