Before liberals screech that Benedict XVI was a tyrant for proclaiming the Faith Catholic and telling theologians that debate should not be mistaken for dissent, in our ecclesiastical world in which obedience is a big thing, an expected thing, we need to come to terms with what tyranny in the Church looks like. To all extents and purposes, we did on Friday 16th July 2021, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It looks like Pope Francis's Motu Proprio restricting the Traditional Latin Mass.
If I may be so bold, I really believe that tyranny isn't what a wayward 15-year-old might imagine, or what Fr James Martin S.J might imagine. To an evil man, the moral law itself is a tyrant. To a delinquent adolescent, tyranny can be somebody else telling you what to do or to believe or how to behave, but that is the use of authority in the service of the good delivered by a good parent. Christ gave all authority to His Apostles to teach and to baptise in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. This is authority in the service of good. Tyranny is, rather, the abuse or misuse of authority in the active service of injustice or evil.
If a good Christian King commands the collection of taxes to build a Cathedral and the people have to cough up and find the money somehow, that isn't tyranny. Hopefully, he asks the tax collectors to show compassion to the poor. If a bad Christian King plunders monasteries, evicts clergy and paupers in the care of religious and commands adherence to a new self-originating religion, that is tyranny. If a Pope commands that God's Faithful be permitted the liturgical riches of the Church, or that the clergy who wish to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass be not hindered by errant, lukewarm Bishops, that isn't tyranny. If a Pope wishes to remove from God's people their liturgical inheritance - that which belongs not simply to the Pope or to the Bishops or even to the clergy but to the entire People of God - that is tyranny, since it is the abuse of power at the service of an injustice. What we see under Francis is injustice flourishing everywhere. Why? Because he does not fear God.
All tyranny involves transgression of the law of God, since it is the law of God that restrains the tyrant and protects the lowly. Unless the law of God is respected by the Monarch, tyranny is always waiting in the wings. All tyranny involves theft. Notice how rights we presumed were forever protected by governments for the greater majority of subjects or citizens (though not the unborn) have been dissolved in the Covid-era. Basic rights during lockdown, yes even the right to worship God in a public manner, were stolen, with the acquiescence of Bishops, setting a terrifying precedent for the future in which unjust rulers can announce an emergency at any time of their choosing and Bishops will meekly obey. In the post-vaccination world, even the assumed right to go into a grocery shop are not going to be protected for all. That's how far we have fallen.
The awkward truth is that Catholics who have been following the Bergoglian nightmare already knew Francis to be a tyrant and a dictator straight out of a 'how to Stalin' Communist manual. We all witnessed the robber Synods in which every view but the Catholic view was acceptable. Perhaps we had hoped or even grown to assume that because Francis is liturgically illiterate and most likely unteachable about the heavenly realities of the Mass, that he would leave Catholics attached to the Mass of Ages alone. Tragically, he hasn't and, even more tragically, he isn't going to. In truth it is more tragic for him than it is even for us, since it is he who is digging his eternal grave. It is he who like Cain has slain his brother, Benedict XVI, destroying his holy work while his predecessor still lives, he whose offering was acceptable to God! Francis has lit the blue touchpaper on a hot war, not a war started by himself, but a war he obviously intends to finish or win. This is WWIII and his chief weapon is Vatican II, a Council now held so closely and forcefully by heretics that they will choke that Council to death.
My heart goes out to the many, many priests, some of whom I personally know, who will see their right to offer the Mass that has nourished so many souls in the distant and recent past, established within the law of the Church removed by the lawless one, for whom law is only useful when it is in the service of destruction, whether that destruction is within families, within souls or within parishes or religious communities. Francis is afraid to meet with those whose lives are blameless, the few notably irreproachable Cardinals and Bishops of the Church whose audience he refuses. To dictators, to celebrity or notorious priests or evil Bishops or bad Cardinals, however, he is an erstwhile confidant and friend. My prayers are with the clergy whose rights to celebrate the ancient Roman rite has been removed with no moral justification whatsoever and with the laity whose rights are oppressed by an unjust steward who constantly belittles the simple Faith and love for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that our ancestors held and cherished.
Such a flagrant injustice as this, on such a scale as to incorporate not merely one religious order but all, not one parish, but all, not one priest, but potentially all and with the potential to persecute not only traditionally-minded priests, but sensible or moderate Bishops who harbour them in their Dioceses to my mind cannot meet with anything but discreet resistance, if not open defiance. I tremble in saying it, but if psychologists are right, the more you give in to a tyrant such as this, with such megalomaniac ambitions, the more ground you concede to those in the active service of Evil, the more confident they become.
Francis won't be satisfied with stealing the Mass of Ages from under your nose, nor will he be satisfied with removing the Roman Missal of 1962 from your hands. I expect he won't be satisfied until you have done what he has done and committed public idolatry and in some manner apostasised from the perennial Catholic Faith. What begins as the removal of the Traditional Latin Mass most probably ends with the removal of the Sacraments of Life altogether. Why? Because this is a Satanic war against God and His Church. Quite patently Satan hates the Traditional Latin Mass because it most expresses the Beauty and transcendence of Almighty God and the efficacy of the one Supreme Sacrifice of Calvary for our Redemption wrought by our loving Saviour, Jesus Christ. However, Satan also hates the Novus Ordo Missae, for while the Sacrifice of our Saviour is rendered more opaque by human novelty, God Himself is made truly present on the Altar. Make no mistake, the Devil hates the Latin Mass, but the Devil hates every Mass offered for the Salvation of mankind. I could be wrong, but I expect that the 'Missal to end the Mass' is already written. My question then is what at this stage, a crucial stage in the war is the Catholic response to tyranny such as this, knowing that it comes from the Evil one? What does the Lord Jesus want from His soldiers confirmed in His army? One layman has made a contribution to this urgent debate already.
The Church, however, cannot be led by the laity. Let us implore the true King, the merciful King, the just One, to lead us and give us Shepherds who will guide us through this war to victory in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And come, Lord Jesus!