Tradcast Express
Tradcast Express, it's Tuesday, February 7th, 2023.
Can Francis ban the traditional Latin Mass?
That was the question discussed by Dr. Taylor Marshall and Mr. Matthew Gaspers
in a YouTube video on January 27th of this year.
Spoiler alert, their answer was no.
Now, of course we know that Francis isn't actually the Pope,
but Marshall and Gaspers believe that he is,
and they're asking the question under the supposition that he is, in fact,
the Pope of the Catholic Church, the Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
In this podcast and the next,
I'd like to go through their main arguments and provide a much-needed reality check
challenging their recognize-and-resist traditionalism.
Even if you're not Sedevacantist, you're going to find this podcast
insightful, thought-provoking, and worth your time.
Let's begin with our first audio clip from Taylor Marshall's YouTube video entitled
Can Pope Francis Ban the Latin Mass?
Can a Pope...
Cancel the Latin Mass?
The Roman Rite.
I'm with my friend Matt Gaspers.
He always does the great research,
and he's been looking into this topic of how previous popes,
the Council of Trent,
understood the relationship between the Pope and the liturgy.
Not just the Latin Mass, but all the liturgies,
all the rites of the Church.
So, real quick, Matt Gaspers,
can a Pope cancel the Latin Mass?
The short answer is no.
Definite no.
All right, there's the show right there.
And we'll get into all the details.
There's the show right there.
All right, let's stop right here already and ask ourselves,
out of all the people Taylor Marshall could have interviewed on this topic,
why do you think he picked Matt Gaspers?
Matt Gaspers used to be a catechist for a conservative Novoseldo parish in Colorado
before he became a semi-traditionalist.
And since 2017, he's been the managing editor of Catholic...
...Family News,
which is a relatively small traditionalist publication,
mostly for the United States and Canada, I believe.
So, he's basically a writer and polemicist for the semi-traditionalists, right?
The recognize and resist tracts.
All right, so why do you think Marshall chose Gaspers?
Why, for example, didn't he choose some Novoseldo seminary professor for liturgy or church history
...
who would have genuine and probably pretty deep academic knowledge of the subject,
as well as a mandate to teach from the supposedly lawful ecclesiastical authority,
and who could probably share a lot more pertinent information than Matt Gaspers.
And I'm not trying to knock Gaspers here.
I'm trying to challenge the very approach that Marshall is taking.
Why invite a semi-trat commentator to answer such an important question?
Well, I think the answer is obvious.
Marshall chose to interview Gaspers because he knows that Gaspers will tell him
that the Pope does not have the authority to suppress the traditional mass.
And that's what Marshall also believes and wants to have confirmed, right?
He knows what answer he's going to get from Gaspers because, theologically,
they're on the same team.
In other words, Marshall is choosing a semi-trat writer to confirm his own semi-trat position.
That's what's going on here.
It's kind of like a Mormon YouTuber inviting on another Mormon and asking him if Mormonism is true.
Well, surprise, he's going to tell you, yes, it is.
And you know that if Gaspers believed that the Pope has the authority
to get rid of the traditional Latin mass,
so that everyone now,
has to attend the Novels Ordo,
then Taylor Marshall would have never invited him on his show.
So, I think it's important to give this Marshall-Gaspers video some perspective.
Because I fear that a lot of people will think
what Marshall and Gaspers are presenting is the result of an objective fact-finding mission.
And that's clearly not the case.
It's a propaganda video for the semi-trat position.
And they can do that.
They can produce a video that gives
arguments for their position.
But let's just be clear up front about it,
that that's what it is.
See, if Marshall were really trying to determine,
objectively and without bias,
if Francis has the authority to ban the traditional mass,
at the very least,
he would also have someone else on who would give him the opposite view of Gaspers,
so that people can weigh the arguments of both sides.
Better yet, he would have chosen someone to intervene,
who actually has proper credentials to be discussing the subject in the first place,
like a diocesan seminary professor,
or a canon lawyer,
or some other genuine liturgical expert.
Now, you might say,
but those would all be Novus Ordo people.
Yes, they would.
But that shouldn't be a problem for Taylor Marshall,
if Francis is the Pope,
and the institution he directs is truly the Roman Catholic Church.
I mean, at some point,
you're going to have to understand that there are consequences
to saying that Francis is the head of the Catholic Church.
You can't have a do-it-yourself church
where Francis is just good enough to be Pope,
so you don't have to be a Sedevacantist,
but he's not good enough for what being Pope entails.
In other words, you can't have all of the benefits
of having Francis as Pope,
but then none of the drawbacks.
Intellectually, it's just not right.
So then, let's pose the question,
does a Pope, a true Pope,
have the authority to completely abolish
the ancient Roman rite of Mass
and replace it with a different rite,
one that is still orthodox and reverent, but new?
My very own personal, non-infallible answer to that is,
probably, but I do not know.
I simply do not know.
What I do know,
is that if a Pope does not have that authority,
and this is the crux,
then he would not be able to issue a decree legislating it.
That is where the Semitrads disagree.
When they say that the Pope cannot ban the traditional Mass,
what they really mean is that when he does do it,
it doesn't count.
Then his decree isn't valid,
and all the truly faithful have to resist it,
even, some would argue,
to the point of excommunication,
like the Society of St. Pius X.
And of course, then they would say that the excommunication isn't valid either,
and on and on it goes.
So, this is really ironic,
because it turns out that the Semitraditionalists,
who scream the loudest that the Pope cannot suppress the traditional Mass,
actually believe that he can.
It's just that when he does, it's invalid.
And who makes that judgment?
Why, they do, of course.
Each individual believer as he reads Catholic Family News or The Remnant.
You see?
So much for,
whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
There are things the Pope cannot do.
He cannot change the faith, for example.
He cannot make an ex cathedra pronouncement defining that God is not eternal.
But that means he truly cannot do it.
He would drop dead before he could define such a heresy.
And that is the key, I think,
to understanding all the evidence Gaspers is going to bring up
about the Pope not being able to do this or that.
He interprets it to mean that the Pope is not allowed to do those things,
but nevertheless quite capable of doing them.
And when he does them,
it's invalid and the faithful have to reject it
until the Pope relents and withdraws the bad decree.
That is the semi-trad understanding of things.
The funny thing is,
they can never point to any theology books that actually say that.
At least they never quote any.
All right.
Let's go ahead and listen some more to Taylor Marshall and Mad Gaspers.
Even from apostolic times,
liturgical stability has played a vital role.
In maintaining unity and integrity of faith for the universal church,
precisely because,
as the church has always taught,
lex orandi lex credendi,
the law of prayer is the law of belief.
In other words,
the church's liturgy,
her public worship and prayer,
shows forth and gives expression to the deposit of faith.
So you can't go tampering with the church's lex orandi
to such a degree that it starts to alter the lex credendi.
That's what's at stake here.
Okay.
So here Gaspers is actually going beyond the mere question
of whether a Pope can abolish the traditional mass.
The question Gaspers is introducing here
is whether a Pope can abolish the traditional rite of mass
and replace it with a new rite that is heretical,
erroneous, sacrilegious, impious, harmful, and so forth.
Well, now,
that's a different topic altogether
and should be asked separately.
But it's definitely one that has great relevance
because that's exactly what the false Pope Paul VI did in 1969
and afterwards with the other sacraments.
Not only did he abolish the old liturgy,
the traditional mass and sacramental rites,
he replaced them with false rites,
that is, with rites that do not express
the same traditional Catholic faith.
And of course,
that was the whole point of the liturgical reform,
well, revolution really,
to begin with, right?
It was about changing the faith.
They needed to make changes to all the liturgical rites
in order to bring them in line with the new conciliar teachings.
They needed them to be updated
to reflect the new religion of Vatican II.
That the Catholic Church cannot possibly introduce
a rite of mass for the entire Church that is sacrilegious
or teaches heresy is obvious.
But again, that means the Church truly cannot do it,
not that she can and then everybody has to protest.
We can see this, for example, in the Council of Trent.
Quote,
If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments,
and outward signs which the Catholic Church uses
in the celebration of masses are incentives to impiety
rather than the services of piety, let him be anathema.
Unquote.
That's the Council of Trent Session 22, Canon 7,
and you can find that in Denzinger 954.
Likewise, Pope Pius VI, writing in his 1794,
Apostolic Constitution, auctorum fide, number 78,
rejects a particular error the robber synod of Pistoia put forth
and concludes, quote,
As if the Church, which is ruled by the Spirit of God,
could have established discipline which is not only useless
and burdensome for Christian liberty to endure,
but which is even dangerous and harmful
and leading to superstition and materialism.
Unquote.
Such an idea, the Pope says, is, quote,
false, rash, scandalous, dangerous, offensive to pious ears,
injurious to the Church and to the Spirit of God
by whom it is guided, at least erroneous.
Unquote.
You can look that up in Denzinger 1578.
All right.
So, going back to Mad Gaspers, he brings up Canon 13
of the Council of Trent, Session 7.
Quote,
If anyone shall say that the received and approved rites
of the Catholic Church, accustomed to be used
in the solemn administration of the sacraments,
may be disdained or omitted by the minister without sin
and at pleasure, or may be changed by any pastor of the Churches
to other new ones, let him be anathema.
Unquote.
So, now, here the debate is always whether or not
any pastor of the Churches includes the Pope or not.
Personally, I'm sure it doesn't include the Pope,
but for right now, without researching this in depth,
the point is that if Gaspers and Marshall think
it does include the Pope, fine.
But then they have to prove that,
and they definitely haven't done that.
So, let's move on.
So, now what we're going to see,
after we've seen what the Council of Trent taught,
what were the Pope's understanding of these teachings?
And I think we have a very clear indication of that
in a couple of quotes I'm going to read now.
Wait, are you saying that Popes other than Francis
have a say in this?
Yes.
Now, aren't we Francis alone?
Isn't that the new way?
We just listen to Francis?
Or do other Popes, do they get a say on these things?
I'm sure there are some people who are Francis alone.
I think we know who they are.
Right. Yeah.
We definitely need to be listening to the magisterium of all time
and not just the magisterium of the current pontiff.
Ah, listen to that.
The magisterium of all time.
Now, I would love to know where Matt Gaspers got that concept,
other than from some Lefebvris piece of literature.
I have never seen in any pre-Vatican II theology book
or church document any kind of distinction between
a magisterium of all time, that we always have to follow,
and then a magisterium of the present,
that we only follow if it agrees with that magisterium of all time.
I mean, that is simply an invention of the Lefebvrists, basically, right?
Society of St. Pius X people.
So, first, let's ask ourselves if what Gaspers says here even makes any sense.
His position is that, on the one hand,
a liturgical decree from a pope of four or five centuries ago
was binding on the entire church,
not only then, but even now, and forever into the future.
And yet, a liturgical decree of the present pope can and must be rejected.
But why should a document from 500 years ago be binding today
if a document from today isn't binding today?
The way things actually work in the Catholic Church
is that by adhering loyally to the papal magisterium of the present,
you are automatically guaranteed to be adhering to the prior magisterium
and to the deposit of faith.
That is the beautiful miracle of the papacy.
Remember, the papacy is God's work, not man's.
God created the papacy, not man.
Distinguishing a pristine magisterium of the past
from a soiled magisterium of the present makes no sense,
and it's certainly not a Catholic concept.
The magisterium stands and falls as a whole.
If the magisterium of the present could be a theological junkyard,
which is precisely what we see with the false popes since Vatican II,
especially Francis,
then there's no reason why the magisterium of the past
should have a guarantee of orthodoxy.
It's all or nothing,
because the same authority that stands behind one pope's magisterium,
namely Jesus Christ,
also stands behind the magisterium of all other popes.
Each individual pope is the vicar of Christ.
In 1885, Pope Leo XIII addressed that,
because I'm not entirely sure
about the historical situation now,
but I think some Catholics had been arguing
that because Pope Leo's directives to the Catholics in France,
with regard to their secularist government,
differed from the directives of Pope Pius IX,
therefore they could simply dismiss Pope Leo's instructions
and revert back to what Pius IX had said.
And Leo XIII shot that down.
On June 17, 1885,
he wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Paris and said,
quote,
It is to give proof of a submission which is far from sincere
to set up some kind of opposition between one pontiff and another.
Those who, faced with two differing directives,
reject the present one to hold to the past
are not giving proof of obedience to the authority
which has the right and duty to guide them.
And in some ways they resemble those who,
on receiving a condemnation,
would wish to appeal to a future council
or to a pope who is better informed.
On this point, what must be remembered
is that in the government of the Church,
except for the essential duties imposed on all pontiffs
by their apostolic office,
each of them can adopt the attitude which he judges best
according to times and circumstances.
Of this, he alone is the judge.
It is true that for this he has not only special lights,
but still more the knowledge of the needs and conditions
of the whole of Christendom,
for which, it is fitting, his apostolic care must provide.
He has the charge of the universal welfare of the Church,
to which is subordinate any particular need,
and all others who are subject to this order
must second the action of the supreme director
and serve the end which he has in view.
Since the Church is one, and her head is one,
so too her government is one,
and all must conform to this."
That's from the letter Epistolatua of Pope Leo XIII,
and we've got it linked in the show notes.
Similarly, Pope St. Pius X stated that
the first and greatest criterion of the faith,
the ultimate and unassailable test of Orthodoxy,
is obedience to the teaching authority of the Church,
which is ever-living and infallible,
since she was established by Christ
to be the columna et firmamentum veritatis,
the pillar and support of truth .
And the same Pope Pius X went on to say,
quote,
This is why St. Paul says,
Feed us ex auditu .
Faith comes not by sight, but by hearing,
from the living authority of the Church,
a visible society composed of masters and disciples,
of rulers and of governed,
of shepherds and sheep and lambs.
Jesus Christ himself has laid on his disciples
the duty of hearing the instructions of their masters,
on subjects of living in submission to the dictates of rulers,
on sheep and lambs,
following with docility in the footsteps of their shepherds.
Unquote.
That's from the address Convera Sodisfazione of May 10th, 1909,
and that's linked in the show notes as well.
So you can see here how important the Pope issue is.
Right?
The question whether the popes after Pius XII were true popes or not.
These things really matter.
Theology has consequences.
Gaspers and Marshall believe that Francis is that living authority,
and they refuse to follow him and let him guide them in the way of salvation.
Instead, they sit in judgment of him and decide what they will accept from him
and what they won't,
and they appeal to some supposed magisterium
of all time that can overrule the present one.
Nonsense.
The only way to get out of this conundrum
is to hold that Francis is not the pope
and that we haven't had a pope for decades.
And, of course, then people rightly ask,
so where is your living magisterial authority?
Where is your pope?
Well, that is the great mystery of our time.
What the heck happened?
Where is the magisterium?
I don't know.
But I do know where it's not.
And we're not going to solve this by changing the traditional teaching.
You cannot keep the faith by changing the faith.
Look, it's not our fault that we don't have all the answers.
But let's at least start by rejecting those things we know to be false.
As I've said in a prior podcast,
I don't know, without using a calculator,
what 251 divided by 7 is.
But I do know it's not 135.
So, just because you don't have all the answers
doesn't mean you can't know which answers are false.
Alright, next, Gaspers brings up the Tridentine profession of faith
promulgated by Pope Pius IV in 1564.
Quote,
I also admit and accept the rights received and approved
in the Catholic Church for the solemn administration
of all the sacraments mentioned above.
Unquote.
That's the translation used by Gaspers.
The one found in the traditional Denzinger number 996 reads as follows.
Quote,
I also receive and admit the accepted and approved rights
of the Catholic Church in the solemn administration
of all the aforesaid sacraments.
Unquote.
Well, I really don't know how that's supposed to be
some kind of slam-dunk proof text.
Gaspers comments as follows.
Clearly, this pope is recognizing I am not an absolute monarch,
to quote Benedict XVI and Cardinal Ratzinger,
whose will is just magically the law.
I am bound by things that are above me
and over which I don't have authority to change.
Oh, look how Joseph Ratzinger is suddenly to be followed
when he says something they agree with.
Well, no doubt there are things that the pope cannot change,
like the dogmas of the faith, for example,
but what the Tridentine profession of faith says
regarding the received and approved sacramental rights
does not support Gaspers' thesis that the pope can issue a decree
changing the rite of mass and then it's invalid
and everyone has to resist it.
That is obviously not what that profession of faith is saying.
Marshall and Gaspers continue.
So the pope is under tradition.
The pope is under tradition.
Yes.
This is the traditional argument here.
The pope is the guardian of tradition.
He's the servant of tradition.
He cannot create new traditions.
He cannot create new books of the Bible.
He cannot create anything.
Right.
He receives the apostolic deposit given by Jesus Christ
to the apostles and he preserves it over time.
Yeah, well, Francis sure doesn't.
If that's what the pope does,
then how can you say Francis is the pope
when he does the exact opposite?
So they say the pope is under tradition.
Again, that is true in a sense,
but not in the sense in which they mean it.
You cannot reject papal teaching by appealing to tradition.
In fact, it is part of tradition that you must accept papal teaching.
Let that sink in for a moment.
It's true that the pope is the guardian of the deposit of faith,
but that doesn't mean what Marshall and Gaspers think it means.
They think it means the pope can contradict the deposit of faith,
but when he does, his teaching or legislation has no value.
In fact, it is dangerous, then,
and requires all other authorities and people in the church to resist it
and basically admonish the pope and tell him to get his act together.
Funny, but they never quote a dogmatic theology manual
from before Vatican II that says that,
obviously because that's simply not what the church teaches.
Instead, the true teaching was expressed by St. Robert Bellarmine.
Quote,
The pope is the teacher and shepherd of the whole church.
Thus the whole church is so bound to hear and follow him
that if he would err, the whole church would err.
Now, our adversaries, and yes, he says adversaries,
respond that the church ought to hear him so long as he teaches correctly.
For God must be heard more than men.
On the other hand,
who will judge whether the Pope has taught rightly or not.
For it is not for the sheep to judge whether the shepherd wanders off,
not even and especially in those matters which are truly doubtful.
Nor do Christian sheep have any greater judge or teacher to whom they might have recourse.
As we showed above, from the whole church one can appeal to the Pope,
yet from him no one is able to appeal.
Therefore, necessarily, the whole church will err if the pontiff would err."
That's St. Robert Bellarmine from his book On the Roman Pontiff, book 4, chapter 3.
And that was the Ryan Grant translation.
There's also a translation out there by Father Kenneth Baker.
So,
nothing there about going by tradition when the Pope teaches nonsense.
And that's not because we don't want to go by tradition,
it's because the Pope cannot teach nonsense.
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
we're about halfway through the Marshall Gaspers video,
and we'll stop here for today and take care of the rest in the next podcast.
Stay tuned.
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