Oh no! No surprises, but OH NO just the same!
BMP

Can we get Luther and Cranmer appointed too?

Can we get Luther and Cranmer appointed too?

I am quite sure that I would rather have Luther as a member of the congregation than Cupich.

Neither Luther nor Cranmer would have tolerated much of what passes for liturgy and (especially Luther) liturgical music these days.

If we put all the horses in the same stable.....

I'm afraid of finishing that sentence.

I assume that Cardinal Cupich won't have much to do with the day-to-day affairs of the dicastery.

I think this is accurate.

Dear God in heaven, I wish that some degree of charity might be exhibited in so many of these remarks. Self-righteousness is always a difficult lens through which to view reality.

Sometimes charity is difficult when one's principles seem to be trodden underfoot by those who answer to very few persons. Prayer for the person in question is a far greater balm than blame; there are God given good in all .

A favorite prayer of mine for contentious times such as these - - -

Put a stop O Lord upon our lips
that we may speak only what is true.
Or, being true is only half true
Or, if wholly true, is merciless.

Our Lord revealed to Blessed Dina, that it is an offense to his wounded heart to speak ill against one of his ministers, even if that minister is in grave sin by the very fact that he is Persona Christi. There is no problem speaking the truth, but charity must always be preserved, benefit of the doubt, and acknowledgement that formation has been lacking in so many of our priests. We have a priest here who comes sometimes, ordained 60 years ago and he just found out that he was supposed to purify his hands... he never knew. Thanks be to God he is so childlike to accept such corrections... we have to be careful. Charity is always the rule of law, and prayer with penance for the conversion of those within and without who hurt the church- but always remember that our Lord said, "even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" and having full confidence and trust in these words. There have been worst times in the church than now, we have to see the hand of God even in this as Augustine mentions, "all things work for the good of those who love God (even sin)." God Bless all of you.

Sister Marie

We don't have to deny truths Chris. Thats not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that we need to remember the dignity of the priest whether or not he is in line with Church teaching.

Charity brings about conversion and so does prayer and penance- that is the best way to win about graces for conversion of heart (otherwise what is the point of me even being in a monastery?). Fraternal Correction is really an art. In this Novena to Pentecost we can ask the Holy Spirit for guidance in this who is the true teacher of Hearts gone astray.

What I am saying is that its not exactly the speaking the truth that is the problem, but the way we are saying it. Making fun of Him- joking about the situation (and I'm not referring to anyone in particular), I don't think is the correct method on our part. Its an observation nothing more, take it or leave it- act according to your own conscience which each one has the duty to follow accordingly.

Comparing Cardinal Cupich to Pol Pot because he implemented Francis's instructions is the kind of rhetoric which led to this situation in the first place.

That suggests that he is in fact very interested, but only one direction.

It is however difficult to say what power bishops have in correcting liturgical abuses. Cardinal George seems to have attempted some control, including dialogue with Fr Pfleger, and decided to let the matter rest where it is. Preceding Archbishops have also had run-ins, and yet Fr Pfleger is still in the same posting for over 40 years.
Luther and Cranmer both had autonomy, no pope to overrule them, and they rewrote their own Canon Law.

@CGZ -- Cupich was appointed to the See of Chicago by Francis in 2014.

More is involved with attempting to rein in Fr. Pfleger than telling him to knock off his liturgical abuses. He has established a cult of personality around himself at St. Sabina's, that cult is inextricably enmeshed with the way Fr. Pfleger celebrates Mass (such as it is), he has powerful political allies in the city, and add the race of his congregation into the mix... I can understand why any white archbishop would rather not touch that these days. Remember when Fr. Pfleger was being investigated for abuse? The parish council withheld the cathedraticum.

Sometimes prudence realizes it's better to just let things be. Fr. Pfleger won't be around forever.

It's unfortunate, but Fr. Pfleger might be more powerful in some ways than Cardinal Cupich.

You can't conclude that Cardinal Cupich agrees with the way Mass is celebrated there simply because he has decided not to intervene. Not in this particular case, where there are thorny considerations of race, politics and celebrity status that effectively tie Cupich's hands. It's a no-win scenario.

My friends, the charity that I referred to does not mean that every person is right, but rather the way we express the truth, as the apostle Paul exhorts speak the truth in love. I daily read through the comments on this site, and I stand amazed how seemingly lacking in charity so many of them are. On issues that are neither black or white, some seem to have determined, apart from the church, which side is coirrect. I have closely followed Cardinal Cupich's response to Traditionis Custodes, and it seems to my mind it is in keeping with what the Holy Father desired. Some may not like it, but others might. Some might agree with it, others might not. But he did as the document directed. Even this very thread has brought on such words of bitterness and anger, one has to wonder why anyone would want to become part of such church. Months ago Father Michael Joncas was nothing short of tarred and feathered over On Eagle's Wings. Liking or disliking a song, or a methodology ought not to involve an attack on the dignity of the person.

I admit that many of my own replies tend to come across rather harsh. This is a fault of mine, to be sure. But I have also learned that people also often take the mere statements of simple truths as “offensive” when they are not. The mode of hearing is according to the hearer and not the speaker. So, while I tend toward the harsher criticism end of the spectrum (of who much has been given, much is expected) there are also those who cannot bear to read any criticisms, no matter how just, which is an equal and proportionate problem, albeit at the other end of the spectrum.

We should also remember that speaking strongly against evil public acts is distinct from condemning the individual; people are eager to extrapolate one from the other, which is why the old trope about “condemn the sin, not the sinner” is so tired and worn; people have difficulty distinguishing one condemnation from the other, even though it is very often the former (the sin) rather than the latter (the sinner) which is being condemned. Also, one can dislike someone who holds an office whilst simultaneously having respect for the office itself.

Speaking for myself, many of my frustrations come from the fact that so many things about the faith are, in fact, quite simple, and prelates go out of their way to obfuscate them, or worse still: teach in direct contradiction to them. We also have objective measures by which we can judge (so to speak) external actions. We have living tradition. We have formal magisterial teaching. We have Holy Writ. So when prelates eagerly contravene or demolish everything we hold dear, one is justified in expressing alarm/concern and even, yes, criticism. When the animals on the edge of a herd spot a predator, they bleat to warn all the others. To fail to do so would, ironically, lack charity for the others who don’t perceive the danger.

I would not celebrate Mass the way Fr. Pfleger does, but I hope the online legions who constantly complain about him are working as hard in their communities as he does in Auburn Gresham. I would not last 41 years in a dying “ghetto” parish I was sent to close down, burying murder victims almost every week. I’m not sure I could organize absolutely impoverished parishioners to build an employment resource center for ex-cons and recovering addicts, or a home for poor seniors, or a youth center where kids can come every day after school, or get thousands of guns off the streets, or distribute free clothing and food every single week, or face down big alcohol and tobacco advertisers, sellers of drug paraphernalia, gang leaders, and crooked Chicago politicians, or keep a Catholic school going, or be able to care for parents whose children were shot in the street. If you know Chicago, you know most people have preferred to forget about that whole part of town ever since white flight in the 70s. There’s nothing there….no jobs, failed schools, no healthcare, no hope. It takes a real Christian to not just live there for so long, but build new things there that make a difference. I don’t know many parishes that do so much with so little. That does not excuse liturgical abuse, but please, put some respect on Fr. Pfleger’s name, or do what he’s done, and better, if you’re going to trash him.

On issues that are neither black or white, some seem to have determined, apart from the church, which side is coirrect. I have closely followed Cardinal Cupich's response to Traditionis Custodes, and it seems to my mind it is in keeping with what the Holy Father desired. Some may not like it, but others might. Some might agree with it, others might not. But he did as the document directed. Even this very thread has brought on such words of bitterness and anger, one has to wonder why anyone would want to become part of such church.

I would just point out that it's Francis, to whom Cardinal Cupich owes the revival of his career, who restarted all of this, first by constantly throwing barbs, second by issuing the new motu proprio and its egregious accompanying letter to the bishops, one which we're supposed to accept lying down, when the previous legislation and its accompanying letter were widely ignored. When Summorum Pontificum came out, many bishops finally applied Ecclesia Dei adflicta.

Frankly, I don't care that the Chicago decree reflects what the pope wants, because the pope wants my religion, my sacraments, and to a certain extent my life of prayer to go away, and I assume that a number of people here agree, though I couldn't possibly dare speak for them. The last year has had some effects worse than my experience living through not one, not two, but three lockdowns (admittedly of varying degrees of severity) which were in some respects an unfortunate foreshadowing of what was to come with the motu proprio.

What Cupich is doing is cruel, and it affects more than just people who attend the traditional Latin liturgy; he doesn't want too much Latin or chant, and he does not like oriented worship, so if you do those three, you will become a target. Is Cupich the cruelest? No, I think that honor goes to the bishop in Costa Rica who suspended a priest over this, followed by a few American bishops who basically have tried to end it all, even with locations that had an indult Mass beginning in 1988, or who have made it very difficult for their new ordinands.

Given that the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, including the seminary, is being visited because the bishop Mgr Rey is welcoming to all comers, at least for a period of discernment, as he's established a reputation for orthodoxy and an openness to both tradition and the charismatic movement — he is a member of the Community of the Emmanuel — and he's no longer able to ordain, at least for now, men that he had called to orders and who were supposed to be ordained this month, I think that it's safe to say that this goes far beyond the trads. There's also the archbishop of Toulouse who banned the cassock in the seminary and sent a rather hostile letter to the seminarians saying that they can't sit in choir and wear cassock and surplice outside of the seminary, and this includes deacons (he didn't address how this doesn't conflict with c. 284). Since they are still "laypeople," they should sit with them, in other words, and a priest should be identifiable first by his various qualities, including holiness and the spirit of service… I haven't met all that many normie French priests, but color me unimpressed by both of those when it comes to normie priests who more often than not wear lay clothes, maybe with a small wooden cross. No, the collar isn't everything, and they even have a proverb that goes "The habit does not make the monk." There's a young liberal priest famous on social media who wears a clerical shirt and tab collar, and while I thought he was OK at first, he's since gotten himself into some trouble. But ordinarily, proper clerical means something. It doesn't lose its value as a sign even if the person wearing it is a terrible person.

To sum it up, these people want to not have a church rather than have the church with the wrong sorts of people in it.

the bishop Mgr Rey….and he's no longer able to ordain, at least for now, men that he had called to orders and who were supposed to be ordained this month.

Isn’t that due to the obstinance of said men, who refused to be ordained according to the new ritual, and found a bishop not their own to confer valid but illicit ordination, incurring automatic suspension of their faculties, because they felt it was necessary for “the good of souls”?
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/15502/traditionalist-monk-suspended-following-clandestine-ordination-

I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, Mgr Rey did not "immediately suspend" Alcuin Reid and his confrère. Rather, Reid wrote to Mgr Rey, his legitimate superior as a deacon incardinated in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, informing him of the ordinations, and Mgr Rey wrote back. Only after Mgr Rey failed to receive a response in what he considered a timely manner was the suspension declared, because it was incurred ipso facto on April 20 last.

Also, Alcuin Reid grievously sinned against a number of people in addition to the church and has complicated the possibility of conferring orders in the traditional rite, but if you compare that rite to the new, you'd weep, and you'd be inconsolable if you'd spent the last several years preparing for ordination promised to you in the traditional rite or had devoted yourself to a life centered on the traditional liturgy. You can read the traditional rite in English at Archive.org and the new rite in English here. (PDF) (Apparently this form is now definitively obsolete, with the publication of a new excerpt from the pontifical, but the main thrust is the same.)

Whatever Alcuin thought was promised to him and whether Mgr Rey ultimately changed his mind or not don't matter in thinking that if you have a vocation, and you can only get ordained once, you should be ordained in the traditional rite; that's the most sensible part of the whole thing, actually. Should one just go find himself a bishop? Absolutely not in the way that Alcuin did. But it's why people join the FSSP, ICRSP, IBP, etc. in the first place!

@Ronn62353
Vatican II did not ask for us to have one Roman Rite. It did not ask for a new Roman Rite. It is obvious that the New Roman Rite as commonly celebrated around the world to increasingly empty churches is not what Vatican II asked for. Worshiping in the way that countless Catholic have worshiped over a thousand years is not a cafeteria, Choosing a church because of the political views of the parish priest, etc. is.

Under the reigns of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, when they extended the permission to celebrate the liturgy using the missal of 1962, there was much rejoicing in some segments of the church, weeping in others. But those documents, together with the document on the translation of liturgical texts in a number of places violated the Tradition, certainly violated norms laid down by the Second Vatican Council, to say nothing of a rather curious take on liturgical history

You should at least give examples of your assertions. Matthew Hazell regularly does so every week or even more often, notably on Twitter, where he describes the total rearrangement of the orations of the Mass as well as editing which violated the Consilium's own principals, to say nothing of his threads on how the lectionary came to be. Gregory DiPippo has demolished almost every single myth out there, and if you don't believe him, the Gelasian Sacramentary is available to us in a critical edition and was available to the Consilium as well. They ignored it.

I have heard for years such things as, blessed Maudine of South Snardvark by the Sea had a vision and said, "Holy priest poo stinketh not. Naaaaay, is sin to say it does." Well, priests do have a divine component conferred by Christ, but their human component can stink to high heaven and they are capable of being totally rotten. I don't know the Chicago Cardinal so you will have to make your own determinations about him.

All that being said, anyone who reads the documents of Vatican II can easily see the Consilium ignored the dictates of the Council and did as it pleased. The pope at the time, whether you accept him as a saint or not, was up to his neck in it. Thus we have what we have today.

Being eastern, I look at the Roman Rite reforms with a jaundiced eye and have difficulty taking their implementation seriously. Given the Peter Principle at work in Rome these days, I can't see much changing anytime soon. The folks in charge have truly risen through the ranks to their respective levels of incompetence.

"The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another." Saint Wiki.