Max helpfully helps us to understand what all the softy-softy Vaticanese means in the pope’s Ecclesia Dei letter:

With his decision on #EcclesiaDei, Pope Francis said to the traditionalists: you can have pre-conciliar liturgy, but you cannot have pre-(anti)Vatican II doctrine

— Massimo Faggioli (@MassimoFaggioli) January 19, 2019

As I think we’ve been saying for years: if you love and adhere to the Faith of All the Ages, you can’t adhere to the New Paradigm of VaticanTwoism. You have to pick one, because they are not only different, but mutually exclusive. That’s what the SSPX statement about the groups formerly known as “Ecclesia Dei Communities” means; that, according to this pope and the whole post-Conciliar “New Paradigm”… “They can have the Mass, the ‘spiritual and liturgical traditions,’ but not the whole doctrine that goes along with them.” This is the meaning of their criticism of Dom Calvet (the founder of Le Barroux) when they said: “That has always been the Society of St. Pius X’s great reproach against Dom Gérard… and all those who thought they should break the unity of Tradition in order to negotiate a purely practical agreement.”

The “practical agreement” was, in effect, a promise to keep their mouths shut about the doctrinal aberrances that were being actively promulgated by popes and hierarchies around the world since 1965, in return for the “permission” to continue with the traditional liturgical rites. This was the deal taken by the FSSP and later the ICK and any priestly group that was being overseen by Ecclesia Dei. And that’s why you meet a lot of FSSP priests who love them some fancy smells n’ bells liturgy, but who are in no other respect “traditionalists”.

I think this was helpful and we owe thanks to professional Twitter Troll Massimo Faggioli for clarifying the pope so adroitly, as he so often does. But if we want to answer him – and the pope he claims to speak for – the response can only be, “Then it’s a good thing our fathers in the Faith wrote everything down, amirite? You just go ahead and try to stop me discovering and believing everything the Church teaches and taught for 2000 years. G’head. I double dare you.”

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