> According to Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, the late Pope Francis had requested that the funeral rites be simplified and focused on expressing the faith of the Church in the Risen Body of Christ.
Always struck me as a simple man and that likely contributed to people liking him more when compared to his predecessors. RIP.
He was, but John Paul II was traditionally conservative. I think Francis resonated with more people–Christian or not–because he emphasized compassion, humility, and social justice.
He spoke more openly about issues like poverty, climate change, and inclusion–his encyclical LAUDATO SI’ is a great read–, and he often used language and gestures that the "common man" could relate to.
Perhaps the way he dressed so simply–with the plain white cassock–also emphasized his overall approach: less focus on grandeur, more on service.
There was an interview on NPR this morning with a high-level Jesuit in the Americas (former leader of the order in Canada and USA, IIRC).
He put it well... Pope Francis was always a pastor at heart. And he put the needs of the person in front of him ahead of strict doctrine. The interviewee likened it to triage in a field hospital - address the soul in front of you, worry about doctrine later (suture the wound, worry about cholesterol later).
Pope Francis was the only Pope that resonated with me. I was really shocked that at how human his words were. The moment he came on the scene he seemed genuine and honest. I hope they find more like him.
Comdemning evil is an act with many purposes. Making the evil-doer change his mind is just one of possible benefit. Even if that is unlikely the other ones remain.
* People naturally imitate what they see others do. A condemnation can prevent others from imitating the evil act.
* A condemnation calls on others to resist and not facilitate the evil act.
* Condemning someone makes you enemies, in a way that is plain for everyone to see. This positioning can open up for alliance offers from others with similar beliefs.
Making someone an enemy comes with risks and drawbacks of course. You become less able to influence someone if you cut ties, hence why people suggest to try influencing in private first.
John Paul II is widely credited with helping Poland overthrow communism. While he won't change the world overnight, there are millions of people even in Russia who respect the Roman Catholic pope, even if they aren't Roman Catholics themselves.
no, it doesnt. What my point is, is that it would have done NOTHING, whereas the message he did send probably had higher chances, and is atleast something someone might listen to, even if they dont follow the advice.
(well except ofcourse the corrupt dictator in ukraine, so it naturally falls on deaf ears)
> telling Ukraine to "have the courage of the white flag".
If an aggressor attacks your country, it takes courage to surrender. Churchill was a coward it seems. He could have surrendered to the Germans and saved so many lives on both sides.
I think it's interesting that PJII was very popular with Catholics and possibly less so with non-Christian. Despite or because being more conservative? He was also a very good man and humble.
JPII was a long running Pope. I would guess most people wouldn't know how conservative or not he was, or even what means in the context of the Catholic Church. He was the first Pope many of us knew, and the Pope who was with many of us the longest. He is probably most well known for the pope mobile.
He actively visited other countries and celebrated massive masses. I believe he was the first Pope to travel around the world bringing his faith. He also efficiently used the media.
JP was a great communicator. He understood what it meant for the church to talk to the people—first by traveling to many countries and in opposition to communist atheism, later with the organization of the Journee Mondiale de la Jeunesse. During the late 90s there was a pretty big Catholic spiritual movement towards boys and girls in their late teens or early 20s and it's crazy how big the JMJ was.
His trick was hiding the conservative positions behind the mask of the beloved communicator.
He also covered up sexual abuses, game power to the Opus Dei, and aggressively pushed the disgusting mandate against condoms in the middle of the AIDS pandemic. Yeah, not a fan.
Yes and no. He was at the same time very open to being "part of the world" beyond the church, but also very conservative in ethics. In the end the former prevailed also in terms of progressiveness, but it wasn't a given.
The issue is a woman being in control of her body, which is already tenuous throughout history simply due to them being the physically weaker sex, nevermind the effects of pregnancy.
I sincerely hope that at some point we can develop artificial wombs and use them to render this whole debate moot. Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.
I certainly don't think creating unwanted babies to be "raised as an orphan or whatever" is preferable to abortion, or even good at all. Certainly something I'd never personally do. That sounds absolutely horrific.
I grew up unwanted, that shit stays with you forever. It's a lifetime of torture.
Are there any developed countries where there arent year long queues for those wanting to adopt infants? I doubt many of them (if they are healthy) grow up orphans.
> Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.
I think very few people who have religious opposition to abortion would actually be happy about the advent of "artificial wombs". They might view it as a lesser evil, but not as a good thing. Because, while belief in the wrongfulness of deliberately killing an unborn child is an important motivator, it generally isn't the sole motivator – another important motivator is the belief that God has a plan for the process of human reproduction, and wandering too far off script is wrong in itself, with artificial wombs likely to be seen as going quite a long way off – at best maybe tolerable as a lesser evil in some cases.
The vast majority of abortions are performed because the pregnancy was unwanted, not because the mother’s life was in danger or what have you. But why was the pregnancy unwanted in the first place?
This is the question you must begin with, because the answer cuts to the psychological heart of the matter. The reason is that we have redefined sexual intercourse in terms of sexual pleasure first. We’ve demoted procreation to secondary status instead of recognizing it as the primary reason for sexual intercourse with pleasure characterizing it rather than defining its function. The absurdity of it is apparent given the anatomical, physiological, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of sex. All of that for pleasure? This is like claiming the digestive system exists and the act of eating exist for pleasure. We would typically associate with such things gluttony, bulimia, and other eating disorders.
Historically, sexual self-restraint has always been a problem for some more than others, of course. Some have more trouble with restraint with respect to food or drink or whatever. Addictions have always existed. However, the cultural norms surrounding such questions have varied. Some cultures have been puritanical. Some have been depraved. Others have managed to channel sexual appetite in healthy ways that respect the dignity of those involved (which, given its nature, aims toward spousal love and the flourishing of the family, including the parents as parents). Ours is not the latter. In the 1930s, we saw the beginning of the normalization of contraception, and this normalization had the effect of splitting the pleasure of sex from the entirety of the act and promoted it to the status of primary end. This opened the door to the sexual revolution and the sexual exploitation of others, especially women. Abortion, paradoxically, only becomes relevant in this context, because only in a contraceptive context is pregnancy conceived as aberrant and contrary to the nature of the sexual act. So contrary to a successfully waged misinformation campaign by people like Margaret Sanger, abortion rates only rise in a society with a culture that normalizes contraception where it becomes a “solution” for the failure rate of contraception.
Is that what we want? Do we wish to continue to dehumanize ourselves by by outsourcing our humanity? Technology extends human ability or fixes broken human function. Do we want to put the cart before the horse and reinforce that error by building a culture and a technological ecosystem around error instead, and in doing so, entrench ourselves in that error? Instead of technology truly serving the human good, do we want instead to abolish the human in service to a dystopian ideology? This is what addicts do. They serve their addictions and build their lives around them.
If there's ever a disagreement or debate about anything, then there are literally always two sides.
You might disagree that the thing that the other side is prioritizing is as important (e.g. the lives of fetuses vs. the right to bodily autonomy for women), or that the thing the other side believes is even right (e.g. people who believe in racial hierarchies and other literally racist ideologies), but that doesn't detract from the fact that two sides do, in reality, exist.
In my experience, it's way more effective determining the thing that the other side cares about, then finding common ground if that's something that you also care about -- from there, it's a lot easier to make the case that while both priorities are good, your priorities might be more justifiable.
Shutting down the other side by saying their viewpoint is invalid has been productive for me literally zero times in my life.
(On the topic, this was a thing that Pope Francis was exceptionally good at: he actually listened to the concerns of people and spoke with them where they were at, even those who he vehemently disagreed with).
That is not my understanding of what “both sides” refers to. Both sides is when both sides are doing bad things, such as lupusreal claiming both sides are being dishonest.
> Shutting down the other side by saying their viewpoint is invalid has been productive for me literally zero times in my life.
When the topic at hand is one group wanting to exercise power over another group, there can never be a resolution. The only thing left is to sway those on the fences.
> When the topic at hand is one group wanting to exercise power over another group, there can never be a resolution.
I actually agree here, but only insofar as a resolution needs to be the ideal for both parties: a resolution could totally be rules and doctrine that both sides find partially objectionable, but the best feasible option.
I do want to point out that your point about one group exercising power over another is almost always where these disagreements arise: each party thinks that they've identified an unjust exertion of power that should be prevented.
Your other comment was flagged before I could submit my response, so here it is:
> or you think women should not be in control of their bodies in some situations.
In almost all countries where abortion is broadly legal there are still limitations. For elective abortions without committee approval or medical necessity there's a limit of 24 weeks in the UK, 12 in Germany and Italy, 14 in France, 20 in Sweden...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe#Grounds_for...
Opinion polling in the US mirrors this nuance:
> "The same poll found that support for abortion being generally legal was 60% during the first trimester of pregnancy, dropping to 28% in the second trimester, and 13% in the third trimester."
Clearly there is plenty of room to quibble over the details without being some sort of Victorian boogieman. Having no limitations at all is a fringe position which most pro-choice people don't agree with.
[End of pasted response.]
By the way, this ties in with what I'm saying about both sides presenting the worst possible arguments of their opponents. Extremists on one side say that the others all want to perform "partial birth abortions", killing babies mere seconds before it is fully born (this is a lie.) Extremists on the other side frame all of their opponents (including anybody who supports abortion in principle but not unrestricted) as being religious extremists who want to lock up women and turn them into breeding cows.
The reality is that most of the population is in between these two extremes, and if our democracy wasn't so dysfunctional, undermined by extremists on both sides we could compromise on abortion being legal for somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 24 weeks, as it is in most of Europe, and that would make most of the American public reasonably happy. But you wouldn't accept that, because any compromise is " controlling women", and antiabortion people wouldn't accept it because its "killing babies."
End result is we're doomed to have these fruitless arguments from now until a comet puts us all out of our misery.
> But you wouldn't accept that, because any compromise is " controlling women",
Because it is. As your own link shows, later term abortions are for medical purposes. Any legislation restricting it is just adding liability for doctors, which results in harm to women because doctors are now second guessing themselves instead of focusing on the woman’s healthcare.
It is only politically popular due to disinformation and people liking the feeling of being morally superior to others. A tried and true strategy to winning votes.
Both sides present the most agreeable arguments for their position, while publicly omitting other motives, while simultaneously highlighting the least agreeable motives of their opponents and omitting or flat out denying their more agreeable motives.
I don't mind being candid (not least because I am not an important person and this is not an important discussion, the stakes are low so there is no pressing need to lie), so I'll say one of the quiet parts out loud for the side I mainly sit on: I think there is plausible social benifit to aborting pregnancies caused by rapists. Not only because rapists might carry genes for aggression, but also because rape circumvents the valuable social/physical fitness selection which women normally perform when choosing who to have babies with. Pro-choice advocates will almost never admit to believing anything like this, because it essentially validates the criticism antiabortion advocates have, that their opponents are eugenicists. To be clear, many pro-choice advocates aren't, and I don't think this particular argument would make or break the debate (it doesn't for me), but it is a potential source of contention pro-choice people might have with my artificial womb proposal.
JPII was also elected in a very different world. And he played a big moral role in taking down iron curtain and getting Eastern Europe back Europe.
Meanwhile Francis was quite the opposite. Especially as seen in the light of Russian aggression against Ukraine. For much of Eastern Europe that was like 180 turn. At least here both church goers and not seem to despise Francis while JPII has a warm place in the hearts both factions. Maybe it was different far away where Russia ain’t a hot topic.
Which would be bad, had he done so, but he didn't actually say that; the white flag comment was specifically and explicitly about being willing to directly negotiate with Russia, not about surrender.
> There were multiple occurrences when he doubled-down on his words after backlash.
He certainly called on multiple occasions for all parties to negotiate, but he was also consistent, both before Russia invaded, after the invasion and before the "white flag" comment, immediately after the "white flag" comment, and since that the invasion by Russia is (or "would be" before it occurred) unjustifiable, immoral, an act of aggression, and that Russia has the primary obligation to stop it.
His global appeal was real, but his decision to give Opus Dei and similar conservative Catholic networks special status under the Vatican had serious consequences.
Elevating Escrivá to sainthood and creating a personal prelature for Opus Dei handed them unmatched moral authority—authority they used to push back on women’s autonomy, justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and quietly influence politics from Spain to Latin America.
Popularity doesn’t erase the impact of empowering hard‑right movements that have harmed lives across the globe.
The church is never going to be pro feminism or pro LGBTQ. I don’t think many, many people find that to be a dealbreaker especially in many developing nations where the entirety of the medical and schooling framework is solely provided by the church and cultural mores already line up with those perspectives.
JP2 was liked by catholics (the reasons are interesting and complicated enough that would warrant a long discussion). But Francis was generally well-liked even by the irreligious.
Part of that though was that he was Polish, at a time when Poland and other Eastern European countries were Communist dictatorships. He represented in part a kind of "insurgency" against them.
The first non-Italian pope since the 1500s.
For comparison, note the 1968 movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, in which a priest from Russia unexpectedly becomes pope and provokes great political change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shoes_of_the_Fisherman_(fi...
Since I see a lot of people commenting on this topic, I would like to offer a different perspective.
Pope JPII was for my southern European social democratic Catholic family much more polarizing than Pope Francis. Pope Francis had politics that are mainstream and not at all controversial in my part of the world. Whereas JPII was perceived as the guy who was buddies with Reagan and Bush and a general supporter of American foreign policy. To what extent that was a fair assessment, I do not want to comment, since he did try to speak against the invasion of Iraq.
None the less, it is not true that Pope Francis is more popular with non-Catholics (Reagan, Bush and most of the US were not Catholic and big supporters of JPII). It was also JPII that started the interfaith dialogue. It is also not true that Pope Francis is unpopular with Catholics.
There are Catholics all across the globe with vastly different opinions on all kinds of issues.
Notably, while Francis is sometimes considered liberal, there weren't (m)any notable changes to Church doctrine during his papacy.
He did have a habit (a good one, IMO) of speaking more off-the-cuff in interviews. Whether that was contrived, or just a natural part of his personality, I do not know. But, it was those comments that usually led to the "he's a liberal!" comments. And both sides of the political spectrum said similar things... "He's a liberal (like us)!" or "He's a liberal (unlike us)!" - so he was probably doing something right.
>> According to Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, the late Pope Francis had requested that the funeral rites be simplified and focused on expressing the faith of the Church in the Risen Body of Christ.
As a kinda-sorta Christian (raised Catholic), I've long admired the Jewish approach to the Mourner's Kaddish prayer said when a loved one dies: It's not about the deceased, nor even about death — it's about G-d. It starts out (in English translation): "Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will."
It’s important to note that The Two Popes was a drama, and not a true factual story.
It fictionalizes and sensationalizes some details; and that’s ok because its purpose is to make you feel exactly the way you feel about it.
Pope Francis was a wonderful steward of Christianity and espoused the virtues that anyone would want to see in their religious leaders: humility, grace, an openness to listen and a strong voice against even prelates in his own church that are xenophobic or nationalistic. He wanted us to welcome all and to live as the bible said Jesus did.
The fear I have is that each swing of the pendulum goes in two directions. He was far more “liberal” than the conservative Catholic prelates of the USCCB, and I fear his actions — including rightfully limiting the Latin mass, will force the church to swing in the other direction and give in to the illiberal forces that divide us.
It's complicated. Few people in the church, including the priests themselves, are fluent in Latin (there's a story told, I think by Francis himself, about an diocese in England that required priests to pass an exam to give a Traditional Latin Mass, and almost none of the requesting priests could pass). The TLM obscures what the mass is about, which creates space for practitioners to substitute in their own things, which, as it happens, tends to be idiosyncratically ultra-conservative stuff. The church is a top-down institution, and the TLM gets in the way of that and divides it.
(I like Latin! Took it in high school, reading Lingua Latina for fun; I think the TLM is neat. But problematic.)
My experience, and that of many of my fellow TLM goers that I’ve heard or read, is that we treasure solemn reverent worship that helps us focus on the Eucharistic sacrifice. If we were being distracted from “what the mass is about”, we’d take ourselves and our children elsewhere.
Here’s a video of yesterday’s Easter Sunday Mass offered by priests of the same religious order that operates the oratory where I attend Mass:
If you get an opportunity, maybe attend Mass one Sunday at a location of the ICKSP or the FSSP. I believe you’ll experience a welcoming community of Catholics passionate about Jesus.
Well, SSPX is a thing. I’ve never been to one of their chapels myself, though there is one here in St. Louis and some folks who now attend the local oratory run by the ICKSP used to be regulars there. As a group, they seem to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder (irregular communion and all that), which has not been my experience with the ICKSP and FSSP, who are in full communion with the local bishops and Rome, even if the most recent pope was not exactly gracious toward “trads”.
Regarding obscurantism, I don't know how one gets around that observation. It's striking to me that even many TLM celebrants aren't fluent in the language. You know why you're going and you seem to have a good reason for it, and I respect that. I think the rap on the TLM is that, in addition to reasonable people like yourself, it also attracts a lot of whackjobs, some of whom have unfortunately included priests.
I'd actually love to attend a TLM! But I'm not setting foot into a chapel run by an order whose officiants accused the Jews of orchestrating 9/11. (That's SSPX, of course, not FSSP.)
I hope my "it's complicated" gives me some cover from the idea that I'm a folk-group C&E Catholic just looking to dunk on some tradcaths. I mean, I may be that too; it's complicated.
When I was in high school ('91-95), I had quite a few friends involved in band and other music programs at the public school we attended. One of those programs was "choir", though it wasn't affiliated with a church, of course, because it was a public school. I remember being amazed at their performances of polyphonic music from the 16th Century, Palestrina and the like – my parents never played recordings of music like that at home and I had not heard it elsewhere. As a kid I was curious about most everything, and I found it interesting but puzzling that some of those musical pieces were described as parts of a Mass – "what does that mean? can you explain the context, I don't get it?" My family was Catholic, but I grew up in a predominantly Protestant area of the country (eastern Tennessee); neither Catholic nor Protestant adults that I talked to could provide a clear explanation and I didn't know the the music teachers so didn't ask them. I looked up what I could in printed encyclopedias, but it was a jumble to me, and it wasn't until years later that I acquired a bigger picture.
All around the world, there exists (or survives, sometimes only in parts) beautiful art and architecture and music that, with a little examination, is directly connected to the Latin Rite as it was celebrated for centuries. You can't really get the full picture of why those things are the way they are without knowledge of the classical Latin Rite. Likewise, a study of the Latin Rite on paper would be impoverished without knowledge of the historical cultural developments and artistic treasures that enriched it over the centuries.
"Rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage, distinguished according to peoples' culture and historical circumstances, that finds expression in each autonomous church's way of living the faith." — according to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (28 §1)[1]
It is remarkable that in the Western Church we have passed through a period from the mid 20th Century during which so much of our Latin Rite heritage has been ignored, forgotten, even tossed aside or rent violently. The term wreckovation[2] is used, and it's pretty accurate though it causes some to bristle.
The TLM movement is, in many respects, about recovering our Western Catholic heritage. That's not accomplished in equal measure everywhere, but the most vibrant communities around it place an emphasis on sacred music, restoring art and architecture as circumstances allow, and educating — catechizing is probably the better term — ourselves and our children so those efforts aren't merely about appearances or performance art, but an integral part of loving and worshipping God as we look to rebuild local Catholic culture.
So "obscurantism"? No, rather traditional expressions of the Catholic Faith given new sails (sometimes the winds are a bit stormy, to be sure). Some of us are learning Latin as we go along — the ordinary parts of the Mass are easy to pick up, and if you're coming from the Novus Ordo you already know what they mean even if you don't fully understand the Latin grammar. Certainly the priests of the ICKSP and FSSP study Latin in their seminaries, and many homeschooling families I know have Latin in their kids' curriculums. It's pretty amazing how quickly little kids pick it up when they participate in choir or serve as altar boys.
I want to provide one more response re: the SSPX/Williamson and whackjobs stuff, but I've already blown my HN comments time-budget today, so it will have to wait.
> I hope my "it's complicated" gives me some cover from the idea that I'm a folk-group C&E Catholic just looking to dunk on some tradcaths. I mean, I may be that too; it's complicated.
I don't think TLM is intended to obscure anything; I claim instead that it is used as a tool of obscurantism for a fringe movement within the church. Everything you're saying that's good about TLM, I agree with. I'm the weirdo on the thread that actually took Latin, and, thanks to a work experience with a Latin scholar (hey Jon!) currently reads a little bit of Latin for fun.
I would claim as well that most people who attend TLM services do not in fact have any fluency in Latin, and would in support of that argument (but not that much support because I'm not going to take the time to dig up the source right now) point out the English bishop's observation that TLM-enthusiast priests in his diocese couldn't pass a simple Latin test.
> I claim instead that it is used as a tool of obscurantism for a fringe movement within the church
When I read your use of "obscurantism" previously, I mentally substituted something like "anachronistic, deliberately so, with the effect of obscuring [what the Mass is about, etc.]".
Wikipedia tells us "obscurantism has been defined as opposition to the dissemination of knowledge and as writing characterized by deliberate vagueness." A dictionary hit in DDG gives "a state of opposition to human progress or enlightenment."
So maybe that's what you had in mind? You mention (also in other HN comments):
> the English bishop's observation that TLM-enthusiast priests in his diocese couldn't pass a simple Latin test
There is an anecdote like that regarding a US bishop:
There's also Francis' "nostalgic disease" comments from 2023 — I remember those well because of the physical pain in my stomach and flushing in my neck after I read them. I had a similar visceral reaction when the credits rolled after the final episode of the new Battlestar Galactica (2003-09), but I digress.
In my previous reply to you, I already outlined what I understand to be the true motives – recovering our Western Catholic heritage, treasuring it, passing it on to our children, building up local Catholic culture around it. I think Benedict XVI got that, per the quote above. We want orthodoxy (little "o"), beauty, reverence, faithfulness to the Apostolic Tradition.
The young priests not knowing much Latin while being gung ho for the TLM… well, that's not uncommon with young people, getting really enthusiastic about some big idea or thing while having limited knowledge and experience of the particulars and background. (How many exuberant Rustaceans fit that bill in recent years?) I don't see any reason to think those priests' motives were anything other than embracing something "sacred and great for us too".
See section 20. The priest should be able to pronounce the words correctly and understand their meaning.
That's the same requirement as for e.g. an English speaking priest whose bishop asks him to prepare to regularly celebrate Mass in Spanish (or whatever). And it's the same for an English speaking Latin Rite priest asked by his bishop to accept biritual faculties to help out at the local Ukranian Catholic parish where they have the Byzantine Rite! In both of those cases it's great if the priest goes on to learn more of the language and culture of the people to whom he ministers, but it's not required to get started. I'm not just making that up, I know priests in both situations. In the case of the biritual priest, his "Hollywood Ukranian and church slavonic" (as he put it) got so good that people would walk up to him after the liturgy and start talking to him in Ukranian, and then be surprised that he couldn't hold a conversation in it.
Now, to be fair to the bishop and the cardinal who expected more, historically the minimum Latin competency for licit celebration was low, strictly speaking, but quite high for graduating seminary. I asked ChatGPT to provide an outline, didn't look up all the sources to see how much it hallucinated, but seems about right based on reading I've done over the years:
It's not as contradictory an arrangement as it might seem. The Church has generally held a low bar for validity and liceity, because people need the graces received in the sacraments, for their salvation! At the same time, and especially per the Council of Trent, it's understood to be critical that priests be well-educated and fully understand what they're about to avoid worlds of trouble that come from clergy just going through the motions.
Moving on to the congregation. As another HN commenter pointed it, the development and use of sacral language is part of the history of Christianity and, even discounting the TLM, it's still prominent in the Eastern churches to this day. It was/is not unusual for the congregation to not understand every prayer and response in the way they know and understand their native language. It's been just over half a century since Latin was phased out almost completely in favor of translations for celebrating the Latin Rite (despite what Vatican II decreed), but it had stood the test of time for centuries. (Of course there were controversies too like the Protestant Reformation, such quibbles.) I can't understand why it's making a comeback should be a huge stumbling block, in the big picture, again looking to our Western Catholic heritage and e.g. its treasury of sacred music.
So this is getting really long, and it's time for me to leave off, though I'll look for your reply in case you make another one. I just won't be going for another round here.
I do want to say a couple of things about the SSPX, mainly general points, because I do not have much personal experience with them — I've read things, I've met some folks who used to be SSPXers, that's about it.
There were a couple of articles on Williamson written recently, published shortly after his death. The insidethevatican page has some biographical information that helps with context and I recommend it for that purpose — Williamson led an unusual life along an uncommon path:
I've archived those pages to share with people, as the need arises, because I think they show how dangerously self-destructive it can be to give oneself over to nuttery. Williamson built a cell around himself and carried it with him everywhere he went; under pressure, he pulled the bars in tighter and draped them with razor wire. He died isolated from the movement to which he committed his life earlier and his memory will amount to little more than a warning and the repulsiveness of extremism.
The SSPX came about in a time of tumult and confusion. Its founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, saw its purpose as continuing the formation of priests and ministry of the sacraments in line with the reforms of the Council of Trent, serving hundreds of thousands of souls who felt adrift in the storms that followed Vatican II. That's really it, even if one sharply disagrees with their decisions and canonical irregularity, it's difficult to argue that they have another purpose or motives.
Later, and independently of the SSPX, there were clergy and laity all over the world with longings for the same. John Paul II made some concessions and then Benedict XVI with Summorum Pontificum. The Abbey of Fontgombault is an example of a monastery that switched back, with permission, unconnected to the SSPX. Fontgombault's later foundation, Clear Creek Abbey, also keeps with the traditional rites.
I know you will write what you think is true and say what you think needs to be said, e.g. giving warnings about supposed tradcath links to antisemitism. I get it. But keep in mind that Williamson is a bit like a crazy third cousin uncle that most of us non-SSPX-trads don't think or care much about. Even among the SSPX he's a pariah. Also keep in mind that the Internet can act like a huge megaphone distorting representation of a community in terms of its most obnoxious members.
Bishop Williamson, the source of that statement, was kicked from the SSPX partly due to raging and irrational antisemitism and misogyny. If that's enough for you to never set foot in a chapel, you shouldn't be Catholic at all, just take a look at what many popes and saints have said and done about jewish people, it's far worse
I don't think SSPX matters, really, but I'd encourage anyone curious about this particular controversy to simply Google [SSPX antisemitism]. There's a whole Wikipedia article about it (going back to the founder of the order), but lots more than that. Suffice it to say, we're just not going to agree about this.
TLM, don't TLM, but conservative Catholics had a beef with Francis about the Latin Mass, and this is important context to that beef.
> Few people in the church, including the priests themselves, are fluent in Latin (there's a story told, I think by Francis himself, about an diocese in England that required priests to pass an exam to give a Traditional Latin Mass, and almost none of the requesting priests could pass).
Strictly speaking, as well as the Tridentine Mass, one can also have the current Mass in Latin. From what I've heard (never been to one to experience it first hand), Opus Dei centres worldwide say it almost every day. Outside Opus Dei, I believe it is quite niche – but, strictly speaking, all Catholic priests (of the Latin Church, or Eastern rite with Latin faculties) are allowed to say the current Mass in Latin, and Traditionis custodes didn't do anything to change that. I think few are interested, and from what I've heard, to try to prevent people shifting from Tridentine-in-Latin to current Mass-in-Latin, bishops have been quietly instructed by Rome to disallow it in practice, even if it is still formally allowed on paper. However, if a priest wants to say the new Mass in Latin privately, or to a small group which isn't widely advertised and flies below the radar, I think that is both officially allowed and likely in practice too. But, the linguistic competence concerns you mention about Tridentine-in-Latin apply equally to current Mass-in-Latin.
Quite separately, there is a history of the Tridentine Mass being translated into other languages, both in some cases authorised by Rome, and also by external groups such as Anglo-Catholic Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox, Old Catholics, Polish National Catholic Church – I think all the cases of this in communion with Rome have all effectively lapsed through disuse. But still, it is another reason people ought to avoid equating Latin and Tridentine.
> The TLM obscures what the mass is about, which creates space for practitioners to substitute in their own things, which, as it happens, tends to be idiosyncratically ultra-conservative stuff. The church is a top-down institution, and the TLM gets in the way of that and divides it.
I think a big potential problem with what Pope Francis did – it made no difference to the quasi-schismatic SSPX, or the more explicitly schismatic groups to their right, who were very used to ignoring everything the Pope said (except maybe if they liked what he was saying on that occasion) – but it upset that minority of Catholics who were involved in the TLM within the Catholic Church proper, and potentially drove them into the arms of those more schismatic groups. Now, to what extent has that potential been fulfilled in practice, I don't have enough personal experience of this topic to say–but I'm sure it has happened in some cases, however many. And I know there are even quite a few conservative-leaning Catholics who weren't involved in TLM in practice, but found the decision upsetting, and it might increase the odds of them wandering off as well.
Of course, the people we are talking about are a small minority in comparison to over 1 billion Catholics worldwide. But most of that one billion are far from devout – people who rarely attend Mass. At the more devout end, at least in some geographies, those involved in TLM, or who aren't but were upset by this papal decision, are arguably much more significant. And much of the institutional strength of any religion comes from its devout minority, as opposed to millions of people who identify with it at some level but far more rarely actively engage with it.
So, I think even if one doesn't have any personal affinity for the Tridentine Mass, there are genuine reasons to question the prudence of this decision.
TLM participants are a tiny fraction of people who routinely attend mass. In fact, something you hear from TLM advocates is that TLM attendees tend to be younger.
You hear this a lot from TLM proponents. First, it's a category error to suggest that church doctrine has a goal of maximizing the number of people to that turn out to mass. But second, no, it really isn't. The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim.
>maximizing the number of people to that turn out to mass
Mark 16:15.
Hebrews 10:25.
The Church organisation is very distinct from the church. And anything that increases their participation is in line with scripture. Both growth and attendance are important.
There's already evidence it works. And it's something that sets the church apart.
Romans 12:2 indeed.
In Antioch [Acts 11:26] people were first called Christians. They weren't the regular people of that time. But people with something that made them visibly different from the Hoi Polloi.
What really is the point of a consecration that doesn't change you? What are you being set apart from?
I just find this sentiment really kind of funny, given how small the number of people who are passionately committed to it, vs. people who attend folk-group mass. But I'm not here to convert you!
For me it's not just about the in practice Latin suppression and the pretense it's not happening.
My reply is primarily about Church growth and the importance of fellowship.
Wherever you go, don't imagine this sentiment is American/Western only as many have claimed/alluded.
If Christ doesn't change you nothing really has changed.
Proselytizing by active action and being examples by our (different/changed post conversion) behaviour are duties of everyone in Christ. As is fellowship.
As exemplified by those who do it in countries and areas where it might mean death like where I live today.
The approach of some recently arrived evangelists has been slammed by some Aboriginal leaders, including Labor senator Pat Dodson.
"They are a type of virus that has really got no credibility," he said. "If they really understood the gospel then the gospel is about liberation.
"It's about an accommodation of the diversity and differences that we have in our belief systems."
He believes the destruction of traditional culture is "an act of bastardry".
"It's about the lowest act you could perform in trying to indicate to a fellow human being that you have total disdain for anything they represent."
compared to:
But the born-again Christian converts have defended their beliefs and practices, saying it is their decision to make, and finding God has brought them peace and happiness.
The Christian converts who are setting fire to sacred Aboriginal objects (2019)
The obvious objection would be that I linked to a story of poor behaviour from Tongan evangelicals rather than Catholics ... the counter being there's no shortage of truly appalling tales of Catholics destroying culture while expanding their flocks .. they are better known for other atrocities hereabouts though, eg:
Regardless of whether you who is outside the church see it as good or bad, it's a necessary part of Christian life for every believer. As is regular attendance in fellowship with other believers.
These new links are even more irrelevant from that perspective.
> The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim.
Lots of religions have liturgical languages which are nobody's mother tongue any more. Orthodox Judaism has Hebrew (Reform/Conservative/etc too, albeit with variably greater use of vernacular): many diaspora Jews have limited Hebrew proficiency, and even for those who speak Modern Hebrew, the liturgy is in mediaeval Hebrew, which has significant differences. And some of the prayers (including quite important ones like the Kaddish and the Kol Nidre said on Yom Kippur) are in Aramaic. Most Muslims pray in Arabic despite the fact that less than 20% speak it natively, and even for those who do, modern vernacular Arabic has diverged a lot from the classical Arabic of the Quran and the prayers. The Russian Orthodox Church prays, not in Russian, but in Church Slavonic, which is a (somewhat Russified) descendant of mediaeval Bulgarian, which comes from a different branch of the Slavic language family. The Greek Orthodox liturgy is in mediaeval Greek, not modern Greek – many Middle Eastern Greek Orthodox have Arabic as their mother tongue, and many ethnic Greeks in Anglophone countries have quite limited Greek proficiency, yet still attend services in the language. The Coptic Church still uses Coptic, a descendant of ancient Egyptian, for its liturgy. The Ethiopian Church uses Ge'ez. The Syriac Churches use Syriac/Aramaic. (And what I just said of those Eastern churches is also true of many Eastern Catholics.) Many Theravada Buddhists pray in Pali. Many Mongolian Buddhists pray in Tibetan (there are many Anglophone Buddhists who pray in Tibetan too). Many Hindus pray in Sanskrit.
Having a special language set aside for prayer, a holy tongue (Lashon Hakodesh, as many Jews call Hebrew) is something a lot of people find spiritually beneficial, across numerous unrelated religious traditions. It can give people a sense of an encounter with the deep past of their own tradition. It can make a religious community feel more unified despite being divided between different mother tongues. And most Catholics, pre-1970, thought the same thing.
It wasn't like people couldn't understand it – they followed English-Latin parallel prayer books, just like people follow English-Hebrew parallel books in many synagogues today. Globally, very many Catholics have a Romance language as their mother tongue, which is historically descended from Latin, which helps with understanding some of the words. Even though English isn't, the heavy infusion of Latin (both directly and via French) into English helps achieve some of the same thing.
I think if I'd grown up Catholic with Latin instead of the vernacular, my understanding of Latin would be a lot better. I feel like I missed out on something there.
So one definitely doesn't have to be a regular Latin Mass goer – I've never been to one in my life, I've thought about doing it but its always just been too out of my way – to wonder if the Church has lost something by throwing away so much of its linguistic heritage. Personally, I'd be quite happy with a kind of compromise in which Latin was much more heavily used but the majority of Masses were still vernacular. Which I actually think is what Vatican II intended, I think the Council's original vision was closer to majority vernacular / minority Latin, than the almost-all-vernacular / almost-no-Latin which actually evolved afterwards.
And this is a separate issue from the Tridentine liturgy – you can say the Mass of Paul VI in Latin and you can say the Tridentine Mass in English (Roman Catholics never have, but some Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and schismatic Catholic churches do it)
You mistake me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with saying the mass in Latin. I'd kind of like to go see one! Put my 4 years of Jesuit Latin to use! But no, I don't think that's going to be a big draw for ordinary people to join the church.
My Greek Orthodox friends growing up definitely spoke Greek!
It would definitely attract some people. An old friend of mine (from our Catholic high school), who almost never goes to Mass, told me he’d be willing to venture back if it were in Latin, just for the experience. We started looking into it, we were going to go together, but lost interest in the idea when we realised there weren’t any convenient to attend. I don’t know how common that attitude is, but I’m sure he’s not the only person like that.
And the fact is, if Latin doesn’t attract many ordinary people, will anything else? Catholicism (and Christianity more broadly) is full of grand evangelistic plans to “get people back to church”, the vast majority of which produce very little results. If anything, niche offerings such as Latin masses or Anglican Use or Eastern Catholicism at least have a bit of a ”it’s different” factor to draw people in with.
There are clearly people who are interested very specifically in the Latin mass. But even though the church is losing practicing members, it's still huge; normie Catholics dwarf tradcaths.
But again: drawing people isn't the point. Francis didn't crack down on TLM because he thought it was a bad way to get people to show up at mass! He did it because things in the church with TLM were getting weird. It's a doctrinal thing, not a marketing strategy.
> He did it because things in the church with TLM were getting weird.
What’s “weird” is in the eye of the beholder - a lot of stuff Francis saw as “weird”, JP2 and B16 may have seen as significantly less “weird”; conversely, JP2 and B16 may well have seen some of Francis’ own decisions as “weird”.
I know one of the big complaints against TLM communities is that many of them question the validity of Vatican II. But, given B16 as a young theologian authored his famous (in the rarified subfield of Catholic/Orthodox ecumenical theology) “Ratzinger proposal”, that reunion with the Orthodox should not require them to accept post-schism councils as binding - which implicitly downgrades the authority of all 13 post-schism councils from Lateran I to Vatican II inclusive, [0] maybe he’d view doubting Vatican II a bit more charitably than Francis ever could. And, among the more liberal/progressive-leaning Catholics (for whom Francis rather obviously had a significant degree of sympathy), there’s a long tradition of questioning the validity of Vatican I - and I suspect Francis was much more sympathetic to doubting the first than the second.
And then there’s also the Eastern Catholic followers of the late Lebanese Melkite archbishop Elias Zoghby, who rejected the ecumenicity of Vatican II (despite being one of its Fathers) on the grounds that a genuinely ecumenical council would require full Orthodox participation, hence denying that status to all post-schism councils - I suspect Francis would have seen that as much less “weird”, despite its superficial overlap with traditionalist views on Vatican II, since he’d be more sympathetic to the motivations behind it. Zoghby’s opposition to Vatican II’s validity wasn’t solely a matter of abstract theological principle, it was also about its substance - at it, he argued that Eastern Catholics should be allowed to observe the traditional Eastern leniency on divorce rather than being forced to conform to the Latin Church’s principled opposition to it, but he lost that argument-but yet again, likely something Francis had more sympathy for than the Latin traditionalist objections to the council’s substance
[0] there is also the problem of the 8th council, which is a pre-schism council; there are two competing claimants to the title of “Fourth Council of Constantinople”, the first in 869-870, the second in 879-880; Catholics accept the first as the 8th ecumenical council and reject the second as invalid; Orthodox reject the first as invalid and accept the second, but disagree among themselves as to whether to class it as the 8th ecumenical council or as sub-ecumenical; and then there’s also the Quinisext Council of 692 (aka Council in Trullo), which many Orthodox view as quasi-ecumenical, Catholics as local to the East; and then the fact that some Orthodox claim one of their own post-schism councils as ecumenical (the fifth council of Constantinople, 1341-1368) - Ratzinger’s proposal didn’t address these conciliar esoterica, but maybe they aren’t that important given so few get worked up about them
I'm just going to point out that it's not surprising that laypeople and clergy who reject Vatican II also have an unusual habit of faceplanting into antisemitism, given that Nostra Aetate was a product of Vatican II.
The Vatican first condemned antisemitism by name in 1928, so I don't think disagreeing even with Nostra aetate necessarily has antisemitism as a consequence. The perennial problem with antisemitism, however, is nobody (Jews included) can agree on how to define it, and how essential Nostra aetate is to ruling it out for Catholics may depend on how broad or narrow a definition of it you adopt.
Indeed; and when the Second Vatican Council decided Mass should be said in the vernacular, the obligation of the Church was to follow. Instead, the conservatives of the church ('conservative' here means those that emphasize adhering to tradition and are adverse to change) created a rift by eschewing this change and even heightening the importance of the Latin Mass, creating the impression that a mass spoken in the local language was somehow less of a mass.
If you’re Catholic, suggesting that a mass spoken in one language over another is somehow "less" takes away from the most important idea of the Mass: reenacting Christ’s Last supper commandment and the institution of the Holy Eucharist for what amounts to word games.
This divisive description of the mass increased over the decades, to the point that it threatened to cause a schism. As such it was the Holy Father’s duty to resolve the issue.
There are still groups(at least I'm aware of them in Poland, I've met people who are part of them) who believe exactly this, that the second Vatican Sobor was a mistake and the "real" mass is only the one conducted in Latin.
Also unlikely that Jesus intended for the ceremony to be conducted at times other than the evening of his death (replacing Passover). Up for interpretation, I suppose.
Once per year. He commanded his disciples to "do this in remembrance of me."
There is no mention of how often, but given Jesus allergy to ritual as opposed to genuine acts of worship, it seems reasonable that this would not be a commonplace thing.
We can get context for how the early Christians understood it by looking to additional sources from that period, e.g. the Didache and the early Church Fathers.
In the early centuries of Christianity, as it spread geographically, there developed distinct rites of worship that solidified and then were handed down to the present, retaining strong links to the spoken-written languages used to express them originally.
Oversimplifying greatly, but in and from Western Europe we have the Latin Rite, and in/from the East we have the Byzantine (Greek) Rite. There are others, not of less importance, see the link above.
There’s quite a lot of history involved in all this. But in Western Christianity it was Latin that became predominant for public worship and knowledge transmission.
But we do have record that the cross' title was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
God certainly had a special plan for these languages: the language of God's Law, the language of human power, and the language of human wisdom. The presence of His name in all three languages left the situation unambiguous to whoever might have been in the area to read it. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, hung on that cross. When pressed about it, Pilate would not amend those words.
In this way, though maybe unnecessary thanks to the Gift of Tongues the Holy Spirit later gave to His apostles, the sign stood as a kind of Rosetta Stone, which no one could misunderstand. It shows that history itself, along with all human matters, belong completely to Him, and at the same time it made those languages new by virtue of that single title, grounding them firmly in the Truth Himself.
Latin and Greek, themselves originally vernaculars, continue to hold a special place in their respective churches, both Catholic and Orthodox. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, continues to be used in many Eastern churches as well, again Catholic and Orthodox both. All three constitute especially venerable traditions—and to this we may add Coptic, since Jesus spent his early years in Egypt; Slavonic, for its very writing system's role in the conversion of the Slavs; and a handful of others I am more or less ignorant of. With each one, by entering into the language, you enter the mind of those first converts, who themselves entered the Mind of Christ.
In the Latin Catholic Church (that is, the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, or however you want to name it) we call the Latin language a "sacramental"—the same sort of thing as holy water, something which conveys grace to those who use it with an openness to those graces.
Demons hate it because of its legal precision, by which, in the name of the same Christ named in Latin on the cross, they are driven out of people, things, and places, fulfilling Christ's own prediction that His followers would cast out demons.
By forming one's faith life around one of these languages, one can more clearly ask those basic human questions that Christ is the answer to, without having to deal with the centuries of semantic drift and overloading that are scattered about the minefields of our modern vernaculars. The vernacular, of course, is no impediment to personal prayer, but as more and more people are gathered in one place the confusion of Babel threatens to set in.
On the other hand, every little Latin grammatical lesson, every new piece of vocabulary learned, reveals new wonders and opens the door to the great body of literature that was composed in the single Mind of Christ.
But we had this, and in the 20th century we let it slip through our fingers, not knowing what we'd been given. The problem is not that we don't know Latin. The problem is that, in broad cultural strokes, even when we did, we didn't care.
> It was certainly not in Latin. It was either in Hebrew of in Greek.
I think it was very likely mostly Aramaic, possibly with some Hebrew mixed in (certain set prayers, with Torah readings in Hebrew followed by extemporaneous Aramaic translation). By the 1st century, Jews had abandoned Hebrew as an everyday tongue, a situation which didn't change until Zionists revived it in the late 19th century (which caused great controversy, since the traditional Jewish belief was that Hebrew is a holy language which should be reserved for religious purposes only, a position still maintained by most non-Israeli ultra-Orthodox to this day.)
Putting aside any claims of supernatural linguistic abilities, Jesus of Nazareth would likely have been fluent in Aramaic (his native tongue), competent in using Hebrew for certain religious purposes (but not as a language of everyday life), possibly some limited ability in Greek (but probably not fluent), maybe a few words of Latin (but very unlikely to be fluent).
> The focus on latin is a pure nitpicking and virtue signaling from the Conservatives (the irony!).
The majority of TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) adherents care more about keeping the traditional Tridentine (pre-Vatican II) liturgy than about Latin in itself – Catholic priests are allowed to say the contemporary Mass in Latin (subject to certain conditions), but there is rather little demand for it.
The issue ive heard with non-Latin mass is that it has lessened the feeling of global community among Catholics as they now do not all speak the same language (Latin).
Anecdatum, but I still feel like part of a community when I go to Mass in a language I'm not familiar with, because its rhythm and flow are the same more or less everywhere.
Disclaimer: I'm definitely not old enough to predate vatican 2, so I'm not from a time when Latin Mass was widespread.
Vatican II opened the way for use of vernacular in the Mass while also directing "use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites".
In practice, after the overhaul of the Latin rites was completed and promulgated (published) in 1969, four years after the council ended in '65, the Latin language itself was dropped almost everywhere all at once and only translations were used. Many people rejoiced at that, some did not, but the vast majority of bishops, priests and laity alike, conservatives and liberals across the full spectrum, probably 99.999%, went ahead full throttle with Mass and all the sacraments in the vernacular.
There were hold-out contingents like the SSPX, led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who stuck with the all Latin rites per the last round of small reforms in 1962, the same as used for the celebration of Mass, etc. during the whole time of the council from 1962-65.
It was over the next 40 years that discontent with the reforms of 1969, and their fallout, began to grow. There was increasing awareness that it wasn't just a switch from Latin to vernacular — the '69 reforms were "cut from whole cloth", outright replacing the traditional rites with syntheses of a commission of scholars. Long story short, many Catholics, some born before '69 and many born after (myself included), desire a return, and have implemented a return, to the traditional form of the Latin rites. Pope Benedict XVI gave it his blessing. But then Pope Francis was not a fan, believing it to be a retrograde movement that causes more harm than good and a kind of "saying no" to the Holy Spirit. It's hard to find middle ground on this matter, to be quite honest.
No idea why you're being downvoted, you're correct. There was and still is pushback against the liturgical reform even from pro-Vatican II priests and bishops
Imagine going to church every Saturday or Sunday and sitting through a 1 hour service that you don't understand. The conservative side of the church has decided that it hates change, and since the Latin services were mostly cast aside, that's a bad thing to them.
The dozen or so TLMs I've ever been to have had their readings in the vernacular. All the other parts are either the same every time (or have only a few variations) or are propers (specific to each day).
I never studied Latin, but I don't find it difficult at all to keep up. A lot of churches that have TLM have the missal booklet with Latin on one page and vernacular on the facing page.
While I do appreciate the richness of the daily propers and miss understanding them, it doesn't bother me enough to avoid the TLM.
Modern catholics and protestants are the exception in regards to "understanding" their rites. For centuries religions have maintained "sacred languages" or at the very least sacred dialects, with the intention of emphasizing continuity between generations.
Also, you don't really seem to understand how the Latin Mass works. The Ordo is repeated the same way every mass, so anyone that remotely cares knows what it says. The proper, including the readings, changes most days, but many are repeated throughout the year, like the mass of the virgins, and also repeats every year in the exact same way, so there's no reason for a concerned faithful not to buy a book with them if they care so much. Readings are frequently read in vernacular before the sermon, if pertinent, but they are not core to the mass so there's not much reason to care
His persona as being simple focus is just PR, no different than puff pieces about bill gates driving a Prius, or Warren buffet living in the first house that be bought.
> According to Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, the late Pope Francis had requested that the funeral rites be simplified and focused on expressing the faith of the Church in the Risen Body of Christ.
Always struck me as a simple man and that likely contributed to people liking him more when compared to his predecessors. RIP.