Cupich on taking away the traditional Latin Mass

• The gift of Traditionis Custodes. From Nov. 4, 2021.

That gift's going right in the garbage, Your Eminence, because I sure don't want it. Even though I haven't been to a traditional Latin Mass (TLM) in three years. With lots of background in it from the mid-1980s to early 1990s, I went to an approved diocesan one nearly every Sunday for most of the 2010s, perfectly fine co-existing with the Novus Ordo in Benedict XVI's accurate English. You can even like more than one kind of church service, you know.

Blase Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, drove out the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, known for doing the TLM in a showy baroque Counter-Reformation style, by ordering them to use the Novus Ordo. A Bergoglian through and through, "standing above the word of God or, as a source of revelation, right next to it."

tl;dr: The present-day revival of the traditional Latin Mass in the Roman Catholic Church has been a BAIT-AND-SWITCH all along. Cupich says so.

For our argument right now, let's call it a rite, which is a whole culture, a school of Christian thought and living, the style of worship services reflecting that. So according to the cardinal himself, this recent Roman game has been to give you back this rite, beautiful services and customs that Catholicism gradually developed over generations, mostly in the Middle Ages but going back to antiquity, then when you're happy with it, even liking it better than others, it pulls out the rug from under you, gaslighting/shaming you as stupid and sinful for liking it, all to get you with the program, which is, the word that comes to my mind, a fascistic and un-historical uniformity of rite. Which by the way is exactly how Latin bishops in America like him treated people of Eastern rites around 1900. John Ireland vs. Alexis Toth.

The plan was and still is to take your (sub-) rite away and funnel you into the Novus Ordo. I'm talking to you, Anglican Use ordinariates, the TLM's half-siblings since Catholic Anglicans started mimicking the Roman Catholic Church in the 1800s. Hint: you can't have married priests after the converts.

The word to watch out for is unity, unity, unity in the church. Do it or you're not Catholic.

I'm willing to be kicked off the team for this Mass.

I didn't start this schism.

The implied false narrative: there was one form of the Roman Rite, then there was this abuse having two forms, which thank God the Pope is clearing up. Actually there have been many local traditional missals and breviaries all at the same time.

Like the mainline Protestants nobody takes seriously, the Novus Ordo is more pliable for Clown World, the global American empire. The churchmen pushing it hate and FEAR the old Mass, a powerful backhanded witness. They're patronizing to the Eastern rites because they don't take them seriously and they half-remember ecumenism being cool; actually they're very provincial. Anyway, the rulers of Clown World don't care about liberal churches. They don't need them.

A third principle is the role of the bishop as the sole moderator, promoter and guardian of all liturgical life in his diocese.

Nice try at sounding patristic high-church. But provably a lie. "The sole moderator, promoter, and guardian of all liturgical life in his diocese" if he does what the Roman Dicastery of Divine Worship etc. tells him to.

By the way, "high church" originally referred to church authority, not ceremonial. The Anglican Oxford Movement dons didn't bring back Mass vestments and the "eastward position" Catholic liberals hate — "the priest has his back turned" — until very late.

Regarding Lumen Gentium at Vatican II, I don't see how acknowedging goodness in non-Catholics acting in good faith or promoting lay apostolates necessitates rewriting worship services and reordering sanctuaries. More a cultural malady as described by Thomas Day, the great explainer of the Roman Church in the English-speaking world, good and bad, old and new. Teach people to chant the old services!

Pastorally fulfilling the aims of TC will require that we as pastors accompany people in coming to an understanding of the link between the way we worship and what we believe,keeping in mind the Holy Father’s desire that pastors are to lead the faithful to the sole use of the reformed liturgical books.

They'll accompany the f*ck out of you.

Accompaniment may take the form of visiting with the faithful who have regularly attended Mass and celebrated sacraments with the earlier rituals to help them understand the essential principles of renewal called for in the Second Vatican Council.

Re-education classes. Not for Fr. James Martin; for YOU, freakshow.

It must also involve helping people appreciate how the reformed Mass introduces them to a greater use of scripture.

Rubbish. The TLM is chock full of scripture, the minor propers tying into the lessons and the Sunday or kind of feast. More important, people don't remember a lesson they only read or hear once every two or three years. Traditional cycles of readings — such as classic Roman, Orthodox, and classic Anglican — are for one year because it works; people learn better that way. Nowadays, if the service is in the old international language, Latin, they can follow along in a book, and many/most traditional priests repeat the lessons in the vernacular from the pulpit before the sermon.

Accompaniment may also mean creatively including in the Mass reformed by the Council elements which people have found nourishing in celebrating the earlier form of the Mass, which has already been an option, e.g., reverent movement and gestures, use of Gregorian chant, Latin and incense, and extended periods of silence within the liturgy.

Condescension. Nobody will be taught to do high-church Novus Ordo. Quite the opposite. You've baited-and-switched these people once; what's stopping you doing it again? Because of the convenient one-true-church claim you have no use for otherwise, you've got these people over a barrel. The rule is they have to keep coming to you for church no matter how you treat them.

I once wrote of the sunset of Catholic Anglicanism, "well, chaps, we had a good run."

The traditional Latin Mass famously won't die — now it's mostly young people. But, mackerel snappers, we've been had.

P.S. The blog WPI, where I found the link to this piece: "Where Pachamama Is." (I didn't come up with that.)