The Vacant Chair
Atlanta, GA
January 23, 2022
I think I understand how Christians felt when in 1303 the French king imprisoned a beleaguered pope, hand-picked an obsequious successor, and precipitated a seven-decade papal encampment in Avignon on the Rhône.
A subsequent schism created rival “popes” based in Rome and Avignon, with a third claimant coming from Pisa thirty years later. The Council of Constance mopped up the mess (or swept it under the rug) by excommunicating one of the imposters, forcing the other two to abdicate, and then selecting Martin V as legitimate Vicar of Christ.
The Church had once again prevailed against the Gates of Hell. But damage was done, and many of the wounds were self-inflicted. Within a century, the gangrene spread, prompting several limbs to sever their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome.
The Council of Trent was a temporary tourniquet. Its reassertion of doctrine and defense of dogma reinforced the Faith, and maintained it thru four centuries of Cultural Revolution, Scientistic Progressivism, and secular ideologies that worship at the altar of the almighty State.
Thru it all, the Church held firm. She didn’t adopt or adapt to passing fashion or contemporary fads. She stood athwart and above them, as a beacon and a barricade…until the early 1960s.
Then, the “accommodation” began. In the words of Dietrich von Hildebrand, a trojan horse infiltrated the city of God.
The Second Vatican Council was an unmitigated disaster for Holy Mother Church. Only the original Protestant revolt did damage comparable to what this more recent one inflicted.
When the Council opened, Pope John XXIII announced that it would “throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through.“
For over half a century, the breeze has blown. But it’s mostly hot air. The Spirit didn’t come through. The world came in, and the Church succumbed.
As ecumenical anesthetics were pumped into the pews, the framework of the ancient faith was discreetly disassembled…then dramatically demolished. And it was the post-conciliar popes who pressed the detonator.
For six decades the earthly ephemeral replaced the eternal ethereal. In place of ancient rituals of a universal Faith came novel “innovations” attuned to mundane whims of the modern world.
Chesterton once challenged us to wonder whether, if we were accused of being a Catholic, there would there be enough evidence to convict. Were the charge levelled against modern Catholic churches, most would be acquitted without need of a trial.
In 1970, the venerable rite of the Tridentine Mass was tossed aside, like a discarded heirloom on the Oregon Trail. With it went a glorious inheritance of the One True Church. Its inspirational accoutrements were soon stripped away, lest they lift weary souls latched firmly to the ground.
Out went the sacred architecture, music, altar, and art that evoked the solemn sacrifice of the Holy Mass. Saintly statues, stained glass, and Gregorian chant were replaced with felt banners, bare walls, and banal music worthy of a Ramada lobby or a Catskills lounge.
The unobtrusive choir that bestowed a cappella polyphony like angels from Heaven devolved into makeshift guitarists, percussionists, and piano players positioned prominently beside the “altar”, where the “music director” can yuk it up with the priest like Doc Severinsen jibing Johnny Carson.
The classic form and sanctifying aura of the parish church deteriorated into stale auditoriums devoid of grace. Communion rails, confessionals, altars, and tabernacles were cast out of dispiriting, disorienting structures that seem intentionally designed to be ugly as sin.
But it’s not merely that the gilded goblet is superior to a plastic cup. It’s that the wine was more precious too. It’s not just the esthetics that deteriorated, as important as that is. The theology also soured.
The most significant retrogression was in the Mass itself. The displacement of the Latin liturgy by revised vernacular versions was a concession to “ecumenism”, a deference to rival religions, and a deliberate dilution of the “catholic” essence of the universal Church.
To make matters worse, the English translation was atrocious, tho’ it improved a bit in the last decade or so. The new Mass is not merely the Latin Mass in the local language. It is a qualitatively different event.
Many prayers in the Propers and Ordinary of the ancient Mass were adjusted, abridged, or abolished. Communal “prayers of the faithful” were added after the homily. A cacophonous “sign of peace” precedes the Agnus Dei, interjecting disruptive hugs, handshakes, and high-fives into what should be the most introspective moments of the Mass.
Out went the altars, in came the table. The Novus Ordo Mass of Paul VI replaced the re-presentation of the sacrifice on Calvary with a re-enactment of the Last Supper.
The focus shifted from the Crucifixion of Christ to the conceit of the congregation. Superficial “participation” in a convivial “celebration” replaced the internal reverence of a solemn sacrifice.
The new rite flipped the priest’s face from the Cross to the people, as if on Golgotha Mary and John had been admiring the crowd rather than adoring our Lord.
Even the Eucharist was degraded, if not defiled. Hosts placed solemnly by ordained priests onto the waiting tongues of kneeling congregants was now…as if from a bag of chips…casually dispensed by lay “ministers” into the indifferent hands of a passing crowd.
The Church has diminished itself by de-sanctifying its sacraments. Confession, which should be made before receiving Communion, is so rare as to seem essentially optional. Many Novus Ordo parishes offer it only by appointment, or during a single half hour on Saturday afternoon. And the private confessional is often replaced with a face-to-face discussion, reminiscent of a therapy session.
Several Holy Days are no longer obligatory if they fall on a Saturday or Monday. Marriage are ended with annulments so simple they’ll soon resemble a drive-thru divorce. But even this expeditious dissolution is apparently not easy enough for our purported pontiff.
The Church has suffered and survived many bad popes. But even the most scandalous ones have upheld Catholic doctrine.
Yet their current successor has questioned the existence of Hell, asserted that atheists can go to Heaven, and called efforts at Christian conversion “solemn nonsense”.
Then again…why wouldn’t it be “nonsense” to someone who claimed (while pope) that “non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live justified by the grace of God?”
Francis celebrated the quincentennial of the Reformation, and expressed gratitude for its “spiritual and theological gifts”. When asked about homosexuality, he responded glibly, “who am I to judge?” Many of us thought he was the pope, and that such judgment was part of the job description.
The only thing Francis seems compelled to condemn is traditional Catholics trying to follow their Faith. Last summer he issued a Motu Proprio applying severe restrictions on the Tridentine Mass. He reiterated and reinforced the crackdown in a harsh Responsa ad Dubia in December.
It’s not as if Francis won’t take a stand in secular affairs. Aside from tightening the screws on Traditional Catholicism, those are the only matters on which he does. It’s as if he’s leading a glorified NGO rather than the Roman Catholic Church.
His most passionate admonitions relate to the primacy of the “social gospel”, threats to “the climate”, the evils of capitalism, and the moral imperative of taking medically ambiguous, abortion-linked “vaccines”. This inclusive pope prohibits anyone who’s not injected them from being employed in the Vatican or stepping foot in any of its museums or gardens.
Regardless one’s opinion on any of these matters, we don’t need a Catholic Church to promote them. Plenty of organizations already do. The last thing we need is another.
What the world needs from the Catholic Church is clarity of dogma, promulgation of doctrine, and salvation of souls. Under this pope, those are the things the Church seems steadfastly opposed to doing.
The last couple years, with souls under siege, Francis was vocal only as an accomplice to the assault. Around the world, as governments ordered churches closed, the pope was quiet. At a time when the faithful flock craved spiritual sustenance, their worldly shepherd conspired with the wolves to lock the doors.
What would St Roch, St Vincent de Paul, or St Bernardino think? During devastating plagues, these men risked their lives and opened their arms to tend bodies and save souls. Christ Himself healed lepers, cared for the sick, and gave His life that we might live.
Yet for the better part of a year, the Catholic hierarchy acquiesced to close churches and suspend sacraments. Again, the Catholic Church closed the churches. It disarmed itself, sacrificing the Spirit to sustain the state.
How different would things have been if our putative pope stood sternly opposed…like so many of his predecessors…against the wickedness of their day? Instead, he’s been an advocate for the evils of ours.
How did this happen? How did the Rock find itself in this hard place?
Since the death of Pope Pius XII, the Church Militant has become the Church Milquetoast. As She lay down her arms in surrender to Modernity, churches and seminaries have emptied. Given the apostatic actions of its ostensible occupant, we wonder if the Chair of St. Peter did as well.
As he parades about under his stage name of “Pope Francis”, Jorge Bergoglio engages in blasphemous behavior while emitting heretical statements.
But if these be heresy, then the man who utters them is a heretic…and cannot be pope. As disconcerting as that conclusion might be, it is somewhat soothing because it makes the most sense. Futile attempts to reconcile papal pronouncements with Catholic doctrine are unnecessary if the person uttering the blasphemy isn’t the pope.
The papal chair has been vacant before. If it is now, the Church will persevere…as it always has, and as Christ promised it always would. But whichever pope fills the seat, he must stop planting cut flowers in vain attempts to grow the garden. To nurture the Faith, he must return to its roots.
JD
