The past week has been buzzing with rumors to the effect that Leo XIV has instructed the Dicastery for Divine Worship to issue “extensions” on the TLM whenever bishops ask for them. In this way, as Kevin Tierney explains, he has begun the practical repeal of Traditionis Custodes, however long its actual replacement with a better policy will take.
And yet… even if the rumor is true (the nuncio to Great Britain has affirmed it with a classic non-denial), it still means that the fate of the TLM is left entirely to the local bishop; legally the situation remains worse than it did under John Paul II’s 1988 indult. Nothing prevents anti-TLM bishops from continuing to shut it down, as we have seen most recently in Detroit, Charlotte, and Knoxville (to name only the most notorious). Worst of all, the vicious lies and theological errors underlying Traditionis Custodes—a document whose claims entail what a French author refers to as “latent schism”—remain official and operative.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
Very often people will ask, as I myself asked for years: “Why in the world would the Church’s leaders persecute some of the most faithful Catholics—those who form the TLM communities?”
The answer is not an agreeable one, but sometimes we must take bitter medicine in order to get well. Truth can be the bitterest of medicines. And of all the sicknesses in the Church, denial of reality is one of the most widespread and most unacknowledged. When this sickness is not diagnosed, the sufferer cannot take the steps he needs to take in regard to spiritual diet and exercise.
Here, then, is my answer to the question with which we started.
The reason the Church’s leaders persecute the most faithful Catholics is that, broadly speaking, the leadership of the Catholic Church on earth at this time is dominated by a network of active homosexuals and theological modernists. They are not always the same people but they rely on, and receive, one another’s support. We all know individual good bishops or cardinals but such exceptions are a controlled opposition, with very limited mobility. The more they act or speak out, the more ostracized they are, and sometimes they can even be canceled, as priests are canceled lower down.
Now, let us consider the enormity of the evil represented by each of these forces. Homosexuals reject the first principles of natural law. Modernists reject the first principles of divine revelation. Together, they reject the foundations not only of Christianity but of religion as such, and therefore of morality.
Continue reading at Tradition and Sanity