Saturday, June 22, 2024

Quo Primum and the rumored forthcoming attack on Traditional Mass communities


About two years ago, I wrote a post lamenting the continuing efforts to restrict access to the Traditional Latin Mass by the spiritually tone-deaf, aging radical contingent which is currently favored in Rome. At that time, I quoted the encyclical of Pope Saint Pius V, Quo Primum, which grants in perpetuity the right of all priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass.

Since doing that, I realized recently that I left off a fairly critical piece, namely the closing admonition of Pope Saint Pius V, which reads as follows in Latin:
Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam Nostrae permissionis, statuti, ordinationis, mandati, praecepti, concessionis, indulti, declarationis, voluntatis, decreti et inhibitionis infringere, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, indignationem omnipotentis Dei, ac beatorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum eius se noverit incursurum. 
This translates to English as follows:
Therefore, let it be licit for none among men to infringe upon the permissions, statutes, ordinances, mandates, precepts, concessions, indults, wills, decretals and inhibitions in this document of ours, or to have the rashness to oppose them. If, however, someone should presume to attempt this, he should know that he will incur the anger of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Those in Rome attempting to push forward the rumored harsh restrictions, assuming they believe in God, should tremble before doing so. It should be recalled that St. John Chrysostom warned: "If you have sinned, but in your own person merely, you will have no such great punishment, nothing like it: but if you have sinned as bishop, you are lost." Our bishops and priests ignore at their own peril the warnings of the saints and the will of the Holy Spirit, who bestows good fruit upon the devout, and evil fruit upon the worldly.  

And it is well to recall the observations of Fulcher of Chartres in the 12th century AD: 

When the Roman Church, which is the source of correction for all Christianity, is troubled by any disorder, the sorrow is communicated from the nerves of the head to the members subject to it, and these suffer sympathetically....For when the head is thus struck, the members at once are sick. If the head be sick, the other members suffer.

The head is clearly sick. Thus, we suffer. Thus, the world suffers. 

If further restrictions come, no one should be surprised at what happens next.

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