Confusion in the Church

Mar 24, 2017

By Robert Mickens
Some self-declared Catholic traditionalists have been complaining bitterly that there is much confusion and division within the Catholic Church.

They blame it all on Pope Francis and, especially, on the challenging programme he has launched for ecclesial renewal and reform. In doing so, they are de facto opposing the Pope — especially his more merciful and pastoral application of the Gospel and Church teaching.

Traditionalists are generally defined by their unflinching loyalty to the Roman Pontiff. But when the one seated on the Chair of Peter is not to their liking, these papists in the extreme find themselves in deep conflict.

The traditionalists are right about one thing — there is a lot of confusion and division in the Catholic Church. But it is not the fault of Pope Francis.

For example, there is nothing more confusing — for English-speaking Catholics, at least — than the awkward prayers used each day at Mass.

But the source of the confusion and division in the Catholic Church goes much deeper than disputes over how prayers have been translated.

A great part of it is actually found in the stubborn resistance to the liturgical reforms that came in the wake of Vatican II and, even more seriously, the refusal to fully accept the teaching and thrust of the Council, especially its ecclesiology.

If there is confusion today in the Catholic Church, it exists to a great extent because of traditionalists who demanded — and, unfortunately, were granted — the right to continue celebrating the Tridentine Mass, despite its post-conciliar reform.

This older form of the liturgy is not primarily about the use of Latin at Mass. Rather, it is the expression of a strictly hierarchical, exclusively top-down and clericalist Catholic Church frozen in time. It is not, as its misinformed enthusiasts claim, the ancient Mass or the Mass of the Ages.

It was created in 1570, seven years after the Council of Trent. Scholars have shown that it is a hybrid of various and (some) over-stylized liturgical books from different times and regions, often with additions and embellishments not found in the earliest Roman liturgy.

This old liturgy had to be reformed to more adequately reflect the ecclesiology that had developed since Trent and was articulated at Vatican Council II.

Pope Paul IV’s original indult to allow for use of the Tridentine Rite was, at first, carefully contained, even by Pope John Paul II. But a tiny number of traditionalist cardinals and some bishops successfully lobbied John Paul II to further expand the provision.

Furthermore, the traditionalists actively encouraged and supported the establishment of obscure religious orders whose specific mission is to preserve the pre-Vatican II rituals.

And one of those cardinals became pope. In 2007, he issued a motu proprio, authorising the near-unfettered use of the Tridentine Rite. He claimed he was actually trying to facilitate an “interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church.”

And with linguistic dexterity, he invented the fiction that the pre-Vatican II Mass was actually just the “extraordinary form” of the one Roman Rite, the reformed liturgy being its “ordinary form.”

Clerical groups and their clericalist lay supporters, once on the fringe of mainstream Catholicism, were now given a prominence and influence disproportionate to their numbers.

And men sympathetic to their liturgical proclivities and neo-Tridentinist view of the Catholic Church were promoted bishops. Some were even made cardinals.

There is confusion and division in the Catholic Church all right, and the man at the Vatican who wears the white robe bears much of the responsibility.

But, let’s be clear, it’s not the one who lives at the Santa Marta Residence.--ucanews.com