Look at this carefully.
Preference for the Traditional Latin Mass is massively correlated with orthodoxy. This is precisely why certain people want it suppressed. They call the TLM “divisive” but the reality is that it is its opponents who want to divide the Church from her liturgical and doctrinal past https://t.co/WtcMl4ymx4
— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) October 15, 2025
I wonder if the gap isn’t even wider now.
UPDATE:
Please note the first comment HERE
UPDATE:
In reference to a short-sighted commentator, below.
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This is precisely what I’ve been saying since Traditionis Custodes was issued. The thriving Traditional Latin Mass communities stand as living proof that the fullness of Catholic doctrine and moral teaching is not only livable in the 21st century – it is luminous. They are a beacon to young people and to all who long for a better temporal life anchored in the hope of eternal life. And that is exactly why it must be “suppressed.” Its very existence refutes the false claim that the Church must change or dilute her doctrine to remain “relevant.” The vitality and fruitfulness of these communities expose that lie in the clearest possible terms, forcing those who seek suppression to choose between admitting error or repudiating the very teachings they claim to protect.
Many have already shown their hand – not by misinterpretation, but by open advocacy for altering doctrine to justify sins of the flesh. Such deceit and cruelty can only be described as demonic, for they invert everything Christ embodies: truth and charity.
As you know, I think the use of the preconciliar Mass should be eliminated. Yet I am fully orthodox on all the table’s data points and doctrines. I don’t want the preconciliar liturgical rites suppressed because they “correlate with orthodoxy”, I want them suppressed because the Church mandated a reformation of the liturgy, and part of being faithful as a Catholic includes that.
If you asked TLM attendees about their reception of Vatican 2, that group’s “orthodoxy” measures would suffer. THAT was one of the points of Traditionis Custodes. You don’t get to pick and choose, and that includes matters of liturgical reform.
I’m confident that if you surveyed Medjugorje apparition believers, their “orthodoxy scores” would be higher than the general “NOM population’s” scores. So what? That doesn’t mean that Medjugorje for that reason becomes legitimate or that suppressing devotion to Our Lady of Medjugorje is wrong or motivated by a desire to stamp out orthodoxy.
The reformed liturgy is the current version of the Roman Rite, in continuity with the ancient liturgical traditon. [That is where everything you hold falls apart.] It preserves the substance of the faith while it has changed some of the rite’s external forms. [Some?]
Godfrey apparently missed the last several decades up until now where Catholics, including priests, bishops, cardinals, and, I think we can safely say at this point, at least one pope, have been “picking and choosing” what parts of Catholic tradition and teaching they like, including matters of liturgical orthodoxy. Another advocate for “check your brain at the door Catholicism.”
No thanks, I’ll pass.
Respectfully, Godfrey, the idea that the Novus Ordo Missae “preserves” the substance or content of the Vetus Ordo is an outright falsehood. Just because Pope Francis (+) claimed that the NO contains “all the elements of the Roman Rite”, that doesn’t somehow make it true.
NLM made a great analysis of this wherein they found that only 13% of the prayers from the VO had been preserved in the NO, with the rest either being revised to match “modern sensibilities” or removed entirely.
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/10/all-elements-of-roman-rite-mythbusting.html
The sooner people stop parroting this blatant lie, the better.
I have always thought what TheBackPew states above.
One thing Godfrey misses is that practically no one sitting in the pews really knows what Vatican II says. One could come up with many statements from Vatican II documents that contradict what the liberal side of the Church believes and they think their rejection of these statements is consistent with the “Spirit of Vatican II.” Well, the Vatican II fathers did not say anything in their documents about a spirit of Vatican II. I have never heard any quotations from Vatican II documents with which I disagree, although I am very skeptical about the whole religious liberty issue. The only way Godfrey could be correct about those assisting at TLMs rejecting Vatican II would be if Vatican II actually changed doctrine. Did it?
Furthermore I recommend Godfrey listen to Father Hunwicke’s lectures given at Silverstream Priory (or find remarks on his blog) about the typology of the Roman rite. He quotes several people from several different theological viewpoints who all say that acceptance of the Novus Ordo means the historic Roman Rite is dead and gone. The theology of the consecration is entirely different. In particular in the Roman Rite and all its dialects the host and the wine become the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ because the priest is making an acceptable offering, whereas in the NO this happens because the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven to do this as is the case in Eastern liturgies. The practical importance of this is immense because if the offering has to be made in an acceptable manner, then the priest must be very careful and do everything in an acceptable manner. My guess is that is why all the prayers said by the priest for himself in the VO are so important.
Now I have a question for Father Z? What if the acceptableness of the offering really is what makes the offering the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Does not that make the behavior of some priests at Mass more than just a matter of aesthetics?
“I want them suppressed because the Church mandated a reformation of the liturgy, and part of being faithful as a Catholic includes that. ”
Whatever Sacrosanctum Concilium may have mandated it wasn’t what the Latin Church got in 1969 (one may argue that the “mandate” was fulfilled in 1965). And as to what we got in 1969 and where it came from, read Bouyer
https://angelicopress.com/products/the-memoirs-of-louis-bouyer
or Luylx
https://angelicopress.com/products/a-wider-view-of-vatican-ii
or even (gasp!) Bugnini
https://archive.org/details/reformofliturgy10000bugn
https://angelicopress.com/products/annibale-bugnini?_pos=1&_sid=42727e417&_ss=r
Change is the god of the modernist. Everything must be sacrificed to its insatiable restlessness.
Because a thriving TLM reveals that change is not infallible, the modernists need the TLM to be erased. This, I concur with TheBackPew.
I’ll reference back to my comment yesterday highlighting Mary Ann Kreitzer’s observation that the TLM and various devotions gave us great saints and brought millions to God. It’s ridiculous to accept the liturgical changes of the 60s with a shrug and say that’s what the Church says and not look at the motives of the reformers!
We have been bullied, abused and gaslighted about the 60s liturgical reform. Since when do you have to do something like that to get people to accept new rules? Oh I forgot. Covid pandemic.
There has been a campaign for the last 4 decades plus (with some brief periods of relief) to stamp out two things 1. the ordained Priesthood 2. right ordered worship through the Mass AND the Sacraments. The reason is to reimagine the “Church” into the “church”, something that looks more like a social service organization or social club that happens to have some prayer. Something you can donate to and get a tax write off…
Over 15 years ago, I was at a pre-Confirmation dinner with a +Bishop of happy memory, at a parish in the land of the stinking onions. Said Bishop was from a land down under, past where there be monsters… He would be well known to Father and I suspect some readers.
During dinner a fulltime “Director of Faith Formation” mentioned that she was supportive of and lauded her Pastor’s efforts for more lay inclusivity. She also mentioned that it was kind of absurd to haul kids out past 6:00PM on a school night for a Confirmation Mass, when Father should just be able to do it himself, “like at the Easter Vigil” but during the school day…She continued on that, “there isn’t really a need for Bishops in the church any longer or at least not so many.” Whatever that means…
To say the rest of the evening went well would be a lie… Said +Bishop of happy memory gently reminded our “Director” that without bishops there would be no priests, without priests no Sacraments, without Sacraments no reason for the “social club sub parish” to exist and lastly no reason for her job to exist… Father Bishop continued, “It’s women like you that want to destroy the Church from the inside out.” That landed as well as one could imagine. Father and this lady left the dining room table, she refused to come back to the table or speak to the Bishop for the remainder of the evening, Father threw back a scotch in his office and the evening went on…
In retrospect, that has really been the unintended or intended goal all along. Work to eliminate the priesthood and right ordered worship and you eliminate or diminish the Church.
The result of this is contained in the Crisis article and the results of the National Study of Catholic Priests. Fr. McTeigue is right on so many levels. Diocesan HR departments have convinced bishops that parish priests especially parish pastors are nothing more than middle managers. Some dioceses now do the equivalence of “satisfaction surveys” in parishes. They pay lots of money to companies to study the results. When the results are not good, there isn’t an offer for help, there is merely admonitions. Soften your tone, listen better, do more of what people want… Oh! “And don’t talk about the last things, it makes people uncomfortable”. I’m not saying there isn’t a way to phrase things but give the guy some help. Then again, HR is almost never there to help in those circumstances.
Fifteen years of reliving that Confirmation evening occasionally or sharing that story convinces me all the more that the individuals forming those young adults were deadly serious and 100% committed to their brand of “church”. Fifteen years on and I am 100% convinced Father (now deceased) was in on it too…
I could go on… I’m not sure if writing all of the above was cathartic or will give me nightmares…
Excuse me, “mandated a reform of the liturgy”? Which council was that?
The one that said “Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.
As far as possible, notable differences between the rites used in adjacent regions must be carefully avoided.”? SC 23.
This shows that the true Faithful cannot be fooled anymore; this why the heterodox have come out of the darkness and are committing their deeds in the light of day.
The Roman Catholic Church is the one, true Church, but like the Roman persecutions of old that drove the Faithful into the catacombs, I feel like history may be repeating itself.
Pray for our Pope and the Church!
Pope Benedict’s hermeneutic of continuity can guide us to a synthesis here: ‘Concretely, the changes which the Council called for need to be understood within the overall unity of the historical development of the rite itself, without the introduction of artificial discontinuities.’ (Sacramentum Caritatis (2007) 3) A footnote adds: ‘I am referring here to the need for a hermeneutic of continuity also with regard to the correct interpretation of the liturgical development which followed the Second Vatican Council.’ (fn. 6)
Already in 1981 he had said, ‘I do regard it as unfortunate that we have been presented with the idea of a new book rather than with that of continuity within a single liturgical history…the so-called Missal of Paul VI is nothing other than a renewed form of the same Missal to which Pius X, Urban VIII, Pius V and their predecessors have contributed, right from the Church’s earliest history.’ (Feast of Faith, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 87)
William Tighe is absolutely, positively, 100% on-target. This is not 1971, we have had Bugnini’s turgid opus available in English for at least 25y so you can read it all – his version, at least – for the proverbial horse’s mouth. In recent years the translation of Bouyer’s memoir – and now publication of Archimandrite Boniface Luykx’s “lost” manuscript – provide ample testimony from two well-known and highly-respected periti to the assertion that the Consilium was indeed dominated by the agendas of a certain few liturgists. Most importantly they confirm that the Novus Ordo was NOT
inadvertently sent my original posting prematurely
Most importantly they confirm that the Novus Ordo was NOT what the Council Fathers had called for and that it far exceeded the brief of the Consilium!
END
(Also, I heartily recommend Luykx’s book – it is chock-full of revelations, observations, opinions, explanations, etc. which carry weight. You may not agree with all of his opinions but it is clear that none of them were formed in haste and that he usually cites his rationale to back them up. Definitely worth reading!)
I want them suppressed because the Church mandated a reformation of the liturgy, and part of being faithful as a Catholic includes that.
This is cold-hearted positivism, and it has no place in the Christian religion.
[BAM!]