Two days ago at OnePeterFive I observed some of the appearances of Providence and the timing of the election of our new Roman Pontiff, Leo XIV. But there was another amazing thing happening in Rome, which should be highlighted much more than it is: the jubilee of Eastern Churches. This seems to have been already planned as a part of the Jubilee called by Pope Francis before his death. Catholic Culture reports that it included some 5,000 pilgrims and representatives from the twenty-three other Catholic Churches.
(There are twenty-four particular Catholic churches within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Only one of these churches is Latin rite within which the Roman rite predominates. Only one of these has a celibate priesthood. The other twenty-three Catholic churches are various eastern rites from the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches, Miaphysites, Syriac Christians, as well as others such as the Maronites and the Italo-Albanian churches).
It is unclear whether or not the planners for this pilgrimage had planned it to coincide with Fatima day, but either way, it is by design—whether of man or God. In his address Pope Leo noted how his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, was “the first Pope to devote a specific document to the dignity of your [eastern] Churches.” This was something happily received by the Eastern prelates, including Metropolitan Fulop Kocsis, Archbishop of Hajdudorog, Hungary, who heads the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
Mar Joy Alappatt of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of St. Thomas of Chicago noted that Cardinal Prevost had served as a member of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches since 2023, and “witnessed the beautiful unity of our universal Catholic communion between East and West.”
I have a Ukrainian Greek Catholic friend who shared with me his gratitude for Cardinal Prevost’s work in Chicago with the Eastern Rites.
The Pope’s address to the Eastern Churches was powerful:
Over a century ago, Leo XIII pointed out that “preserving the Eastern rites is more important than is generally realized”. He went so far as to decree that “any Latin-Rite missionary, whether a member of the secular or regular clergy, who by advice or support draws any Eastern-Rite Catholic to the Latin Rite” ought to be “dismissed and removed from his office” (ibid). We willingly reiterate this appeal to preserve and promote the Christian East, especially in the diaspora. In addition to establishing Eastern circumscriptions wherever possible and opportune, there is a need to promote greater awareness among Latin Christians. In this regard, I ask the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches – which I thank for its work – to help me to define principles, norms, and guidelines whereby Latin Bishops can concretely support Eastern Catholics in the diaspora in their efforts to preserve their living traditions and thus, by their distinctive witness, to enrich the communities in which they live.
The Church needs you. The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty! It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)! It is vital, then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism.
Your traditions of spirituality, ancient yet ever new, are medicinal. In them, the drama of human misery is combined with wonder at God’s mercy, so that our sinfulness does not lead to despair, but opens us to accepting the gracious gift of becoming creatures who are healed, divinized and raised to the heights of heaven. For this, we ought to give endless praise and thanks to the Lord. Together, we can pray with Saint Ephrem the Syrian and say to the Lord Jesus: “Glory to you, who laid your cross as a bridge over death… Glory to you who clothed yourself in the body of mortal man, and made it the source of life for all mortals” (Homily on our Lord, 9). We must ask, then, for the grace to see the certainty of Easter in every trial of life and not to lose heart, remembering, as another great Eastern Father wrote, that “the greatest sin is not to believe in the power of the Resurrection” (SAINT ISAAC OF NINEVEH, Sermones ascetici, I, 5).
The fact that this jubilee coincides with Fatima and this new election strikes me as providential.
What is all the more significant is the fact that Pope Leo was elected this year, which is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (the Greek Orthodox head of the Phanar, one of the most influential posts among the Orthodox Churches) had planned a joint trip to Nicaea with Pope Francis in this month of Mary, which, on the 20th of May, is the anniversary date of the opening of the Council.
The Failure of the Trad Critique of Vatican II
This gives me an occasion to discuss a very important problem in the traditionalist movement in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church. Before I say this, let me emphasise that I am a traditionalist, and I only critique my own movement in order to make it better and in hopes that with God’s help, it will succeed in its goals.
But I must say that one of the biggest problems with the traditionalist movement, besides its spiritual issues, is the sophomoric nature of its theological critique of Vatican II.
There are many different aspects to this superficiality. But one of the most important aspects of it is our failure as traditionalists to consider that Vatican II restores a traditional phronema patrum regarding the Eastern Churches.
This phronema patrum was very often supported by Popes before Vatican II, but the reality is that after Trent, due to the influence of the Jesuits and other orders who were fighting manfully against the Protestant heretics, there developed de facto an obscuring of this phronema patrum.
What is this phronema? It is nothing less than traditional Romanitas in regards to all the rites of the Church: Greek, Latin, Syriac and the rest.
The traditional attitude of Rome towards all rites is the true harmony of unity in diversity.
Unity in faith.
Diversity in rites.
This allows for a true sharing of liturgical and spiritual treasures, so that different traditions can adopt the riches of others. For example: the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was a Greek feast which was later adopted in Rome. In the same way, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was a Latin devotion, which was later adopted by the Ukrainian Catholics.
This true and traditional Romanitas is contrasted with the post Tridentine excess of Latinisations and excessive Thomism. This contributed to a de facto attitude among many Latins (which was too many times tolerated by the Popes) which amounted to something like this:
* no salvation outside Thomism.
* Eastern churches must adopt Latin practices because Latin is superior to Greek and every other rite.
This attitude developed after Trent and it is contrary to the traditional stance of Rome as we saw at the council of Lyons 1274 and Florence. This attitude of domination and Latin triumphalism is the primary reason (from the Latin side) which has prevented Eastern Orthodox and other Orthodox churches from coming into communion with Rome.
What did Vatican II Accomplish in this Regard?
The council restored a traditional phronema toward the east:
The Holy Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is made up of the faithful who are organically united in the Holy Spirit by the same faith, the same sacraments and the same government and who, combining together into various groups which are held together by a hierarchy, form separate Churches or Rites. Between these there exists an admirable bond of union, such that the variety within the Church in no way harms its unity; rather it manifests it, for it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each individual Church or Rite should retain its traditions whole and entire and likewise that it should adapt its way of life to the different needs of time and place.
After this there is a condemnation of Latinisations implied with strong language:
These individual Churches, whether of the East or the West, although they differ somewhat among themselves in rite (to use the current phrase), that is, in liturgy, ecclesiastical discipline, and spiritual heritage, are, nevertheless, each as much as the others, entrusted to the pastoral government of the Roman Pontiff, the divinely appointed successor of St. Peter in primacy over the universal Church. They are consequently of equal dignity, so that none of them is superior to the others as regards rite and they enjoy the same rights and are under the same obligations, also in respect of preaching the Gospel to the whole world (cf. Mark 16, 15) under the guidance of the Roman Pontiff.
As I said, prior Popes had expressed these statements, but this is the first time they were expressed emphatically by an ecumenical council. This is a very orthodox and traditional thing to say. And it was said for the first time at a new level of authority at Vatican II.
There is a great deal that traditionalists can offer the Church in their critical assessment of the Second Vatican Council. However, too often we as traditionalists ignore or minimize the importance of these statements. They are nothing less than confirming a 2000 year old tradition which had been unfortunately obscured in recent centuries and contributed to the loss of souls.
Too often we as traditionalists take an attitude of “No Salvation Outside Thomsim,” and we do not realize that this attitude is totally modern. It only became popular after 1870.
Let us return to the Roman Pontiff. I talked to one priest who was leading a group of young Latin rite Catholics in Rome and they witnessed the address of Pope Leo. “They were deeply moved by the pope’s emphasis on liturgy and the mystery of the faith,” he said, and “they were struck by the comment the pope made that we as Roman Catholics should not seek to ‘convert’ to the Latin Rite Catholics of other Rites because the diversity and beauty of their traditions are essential to the body of Christ.”
This of course, brings us back to the elephant in the room regarding the traditionalist movement in the Latin rite: where is the preservation of the ancient Roman Rite? If we are promoting a true diversity in unity, why not promote the Latin Mass too? Even if I’m correct that we as Trads get a few things wrong about Vatican II, we are absolutely correct in our insistence about preserving the Latin Mass. We shall see what Pope Leo does.
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