Traditionis custodes

 The Pope, and quite frankly, large swaths of the Church, have finally had enough of the schismatic attitudes generated by the Latin Mass. The disciples of the TLM have spent the last few decades channeling their inner schismatics, imitating the madness of Marcel Lefebvre, and they got the response that justice required.

To be completely clear, I was a member of an FSSP TLM parish for five years, attending every Sunday. When I began there, I had high hopes that I would encounter a group of Catholics who were better-educated, better-formed, just better at being Catholic, than the great mass of Catholics at the Novus Ordo Mass. It is easy to find my blog posts from that period extolling the virtues of the Latin Mass and its community. 

But, over the course of those five years, I slowly realized there was a level of hatred and anger within the community that could only be described as demonic. When priests spout denigrations of an ecumenical council, the Pope and the post-conciliar Church in pseudo-anonymous podcasts or, worse, from the ambo during Mass, there are serious problems with the movement that forms such priests. When the people attending to those podcasts or assisting at those Masses cheer the priests on, there is schism.

I have personally watched my brother-in-law, a good man and a good priest, driven to theological insanity by the TLM. I have seen him drag several members of his family, including his own mother, into the madness. It was and is a train-wreck, it turned him and his family into a theological train-wreck. 

Marcel Lefebvre was a schismatic and a heretic, the movement he founded shared his spirituality of schism, heresy, madness. The FSSP attempt to reform the TLM movement failed. Lay members of TLM communities, whether FSSP or SSPX, continue to revere Lefebvre as a visionary instead of condemning him as the nutcase that he unquestionably was. With shocking conformity, TLM members continued to ape Martin Luther's insistence that the Church would soon reverse itself and see the "wisdom" of the schism he fomented. 

Blessed Pope Pius IX famously proclaimed, "I am Tradition!" Pope Francis occupies the chair that is tradition. Denigrating Pope Francis, as so many TLM communities take delight in doing, logically and ineluctably leads to sedevacantism, which is itself simply an assertion that the gates of Hell prevailed against Christ. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both gave the TLM communities decades to correct themselves, decades to demonstrate their love of Christ and His Church by showing fraternal charity towards the council and the post-conciliar Church. But the TLM'rs let both of these Popes down.

Instead, it squandered every opportunity, choosing to pour out venom on anyone who did not share their particular theological idiosyncracies. No group within the Church can lay claim to the entire spirituality of the Church. Franciscans cannot engage in combat with Dominicans about whose spirituality is "better". That's not a Catholic attitude. Lefebvre's attachment to the TLM drove him to schism and heresy. The people who followed him demonstrated they could not escape that error. They insisted that their way alone was superior, that the whole Church must reform to their understanding of Catholicism or be dragged down to the depths of hell. They set themselves up as Pope and denigrated the Pope for not following their vision.

But it is the Pope who leads and directs, not Lefebvre, not the TLM community. It is the Pope who is Tradition. The Pope leads the Church and forms her. If the Pope says a spiritual practice is not conducive to spiritual growth, then we surrender that practice to his ruling. Popes have suppressed liturgical traditions before. Most famously, Pope Pius V suppressed numerous liturgical traditions immediately following Trent. Now, following Vatican II, the Pope has suppressed an additional liturgy. It is his right to do so, not ours, nor have we any right to murmur against the decision.

"Traditionalists" like to insist that monarchy is the best form of government. Well, TLM'rs, you live in a monarchy. The king has decreed. Suck it up, buttercup, and walk the talk. Quit imitating the followers of Korah and Luther. You have been given another opportunity to embrace the Catholic Faith, to follow Tradition, to thank the Pope for his wisdom. Take advantage of it. 

Why the Church is Losing Relevance

The Church is dying because it doesn't have a coherent answer to industrialization. Due to technology, NO ONE alive today suffers as much as EVERYONE did prior to 1800. We are ALL richer, we all live longer, we all suffer from fewer diseases, which have shorter durations.

Some diseases are entirely wiped out. There is no more smallpox, no rinderpest in cattle, almost no polio (only 1 case of wild polio virus (WPV) in Afghanistan, and 1 in Pakistan this year so far, map for last 12 months here). Guinea Worm is just about eradicated, inroads are being made against at least one dozen other endemic diseases.

The entire world used to live in abject poverty, now less than 10% of the world does. Natural disasters kill and injure only one-tenth as many people today as were killed or injured just 20 years ago.

We have the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, two sets, to deal with every kind of suffering there is. The spiritual works still apply, but the corporal works are increasingly irrelevant.

We are on the verge of totally wiping out famine. Same with concerns about potable water - I've seen at least four major pieces of tech in the last year (see here, here, here and here), that will literally dissolve that problem. We have so much clothing that we can't give it away. Shelter is next on the list of solutions, there aren't nearly as many sick and imprisoned to visit as there were, and we're cremating the dead. 

Literally half of the work of the Church is either already irrelevant or on the verge of being rendered irrelevant. Christ may have come to share our sufferings, but we don't share in that suffering nearly as much anymore. It's harder to identify with the crucified Christ now than it ever has been in history. 

For most of human history, mankind has been agricultural or hunter-gatherer. The man who wanted meat for supper had to kill the animal himself, watch the blood run out on the ground, see the suffering and death throes of the animal as it breathed its last. He would then skin, eviscerate, dismember and roast that recently living flesh. Everyone did this every week, week-in, week-out, for their whole life. 

They saw their friends and family members suffer and die in accidents, from illness, on deathbeds that were as common as the dirt the corpses were buried in.  But almost no one lives this way anymore. These experiences are almost entirely unknown to a plurality or perhaps even a majority of the global population. We preach Christ, and Him crucified, but most people simply have no way of connecting with that level of suffering because suffering, violence and death are no longer something we encounter every day.

Christianity was wildly successful in a subsistence-level, agricultural society, arguably better than any other philosophical or theological system the world has ever seen. As Julian the Apostate observed, the Church used the corporal works as a way to demonstrate charitable intent, and used the salving corporal works as a segue-way to the salvific spiritual works. But what happens when the corporal works of mercy are no longer necessary or relevant? 

For the last two centuries, the Church has tried and failed to adapt its message to a surplus-goods, industrial, high-technology society. So far, it has not developed  a compelling message for a world that is not suffering constant corporal want. Indeed, you would look in vain for a Church document that recognizes, in a detailed way, any of the successes listed above. 

The Pope and other Christian leaders continue to preach the necessary message that the poor must be cared for, without acknowledging that the number of poor has been steadily disappearing. Leaders speak of famine without acknowledging how uncommon it is. While we certainly still have poor to care for today, what happens in that near future when we... don't? What is the message then? The goalposts can only move so far before the message becomes a parody of itself. 

If you want to speak of a crisis in the Church, that is the crisis.