Pope Francis has died

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.)

For fun, try searching YouTube for "speaking latin at the vatican". It's hard to find people who can speak it even there!

> The TLM obscures what the mass is about…

Well, opinions and all that…

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:

https://www.youtube.com/live/XshPZzdI0zk

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.

sed invenire potes ibi scorpiōnem martianum

I'd rather not get snark for putting my Christmas tree up the first week of December. My nearest TLM is at an SSPX chapel.

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.

> 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.

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.

A clear direction for church growth.

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.

> 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.

>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.

"Take up your cross and follow me" indeed.

There are many opinions about proselytism, eg:

  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)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-20/the-christian-convert...

This isn't relevant here.

I don't know if I should bother pointing out why.

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.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/la/apost_constit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreckovation

> 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 take offense, Dominus vobiscum.

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:

* https://kelsolawyers.com/au/paedophile_offenders/brother-kea...

* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-29/child-sex-abuse-royal...

* https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report

> 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 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'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.

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.

> 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:

https://thecatholicherald.com/four-reasons-francis-had-to-re...

There is something similar-ish from a meeting Francis had with Slovakian Jesuits in 2021:

https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/freedom-scares-us-pope-fr...

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.

https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/this-is-gods-style-pope-f...

So, your "tool of obscurantism" suggests perceived motive on the part of the trads. I think that's barking up the wrong tree.

"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful." — https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2007/...

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".

The Latin-language requirements, following Summorum Pontificum, were given in Universae Ecclesiae: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/ec...

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:

https://chatgpt.com/share/680bc83a-de6c-8011-9f2c-4c948d2229...

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:

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/01/30/expelled-soci...

https://insidethevatican.com/news/newsflash/letter-17-2025-t...

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.

I only just got to this 4 days after you wrote it; we have disagreements still, but I want to say I appreciate how carefully and well you wrote it.