July 3, 2025 • 39 mins
A secret Vatican survey finally surfaces—and it tells a very different story than the one Pope Francis used to restrict the Latin Mass. In this explosive episode of The Prayerful Posse, Raymond Arroyo is joined by canon lawyer Fr. Gerald Murray and editor Robert Royal to unpack the newly leaked document that exposes how most bishops worldwide actually supported the traditional Latin liturgy. Were the faithful misled? Was this a top-down suppression of a rite many young Catholics are flocking to?
The Posse digs into the survey fallout, the role of Pope Benedict XVI, and what the findings mean for Pope Leo and the future of the Church. We ask: where’s the true synodality? And can unity be restored without silencing tradition?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A hidden Vatican document emerges undermining Pope Francis's rationale to
limit the Latin Mass. What did the bishops of the
world really think about the tridentine? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Prayerful Posse?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Next, welcome to this Arroyo Grande series, The Prayerful Posse.
Let's convene the Posse joining me now, Father Gerald Murray,
canon lawyer and priest of the Archdiocese of New York,
(00:33):
and of course Robert Royal, the editor in chief of
the Catholic Thing dot Org. I'm Raymond Arroyo. Go subscribe
to the Arroyo Grande channel now. We don't want you
to miss an episode of the show. And of course
you can also find the podcast on iHeart, Apple, Spotify or.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Our YouTube channel Arroyo Grande Show. Gents, we had to
hop on.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We weren't even going to do a show this week
with July fourth, but when independent journalist Diane Montga obtained
this survey that Pope Francis commissioned asking the world's bishops
their experience with the Latin Mass in their dioceses, I
thought we had to get on.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Everybody will recall they were asking what the bishop's thought
of Pope Benedict because he had expanded the celebration of
the traditional Roman rite. Now this was back in twenty twenty.
Pope Francis used the alleged results to bolster his twenty
twenty one decree, which severely limited the Latin mass. And
(01:29):
that's not just the language. It's an entire rite. It's
not just that, you know, some people think, oh, it's
just a language instead of Spanish or English. No, no,
it's a whole right, and it's very different in some ways. Well,
now it turns out the results of that survey were
the opposite of what we were told. Pope France has
claimed that the questionnaire quote persuades me of the need
to intervene, but in fact, the document obtained by Diane
(01:52):
Montga summarizes the global bishop's response this way. Quote the
majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire and who
have generously and intelligently implemented some morem pontificum that was
Pope Benedict's permission to spread the Latin mess and celebrate
it widely, ultimately expresses satisfaction with it. End quote, Father,
(02:16):
why did the Pope and the Vatican lie about this? I?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Can only speculate Raymond, but it certainly fits a pattern
where the Pope decides on the course of action and
then enlists a group of what he thinks is going
to be sympathetic acolytes to give him the answer that
he wanted. You recall the first Senate on the Family
did not go along with his proposals regarding community for
divorce remarried, so he changed the cast. The second Senate
(02:44):
on the Family had a different group of people voting,
and they voted for what the Pope wanted. In this case,
it was a survey, and the survey results did not
match the Pope's hostility to the traditional Latin mess I
don't think the Pope ever thought that this information was
going to become public. So then he makes a statement saying,
I'm persuaded by the bishops of the world that this
is a problem. It wasn't a problem. So I'm glad
(03:08):
this came out because I remember at the time saying
to myself, wait a minute, where's the mass number of bishops,
you know, going on TV and radio saying we got
to stamp out the traditional Admit it wasn't there. My
experience here in New York was the cardinal was very
happy that the Latin mask people were able to be
accommodated at different parishes.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Bob, the fact is the Pope doesn't need the agreement
of all the bishops to make a decision. I mean
we should say that up front, So why spin what
advice they were giving him and the feedback, the organic
and natural feedback about how the Latin mass was affecting
dioceses and the people in it across the world.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, he was careful when he issued the document. Artsionis
custodis not to make this like a Plubis side. It
was his own decision to do this, But it's clear
that what he tried to do. And you know, there were,
of course a few bishops who objected, because there are
people who are a problem and you know around the world,
whatever right you're going to be using, there's going to
(04:08):
be some people who are going to object and make
trouble for the local bishop. But the remarkable thing about
the summary document is how much it I just reread
it before we came out on the air, how much
it really underscores how successful the adjustments that Pope Benedic
the sixteenth made that the people actually were happy. Bishops
(04:28):
were starting to be happy about this. You know, it's
very very different than we were led to believe. And
I think we have to say that Diane must have
you know, we all know Diane. We trust her. She's
a very very careful reporter. What she's found must be true.
Because the document has been out. We're recording on July second,
(04:49):
it's already been out for over twenty four hours. People
have asked the Vatican to respond whether this is an
authentic document or not. They haven't denied it, so there
must be some response being prepared. And maybe this is
a way for now Leo to make some changes and
go back to a more you know, a more generous
approach to people across the board. No one's being forced
(05:10):
to go to a Latin mass and no one's being
forced to go into a Novisorto mass. So it's very
regrettable that the Pope Friensis did this, and a lot
of people I think are very much upset. They were
upset with him while he was alive. Now they're except
they're upset with him now that he's dead.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, father, I mean, look, the dicastro of the doctrine
of faith. I mean, when you read the thing, there's
this quote. The bishops most attuned to this matter observed
that the older form of the liturgy is a treasure
of the Church to be safeguarded and preserved. It constitutes
a good to find unity with the past, to know
(05:46):
how to advance along a path of coherent development and progress,
and to meet as far as possible the needs of
the faithful. What was the problem with that, Father? That
was the recommendation by the way of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of Things. Who were collecting the reaction from
the bishops around the world.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Well, I mean, this is an example of the you know,
the people in the field closest to the sheep, they were,
you know, knowing what the sheep wanted. And it really
was an example of a consultation that brought a result
that wasn't desired. So you know, the interesting thing, of course,
is the Pope never published this himself. The survey included
(06:27):
comments from bishops. The surveys were kept secret, although, as
you may remember, maybe about a year after TRADITSI and
as Diane I was able to obtain some of those
survey answers from bishops and the quotes were really basically
supporting what now has been revealed. So, you know, there's
a whole school of thought in the Church which is
(06:48):
basically called, you know, the discontinuity school, which means anything
that came before Vatican two is an obstacle to the
Church accomplishing her mission at the present time. Pope Benedict
John Paul this and rejected that they were into a
continuity interpretation and the Latin the success of the traditional
Latin Mass bolstered that continuity. In other words, a new
(07:09):
Church wasn't born in Rome when the Vatican Council closed.
It was the same Catholic Church as before. There were
some different things being proposed in terms of how we're
going to approach the modern world. But the idea that
reverent liturgy no longer has a role to play in
converting the world. The survey reveals that it does, because
the bishops saw that people were responding.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, but Bob, this runs to the heart of the matter.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
The argument at the time was that this was a
radicalizing side show of a liturgy, a break with unity
that was creating hatred of Vatican too. But the Congregation
for the Doctrine of Faith in this report. The quote
is this The ecclesiological dimension of the hermoneutic of continuity
with tradition and with a coherent renewal and development has
(07:55):
not yet been fully embraced by some bishops. However, where
it has been received and implemented, it is already bearing fruit,
the most visible of which is.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
In the liturgy. End quote.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They said it renewed the liturgy when it was implemented,
So why suppress that? And here's the big question, Bob,
where's the sinidelity.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
In all this?
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Well, yeah, it's a sinidelity that's ideologically oriented what we
got with the previous pope. I mean, it's very clear
that he knew that he didn't want there to be
this continuing element within the church. I mean, just as
there are extremists who wanted to reject the nous Ordo Mass,
there are people who seem to think that the old
(08:37):
Latin Mass, which Benedict properly said what was sacred in
the past, cannot become unsacred. It has to remain so
for those of us who are in this one Catholic
Church that has existed over two thousand years. And so
it's not surprising that Pope Francis went in and highlighted
the stuff that really was not very much prominent in
(08:58):
the original documents, that he he knew what outcome he
wanted and he didn't get it when the survey occurred.
And by the way, if you go back and look
at those remarks by individual bishops, a lot of them
are specified San Francisco probably, Archbishop of Corleone, or Baltimore,
Archbishop Glori, and others like that. So it's possible to
(09:20):
identify exact experience here in the United States and presumably
elsewhere in the world where people found that there was
no problem and when the bishop engaged the people properly
and didn't try to tell them that they were they
were way off in left field or maybe right field.
In this case, they got along very well, and this
was utterly unreported on It says if these results of
(09:43):
this survey were that the situation was so appalling, and
Francis said he was saddened and he was preoccupied by
all the results that he had to intervene. I think
that this is I'm sorry I'd have to say this
about any pope. It's an outright lie and it's shameful.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Wow, Pope Francis wrote in twenty twenty one that he
limited the tridentine right quote because an opportunity offered by
Saint Pope John Paul the second, and with even greater
magnanimity by Benedict the sixteenth, was quote exploited to widen
the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure
(10:20):
the church block her path and exposure to the peril
of division end quote? Was the teen right a source
of division? I mean, this report actually decried what would
eventually would happen.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
But I'll let you react to that first.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, Well, the Congregation of Doctor and the Faith didn't
think it was because they were saying that where it
was applied by bishops who took an interest in this
pastoral need that had produced great fruits. The fact that
the division, I'm always amazed because when you had the
Latin Mass being permitted in your average parish, it unified
the parish because those people no longer going to independent
(10:57):
chapels or chapels run by the Society Saint Pius the tenth.
They were now participating in diocese and masses at diocese
and parishes and as regards the unity of the Church.
Remember what Pope Benedict said and some more in Pontificum.
He wanted mutual enrichment between the New Mass and the
Old Mass. And that was going on because you know,
part of the experience of the traditional Latin Mass is
(11:19):
Gregorian chant, so and then the musical heritage of the
Latin Church, the Western Church, Renaissance polyphony and the like.
And it's quite clear there's a demand for that in
the world and in the Church. And that was highlighted
because how many of those you know, monastic chant CDs
were selling, you know, hundreds of thousands of copies. Well,
(11:41):
you don't need to buy a CD when they have,
you know, the availability in your local parish. So the
reality is the Pope was hostile to this form of worship,
and he tried to enlist the bishops of the world
to support him. They didn't, and then he basically said
that they did.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
That's said a curious thing that when you read this
report closely, as I did, the bishops who refused to
allow the Latin Mass considered it dangerous. They wanted it suppressed.
But the Congregation found that Spanish speaking regions and the
Italian bishops were the most reticent to allow the Old Mass.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Well, they didn't say redicent, they said they weren't interested
in all that budget. And I have to say, as
a kind of an amateur at these things, that when
I go to a mass that's in Italian or in Spanish,
it's closer to Latin. And maybe because the difference isn't
that large that for some people it just dispersed whatever
(12:43):
interest that they might have had in the older Latin.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Oh, that's kind of an interesting point. I hadn't thought
of that far.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
But I mean, look, the report actually predicts accurately what
is going to happen. The couple of bishops said, look,
if you reverse this, it's going to make the situation
even worse. And that's precisely what happened. But suddenly this
thing's sprung up and instead of people coming together, they
were at one another's throats. And it didn't have to
(13:11):
be that way, except if you thought that somehow the
Old Latin Mass was a danger, as you rightly quote,
and the application of basically a weed killer is what
happened against the Old Latin Mass, where you're told you
can't have it in a parish, you can't list it
in a bulletin. I mean, this was so clearly an
attempt to wipe it out that you can only think
(13:33):
that there was some animus against this here. And by
the way, I would just like to put on the
record this point. The Eastern Church has had a unified
liturgy basically, you know, for fifteen hundred years. Does it
have unity? Because if there's only one right, the various
jurisdictions are always at one another's throats. A liturgy in
(13:54):
and of itself, a single liturgy in and of itself,
isn't a guarantee that people are going to be unified.
Circumstances in which we find ourselves in the church now
in twenty twenty five, we need to let a few
flowers bloom out there, and you know, not the craziert stuff,
but some stuff that connects us with our tradition and
maybe recovers, as Pope Leo has been saying about the
(14:14):
Eastern Rite, recovers some things that have been lost in
the West and that really draw people in, draw young
people in, and energize the faith again. It's it's a
win win to do this.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Father you got to take a crack at what Bob said.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, about the Spanish and Italian thing first, which I
didn't I didn't even think about that, But that does
make sense that it's, you know, it's a latinate language.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Well, I'll put another perspective on it, which supports Bob's point.
The Latin mass was most popular in anglosphere world England,
United States, Australia, and it was popular in countries where
secularism has been aggressive, such as France and also in Germany,
which is a Protestant country. So countries where Catholic identity
(14:59):
had been maintained over the centuries because of an adherence
to the Roman faith and the Roman form of worship,
people were very very sensitive to and take the question
of Archibisipal of Reverend France. He saw that the removal
or the suppression of the Latin mass fit in with
the French revolutionary plan to desacralize public life, and they
(15:23):
didn't like it. And in the English speaking world, you know,
the aim of Cranmer and the Protestant Reformers was to
get rid of the Latin Mass. So and in the world,
you know, the Spanish world did have its brush with Freemasonry,
and there was a problem in Spain, but largely in
Latin American Italy, Catholic culture just continues and when the
(15:43):
Pope says we do something, we do it. So yeah,
and it is closer, of course, an expression to Latin.
So I think these are points to consider, and that's
I think, sadly something that Pope France has never understood.
The experience he had in Argentina was a slice of
Catholic life. And to say that the rest of the
(16:04):
world who doesn't go along with that kind of approach
is somehow disunified, that's just a mistake.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Well, it's shocking when you read this report and the
recommendation of the Doctrine of Faith is this, I'm going
to quote it. The majority of bishops who responded to
the questionnaire state that making legislative changes to some morum
pontificum that was Benedict's permission to celebrate the Mass would
cause more harm than good end quote. Pope France has
(16:31):
just ignored that bomb.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah. Well, and I think that the reason we've actually
predicted this in the past, we spoke about how we
were mystified that there was apparently this outrage from bishops
and whatnot. It was a select of reading. I mean,
you have to really go in with a desire, like
with a fine tooth, come to find the bishops who
(16:54):
are actually objecting and what they're objecting to. Is interesting
that that in snippets that Diane was able to find
that the Archbishop of San Francisco, which is to say Corleone, said,
where there have been problems in his archdiocese, it's not
because of the right as such, it's because of people
who haven't been instructed. And how this all fits together
(17:16):
with Vatican two. And you know, you can live with
pluralism in the church if your own, your own take
on how you want to live your life is being
respected by the rest of the Church, then it's a
live and let live situation. We go along to get
along with one another. And just as long as we
don't step outside of orthodoxy, we can have divers expressions.
(17:39):
We already have it in the different rights that exist
in the church.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, and this is the key point. We've talked about
this for years now. When you go to these masses
and I go to them, I go to them in
other cities, I go to them in foreign countries, the
vast majority drawn to this traditional Latin Mass.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And again it's not just the language.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
There are movements and rights, there's their prayers that are
omitted from the new Mass, their silence in an otherworldly
sandsum with the chant and the smells and the bells.
It is transformative and I think transportative for young people.
Here's what the CDF reports said. This is from twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
A constant observation made by the bishops is it is
young people who are discovering and choosing this older form
of the liturgy. The majority of the stable groups present
in the Catholic world are composed of young people, often
converts to the Catholic faith and those returning after a
time away from the church and the sacraments.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
They're drawn by.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
The sacredness, seriousness, and solemnity of the liturgy. What strikes
the most, also amid a society that is excessively noisy
and verbose, is the rediscovery of silence within sacred actions
and restrained and essential words, preaching that it is faithful
to the Church's doctrine, the beauty of liturgical life, chant,
(19:01):
and the dignity of the celebration. Quote A seamless hole.
That is deeply attractive.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Father.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Why would Pope Francis looking at those young people, converts,
the future, people who are returning to the sacraments, why
would he just say, no, we don't want any more
of that, we don't want that any longer.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, again, we can just go to what the Pope
himself said, how often he used this expression backwardists people
who had psychological difficulties and were seeking security and grasping
on to what they imagined were exterior forms of solidity.
I think the Pope had a deep hostility to those
(19:41):
who were not in agreement with his approach, and it's
amazing to me. You would criticize, They would say, the
people who like the traditional Latin masks don't like the
new mass, and that's unacceptable. But they themselves are the
sponsors of the Amazon right, the green mass isn't good
enough for them. They have to add other new elements.
And in fact, that's one of the unspoken realities of
(20:03):
white people. Like the traditional at mess. It doesn't change.
It's predictable, you know what was it? C. S. Lewis
said that literagy should feel like, you know, a comfortable
old shoe. You put it on and it doesn't give
you any problems. You know, you have to understand the
liturgy that require years of study and prayer. But you
know the cycle for princess, the cycle of readings in
(20:26):
the Old mess it's yearly, so you can remember, oh, yeah,
last year I heard that gospel, right, and then and
then the feast days and all the rest. Now, let's
get down to what you're questioning about young people. It's
a grave mistake to interpret youth with a revolutionary spirit,
and therefore to view people who don't have a revolutionary
(20:46):
spirit are not really young people. You know their problem cases.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And these are the young.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, the backwards and you know this again sad to say,
it's Marxist interpretation. Marxists believe in historical inevitability, and therefore
young people who buy into that, they're just cooperating. What's
going to happen anyway. The rest of the people are
obstructionists and backwards, and we have to put them aside.
But Bob's father is a referenced before.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
When the church is going broke, when you can't fill
the pews, this is a suicidal decision that and I
think it's one that befalls any group that thinks it's
that attempts to replace its audience with an imagined audience.
Is you always pay the penalty for that. We see
this in film, we see this in corporations. You can't
impose your will on the audience. They want what they want,
(21:35):
you have to give them what they want.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Yeah, I think the one thing that struck a chord
with me in the objections that some of the bishops
had was that the vocations in their dioceses were not
going to the diocesan seminary, but they were going to
the traditional Latin Mass seminaries. And look, the way that
you solve that problem is you make the Latin Mass
available within the diocese. And now that the if they're getting,
(22:01):
they're getting big bumpons in locations across the street. Well,
you bring some of those guy guys back because you
can see that that's the growing end of what the
church is.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Well, Bob, the CDF report did suggest at some point,
I don't have a quote in front of me, but
it did suggest that both the old and the New
Right should be taught in seminary. But my guess is
people feared that because then you'd have real competition, and
you know what the hearts of these young priests would gravitate.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Look, I mean we're still unfortunately in the Church, we're
still wrestling with one another over the interpretation of Vatican too.
And it's clear that Pope Francis had this if we
want to use the political term, a more progressive view
of what came out of Vatican Two. His father was
rightly saying he used a lot of very disparaging remarks
(22:45):
about priests and lay people and young people who seem
to be attached to something solid. But look, when you're
in a boat and the storm is all around you,
you want something solid to hold on to you. You
want to be able to steer in a certain direction.
And in fact, Vatican two I never get tired of
saying this proposed two principles. People forget this, but the
(23:07):
one principle of which you could regard as kind of
look as not progressive. But I would say forward looking.
Isn't jornamento, you know, updating to the new Jordnal, the
new day. But it also recommended what it called russourceman,
going back to the sources of Christianity, the early Gospels,
the Great for the early church fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, etc.
(23:30):
And so you get this dynamic that it's moving in
two directions. It's not only one direction that you go
back to the roots to find out how do I
deal with these maybe unprecedented circumstances. And if you suppress
one side of it, if you suppress that going back
to the foundation and the roots of the church, you're
going to be flailing. And that's what's happened to a
(23:51):
lot of people. And that's why young young people in particular,
who are setting out in their lives are looking for
something more as they approach the future Father.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The report ends with a line from Pope Benedict in
two thousand and eight, and again we never saw this report,
but here's the quote. Lest the seamless tunic of Christ
be further torn, everyone has a place in the church.
Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at
home and never rejected. God, who loves all men and
(24:21):
women and wishes none to be lost, and trusts us
with this mission by appointing as shepherds of his sheep,
we can only thank him for the honor and the
trust he's placed in us. Let us therefore strive always
to be servants of unity. Why do you think Pope
Francis and even bishops to this day reject that idea
(24:42):
of being servants to unity and serving the natural desires
of young people and older people who want this sacred
style of worship and right.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I think Pope Francis and those who support his program
have a different definition of what unity means for them.
It's not the unity that's based on the common form
of worship in Christendom, you know, for over you know,
a thousand plus years.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
The unity was a new Vatican two understanding of the
relationship of the Church and the world. And as Bob said,
this gets back to an even better, even more fundamental
issue is the discussion of how Vatican Two was implemented
in not only the field of liturgy, but in theology
and philosophy. Because there's a good argument to be made
(25:32):
that the New Mass was not faithful to the vision
of the cart of the Council Fathers. In other words,
the complete rejection of Latin, the adding of new eucharistic prayers,
the reform of the calendar, the getting rid of you know, octaves.
You know, there's no more octave of the Holy Spirit,
expulsion of chant, expulsion of chant. They got rid of
(25:53):
Ember days. You know, the Lenten season began earlier than
ash Wednesday. Uh, you know the cover of statues. Now,
some of these elements were regained over time, but there
was a whole set of things that were just categorically
removed because the counts, the committee that was in charge
of revised liturgy, invented their own criterion and Pope Paul
(26:14):
the Six went along with it. And then that's where
the debate got started. And that's a legitimate debate. There's
no disloyalty to any pope to say, can we look
at what was done, how it was justified, and how
it result the implement By the way, you remember when
they got rid of coke, they called it new coke
and it failed, And what did they come up with?
Classic coke? Right, Well, they dropped the classic because eventually
(26:36):
people just got back to coke. But you know, the
whole idea was you've got to be sensitive to the
results of your actions because the actions are directed toward it,
not yourself, but to a whole group of people, meaning
the faithful in the pews. They weren't sensitive to it.
And that's where Benedict and John Paul the second I think,
really did great things, and that Poe Francis just implemented
(26:56):
his view of life and then claimed that others supported it.
It some did, but this report reveals not the people
he had told us reported it.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
That that's the big the big takeaway is the majority
of bishops were actually with the Latin Mass people. They
weren't adversaries. But Bob Father brings up a very interesting
point there. Pope Benedict by holding up what he called
the extraordinary right, the old Tridentine right and the New Mass,
putting them side by side, you see the deficiencies in
(27:27):
one or the other. And it did invite the people
to see what was and what is and to make
their own determination of what should be.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, and it was it was an effort at healing.
It wasn't it wasn't suppressing, you know, either one side
or the other. He was giving people freedom. It's ironic
that in the papacy of Francis, who tried to decentralize,
I mean, he made a number of decisions in which
he seemed to want to decentralize power away for it
in that what in fact, and by the end of
(28:00):
his papacy was he was making a lot of decisions
over the heads of you know, of his nuncios and
the normal people he would consult with. And it's almost
a caricature. I mean, it's ironic to put it this way,
but a lot of people who are again to use
the term progressive in the church look back at the
pre Vatican to church and say, oh, it was so monolithic.
(28:22):
It just demanded that everybody be one thing. The best
unity is not totalitarian, It is not totally unified like
that where it suppresses all difference. The best unity when
we say all the time with diversity is our strength,
and that's true when we get the proper diversity, when
we're not using diversity as a term really for progressivism,
(28:43):
when we really talk about the authentic diversity that can
exist in the church, that is what really attracts a
lot of people. And when popes like Leo, you know,
very early on after his election, is talking about how
dioceses in the West should not seek to suppress the
Eastern Catholic churches that are there or draw people away
(29:04):
from them, because there are riches there, the authentic riches
that are part of a tradition that's two thousand years old.
You have to be sensitive to how to incorporate all
those to bring you forgotten riches back into active participation
in the life of the church. And that is where
the unity will come from.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, no, I agree, And in Detroit we should talk
about this is not something back at you know, we're
talking about this report from twenty twenty one. We are
still in the present moment dealing with the fallout from
Pope Francis's restrictions on the Latin Mass.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
In Detroit.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
On July first, the Mass was stamped out in all
but four of the seventeen parishes where it has been
celebrated for years and years.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So this continues. It's not the past.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Your thoughts on this extremism, if you will, Father, And
in light of this report surfacing, is Pope Leo come
peled to repair this wound or at least focus on this.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yeah, well, I would say call off the battle against
the Latin Mass people. I mean, this is essentially an
assault on what they hold sacred, which is what the
Church holds sacred. By the way, the Latin Mass doesn't
belong to the Latin Mass goers it belongs to the church.
So the church is depriving herself of a spiritual treasure
by telling people this can no longer be offered in
(30:24):
your parish church. And you know, in the perspective of
Christian history, when in the world did the Holy See
evict people from their parish church when they were worshiping
an orthodox form of worship. The only people you would
exclude would be heretics or sismatics. And the reason your
(30:45):
excluding is to call them back into unity by saying
you can return to the churches when you renounce your
heresy or submit to the authority of the Holy See.
The people go latiness, aren't heretics, and they're certainly not schismatics.
They believe in the doctrine of the faith. So yeah,
to your second question, I think Pope Leo, uh, really
it's it's an obligation in charity. Uh, to reverse what
(31:09):
Pope Francis did, to realize that it was a mistake,
that it was not something grounded in the actual needs
of the church, and that it reflected a personal hostility
to what Pope's John Paul the Second and Benedict had done.
And then to soften the appearance of that hostility was
basically masked as a papal response in charity to the
(31:32):
demands of the worldwide hierarchy. Well it turns out it
wasn't that. So now is the time just say, look
back to Samorum pontificum. You know, let people go to
church as they wish and in the form they wish,
and as you and Bob, you know, can attest by
your own travels everywhere you go. When you found a
Latin miss you find young people with kids, and what's
(31:53):
go wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah? This is this is this is what we want.
This is the future of the church. Bob.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Is it time for Pope Leo to step up to
that here and put this to put these liturgy wars
to rest.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Well, I don't see how he can avoid doing it.
I mean, the whole question of how this document was
so called leak is of course an interesting one, and
maybe Diane Montana will have some news about that for us.
At some point it was either someone who wanted to
make sure that this was known, or it could have
been even from the very top of the church itself
that this was put out there. And look, I would
(32:27):
even go a little further, Well, maybe I don't know
if this is further farther than what you said about charity,
but I think it's a matter of justice. Yeah, you know,
it's people were unjustly treated by this kind of gin
d up and false reading of what the bishops of
the world actually wanted. Now, you know, any pope has
has a right to his opinion about about various things
(32:50):
about how to how to deal with the world. There
are wars or economic issues about climate, climate issues of climate,
but no pope can really just impose his own private
vision on the entire church. And what we got was
was clearly an unjust treatment of people who I think
(33:10):
if Leo is sensitive to bringing people together and he
talks a lot about unity, and he's just a different
type of man, he's not confrontational, he doesn't he doesn't
humiliate people who have a different view than he has.
I think it could be both a matter of justice
and of charity that these people who are were mistreated
(33:33):
now for the last several years are finally going to
get some remedy, and a remedy that's a substantial remedy,
so that we can go back to at least having
a certain stability and priests and peace. And by the way,
the document talks about stable communities, communities that have settled
themselves in and they're happy with what they are doing,
(33:54):
and they're in communion with their local bishop. That's ultimately
what we want, whether you're talking about the novice or
the traditional Latin mask.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, you took the thunder out of my cloud.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Here about the leak that leak document and who leaked it,
because that.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Is the million dollar question.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
And my guess is this was to set the stage
and create the ground so that should Pope Leo want
to reverse this, there's some justification for doing so because look,
and the Pope I said this at the top. Pope
Francis didn't need the permission or majority of bishops. There
have been great decisions made by popes in the past
that his bishops did not agree with. But this was
(34:34):
a situation where there was no controversy, there was no problem,
and he intervened and he stifled a community and stamped
out a legitimate, ilicit, holy ancient version and right of
the Mass just on his own whim. And I think
that has been exposed in this report, and I think
(34:55):
it makes it harder for Leo.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Not to do something. Now, I'll give you the last word,
Father on this.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I agree with both what you and Bob just said.
And I think you know the charity of a shepherd
is to say, if the sheep are wandering, I go
to follow them. And if it's they're wandering because the
shepherd told them to go away from what you know,
my predecessor told you could do, then it is an
obligation of justice to draw them back. And this is
a situation where I think Pope Leo can make it
(35:23):
quite clear to the world the love of Christ compels
him to do everything possible to support those who want
to worship and raise their children in the faith, and
to do so in the Mass that was celebrated for
more than a thousand years, the ritual. How can that
be bad? It's not bad now.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I have to think the more people that see it,
the more the adherents growth.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yes, and you know what, Pope bendeddyt will go back
to that mutual enrichment. You know, the deficiencies in the
new Mass, And we could do a whole show on that.
Yes we should, yeah, we should, but the deficiencies are
to large extent the result of this free for all
spirit that came in, and then the omission of some
of the prayers from the Old Mass, which fitz Prinstan's
(36:09):
the auferatory, the confedio, and the prayers the foot of
the Old. I mean, you could restore elements from the
Old Mass in the vernacular to the New Mass, and
I think we would have general widespread acceptance by all
those who go to the New Mass. So, but you know,
I'll get another point. Discipline in the liturgy reflects reverence
of spirit, and that's what people like. In the Old Mass.
(36:32):
There's an undisciplined ad hoc free for all. I mean,
how many masses have we seen on YouTube were the
priest's dressed like I saw a German priest dressed in
a rappers outfit and he was doing a wrap routine
at the homily time and I left. I said to him, iself,
this is insane.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
If I want.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Rappers, I know where to get them. I couldn't go
to church in Germany to do that.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Well, this is what I want.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
I want. I want a bishop or a priest who
says a mask where he doesn't invent anything. That's what
we want.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, Bob, I mean, this is the problem.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
When you you know, when you have Catholics, we shouldn't
have to go shopping for a parish that has a
reverend liturgy and a sacred liturgy, you know, because oh, well,
you know Saint you know Confiti, or that's the guy
who's on the skateboard and does the you know, sing alongs.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
So we're not going to go to that mask, So
I'm going to go over here. We shouldn't have to
do that. It's Catholics.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Yeah, and look that those abuses are far more damaging
to the church than anything that a Latin mask would do.
I would just sort of say this in kind of
summary that I think that the way that Pope Leo
handles this is going to be quite indicative of what
his papacy is going to be like, because look, we
know on the one hand that he is he does
(37:45):
retain a great affection for Pope Francis. For some reason,
the two of them seemed to click, and it's one
of the reasons perhaps why he was elected that he
seemed to the people who wanted to have a continuity
with Francis that there would be some of that, and
for others it looked like it would he would not
be a radical, that he would be a more centrist
kind of person. But the way that you handle this,
(38:08):
once you recognize that there was an injustice done here
on the basis of a kind of a false foundation,
I think that that will tell us a lot about
what kind of pope he is. And he seems to
be a man, a steady man, a fair man, a
man who's not given to anger or emotions that are inappropriate.
(38:30):
And so I really would like to see him. I
don't know if he can reverse traduc on his custodius.
I would like that to happen.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
He can, he can, he can't.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, I mean, if you.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Can flap it away, you can restore it the whole
context that he comes out of. It's going to be
interesting to see how he does this. If he asked
a finesse it, that's fine. If he wants to reverse it,
that would be even better.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, well, we will leave it there.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Possibly, boy, we could go for another hour, but you
all have to get to dinner, and so do I.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
There. We'll see you next time. And look, if you want.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
More of the Royal Grande prayerful Posse, subscribe at a
Royal Grande show on YouTube or the Royal Grande Podcast
wherever you get yours on behalf of Robert Royal, Father
Gerald Murray until the Posse rides again. Stay the course,
follow the life. I'm raiming Arroyo. We'll see you next time.
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and
(39:25):
is available on the iHeartRadio Apple wherever you get your
podcasts
A hidden Vatican document emerges undermining Pope Francis's rationale to
limit the Latin Mass. What did the bishops of the
world really think about the tridentine? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Prayerful Posse?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Next, welcome to this Arroyo Grande series, The Prayerful Posse.
Let's convene the Posse joining me now, Father Gerald Murray,
canon lawyer and priest of the Archdiocese of New York,
(00:33):
and of course Robert Royal, the editor in chief of
the Catholic Thing dot Org. I'm Raymond Arroyo. Go subscribe
to the Arroyo Grande channel now. We don't want you
to miss an episode of the show. And of course
you can also find the podcast on iHeart, Apple, Spotify or.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Our YouTube channel Arroyo Grande Show. Gents, we had to
hop on.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We weren't even going to do a show this week
with July fourth, but when independent journalist Diane Montga obtained
this survey that Pope Francis commissioned asking the world's bishops
their experience with the Latin Mass in their dioceses, I
thought we had to get on.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Everybody will recall they were asking what the bishop's thought
of Pope Benedict because he had expanded the celebration of
the traditional Roman rite. Now this was back in twenty twenty.
Pope Francis used the alleged results to bolster his twenty
twenty one decree, which severely limited the Latin mass. And
(01:29):
that's not just the language. It's an entire rite. It's
not just that, you know, some people think, oh, it's
just a language instead of Spanish or English. No, no,
it's a whole right, and it's very different in some ways. Well,
now it turns out the results of that survey were
the opposite of what we were told. Pope France has
claimed that the questionnaire quote persuades me of the need
to intervene, but in fact, the document obtained by Diane
(01:52):
Montga summarizes the global bishop's response this way. Quote the
majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire and who
have generously and intelligently implemented some morem pontificum that was
Pope Benedict's permission to spread the Latin mess and celebrate
it widely, ultimately expresses satisfaction with it. End quote, Father,
(02:16):
why did the Pope and the Vatican lie about this? I?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Can only speculate Raymond, but it certainly fits a pattern
where the Pope decides on the course of action and
then enlists a group of what he thinks is going
to be sympathetic acolytes to give him the answer that
he wanted. You recall the first Senate on the Family
did not go along with his proposals regarding community for
divorce remarried, so he changed the cast. The second Senate
(02:44):
on the Family had a different group of people voting,
and they voted for what the Pope wanted. In this case,
it was a survey, and the survey results did not
match the Pope's hostility to the traditional Latin mess I
don't think the Pope ever thought that this information was
going to become public. So then he makes a statement saying,
I'm persuaded by the bishops of the world that this
is a problem. It wasn't a problem. So I'm glad
(03:08):
this came out because I remember at the time saying
to myself, wait a minute, where's the mass number of bishops,
you know, going on TV and radio saying we got
to stamp out the traditional Admit it wasn't there. My
experience here in New York was the cardinal was very
happy that the Latin mask people were able to be
accommodated at different parishes.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Bob, the fact is the Pope doesn't need the agreement
of all the bishops to make a decision. I mean
we should say that up front, So why spin what
advice they were giving him and the feedback, the organic
and natural feedback about how the Latin mass was affecting
dioceses and the people in it across the world.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, he was careful when he issued the document. Artsionis
custodis not to make this like a Plubis side. It
was his own decision to do this, But it's clear
that what he tried to do. And you know, there were,
of course a few bishops who objected, because there are
people who are a problem and you know around the world,
whatever right you're going to be using, there's going to
(04:08):
be some people who are going to object and make
trouble for the local bishop. But the remarkable thing about
the summary document is how much it I just reread
it before we came out on the air, how much
it really underscores how successful the adjustments that Pope Benedic
the sixteenth made that the people actually were happy. Bishops
(04:28):
were starting to be happy about this. You know, it's
very very different than we were led to believe. And
I think we have to say that Diane must have
you know, we all know Diane. We trust her. She's
a very very careful reporter. What she's found must be true.
Because the document has been out. We're recording on July second,
(04:49):
it's already been out for over twenty four hours. People
have asked the Vatican to respond whether this is an
authentic document or not. They haven't denied it, so there
must be some response being prepared. And maybe this is
a way for now Leo to make some changes and
go back to a more you know, a more generous
approach to people across the board. No one's being forced
(05:10):
to go to a Latin mass and no one's being
forced to go into a Novisorto mass. So it's very
regrettable that the Pope Friensis did this, and a lot
of people I think are very much upset. They were
upset with him while he was alive. Now they're except
they're upset with him now that he's dead.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, father, I mean, look, the dicastro of the doctrine
of faith. I mean, when you read the thing, there's
this quote. The bishops most attuned to this matter observed
that the older form of the liturgy is a treasure
of the Church to be safeguarded and preserved. It constitutes
a good to find unity with the past, to know
(05:46):
how to advance along a path of coherent development and progress,
and to meet as far as possible the needs of
the faithful. What was the problem with that, Father? That
was the recommendation by the way of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of Things. Who were collecting the reaction from
the bishops around the world.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Well, I mean, this is an example of the you know,
the people in the field closest to the sheep, they were,
you know, knowing what the sheep wanted. And it really
was an example of a consultation that brought a result
that wasn't desired. So you know, the interesting thing, of course,
is the Pope never published this himself. The survey included
(06:27):
comments from bishops. The surveys were kept secret, although, as
you may remember, maybe about a year after TRADITSI and
as Diane I was able to obtain some of those
survey answers from bishops and the quotes were really basically
supporting what now has been revealed. So, you know, there's
a whole school of thought in the Church which is
(06:48):
basically called, you know, the discontinuity school, which means anything
that came before Vatican two is an obstacle to the
Church accomplishing her mission at the present time. Pope Benedict
John Paul this and rejected that they were into a
continuity interpretation and the Latin the success of the traditional
Latin Mass bolstered that continuity. In other words, a new
(07:09):
Church wasn't born in Rome when the Vatican Council closed.
It was the same Catholic Church as before. There were
some different things being proposed in terms of how we're
going to approach the modern world. But the idea that
reverent liturgy no longer has a role to play in
converting the world. The survey reveals that it does, because
the bishops saw that people were responding.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, but Bob, this runs to the heart of the matter.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
The argument at the time was that this was a
radicalizing side show of a liturgy, a break with unity
that was creating hatred of Vatican too. But the Congregation
for the Doctrine of Faith in this report. The quote
is this The ecclesiological dimension of the hermoneutic of continuity
with tradition and with a coherent renewal and development has
(07:55):
not yet been fully embraced by some bishops. However, where
it has been received and implemented, it is already bearing fruit,
the most visible of which is.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
In the liturgy. End quote.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They said it renewed the liturgy when it was implemented,
So why suppress that? And here's the big question, Bob,
where's the sinidelity.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
In all this?
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Well, yeah, it's a sinidelity that's ideologically oriented what we
got with the previous pope. I mean, it's very clear
that he knew that he didn't want there to be
this continuing element within the church. I mean, just as
there are extremists who wanted to reject the nous Ordo Mass,
there are people who seem to think that the old
(08:37):
Latin Mass, which Benedict properly said what was sacred in
the past, cannot become unsacred. It has to remain so
for those of us who are in this one Catholic
Church that has existed over two thousand years. And so
it's not surprising that Pope Francis went in and highlighted
the stuff that really was not very much prominent in
(08:58):
the original documents, that he he knew what outcome he
wanted and he didn't get it when the survey occurred.
And by the way, if you go back and look
at those remarks by individual bishops, a lot of them
are specified San Francisco probably, Archbishop of Corleone, or Baltimore,
Archbishop Glori, and others like that. So it's possible to
(09:20):
identify exact experience here in the United States and presumably
elsewhere in the world where people found that there was
no problem and when the bishop engaged the people properly
and didn't try to tell them that they were they
were way off in left field or maybe right field.
In this case, they got along very well, and this
was utterly unreported on It says if these results of
(09:43):
this survey were that the situation was so appalling, and
Francis said he was saddened and he was preoccupied by
all the results that he had to intervene. I think
that this is I'm sorry I'd have to say this
about any pope. It's an outright lie and it's shameful.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Wow, Pope Francis wrote in twenty twenty one that he
limited the tridentine right quote because an opportunity offered by
Saint Pope John Paul the second, and with even greater
magnanimity by Benedict the sixteenth, was quote exploited to widen
the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure
(10:20):
the church block her path and exposure to the peril
of division end quote? Was the teen right a source
of division? I mean, this report actually decried what would
eventually would happen.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
But I'll let you react to that first.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, Well, the Congregation of Doctor and the Faith didn't
think it was because they were saying that where it
was applied by bishops who took an interest in this
pastoral need that had produced great fruits. The fact that
the division, I'm always amazed because when you had the
Latin Mass being permitted in your average parish, it unified
the parish because those people no longer going to independent
(10:57):
chapels or chapels run by the Society Saint Pius the tenth.
They were now participating in diocese and masses at diocese
and parishes and as regards the unity of the Church.
Remember what Pope Benedict said and some more in Pontificum.
He wanted mutual enrichment between the New Mass and the
Old Mass. And that was going on because you know,
part of the experience of the traditional Latin Mass is
(11:19):
Gregorian chant, so and then the musical heritage of the
Latin Church, the Western Church, Renaissance polyphony and the like.
And it's quite clear there's a demand for that in
the world and in the Church. And that was highlighted
because how many of those you know, monastic chant CDs
were selling, you know, hundreds of thousands of copies. Well,
(11:41):
you don't need to buy a CD when they have,
you know, the availability in your local parish. So the
reality is the Pope was hostile to this form of worship,
and he tried to enlist the bishops of the world
to support him. They didn't, and then he basically said
that they did.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
That's said a curious thing that when you read this
report closely, as I did, the bishops who refused to
allow the Latin Mass considered it dangerous. They wanted it suppressed.
But the Congregation found that Spanish speaking regions and the
Italian bishops were the most reticent to allow the Old Mass.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Well, they didn't say redicent, they said they weren't interested
in all that budget. And I have to say, as
a kind of an amateur at these things, that when
I go to a mass that's in Italian or in Spanish,
it's closer to Latin. And maybe because the difference isn't
that large that for some people it just dispersed whatever
(12:43):
interest that they might have had in the older Latin.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Oh, that's kind of an interesting point. I hadn't thought
of that far.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
But I mean, look, the report actually predicts accurately what
is going to happen. The couple of bishops said, look,
if you reverse this, it's going to make the situation
even worse. And that's precisely what happened. But suddenly this
thing's sprung up and instead of people coming together, they
were at one another's throats. And it didn't have to
(13:11):
be that way, except if you thought that somehow the
Old Latin Mass was a danger, as you rightly quote,
and the application of basically a weed killer is what
happened against the Old Latin Mass, where you're told you
can't have it in a parish, you can't list it
in a bulletin. I mean, this was so clearly an
attempt to wipe it out that you can only think
(13:33):
that there was some animus against this here. And by
the way, I would just like to put on the
record this point. The Eastern Church has had a unified
liturgy basically, you know, for fifteen hundred years. Does it
have unity? Because if there's only one right, the various
jurisdictions are always at one another's throats. A liturgy in
(13:54):
and of itself, a single liturgy in and of itself,
isn't a guarantee that people are going to be unified.
Circumstances in which we find ourselves in the church now
in twenty twenty five, we need to let a few
flowers bloom out there, and you know, not the craziert stuff,
but some stuff that connects us with our tradition and
maybe recovers, as Pope Leo has been saying about the
(14:14):
Eastern Rite, recovers some things that have been lost in
the West and that really draw people in, draw young
people in, and energize the faith again. It's it's a
win win to do this.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Father you got to take a crack at what Bob said.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, about the Spanish and Italian thing first, which I
didn't I didn't even think about that, But that does
make sense that it's, you know, it's a latinate language.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Well, I'll put another perspective on it, which supports Bob's point.
The Latin mass was most popular in anglosphere world England,
United States, Australia, and it was popular in countries where
secularism has been aggressive, such as France and also in Germany,
which is a Protestant country. So countries where Catholic identity
(14:59):
had been maintained over the centuries because of an adherence
to the Roman faith and the Roman form of worship,
people were very very sensitive to and take the question
of Archibisipal of Reverend France. He saw that the removal
or the suppression of the Latin mass fit in with
the French revolutionary plan to desacralize public life, and they
(15:23):
didn't like it. And in the English speaking world, you know,
the aim of Cranmer and the Protestant Reformers was to
get rid of the Latin Mass. So and in the world,
you know, the Spanish world did have its brush with Freemasonry,
and there was a problem in Spain, but largely in
Latin American Italy, Catholic culture just continues and when the
(15:43):
Pope says we do something, we do it. So yeah,
and it is closer, of course, an expression to Latin.
So I think these are points to consider, and that's
I think, sadly something that Pope France has never understood.
The experience he had in Argentina was a slice of
Catholic life. And to say that the rest of the
(16:04):
world who doesn't go along with that kind of approach
is somehow disunified, that's just a mistake.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Well, it's shocking when you read this report and the
recommendation of the Doctrine of Faith is this, I'm going
to quote it. The majority of bishops who responded to
the questionnaire state that making legislative changes to some morum
pontificum that was Benedict's permission to celebrate the Mass would
cause more harm than good end quote. Pope France has
(16:31):
just ignored that bomb.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah. Well, and I think that the reason we've actually
predicted this in the past, we spoke about how we
were mystified that there was apparently this outrage from bishops
and whatnot. It was a select of reading. I mean,
you have to really go in with a desire, like
with a fine tooth, come to find the bishops who
(16:54):
are actually objecting and what they're objecting to. Is interesting
that that in snippets that Diane was able to find
that the Archbishop of San Francisco, which is to say Corleone, said,
where there have been problems in his archdiocese, it's not
because of the right as such, it's because of people
who haven't been instructed. And how this all fits together
(17:16):
with Vatican two. And you know, you can live with
pluralism in the church if your own, your own take
on how you want to live your life is being
respected by the rest of the Church, then it's a
live and let live situation. We go along to get
along with one another. And just as long as we
don't step outside of orthodoxy, we can have divers expressions.
(17:39):
We already have it in the different rights that exist
in the church.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, and this is the key point. We've talked about
this for years now. When you go to these masses
and I go to them, I go to them in
other cities, I go to them in foreign countries, the
vast majority drawn to this traditional Latin Mass.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And again it's not just the language.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
There are movements and rights, there's their prayers that are
omitted from the new Mass, their silence in an otherworldly
sandsum with the chant and the smells and the bells.
It is transformative and I think transportative for young people.
Here's what the CDF reports said. This is from twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
A constant observation made by the bishops is it is
young people who are discovering and choosing this older form
of the liturgy. The majority of the stable groups present
in the Catholic world are composed of young people, often
converts to the Catholic faith and those returning after a
time away from the church and the sacraments.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
They're drawn by.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
The sacredness, seriousness, and solemnity of the liturgy. What strikes
the most, also amid a society that is excessively noisy
and verbose, is the rediscovery of silence within sacred actions
and restrained and essential words, preaching that it is faithful
to the Church's doctrine, the beauty of liturgical life, chant,
(19:01):
and the dignity of the celebration. Quote A seamless hole.
That is deeply attractive.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Father.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Why would Pope Francis looking at those young people, converts,
the future, people who are returning to the sacraments, why
would he just say, no, we don't want any more
of that, we don't want that any longer.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, again, we can just go to what the Pope
himself said, how often he used this expression backwardists people
who had psychological difficulties and were seeking security and grasping
on to what they imagined were exterior forms of solidity.
I think the Pope had a deep hostility to those
(19:41):
who were not in agreement with his approach, and it's
amazing to me. You would criticize, They would say, the
people who like the traditional Latin masks don't like the
new mass, and that's unacceptable. But they themselves are the
sponsors of the Amazon right, the green mass isn't good
enough for them. They have to add other new elements.
And in fact, that's one of the unspoken realities of
(20:03):
white people. Like the traditional at mess. It doesn't change.
It's predictable, you know what was it? C. S. Lewis
said that literagy should feel like, you know, a comfortable
old shoe. You put it on and it doesn't give
you any problems. You know, you have to understand the
liturgy that require years of study and prayer. But you
know the cycle for princess, the cycle of readings in
(20:26):
the Old mess it's yearly, so you can remember, oh, yeah,
last year I heard that gospel, right, and then and
then the feast days and all the rest. Now, let's
get down to what you're questioning about young people. It's
a grave mistake to interpret youth with a revolutionary spirit,
and therefore to view people who don't have a revolutionary
(20:46):
spirit are not really young people. You know their problem cases.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And these are the young.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, the backwards and you know this again sad to say,
it's Marxist interpretation. Marxists believe in historical inevitability, and therefore
young people who buy into that, they're just cooperating. What's
going to happen anyway. The rest of the people are
obstructionists and backwards, and we have to put them aside.
But Bob's father is a referenced before.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
When the church is going broke, when you can't fill
the pews, this is a suicidal decision that and I
think it's one that befalls any group that thinks it's
that attempts to replace its audience with an imagined audience.
Is you always pay the penalty for that. We see
this in film, we see this in corporations. You can't
impose your will on the audience. They want what they want,
(21:35):
you have to give them what they want.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Yeah, I think the one thing that struck a chord
with me in the objections that some of the bishops
had was that the vocations in their dioceses were not
going to the diocesan seminary, but they were going to
the traditional Latin Mass seminaries. And look, the way that
you solve that problem is you make the Latin Mass
available within the diocese. And now that the if they're getting,
(22:01):
they're getting big bumpons in locations across the street. Well,
you bring some of those guy guys back because you
can see that that's the growing end of what the
church is.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Well, Bob, the CDF report did suggest at some point,
I don't have a quote in front of me, but
it did suggest that both the old and the New
Right should be taught in seminary. But my guess is
people feared that because then you'd have real competition, and
you know what the hearts of these young priests would gravitate.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Look, I mean we're still unfortunately in the Church, we're
still wrestling with one another over the interpretation of Vatican too.
And it's clear that Pope Francis had this if we
want to use the political term, a more progressive view
of what came out of Vatican Two. His father was
rightly saying he used a lot of very disparaging remarks
(22:45):
about priests and lay people and young people who seem
to be attached to something solid. But look, when you're
in a boat and the storm is all around you,
you want something solid to hold on to you. You
want to be able to steer in a certain direction.
And in fact, Vatican two I never get tired of
saying this proposed two principles. People forget this, but the
(23:07):
one principle of which you could regard as kind of
look as not progressive. But I would say forward looking.
Isn't jornamento, you know, updating to the new Jordnal, the
new day. But it also recommended what it called russourceman,
going back to the sources of Christianity, the early Gospels,
the Great for the early church fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, etc.
(23:30):
And so you get this dynamic that it's moving in
two directions. It's not only one direction that you go
back to the roots to find out how do I
deal with these maybe unprecedented circumstances. And if you suppress
one side of it, if you suppress that going back
to the foundation and the roots of the church, you're
going to be flailing. And that's what's happened to a
(23:51):
lot of people. And that's why young young people in particular,
who are setting out in their lives are looking for
something more as they approach the future Father.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The report ends with a line from Pope Benedict in
two thousand and eight, and again we never saw this report,
but here's the quote. Lest the seamless tunic of Christ
be further torn, everyone has a place in the church.
Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at
home and never rejected. God, who loves all men and
(24:21):
women and wishes none to be lost, and trusts us
with this mission by appointing as shepherds of his sheep,
we can only thank him for the honor and the
trust he's placed in us. Let us therefore strive always
to be servants of unity. Why do you think Pope
Francis and even bishops to this day reject that idea
(24:42):
of being servants to unity and serving the natural desires
of young people and older people who want this sacred
style of worship and right.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I think Pope Francis and those who support his program
have a different definition of what unity means for them.
It's not the unity that's based on the common form
of worship in Christendom, you know, for over you know,
a thousand plus years.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
The unity was a new Vatican two understanding of the
relationship of the Church and the world. And as Bob said,
this gets back to an even better, even more fundamental
issue is the discussion of how Vatican Two was implemented
in not only the field of liturgy, but in theology
and philosophy. Because there's a good argument to be made
(25:32):
that the New Mass was not faithful to the vision
of the cart of the Council Fathers. In other words,
the complete rejection of Latin, the adding of new eucharistic prayers,
the reform of the calendar, the getting rid of you know, octaves.
You know, there's no more octave of the Holy Spirit,
expulsion of chant, expulsion of chant. They got rid of
(25:53):
Ember days. You know, the Lenten season began earlier than
ash Wednesday. Uh, you know the cover of statues. Now,
some of these elements were regained over time, but there
was a whole set of things that were just categorically
removed because the counts, the committee that was in charge
of revised liturgy, invented their own criterion and Pope Paul
(26:14):
the Six went along with it. And then that's where
the debate got started. And that's a legitimate debate. There's
no disloyalty to any pope to say, can we look
at what was done, how it was justified, and how
it result the implement By the way, you remember when
they got rid of coke, they called it new coke
and it failed, And what did they come up with?
Classic coke? Right, Well, they dropped the classic because eventually
(26:36):
people just got back to coke. But you know, the
whole idea was you've got to be sensitive to the
results of your actions because the actions are directed toward it,
not yourself, but to a whole group of people, meaning
the faithful in the pews. They weren't sensitive to it.
And that's where Benedict and John Paul the second I think,
really did great things, and that Poe Francis just implemented
(26:56):
his view of life and then claimed that others supported it.
It some did, but this report reveals not the people
he had told us reported it.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
That that's the big the big takeaway is the majority
of bishops were actually with the Latin Mass people. They
weren't adversaries. But Bob Father brings up a very interesting
point there. Pope Benedict by holding up what he called
the extraordinary right, the old Tridentine right and the New Mass,
putting them side by side, you see the deficiencies in
(27:27):
one or the other. And it did invite the people
to see what was and what is and to make
their own determination of what should be.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, and it was it was an effort at healing.
It wasn't it wasn't suppressing, you know, either one side
or the other. He was giving people freedom. It's ironic
that in the papacy of Francis, who tried to decentralize,
I mean, he made a number of decisions in which
he seemed to want to decentralize power away for it
in that what in fact, and by the end of
(28:00):
his papacy was he was making a lot of decisions
over the heads of you know, of his nuncios and
the normal people he would consult with. And it's almost
a caricature. I mean, it's ironic to put it this way,
but a lot of people who are again to use
the term progressive in the church look back at the
pre Vatican to church and say, oh, it was so monolithic.
(28:22):
It just demanded that everybody be one thing. The best
unity is not totalitarian, It is not totally unified like
that where it suppresses all difference. The best unity when
we say all the time with diversity is our strength,
and that's true when we get the proper diversity, when
we're not using diversity as a term really for progressivism,
(28:43):
when we really talk about the authentic diversity that can
exist in the church, that is what really attracts a
lot of people. And when popes like Leo, you know,
very early on after his election, is talking about how
dioceses in the West should not seek to suppress the
Eastern Catholic churches that are there or draw people away
(29:04):
from them, because there are riches there, the authentic riches
that are part of a tradition that's two thousand years old.
You have to be sensitive to how to incorporate all
those to bring you forgotten riches back into active participation
in the life of the church. And that is where
the unity will come from.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, no, I agree, And in Detroit we should talk
about this is not something back at you know, we're
talking about this report from twenty twenty one. We are
still in the present moment dealing with the fallout from
Pope Francis's restrictions on the Latin Mass.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
In Detroit.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
On July first, the Mass was stamped out in all
but four of the seventeen parishes where it has been
celebrated for years and years.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So this continues. It's not the past.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Your thoughts on this extremism, if you will, Father, And
in light of this report surfacing, is Pope Leo come
peled to repair this wound or at least focus on this.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yeah, well, I would say call off the battle against
the Latin Mass people. I mean, this is essentially an
assault on what they hold sacred, which is what the
Church holds sacred. By the way, the Latin Mass doesn't
belong to the Latin Mass goers it belongs to the church.
So the church is depriving herself of a spiritual treasure
by telling people this can no longer be offered in
(30:24):
your parish church. And you know, in the perspective of
Christian history, when in the world did the Holy See
evict people from their parish church when they were worshiping
an orthodox form of worship. The only people you would
exclude would be heretics or sismatics. And the reason your
(30:45):
excluding is to call them back into unity by saying
you can return to the churches when you renounce your
heresy or submit to the authority of the Holy See.
The people go latiness, aren't heretics, and they're certainly not schismatics.
They believe in the doctrine of the faith. So yeah,
to your second question, I think Pope Leo, uh, really
it's it's an obligation in charity. Uh, to reverse what
(31:09):
Pope Francis did, to realize that it was a mistake,
that it was not something grounded in the actual needs
of the church, and that it reflected a personal hostility
to what Pope's John Paul the Second and Benedict had done.
And then to soften the appearance of that hostility was
basically masked as a papal response in charity to the
(31:32):
demands of the worldwide hierarchy. Well it turns out it
wasn't that. So now is the time just say, look
back to Samorum pontificum. You know, let people go to
church as they wish and in the form they wish,
and as you and Bob, you know, can attest by
your own travels everywhere you go. When you found a
Latin miss you find young people with kids, and what's
(31:53):
go wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah? This is this is this is what we want.
This is the future of the church. Bob.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Is it time for Pope Leo to step up to
that here and put this to put these liturgy wars
to rest.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Well, I don't see how he can avoid doing it.
I mean, the whole question of how this document was
so called leak is of course an interesting one, and
maybe Diane Montana will have some news about that for us.
At some point it was either someone who wanted to
make sure that this was known, or it could have
been even from the very top of the church itself
that this was put out there. And look, I would
(32:27):
even go a little further, Well, maybe I don't know
if this is further farther than what you said about charity,
but I think it's a matter of justice. Yeah, you know,
it's people were unjustly treated by this kind of gin
d up and false reading of what the bishops of
the world actually wanted. Now, you know, any pope has
has a right to his opinion about about various things
(32:50):
about how to how to deal with the world. There
are wars or economic issues about climate, climate issues of climate,
but no pope can really just impose his own private
vision on the entire church. And what we got was
was clearly an unjust treatment of people who I think
(33:10):
if Leo is sensitive to bringing people together and he
talks a lot about unity, and he's just a different
type of man, he's not confrontational, he doesn't he doesn't
humiliate people who have a different view than he has.
I think it could be both a matter of justice
and of charity that these people who are were mistreated
(33:33):
now for the last several years are finally going to
get some remedy, and a remedy that's a substantial remedy,
so that we can go back to at least having
a certain stability and priests and peace. And by the way,
the document talks about stable communities, communities that have settled
themselves in and they're happy with what they are doing,
(33:54):
and they're in communion with their local bishop. That's ultimately
what we want, whether you're talking about the novice or
the traditional Latin mask.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, you took the thunder out of my cloud.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Here about the leak that leak document and who leaked it,
because that.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Is the million dollar question.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
And my guess is this was to set the stage
and create the ground so that should Pope Leo want
to reverse this, there's some justification for doing so because look,
and the Pope I said this at the top. Pope
Francis didn't need the permission or majority of bishops. There
have been great decisions made by popes in the past
that his bishops did not agree with. But this was
(34:34):
a situation where there was no controversy, there was no problem,
and he intervened and he stifled a community and stamped
out a legitimate, ilicit, holy ancient version and right of
the Mass just on his own whim. And I think
that has been exposed in this report, and I think
(34:55):
it makes it harder for Leo.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Not to do something. Now, I'll give you the last word,
Father on this.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I agree with both what you and Bob just said.
And I think you know the charity of a shepherd
is to say, if the sheep are wandering, I go
to follow them. And if it's they're wandering because the
shepherd told them to go away from what you know,
my predecessor told you could do, then it is an
obligation of justice to draw them back. And this is
a situation where I think Pope Leo can make it
(35:23):
quite clear to the world the love of Christ compels
him to do everything possible to support those who want
to worship and raise their children in the faith, and
to do so in the Mass that was celebrated for
more than a thousand years, the ritual. How can that
be bad? It's not bad now.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I have to think the more people that see it,
the more the adherents growth.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yes, and you know what, Pope bendeddyt will go back
to that mutual enrichment. You know, the deficiencies in the
new Mass, And we could do a whole show on that.
Yes we should, yeah, we should, but the deficiencies are
to large extent the result of this free for all
spirit that came in, and then the omission of some
of the prayers from the Old Mass, which fitz Prinstan's
(36:09):
the auferatory, the confedio, and the prayers the foot of
the Old. I mean, you could restore elements from the
Old Mass in the vernacular to the New Mass, and
I think we would have general widespread acceptance by all
those who go to the New Mass. So, but you know,
I'll get another point. Discipline in the liturgy reflects reverence
of spirit, and that's what people like. In the Old Mass.
(36:32):
There's an undisciplined ad hoc free for all. I mean,
how many masses have we seen on YouTube were the
priest's dressed like I saw a German priest dressed in
a rappers outfit and he was doing a wrap routine
at the homily time and I left. I said to him, iself,
this is insane.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
If I want.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Rappers, I know where to get them. I couldn't go
to church in Germany to do that.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Well, this is what I want.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
I want. I want a bishop or a priest who
says a mask where he doesn't invent anything. That's what
we want.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, Bob, I mean, this is the problem.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
When you you know, when you have Catholics, we shouldn't
have to go shopping for a parish that has a
reverend liturgy and a sacred liturgy, you know, because oh, well,
you know Saint you know Confiti, or that's the guy
who's on the skateboard and does the you know, sing alongs.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
So we're not going to go to that mask, So
I'm going to go over here. We shouldn't have to
do that. It's Catholics.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Yeah, and look that those abuses are far more damaging
to the church than anything that a Latin mask would do.
I would just sort of say this in kind of
summary that I think that the way that Pope Leo
handles this is going to be quite indicative of what
his papacy is going to be like, because look, we
know on the one hand that he is he does
(37:45):
retain a great affection for Pope Francis. For some reason,
the two of them seemed to click, and it's one
of the reasons perhaps why he was elected that he
seemed to the people who wanted to have a continuity
with Francis that there would be some of that, and
for others it looked like it would he would not
be a radical, that he would be a more centrist
kind of person. But the way that you handle this,
(38:08):
once you recognize that there was an injustice done here
on the basis of a kind of a false foundation,
I think that that will tell us a lot about
what kind of pope he is. And he seems to
be a man, a steady man, a fair man, a
man who's not given to anger or emotions that are inappropriate.
(38:30):
And so I really would like to see him. I
don't know if he can reverse traduc on his custodius.
I would like that to happen.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
He can, he can, he can't.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, I mean, if you.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Can flap it away, you can restore it the whole
context that he comes out of. It's going to be
interesting to see how he does this. If he asked
a finesse it, that's fine. If he wants to reverse it,
that would be even better.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, well, we will leave it there.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Possibly, boy, we could go for another hour, but you
all have to get to dinner, and so do I.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
There. We'll see you next time. And look, if you want.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
More of the Royal Grande prayerful Posse, subscribe at a
Royal Grande show on YouTube or the Royal Grande Podcast
wherever you get yours on behalf of Robert Royal, Father
Gerald Murray until the Posse rides again. Stay the course,
follow the life. I'm raiming Arroyo. We'll see you next time.
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and
(39:25):
is available on the iHeartRadio Apple wherever you get your
podcasts
Host
Raymond Arroyo
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