Dr. K, I agree that the +Strickland letter was huge. I almost couldn't believe it was real at first. We need to let sink in the significance of a fellow U.S. bishop coming out so publicly in support of +Lefebvre and the SSPX, critiquing the liturgical rupture and anthropocentricity of the Novus Ordo, and pointing to (gasp!) Vatican II as the source of our present crisis. (And unlike +Vigano, who hasn’t been seen in the flesh for years, +Strickland is not “in hiding” – either physically or virtually behind a seemingly unbalanced ghostwriter.)
In my opinion, traditionalists would do well to make a similar pivot in 2025. Instead of focusing so much on Pope Francis (and, especially, trying to “out-trad” each other by declaring him an anti-pope, as if that does anything to solve the crisis), we need to focus more on exposing how we got to our present situation.
For me, it really clicked when I realized that Pope Francis and his “synodal church” is merely the fruit of Vatican II's ecumenical ecclesiology. In this regard, the final document on the synod gave us a real gift by making this connection explicit: “The Second Vatican Council was indeed like a seed thrown onto the field of the world and the Church… The Synod 2021-2024 continues to draw upon the energy of that seed and develop its potential, putting into practice what the Council taught about the Church as Mystery and Church as People of God” (para 5).
Indeed, things are so much clearer now, and even bishops are starting to wake up to possibilities they’d never dared consider in the past. I believe getting us to this point is one of the reasons why God, in His providence, has permitted Pope Francis. Can anyone imagine a letter similar to +Strickland's coming out under John Paul II or even Benedict XVI?
I agree with all you've written. Though I would say that all historians recognize that Vatican II deliberately contained different "strains" of thought, some more traditional, some more progressive/modernist. And it makes all the difference which side one leans on, as we saw with Benedict XVI, who, though very modern in many ways, looks like a traditionalist compared to Francis.
Anyway, yes, it's important not to fixate on Francis, yet he has afforded us some golden opportunities for clarifying the nature (and limits) of the papacy.
I edited an anthology on the Council which contains some good material:
Good points, Dr. K. I guess what I'm wondering is if +Strickland would have come to the same conclusions under a "hermeneutic of continuity" framework. The word "rupture" was a bad word under Benedict XVI, yet to me it seems to exactly describe what has happened since the Council: doctrinally, morally, and especially liturgically. So perhaps it took Pope Francis to get us to realize this?
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the first rupture that occurred in the twentieth century, liturgically speaking, was in 1911, and not in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s…
Yes, of course that is true - I spend some time in chapter 12 of "The Once and Future Roman Rite" discussing this issue. Here's an excerpt from pp. 334-35:
<< Although the problem of papal interference in liturgy goes back many centuries, an abyss separates anything done by popes prior to the twentieth century from that which was done by Pius X to the breviary in 1911, Pius XII to Holy Week and the calendar in the 1950s, and Paul VI to absolutely everything connected with worship in the years 1965–1975. Compared to earlier centuries, we are dealing here with a difference in kind, not just a difference in degree. Moreover, we could say each of those papal steps was exponentially graver than the preceding. Pius X reordered part of the Roman rite’s prayer; Pius XII refashioned the heart of the Roman rite’s year; Paul VI replaced the entire Roman rite with a modern rite.
To explain more fully: Pius X moved about the pieces of the traditional breviary while retaining its material content; it would be as if a pope took the usus antiquior and moved the orations, Epistles, and Gospels to different places in the missal, while keeping the same texts: materially the same, formally different.3 Pius XII’s reforms to the calendar and the rubrics were equally severe; yet it was his alteration of Holy Week that moved from structure to substance: the new ceremonies were a mutation of the old ones, not merely a reorganization of content, done on the specious double pretext of removing “corruptions” and promoting “active participation” (without explaining how one will increase participation by offering the faithful less to participate in, as we will see further on in this chapter). We may add here that John XXIII’s 1962 missal not only includes the defective material of his predecessor but also a problematic code of rubrics from 1960 that, if it solves certain problems left by Pacelli, also introduces
novelties foreshadowing the Novus Ordo. Finally, Paul VI created a new set of liturgical rites that bear only a generic resemblance to what came before; his work is both materially and formally different.
In short: Pius X dared to reorder the Roman rite, Pius XII dared to refashion it, Paul VI dared to replace it. It is therefore less problematic to pray the Pius X breviary than to follow the Pius XII Holy Week; and the 1962 missal, though defective, is altogether less problematic than the Novus Ordo. >>
The story about the prohibition of altar girls got me thinking about something else I've been considering lately: reasons why I've seen so many girls and young women leave traditional Catholicism, especially those who grew up in the SSPX, lately.
Even among traditional Catholics, one still finds modern ways of thinking, such as evaluating the worth of the human person by what he does, rather than what he is (in contradiction to the traditional maxim agere sequitur esse), and a lack of appreciation for the value of symbols (as Gertrude von Le Fort discusses extensively in her book The Eternal Woman). One ought to view the question of altar girls through the lens of symbol, as a woman in her being (and not only in her doing) necessarily represents the Church as virgin, bride, and mother, and the notion of having a female minister serve a feminine Church is absurd and grotesque.
However, the reality is that this discussion is often boiled down to a simple "thou shalt not" for these girls with no compelling explanation given, thus reducing the role of women down to a mere negation instead of something that possesses its own proper identity and thus must remain distinct from male ministerial roles. These girls grow up assuming that the Church teaches that they are ontologically inferior to males, and they get up, leave, and put on trousers as soon as they reach adulthood.
For too long, the traditionalist rhetoric has centered solely around the crisis "in" the Church, caused by corrupt Churchmen, and ignored the crisis "of" the Church, in which her (not its!) identity as the (feminine) Bride of Christ has been undermined by bureaucracy, legalism, and a lack of appreciation for beauty, purity, virginity, and other values typically associated with the feminine in symbolism. It does us no good to fight feminism with chauvinism, as both are disordered and perpetuate each other like a swinging pendulum.
Dr. K, I agree that the +Strickland letter was huge. I almost couldn't believe it was real at first. We need to let sink in the significance of a fellow U.S. bishop coming out so publicly in support of +Lefebvre and the SSPX, critiquing the liturgical rupture and anthropocentricity of the Novus Ordo, and pointing to (gasp!) Vatican II as the source of our present crisis. (And unlike +Vigano, who hasn’t been seen in the flesh for years, +Strickland is not “in hiding” – either physically or virtually behind a seemingly unbalanced ghostwriter.)
In my opinion, traditionalists would do well to make a similar pivot in 2025. Instead of focusing so much on Pope Francis (and, especially, trying to “out-trad” each other by declaring him an anti-pope, as if that does anything to solve the crisis), we need to focus more on exposing how we got to our present situation.
For me, it really clicked when I realized that Pope Francis and his “synodal church” is merely the fruit of Vatican II's ecumenical ecclesiology. In this regard, the final document on the synod gave us a real gift by making this connection explicit: “The Second Vatican Council was indeed like a seed thrown onto the field of the world and the Church… The Synod 2021-2024 continues to draw upon the energy of that seed and develop its potential, putting into practice what the Council taught about the Church as Mystery and Church as People of God” (para 5).
Indeed, things are so much clearer now, and even bishops are starting to wake up to possibilities they’d never dared consider in the past. I believe getting us to this point is one of the reasons why God, in His providence, has permitted Pope Francis. Can anyone imagine a letter similar to +Strickland's coming out under John Paul II or even Benedict XVI?
I agree with all you've written. Though I would say that all historians recognize that Vatican II deliberately contained different "strains" of thought, some more traditional, some more progressive/modernist. And it makes all the difference which side one leans on, as we saw with Benedict XVI, who, though very modern in many ways, looks like a traditionalist compared to Francis.
Anyway, yes, it's important not to fixate on Francis, yet he has afforded us some golden opportunities for clarifying the nature (and limits) of the papacy.
I edited an anthology on the Council which contains some good material:
https://www.amazon.com/Sixty-Years-After-Catholic-Writers/dp/1621388891
https://osjustipress.com/products/sixty-years-after
Good points, Dr. K. I guess what I'm wondering is if +Strickland would have come to the same conclusions under a "hermeneutic of continuity" framework. The word "rupture" was a bad word under Benedict XVI, yet to me it seems to exactly describe what has happened since the Council: doctrinally, morally, and especially liturgically. So perhaps it took Pope Francis to get us to realize this?
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the first rupture that occurred in the twentieth century, liturgically speaking, was in 1911, and not in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s…
Yes, of course that is true - I spend some time in chapter 12 of "The Once and Future Roman Rite" discussing this issue. Here's an excerpt from pp. 334-35:
<< Although the problem of papal interference in liturgy goes back many centuries, an abyss separates anything done by popes prior to the twentieth century from that which was done by Pius X to the breviary in 1911, Pius XII to Holy Week and the calendar in the 1950s, and Paul VI to absolutely everything connected with worship in the years 1965–1975. Compared to earlier centuries, we are dealing here with a difference in kind, not just a difference in degree. Moreover, we could say each of those papal steps was exponentially graver than the preceding. Pius X reordered part of the Roman rite’s prayer; Pius XII refashioned the heart of the Roman rite’s year; Paul VI replaced the entire Roman rite with a modern rite.
To explain more fully: Pius X moved about the pieces of the traditional breviary while retaining its material content; it would be as if a pope took the usus antiquior and moved the orations, Epistles, and Gospels to different places in the missal, while keeping the same texts: materially the same, formally different.3 Pius XII’s reforms to the calendar and the rubrics were equally severe; yet it was his alteration of Holy Week that moved from structure to substance: the new ceremonies were a mutation of the old ones, not merely a reorganization of content, done on the specious double pretext of removing “corruptions” and promoting “active participation” (without explaining how one will increase participation by offering the faithful less to participate in, as we will see further on in this chapter). We may add here that John XXIII’s 1962 missal not only includes the defective material of his predecessor but also a problematic code of rubrics from 1960 that, if it solves certain problems left by Pacelli, also introduces
novelties foreshadowing the Novus Ordo. Finally, Paul VI created a new set of liturgical rites that bear only a generic resemblance to what came before; his work is both materially and formally different.
In short: Pius X dared to reorder the Roman rite, Pius XII dared to refashion it, Paul VI dared to replace it. It is therefore less problematic to pray the Pius X breviary than to follow the Pius XII Holy Week; and the 1962 missal, though defective, is altogether less problematic than the Novus Ordo. >>
https://osjustipress.com/products/the-once-and-future-roman-rite
This is very helpful--thank you! The Once and Future... is on my list.
So which missals do the SSPX, FSSP, and ICKSP use?
SSPX are mostly diehard 1962ers.
ICKSP are as diehard pre-55 as they can get away with.
FSSP is of a divided mind: officially 1962, but increasingly pre-55.
Please explain--I'm new to this....
Yes, quite so. That is for sure the case. Lots of red-pilling going on.
Why "even Benedict?"
Peter,
When will you set that beautiful poem to your own special music? r
That is an attractive idea...
The story about the prohibition of altar girls got me thinking about something else I've been considering lately: reasons why I've seen so many girls and young women leave traditional Catholicism, especially those who grew up in the SSPX, lately.
Even among traditional Catholics, one still finds modern ways of thinking, such as evaluating the worth of the human person by what he does, rather than what he is (in contradiction to the traditional maxim agere sequitur esse), and a lack of appreciation for the value of symbols (as Gertrude von Le Fort discusses extensively in her book The Eternal Woman). One ought to view the question of altar girls through the lens of symbol, as a woman in her being (and not only in her doing) necessarily represents the Church as virgin, bride, and mother, and the notion of having a female minister serve a feminine Church is absurd and grotesque.
However, the reality is that this discussion is often boiled down to a simple "thou shalt not" for these girls with no compelling explanation given, thus reducing the role of women down to a mere negation instead of something that possesses its own proper identity and thus must remain distinct from male ministerial roles. These girls grow up assuming that the Church teaches that they are ontologically inferior to males, and they get up, leave, and put on trousers as soon as they reach adulthood.
For too long, the traditionalist rhetoric has centered solely around the crisis "in" the Church, caused by corrupt Churchmen, and ignored the crisis "of" the Church, in which her (not its!) identity as the (feminine) Bride of Christ has been undermined by bureaucracy, legalism, and a lack of appreciation for beauty, purity, virginity, and other values typically associated with the feminine in symbolism. It does us no good to fight feminism with chauvinism, as both are disordered and perpetuate each other like a swinging pendulum.