Ah, we are making progress because now we are hitting on the crux of the matter and the crux of the disagreement.

Does the pope have the authority to abrogate the TLM? That is the question.

It seems to me the bishops now have approval to continue the TLM or shut it down completely in their dioceses. You can claim rights and privileges from now on but if the TLM is no longer available it is over for any practical purposes.

The issue is the Church's authority, the pope's authority, over the liturgy

But why don’t people do as they’re told, when they’re told to give up all they hold dear? The question answers itself. The New Man demands submission, but the cumulative loves and sorrows of the past embroider us all into a community stretching across space and time.

Look closer at the shrill commands of the New Men and you’ll see that the will, although it feels strong on the inside, is the weakest of human powers. The will seeks to impose itself on the cosmos, but the cosmos is almost entirely indifferent. The will also seeks to enter into the psyches of other people, to control what goes on in other souls and minds. There, too, the will fails. The will rages and commands, but, really, it is a will-o’-the-wisp.

No one knows better than he who seeks to make his will law just how weak his will actually is. Hence, the terror of the twentieth century, the century where the New Man willed by the possessed few just wouldn’t stick in reality. The will is shown almost immediately to be impotent—after that, for those who won’t recognize the will’s weakness, there is only the twisting of arms, the cracking of heads.

Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes is a document which could only be written by a man who had sensed his own impotence to will reality, but had not yet repented of dictating terms to God’s Creation. The document’s apparent translation errors (https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/5494-cardinal-burke-statement-on-traditionis-custodes) and the overall appeal to the very thing—tradition—which the document overtly seeks to destroy make it clear that Traditionis Custodes is not a work of care for what has been handed down, but an attempt to will the entirety of the Christian heritage out of existence. Francis has proclaimed that all Catholics must be New Men. He must surely understand, even before he made the crazed decision to declare war on the Deposit of the Faith, that such attempts are bound to end in failure.

Why this is so is a matter of historical context. First, to understand Traditionis Custodes, one must understand Vatican II. Francis was hardly the first Churchman to hate tradition. In Vatican II, many of the leaders of the Church tried to revolutionize the Deposit of the Faith. The spirit of Vatican II was aggiornamento. It sounds lovely in Italian, but in plain English it means “update”. The arrogance hidden in that one simple word is breathtaking. The pope is, at best, middle management—he does not innovate, he only cares for what he has received. And what he has—and we all have—received is nothing less than the means of our salvation, the graces of Christ mediated by Our Lady and Holy Mother Church.

Vatican II wanted to “update” the divine plan for saving the human race. Traditionis Custodes doubles down on this rejection of tradition—a rejection which has utterly failed because no sane man or woman wants to throw onto the dustheap the riches of tradition, or especially the promise of eternal life.

All of the sudden it’s impermissible?

Does the pope have the authority to abrogate the TLM? That is the question.

"In what sense, then, can the 'Neo-Roman' liturgy be regarded as a Roman one? There is no doubt that it is 'Roman' in two respects. Firstly, the majority of the Roman Catholic Church today celebrates her liturgy according to this Ordo. Secondly, it was produced within the juridical framework of the Roman Church, and it enjoys her official approval However, the conclusion is quite different if we test the Novus Ordo from the viewpoint of its content. In this respect, it does not belong to the ancient and long-lived Roman liturgy, but represents another type (pp. 154-55; emphasis in the original.)

It is . . . problematic if Rome, which acts as a guarantee of the regulations, wishes to reduce the whole matter to a question of obedience. In this case her own commission could also be called upon to account for obedience to more universal and comprehensive laws. What makes the claim of obedience psychologically difficult is that an arbitrary construction — based to a large extent on individual initiatives and opposed to the centuries-old customs of the Church - now claims the reverence due to the usage of the Church, a procedure which though perhaps valid legally, is yet contestable from the point of view of contents.

"The pope is not an absolute monarch whose will is law; rather, he is the guardian of the authentic Tradition and, thereby, the premier guarantor of obedience. He cannot do as he likes, and he is thereby able to oppose those people who, for their part, want to do whatever comes into their head. His rule is not that of arbitrary power, but that of obedience in faith. That is why, with respect to the Liturgy, he has the task of a gardener, not that of a technician who builds new machines and throws the old ones on the junk-pile. The “rite”, that form of celebration and prayer which has ripened in the faith and the life of the Church, is a condensed form of living Tradition in which the sphere using that rite expresses the whole of its faith and its prayer, and thus at the same time the fellowship of generations one with another becomes something we can experience, fellowship with the people who pray before us and after us. Thus the rite is something of benefit that is given to the Church, a living form of paradosis, the handing-on of Tradition.”

The sensus fidelium must include fidelity

Does the pope have the authority to abrogate the TLM?

OBrogate, yes. DErogate, yes. ABrogate? B-16 didn't think so.

The Council . . . provided general norms. The new Mass fits those norms.

If someone rejects Vatican II, I think that qualifies as not being a good Catholic.

It is plainly inconsistent to claim to accept a council that mandated liturgical reform yet insist on celebrating the unreformed liturgy: to ignore or reject that part of the council, is to reject the council at least in part.

It's not possible for an ecumenical council in union with the pope to err in doctrine, according to a Catholic understanding of ecumenical councils and the Magisterium as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Where councils do not define doctrine but provide direction or directives, they do so authoritatively to which Catholics must submit in obedience.

Schoenbergian, this was marks’s statement that I was addressing. He does indeed seem to be invoking the principle of infallibility even if not by name.