Roman Trads Plead with the Holy Father to Listen

I find it amusing that Francis can't leave the Vatican without being reminded of his cruelty to faithful members of the Mystical Body.

From One Peter Five 

By Aurelio Porfiri 

For the love of the Pope
For the peace and unity of the Church
For the liberty of the traditional Latin Mass

One of the elements for which the pontificate of Pope Francis will be remembered will certainly be for his very severe measures towards those who find the Latin Mass to be a more worthy way of giving glory to God than in the new Mass. These measures to some, even in the progressive camp, seem out of proportion to the enormous problems facing the Church, such as the challenges of a culture that is not only no longer Christian, but is increasingly anti-Christian. Yet these critics contend that the real problem of the Church is the traditionalists.

I think that the recent intervention by Cardinal Arthur Roche on the need to limit the celebration of that Mass because now there is a different theology was, after all, clarifying. Finally the true positions are outlined, without the sometimes sterile compromises of the past. It is clearly stated that the Church today is different from her past, whether we like it or not. If someone thinks that the Church must be a continuity in her tradition, rather than a break with it (as Pope Benedict said and Cardinal Sarah reiterated after Traditionis Custodes), obviously he is now in a difficult spot because, contrary to what we have been told in recent decades about the continuity between the various forms of the Roman rite, we realize what an abysmal distance has been created between the traditional Mass and that of Paul VI. This distance that has now crystallized and it will be a grave ecclesiastical difficulty to overcome.

Very often, due to the way in which it is celebrated, the Mass of Paul VI does not seem to be another form of the Roman rite, but almost seems to belong to another Christian confession.

I recently happened to speak with a well-known and elderly liturgist, certainly not a traditionalist. We spoke of some of the protagonists of the liturgical reform that he described with great admiration. I asked him if these protagonists would be happy with how the reform was carried out and he very resolutely told me that this is absolutely not what was thought at the time.

But what should the faithful do in such a difficult situation?

Some look for ways to make their discontent felt. This is the sense of a campaign that began on March 27 that some faithful organized in Rome, with posters in Italian and English in which laudatory phrases about the traditional Mass of St. Pius V are quoted by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The faithful who organized this initiative belong to some well-known groups of the traditionalist Catholic world, such the Messainlatino blog, among others. An initial desire was, understandably, to put up the posters in the Vatican area, but this seems to have not been possible. So it was decided for the Prati area, which is adjacent to the Vatican and thus they hope that whoever sees them can reflect on the fact that there is no reason for this ostracism towards the Roman rite by which thousands of men and women have become saints. The headline on each billboard reads thusly:

For the love of the Pope
For the peace and unity of the Church
For the liberty of the traditional Latin Mass

Photo by Messainlatin.it

Photo by Messainlatin.it

English copy from Messainlatino

But I believe they too know it’s like fighting against all odds with no hope.

But there are those who choose to let themselves die and those who want to die fighting instead. And we know that if the traditional Mass comes from God, as we all think, God will go into battle together with those who defend its inalienable rights, including that of a worthy, holy and devoted worship.

Our God is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly. Therefore we will not fear, when the earth shall be troubled; and the mountains shall be removed into the heart of the sea. The Lord of armies is with us: the God of Jacob is our protector (Ps. 45).

Diane Montagna has translated the Italian announcement here:

Here follows the press release as reported on Messainlatino.it:

***

Starting this morning, and lasting for 15 days, several dozen billboards dedicated to the traditional liturgy will be posted near and around the Vatican.

An organizing committee, whose members are participating in a personal capacity and who come from different Catholic entities (such as the blogs, Messainlatino and Campari & de Maistre, and the associations, National Committee on Summorum Pontificum and the St Michael the Archangel Association), wished to make public their profound attachment to the traditional Mass at a time when its extinction seems to be planned. They do so out of love for the Pope, so that he might be paternally opened to understanding those liturgical peripheries that no longer feel welcome in the Church, because they find in the traditional liturgy the full and complete expression of the entire Catholic Faith.

“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden of even considered harmful” (Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the occasion of the publication of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum). The growing hostility towards the traditional liturgy finds no justification on either a theological or pastoral level. The communities that celebrate the liturgy according to the 1962 Roman Missal are not rebels against the Church. On the contrary, blessed by steady growth in lay faithful and priestly vocations, they constitute an example of steadfast perseverance in Catholic faith and unity, in a world increasingly insensitive to the Gospel, and an ecclesial context increasingly yielding to disintegrating impulses.

For this reason, the attitude of rejection with which their own pastors are forced to treat these communities today is not only reason for bitter sorrow, which these faithful strive to offer for the purification of the Church, but also constitutes a grave injustice. In the face of this injustice, charity itself demands that we not remain silent: for “indiscreet silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed” (Pope St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book II, chapter 4).

In the Church of our day, in which listening, welcoming, and inclusion inspire all pastoral action, and there is a desire to build ecclesial communion “with a synodal method,” this group of ordinary faithful, young families, and fervent priests has the confident hope that its voice will not be stifled but welcomed, listened to, and taken into due consideration. Those who go to the “Latin Mass” are not second-class believers, nor are they deviants to be re-educated or a burden to be gotten rid of.

The Organizing Committee
(Toni Brandi, Luigi Casalini, Federico Catani, Guillaume Luyt, Simone Ortolani, Marco Sgroi)
prolibertatemissalis@gmail.com