Denver Newsroom, Jul 21, 2021 / 21:56 pm
In an essay published on First Things on Wednesday, July 21st, George Weigel described Pope Francis Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes as "theologically incoherent, pastorally divisive, unnecessary" and "cruel."
Weigel, Pope John Paul II biographer and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, starts his essay by establishing his Novus Ordo creds. "I don’t agree that the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570 entombed the Roman Rite in ecclesiastical amber."
Moreover, "I think the suggestion from some liturgical traditionalists that the survival of Catholicism demands the restoration of the old Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the old Offertory prayers, and the old Last Gospel is ridiculous: which is also how I view the claims that the Council’s liturgical constitution and its immediate implementation were the result of a cabal of Freemasons, communists, and homosexual clerics," Weigel explains.
He then proceeds to describe Traditionis Custodes as "theologically incoherent, pastorally divisive, unnecessary, cruel—and a sorry example of the liberal bullying that has become all too familiar in Rome recently."