Catholic Grief and Faithful Shepherds in Death and Exile

2023 began in sorrow with the death of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds. It ended in sorrow with the exile of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds.

December 27, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” King Henry II (1133-1189) referring to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who opposed the King’s effort to subject priests to trials under English law instead of Church law. Four of King Henry’s knights took the words as a directive. They murdered Thomas Becket as he offered Mass in the Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170.

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Of the 54 posts published here in 2023, fully half of them were consumed with the painful internal affairs of the Catholic Church — affairs in which both priests and faithful Catholics always seem to come out on the losing end of things. My second post of 2023 was “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

Its title speaks for itself. The results of CUA’s broad study demonstrated a huge chasm between the perspective of bishops and that of priests in the trenches. The consensus among priests was that their bishops are largely oblivious and unresponsive to the pressures and challenges of their ministry. The consensus among bishops was the opposite, that they are right on top of things and are supportive of their priests in challenging times.

Perhaps the most glaring result of the study was the perception among priests that they can be “canceled” by their bishops for any reason or no reason at all. It is a grave irony, as we will explore later in this post, that the year began with an in-depth review of this study and ended with the removal of a faithful bishop from his ministry with no clear canonical crime or reason other than his fidelity.

Many Catholic laity also spent much of 2023 in a state of high anxiety about their lived experience of Catholic faith. As I began typing this post, I received a letter from a reader who revealed that she and her family have been spiritually enriched from weekly participation in the Traditional Latin Mass. “Please pray that this is not taken from us,” she pleaded. It gripped my heart to realize that the Catholic version of “cancel culture” is a source of torment for traditional Catholics.

This year began as the previous year ended — with breaking news of the December 31, 2022 death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, revealed that Benedict was alarmed and saddened by the new restrictions placed by decree on any celebration of the Latin Mass, a practice that Benedict himself had restored to the faithful by Motu Proprio, the same means by which Pope Francis restricted it. The “optics,” as politicians often say, were terrible.

Much of the last year of Benedict’s Earthly life was spent fending off the exploitation and unjust smearing of his good name while the liberal secular news media feasted on the spoils. Much of the mud thrown at him seemed to emanate from the heart of the German synodal path. I wrote of this story and its fallout in 2022 in “Benedict XVI Faces the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.”

The matter at hand was the elderly Benedict’s failure to instantly recall accurately, and without consulting notes, a meeting he attended forty years earlier in which an accused priest was discussed. Benedict was thus accused of obfuscating, minimizing, and covering up the truth. The real agenda, according to Archbishop Gänswein, was to undermine Benedict’s reputation as a bulwark of Catholic Truth and orthodoxy, and to drive a wedge between faithful Catholics and his papacy. I addressed this again in early 2023 in “Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell.”

George Cardinal Pell v. Vatican Corruption

Just ten days after the death of Benedict XVI, Cardinal George Pell died during routine surgery in a Rome hospital on January 10, 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, I wrote twelve posts about the plight of Cardinal Pell. I wrote them perhaps because I can most identify with all that he endured from explosive accusations and charges, a trial by media, exploitation by enemies of the Church from without and within, false imprisonment, and suspected corruption from both secular and ecclesiastical sources.

Among my posts about Cardinal Pell in 2023, one of them, the last one, drew a huge readership from around the globe. It was “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod.”

In the trials of my own life, I have not yet been able to attain the reversal of injustice that ultimately set Cardinal Pell free, but only because U.S. courts function with a different standard than Australia’s courts. In the U.S., finality in a case is given more weight than other considerations and it is difficult to overcome. When I started this post, I found a letter written to me by Cardinal Pell in Rome after his exhoneration. He wrote that I had been on his mind since his release from prison. He spoke of his plan to raise my case during various meetings in and around Rome, but he never got that chance.

While Cardinal Pell was in prison, I wrote an article about something I had researched heavily. The article is entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Well, it turned out that he was. My article was sent to him in prison, and it became an entry in his celebrated Prison Journal, which was published after his release. He wrote the entry in his prison cell after reading my post.

Four of my dozen posts about the injustices that befell Cardinal Pell were written in 2023. One of them became recommended reading by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It tied together, though unintentionally, several stories that are now prominent in the news. That post was “Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell.”

Readers may have seen recent news of the trial and conviction of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu charged with embezzlement in a Vatican Court. Vatican magistrates alleged that Becciu had embezzled more than $100,000 through a non-profit group run by his brother. Cardinal Becciu has been on trial since 2020 and was the first cardinal in history to face trial in the Vatican criminal court. On December 13, 2023, just a few days before the verdict of guilty, The Wall Street Journal’s Vatican correspondent, Francis X. Rocca, ran an extended story analyzing the case in “A Cardinal Once Seen as Future Pope Now Faces Prison.” Here is an excerpt:

“The Secretariat of State managed around $700 million in financial assets, including the investment that later engulfed Becciu and other Vatican officials in scandal.... Around that time, Francis made Australian Cardinal George Pell his finance chief and gave him sweeping powers. Pell unveiled new financial guidelines for the Vatican. But he clashed with the secretariat, which opposed his plans for a financial audit by an external auditing firm. Pell considered Becciu his main opponent in the secretariat. Other Vatican officials also lobbied the Pope against Pell’s changes. The Pope curtailed Pell’s powers and the external audit was canceled.... Pell later returned to Australia to face child sex abuse charges. He was acquitted on appeal and died this year.”

In an October 15 commentary on this account in The Wall Street Journal, I added some further context to this story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of Pope Francis to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms after [the Pope] had empowered him to reform Vatican finances. Mr. Rocca does not speculate on the source of charges against Cardinal Pell in Australia — charges for which he was exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s High Court. This was after he wrongly spent 400 days in prison. There are many who believe that there may have been a connection between Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances and these false charges in Australia. Pell himself suspected this.”

While researching this, I discovered yet another similarity between the Pell case and my own. In both of our legal matters, police misconduct and government corruption played a substantial role. It is a little known fact in the Cardinal Pell case that a 2014 email reveals an exchange between a media assistant in the Victoria, Australia Police Department and the Deputy Commissioner of Police suggesting that promoting these charges in the media could deflect from public exposure of a burgeoning scandal within the Police Department.

Bishop Joseph Strickland and Raymond Cardinal Burke

Then, seemingly dwarfing all of the above in shock value, Pope Francis swiftly and mysteriously removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his role as shepherd of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas in November 2023. Then, in rapid succession he ordered Cardinal Raymond Burke to vacate his Vatican apartment and reportedly left this faithful shepherd without income or position. Lots of ink has been spilled over both stories, especially in the United States. I covered the Bishop Strickland story a week ago in the first segment of “Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World,” my Christmas post this year.

Both stories have been heavily covered by so many Catholic writers and commentators that there is nothing left for me to add except sorrow. These are faithful shepherds. Perhaps in time, the hidden truth of both matters will emerge. Absent that, I am sad to write, the buck stops only at the top.

In a stunning article in the January 2024 edition of Newsmax magazine (Pope Pushes Radical Agenda that Shocks Faithful) the National Catholic Register’s Vatican correspondent, Edward Pentin, commented on both stories:

“This past November, Francis removed [Bishop Joseph] Strickland from heading the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, citing his criticism of the Pope’s liberal social agenda and allowing the faithful to partake in the Latin Mass.... But the biggest surprise was his late November targeting of Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of Saint Louis and one of the Vatican’s most influential prelates.

“Burke has been an open critic of Francis for some time, alleging that the Holy Father has been discarding some of the most basic church teachings on communion, sexuality, and marriage. In a private meeting in Rome, Francis reportedly declared that Burke was ‘my enemy’ and he would strip him of his Vatican salary and even his apartment residence in Rome.”

Early in his pontificate, I wrote several posts in defense of Pope Francis. However, what Edward Pentin describes above seems more reminiscent of the court of Caligula than the Vicar of Christ.

Scandal and sorrow were not the only news items dominating this blog in 2023. There were other major events. We took a break from all the bad news of the Church to launch “A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls” in March. It was composed of most of our past special Holy Week posts and the invitation had many takers. In a Church wandering in the desert mired in political controversy it was encouraging to see this vast lay interest in the events of Holy Week.

In June, documentary film producer Frank X. Panico unveiled his project about my trial and imprisonment in a 45-minute video production, “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.”

As I marked the beginning of a 30th year in prison on the Feast of Saint Padre Pio in April, our friend Pornchai Moontri moved the world to tears with his deeply moving post that left me and many others speechless. It was, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Not wanting to leave justice dangling, Los Angeles documentary researcher, Claire Best, caused a New Hampshire earthquake with her bombshell post, “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

That led us finally into December with the much needed shining light of the year, “The Music of Eric Genuis Inspired Advent Hope.”

And on that note, this is where I leave you until 2024. Keep the faith. Keep it close to your heart. And may the Lord Bless you and keep you in the New Year ahead.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. You may like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod

Christ the Good Shepherd

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Will Pope Francis Stand Against Catholic Schism?

Courtesy of Catholic News Service

The Vatican rejects, for now, the radical reshaping of Catholic moral teaching and practice demanded by the German Synodal Path, but who will break faith first?

August 24, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I have often said that in the Universe of Catholic life, I write from the “Oort Cloud,” that vast field of the Solar System’s castoff debris — asteroids, comets, and meteors — far out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was named in 1950 for the astronomer who discovered it, J. H. Oort of Leiden, Holland. It’s an especially cold and exiled place from which to write, but it also offers a panoramic view of things, a perspective not always available to those entangled in the culture wars of Earth.

On August 11, 2021, I published “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.” Pope Francis had seriously wounded Traditional Catholics by imposing severe restrictions on offering the Traditional Latin Mass that had grown in popular preference among conservative Catholics in recent years. Its popularity, in part at least, is a reaction to the encroaching accommodations to secular culture that have invaded Catholicism.

For conservative and traditional Catholics, the timing of the Pope’s imposed restrictions could not have been worse. For the previous two years in America and across the Western World, Covid-19 brought invasive government restrictions on offering any Mass at all. Even when courts declared some restrictions unconstitutional, a number of Catholic bishops re-imposed the same restrictions. This gave rise to a concern about the proper and expected role of bishops, a concern given voice in my post, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”

The last two years have been a rough time for faithful Catholics and more so for priests who openly support Catholic fidelity. The appointment of progressive bishops has created an appearance of forced compliance with their ideology among priests. The sexual abuse crisis opened pathways for bishops to discipline and even remove priests for virtually any reason or none at all. This gave rise to an initiative of the laity who in response in the U.S. created the “Coalition for Canceled Priests.”

Nowhere in Catholic life, however, has the modern wave of cancel culture been more visible or vocal than in Germany. For many months, some of the bishops of Germany have responded to the Pope’s emphasis on “synodality,” a term from the Greek meaning an ecclesiastical assembly, to promote a ‘woke’ agenda.

The agenda of the German Synodal Path includes a radical revision of Catholic moral teaching and sacramental life. It demands the ordination of women priests, a reconsideration of priestly celibacy, an accommodation for a married priesthood, sacramental recognition for same-sex unions, and the promotion of homosexuality and LGBTQ+ lifestyles as normative expressions of human sexuality.

It is interesting that more recently in the United States, parents have sought to limit some of these same influences in the education and indoctrination of children. While the bishops of Germany promote their demanded revisions as expressions of the “Census Fidelium,” the sense of the faithful, parents in America have been mobilizing to vote the proponents of LGBTQ+ education out of office on public school boards across the land.

On July 21, 2022, in a surprising and hopeful gesture of support for Catholic unity, Pope Francis took a step to rein in the fractious “German Synodal Way” that for the last year has moved ever closer to the precipice of Catholic schism. The Vatican Declaration, which was unsigned, stated that the German Synodal Path has no authority to oblige bishops or the faithful to assume new ways of governing or new approaches to doctrine or morals. This clarification was made “in order to protect the freedom of the people of God and the exercise of episcopal ministry.”

Courtesy of Catholic News Service

George Cardinal Pell and a Patron Saint for Germany

It feels ironic beyond measure that I first decided to write this post on August 9, 2022 the day the Church remembers Edith Stein, better known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. On the day before deciding to write this, I asked our editor to republish on social media a post I wrote several years ago: “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.”

To write this current post, as I now feel I must, I also need an extended excerpt from one that I wrote many months ago entitled, “Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.” The following excerpt is a necessary prequel for this post:

“While reading from Cardinal George Pell’s book, Prison Journal Volume 2, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about his concerns for the direction of the Church in Germany. In an entry from his prison cell on August 9, 2019, he wrote of Edith Stein, now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who, like St. Maximilian Kolbe a year earlier, was murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazi regime in 1942.

“Cardinal Pell wrote that Edith Stein was German by birth, and he asked readers to pray for her intercession for the Catholic Church in Germany. He quoted German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

“‘The Catholic Church in Germany is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. They are self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They do not speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the Sacraments, faith, hope, or love.’ (Prison Journal 2, p.75)

“Later in the book, Cardinal Pell wrote about Vatican concerns for the growing possibility of a German Catholic schism over the very issues identified by Cardinal Müller. If such a progressive schism were to occur, it would sweep much of the European Union where (with the exception of Poland) Mass attendance is at its historically lowest point. Cardinal Pell cited a September 17, 2019 Catholic Culture article by Phillip Lawler, ‘Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?’

Lawler argues that the prospect of a schism is remote, but becoming less so. He cited that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect saying that he is not frightened by it, something that Lawler found to be frightening in and of itself. Cardinal Pell added that The New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a German Catholic schism by ‘the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States.’ Cardinal Pell wrote that Lawler’s diagnosis is correct. Cardinal Pell added:

“‘The most aggressive online defenders of Pope Francis realize they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving progressives free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’

“In light of this, it comes as no surprise that some progressive U.S. bishops have pushed Pope Francis into divisive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass and other traditional expressions of the faith. These efforts, and German Catholic steps taken recently to demean Pope Benedict, a stalwart of Catholic orthodoxy, may well be designed to encourage a conservative split from the Church. Embracing and promoting fidelity at this juncture has never been more urgent.

“Faithful Catholics must never accede to the desired end that German progressives seek. Handing the Church over to them would leave ‘Satan at the Last Supper’ while Jesus is removed from the room.”

(End of excerpt)

Courtesy Catholic News Service

Raymond Cardinal Burke Weighs In

Not everyone among German Catholics is in support of this path. One bold German Catholic disseminated my post above to many others in Germany, including many priests. It is interesting that at the same time this began to happen, Facebook started actively suppressing my blog, Beyond These Stone Walls to limit its being shared among various Catholic groups with a presence there to promote Catholic fidelity and unity.

In a May, 2022 interview, American Cardinal Raymond Burke spoke strongly about the direction of the Synodal Path being promoted by some of the German bishops who in the process seek to abandon traditional Catholic doctrine. Cardinal Burke responded boldly:

“The bishops doing this are abandoning the flock and they are showing themselves to be not shepherds, but hirelings who are trying to accommodate the Church’s teaching to the ways of this world, a secular way of thinking, a godless way of thinking. To hold what they are saying regarding unnatural sins against the 6th and 9th Commandments is heretical. They are leading people, to their great harm, into heresy at a time when the world needs the Church to proclaim her teaching with clarity and courage.

“[The Holy Father] must ask [the German bishops] to renounce these heresies and positions against the sound discipline of the Church. If they will not renounce their errors and correct themselves, then he would have to remove them from office. This is the situation in which we’ve arrived.”

— Statement of Raymond Cardinal Burke

In April of 2022, an open letter signed by six cardinals, 19 archbishops and 78 bishops expressed alarm over “the confusion that the Synodal Path has already caused and continues to cause, and the potential for schism that will inevitably result. In its effect the Synodal Path displays more submission and obedience to the world than to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” Among the signatories of this letter were Joseph Cardinal Zen, George Cardinal Pell, Raymond Cardinal Burke, Francis Cardinal Arinze, and Wilfred Cardinal Napier. It should be noted that the first two names on this short list of cardinals are now considered by many to be white martyrs.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, second from left, is President of the German Catholic Bishops conference, pictured here at the opening meeting of the German Synodal Way.

The German Bishops Respond

The response of the German bishops has been largely voiced by one person, Bishop Georg Bätzing, an appointee of Pope Francis who became President of the German Bishops Conference in 2016. He showed no sign of backing down from the path he and the Synod have been on. Many found his response to be arrogant and alarming:

“Yes, the pope disappoints me. Even in the Catholic Church, even with all the right that would be his, he is not the one who could turn the Church from its head to its feet which is what we would like … He is initiating a process where all these questions are put on the table.”

Bishop Bätzing went on to describe the matter of women’s ordination as “like an iceberg,” meaning that there is more substance and clamor for it below the surface than can be seen from above. He said that he is moved by the “sensus fidelium” on this, but the sensus fidelium — the sense of the faithful — must be universal and not merely a fractious German consideration. On the day I am typing this, this blog had 850 visits from Germany alone. I wonder if Bishop Bätzing’s measure of the sensus fidelium includes them.

The state of the Church in Germany — where Catholic identity and Mass attendance are at their lowest points in history — does not reflect Catholicism in the rest of the world. It is the height of hubris to suggest that the political positions of Germany should take precedence and be imposed upon the faithful in Poland or Africa or the United States where many Catholics embrace fidelity to Sacred Tradition.

Like the American Episcopal church of the 1990’s, Bishop Bätzing would be willing to shatter the Church’s unity to satisfy the transient “woke” in Germany. Even if they had the Church that they want — one in which Christ takes a back seat to pop culture — there is no evidence that their practice of their faith would be any more faithful than it is now.

The most telling response of Bishop Bätzing was a statement that he would personally leave the Church if he had the impression that none of his agenda would be realized. He would lead the German Catholic church into a progressive schism if Traditional Catholics did not accede to it first.

Cardinal George Pell’s suggestion that Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, would be the best intercessor for Catholic Germany is prophetic. Upon her arrival in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, she took her younger sister by the hand and said, “Come Rosa, Let us go for our people.” Then, in full Carmelite habit, she walked to the Nazi gas chamber refusing to renounce either her Jewish heritage or her Catholic faith.

Pray for her intercession for the Catholic church of Germany being led astray by its bishops. And pray for Pope Francis that the Blood of the Martyrs still speaks to him with sacrificial clarity about the faith for which they surrendered their lives.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.

You may also like these related posts:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz

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A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass

In Traditionis Custodes restricting the Traditional Latin Mass, Pope Francis insists that his goal is ecclesial communion. Then he dropped a bombshell of division.

In the above composite photo Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis offer Mass Ad Orientem in the Sistine Chapel.

August 11, 2021

The Year of Our Lord 2003 seemed a lot more like a year of Our Lord’s Calvary. It was a most painful year for me personally and for many Catholics. Starting in Boston with a rapid ripple effect across the land, diocese after diocese faced relentless Catholic scandal over the horror of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse. A spotlight was cast upon the Catholic Church to the delight of the news media, but the subject needed a flood light. There was little justice in the moral panic to follow. This is a story I wrote about in a recent post, “A Sex Abuse Cover-Up in Boston Haunts the White House.”

Just beyond the glare of The Boston Globe spotlight, there was another event that had an even more profound impact on another church community in 2003. It took place just north of Boston in New Hampshire and from there it, too, rippled across the land, and many lands. Its most distinctive feature was its contrast to the Catholic story. While Catholic priests were judged and condemned in the media, one Episcopal clergyman in New Hampshire became a celebrity of pop culture.

In 2003, The Reverend V. Gene Robinson became the first openly gay Episcopalian priest to be nominated to become a bishop. The announcement had the immediate effect of alienating conservative members of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Born Vicky Gene Robinson in 1947, the nominee had been married, raised a family, divorced, and was in a conjugal same-sex relationship at the time of his nomination. For many, this seemed more of a politically correct statement than a serious nomination. If The Reverend Robinson had been divorced and living with another woman who was not his wife, this nomination would have gone nowhere.

Bishop Robinson’s nomination was confirmed by the Episcopal church of New Hampshire to equal parts applause and dismay. Then the cascade of damage was set in motion. With the support of the Nigerian Anglican church, many American conservative Episcopalians broke from the Worldwide Anglican Communion to form the Anglican Church in North America. The Anglican bishops of Uganda announced that they too broke from communion with the Episcopal church. This spread among conservative Anglican bishops across Africa and other parts of the world.

Having torn the Worldwide Anglican Communion asunder, Bishop Robinson announced his retirement seven years later in 2010. At some point he checked into drug rehab, and then used his voice as a retired bishop to promote same-sex marriage before the New Hampshire Legislature. He and his partner were among the first to “marry” under the new law he helped to pass. Then he announced his divorce to a news media that kept it very low key.

Among the protests came a multitude of petitions to Pope Benedict XVI who, in 2009, promulgated the Motu Proprio, Anglianorum Coetibus accepting into the Roman Rite entire Anglican parishes desiring to “cross the Tiber” to join the Roman Church. The first was a parish that became part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas in 2009.

We Are on a Road to Calvary Not Schism

The reactions that resulted in a breakup of the Worldwide Anglican Communion could not happen in the Catholic Church. Canon Law does not allow for the decisions to leave promoted by the Anglican bishops of Africa and other conservative communities. Only the Holy See can declare that a schism exists in a region or diocese. Popes have gone to great lengths to avoid schism. Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) to heal a longstanding rift with traditionalists. In 2007, Pope Benedict further mended that rift with his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which removed obstacles to the Traditional Latin Mass.

Now Pope Francis has reopened those wounds anew with Traditionis Custodes, his Motu Proprio: announced on July 16, 2021 which contradicts and revokes the permissions granted by Pope Benedict. I wrote of this last week in these pages in “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

I used that title because in many ways my experience of the vast majority of those who seek out the Latin Mass are among the most faithful. In a published Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal on July 30, 2021, writer Ray Martin of Ridgefield, Connecticut described what has become a lax and often disrespectful atmosphere in too many parishes. This is an impression that I hear about frequently from readers:

“I do not regularly attend a Latin Mass but I do remember it from childhood ... Nowadays, fewer Catholics attend Mass regularly, they tend to come late and leave early, and it is not unusual to see T-shirts, short-shorts and flip flops. Everyone presents at the altar for Communion. One study found that around one in three Catholics believes in the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I would guess that more than 90-percent of Latin Mass attendees do.”

— Ray Martin, WSJ.com

My experience of the many Catholics I hear from who seek out the Latin Mass either weekly or even just on occasion is that they are our modern day Essenes. I wrote of the Essenes and their role in preserving the faith of both Israel and the early Jewish Christians in “Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse.” When Pope Benedict XVI opened the Church door to those requesting the Tridentine Latin Mass, many thought it would draw only senior citizens and some “far-right cranks,” as one writer put it back then. That has been far from true. Pope Francis expressed a concern that many who take part in the Latin Mass deny the validity of the Novus Ordo, the form of the Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970. This also is far from true. I hear from many Latin Mass attendees who also take part in the Novus Ordo Mass. All they ask for is a sense of the sacred, and a communal acknowledgment that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. Their appreciation of the Novus Ordo has been strengthened by the Latin Mass.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp magazine, penned an eye-opening op-ed one week after Pope Francis announced new, severe and immediate restrictions on the Latin Mass. Entitled, “Pope, Francis, the Latin Mass, and My Family” (July 23, 2021), Mr. Lamb described the reaction of those in his Catholic community of faith:

“We are loyal children of the Church on the receiving end of a harsh punishment. Pope Francis ... seemed to suggest that things had gone too far and were threatening to undo the liturgical reforms of the 1960s. The gradual displacement of the new rite, which emerged after Vatican II, was in fact the half-articulated ambition of many traditionalists. Until recently many had looked forward to a future in which the ‘extraordinary form’ of the Mass, as Benedict referred to it, was set to become rather ordinary.”

— Matthew Walther

Perhaps that is the point. The solemnity, majesty, and sacredness of the sacrifice taking place is just that — extraordinary. I want to contrast that with an experience I had as a newly ordained priest in one New Hampshire parish whose pastor made a weekly show of rushing through Sunday Mass at warp speed. After his hasty final blessing he would look at his watch and declare, “Twenty-two minutes, and I didn’t miss a thing!”

Standing with Peter v. Standing Our Ground

In some ways, Pope Francis has been unpredictable for so-called progressive Catholics as well. After playing down the issue of homosexuality with oft-quoted remarks like, “Who am I to judge?”, he disappointed many in liberal Catholic enclaves like Germany when he refused to allow blessings of same-sex unions. He dismissed the proposition while shocking liberal German priests with the definitive statement, “God cannot bless sin.” In an open letter to German Catholics in 2019, he cautioned them against “multiplying and nurturing the evils the Church wants to overcome.” He also gave a definitive “no” on the topic of ordination of women.

With all the open, and often flagrant, dissent from Church teaching and discipline in Germany and other parts of Europe, why would Francis choose to label traditional Catholics who appreciate the Latin Mass as “divisive?” I do not have answers.

But I do have more questions and a few suspicions. As I pointed out in these pages a week ago, there is an immense and growing contrast between the state of the Catholic Church in Germany and other areas in Europe, and that of the Church in Africa. The former has been in a state of stagnation for decades, and is now deeply involved in the embrace of what has come to be called, “Cancel Culture.” In its Catholic manifestation, I can only describe this as the setting aside of the “sensus fidei,” the sense of the faith as it has been expressed across two millennia, in favor of populist social trends of just the first two decades of the 21st Century.

With that understanding, “Cancel Culture” has become a modern plague on humanity that is far more destructive than any viral pandemic. If we do not understand history, and learn from it, we are doomed to repeat its most destructive patterns. Joining this secularized culture by placing God on the shelf while morphing Roman Catholicism into a mirror image of the flailing American Episcopal church is perilous.

The rapid growth of the Traditional Latin Mass since Pope Benedict XVI re-opened that door may well be the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis knows well that the entire Church — and not just the bishops with whom he consulted — comprises the “sensus fidelium,” the action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds and souls of the faithful from the Sacrifice at Calvary to the present day. The faithful witness of those who embrace the Traditional Latin Mass may prove to be a gift to the Church.

But the faithful must not stand against Peter to achieve that end. We are a Church built upon the blood of martyrs, and faithful witness may now require paying the cost of discipleship. Sometimes in the Church’s story of faith, white martyrdom has not only been for the Church. Sometimes it has been from the Church. Padre Pio knew this. So did Cardinal George Pell. So do I.

I have been most struck by the two volumes of Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal. He frequently repeated his longing for Mass and the Eucharist in a place where he was barred from them. I recall reading from Father Walter Ciszek’s book, With God In Russia, that he sat on the edge of his bunk in a Siberian labor camp and would mouth from memory the words of the Roman Canon of the Mass.

My experience of Mass as a prisoner is reduced to the contents of a small plastic box. On Sunday nights at 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, I take that box from a shelf and place it at the foot of my prison bunk. It serves as both a container and an altar. It has a Corporal that I spread over its surface. I attach a small battery powered book light to the wall just above it, and begin my preparation for Mass. The Mass is always “Ad Orientem,” toward the East, not by any design of my own, but because the cell window faces in that direction.

I have no sacred vessels. I have a coffee cup purchased years ago but never used for any other purpose. I have a weekly supply of a host placed on a clean linen purificator, and a one-quarter ounce of unfermented wine with no additives approved for liturgical use by Catholic priests serving in a war zone. I have a small wooden crucifix on a stand on a shelf just above where my Mass is offered.

There was a time when I did not have even these. For many years in prison, I had no access at all to the Mass. So I look upon this present drama unfolding now in our Church, and see it as madness that is hopefully brief. If you have appreciated the Traditional Latin Mass, you must not leave. The Church needs you. We need you to remind us of a lesson that I have long since learned harshly, and can now never forget.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. And please visit our Special Events page. It contains a story that is dear to my heart.

You may also like these relevant posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

The feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, our patron saint, is August 14. The above photo is his prison cell.

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Pope Francis is suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass at the same time the Chinese Communist Party is suppressing Tibetan Buddhism, and for the same stated reason.

August 4, 2021

A lot of ink is now being spilled in Catholic circles about a new Motu Proprio — an Apostolic Letter — of Pope Francis announced on Friday, July 16, 2021, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Pope Francis has placed severe restrictions on celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Effective immediately, his restrictions include a mandate barring newly organized celebrations of the TLM and its celebration in any parish church. Further, newly ordained priests will need the written consent of their bishops who in turn must consult the Holy See before approval is granted to celebrate the Traditional (Extraordinary) Form of the Mass.

Pope Francis has imposed these restrictions without explanation in open contradiction of a 2014 Motu Proprio of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who permitted celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass without preconditions and without consent from a bishop. Some of the best early reaction to this new and draconian development has come from Father John Zuhlsdorf (Father Z’s Blog, “Reactions to Traditionis Custodes.”)

“Fathers ... change nothing, do nothing differently for now. It is not rational to leap around without mapping the mine field we are entering. Keep calm and carry on.

“Lay people ... be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.

“To those of you who have put your heart and goods and hopes into supporting and building the Traditional Latin Mass, thank you. Do not for a moment despair or wonder if what you did was worth the effort, time, cost and suffering. It was worth it. It still is.”

— Father John Zuhlsdorf, July 16, 2021

Father Z adds pointedly, “I am forced to remark that the vulgarity of this document is matched only by its cruelty.”

For my part, I cannot help but wonder what Pope Francis might have been thinking at Mass just two days later as he listened to the First Reading on the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Was he at all conscious that Catholics all over the world were hearing the same rebuke from the Prophet Jeremiah that he heard that Sunday?

“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but ... I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands and bring them back to their meadow ... I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 23:1-6

A Catholic Unraveling in Germany

I have been searching for a more panoramic map of the mine field Father Z says we are now entering, and I think I may have found some of its initial rumblings. While reading Volume Two of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell, I came upon his entry for 9 August 2019, the feast of Edith Stein, St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. I wrote about her once in "Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz."

Edith Stein was German by birth. In his book, Cardinal Pell advises readers to seek her intercession for the Church in Germany. Cardinal Pell quoted Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

“The Catholic Church [in Germany] is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. [They are] self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They don’t speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the sacraments, and faith, hope, and love.”

— p. 75

It gets worse. Later in Prison Journal, in an entry dated 16 October 2019, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about the German Catholic Church fears of the possibility of schism that have been raised there. If allowed to happen, such a break would sweep much of Europe. Cardinal Pell referred to a Catholic Culture article by Philip Lawler entitled, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?” (September 17, 2019):

“Lawler argues that the prospect of a schism is remote, but Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect, saying he is not frightened by it, something Lawler believes is frightening in itself.”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p. 214

Cardinal Pell spoke of earlier confidence about the unlikelihood of a schism, but acknowledged that “the odds against it have shortened.” He added, while again citing Philip Lawler:

“Not surprisingly, the New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a schism by the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics ... I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘recognize that they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving [progressives] free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p. 214-215

It was that final sentence that caught my attention after hearing these new restrictions imposed by Pope Francis on the Traditional Latin Mass. Are we now witnessing the opening salvo of such a manipulated agenda? Is there a move under way to antagonize conservative and traditional Catholics into breaking away?

The Pope and the Chinese Communist Party

I am certain this was not by design, but on the day after this announcement by Pope Francis, the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal carried a stunning pair of articles. If you are unable to view them without a subscription, I will summarize their major points here.

The first was entitled, “Beijing Targets Tibet for Assimilation” by Liza Lin, Eva Xaio, and Jonathan Cheng. The assimilation referred to is better described as suppression, and it needs a little historical background.

Twelve centuries had passed between the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in AD 747 and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gaining control of China in 1949. By 1950, the CCP came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.

As such, the Dalai Lama is spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the ex officio ruler of Tibet since the Eighth Century. In 1959, during the Chinese Communist oppression of Tibet, the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India where he has remained since. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading a nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese claims to rule Tibet.

Xi Jinping, President of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has as his national priority the forging of a single Chinese identity centered on unity and Party loyalty. His agenda has placed new restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism and has launched an effort to replace the traditional Tibetan language with Mandarin Chinese while insisting on courses designed for indoctrination in socialism and the CCP.

The Dalai Lama, in exile in India, is now 86 years old. His eventual death is expected to trigger a clash with the Chinese government over control of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the major points of Chinese suppression is a CCP claim that it has the right to identify and choose the Dalai Lama’s “reincarnation,” and thus obtain full control over the heart of Tibetan religion and identity. In late 2020, President Xi Jinping demanded an effort to make Tibetan Buddhism “compatible with a socialist identity.”

This affront to Tibet’s religious freedom actually has a strange sort of precedent. In 2019, Pope Francis signed a concordat — the tenets of which are still secret — in which he agreed to a Chinese Communist Party demand to choose Catholic bishops in the State-approved Chinese Catholic church. This has since translated into increased harassment and suppression of the underground Catholic Church for which many have suffered for their loyalty to Rome.

Pope Francis and the Threat of Schism

A second major article, this one by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca, appeared on the same day in The Wall Street Journal, again just two days after the announced suppression of the Latin Mass. Its title asks an ominous question: “Is Pope Francis Leading the Church to Schism?” The Pope has used some of the same reasoning and language in restricting the TLM that Xi Jinping uses while suppressing Tibetan Buddhism. Pope Francis cites “unity” as his principal reason and goal, but its effect seems the opposite.

Two years after Cardinal Pell wrote from his prison cell with dismal foreboding about the state of the Church in Germany, Francis X. Rocca quoted Cardinal Rainer Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne and leader of the conservative minority of German bishops. He warned that the current wave of dissent sweeping Germany could lead to schism and/or the formation of a German national church. Rocca reports that similar warnings have been echoed by cardinals and bishops of other European countries.

Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked for prayers for the universal Church and the bishops of Germany “that they step back from this radical rupture.” Schism is more a threat to the Catholic Church than any other because, as Rocca points out, its “core identity [of being Catholic] is inextricably tied to its global unity under the pope.”

In my recent post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul,” I wrote briefly about the 2014 Synod on the Family and the controversial document penned by Pope Francis, “Amoris Laetitia.” During the Synod, the Catholic Bishops of Africa emerged as a bloc opposed to the liberalizing views on sexuality and divorce proposed by the Germans. In an Easter sermon this year, African Cardinal Philippe Ouedraogo urged African Christians to “rebel against the imperialism of certain lobbies and associations [in the Church] which advocate and want to impose same-sex marriage, socio-sexual debauchery, and divorce.”

Francis X. Rocca writes that Pope Francis has played down these concerns of the African bishops who, in my view, are the future of the Church’s moral integrity. For a glimpse of the mindset at work in the German church, consider this statement by Joachim Frank, a German journalist who is taking part in the synod there. He described the work of the synod:

“There was this sense of movement, of change, another spirit, another type of church after these boring and very painful years of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”

In his 26-year papacy, Saint John Paul II is widely considered to have almost single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union and ended European communism. To dismiss his papacy and that of Benedict XVI as “boring and painful” is to break, not with Catholic tradition, but with reality.

The trending Catholic mindset of Germany and most of Europe should not steer the Barge of Peter and the moral authority and praxis of the Church. In Germany, before the 2019-2021 pandemic, only about nine-percent of Catholics attended Mass on a regular basis. Among African Catholics, regular Mass participation is the world’s highest. By 2050, there will be twice as many Catholics in Africa than in Europe.

Throughout Asia, Catholicism is relatively small, but growing, and even though small it has a large footprint. In Thailand, Catholics account for only about one-percent of the population, but they leave a large footprint on the culture because of their orthodox commitment to living their faith, often heroically.

Our friend, Pornchai Moontri, told me that in the five months he has lived in Thailand, he has heard Masses in Thai, Vietnamese, and even Lao, but beyond the visible familiarity of the Mass, he has understood little of what he hears. “If the Church had kept Latin,” he recently said, “this would not happen.” He pointed out rather wisely that in the mobile culture this world has become, a universal language promotes unity instead of detracting from it.

There is one hope still for proponents of the Traditional Latin Mass. It is found in Canon 87 of the Code of Canon Law:

“A diocesan bishop, whenever he judges that it contributes to their spiritual good, is able to dispense the faithful from universal and particular disciplinary laws issued for his territory on his subjects by the Supreme Authority of the Church.”

In other words, approval for continued celebrations of Mass in the Extraordinary Form now falls to individual bishops. However, I remain concerned about one major point raised by Cardinal George Pell citing Catholic Culture’ s Phil Lawler. I mentioned it above, but it must be emphasized:

“I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘’ecognize that they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving [progressives] free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p . 214 -215

Conservative and traditional Catholics must not concede to this by schism. You are the Church, and Her most faithful manifestation. It is a quandary why Pope Francis now points to you as “divisive” while remaining silent about the rampant heresies arising out of the progressive German church. I can only conclude with the last two lines of a famous poem by Dylan Thomas written in the year I was born:

"Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

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Please share this post. You may also like this recommended reading by Father Gordon MacRae:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz