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Another mania is the contempt, the hatred of Latin. The progressive cannot bear a priest celebrating the Holy Mass—not even that of St. Pius V, but that of Paul VI—in the noble language of Latium. In fact, more often than not, this negative sentiment is expressed by those who have no idea about it; they have not gone beyond rosa, rosae. They detest what they do not know, out of pure ideology. Because of this attitude, for example, some hymns that used to be sung without difficulty in parishes by elderly ladies have disappeared from circulation: the Pange lingua, and the Tantum ergo; formulas for the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

This Archbishop emeritus seems to believe that the 16 documents of Vatican II are quite troubling, that the Traditional Latin Mass is simply wonderful, and that so-called “progressives read Lumen Gentium through the lens of Karl Rahner as opposed to ecclesial Tradition. One has to wonder when he might have discovered all this.

It certainly wasn’t during the 26 years when he served as the Archbishop of Brazil until he retired in 2018. I say this because he never once demanded or even sugggested that his priests celebrate the TLM as opposed to the Novus Ordo (which he could have done). And unless the media simply buried all of his “conservative” comments over the years, from I can tell he was as silent as a church mouse until he offered his resignation.

And that’s the problem. These prelates simply remain quite and enjoy their perks until they retire, and then…….start proclaiming why liberalism is so bad and the true teachings of the Church are so good and important. Perhaps they believe that God will be pleased and invite them into His heavenly Kingdom. We know, of course, that what he has to say is absolutely meaningless as far as leading anyone to salvation—the job he took on when he was consecrated as a bishop. Most troubling, of course, is all the other prelates are not a whit better.