Faggotry, Comedy and Killing the Latin Mass
In a country town parish in the Blue Mountains (New South Wales), one quietly observes the congregation.
There is only one Sunday Mass, so a quick census is straightforward. Apart from the obvious eighty or ninety per cent who have white hair or none, the other obvious and alarming observation is that one counts only one – yes one – school aged child in attendance. The parish church is right across the road from the parish primary school, where, on any given day, one sees hundreds of happy children frolicking around the playground. (And yes, I realise that many of the students in Catholic schools are not Catholics).
Obvious question. Where are they all at ten o’clock on Sunday morning? Not in church; that much is clear. Next obvious question, why are all but one of them not there? A complex question, with many answers. Some hints may lie below.
The titular head of the Church on earth and the Vicar of Christ, the 266th title holder, is often in the papers, generally for the wrong reasons. One gets the impression that he likes being in the papers.
Well, it was St Paul who stood up to the first pope, “to his face”, over a matter of importance relating to divisions in the early Church.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%202%3A11-21&version=GNT
A tradition that should be continued wherever necessary. As we know from the secular realm, citizens have a moral obligation to resist bad laws and regimes.
Three recent papal appearances in the media are noteworthy.
The first. “Pope bans Traditional Latin Mass at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s”, Tess Livingstone’s story in The Australian read.
https://archive.md/sDOo2#selection-399.5-407.43
Livingstone writes:
In a move that has shocked and upset hundreds of Catholics in Melbourne, the Vatican has banned the traditional Latin Mass from the city’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The final traditional Mass will be offered on Wednesday, June 19, at 5.30pm. By essentially ordering traditional Catholics to get out of their own cathedral, the ban is stirring up tensions and divisions.
On Wednesday evening Mass, which has been a regular feature of cathedral worship for 13 years, drew a crowd of more than 150, mainly young people, including city workers not aligned with traditional parishes.
One standout phrase is, obviously, “mainly young people”. One of the few places in the first world where the Mass and Catholic devotion are growing is in traditional communities. We can’t have that!
There is a feel of holiness in these places. In the words of Bernie Taupin:
Oh the furnace wind
Is a flickering of wings about your face
In a cloud of incense
Yea, it smells like Heaven in this place.
Indeed, it does.
A recent visit to north Queensland revealed just about every priest in the Townsville Diocese to be Indian. Both parishes with which I have a connection are (mercifully) presided over by Filipinos. Australia is now what we used to call a “mission country”. Increasingly, our pastors are from what we used to call the Third World. There are simply not enough vocations here now, probably because of all of those Catholic non-Mass attending families who no longer pray for vocations. And who no longer raise children for whom a priestly vocation might appear a real possibility.
Tess Livingstone continues:
The priest who said that Mass, Father Shawn Murphy, 34, who was ordained a year ago, told The Australian: “The Cathedral is the mother church of the Archdiocese and like a mother should be welcoming to all her children.’’
Father Murphy, the Assistant priest of the St John Henry Newman old rite parish in Caulfield North in Melbourne where he leads the young adults’ group, said members of the group were distressed, shocked and disbelieving about the decision.
“What is so tragic is that unlike previous oppressions of the Mass and the faithful, in England under the Tudors, during the French Revolution and in prison camps of the Soviet Union and China, this oppression is coming from within the church,’’ Fr Murphy said.
Yep.
Right from the top, to be precise, Father.
It is beyond ironic that the most divisive pope in church history thinks he has to ban the Old Rite because he thinks it is … divisive. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Tess Livingstone also sees irony:
Francis overturned his predecessors’ initiatives three years ago, in a document ironically entitled Traditionis Custodes (Custodians of Tradition), which crushed centuries of tradition.
Fr Glenn Tattersall of the Caulfield traditional community weighed in:
“I can personally attest to the many graces, including those of conversion, that have been granted through this Mass. It has borne only good fruit. But now, we learn that the Holy See has directed that the Mass be discontinued – causing widespread sadness and distress.
“In fact, the historical form of Mass is a constituent part of tradition and cannot be lawfully suppressed or forbidden. But in this Pontificate neither orthodox doctrine nor the law of the Church counts for anything.
“Everything is about power, and those in power in Rome insist that this Mass must stop. Archbishop Comensoli has been treated by the Holy See not as a Successor of the Apostles – which he is as Archbishop – but as the flunky of a remote and heartless bureaucracy. It seems that Pope Francis has suppressed Vatican II as well as the old Mass!’’ (Emphasis added).
No punches pulled there. Fr Tattersall is a modern and unacknowledged giant of the Australian church.
The second pope story this week? It comes from a Spectator interview with a French academic and writer, Frederic Martel. He is the author of many books, the most provocative of which is called In the Closet of the Vatican.
https://thespectator.com/topic/pope-think-frociaggine-vatican-homosexuality-frederic-martel/
Matt McDonald reports:
Pope Francis this week apologized for decrying the “frociaggine” — or “faggotry” — in the Vatican and in Catholic seminaries for the second time in a matter of weeks. On Tuesday in a private meeting, Francis mentioned the “air of faggotry” in the Vatican, which followed his May 20 comment that “nella chiesa c’è troppa aria di frociaggine” — “in our Church there is too much of an air of faggotry.”
Ah, faggotry in Rome. He has apologised twice for saying that, the same man who has been out in front arguing for blessing “civil unions”, as per the declaration Fiducia Supplicans. (God help you if you have an uncivil union).
Go figure.
Martel argues, interalia, that the Pope is not anti-gay, so long as gaydom is kept “in the closet”. When it becomes an all-consuming culture, they he is concerned. Martel explains:
While we can think that Popes Paul VI or Benedict XVI had homosexual tendencies and desires, though probably remaining chaste, nobody can think that Francis is gay. On the contrary, he’s a heterosexual who’s both rather gay-friendly (although here he’s been very changeable in his ideas on the topic) and very reserved about the Vatican’s gay omnipresence. I don’t think Francis has a problem with gays per se, but he’s very reserved about gay activism. He likes discreet gays, let’s say “in the closet.” Not those who militate for or against the gay cause, while being gay. That, to my mind, is the key to his repeated remarks.
… I believe that Francis has been quite consistent from the start: recognition of the right of individuals to live their sexuality as they wish; acceptance of civil unions; refusal of gender studies and gay marriage; denunciation of homophobic cardinals who are almost always the most homosexual in their private lives. That’s his strategy.
Yes, Martels will not be considered an unbiased and reputable source. The College of Cardinals mostly homosexual? Really. This will be difficult reading for people of (Catholic) faith. Martels said that the Pope thought his book was “good”. But Martels’ explanation of the Pope’s position does make a kind of sense. His account of contemporary Rome should not be totally dismissed. And given the Peronist Pope’s overall approach to politics and people-management, we might think that his implied (by Martels) strategy of smearing traditionalist opponents with the gay charge could be on the money. In view of the Vatican’s possible role in the defenestration of George Pell, anything is plausible.
What does all this mean for the little, old, white-headed lady in the pews? Mercifully, not much. But the Vatican is what it is. Big power games are not unknown in the long history of the Barque of St Peter. The weeds grow alongside the crop. This is not the first time that Rome required fundamental counter-revolution engineered by a saintly outsider. St Catherine of Siena’s mission in the age of the Avignon Popes comes to mind.
The third and final pope story. A hundred comedians were recently invited to the Vatican.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722vd9274yo
Yes, I know, an unkind observer might say, well that makes a total of one hundred and one comedians in the Vatican. As the fictional Francis (yes, that was his name) Urquhart would have said, you might well think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.
Without plunging into the list of invitees, one’s best guess is that most of them are unfunny progressives. Most comedians are. No Dave Smith or Steven Crowder here, methinks. Johannes Leak? Billy Birmingham? Jerry Seinfeld?
Instead, the headline act was Jimmy Fallon. Covid pro-vaxxer. Climate campaigner. Maximum shill, as Steven Crowder called him. As The Hill reported:
Jimmy Fallon is giving a boost to COVID-19 vaccine boosters, teaming up with Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion for an offbeat, Christmas-themed music video encouraging Americans to get “in line” for the shots.
“It was a masked Christmas, we stayed in the house. We covered our nose, and covered our mouth,” the NBC “Tonight Show” host croons in “It Was A (Masked Christmas),” which he debuted on Monday. “But it’s Christmastime, we’ll be in line for a booster.”
Whoopie Goldberg was (inevitably) there. Theologian Whoopi recently had this to say:
Whoopi Goldberg says abortion isn't included in the Ten Commandments: 'It’s you, your doctor, and God'.
Clearly Whoopi can’t count to five. As in, thou shall not kill. As Fr Tattersall said, putting it extremely kindly, this pontificate hasn’t been known for its orthodoxy of belief. These are the Pope’s mates. Welcomed into the very heart of the Church. At the See of Peter.
The man himself, of course, like Jimmy Fallon, was one of the great global pro-vaxxers. They all just roll on. Unaccountable. In the clear.
I was reading recently about the sad death of the cult figure and star of Animal House, John Belushi. The woman who injected him with what turned out to be a fatal concoction of cocaine and heroin (aka “speedballs”), one Cathy Smith, did fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-mystery-woman-admitted-i-killed-john-belushi/
A fatal jab, indeed, right there.
As the death and injury tolls from the lethal Covid jab ever mount, as does the peer reviewed evidence as to its lethality, one can be forgiven for thinking that all those who cheered on the jab – given that the impact of whose cheering on included thousands of tragic deaths – might consider themselves very fortunate that they too haven’t done time for the lethal injection. They may as well have been holding the needles themselves. Accessories after the fact, at least.
I doubt any of this will have come up in conversation in Rome this past week, amidst all the merriment and laughter.
Meantime, out in the distant provinces, the Church continues to haemorrhage members and to endanger souls through the side-bar antics of its leaders. Our country (and city) parish churches continue to empty. In Britain and elsewhere, they are increasingly sold off for restaurants and B&Bs. They and we are becoming relics, artifacts, in a post-modern, secular, go-along-to-get-along world, in which belief in the transcendent and its still-glorious signs and wonders are consigned to the dustbin of liturgical and (so) ecclesial history. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
In sum, not a pretty look. Those who, back in the day, perceived (or knew of) the infiltration of Rome by communists and activists, of both the rainbow and non-rainbow variety, as ringing the Church’s death knell, now seem not a little prescient.
One such communist whistleblower turning (Vatican) state’s evidence was Bella Dodd.
The gates of hell shall not prevail? We hope not. But what if those that are keenest to see the Church’s passing are housed comfortably within its bosom? And calling the shots?
Paul Collits
16 June 2024
One of the few growing Catholic parishes in W.A. was the Latin Mass parish of an Australian priest Fr. Michael Rowe. He has been persecuted for years and spent a lot of his own money fighting in the courts. A few months back he was locked out of his church. His crime, the Latin Mass.
Comedians pushing medical procedures was one of the lows during the mad flu scam we had. No repercussions at all! shame.
Amr