‘From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War’ will help Catholics fight for the soul of the Church

LifeSite News ^ | December 20, 2021 | Maike Hickson

[ebb tide]

‘From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War’ will help Catholics fight for the soul of the Church

Containing works by 5 cardinals and 5 bishops, among others, the best, most vigorous, most appreciated writings about the motu proprio 'Traditionis Custodes' have been placed in a single volume.

Edited by liturgical scholar and traditionalist advocate Dr. Peter Kwasniewski (no stranger to LifeSiteNews readers), the anthology brings together a remarkable array of writers: 5 cardinals (Eminences Brandmüller, Burke, Müller, Sarah, and Zen), 5 bishops (Excellencies Aguer, Gullickson, Viganò, Mutsaerts, and Schneider), 8 priests (Fathers Barthe, Fiedrowicz, Grichting, Hunwicke, Pope, and Weishaupt), 2 religious (one of whom is the well-known liturgist Dom Alcuin Reid), and 27 laymen—among them Juan Manuel de Prada, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Ross Douthat, Edward Feser, Phil Lawler, Martin Mosebach, George Neumayr, Joseph Shaw, and Tim Stanley. The authors hail from 12 countries. It is, from this point of view, an impressive and substantial body of work representing the strength of conservative and traditionalist thought in the Church today.

The purpose of the anthology is explained clearly in the first pages: it is meant to place in one convenient book the best, most vigorous, most appreciated writings about the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. The editor’s introduction is brutally honest: “This book is not, and makes no pretense of being, a presentation of ‘both sides of the argument.’ It offers a variety of critiques of this profoundly unwise and unpastoral decree, which suffers from incoherent doctrinal foundations, grave moral and juridical defects, and impossible ecclesiological implications.”

[ebb tide]

Traditionis Custodes was an official declaration of war, a first step in what Stuart Chessman calls “that most difficult of martial undertakings, an aggressive war of total annihilation,” since—pace Cardinal Sarah—the motu proprio states that all Catholics must eventually “return” to a single way of worshiping, namely, according to the new liturgical books of Paul VI. (It has not yet been explained why the same strictures do not apply to adherents of the Anglican Ordinariate use, the Ambrosian Rite, or the Mozarabic Rite. Neither is it clear why it is still acceptable for Eastern-rite Catholics to worship differently from their Latin brethren. How can such great diversity be compatible with unity? That, of course, is a rhetorical question.)

[ebb tide]

Ping

[neverevergiveup]

‘Progressives’ always characterize themselves as non-dogmatic, but what they want is to force their particular dogma on the world.

[fastrock]

“It has not yet been explained why the same strictures do not apply to adherents of . . .”

Pope Frank can’t eat the whole elephant at a single dinner setting!