Whatever! Sticks and stones, right? And we've been hearing the same for years. But here's the new bit: Francis outed his true agenda behind Traditionis Custodes:
"The danger today is indietrismo, the reaction against the modern... This is why I decided that now the permission to celebrate according to the Roman Missal of 1962 is mandatory for all newly consecrated priests."
Because, says Francis, "The good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward."
Is there anything more ideological and, quite frankly, backward, than the current Synod on Synodality? Let's take 2000 years of learning, thinking, and defining and let's toss that so we can do it all over again, starting with Cavemen drawings and primitive vocabulary!
(In case you forgot what the Synod logo looked like)
... But I digress.
The clincher comes as Francis now seems to face the charge that his motu proprio contradicts the actions of his immediate predecessors. The thing of it is, claims Francis, it didn't go their way, anyway:
"It was necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors."
Good thing his predecessors aren't here to defend themselves. But last I heard, Traditionis Custodes had broken old Pope Benedict's heart...
The Pope's full rant against tradition-minded Catholics and the question which prompted it are below:
The Second Vatican Council talks about the relationship between the Church and the modern world. How can we reconcile the Church and the reality that is already beyond the modern? How do we find God’s voice while loving our time?
I wouldn’t know how to answer that theoretically, but I certainly know that the Council is still being applied. It takes a century for a Council to be assimilated, they say. And I know the resistance to its decrees is terrible. There is unbelievable restorationism, what I call “indietrismo” (backwardness), as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:39) says: “But we do not belong to those who shrink back.” The flow of history and grace goes from the roots upward like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. But without this flow you remain a mummy. Going backwards does not preserve life, ever. You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age. But this is a change from the bottom up. The danger today is indietrismo, the reaction against the modern. It is a nostalgic disease. This is why I decided that now the permission to celebrate according to the Roman Missal of 1962 is mandatory for all newly consecrated priests. After all the necessary consultations, I decided this because I saw that the good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward. It was necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors.
Pope Francis may be backward-obsessed, but his attempt to reframe the "pastoral vision" of his predecessors in order to excuse his rage-smashing of the single greatest channel of grace left in the world... that's not just backward. That's something the likes of which only Screwtape could be proud.
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