Francis Caught Red-Handed & Weekly Roundup, July 4

Synodality bites the dust, gaslighting returns, externals matter, Spain lectures, round table, recommended reading

Since we’re celebrating Independence Day in the United States of America, and since my #1 news item has to do with the late pope, I thought I’d try to find a photo with both elements. And I did, thanks to the USCCB.

To my fellow countrymen, Happy Fourth! To everyone, Happy Octave of the Sacred Heart, Commemoration of All Holy Popes, and dies natalis of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (today is the centenary of his death, in fact — and Massimo Scapin relates to us what a lover of music he was).

Dr. K Updates

Before diving into this week’s roundup, I’d like to announce that I will be giving six lectures in Spain between July 18 and 25. If anyone reading this Substack lives in Spain, I’d love to meet you in person at the city nearest where you live!

When I was visiting Sanctus Ranch a couple of weeks ago, a group of us got together on Sunday morning — Nick Cavazos, Dr. Ed Schaefer, Dan Sevigny, and myself — for a roundtable discussion on the traditional Catholic movement under Pope Leo XIV:

The panel explores the relief many feel compared to the Francis era, while examining ongoing episcopal persecution of traditional priests and faithful. They tackle complex questions about papal obedience, priestly faculties for the Latin Mass, and whether bishops can legitimately forbid approved liturgical practices. The conversation delves into the crisis of "hyper-papalism," the need for high-commitment Catholicism, and practical advice for families seeking authentic Catholic formation. A thought-provoking discussion on navigating Church authority, tradition, and personal sanctification in turbulent times.

At OnePeterFive, Martin Barillas discusses why Os Justi Press has released “The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Hymnal.” Naturally, we wanted to dedicate our book to the Blessed Mother, but we also wanted to choose a patronage that makes sense to the traditional movement at this time. Beyond that, we talk about why I started a publishing house, and what some of my goals are.

We Knew It All Along

To hell with collegiality

The #1 news item this week, of course, was the bombshell publication, by Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, of the summary of the worldwide bishops’ survey, which confirmed what she and others had been saying all along: Francis lied about the results, and acted against the clear majority view of the worldwide episcopate. Synodality much? (Ms. Montagna has subsequently published further backup evidence.)

A brief recap: the survey was sent out in 2020. Bishops were asked their thoughts on how Summorum Pontificum was going in their dioceses. This survey had already been broached back in 2007 when Benedict XVI published his groundbreaking motu proprio, which marked the culmination of decades of careful thinking about the exact status of the old rite in the life of the Latin Church (a history I recounted here). We knew the bishops would give their opinions. What we didn’t know is what they would say.

Pope Francis, when issuing Traditionis Custodes on July 16, 2021, overturning Summorum Pontificum, very definitely transmitted the message that he was acting on the basis of the survey’s results. Here is how he explained his rationale in the letter accompanying TC:

With the passage of thirteen years, I instructed the CDF to circulate a questionnaire to the Bishops regarding the implementation of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene. Regrettably, the pastoral objective of my Predecessors, who had intended “to do everything possible to ensure that all those who truly possessed the desire for unity would find it possible to remain in this unity or to rediscover it anew”, has often been seriously disregarded. An opportunity offered by St. John Paul II and, with even greater magnanimity, by Benedict XVI, intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities, was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.

All this sounds like the bishops’ reports must have been positively awful!

Later, he states outright:

Responding to your requests, I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.

Evidently most of the bishops wanted SP repealed — right? That’s what anyone would have thought, reading such language.

Lastly, Francis states he is returning to the bishops their prerogatives:

In the Motu proprio I have desired to affirm that it is up to the Bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the liturgical life of the Church of which he is the principle of unity, to regulate the liturgical celebrations. It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.

I assume Francis must have believed that because Roma locuta…, the bishops would just fall into line, regardless of the actual survey results (and let’s not forget, the bishops themselves wouldn’t necessarily have known what all the other bishops had said).

But when they did not fall into line as expected, he told Card. Roche to go after them (or Card. Roche persuaded the pope that he should go after them) to make them implement TC (synodality much?). Nearly all of the bishops’ authority to regulate the 1962 missal was stripped away from them, exactly contrary to what Francis said above. Or rather, they were allowed only to destroy, not to regulate or build up.

And still, many bishops did not fall into line. Indeed, several new personal traditional parishes have been erected since July 16, 2021, yet Francis stated that no more were to be established.

I won’t try here to give a full history of the past four years. Suffice it to say, everyone agrees that there was not a hugely enthusiastic reception of Traditionis Custodes among the majority of the world’s bishops. And this is because of a very simply fact: as the survey published last week by Ms. Montagna elegantly summarizes, the majority of them were content with Summorum Pontificum, and in fact warned that overturning it would cause greater grief and disunity.

In short, no matter how you slice it, Pope Francis has been caught telling lies. Red-handed.

Coverage of the news

Not surprisingly, the internet has been buzzing with reactions. I am happy to say that most normal people, and the secular press, have simply accepted the news for what it is: yet another sign that the last pope was a caudillo, a dictator, who did whatever he pleased and did not balk at lying about it when Machiavellian politics demanded said course of action.

Thus, Hélène de Lauzun at The European Conservative entitles her article: “Decalogue Check Failed: Documents Reveal Deliberate Lies from the Vatican,” writing:

The unveiling of the operation of lies and manipulation orchestrated by Pope Francis and his direct collaborator in the drafting of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Cardinal Arthur Roche, hurts. For many faithful attached to the traditional liturgy, these revelations are not really a surprise, but rather an official confirmation of what they intuitively sensed.

It is now a matter of drawing practical conclusions. It is difficult to see how, in the weeks and months to come, the Vatican will not take the wise decision to retract a text that has caused scandal and hurt many believers, all based on an objective lie. All this may take some time. The Church of Christ does not count the passing of time. But one thing is certain: it cannot allow itself to become entangled in a path so objectively paved with lies.

The usually mild-mannered Timothy Flanders took off the gloves:

This whole process confirms what many suspected about the Francis Pontificate: that he was implementing the “synodality” of Cardinal Martini and the St. Gallen Mafia, which amounted to what Pentin called The Rigging of a Vatican Synod. It’s what the Liberals did in 1776 in America, 1789 in France, and everywhere else besides. It’s what the Communists did in 1870 in Paris, in 1917 in Mexico and then in Russia. The trick is so obvious that it’s sad that so many still fall for it. Here’s how it works:

• Form an elite conspiracy of power hungry heretics

• Find an emotional grievance that many people have

• Whip up the mob using emotional rhetoric about this grievance

• Tell everyone that this mob represents “the people”

• Impose your minority will on the majority “in the name of the people”

This is the methodology of Liberalism and its two ugly daughters: Communism and Feminism. It seems to have also been the methodology of “synodality” under Francis, and so the implementation of Traditionis Custodes is no different. They sent a survey and then plucked what they wanted out of it in order to impose their minority will on the majority. Andrea Grillo and his New Iconoclasts convinced the Holy Father to abrogate himself and act against Tradition.

Again, not surprisingly, the Vatican moved quickly into damage-control mode, as an official spokesman said he would not verify the authenticity of Ms. Montagna’s leaked document and then claimed that its content represented only a partial view of the results that reached Francis. Matthew Hazell on X responded: “I’m afraid that ‘nothing to see here, move along’ isn’t really going to cut it.” For, as many have pointed out, those who prepared this summary document for Pope Francis were by no means allies of the traditionalists. They simply did their job: “Here’s what the survey results show, Holy Father.”

Joseph Shaw observed in “The Bishops’ Real Verdict on Summorum Pontificum”:

The Church is not a democracy: that is certainly true. On matters of doctrine, the views of those trained in the Tradition of the Church are worth more than the views of those who want to satisfy their concupiscence by rejecting it, however numerous the latter may be, and those who wield magisterial authority do well to listen to the former. But this survey was not about doctrine, but about the success or failure of a pastoral policy. If a pastoral policy was succeeding in scores of dioceses, and not succeeding in a much smaller number, then it makes no sense to say that the policy has been a failure overall and needed to be reversed.

Heck, even the German Bishops’ Conference’s news site admitted that Francis fibbed! That’s not something you see every day.

Cue the hyperpapalists

Online defenders of Francis — for yes, they still exist, and rose up again out of the woodwork (relax, fellahs, he’s dead, you don’t have to defend his every word and action any more; indeed, you never did) — have made a rather pathetic showing, as Kevin Tierney explains in two pieces: “The Beginning of the End of Traditionis custodes” and “The Shifting Sands of Traditionis custodes” explains. For, no matter what line they take, they will have egg on their face in copious quantity.

Once again I had the opportunity to reflect on how hyperpapalism is a mental disorder. Have a look at this comment by someone online who calls himself “Pope Respecter” and the responses by LB236 and Hilary White:

A friend sent me a book about Napoleon III, and to be honest, my first reaction was: “Shucks, someone’s already taken the perfect title for a book on the last pontificate.”

The problem with the hyperpapalists is above all epistemological in nature: it has to do with the theory of how we know truth, how we can know what we know. Let me briefly explain.

Normally, we trust our senses and our “common sense,” we trust wise men who guide us in person or through their writings, we trust traditions and customs that we’ve inherited as ways of living a good life. But modernity introduced several errors that undermine these sources of knowledge: nominalism, voluntarism, positivism. Moderns who are infected by these errors no longer have confidence in any commonly available sources of knowledge, including sense evidence and tradition/custom. If they are Catholics, they will be tempted to find their rock of certainty, à la Descartes, in the person and will of the pope. He will the one and only source of truth; nothing else can be relied upon.

Thus, even if the entire world had flourishing TLM parishes but a pope came along who said “This is all dangerous and we need to overturn it immediately,” and a catastrophic collapse resulted, they would say: “He knows best, he has access to all the information, he has a special charism, he’s the vicar of Christ whom all must blindly obey,” etc. It’s quite demented, and rather tragic.

I was reminded of this false epistmology when reading Kale Zelden’s words about a recent sacking of an academic who had built a successful program but was guilty of the “sin” of being too attached to the Great Books:

They [haters of Western civilization] are so motivated by ideology that they would rather kill a golden goose rather than see it flourish on the enemy’s terms.... You may not like the culture war, or even the very notion of a culture war, but that doesn’t change the reality. All such attempts to create [something of value] will be squelched because the apparatchiks are in control of the institutions. Their project is focused on exterminating the patrimony of the tradition, because they see the patrimony as the enemy. It is positively Screwtapian.... The “progressive element” are firmly ensconced. They will not rest until all vestiges of the old and outmoded classics are memory-holed or problematized out of existence.

This has its exact parallel in the attack on the TLM by churchmen.

I delved into the irrationalism of this worldview (and therefore its incompatibility with confessional Catholicism) here:

As for gaslighting, Ed Feser puts it all very well:

I generally agree with Feser but would make one refinement to his point here. Francis's predecessors did (sadly) move in a direction that made his own views possible, even if he went much further and crossed several red lines. In some ways he was different in kind, but in other ways merely different in degree. This will all get sorted out sooner or later.

I think a key point is that Montini, Wojtyla, and Ratzinger all had traditional leanings and sentiments that acted as counterweights to their progressive tendencies, while Bergoglio had none. (Well, okay, there was some populist Marian devotion, but that’s about all.) What you got with the other popes was “spirit and letter of Vatican II + other stuff.” What you got with Francis was “spirit of Vatican II” period.

But I also think that traditionalists are right to emphasize the liturgy as the main issue, even more than doctrine in the abstract. For the liturgy is the culminating synthesis of the Faith: it is the proclamation of what we believe but also the religious practice by which we conform to the Faith and, especially, by which the Lord is glorified as He deserves to be glorified, and by which we are sanctified in offering ourselves in union with Him.

Often, traditional Catholics are accused of “putting too much emphasis on mere externals.” Happily, Eric Sammons, with his incomparably water-tight way of putting things, wrote a fine piece last week at Crisis, “The Importance of a Veneer,” defending the irreplaceable role of externals in the Catholic Faith against those who would either write them off as distractions or would say they are actually harmful if traditional faith and morals are not equally present (as some rad trads are saying about Leo XIV — prematurely, in my opinion and in that of other close observers like Serre Verweij).

Thus, the following contrast is significant, even if it’s “just externals.” In the top picture, you see how the Knights of Malta presented themselves to Francis, who hated pageantry; then, how they present themselves to Leo, who is, well, a normal guy who likes pomp and circumstance:

Symbols and signs matter; what we do with our bodies — and, above all, with the Body of the Lord — matters. In “The Mercy of Withholding the Eucharist,” Sarah Cain explains why it is crucial for priests to refuse Holy Communion to notorious public sinners, like politicians who vote for euthanasia or abortion or IVF, and why bishops who oppose these actions are undermining the Faith.

Liturgical Lessons

The Preface

Dr. Michel Foley once again enlightens us, this time about the dialogue leading into the Preface, and the Preface structure:

After the priest chants aloud the ending of the Secret, he and the congregation or choir chant aloud three rounds of dialogue. The last thing that the priest chanted was the word Oremus at the beginning of the Offertory Rite; now, we hear him sing the end of the Secret, per omnia saecula saeculorum. It is as if the Offertory were one great oratio, the middle of which was shrouded in silence.

I love his further remarks about how the phrase “dignum et justum est” indicates Rome's inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem.

Corpus Christi in Tokyo

The Mass of the Ages. Yes, this is an absolutely appropriate term.

The Roman rite of the papal curia that we call the “Tridentine rite” had deep roots in antiquity. It was substantially in place by the time of St. Gregory the Great, who died in 604. It matured slowly to its high medieval perfection. By the time of St. Pius V it was already in use for well over a millennium. And the regional and religious variants shared so much common “DNA” that they would be instantly recognizable as belonging to the same family.

Here is a moving example of the way this Mass speaks to all Catholic hearts: a short video from the traditionalist community in Tokyo, celebrating a Corpus Christi Mass and procession. True unity in a common language and an ever-fertile tradition that speaks to every culture.

Sociological study

A well-researched and well-documented series of articles by Gabriella Nyambura on the TLM community in the United States has just been released on Substack. I recommend it for those who are looking for an in-depth, interview-based work. If you look at Ms. Nyambura's Substack page you can find links to all the parts.

Why vocations flourish

Fr. Kevin Cusick has a fine piece on why vocations flourish in the garden of tradition.

Fontgombault abbot interview

In these times when much discussion is under way about the restoration of the pre-55 Roman Rite in view of the problematic aspects of the Pius XII Holy Week reform and the Bugninian aspects of the 1962 missal, it seems more than a curiosity to be reminded that the monastery of Fontgombault adheres (for conventual Mass) to the “1965 interim missal,” a sort of island that has nearly disappeared due to erosion from the oceans of controversy. The Abbot Jean Pateau recently gave an interview to Lothar Rilinger.

Inculturation under scrutiny

At GUMISIRIZA’s Substack, an African Catholic assesses the ideas and the realities of African inculturation, asking if it has been all that it’s cracked up to be. The background history here is fascinating. Who’d know, today, that there were many dissenters in Africa from the notion of “adapting” the liturgy to “their cultural sensibilities” — as if the Church had not already been successfully evangelizing with her age-old rites?

In Brief…

• Amelia McKee, “Maurice Denis, the Sacred Heart, and the Eucharist” — about an admirable 20th-century Catholic artist

• New research shows that college English majors could barely understand the first 7 paragraphs of a novel by Charles Dickens. These are students who will likely be awarded BAs in English literature. They should call their degrees BS instead (apologies to real scientists).

• A peer-reviewed medical study finds a 33% drop in fertility among the Covic-19 vaccinated women in the Czech Republic. That the papacy demanded and otherwise shamed people into receiving this vaccine is a massive scandal, especially when it had been so poorly tested. One can expect more and more findings like this to see the light of day. And this, at a time when the West, and Europe in particular, does not need any further causes of demographic collapse.

• Robert Lazu Kmita, “An Agnostic’s Defense of Catholic Nuns”

• Robert Lazu Kmita does a superb job explaining the truth and beauty of the Church’s dogma about Our Lady: “Virgin Before Birth, During Birth, and After Birth.”

• Really wonderful stuff in this article, “The Angel of the Lord.” A taste: “While Mary is the New Eve, as the bride of the Sovereign God, she is also destined to be the Queen of Heaven. The importance of a royal marriage is so great and has so many implications for the kingdom that it is not merely a romance but an act of state. These unions are not casually entered into. In the case of the Virgin Mary, God sends an emissary, the Archangel Gabriel, to inquire of the interest and suitability of the potential bride. Once her assent is assured, only then does the Holy Spirit come himself.”

• Emily Finley, “Boys are Builders: it’s time for the culture to ‘affirm’ that”

• “It’s Never Too Late to Turn Things Around”: about what parents who have already given smartphones to their children but regret it can still do to intervene while there is time. Related is Kennedy Halls: “Stop Sending Your Kids to Digital Hell.”

• “Strahlenmadonna of Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Germany.” We must learn to recapture this beauty! “Medieval Madonna carving are generally quite striking and I’ve always had a particular interest in the Madonnas of the German tradition called Strahlenmadonna. In English this would translate as the Madonna of Radiance, coming with reference to rays of light that depicted in and behind her and the Christ-child. These wonderful Madonnas are particularly striking, many of them gilt and polychromed…. There’s not much more to say other than: enjoy.”

• Aaron James Weisel, “The New Romanticism: Hope and Caution for the Church Today.”

That’s all this time around (and it’s plenty)!

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.