Another Embarrassing Letter From a Bishop About "Traditionis Custodes"… or Rather About "Custodies Traditiones"!

The person who wrote this doesn't even know how to spell 'Traditionis Custodes'! Tho', to be honest. I don't see the problem with playing the organ for hockey games. His Lordship is Canadian, after all!

From Fr Z's Blog

UPDATE:

This came in from a reliable reader. It is highly anecdotal but there is clearly something to it. I share it out of fairness to the Bishop.

Interestingly, “Father” Lobsinger, offered the Vetus Ordo in the parish church and was part of a regular rotation of priests for the EF community in Kitchener. He, as bishop, has offered the Vetus Ordo as a Low Mass in private.

The worst role in the church has to be “auxiliary bishop”.

That said, he could have said, “No. You write it.”

From the Diocese of Hamilton, in Canada.

NB: This is from an auxiliary bishop who seems to be also the Vicar General.   He has the coveted MDiv degree from a Canadian school and has also served as the organist for the Kitchener Rangers Junior A hockey team.

Read carefully, this letter doesn’t seem to promulgate any particular law.  These are strong suggestions reflecting someone’s personal preferences.  That doesn’t mean that people and priests cannot be bullied and marginalized even more.  They can always hurt you more, something evident over the last few years.

Note the variant spelling at the top. Spelling?  Total wreck.  “Custodies Traditiones”.  Clearly whoever wrote this and signed it doesn’t have the slightest clue about the issue.

I’d like to think that this is someone’s idea of a prank, but it does have that inflated chancery feel about it.

About that point of using only English…

I wonder how the Francophone communities in the Diocese like that?

About that point of the Missae Defunctorum…

No member of the faithful can be required to attend one kind of Mass or another kind of Mass for a certain number of times or length of time in order to be eligible for a funeral in a particular Rite. Let’s say you are a Latin Church Catholic. You’ve lost your driver’s license for whatever reason. Happily, two blocks away there is a Byzantine Catholic Church. You start to go there. Then you die. You, by previous request, and your loved ones in the present, can ask to have your funeral at either that Byzantine church or at your old Latin parish which you could not reach without a car. No one can say you can’t because “She hasn’t been at St. Canute’s for a while!”

Another example. What if you are a snow bird who spends part of the year in Arizona and part in Canada?

This is a matter of the Church’s “constitution”, which might be a confusing point for Americans and maybe less so for Brits.  They have a constitution too, but it isn’t written down in one document called the Constitution.  It’s hard.

Now, however, you have to know where to look for constitutional principles, things extrapolated from the law.

The Church has a constitution. It isn’t written down in the form of a document called a Constitution. Libs have a sort of holy grail of getting a Lex Ecclesiae Fundamentalis, a written constitution. Then, boy Oh BOY!  Let the Reign of Terror begin!

A minimum number of Masses you have to attend before you are eligible to be buried in a legitimate Rite of the Church cannot be legislated. It is a violation.

Another example, easier. People can’t be required to know Latin in order to attend a Latin Mass, or Vietnamese to attend a Mass in Vietnamese. Priests can be required to be able to pronounce things properly to celebrate in a language, but they can’t be required to have mastery of that language. Heck, there are any number of priests who say Mass in Spanish but they can’t preach. Priests whose native tongue is English perhaps have no idea what the prayers they read aloud regularly really say, what they mean.

In any event, there is a lot of sloppy overreach in the above. Not to mention the other things.