Weekly Roundup, June 6, 2025

Lots to cover this week (as usual!). Procedamus in pace…

Catholic Unscripted

Katherine Benneth, Mark Lambert, and Gavin Ashenden, three of the most delightful Catholics you could ever wish to talk to, interviewed me this week about The Liturgical Question: Why has this area been so vexatious for so many decades now? What’s at stake for the Church—and for individual Catholics? Why will the debate not just “go away” (and why shouldn’t it)? There was a great energy among us in the conversation, so I do recommend watching.

Most of the comments under the video are positive, and people share their transformative experiences with the TLM. But, as usual, there was a tightly buttoned naysayer who set Larry Chapp against me (and, for the record, I don’t think this is a fully accurate picture of Chapp’s own views):

I replied:

Obviously, there’s so much more than can be said, but that’s why I’ve written some books about the topic. The best one to convince skeptics and equip faithful apologists is Turned Around: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional Latin Mass.

Speaking of that book, I did a 2-part interview with John-Henry Westen (Part 1 | Part 2) on it that you might enjoy. In this conversation, my interlocutor hurls at me one argument after another against the TLM (not because he agrees with them, but to play devil’s advocate). And I was on the ball in making responses. A good Thomistic exercise!

Upcoming event in San Antonio

I’ll be speaking alongside my friend Dr. Ed Schaefer at a Gala for Sanctus Ranch and Lumen Christi Academy, in Pipe Creek, Texas, just outside of San Antonio. A cause well worth supporting. Hope to see some of you there on June 21st!

I should note, by the bye, that Lumen Christi Academy, and Sanctus Ranch where it is located, have come under renewed attack by the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Ordinariate. The attacks are both inaccurate and unjust, as the excellent and comprehensive “Formal Public Response and Canonical Defense of Lumen Christi Academy” demonstrates. Lumen Christi Academy, which I have visited personally, is an exemplary private classical Catholic school. Parents who have been suddenly stranded by the closure of the Catholic school their children had been attending (Atonement Academy) should read this response, go visit LCA in person, use their own intelligence and make up their own minds as befits mature lay Christians.

Over in Charlotte…

The saga continues. Bishop Martin announced, rather abruptly, that the date for the last TLM would be reverted to October rather than falling in July. Speculation is rife as to whether he received a phonecall from Rome, particularly as the pope met earlier the same day with Cardinal Roche. No one knows, but presumably we shall find out sooner or later where the pope actually stands on this matter.

(As to how Leo XIV should reverse the damage caused by Traditionis Custodes, opinions vary. In a piece at National Catholic Register, Edward Pentin interviewed me, Joseph Shaw, Amy Welborn, and others on this question. I was also chuffed to see George Weigel, in “Petrocentrism: A Problem?,” taking up my recent talking point — although without acknowledgment, needless to say — when he urged Catholics: “Let us also do Leo XIV the service of not dissecting every sentence he speaks, every initiative he undertakes, or every appointment he makes as if the Church’s future were hanging in the balance.”)

Understandably, laity are worried about themselves and their families whenever the TLM is threatened or taken away. But how often do we think about the effects anti-liturgical decrees have on priests? Remember, Bishop Martin is still kicking around a document that would strip all Novus Ordos in the diocese of the traditional elements that have survived or been recovered. That’s like tearing off the tattered piece of clothing from an already shivering waif.

In her fine article “Charlotte’s War on Reverence: A Priesthood Undone,” Sarah Cain hits the nail on the head:

An area that hasn’t been considered enough is the effect [of such episcopal diktats] upon priests who have offered their lives in service to God and who now face what can only be described as abuse. In being refused pastoral discretion and personal acts of piety, a priest is denied the fullness of his vocation and is reduced to a mere executor of another man’s frivolous preferences. His role as alter Christus—another Christ—is denied as he is reduced to a mere liturgical functionary.

Those who love God enough to sacrifice themselves for Him lose the ability to celebrate Mass with the reverence that is due—with symbolic acts that reflect their devotion and love of Christ. The priest participates in the power of consecrating the Body and Blood of Christ, which he exercises in the person of Christ. To interfere in this sacred exercise and reduce every element to a diocesan policy, detached from the universal tradition of the Church, is to dishonor the very nature of Holy Orders. Ironically, it is a hyper-clericalism that denies hierarchy....

In attempting to follow their bishop, priests necessarily become the unwilling instrument of pain for their flocks, denying the faithful the reverent Masses that have formed them and in which they find the recognizable sacrifice of Our Lord. Denied even a crucifix on the altar, for the visual representation of Christ is reduced to a “visual impairment,” they are made to stand before their people and perform a gesture that wounds both priest and laity: a liturgy stripped of sacred orientation, emptied of its symbolic transcendence, and recast as a horizontal display. It is a humiliation not only of their priesthood but of their humanity, as they must act against both conscience and formation, offering not what they know to be fitting but what they are told is expedient.

As if to confirm exactly what Sarah wrote, Fr. Michael Rennier of the Oratory of Sts. Gregory & Augustine in St. Louis left this personal testimony in a recent Substack post “Veiling the Sacred”:

All I know is that when I myself encountered the poetics of Holy Mass by stumbling into a liturgy that earnestly sought the fullness of beauty, it changed my entire spiritual life. Before that, I was over-intellectualized, depressed, and struggling with basic theological concepts and virtues. I could see nothing of the God I so desperately wanted to believe in.

When I finally discovered the Traditional Latin Mass of the Catholic Church, everything about the liturgy was veiled. Finally, I knew, here was a mirror to the sacred. I could let my guard down. Finally, a religion that takes the mystery of our creation and destiny seriously enough to hide its blinding light from full view. I could stop fretting about my lack of intellectual understanding and rest in ancient beauty. Finally, a poetic world that truly mediates transcendence. I didn’t understand it, but something in my soul shifted. Through the veil God revealed the hem of his garment.

A friend of mine criticized me the other day for what she perceived as my efforts to “shame” priests into being disobedient to their bishops over the TLM. I told her that my goal is never to make anyone feel ashamed — many priest friends have shared their woes, anxieties, and doubts with me, so I am under no illusions about how difficult it is for a diocesan priest — but rather to try to wake people up to the immense goods that are at stake in the suppression of the TLM and the magnitude of spiritual damage this will cause. I have laid out my reasons for believing that preserving these goods and avoiding this damage are proportionate justification for material disobedience in certain cases, and that there can be not only a right, but a duty, to follow this line.

How important is it to return to tradition, integrally and without apologies? I would say, quite simply, the future health of the Church depends on it. (You might head over to James Green’s “LSD, CIA Ops, and Utopian Optimists Making Deals With the World, the Flesh, and the Devil” to view the charts that indicate how things have been going since the “new springtime” of Vatican II.)

Remember that Fr. James Martin, SJ, in spite of his many grievous and soul-scarring errors (well summarized this week by Timothy Flanders in “Against the Errors of James Martin”), together with a thousand others like him, is still “in good standing” and “full communion,” while priests of the SSPX are not. How is that supposed to work? This is where classical ecclesiology starts to buckle and bend.

Allow me to add here that it’s long past time for Catholics to stop treating SSPX clergy and attendees like pariahs. The Society deserves our gratitude for what they have preserved and made available to countless souls since the 1970s. Without them as a counterweight, many of the “concessions” that have been made to traditionalists over the decades would likely never have come about.

I’m in favor of legitimate pluralism. Let’s call it being tradumenical. At least until this crisis in the Church has passed, we need many different approaches, because that means if one is eliminated or obstructed, maybe the other survives and thrives. But whatever we do, let us love one another and help one another concretely.

Traddy “bad attitudes”?

My friend Phillip Campbell, of Cruachan Hill Press and the ever-helpful Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog, posted on Facebook the following commentary about “traddy bad attitudes.” It’s worth sharing in full:

I occasionally see takes from normie Catholics trying to justify the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass based on the alleged mean-spiritedness of Trads. They will say, “I understand why the Traditional Latin Mass keeps getting restricted. TLM Catholics nurture a ‘holier than thou’ attitude about the rest of the Church. They are disrespectful to the Holy Father and the bishops and hyper-critical about the Novus Ordo. They think they are better than other Catholics.”

Setting aside the question of whether this characterization is true (it isn’t), let us assume for a moment that it was. Let us assume that TLM Catholics do have a generalized “bad attitude” compared to Novus Ordo Catholics. Let us assume they are ‘holier than thou’ and all the other negative epithets attributed to them.

Okay... so what? You think something as subjective and ethereal as “bad attitude” justifies such draconian canonical penalties?

Where in the history of Christendom do you see an entire liturgical rite being suppressed because some people are being mean? Where do we ever see a vast, ritual patrimony being dismantled and ostracized because of the attitudes of its adherents? The proper object of ecclesiastical discipline is the individual, not the liturgical patrimony those individuals happen to worship in. If individuals cross the line, individuals are disciplined, not a liturgy. If you think that the historical liturgical rite of the Latin West should be suppressed because of something like “bad attitude,” then you are the real problem.

Furthermore, to justify the suppression of the TLM based on the alleged meanness of Trads inverts cause and effect. Did you ever stop to think that if Trads are ornery, it’s precisely because the Church continues to persecute them? Because we are thrown out of our parishes, treated as non-persons, and vilified simply for wanting to live the Faith as it was known and lived by our ancestors? I think some of these people really believe the TLM somehow generates Pharisees; they never stop to think that whatever attitude problems may exist within Traddidom come not from the TLM but from the Church’s shabby treatment of them.

Imagine saying, “I can see why that man beats his dog. It’s a mean dog and deserves to be beaten,” and you’ll see how stupid this reasoning is. Of course the Trad dog is bristly; it’s been beaten for over 50 years! Instead of saying it deserves its beatings, how about you try NOT BEATING IT and see the difference it makes?

I do not believe Trads have a ‘holier than thou’ attitude. To the degree they do, they are prideful and need a dose of humility, just like any other individual nursing that delusion. But to suggest that an entire historical rite should be suppressed because of the imperfect humility of some of its adherents — let alone a rite as venerable as the historic Roman rite — is profoundly stupid, and people making such arguments should really just log off.

Thanks for saying it so well.

In fact, the nastiest behaviors I’ve ever encountered were among the anti-trads, especially clerical ones, and especially episcopal ones. If a “bad attitude” deserves suppression, I can’t even imagine what part of the Establishment would be left standing now. The whole hierarchy would fall like a house of cards.

Let me tell you a little story to help illustrate how suckily (if I may use a bit of slang) trads are treated by the Powers That Be.

A lady I know donated substantial sums of money to renovate a church in a traditional direction and bought solemn vestment sets. A new bishop came in and canceled the TLM there and it looks like even the altar rail she paid for will be removed. The same lady used to belong to a congregation in another state that was kicked out of its first location. She invested heavily in the restoration of the second chapel, only to see the community kicked out two years later and sent to a broken-down place no one wanted. The community pooled its resources again and fixed up this place—yet, incredibly, was charged heavy rent for using the space they had beautified. Then, two years later, the community was told to move to yet another chapel.

The same lady said to me that from now on she will be giving only to individual priests she can count on to continue the TLM, and to private chapels that will not be subject to closure or modernization. And I don't blame her one bit. She is doing absolutely the right thing given the circumstances.

Over the years, I’ve heard many, many times about lifelong attendees of the TLM being denied a Requiem Mass in the traditional rite, even when they specifically requested it in their Last Will and Testament, or when their family has offered to take care of all expenses and arrangements. It is just this kind of petty, vindictive, contemptuous, nasty, godless, and Christ-mocking behavior that tempts trads to become bitter. Some people treat their dogs better than this, and I imagine some plantation owners treated their slaves better than this.

Would you be a paragon of angelic virtue in the aforementioned situations? A little angel of sweetness and light, patient and all-forgiving? Think twice before blurting out an affirmative.

I’m not saying, obviously, that we should be bitter; we have to fight against spiritual flaws like anyone else, without giving up what we know is right. I’m only saying that it is perfectly understandable why some traditional Catholics are bitter, weary, angry, caustic, untrustful, skeptical, and all the rest. And until the leaders of the Church reverse the harm they have done and broadly restore access to tradition, their sides will prickle with thorns.

Just to make it clear to you that I know there are some good bishops… Here’s a bit of good news. Last month, His Excellency Ronald Gainer, Bishop Emeritus of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, celebrated a glorious pontifical Mass for the faithful. You can find the photo album here. A bishop doing what bishops should do. Thank you, your Excellency!

Worthy causes

People from bad dioceses often ask me, “What should I tithe to, since my local diocese is utterly unworthy of support?”

We may support anything and everything that advances the mission of the Church. Donate to priestly institutes and religious communities that are firmly founded on tradition: FSSP, ICKSP, IBP, Benedictines of Mary, Carmelite Hermits, Carmelites nuns with TLM, etc. Donate to Catholic pro-life organizations and soup kitchens (if you can be reasonably certain that they are well operated). Give to particular families in need, to support the widows and the orphans.

One such case happened quite recently: a Swedish traditional Catholic who was instrumental in bringing the TLM back to his predominantly Lutheran country was called back to the Lord at the age of 44, fortified by the holy sacraments and surrounded by his loved ones — a death any of us would pray for. May John rest in peace and may the Lord sustain his family in their mourning. His wife and seven children are in urgent need of financial support at this difficult time. Friends of theirs have started a GiveSendGo page. I just gave some of my tithing to this most worthy cause and would encourage others to do so as well.

Astonishingly, the small but zealous trad community in Sweden was able to gain permission from the Lutherans to hold a traditional Solemn Requiem Mass in the Church of Husaby, once upon a time the first Cathedral in Sweden and the place where King Olof Skötkonung was baptised in the year 1000. For the first time in centuries, the stone walls and faithful in the pews witnessed again a true Catholic Requiem — with three of the deceased father’s young boys serving at the altar. It’s astonishing to think that the Lutherans who permitted a traditional Mass in their church are being more generous to tradition-loving Catholics than certain Catholic bishops today, and that this medieval church in its original configuration — including a marvelous rood screen — has been better preserved by Lutherans than it would have been by Catholics had it been theirs to wreck in the 1960s/70s.

Here are some photos:

Getting back to worthy objects of tithing: don’t forget good Catholic schools! As one who taught all my career at small academic institutions, I know how close to destitution most of them are, usually lurching from one month’s payroll to another. Good education can’t be done on the cheap; it’s not only a non-profit model, it's virtually an anti-profit model. Yet nothing is more important than offering sound Catholic liberal education.

Case in point: the Cardinal Newman Academy is doing good work in Virginia but they are in some dire financial need at the moment. A majority of their board, half of their teachers, and close to half the students attend the local FSSP parish in Richmond. So, if you're looking for a tithing option this month or this summer, I can recommend this school.

Riches beyond compare

The riches of the old missal never cease to amaze me. The cycle of each year brings new gems to light.

St. Francis Carraciolo

I guess I’d either never been to Mass on the feast of St. Francis Carraciolo (June 4) or perhaps had been distracted in the past, but I noticed this year how the three orations are just magnificent: they present an entire theology of the Eucharisticized Christian life.

The Collect presents the ascetical predispositions:

O God, Who didst adorn blessed Francis, as the founder of a new order, with the spirit of prayer and the love of penance, grant Thy servants to make such progress in imitating him that, by prayer without ceasing, and by bringing the body into subjection, they may deserve to attain heavenly glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son…

The Secret presents the acquisition of virtues, above all that of charity, which entitles us to be partakers of the Lord’s table:

Grant us, O most merciful Jesus, that, while celebrating the noble virtues of blessed Francis, we, being enkindled with the same fire of charity that burned within him, may be able to stand worthily about Thy sacred table. Who livest and reignest...

Finally, the Postcommunion recalls the union with the sacrificial victim, in which (says St. Thomas) our perfection in the wayfaring state is accomplished, and asks for all the fruits of it to endure:

Let the happy memory of the most holy sacrifice, which we have this day offered unto Thy majesty on the solemn feast of blessed Francis, ever endure in our minds together with its fruits. Through our Lord...

As recent a feast as this is (ca. 1807), it has much to teach the faithful who assist at Mass and make these prayers their own. Of course, it is better yet that these are the prayers raised up to God, who is their intended object; we are only privileged bystanders.

St. Boniface

I imagine the (partially proper) Mass of St. Boniface, apostle of Germany, is very rarely sung, outside of dioceses or countries that have him as patron. Still, at Low Mass, I couldn’t help but be struck by the text of the Communion antiphon, which is so admirably fitted for a time of year in which the feast of the Ascension falls. “To Him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with Me in My throne: as I also have overcome, and am set down with My Father in His throne” (Rev 3:21).

Transitioning to the Pre-55

New Liturgical Movement has begun an important series (first installment here) on how a priest may transition gently and intelligently from the 1962 to the pre-55 Roman Rite. The author is an MC and chanter intimately familiar with the rubrics and ceremonies, with ample experience in the process of restoring, “brick by brick,” the riches that had been lost even before the Council unleashed the giant wrecking ball. Lovers of Tridentine plenitude will not want to miss it. The next three installments will come out on Wednesdays of June. (I’ll include links to them in future roundups.)

Renaissance polyphony

Sheer and utter perfection: Byrd’s Gloria from the Mass for Four Voices. This is the Mass setting (sans Credo) our local choir will be singing for Solemn Mass on Pentecost. My favorite recording is Stile Antico’s, divided here across two tracks:

A special grace was poured forth on the Church in the Renaissance period so that a body of heavenly music like this could be deposited in the Church for all ages to come, even as Gregorian chant was seeded in the preceding millennium to be the backbone of the rite. The rich, leisurely ceremonies and quiet prayers of the old rite welcome this music as fully complementary to the act of paying homage to the Blessed Trinity.

One of the things that is most disturbing about the liturgical revolution is that its sponsors, from Paul VI and Bugnini on down, saw no place for this music anymore; and indeed, their assumptions about the nature of liturgy (horizontal, vernacular, didactic, etc.) and the meaning of active participation have tended and do tend inexorably to push it out or keep it out. This is one of those areas in which no “mutual enrichment” is seriously conceivable or sustainable, as it will be a rare pastor who thinks that having a polyphonic setting of the Gloria or Credo is compatible with the Novus Ordo.

Other noteworthy items

• Glen Sproviero, “Ideology and the Prospect of Christian Postmodernism”

• Are you a Catholic who loves the tradition but feels overwhelmed trying to navigate it alone? A Thomist I know and admire, Matthew DuBroy, has set up a new endeavor, “Aquinas Institute for Christian Perfection,” to serve everyday Catholics—especially parents—who are looking for clarity, depth, and guidance through courses and thoughtful engagement that fit into their busy lives.

• As some may recall, even after the late, great Fr. John Hunwicke died about 13 months ago, several blog posts he had scheduled ahead of time continued to roll out (as he had jokingly said, someday he might be “speaking from beyond the grave”!). Well, turns out he had a draft article ready for when Pope Francis would die, and this has just been published. My word, what a tour-de-force of truth-telling. No holds barred.

• Although the last pope is gone, the legacy of his words and actions remains. A hardcover book is available at Amazon that contains—in English, Italian, Spanish, and French versions—the letter to cardinals that was published on May 2, 2024, summarizing the crimes and heresies of Pope Francis. A valuable publication to have on hand for the historical record.

• Caminante Wanderer asks about the difference between “An Apostolic Church or a ‘Synodality’ Church?”

• Robert Lazu Kmita, “The Catholic Vision of Novalis”

• Robert Keim, “The Age of Faith—and of ‘Mirth and Merriment’”

• Peco and Ruth Gavroski, “Welcome to the Analog Renaissance: The Future Is Trust”

• Dominic Cassella, “The Desert as Polis”

Petals for Pentecost

How delightful! In the words of Michael Foley:

The main use of the Holy Ghost Hole was on Pentecost. During the chanting of the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, communities came up with creative ways to mimic the descent of the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the first disciples. The eminent scholar of feasts and customs Fr. Francis X. Weiser, SJ writes:

“In some towns of central Europe people even went so far as to drop pieces of burning wick or straw from the Holy Ghost Hole, to represent the flaming tongues of Pentecost. This practice, however, was eventually stopped because it tended to put the people on fire externally, instead of internally as the Holy Spirit had done at Jerusalem.”

France had a safer if not cleaner solution. In the thirteenth century, several cathedrals released real white pigeons that flew around inside while roses were dropped from the Holy Ghost Hole. The records do not show how the pigeons were collected afterwards, or who had to clean up the birds’ own contributions to the floor and pews.

Another option was lowering a blue disc the size of a wagon wheel with the figure of a white dove painted on it. The disc would swing in ever-widening circles as it descended. Some places even provided sound effects, imitating the noise made by the Holy Spirit’s appearance in the Upper Room with trumpets, windbags, hissing, humming, and rattling benches. It too was followed by a shower of rose petals.

Rose petals, in fact appear to have been the most popular (and reasonable) practice.

Read the rest there, complete with pictures.

Thank you for reading, and may you have a very blessed Pentecost!