REASONS TO GO WITH THE INDULT

· Chapels, priestly societies, and other traditionalist organizations that operate outside the diocesan framework have absolutely no external checks and balances against potential wrongdoing. This is scary! They answer only to themselves. They police only themselves. Are you comfortable with this? Be honest now! I hate to suggest that any group would be guilty of such things, but this is the question that won’t go away. If there were any wrongdoing, to whom would you go for recourse? The local diocese would laugh at you! “That’s what you get for leaving the Church!” Not suggesting they’re right, just telling you what they’d say. The legal system? The media? Of course, the most dreadful scenario is sexual abuse. “But traditionalists wouldn’t do that!” Oh, really? Two indult groups have had charges of priestly sodomy. In one group, there was a conviction, and the priest went to jail. That is as it should be. The two cases in the other group are still being investigated in the legal system. What if it were a non-indult group? Would they come clean? How would you know? Would you simply be dismissed as an ingrate and a troublemaker? The closed nature of the Catholic Church in days gone by, coupled with unquestioning deference to priests, fed the sacerdotal sodomy silence syndicate that we ended up with. NOT EVERYTHING FROM THE “GOOD OLD DAYS” WAS GOOD!!! Remember that. (And, needless to say, with any group you get involved with, whether indult or non-indult, you’d want to check them out. Run them through an Internet search engine, and whatever you find, pro or con, read it! Keep an open mind.)

· Priests who operate outside the jurisdiction of a canonical bishop do not have faculties to hear confessions. That means, in a nutshell, that unless the penitent is truly ignorant of this fact, or if he is truly convinced that there is an “emergency” (in which case the Church would automatically supply these faculties), or, of course, if the penitent is in danger of death, the absolution is invalid. As for the “emergency” loophole, that has been worked to death—it’s become so that everything traditionalist Catholics want to do to promote their cause somehow gets “justified” because there is a “crisis of faith”. (“Rationalized” is probably a better way to put it.) To be sure, no one wishes to dispense from the divine law (let’s hope not anyway!), but as for Church law, it becomes pretty much a cafeteria game. This is not Catholicism.

· The same goes for marriages. True, the bride and groom confer this sacrament upon each other, but again, the Church’s permission is required for this. (Curiously, marriage in a schismatic Eastern rite is valid. Illicit, but valid.) Don’t live in an invalid marriage. That’s a mortal sin. Have you married outside the Church’s jurisdiction? Are you dissatisfied with your circumstances? There may be hope! See a diocesan priest and explain your situation.

· While we’re on the subject of marriage, what if you have an annulment from a diocesan tribunal, and you are now in a second and happier marriage? Some independent traditionalist groups wouldn’t recognize your second marriage! For that matter, if you were married “in the Novus Ordo” (as they put it), they might not recognize your marriage for that reason either, annulment or not! Is operating independently of the indult worth breaking up your home and family? Think about it! (Note: if you have an “easy annulment” that should never have been granted, you may fool man but you can’t fool God. I speak here of legitimate annulments only, and yes, they do exist.)

· It’s been observed more than once that Protestants have absolutely no problem with Catholics operating without Church permission. “Well, DUH!” Protestants absolutely detest the notion of a Church that (a) speaks with final authority and (b) isn’t their church! (Having a world headquarters on the outskirts of Rome isn’t exactly a selling point either.) You say “Protestants are more compassionate towards our situation than Catholics are”? Perhaps. But since when do you go to Protestants to get their approval? This annoyed me for a long time before I finally broke with the “independent movement”. Traditionalist Catholics who operate outside the diocesan framework actually scandalize Protestants by making them think it is “okay to set up an independent church”. In an indirect way, this confirms them in their errors as well. Make no mistake about it: Protestants always resolve religious questions from their standpoint, not ours. They’ve got their minds already made up: “we’re right, you’re wrong”. When they give up this fiction, they tend to cease being Protestants and become either Catholic or Orthodox.

· A recent article on a sedevacantist Website shows us the difficulty in maintaining the “sede” position as the time since the last “valid” Pope (1958, to hear them tell it) gets further behind us. Here, too, there seems to be a pattern—just how long can sedevacantists credibly maintain “there is no Pope, but just wait, there’ll be one someday”? Or, failing this, they can maintain that we are in the years immediately preceding the end of the world, and the “fact” we are without a Pope won’t matter much longer. Did the phrase “Jehovah’s Witnesses” flash through your mind just now? But what if the world doesn’t end anytime soon? And what if the papacy continues to fall short of the sedevacantists’ criteria?

· There is a new generation of traditionalist Catholics that has no concept of obedience to Rome (at least, not as a practical matter in their lives) because they’ve never experienced it. This is dangerous. Many of them are converts, or even if from Catholic families, they take their faith more seriously than their parents. (They also tend overwhelmingly to be young men, not women, and single, not married, which is intriguing but not really germane to the discussion.) Not only are they “loose cannons on the deck”, but they are very, very likely to break into actual schism should Rome ever “draw a line in the sand”.

· Rome is not going to repudiate Vatican II, they are not going to get rid of the Novus Ordo Mass all in one fell swoop (Rome rarely if ever does ANYTHING “in one fell swoop”!), and they are never going to declare post-Vatican II sacraments (Holy Orders, etc.) per se invalid. It just is not going to happen, and you can either resolve that the Holy Ghost preserved Rome from actual heresy (a very Catholic sentiment), or that Rome lost the Holy Ghost and the “true Catholic Church” is defined in some other way (a very Protestant sentiment!). No “reconciliation” is possible unless one side gives in. This is not without precedent. There is going to come a day of choosing sides, just as there was a thousand years ago with the Orthodox. Will Latin Rite traditionalists not in union with Rome become a “fourth division” of Christianity, just as the Protestants and Orthodox are now? I can see it happening, and quite frankly, this realization compelled me to “get my mind right with Rome” before it’s too late. Again, look at the Orthodox. The best of intentions, a lot to admire, a lot of reverence, beautiful liturgy, sacred art and architecture, certainly valid sacraments—just as with the independent traditionalists. But… a thousand years later, the Orthodox are still saying “you can’t trust Rome”. The Orthodox became upset (to say the least) over the insertion of “filioque” into the Creed. Present-day traditionalists are upset over changes to the form of the sacraments. I don’t know about you, but I see a pattern.

· Or perhaps more likely: traditionalists risk becoming to Vatican II what the “Old Catholics” (Utrecht et al) were to Vatican I. The First Vatican Council taught papal infallibility as a dogma of the Faith. Some didn’t like this. Outrageous! An innovation! This cannot bind us! (See a pattern?) So they went back, found a loophole regarding rights and privileges once granted to the Church of Utrecht in Holland (sounding familiar by now?), and are schismatic to this day. Mighty shaky ground, wouldn’t you say?

· Still not persuaded? Think on these words from St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed.”

· Let’s face it: the vast majority of Catholics simply won’t have anything to do with a Mass that is celebrated outside the diocesan framework. People are wary, and rightly so, of “hotel Masses”, or of organizations and locations that the local bishop has warned them against. True, some bishops’ condemnations are exaggerated (e.g., telling people that a Mass doesn’t fulfill the Sunday obligation when it does, or telling people that adhering to mere disobedience makes them schismatic and excommunicated), but experience shows this much: put the Church’s stamp of approval on something, and people flock to it. That’s just a healthy sensus Catholicus! It does not come naturally to a Catholic to rebel against the Church. What, you say? Yes, people are unruly on things like birth control, premarital sex, voting pro-life, and so on (basically, the things that pertain to interpersonal affection and reproduction, always a weak point for those who “want what they want” in this sphere of life) but at heart, even the most jaded Catholic who wishes to remain Catholic doesn’t venture outside the official Church in search of answers. Most Catholics (especially those under the age of 40) have absolutely no idea what a “Tridentine Latin Mass” even is! Isn’t it better to reach them where they are—in their own parishes—than to invite them into an environment that they’re leery of to begin with?

· Even if one concedes that any Latin Rite priest has a right (per QUO PRIMUM) to celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass—and I make this concession—still, that does not mean that an ordinary diocesan priest, in obedience to his bishop, is not obliged to say the Novus Ordo. Simply put, it’s part of his job description, and if his bishop tells him to say the Novus Ordo for a congregation, he simply does it. According to the rubrics, to be sure. Reverently and with valid matter, to be sure. But he does it, and he does it out of obedience. Period. If that same priest says a private Mass, of course he can say the Tridentine Mass. If he wants to say the Tridentine Mass all the time, he can ask his bishop’s permission to join a priestly society (such as the FSSP) where this is the norm. What’s so hard about that? And if you’re a layman with a possible vocation? Traditionalist seminaries (both approved and unapproved) are bursting at the seams! Seminaries that follow the post-Vatican II disciplines and spirituality are begging for vocations. Res ipsa loquitur (“it speaks for itself”)—but in unity with the Holy Father, please!