Our Dear Holy Father!

It's a little bit embarrassing to hear so many of my Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) friends chattering, questioning and even bashing our new Holy Father. Some begin to say how they fear that he will suppress the Latin Mass. That even in his home country, he was very apathetic to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass which is why there are little to no Latin Mass Churches in Buenos Aires. Some are even going as far to say that he is a "sworn enemy to the TLM!" There is panic over all the forums; will he undo what Bl. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI did? Or will he continue it?

First things first… STOP IT!! I will say this once more… You DO NOT rebuke Satan using Satan's ways!! Can't you see that he is already trying to turn us against this new Pontiff? Clearly any bit of temptation to gossip, bash or even threaten disloyalty to our Holy Father is the work of Satan himself! So STOP IT!!!

Second, I remember asking my Dad once if a Pope could ever undo what another Pope did? And he answered me saying no. Yet at the time I think I was referring to a Pope declaring something a Dogma of the Church; no Pope would ever undo something like that. Yet practices and rituals have been changed when certain ways of doing things just weren't working out. For example, Pope Benedict before he resigned made some changes in the process of electing a new Pope. Things like that can be done. But on the topic of the TLM which has become such a powerful movement in the Church, gathering such great responses in faith, reverence to the Mass and an increase in vocations, I would highly doubt that the Pope would want to undo what is going so well in the Church. Plus it is also providing a step in the right direction for those who are of the SSPX to make a full communion with Rome. This is something every Pope desires to do; bring the Church back into one fold. Why would he want to challenge that? I highly doubt that is the mission of this Pope to undo what has been done with the Latin Mass in the Church.

I would venture to guess that this Pope has a main focus on getting us back to the basics of being a Christian. Reminding us of the importance of prayer, humility and aversion to worldliness. As I even said in my last article, I believe this Pope is going to work on rebuilding the Church family. And with this focus on the traditional family, I believe that it is then and only then that a traditional church will flourish!

Who cares if he is a Jesuit! From what I hear most Jesuits who are of the political left way of thinking, dislike Pope Francis. This to me is a good sign that we are in for good things! I even read another source that said that Fr. Fessio, who founded the Adoremus – Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy speaks highly of him. Specifically, he stated when asked his thoughts: “You’ll love him. The other Jesuits hate him. I’m ecstatic.” He also has a deep devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, is said to practice the Five First Saturday Devotions, and prays 15 decades of the Rosary each day. So really, what's not to like about him? 

So many of the TLM followers desire for the whole Church to be turned on its end and for us to revert completely back to pre-Vatican II, so that everywhere, everyone will be practicing the Latin Mass again and the Church will be as beautiful as she once was almost 50 years ago. Then there will be no more scandals, no more problems, just good sold Catholicism the way it used to be. But you have to sit back and realize when you wish a thing like that, that you are forgetting something… Vatican II happened for a reason. The Holy Ghost is in the driver seat of the Church and He allowed it to happen for a reason. Therefore, if it was never supposed to happen in the Church, then it would have never happened at all. I remember the words of St. Padre Pio saying how we are all like little children sitting on a very small stool looking up at the tapestry of our world that God has created. We can't see the full picture, and to us it doesn't make sense why God allows such things to happen. But if we could only see what God sees, we would notice the full beauty of God's work and see the tapestry in the way that it was meant to be seen. There is something to Vatican II that I believe will eventually be ironed out. But maybe not right now.

The way God seems to always do things is to uproot from the bottom up. I believe with Pope Francis he is starting with bringing us back to our Christian roots as I mentioned earlier, and from there in time we will eventually see the beauty of the Church restored!

Thirdly, in order to bring some peace of mind to this whole issue, I would like to point out that one of the first things that Pope Francis did while in the Basilica, was that he went and knelt in front of a tomb of a Pope. Which Pope? Pope St. Pius V (1504-1572), the Pope who, being a Dominican, declared the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church and commissioned the first edition of his complete works. The He also patronized the sacred music composer Palestrina, and, in his the Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum on July 14, 1570, promulgated the 1570 edition of the Roman Missal, making it mandatory throughout the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, except where a Mass liturgy dating from before 1370 AD was in use.
 
This “St. Pius V” form of the Mass remained essentially unchanged for 400 years until Pope Paul VI’s revision of the Roman Missal in 1969–70. It is this form of the Mass that we know today as “the Tridentine Latin Mass,” or, the “Extraordinary Form” of the Mass. It seems clear that by kneeling and praying before the tomb of this great, and holy, Pope, Pope Francis was making a statement of respect for him and his work, and so, by implication, for the form of the Mass that he implemented.

Therefore, all-in-all I would not worry at all about what Pope Francis is about to bring to the table. Instead I would pray for him as he has asked us to do, and learn from him. He may have a lot to teach us. For those of us who are Traditional Latin Mass Catholics, we need to let go of this pride of always thinking that we are better than the rest of the church and that everyone needs to conform to us. We are apart of a Universal Church that has many different parts. It would be wrong of us to say one part is better than the other. The Body of Christ should be working together as one, so that as one we may enter into that Heavenly home where we all belong.

Viva Christus Rex!