Denver Newsroom, Mar 18, 2021 / 05:04 pm (CNA).- New “models” of early human embryos that cannot grow into full human beings provoke ethical questions about whether they are human beings. One ethicist warns that research should be halted out of caution until more is known, because of the ethical dangers and temptations in the experiments.
“Scientists face the perennial temptation to depersonalize early human life, and to treat embryos as objects. Human beings are so sacred, that we must particularly reverence them in their origins, in the way they come into the world,” Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a National Catholic Bioethics Center staff ethicist with a background in medical research, told CNA March 18.
“Researchers should err on the side of caution, because it remains always and everywhere wrong to create young human beings in petri dishes or laboratory glassware,” he said. “Doing so indicates a disordered eagerness to manipulate early human life and a willingness to exploit our own human offspring at the earliest stages of their existence.”
Two different research teams have created human embryo-like entities by creating hollow balls of cells that resemble blastocysts, called blastoids. The blastocyst stage is normally about five to six days after conception, at which time the developing embryo has rapidly dividing cells, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“The recently-reported human blastoids are pieced together out of stem cells, and at this point, they appear to be very embryo-like, though the jury is still out on whether they could ever be fully functional or complete human embryos,” Pacholczyk said.
The models are different enough from naturally conceived embryos that they will never become a viable fetus or baby, but they are very close to functioning like the early stages of a human being, National Public Radio reports.
The research could contribute to understanding how a single cell grows into a fully formed human being, and could help develop treatment for genetic diseases and prevent birth defects, miscarriages, or infertility problems.
The exact nature and ethical status of the models themselves is unclear, some observers said.
Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice University, told NPR she was concerned about “growing these sort-of humans in a test tube and not even considering the fact that they are so close to being human.”
Pacholczyk was similarly concerned.
“One of the ethical questions around such experiments is whether researchers may actually be making a handicapped, but genuine, human embryo, a young human that is doomed to death as he or she grows because of various defects in the way they were originally constituted by researchers,” he said, comparing the experiments to creating a child with a serious defect that kills them at a young age.
“If it were true that researchers are producing ‘disabled’ human embryos, entities that genuinely partake of our human form and essence, this would involve serious moral objections.”
“Because we don’t know yet whether we are creating crippled embryos in this way, we should be careful, and not perform these experiments using human cells,” he said. “Rather they should be done exclusively in animals, including non-human primates, to help us figure out, with reasonable certainty, whether any human entities we might later make would be human creatures or not.”
Jun Wu, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, led one research team’s experimental model development, while Jose Polo, a developmental biologist at Monash University in Australia, led a different team.
Polo’s team created blastoid models from adult skin cells, while Wu’s team created models using a combination of induced-pluripotent stem cells from adult human cells and human embryonic stem cells. The use of human embryonic stem cells has drawn ethical scrutiny from critics, including Catholic critics, because the cells are derived from the destruction of human embryos.
Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University and Harvard University, told National Public Radio that the models are so close to being a human embryo that they raise “a very interesting question of, at what point does an embryo model become a real embryo.”
“This work is absolutely unnerving for many people because it really challenges our tidy categories of what life is and when life begins,” Hyun continued. “This is what I call the biological-metaphysical time machine.”
In Pacholczyk’s view, the experiments described extend a mindset accepting of in vitro fertilization. The Catholic Church has long said this “is never acceptable as a way to engender new human life.”
“Regrettably, developmental biologists, such as Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science, are rationalizing precisely this kind of embryo experimentation by saying that researchers have already been destructively studying early embryos from IVF clinics for so long that there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it,” the ethicist added.
“He is advocating a very disturbing idea, namely, that of growing embryos and/or embryo-like entities ‘until day 40 and then disposing of it’,” said Pacholczyk. “He proposes, ‘Instead of getting tissues from abortions, let’s take a blastocyst and grow it.’
Hyun, one of the embryo model researchers, agrees on the need for clear ethical guidelines. However, he supports revisions to an international guideline that allows embryonic human experimentation on embryos up to 14 days old. He wants more exceptions “case by case in an incremental fashion,” he told NPR.
There is “growing pressure” to eliminate the 14-day rule in order to grow embryos for longer periods, Pacholczyk told CNA.
“Those who originally set up the 14-day rule devised a clever stratagem to offer lip service to the moral status of the human embryo, while enabling serious human rights violations to proceed apace in the world of embryology,” he said. “The 14-day rule objectively demonstrates no more respect for vulnerable humanity than would a declaration by the National Institutes of Health that researchers will now be permitted to do lethal experimental research on newborns up to the age of 14 months. Whether 14-days, 14-months, or anywhere in between, such ‘rules’ remain contrivances to justify the most unethical kinds of science and to allow for the exploitation of our own vulnerable human offspring.”
The U.S. National Institutes of Health funds work on human embryo-like structures but must follow a federal provision called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which bars government funding for research that creates or destroys human embryos.
Some researchers are pushing for this amendment to be changed, including some who aim to create synthetic human embryos, Nature reported in January 2020.
Catholic authorities have consistently rejected destructive human embryo research. In May 2017, Pope Francis told a gathering of Huntington’s disease patients and their families, “we know that no ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos.”
The October 2020 issue of Ethics & Medics, a commentary published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, also discusses the ethics of embryo models in an article by Kevin Wilger, a research engineer.
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Why is Pope Francis so judgmental, clerical and hateful?
His Holiness Francis says the liturgical restrictions were to promote a Lérinean deepening with age. As to what’s happened to dogma overall, it’s equivalent to a Chateau Canon La Gaffeliere St Emilion deepening into a Gallo Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon.
Fr. Peter, your comment here is the finest blend of wisdom, brevity and humor that I’ve ever read in the CWR comments section. More generally, your comments are always enlightening and enriching appointment reading. Thank you!
I’ll drink to that!
I can only conclude that Pope Francis is woefully out of touch with the Church over which he is Christ’s Vicar. What a shame.
An equal shame is the cowardice of prelates who know better unwilling to tell him to his face.
The Pope’s “Indietrismo” is a pure fiction, in my opinion. The reality is that the imposition of the so-called a N.O. Mass, in the form it was imposed upon us, deracinated the love and spirituality of faithful Catholics for the profoundly rich liturgical life of our holy religion. It was our holy inheritance developed over the history of Holy Roman Church. Why it was done is hardly open to speculation. A high-ranking admitted ‘Masonic’ clergyman with a misguided tendency to adapt our worship to Protestantism gave us the distilled elements of a rude and vicious disruption of Catholic life. An opening of such proportions, which was psychologically aligned with modern cynicism and the observable modern moral dissolution, bears much of the weight of the staggering loss of Faith which only the blind cannot see.
Well said!
We read: “You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age.”
Three points:
FIRST, expanding on Vincent, Cardinal Newman (also the father of Vatican II) explained that “old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them [“dangers and hopes which appear in new relations”] IN ORDER TO REMAIN THE SAME [!]” (“The Development of Christian Doctrine”).
So, in terms of “ideology,” what does it mean to speak of the Tridentine Mass being used ideologically? While pockets of resistance might be found, might as much or more of an ideological shoe be on the other foot?
SECOND, how, then, to grow the inherited Mass in a manner that does not lose the non-ideological—its expansive, evocative (!) and imaginative (!)—openness in responding to the Mystery of God??? Banners, bland scripts, ambivalent wording? Ideological violations of the Council’s (!) Sacrosanctum Concilium? Ham-fisted treatment of Summorum Pontificum?
THIRD, in line with the complete Vincent of Lerins, Cardinal Newman gives clues about doctrinal development which, yes?, might also apply to the flow of perennial “sap” through a non-mutating and, yes, growing liturgy:
“I venture to set down seven notes of varying cogency, independence, and applicability to discriminate healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay, as follows: There is no corruption if it retains: (1) One and the same TYPE, (2) The same PRINCIPLES, (3) The same ORGANIZATION, (4) if its beginnings ANTICIPATE its subsequent phases [!] (5) if its later phenomena PROTECT and subserve its earlier [!], (6) If it has a power of assimilation and REVIVAL [!], and (7) is vigorous ACTION from first to last…”
Hello! Weekly Mass attendance in the United States is down from 55% in 1970 to 17% in 2021.https://faithsurvey.co.uk/american-catholic-statistics.html
And, only 29% of United States Catholics even believe in the engaging mystery (!) and gift of the Real Presence (CCC 1374). Instead, the Mass has devolved into something that WE do, should we choose to even show up.
Thank you.
Excellent points. But what are the odds of anyone stating this sense directly to Francis?
Authentic Catholicism most certainly is a threat to the Catholicism of Francisistic ideology.
And one observation about your lament of poor liturgical practice. Since I chauffeur healthcare workers on Sunday morning, I am not able to attend my local TLM frequently. Living in NYC I nonetheless can travel around to seek N.O. Masses with good priests. But it’s getting harder to find Masses that allow any amount of reasonable time to meditate on the Eucharist before the onslaught of end of Mass announcements begin calling attention to the next silly parish party or another frivolous matter.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Snap out of it Francis, for your own sake if not for the sake of the flock.
Bergoglio makes no sense here.
What is he talking about? How does someone “go backward” in faith?
Can’t he give us a specific example of what he is complaining about?
And shouldn’t he explain how the rubrics of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as it has been celebrated for many hundreds of years can in any way affect Catholics negatively?
This papacy is extremely tiring, to say the least.
Would Bergoglio make more sense to me if I had a theology degree?
Or two? Or three?
Perhaps a degree in Early Childhood Education, with a major in diapers.
Mr. Briney,
I hope you’ve been well! I think I might add some insight to your conundrum – at least, I’ll be bold and proud enough to try. As I have related in the past, I now attend the TLM and will never again darken the threshold of my local NO parish. There is THAT MUCH of a difference. It’s VAST. It’s STARK. It’s also an expression of the faith that was, at the time that Bergoglio was a young priest, the object of scorn, antipathy and rejection. These young priests were heretical; but, the old priests were passing on. They no longer had much fight in them. They RAZED the mass, destroyed the calendar, eliminated many of the old spiritual exercises, removed the altars, the communion rails, etc., etc., etc. To admit now that they were wrong is, in their estimation, an impossibility. They’ll ride this V2 revolution at the health and well-being of the church all the way into oblivion. What’s at stake is what’s they’ve believed ALL THEIR LIVES. They’re not about to admit it was a mistake. Rather, ALL THE REST OF US that assist at the Latin Mass are hopelessly lost in ancient sentiments, wasting our time pursuing irrelevancy. If I’ve framed this explanation unfairly, I welcome criticism and correction.
BS HONESTLY…WHERE THERE IS THE PETER THERE IS THE CHURCH. YOU GUYS ARE SLOWLY FINDING YOUR WAY OUT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.. BUT IN YOUR MORALISM THATS WHEER YOU WNAT TO BE…THE POPE IS RIGHT
Within this same series of questions a number of topics came up for which PF provided an answer rooted in “consistency”, how important it was; how essential it is for integrity. Consistency . . . like 1950 years of liturgical consistency? It’s too bad our dear Pope doesn’t see how important it is to understand the measure by which he measures; is the same measure measuring him. 🙄
It’s not so much that the mass has changed that’s the problem; it’s just that the changed mass no longer points to the same Catholic theology. It was no mistake that Cramner and Bucer DEMANDED that the communicant receive STANDING and in the HAND. Why? Because such an act reels against the possibility of the doctrine of the Real Presence and minimizes “sacrifice”. It’s no wonder they smashed the altars and used their top surfaces as stepping stone entrances into their protestant churches. The people were forced to tred on the surface of the altars that had, until recently, been fundamental to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Perhaps, our dear bishops can go back and revisit the Protestant Reformation as it was rolled-out in England in the mid-16th century. They would find eerie parallels with that time and the 1960’s when similar changes were implemented through Vatican II. It’s time to revisit the last counsel both for its strengths AND weaknesses. It’s the 900 lb. gorilla in the room that no one higher than your local priest (sometimes not even him) dares discuss critically. Meanwhile, the NO parishes continue hemorrhaging and the Latin Mass continues growing. It’s clear where the Holy Spirit is being honored, where God is being adored, loved and cherished.
Apostle Paul said in the book of Corinthians, (referring to an unknown tongue) if someone comes in the church and listens to the message but doesn’t know what the priest is saying, how is that helping him spiritually. I been watching ewtn mass on TV and at certain points in the mass the priest start speaking Latin, which I think, if u don’t know Latin ur lost in the mass worship like most non speaking Latin catholics
Stanley, EVERY religion has a “sacral” language, Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, LATIN . . . there are missals that help those that attend. I have a 1962 Missal that has the English on one hand and the Latin on the other. Most of the time, I’m reading the LATIN. Why? Because the cognates tell a deeper story of the meaning of the prayers being said. Beyond that, the Latin Mass offers the holy Son to the Father; His gift to us is given BACK TO HIM. That’s the whole point, i.e. the SACRIFICE of the Mass. There is so much that makes the Latin Mass so far superior, so deeply interior and so transcendent that, should you go a total of 3 times: once for the Father, once for the Son and once for the Holy Spirit, you’ll never again want to return to the NO Mass. The Latin Mass is truly Heaven on Earth; but, go when the Schola is singing – the High Mass. Go then. If you don’t find it deepening your relationship with Christ, I’ll be shocked.
But their singing makes up for any of that misunderstanding; plus it’s one thing in this world that is still mysterious. I have noticed when they use Latin, you get used to it. My neighbor grew up on Latin and they left the church after Vatican II. Told me recently when he attends a funeral where they use Latin he still remembers and can recite the prayers, but cannot remember them unless he’s at a Latin service
While the Vatican band played Michael Jackson’s man in the mirror?
Francis cites Hebrews 10:39 and uses only the first words of the verse which reads in full, “We are not among those who draw back (shrink back) and perish, but among those who have faith and will possess life.” This verse follows Paul’s exhortation to the new Hebrew Christians to endure in doing the will of God after the initial enlightenment of Baptism, to resist falling away. Several verses earlier in this same chapter, Paul writes, “We should not stay away from our assembly (the liturgical assembly of Eucharist), as is the custom of some, but encourage one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.” Paul is concerned about the falling away that occurs for the newly-initiated who lose vigor, or fear public abuse and afflictions like the confiscation of their property because of their faith. In verses 37 and 38 Paul writes: “For, after just a brief moment, he who is to come shall come; he shall not delay. But my just one shall live by faith, and if he draws back I take no pleasure in him.” Francis cites his fragment from Hebrews with the words “drawing back” or “shrinking back” to make us think Scripture reinforces his impugning of Catholics who “retreat” to the pre-Vatican II liturgy, but the context of the verse in Hebrews chapter 10 has nothing to do with the “backwardness” Francis is trying to accuse faithful Catholic’s of having. Instead, Paul speaks about shrinking from faith. To draw back from faith in Jesus Christ is to perish, he says.
The joyful recompense of double-checking Francis’ Biblical references is deepened knowledge of The Word!
Thank you very much, Beth.
Believe this is not the only time Pope Francis has misused—actually changed the meaning of—scriptural verses to support his political views.
I do not attend the TLM but know faithful good Catholics who do. With all charity and humility. I feel impelled to say that the analysis and arguments the Pope makes here are utter nonsense.
Pope Francis has form when it comes to taking scripture and documents out of context to push his agenda.
Francis is good at cherry picking phrases from various popes and saints to justify his position. Too bad so few clerics don’t point out this devious error.
Warning – virtue-signaling
There is a Latin Mass 55 miles away from me in Lewiston, Maine. To get there I have to rise around 5:30(ish) stumble about for a bit and be on the way at 6 getting there around 7:30 (I drive like a turtle) and I then spend 1 hour in the Church praying, reciting a Rosary, and just sitting there. Mass starts at 8:30.
The music is exquisite, the preaching wonderful, the parish participation very reverent, and after Mass ends usually around 50% or so of the attendees stay behind to pray – quietly. Those who are leaving do so quietly.
But – This Pope says that the allowances granted by his predecessors were being used “in an ideological way.” Could someone – ANYONE – PLEASE explain to me and to many others I am sure – what exactly does that mean? To me it makes no sense at all.
Frequently there are people at the Mass At the Mass who have driven 100 miles or more ONE WAY to get there, while probably bypassing a NO Church 5 miles from home on the way.
My family rises at between 4:30 and 5:00 AM to be at our SSPX chapel 120 miles away. My 14 year old son and 23 year daughter are dressed in their best and ready to go by 5:30 AM. When we attended our local NO parish 10 minutes from home, my kids would dally to the point of being late to arrive. Our local NO parish is dying of its own “weight, gas and age”. The only people now still attending are what were (still are?) Woodstock hippies. Many of the car bumpers in the lot have Obama Biden bumper stickers. The NO is a non issue in my book. It’s demise is inevitable and welcome as the Vetus Ordo ascends. Deo Gratius!
Why don’t you and your family and SSPX community storm your local church and take it back? It’s called “evangelizing.” Nothing better than seeing a conservative group of folks battle it out with the hippy-dippy crowd. Most of the younger priests will support you. They’re grateful for you, and other TLM-ers, because you all left, and in essence created a new church. My local NO parish, and many others, are not dying. Remaining in the SSPX does nothing to effect change.
The renewal of the Church will come from the East, when the Orthodox return. They are not suffering from the fanatical nostalgia and Protestant uppity behavior of the TLM groups.
And as an aside, your kids dallying to get to Mass is on you, not the former of Mass. Ridiculous.
Ideological was the label the Pontiff Francis gave to Archbishop Chaput, and given that Chaput publicly voiced his critique at/about the “Family Synod” and Amoris Latetiae, “ideological” clearly means respecting the 6th Commandment, and of course failing to be “Gay-Positive.”
Chris – I assume you’re responding to my question, for which I thank you but – the statement still makes no sense at all.
Archbishop Chaput, on the other hand, has been and remains one of the people I look up to in these times – a voice of hope and reason.
This interview makes me wonder about the secret China-Vatican agreement. Is this agreement the Pope’s way of being sure that the underground Church in China doesn’t go backwards and will get with the modern program of the CCP? China is the senior partner in this agreement. The modern Church often acts like King Solomon did under the influence of his foreign wives.
Mass is a humble sacrifice in memory of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We need to pray for the conversion of mass warriors.
Yes, but for possible clarification, also infinitely more than a memory. Rather, the “continuation and extension” (words of St. John Paul II in his Prayer before Mass) of the singular self-sacrifice of the God-Man Christ on Calvary:
“…In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist :the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity [!], of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, THE WHOLE CHRIST IS TRULY, REALLY, AND SUBSTANTIALLY [italics] contained [….] wholly and entirely present” (CCC 1374).
I share your view because I am wondering about the following issues:
1). What does the pope really mean by the idioligucal use of Lstin?
In this regards I ask:
2). The ideology of which government, political party or organisation?
3). I know that the Second Vetican Council provided for, or approved, the use of local languages provided they are not based on or connected with superstition.
4). Should the Holy Church sent to convert the world be converted by the world as a sign of medernisstion? In order words should the Holy Church be in the world and be of the world? Or, by another thought, should the Holy Church please the world and not God?
4). Has any person or nation ever pleased some people or the world without destroying the essence, meaning or value of its uniqueness, traditions, or customs, and its necessity and importance?
5). These questions are considered necessary for dealing with the issues of ideology and “shrinking back”.
6). The Holy Church has been contending with materialism, individualism, secularism, sexual profligacy and criminality (abortion), feminism and globalisation. Should she be plunged into another problem, idioligy?
Upholding faith is never Pelagian or “rigid” or “incurvatus” or “indietrist” or backward-looking or nostalgia. Etc., etc. Neither is it Jansenist. With all these changing labels you are proving it is impossible for you to specify what the specific reality is, that you are so trying to impact -or, affect, or, uncover, or what.
‘ The standard-bearer is not a combatant, yet nonetheless he is exposed to great danger; and inwardly he must suffer more than anyone, for he cannot defend himself as he is carrying the standard, which he must not allow to leave his hands even if he is cut to pieces. Just so contemplatives have to bear aloft the standard of humility and must suffer all the blows which are aimed at them, without themselves striking any. ….. Do you think those to whom the King gives these duties are being given a light task? ….. Their duty is to suffer as Christ did, to raise the Cross on high ….. and not let themselves be found backward in suffering ….. Great harm, I think, is done to those not so far advanced if those whom they consider as captains and friends of God let them see they are acting in a way un-befitting to their office. ‘
– Teresa of Avila,, The Way of Perfection, Chap. 18 (Doubleday First Image Books NY NY 1964 / Nihil Georgius Can. Smith, Imprima. E. Morrogh Bernard 1946)
“Nostalgic disease” is refusing to understand the 1970’s Iconoclast Movement is over.
Oh that’s why the FBI wanted to investigate the churches to see if Latin mass, because of shrinking back to the good old days of the 1950’s. They think this is racist! CRT training at its finest.
Or a gathering of people who believe in the eternal God, not the god of state.
I do have to note the following thought experiment.
Consider a hypothetical Christian AG presiding over the infiltration of Mosques or Synogogues.
I don’t agree with your comment, but I attempted to post something similar comparing … Francis to the FBI. I doubt that it will be published.
Essentially … Francis and the FBI are concerned that opposition is likely to form among those who attend TLM. For the FBI it is/was about the “unicorns” that they call “extremists.”
Yes, Your Holiness, because to be modern is to have a singular attachment to a ritual relic from the late 1960s. Everyone is simply waiting for this miserable pontificate to end.
Amen.
But everyone really knows it is the “Novus Ordo” that is the ideological weapon.
Next the pope will say the bible is not living up to the times??? Not looking forward…. it could happen with this man.
Second attempt at send. First attempt timed-out.
Quo Primum Pope Pius V 1570
Promulgating the Tridentine Liturgy
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5quopri.htm
Pope Benedict’s “Summorum Pontifcum” eliminated an illegal construct known as the “indult” wherein a priest had to ask his bishop for permission to celebrate the TLM. Pope Francis’ ironically named “Traditiones Custodes” is illegitimate on its face because Pius V’s “Quo Primum” although wordy, is very clear that no one may restrict the celebration of the Tridentine Liturgy. No one.
Pope Francis’ requirement that a priest receive permission from both his bishop and Rome ratchets things up and is pure mean-spirited micromanagement in the service of suppression of the TLM.
Without apology, before God and the angels, I state that an enemy of the Latin Mass is an agent of Satan.
Joseph, Quo Primum was written before Vatican II and by a truly Catholic Pope. There is no way the current church will advertise to the faithful about what it really says. When PF did mention Quo Primum he stated Pius V created the old mass.
Who is the ideologue?
As Pope Benedict XVI said long before he became the Holy Father, the Holy Spirit always inspires, men do not always listen. The papacy is not a magical enterprise. It serves a prophetic role when it faithfully adheres with awe and devotion to Divine Revelation, to the perennial understanding of Divine Revelation by the Church, not appealing to their own confections: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD’” (Jeremiah 23:16).
Thank God for Pope Francis that keeps it all relevant and true to our Catholic faith.
If the Usus Antiquior, practiced for centuries, retains every formal element that makes it Mass, remaining united with the One Mass that mystically collects and binds all, how can this be in error, if clear-hearted consciences are wed to that spirit of unity?
Christ, the Gospels, Tradition away with all that «indietrismo».
Vat II and year One of New Revolutionary Church blah, blah, same old…
Project much, Papa Francesco?
That was going to be my comment, but then I opted to be little more explicit.
… Francis is concerned about the TLM like the FBI is/was concerned about it. The FBI said that they were concerned about so-called “extremism,” but what they are actually concerned about is likely the coalescing of a movement that would upset TPTB who likely control the FBI and The Justice Department.
The TLM is a possible “political rallying point” for those who might oppose … Francis. That said, it is doubtful that there is more than a few licit (i.e. authorized) celebrations of the TLM in the world. I don’t know how many are currently public, but there was one in “a Far East country.” I met a true priest from this country in 2016.
When one goes on the Paris de Chartes at Pentecost, one is drawn into an experience that is not of this world! I’m still haunted by that, and to paraphrase Van Morrison once said: Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time? Yes indeedy!