Cut Down, It Flourishes Again: Why I’m Hopeful About the Future

And how we can nurture our hope in difficult times

Photo by Anshul (source)

A phrase I have often recalled on this Substack¹ is the great Benedictine motto “Succisa virescit.”

“Cut down, it flourishes again.”

I first met this lapidary Latin phrase, probably referring to the art of pruning, in an all-boys high school run by Benedictine monks. At the time, I didn’t make much of it, but it lodged itself in my memory all the same.

Later, after several years of friendship with Fr. Cassian Folsom and the monks of Norcia, I took on their liturgical and biblical spirituality by becoming an oblate of that monastery. When the great earthquake of 2016 destroyed the town of Norcia (including the monastery) and the monks began to build a new monastery nearly from scratch, the powerful truth of these words, Succisa virescit, hit me in the gut, as I’m sure it hit them even more. Since then, they have built a beautiful monastery up in the mountain, even better for their monastic life than the one that was destroyed.

The traditional Roman Rite, too, offers a perfect illustration of the motto’s truth. In spite of being cut down, the great liturgy of Rome has never ceased to grow back, and today it flourishes again — in spite of renewed attempts to abolish it, all of them illicit and doomed to fail.

Change of Mentality

When Archbishop Viganò blew the whistle in the Summer of Shame (2018), he became an international hero overnight to Catholics everywhere, especially those who had been battling the corruption of the hierarchy more or less unsuccessfully for decades. While it is true that plenty of corruption remains (in fact, the corruption greatly increased under Pope Francis, as John Lamont and Henry Sire have documented), nevertheless 2018 marked a turning point in public awareness and the mentality of the laity, which began to take a more militant direction.

Regardless of where Viganò has drifted since then, the exposure of the McCarrick network prompted a tectonic shift. There is now a much healthier skepticism about officialdom and a spirit of determined resistance on the part of Catholics who take their faith most seriously. The corruption is plain to see, and the remedies for it are also clear: the traditional Catholic Faith, traditional prayer and penance, and an uncompromising commitment to the full restoration of that Faith. We might call this a “counterrevolutionary credo.”

A Word of Hope

I think it’s fair to say that the one thing that most unites readers of Tradition & Sanity is a common love for the traditional Latin Mass. We probably have a lot more than this in common, too, and I also know readers of this Substack who have divergent interests and priorities, but the TLM is pivotal for the majority of us. Those who come from other liturgical traditions, especially Eastern Christian, have their own equivalent of the TLM, which makes it easy for them to relate.

It’s also fair to say that the past twelve years, and in particular the past four years since Traditionis Custodes, have been very hard on a lot of people. We have seen so many flourishing Mass communities, planted in faith and zeal, torn down by hirelings unworthy to lick the dust beneath the Apostles’s feet. Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago, Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit, Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte, and others besides, are destroyers, not builders; ravening wolves, not caring shepherds; enemies of Christ, not friends of God.

As traditional Latin Masses continue to get canceled, it is well to remind ourselves: succisa virescit. Cut down, it grows back again. What is taken away can return. With faith and zeal, it will return.

But why do I think this will happen, when so many wielders of power are ranged against it?