The Motu Propio that embraces a hermeneutic of rupture.

The German writer Martin Mosebach has written a piece on Traditiones custodes in First Things.

He recognises that perhaps the most striking think about Traditiones custodes is the extent to which it constitutes a departure from the pope's professed style: with this document the pope...

...has given a command. He does this at a time when papal authority is unraveling as never before. The Church has long since advanced to an ungovernable stage. But the pope battles on. He abandons his dearest principles—“listening,” “tenderness,” “mercy”—that refuse to judge or give orders. Pope Francis is roused by something that troubles him: the tradition of the Church. 

This is important because it exposes the modus operandi of those who seek to fundamentally change/ destroy the Church. They always speak of "dialogue" but they only seek dialogue where none should be had; i.e. about settled matters. This kind of talk always makes me nervous because, as Archbishop Chaput once pointed out:

Mosebach also correctly identifies why those who share the pope's obvious dislike of the vetus ordo are so against the old liturgy.

• It has attracted young people
• It has attracted more vocations than the
• It has attracted many converts

None of this is much of a surprise to me because if the faith is TRUE and we long for Christ, the same Christ who said 

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" Lk 12:49

It should be attractive and dynamic: it should have a dimension of sacrifice: Mt 16:24 and it should be challenging & provocative, because the truth is provocative. In a society which embraces evils like the wholesale slaughter of millions of babies through abortion, the truths we stand for as Catholics are extremely provocative and deeply at odds with mainstream opinion. This is why people fall in love with the faith, and it appears to be the direct opposite of what most of the church establishment seem to promote. Indeed, one might say the vast majority studiously avoid any of these things.

I also think, as I posted here, the growth & practice of the Catholic faith as deposited by Jesus & the Apostles & as held in perpetuity by the Catholic Church & passed down through the ages (what tradition actually means: "passing on") exposes the modernist Church as a different religion. There are too many points of rupture. The focus is entirely different. It lacks almost any supernatural dimension & because it has no real faith in a future life after death, it is focused on the impossible mission of creating heaven here & now, on earth.

It has nothing to say: no challenge to the dominant contemporary secular tropes. It seeks accommodation with all manner of positions previously unthinkable for Catholics: plurality of religions, divorce, abortion, gender theory, you name it really.

Perhaps the most important quote from the piece is this one:

we have to ask ourselves whether the pope had no more urgent task—in the midst of the sex abuse crisis, the Church’s financial scandals, schismatic movements like the German synodal path, and the desperate situation of Chinese Catholics—than to suppress this small, devoted community.

I am so aware that most Catholics won't even know what the pope has done or what it means and if they found out some how would not care...And that is the perfect summary of the problem we face as the Church. Those who will know are those WHO CARE: care about being Catholic, about what that means and how they go about it. This means, it seems very clear to me, the Holy Father has singled out and attacked those who are most committed to the faith he is the head of. Is the world weird at the moment or is it just me?

In this recent post I wrote that Pope Francis has rejected the hermeneutic of continuity; Pope Benedict XVI's important vision of the faith which embraced the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and held it in continuity with what the Church has always taught. I studied Vatican II for five years in this vein & was taught that the only way to understand any council of the Church is in the light of Tradition. As Mosebach illustrates, Traditions custodes represents a break with this idea which will inevitably have serious consequences for the Church's future:

Francis appears to sympathize with the “hermeneutic of rupture”—that theological school that asserts that with the Second Vatican Council the Church broke with her tradition. If that is true, then indeed every celebration of the traditional liturgy must be prevented. For as long as the old Latin Mass is celebrated in any garage, the memory of the previous two thousand years will not have been extinguished.

This memory, however, cannot be rooted out by the blunt exercise of papal legal positivism. It will return again and again, and will be the criterion by which the Church of the future will have to measure itself.

Mosebach's insight, that the Motu proprio demonstrates Pope Francis authority is unravelling is echoed by many commentators. Notably, Bishop Rob Mutsaerts who is the Auxiliary Bishop of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Writing in Dutch on his blog & translated into English by Rorate Caeli, the courageous Bishop says:

The fact that Francis here uses the word of power without any consultation indicates that he is losing authority. This was already evident earlier when the German Bishops’ Conference took no notice of the Pope’s advice regarding the synodality process. The same occurred in the United States when Pope Francis called on the Bishops’ Conference not to prepare a document on worthy Communion. The pope must have thought that it would be better [in this case] not to give advice any more, but rather a writ of execution, now that we’re talking about the traditional Mass!

 Frankly you'd have to be completely opposed to Catholicism to ignore what's going on in German — even encourage it — and focus your animus on the Latin Mass. It doesn't make sense. This Pope isn't Catholic!