interesting post. I am sure you mean well, but what you say is duplicitous.
Respectfully, I assume and hope you did not intentionally use the word duplicitous with full knowledge of its meaning, because that word literally means “deceitful,” and nothing I have written herein was intended to deceive, nor do I see how my opinions about what the Roman Catholic Church ought to do in order to shore itself up could possibly amount to deception, given that they are my true and honest opinions.
To put it another way, if you characterize a statement someone makes as duplicitous, you cannot logically assume they mean well. A more appropriate word choice would have been “erroneous,” which unlike duplicitous does not carry connotations of dishonesty.
On one hand you argue for the traditional Latin Mass, but on the other you argue for what Hans King and the modernists have wanted for the last 60 years.
I can assure you I am not a theological modernist; the limit to which I have any use for modernism is in industrial design (the 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible comes to mind, as well as various computers, particularly those built by Apple, and the final generation of Sun Microsystems and Oracle machines) graphics design (for example, the Swiss school of typography), architecture (especially the Lever House, and also the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe and the gorgeous Four Seasons restaurant by Philip Johnson, where I was fortunate to dine before its closure), and some modernist music, specifically the film scores of Alex North (specifically, his score for
Spartacus, and his brilliant unused score for
2001: A Space Odyssey) and Jerry Goldsmith (who did the music for a number of films, some highlights of which are
The Wind and the Lion, Patton, The Andromeda Strain, Logan’s Run, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and a few other Star Trek films, most notably
First Contact, and the theme for
Star Trek: The Next Generation, before his untimely death in 2004), as well as a few other composers I think could be classified as modernist, although to my knowledge they did not identify as such, specifically the brilliant Anglican organists Herbert Howells, T. Tertius Noble and Francis Jackson, who reposed in the Lord on January the 10th at the age of 104, and had a funeral in York Minster, where he spent much of his career as organist.
However as a theological system, modernism is dreadful; I wish it were not even called Modernism, so that the architecture of the likes of Mies van der Rohe, the paintings of Mondrian, or the exquisite typefaces of the Swiss school, such as Univers and Helvetica, were not tainted by association with bad theology. And of course, postmodern theology is even worse.
The chief reason why I want a hypothetical future Bishop of Rome to revert the liturgical changes and other actions of Pope Francis, and then permanently revert the powers of his office to those historically held during the reign of Pope St. Gregory the Great, or better yet, Pope Celestine,* is to preclude another disaster of theological modernism.
The seeming liquidation of the legacy of Pope St. John Paul II, and even more so, the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI, has been horrible to watch, and it is my belief that the Roman church needs to do everything in its power to prevent that from happening again. Rome has been very lucky to have been blessed with a number of good Popes since the Counter Reformation, starting with Pope Pius V, and Pope St. Pius X was particularly worthy of praise. There have also been less successful popes, however, particularly surrounding Vatican I and Vatican II, both of which led to schisms.
In addition, as immensely talented as Pius V, Pius X and Benedict XVI were with regards to the liturgy, one also encounters popes like Pius XII who modified the liturgy for no good reason, specifically in the form of the changes made to the ancient Paschal Triduum, which dated back to St. Gregory the Great and which directly corresponded to the Byzantine Rite in a number of ways, including the wording of the prayers of the Mass of the Presanctified, the color of the vestments, the timing and the number of Paschal prophecies read during the Vigils service on Easter Even (which in terms of the structure of its synaxis followed the same pattern as the Byzantine Rite Vesperal Divine Liturgy on the same day, as used by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholics such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church).
Additionally, one of the two crowning liturgical achievements of Pope St. Pius X, the motu proprio
Tra le sollecitudini is now seemingly ignored in a very large number of rural parishes in the Western US; indeed, it depresses me to note that I have never personally visited a Novus Ordo mass anywhere in the Western US that was entirely faithful to the instructions on sacred music provided by that motu proprio, and most Novus Ordo masses I have attended out here seem to disregard it utterly. Gone is the Gregorian chant which is supposed to be the standard form of ecclesiastical music in the Roman Rite, and meanwhile, guitars, pianos and other instruments the use of which is not actually licit or canonical seem to predominate.
The Papacy is what has preserved the faith for the past two millennia. It is the kingdom of God, and by that it is a monarchy. The Pope has supreme authority over the Church, primus sine paribus, as you said.
Firstly, the faith was preserved for the past few millenia chiefly thanks to the actions of the ecumenical councils, which together with equivalent decisions by the Oriental Orthodox, after ill-advised action by Leo I, collectively condemned Arianism, Semi-Arianism, Apollinarianism, Pneumatomacchianism, Nestorianism, Monothelitism and Iconoclasm. On the subject of Monothelitism, by the way, this creates something of a hole in your argument, because Pope Honorius I was a proponent of Monothelitism.
Additionally, reverting back to the Council of Nicaea, Canon VI clearly declares that Alexandria and Antioch have the same authority as Rome (these were, along with Cyprus, the three surviving autocephalous churches after the destruction of Jerusalem, before the establishment of the Pentarchy; Canon VII, meanwhile, takes the first step towards restoring the authority of Jerusalem, although in 325 the port of Caesarea remained the Metropolitical See for the former province of Judaea, then called Syria Palaestina.
Actually, a number of the
twenty canons instituted by the Council of Nicaea which are still upheld by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox have, for reasons I cannot explain, ceased to be observed in the West, despite their clear theological, liturgical and ecclesiological justification, as one can tell by reading them. Given the centrality of the Council of Nicaea to our faith, it seems to me that these canons ought to be in the very opening chapters of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law, just as they are in the opening chapters of the Eastern Orthodox equivalent, the Pedalion.
If the Papacy is altered to undermine that authority, then that is the end of the Church. If we had primis sine paribus in the fourth century, then we would all have been Arians, as the majority of bishops would have voted that way, but it is not that way
Umm, seriously, no; the Bishop of Rome was not even present at the Council of Nicaea, and it was Pope St. Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, who, together with his Holy Synod, anathematized Arius and Arianism, an act subsequently upheld at the Council of Nicaea thanks to a brilliant defense of Trinitarian Orthodoxy presented by St. Athanasius, who after much resistance, was ultimately dragged to the cathedra of Alexandria and became the successor of St. Alexander on the apostolic throne of St. Mark. The most prominent bishop absent from the Council of Nicaea was the Bishop of Rome, who sent legates in his place, although he did support St. Alexander and Athanasius. The biggest contribution made by the Bishop of Rome during the course of the Arian persecution of Alexandrian Christians was providing assistance to the exiled St. Athanasius, which was very important, however, it is certainly not the case that any of the bishops of Rome in the fourth century were directly and solely responsible for the demise of Arianism.
Indeed, if they had the power you suggest they had, the Arian controversy would have ended before the Council of Nicaea, rather than dragging on for over 60 years.
God rules a kingdom, not a democracy. One either denies himself takes up his cross and follows the king, or he doesn’t. There is no debate and discussion about the commands of God. It is either obey or not. God gives us complete free will to make that choice.
As for me, I choose obedience rather than sacrifice.
Obedience to God is inherently a sacrifice. We have to put to death the old man within us, cutting ourselves off from worldly pleasures, so as to offer ourselves and our lives as a living sacrifice to God, for Him to do with what He deems best. This is why in Catholic and Orthodox sacramental theology, Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders are both interpreted as sacraments, because they constitute a sacrifice, a rededication of our very selves to the service of God either in raising families or serving Him in the church.
The way forward is not democracy for the Church. The way forward is repentance and obedience
Indeed, and I am not calling for democracy in the Roman Catholic Church. I am calling for the Roman Catholic Church to adhere to ancient canon law from the Patristic period, which defines the role of the Pope as Primus Inter Pares, and to re-enter into communion with the Eastern churches and make decisions as they were made historically, by means of what the Eastern churches call the Holy Synod (for all practical purposes, the College of Cardinals would logically be the Holy Synod of the Roman Catholic Church, since its functions are roughly equivalent to that of the Holy Synods of the Orthodox churches). In this manner, a repeat of the liturgical disaster now unfolding could be averted, by preventing anyone from wielding sufficient power to unilaterally change the various liturgical rites of the Catholic Churches in communion with the Pope of Rome.
*Technically Archbishop Celestine, as the Roman pontiffs did not adopt the style of Papem, or Pope, until around the year 530 AD, and indeed did not even style themselves as Pontifex Maximus until the reign of Leo I around 440 AD; the title of Pope was historically used only by the Patriarch of Alexandria, which is why to this day we have His Beatitude the Greek Orthodox Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa Theodore II, and His Holiness the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria Tawadros II (which in an amusing coincidence, is the Coptic form of the name Theodore II; this is fitting since these two Popes, despite one being Eastern Orthodox and the other Oriental Orthodox, have a very close working relationship, and the two Orthodox churches of Alexandria have the second closest relationship of any two EO and OO churches, after the relationship between the Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church).
