Washington D.C., Oct 30, 2017 / 04:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One fated Halloween, 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle in a dramatic act of defiance against the Catholic Church.
Or, he may have just hung it on the doorknob. Or mailed out copies.
Or, if he did nail it, the act of the nailing itself would not have been all that significant, because the door may have been used as a bulletin board where everyone was nailing announcements.
And he probably wasn’t all that defiant; he likely had the attitude of a scholar trying to raise questions and concerns. At that point, Luther didn’t know how defiant he would eventually become, or that his act, and his subsequent theological work, would lead to one of the greatest disruptions of unity in the Church’s history.
“This was not a declaration of war against the Catholic Church, nor was it a break,” Dr. Alan Schreck with Franciscan University of Steubenville told CNA.
“It was a concerned, Augustinian monk and biblical scholar correcting an abuse, and it was really a call for a dialogue.”
However, it took fewer than five years for this call for dialogue to transform into schism, rejection of the authority of the Church’s tradition and bishops and most of the sacraments, and a growing number of Protestant communities, united only by their rejection of the Catholic Church.
While historians debate just how dramatic was the actual posting of the 95 theses, its anniversary is an occasion to look back at what the role of the most popular Protestant was in the movement that ultimately split Western Christendom in two.
Who was Martin Luther?
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, the oldest son of Hans and Margarethe Luther. His father, a successful business and civic leader, had grand visions for his eldest son’s life and sent him to school with the hopes he would become a lawyer.
While Luther completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree according to his father’s plan, he dropped out of law school, finding himself increasingly drawn to the subjects of philosophy and theology.
Soon after leaving law school, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery, a decision he would later attribute to a vow he made during a precarious horseback ride, when he was nearly struck by lightning in the midst of a storm. Terrified that he was about to die, the 21-year-old Luther cried out to St. Anne, promising that he would become a monk if he survived. He felt it was a vow he could not break; his father felt it was a waste of his education.
By all accounts, Luther was a Catholic success story before he became the leading figure of the Reformation. He joined the monastery in 1505, and by 1507 he was ordained a priest. He became a renowned theologian and biblical scholar within the order, as well as a powerful and popular preacher and lecturer at the University of Wittenberg in Germany.
During his years of study and growing popularity, Luther began developing the groundwork of his theology on salvation and scripture that would ultimately become deal-breakers in his relationship with the Catholic Church.
The offense of selling indulgences
But it wasn’t strictly theological ideas that first drove Luther to the ranks of reformation ringleader – it was his critique of the practice of selling indulgences, the central subject of his 95 theses, that catapulted him into the limelight.
According to Catholic teaching, an indulgence is the remission of all or part of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been forgiven, and can be applied either to the person performing the prescribed act or to a soul in Purgatory.
To obtain an indulgence, one must complete certain spiritual requirements, such as going to the sacraments of Confession and Communion, in addition to some other act or good work, such as making a pilgrimage or doing a work of mercy.
But even years before Martin Luther, abuses of indulgences were rampant in the Church.
Instead of prescribing an act of prayer or a work of mercy as a way to obtain an indulgence, clerics began also authorizing a “donation” to the Church as a good work needed to remit the temporal punishment due to sin.
Increasingly, people grew critical of the sale of indulgences, as they watched money gleaned from people’s afterlife anxiety go to fund the extravagant lives of some of the clergy. The money was also often used to buy clerical offices, the sin of simony.
During Martin Luther’s time, in northern Germany, the young and ambitious prince-Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg was offered the position of the Archbishop of Mainz, but was unwilling to relinquish any of his previously-held power.
Meanwhile in Rome, Pope Leo X was demanding a considerable fee from Albrecht for his new position, as well as from the people of his dioceses for the fund to build St. Peter’s Basilica. Albrecht took out a loan and promised Rome 50 percent of the funds extracted from – as critics would describe it – preying on people’s fear of Purgatory.
For the St. Peter’s fund, the Pope had employed Dominican friar Johann Tetzel to be the Grand Commissioner for Indulgences for the country of Germany.
According to historians, Tetzel liberally preached the indulgence, over-promising remission of sins, extending it to include even future sins one might commit, rather than sins that had already been repented of and confessed. He even allegedly coined the gimmicky indulgence phrase: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from Purgatory springs.”
It was Tetzel’s activities that ultimately pushed Luther to protest by publishing his 95 theses.
The 95 theses and the seeds of reform
“When he posted the 95 theses, he wasn’t a Lutheran yet,” said Michael Root, professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America.
“In some ways they get things rolling, but what’s important is what happens after the 95 theses when Luther gets pushed into a more radical position.”
Regardless of how dramatically they were posted to the door of Wittenberg Castle on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed not only his theses but the feelings of many faithful at the time who were also frustrated with the corruption and abuse they saw in the Church.
Christian humanists such as Erasmus and St. Thomas More were contemporaries of Luther who also objected to abuses within Church while not breaking from it.
Meanwhile, Luther’s already-established reputation as a respected professor, as well as access to the printing press, allowed his theses and ideas to spread at a rate previously unmatched by previous reformers who had similar critiques of the Church.
“Clearly there was a kind of symbiosis between Luther and the development of the printing press,” Root said. “What he was writing was able to engage lots of people. Many of them were short pamphlets that could be printed up quickly, they sold well…so he was on the cutting edge of technology and he fit what the technology needed – short, energetic things people wanted to read.”
Most historians agree that Luther’s original intent was not to start a new ecclesial community – that idea would have been “unthinkable at the time,” Root noted. ??“So that’s too much to say; however, it’s too little to say all he want to do was reform abuses.”
By 1518, his theses spread throughout Germany and intellectual Europe. Luther also continued writing prolifically, engaging in disputes with Tetzel and other Catholic critics and further developing his own ideas.
For its part, the Church did not issue an official response for several years, while attempts at discussions dissolved into defensive disputations rather than constructive dialogue. As a result, early opportunities to engage Luther’s criticisms on indulgences instead turned into arguments about Church authority as a whole.
Swatting flies with a sledgehammer – Luther becomes a Lutheran
One of Luther’s most well-known critics was Catholic theologian Johann Eck, who declared Luther’s theses heretical and ordered them to be burned in public.
In 1519, the two sparred in a disputation that pushed Luther to his more extreme view that scripture was the only valid Christian authority, rather than tradition and the bishops.
“The Catholic critics quickly changed the subject from indulgences to the question of the Church’s authority in relation to indulgences, which was a more dangerous issue,” Root said. “Now you’re getting onto a touchy subject. But there was also an internal dynamic of Luther’s own thought,” that can be seen in his subsequent writings.
In 1520, Luther published three of his most renowned treatises: The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, On the Freedom of a Christian Man, and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.
By that time, it was clear that what Luther thought was wrong in the Church was not just the abuse of indulgences, but the understanding of the message of Christianity on some basic levels. Besides denouncing the Pope as a legitimate authority, Luther also declared that faith alone, sola fide, was all that was necessary for salvation, rather than faith and good works.
“Luther was definitely trying to fix what was a legitimate problem, which was pelagian tendencies, or people trying to work their way into heaven,” said Dr. Paul Hilliard, Assistant Professor and Chair of Church History at Mundelein Seminary. It had created a “mercantile attitude” in some people at the time of Luther – “if I do this, God will do this.”
“So Luther was trying to correct these things, but the phrase I sometimes say is that Luther swatted the fly of pelagianism with a sledgehammer. In order to keep any trace of humans earning salvation out of the system, he changed the system.”
Luther’s distrust of human beings did not particularly spring from his criticisms of indulgences and the subsequent pushback from the Church – it was in line with most anthropological thought at the time, which tended toward a very negative view of human nature. Therefore, in his Protestant views, he sought to get rid of any human involvement wherever possible – particularly when it came to interpreting scripture and salvation.
“On the scale of beasts to angels, most people (at the time) would have us a lot closer to beasts,” Hilliard noted.
The Catholic Church officially condemned Luther’s theses in a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, promulgated in June 1520, and in part authored by Eck. The declaration afforded Luther a 60-day window to recant his positions, lest he be excommunicated.
But by the time the papal bull was issued, Luther had not only denounced the authority of the Pope, but had declared him an anti-Christ. The window for reconciling views was all but closed.
The popular and political reforms
Despite Luther’s increasingly radical claims against the Pope and the Church, his popularity spread, due to his compelling and prolific writings and, to Luther’s dismay, his populist appeal.
Luther popularized the idea of a “priesthood of all believers” to the exclusion of an ordained, ministerial priesthood. Rather than bearing an indelible mark on their soul, in Luther’s view ministerial priests did not differ from the “priesthood of believers” except in office and work. This, along with his personality and background, appealed to the poor and working class of the time who were frustrated with the lavish lives of Church hierarchy, which typically came at the expense of the poor in rural areas.
“Luther was very much a populist, he was a man of the people, he was scruff, he came from sort of peasant stock, he spoke the language of the people, so I think a lot of the common people identified with him,” Shreck said.
“He was one of them, he wasn’t far away in Rome or a seemingly wealthy bishop or archbishop…so he appealed particularly to Germans because he wanted a German liturgy and a German bible, and the people said, ‘we want a faith that is close to us and accessible’.”
But Luther balked when his religious ideals spurred the Peasant’s War of 1525, as peasants in rural areas of German revolted, motivated by Luther’s religious language of equality. The year or so of subsequent bloody war seemed to justify those who dismissed Luther as nothing more than a social movement rather than a serious religious reformer.
In order to maintain the esteem of those higher up, Luther disavowed the unruly peasants as not part of the official reform movement, laying the groundwork for the Anabaptists to fill in the religious gaps for the peasants in the future.
However, the Peasant’s War wasn’t the only time the Reformation got political – or lethal. Because of the vacuum of authority that now existed in Luther’s pope-less, emerging ecclesial community, authority was handed over to the local princes, who took advantage of the reformation to break from the fee-demanding Pope.
Much of Germany had embraced Lutheranism by the mid 1500s, though some parts, such as Bavaria, retained their Catholic faith.
For his part, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V officially condemned Luther’s theology at the 1521 Diet of Worms, a meeting of German princes, during which Luther famously refused to recant his position with the words: “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”
Despite Charles V’s opposition to Luther’s views, he allowed for Luther’s safe passage from the diet, rather than enforcing the customary execution of heretics, and thus forfeited his best chance for stomping out the Reformation at its roots.
Historians speculate that while Charles V personally opposed Luther’s views, he let him live because he also saw the decentralizing of power from the Vatican as something of which he could take political advantage.
Reformation fever was also catching throughout Europe, and soon Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and England were all following Germany’s example of breaking from the Catholic Church and establishing state-run, Protestant ecclesial communities.
“I like to think of the story with the little Dutch boy with his the finger in the dyke,” Shreck said. “Once the breach was made, others follows his example. Once Luther did it, it was like the domino effect.”
“In a book by Owen Chadwick, he said the Reformation came not because Europe was irreligious, but because it was fervently religious,” Shreck added. “This was after the black death and a lot of social turmoil – people really wanted to turn to God and seek solace in faith.”
But the reformers were not all agreed on their beliefs, which led to the rise of numerous sects of Protestantism, including Calvinism, Anglicanism, and Anabaptism.
“Protestantism became very divided, though they all claimed to be doing the right thing because they believed they were maintaining the purity of the faith,” Schreck said.
Root noted that once the Protestant-Catholic divide “got embedded in political differences, between southern Europe and northern Europe, between Spain and England, and so the religious differences also became national differences, that just made matters far worse.”
“Once you have the wars of religion in 1546, then attitudes become very harsh. Once you start killing each other, it’s hard to sit down and talk,” he added.
The wars over religion would become especially pronounced in the 30 Years War of the 1600s, though at that point, religion had become more of a political tool for the state, Hilliard said.
“The 30 Years War is a really good indication that while religion was important, it was not the most important thing – it was a war between different competing princes to gain greater control of territories, during which religion was thrown into the mix,” Hilliard noted.
Could the Reformation have been avoided?
The million-dollar question at the center of Reformation history is whether the Reformation and the splitting of Western Christendom could have been avoided.
“Some would say by two years into the Reformation, the theological differences already ran very deep and there was no way you were going to get reconciliation,” Root said.
“But there are others who would argue that as late as the 1540s it was still possible that perhaps the right set of historical circumstances could have brought people together, and there’s no way of knowing, because you can’t run history again and change the variables.”
“Whether one could have settled it all then short of war, there were missed opportunities for reconciliation, that’s clear,” he added.
Luther’s fiery and rebellious personality, matched with the defiant and defensive stance that the Catholic Church took in response to his ideas, created a perfect storm that cemented the Protestant-Catholic divide.
Much of Luther’s thinking remained Catholic throughout his life, Schreck noted, including his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
“I think if there had been a sincere effort on the part of the Catholic hierarchy that his concerns were legitimate, history might have gone in a different direction.”
It wasn’t until Pope Paul III (1534–1549), 17 years after the fated theses first made their rounds, that the Catholic Church as a whole took a serious and official look at its own need for reform, and its need to respond to the Protestant Reformation.
This is Part 1 in a three-part series on the Reformation. Part 2 will discuss the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation. Part 3 will discuss ecumenism today.
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And every cardinal who values his career more than the faith and the good of the Church is complicit with this catastrophic papacy. These, who donned red to display a willingness to be martyrs for the faith, are nothing more than cowardly careerists and lapdogs. They can’t even stand up to the threat within. Shame on them. As for Bergoglio, he is beyond hope.
I don’t know if Francis is consciously trying to wire the next conclave that elects his successor, but the appointment as Cardinals of such stalwarts as Cupich, Tobin, McElroy, etc. certainly make you wonder.
CWR’s stated policy:
“…comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published.”
You cannot possibly hold us to this impossible standard when the topic we are addressing is the crepuscular, assiduous, blepharitic mess Bergoglio has made of our beloved 2,000-year-old Church in a mere ten years.
It’s positively Jesuitical.
For the love of Christ what successes are you talking about. Success of a pope should be to let the truth of Christ shine forth, to unite the Church and to greatly increase the number of believers because of the mesmerizing proclamation of the love of Christ our Incarnate God Redeemer the Savior of humankind without chipping away at the holy faith deposit that we already treasure in the Church while instead he supports the rebels who defy the truth to replace it with their own will of evil desires. This papacy is a “nightmare”.
Well done.
deeply apologize to CWR and its readers for the language used in my earlier comment.
The people of God should never have to be subjected to a glutenous, tumescent term like, “Jesuitical,” or any of its fatuous derivatives.
The beauty of irony!
Evangelization is his forte. In our time, when it comes to evangelization, Pope Francis is second to none. Cardinals, bishops, priests, religious women, men, and each and every person of goodwill keep wishing the Pontiff good health and long life.
How do you come by your assessment that evangelization is his greatest forte? Evangelization is more than words or good intentions; its success can only be judged by its fruits. Please enlighten us.
Evangelization? Perhaps no pope in history has done more to attempt to drive believing Catholics out of the Church. May God deliver us from this appalling fraud of a papacy!
Why then, I wonder, does Mass attendance continue to decline and vocations to the priesthood and religious life drop as well?
How dreary! While disproportionate kudos are given to Papa, Jesus is left outside the door! Yet, Papa is in need of constant pick-me-ups and your just the man to provide them!
I’m going on memory but was it about a year ago there was an article where the author interviewed about 30 US bishops off the record. One of the questions was “Are you aware of any seminarians who entered the seminary because of being inspired by Pope Francis?” To a man, the answer was “No.”
You are, I think, referring to Francis X. Meier and this piece from two years ago: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/02/somebody-needs-to-be-dad
Carl – you da man. Here is the relevant quote: “When pressed, none of the bishops I queried could report a single diocesan seminarian inspired to pursue priestly life by the current pope. None took any pleasure in acknowledging this.”
Yes, it’s a brief but important piece by Fran. And my own experience, talking to a smaller number of bishops, is the same.
Sadly, with many young men – including my own youngest son – the “Francis effect” has been the opposite. They do not even want to think of the priesthood until knowing that Francis is gone, and that his successor is not made in his image.
Through the action (and inaction) of Pope Francis, the true state of our beloved Catholic Church has been revealed. There may be a few more closets or secret dungeons yet to be opened, but it seems to me it’s all out there on full display. Doctors will wait for the full condition of their patient to declare before taking action. There’s a whole lot of declaring going on right now!
All of the priests and bishops who shock and amaze us on an almost daily basis have been priests and bishops for many years, much longer than a decade. And those that the Pope has “elevated” and “honored” are bathed in glaringly bright lights. This wasn’t the case before. Men and women of goodwill will do good no matter where they are placed.
We’re all sitting on the edge of our seats, watching closely, listening attentively. Could this be “The Francis Effect”?
Actions speak louder than words, and his actions give the lie to his words.
“Persons in the prince’s orbit not only subject to his power but dependent upon it are willing to let the prince do what he will, so long as he would not harm them. Pope Francis has taken that to heart” (extract of Altieri).
Prince Francis does what he wants independent of opinion. Intimidation and feeling safe extend beyond his inner circle of glorified rogues to the ordinaries in the field, many of them good men who lost their voice.
What else with the Church as it has become. If anything, I repeat what was apparent from the start of the German Synodale Weg operetta, that the outrages there were the prelude for the great stage opera the Synod on Synodality.
At present there’s widespread confusion in what to believe as a Christian. That will be clarified 2024 to mean that there really are no permanent beliefs to be confused about. All that will be required is merciful tolerance of sin, quickly becoming, by then an irrelevant word, and inclusiveness no longer required to be called radical.
That’s not to say all will go along, there certainly will be resistance. And with that resistance, our loyalty to the eternal Word there certainly will be greater hope for justification before Christ’s judgment. Our compassionate mission, effort for conversion of the misled.
I like to look at the brighter side of things. Upon the Second Coming of Jesus, Jesus will wipe away His Bride, the Catholic Church’s, every tear, and there will be Peace on Earth. Hallelujah! What Jesus tells us to look for, which will indicate His Second Coming, is the Matthew 24:15 “the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place”. Both Jesus and the Blessed Mother, through locutions to St. Faustina, have confirmed that Jesus is, in fact, now Coming.
To survive ‘The Great Tribulation’ which comes when we see the, Matthew 24:15 “the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place”, is to flee to Jesus’, recently instituted, year 2000, gifts of Divine Mercy Sunday. “a person on the housetop must not go down to get things out of his house, a person in the field must not return to get his cloak”.
Please receive Jesus Gifts of Divine Mercy Sunday, this April 16th, in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus! Jesus will Rule on earth for tens of thousands of years, and those Catholics in a State of Grace, will live in paradise on earth, married to Jesus.
Matthew 24:15 The Great Tribulation
“When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, a person on the housetop must not go down to get things out of his house, a person in the field must not return to get his cloak. Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days. Pray that your flight not be in winter or on the sabbath, for at that time there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will be.
Divine Mercy in My Soul, 965
Jesus looked at me and said, Souls perish in spite of My bitter Passion. I am giving them the last hope of salvation; that is, the Feast of My Mercy. If they will not adore My mercy, they will perish for all eternity. Secretary of My mercy, write, tell souls about this great mercy of Mine, because the awful day, the day of justice, is near.
Divine Mercy in My Soul, 699
I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which grace flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet.
Divine Mercy in My Soul, 635, The Blessed Virgin Mary :
… you have to speak to the world about His great mercy and prepare the world for the Second Coming of Him who will come, not as a merciful Savior, but as a just Judge. Oh, how terrible is that day! Determined is the day of justice, the day of divine wrath. The angels tremble before it. Speak to souls about this great mercy while it is still the time for [granting] mercy. If you keep silent now, you will be answering for a great number of souls on that terrible day.
http://www.apocalypseangel.com/married.html
Ron above – Yes, Francis Maier.
Fr. Fessio of Ignatius Press also said recently, I believe on EWTN, that there are JPII priests and BXVI priests but there are no Francis priests. Doesn’t it say somewhere, “By their fruits you shall know them”?
The image of humility paying for his bill getting on the bus and the only really good thing: the year of mercy! After that the Vatican version of an Eton mess! The put downs, the angry fist waving,the castigating of those who love tradition as mentally deranged and other things! I wonder what is Catholicism any more? Just to have a good holy Pope and give us solid spiritual food rather than the gruel currently on offer!!!!
These past ten years Pope Francis has repeatedly reminded Catholics that the Church’s Pro-Life teaching and active care extends through the whole range of life from womb to tomb as this quotation from his apostolic exhortation, “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World,” exemplifies: “Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.” (Gaudete et Exsultate 101)
“On the call to holiness”! One sentence for the “defense of the unborn” and back to his principal cardinal message: tend to the poor! THE CALL TO HOLINESS for Bergoglio is to take care of the poor. After he was elected pope he chose the name Francis because Saint “Francis loved the poor”. Wrong, Saint Francis, the Poverello, wanted to be the poorest one because by the love of God he was on fire for Christ called the seraphic saint. Certainly, we have to give alms and fight injustice but as Jesus said to Saint Faustina: “I demand deeds of mercy…for love of Me.” “For it is love that I desire” (Hosea 6:6). “that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them” (Jn 18:26) HE is the King of Glory and the God of love. He made us for his glory and that is what brought forth saints and martyrs. Georgio Bergoglio said when he was young, he wanted to be a politician or a priest. He might have been a great politician.
For a regular Catholic in the pew like me with a little knowledge of theology, the most significant and meaningful act made by Pope Francis was the suppression of the pre-Vatican II Mass. He abrogated Benedict XVI’s decree Summorum Pontificum, which allowed any priest to celebrate the old Mass. Essentially, Francis declared this a failed experiment. Instead of leading to the mutual enrichment of two different forms of the Roman rite, the older form was being abused as a rallying point for opposition to the Second Vatican Council. Francis rescinded Benedict’s permission, reverting to the status quo under Paul VI and John Paul II: each bishop can decide — within the authority granted to them by the Church’s universal norms — to what extent to allow the older form, and even then only in chapels, not parish churches. Francis’s stated goal is to have all Latin Rite Catholics worship together with the reformed Roman Rite called for by Vatican II. While the severity of his decision surprised almost everyone, the Pope feels it is his duty, as Bishop of Rome, to ensure the full implementation of the Second Vatican Council. The Council demanded, for good theological reasons, that the Church’s rituals be reformed.
Sorry, but I can’t see the connection between Sacrosanctum Concilium, VII’s document on the liturgy, and the decision of Francis to revoke his predecessor’s generosity in allowing Mass to be celebrated in the old rite. The decision seems more motivated by the Pope’s personal dislike for the TLM than by any legitimate pastoral consideration.
Dictionary please.
F. Connell
Summorum Pontificum was no experiment. It was a righting of a wrong by eliminating an illegal restriction on the celebrating of the TLM, that illegal construct called an indult. You seem to have unquestionably accepted the argument that just because one attends the TLM that one rejects VII. The two are not necessarily related.
Read the ancient church document Quo Primum. As I have posted here in the past I state again; an enemy of the Mass of the Ages is an agent of Satan. I pray for the conversion of the Pope’s soul.
Joseph Meynier:
I invite you to get a copy of and read the book: “The Pope, The Council, and The Mass” by James Likoudis and Kenneth Whitehead. There is a chapter about “Quo Primum.” You’ll be enlightened about the reformed Mass of Vatican II as indeed containing elements of both continuity and change (reform, or actually more of return to the original and more ancient sources) of the Mass of the Ages: its essence of being the memorial sacrifice of Christ remains and has not changed, while its ceremonial flow and ritual order has been reformed. What is even of happy development for us the laity is the retrieval of the more ancient understanding that got lost in the passage of church history about the “celebrant” of the Mass being the whole gathered assembly participating in the priesthood of Christ with the priest as “presider.” Today we don’t call the priest “celebrant,” for we all who are gathered for Mass are the “celebrant.” I hope you spend time in study and prayer in reading the book.
But once again: Why does any of this preclude the celebration of Mass according to the TLM?
F.Connell, some of us would prefer to have both the Novus Ordo and the traditional Mass. Neither is perfect. Why does Francis need to directly contradict his far more learned, experienced and intelligent predecessor? What could possibly be the problem with having two forms of the Latin Rite Mass for a while?
Is the Novus Ordo so bad that it can’t survive if any competition to it allowed? Is that why only a minority of Catholics attend Mass anymore? I don’t think so but then why is Francis so upset that he wants to suppress the competition? The TLM Mass is always crowded on Sundays and always has families with young children.
Is Francis upset that there are still Catholics that believe that not going to Mass on Sunday is a mortal sin?
As Weigel has said it is hard to understand why Francis would be so upset with the TLM and shows no concern with the enormous drop in attendance at Mass on Sundays.
Please read my first comment above. And if you want to know the Pope’s reasons, please read the actual text of Traditiones Custodes (easily accessible online!), not the commentators.
Your first comment above which has the obvious error where you said that TC reverts to the “status quo”… “where “each bishop can decide”? That status quo no longer exists. Bishops now need temporary permission granted from the Vatican to allow the TLM. Any TLM Mass is not even allowed to be mentioned in the parish bulletin. Was that the policy of John Paul II? I guess you also think that the gutting of the JPII Institute by Francis was also what JPII would have wanted.If you are not even aware of the simple facts how could anyone trust that you have any understanding at all of the new policy on the TLM of Francis?