A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

The suffering of souls who desire the TLM is often immense March 17, 2014

A good reader sent me a link over the weekend that outlines – for the umpteenth time – the anguish of some group of pious, if possibly a bit naive, souls who only desired to have the Traditional Mass a little bit available in their Diocese.  It’s a story that has been told many times in this country (even with respect to the Novus Ordo in Latin!) and even more in locations where the dominance of progressive “spirit of Vatican II” types is even more entrenched.

Outside Western Europe, the region of the world most suffering under this progressive dominance is Latin America.  Only, due to a history of greater authoritarianism, and much less experience with freedoms and individual rights (I say this universally, not just with respect to matters of faith) in Latin America, there are very few priests willing to step out on a limb and start to publicly re-embrace Tradition.  There are brilliant exceptions, of course, but, by and large, the region of the world in which Summorum Pontificum has had the least impact is in Latin America.

To cut to the chase, some faithful in Costa Rica started up a society of people dedicated to making the Traditional Mass available.  Over time, this became part of Una Voce International.  They have been working and struggling under two different bishops over the past 4 years to have public TLMs made available.  Some private TLMs were permitted under conditions of strict secrecy, but that is all.  There have been numerous letters sent to the archbishop and archdiocesan officials, letters hand-carried to Rome, etc., but still no public TLM.  Even when a priest of the Ecclesia Dei Commission came to San Juan, Costa Rica and was originally given “permission” to offer the TLM, that permission was yanked at the last minute and the priest told he could only offer a private TLM with no faithful present:

In general we have also witnessed how no parish priest dares to authorize the Mass without the express permission of the Archbishop, even when they know they have the general permission granted by the law of the Church (from Quo Primum Tempore to Summorum Pontificum). Additionally, no priest (with the exception of one) dares to celebrate the traditional rite without the approval of the Archbishop, even though the law of the Church is emphatic when it states that they do not require any permission from any higher authority.

It should also be mentioned that before we had our first meeting with the Archbishop, a priest from Ecclesia Dei, Father Mark Withoos, visited our country on his vacation time at the invitation of several faithful from our group and some outsiders. The Mass that he was going to celebrate was cancelled at the last minute, and after a meeting with the Archbishop he was told that he could only celebrate in private and without the participation of the faithful who had originally been invited to what should have been a public Mass.

Due to this situation, the faithful in Costa Rica can not enjoy through the Archdiocese the spiritual treasure of the Holy Mass, a treasure they are entitled to receive and a treasure that can not be prohibited by any archbishop, thus creating an outrageous state of need, unprecedented in the history of the archdiocese. In our country there is a silent ban, a de facto ban, against the Mass that sanctified all of our saints,

This is a sad refrain that has been repeated dozens or hundreds of times around the world.  The lay faithful, likely after experiencing years of abusive, unedifying Novus Ordo Masses, come to recognize the Traditional Mass as both their birthright and as the prime means to overcome the crisis in the Faith.  They forthrightly request that which the highest authority in the Church has granted to them.  They then meet with obfuscation, stonewalling, and outright denials of these rights.  And any priests who are sympathetic to their cause will likely find their career derailed if the powers that be become aware of their support.  This goes on constantly.  In places where the modernists are deeply entrenched, it normally takes either enormous pressure/will or an outright miracle to induce them to let go their death grip on power and allow a TLM.

I say normally, because there is an event that can occur that will often bring a sudden willingness on the part of the bureaucracy to suddenly liberate the use of the TLM.  That event is the opening of an SSPX chapel nearby.  Leaving aside any problems or concerns with the Society, one can see the response to SSPX chapels that attract a fair attendance by the sudden appearance of Ecclesia Dei community or other TLMs some time thereafter in the dioceses the SSPX draws from.  This may be an explosive comment, these occurrences could simply be mass coincidence, I don’t know, but there seems a fair correlation, nonetheless.

As it turns out, the SSPX has just very recently, in the past few months, opened up a chapel in Costa Rica. It will be interesting to see if this trend bears out in this case.  It doesn’t always.  In some dioceses, the hatred of the TLM is so inveterate that nothing will move authorities to permit the Mass of Ages.  But more often that not, it does.

Recognizing this visible tendency is not an endorsement nor a condemnation of the SSPX.  And certainly, the presence of a nearby SSPX church/chapel is certainly not the only cause for reasonable implementation of Summorum Pontificum, there are dioceses that have been receptive to varying degrees to the faithful’s request for Traditional Masses.  But where opposition to the Traditional Mass is most hardened, where the authorities are most accustomed to trampling on the rights of some of the most pious souls in their jurisdiction, there has often been a visible reduction in opposition when there is, for lack of a better term, competition in the form of an SSPX presence.  Such likely figured in the history of this Diocese of Dallas.