Traditionis Custodes, Desiderio Desideravi, and Their Positions on the Mass (3)

Liturgical and Sociopolitical Reform

Another fact eminently likely to enlighten many minds is that in the United States the most zealous supporters of Traditionis Custodes are the spiritual sons of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, reduced to a lay state for the abuse of minors.

In katholisches.info of July 23, 2022, Giuseppe Nardi wrote at article titled “The McCarrick Boys Tear the Traditional Rite to Pieces”: “While the Archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cardinal Cupich, wages a campaign against the ‘old rite’ communities, the Archbishop of Washington, Wilton Cardinal Gregory, forbids the parishes of his archdiocese to celebrate according to the traditional rite.”

“Both cardinals refer to Pope Francis’s Motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. Both were elevated to the office and rank of cardinal by the current pope. Both are part of the McCarrick Boys.”

And to show how this strange filiation works: “Theodore McCarrick, cardinal until 2018 and priest until 2019, had risen to become the most powerful churchman in the United States under Francis until he fell out of favor with the New York Times and disappeared into oblivion.”

“However, his poisonous legacy lingers on. His proteges have reached the highest ranks through Francis. They thank the reigning pope by faithfully implementing Traditionis custodes and other papal documents.”

According to Giuseppe Nardi, McCarrick's sons are not only supporters of the pope's doctrinal line, but also of his politics: “They share the ideological presuppositions of papal action, including with regard to his political preferences, and are strong supporters of an alliance with the Democratic Party of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi – including its sociopolitical agenda. Politicization has never been more dominant than under Francis. The battle for America is in full swing and Traditionis custodes is part of this fight.”

According to the Vaticanist: “Many faithful Catholics in the United States suffer from the political context on which Francis bases his action, they suffer the political fight that results from it and that the Pope imposes on them by leading it against them. They don't understand it, because they don't give political thought the priority that Francis gives it.”

“But Francis still thinks that way and his vision of the world is made in political categories, it is determined by leftist maxims like power (struggle for power/conservation of power) and domination (discourse of domination).” – Here it is useful to remember the role that Peronism played in the life of Bergoglio the Jesuit. Ed.

In support of this thesis, Giuseppe Nardi highlights the political-religious conflict between Francis and Msgr. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco:

“After Francis, through massive interventions, spared his Democratic Party politician friends, condemnation—for their support of abortion—by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in November 2021, Archbishop Cordileone made an autonomous choice by excluding Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, a leading figure in the Democrats for abortion, from receiving Communion.”

“Pelosi traveled to Rome, attended a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and took communion there. It was a stab at Archbishop Cordileone, a typical Bergoglian stab, because formally Francis did nothing, he was only present at this Mass.”

“Archbishop Cordileone reacted in his own way. The ban on Pelosi taking communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco is still in effect, and on July 1, two days after the Roman stabbing, Cordileone celebrated a pontifical Mass in the traditional rite at the Mission of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco, founded by St. Junipero Serra.”

“Cardinals George Pell and Robert Sarah, both disgraced by Francis, also took part. … The occasion of the celebration was the commemoration of St. Junipero Serra, the Apostle of California, against whom anti-Christian forces, which in turn are close to the left-wing Democrats, Francis’ political friends, have been fighting a sometimes violent fight for several years.”

“This fight wants – an irrationally insane paradox – to undo the discovery of America, the European settlement and the Christianization of the continent.”

The revealing role of Traditionis Custodes and Desiderio Desideravi is not only of a doctrinal and liturgical order, it is also of a sociopolitical order. Through his two apostolic letters, Francis manifests the profound unity of the reforms he is imposing on the Church.

It would be naive to believe that a liturgical reform does not also concern the doctrinal teaching of the Church and the social reign of Christ over human institutions. As St. Pius X demonstrated in Pascendi (1907), modernism is apparently shape-shifting, but profoundly coherent.