Archdiocese of Military: Better to Have No Priests than Traditional Ones
For the past two years the Fort Hood Traditional Latin Mass community has celebrated All Souls Day with an outdoor Mass offered on the hood of a Korean era Army Jeep. While the Mass is offered for the souls of all the faithful departed, it is especially for soldiers who fell in battle, including Father Emil J. Kapaun, chaplain for the 8th Calvary during the Korean War. Fr. Kapaun was famously photographed offering the Mass on the hood of a Jeep during the war, shortly before his capture and eventual death, at the hands of the North Koreans.
Fort Hood’s Latin Mass Community, established in 2015 and comprised of approximately 120 faithful, has been averaging upwards of 45-55 weekly attendees at their Sunday Latin Mass. They have also been profiled on EWTN’s Extraordinary Faith series, in an episode scheduled for broadcast later this year. Unfortunately, all of that may soon be coming to an end.
Like many other service men and women in the Archdiocese for the Military Services, the Traditional Latin Mass community at Fort Hood might become victims to the ongoing vocations crisis. With their current chaplain set to retire from active military duty this summer, they are likely to find themselves without a priest capable of offering the Traditional Mass.
One of the founding members of the Fort Hood Traditional Latin Mass Community, Sergeant Major Johnny Proctor, US Army, III Armored Corps Chaplain Sargeant Major, reached out to Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services for help. More importantly, SGM Proctor wrote the archbishop offering a potential solution to the crisis: invite more traditional priests to consider joining the military as chaplains.
That the military is suffering a priest shortage is undisputed. Archbishop Broglio has said the need for Catholic chaplains is “desperate”, noting that an already bad situation is about to get worse.
In 2015, the same year that Fort Hood began offering their Latin Mass, Archbishop Broglio appealed to his brother bishops at the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore:
Approximately one fourth of the active-duty personnel and their immediate families are Catholics…At present, those Catholics — totalling around a million people — are served by only 217 priests in a territory that covers the globe. They represent only 8 percent of all military chaplains…That suggests that others might easily cultivate Catholic young people seeking spiritual counsel…
Archbishop Broglio has also noted that as many as half of those priests may be retiring from active service in the next few years. In his remarks in Baltimore, he urged the bishops to release more priests to serve in the military, noting it was “imperative that every diocese give at least one priest to ensure that your faithful who defend our religious freedom do not have to sacrifice theirs.”
For Catholic men and women serving in the military the importance of the priest-chaplain cannot be overstated. They:
- Offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
- Hear Confessions
- Provide spiritual guidance and formation
- Visit and comfort the sick and wounded
- Anoint the sick
- Pray for the dead
- Administer Last Rites
Of course, the need for all of the above is even greater to those service members deployed for combat, where death is a daily reality and availability to a priest-confessor the difference between salvation or damnation.
It is in this context that SGM Proctor reached out to Archbishop Broglio. In his letter, Proctor wrote:
We have…been visited by another seminarian from Houston who served eight years in the US Army Special Forces and has the…desire for Traditional formation and Army chaplaincy. We have a seminarian who will be ordained next month for the Priestly Society of St. Peter (FSSP)…His parents are regulars at our TLM. Typical of Traditional communities, we have many young men in attendance and also young couples with children. We have several altar boys who diligently practice the Latin responses and perform their liturgical actions with precision and reverence.
In his letter, SGM Proctor further highlighted for Archbishop Broglio a trend already well known to Latin Mass Catholics: traditional orders and societies are experiencing a boom in vocations as more of the young are drawn to the traditional Mass. He noted:
(A)ccording to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), the average age of a Priest in the USA is 64. In the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), it is 37. The FSSP and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) have almost 500 priests with over a hundred in formation now. The Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) may soon be regularized by the Holy Father and granted a personal prelature. They have 600 priests and over 200 seminarians in formation now…Priest-chaplains for the future may be available from these traditional priestly societies if we actively recruit them and permit them to serve in their charism of exclusively using the 1962 liturgical books.
Archbishop Broglio wrote back to SGM Proctor and the Fort Hood Latin Mass community in a letter dated June 6 (interestingly enough the anniversary of D-Day). Considering the “desperate” situation currently facing U.S. military personnel due to the shortage of chaplains, the archbishop’s response is surprising.
In his letter (see above), Archbishop Broglio argues against the Military accepting priests as chaplains who only offer the traditional Mass, also called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Unfortunately, the reasoning employed is faulty. This isn’t to suggest malice, rather it could simply reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the Roman Rite, both its history and its current definition following the release of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict in 2007.
In the letter the archbishop compares the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite to the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Church. He argues that eastern rite priests have to be bi-ritual if they are military chaplains and must offer the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, suggesting the same holds true for priests offering the traditional Mass. He also states that the Divine Liturgy is much older than the “liturgy established by the Council of Trent.”
First, regarding the suggestion that Extraordinary Form is a different rite. In his letter to the bishops which accompanied the release of Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict wrote:
It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two Rites”. Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite.
In other words, a Catholic priest of the Latin Church offering the Roman Rite does so, regardless of whether the Mass said uses the 1962 Missal (the Extraordinary Form), or the 1970 Missal (the Ordinary Form). Using an analogy to bi-ritual priests of eastern churches is simply incorrect.
Secondly, it is historically inaccurate to suggest that the Council of Trent established the Traditional Roman Rite in 1570. Pope St. Pius V simply codified the existing Roman Rite for the entire Latin Church, only excepting those venerable rites which were more than 200 years old at the time (such as the Ambrosian Rite).
It is much more accurate to state that the Traditional Latin Mass is the form of Roman Catholic worship used in the Latin Rite since the time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great (d. 604 AD). While there was ongoing organic development from the 6th century until the time of Trent, the Mass itself, from the Canon to many of the Offertory prayers to the liturgical use of Latin and Chant, were all there.
Archbishop Broglio, referencing St. Paul’s admonition to be “all things to all” contends that the “legitimate liturgical expectations of all Catholics” would not be fulfilled if a priest-chaplain was unable to offer the Ordinary Form. Interestingly, the archbishop doesn’t see the irony in the reverse being the case now for those who desire the Extraordinary Form.
Regardless, this argument for the “liturgical expectations” of the faithful strikes me as being highly unusual and rather arbitrary. Considering the “desperate” situation now faced by Catholics in the Archdiocese for the Military Services, isn’t there also a “legitimate” expectation that a bishop will do all he can to simply make the sacraments available to his flock?
In his final paragraph Archbishop Broglio provides what he believes to be the solution: those traditional priests of the FSSP, or ICKSP, or even diocesan, who feel called to be military chaplains should petition their superiors for faculties to offer the Ordinary Form of the Mass and sacraments.
With all due respect to His Excellency, this suggested solution isn’t a solution at all.
The current crisis and priest shortage resides in the military, not the traditional orders. The traditional liturgy is attracting the young and experiencing growth, not the military services. The charism which attracts young priests to offer the liturgy according to the Extraordinary Form isn’t simply an option for their priesthood; it is part of their identity. Their formation. Their spirituality. If anything, one might wonder why the archbishop isn’t more interested in finding out why tradition attracts, instead of simply looking to restrict it, or rejecting it outright.
SGM Proctor summarized it best when he told me:
What we are left with from Archbishop Broglio’s letter is a stunning conclusion that under the auspices of pastoral efficiency and paternal concern, it is better to have no priest-chaplains than to have ones devoted exclusively to the Traditional liturgical books.
Unfortunately, this indeed appears to be the case.
The Catholic chaplain has been a fixture in the U.S. military for well over 150 years. In fact, since the end of the Civil War, only five chaplains have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic service. All five were Catholic priests. All five offered Mass in the traditional Roman Rite. The most recent recipient being none other than the previously mentioned Father Emil J. Kapaun.
Edit: the post as been updated to reflect a more current assessment of Fort Hood’s weekly Mass attendance.
[Photo Credit: Amy Proctor]
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Posted on June 17, 2017, in liturgy and tagged Archbishop Timothy Broglio, Archdiocese of Military Services, Emil Kapaun, Fort Hood Latin Mass, FSSP, ICKSP, traditional priests. Bookmark the permalink. 74 Comments.
liturgy guy 
Disaster… This is when you believe that “the Natural Solution” will work over time, and another bishop with more awareness will come to his place.
Since AMS was created in 1986 all of the archbishops appointed have been “do-nothing” bishops. In fact, you can not tell any difference between the AMS and the Military Vicariate of the Archdiocese of New York other than a blotted, do-nothing, female bureaucracy in a palace chancery and 5 separate episcopal mansion in the DC area.
The reason that a vicariate is raised to the status of an archdiocese is that it has reach a certain level of maturity and should be able to exist on is own rather than acting like a weak and forlorn stepchild of the other dioceses and religious orders in the US. An archdiocese raising up its own permanent and incardinated clergy is a sign of that maturity. The AMS and its archbishops have been totally lacking in this maturity and continue to have a pre-archdiocesan mindset that they absolutely must and can not be otherwise that a beggar and priest-poacher throughout the world. Where originally the poaching and theft of priests was limited to diocese and religious orders in the US, now AMS has a campaign of theft that is worldwide concentrating specifically on the poor jungle and swamp countries of Africa and Asia. AMS is truly a leper institution that refuses to incardinate men as semenarians.
How do these fools become a priest let alone become bishops ???. Such Apostasy in high places ,sad to say.
The more extreme Left they are, the more likely they are to be ordained to the priesthod and then the episcopate.
Spelling: “Priesthood”
Novus ordo priests and bishops are as nearly cut off from the Apostolic tradition as are the Protestants. Because the Mass of the Ages, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is as familiar to him as an Appalachian snake handler Protestant service he does not understand that that Mass (**THE** Mass) inspires the very zeal and virtue that military commanders would prize in their troops. Would people sacrifice their lives for the Novus Ordo? No, of course not! After all, that wouldn’t be very ecumenical. At some level that I am unable to properly articulate the sacrificial nature of the Mass (the “Extraordinary Form” for arguments sake) inculcates a willingness to sacrifice that is incomprehensible to the novus ordo and its “celebrants”/”presiders” etc. Encountering God face to face as one does in the Extraordinary Form is what makes the Church Militant militant. The “EF” causes one to want to go out and conquer the world for Christ, His Church, and for the honor and glory of His holy Mother. The novus ordo causes you to want to do what? Dialog? Encounter? Accompany? What good has that done. Either we are in the business of making Christ King, building Christendom in whatever corner of the world we occupy, and doing all we can to place that world at His feet, or, we are simply there to share sentimental feelings about Jesus with one another and try to “be nice” (the favorite suggestion of the novus ordo priests I know). Pardon the rant but these Bishops need to wake up and realize people buying their New Coke novus ordo BS! Traditional Catholicism is mere Catholicism, just regular Catholicism. Paraphrasing Archbishop Lefebvre (or was it St. Athanasius?) they may have our churches, but they do not have our faith.
The Novus Ordo “Mass” is primarily directed at the worship of feminism and lesbianism as a means of driving normal men out of the Church as per the Hard Left’s plan when it took over of the Church at Vatican II.
The height of masculinity:
http://sergesblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/clerical-lace-and-ribbons.html
I hope not.
+ I am one of the so called “Novus Ordo priests” about whom you spoke disrespectfully and with such contempt and I can assure you that I and many other orthodox, Roman Catholic priests who offer the Ordinary Form of the Mass are NOT “cut off from the Apostolic Tradition,” as you stated. You so arrogantly assert that only the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, “inspires the very zeal and virtue that military commanders would prize in their troops,” and that no one would die for the Ordinary Form of the Mass (I use the term that St. Peter’s Successor tells me to use and not a term I choose on my own). You’ve obviously never assisted at the Ordinary Form of the Mass offered by the orthodox, Roman Catholic priests I know. One who has been ordained almost 60 years lifted the soul straight to heaven when he offered the Ordinary Form of the Mass with exquisite Gregorian Chant and beautiful choral music. At the Masses of another holy priest who has been ordained many years, you could hear a pin drop all the time you were there. His Masses certainly offered one a glimpse of heavenly paradise and there was no music with them. Think what would’ve happened if there had been some of the beautiful hymns you and I both love along with Gregorian Chant. I can list countess Masses offered in the Ordinary Form that have had hearts and souls soaring to heaven, some of which I’ve offered myself and have had people tell me that they felt like they were in heaven. We orthodox, Roman Catholic priests who offer the Ordinary Form of the Mass reverently and with all our hearts, just as Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI did, encounter God and receive the grace to sacrifice ourselves both bodily and spiritually in the same way priests who offer the Extraordinary Form do. Those who attend our Masses receive the graces to sacrifice themselves, otherwise how could those Catholic soldiers who have attended the Ordinary Form of the Mass and given their lives for their fellow soldiers have sacrificed themselves if not by the graces received at the Ordinary Form of the Mass where they truly encountered God?
Your arrogance, attitude of superiority over every other person created by God and your vulgarity only feed Archbishop Broglio’s hesitancy in wanting to bring in a priest who only offers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass; you personify as a layman what he mentioned in his letter about his fear that perhaps some priests from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and like communities may find the Ordinary Form of the Mass to be flawed and, therefore, less than the Extraordinary Form. You are only to be pitied and hopefully you will soon approach the Sacrament of Confession because your words and your hateful attitude will only bring you condemnation from God. He looks down on those who show disdain for the legitimate Successors to St. Peter by your criticism of their reforms, who show disdain for His bishop by taking out of context his letter and who show disdain for His orthodox, Roman Catholic priests who offer His Mass reverently and are growing in holiness through It because the Ordinary Form is still the Holy Sacrifice of Calvary re-presented on the altar daily by His faithful priests to His faithful people.
Do not try to persuade me that everyone who assists at the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is always attentive and properly disposed because I’ve preached at the Extraordinary Form a number of times and have noticed during the Mass the same distracted people that assist at the Ordinary Form. This applies to the people who assisted at Mass when THE Mass, as you put it, was the only one before the Council. People were distracted and so were some priests who merely offered Mass, but didn’t always encounter God. My point in saying this is to disprove the idea that if we return solely to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the Church’s problems will be solved. I agree with Msgr. Klaus Gamber’s solution as to what needs to be done regarding the Mass. He believedll our only option now is to use the Extraordinary Form as our base, make the necessary changes in it, e.g. have the readings done once and in the vernacular, and make that the one Mass for the Latin Rite. I hope our next Pontiff takes this advice and we eventually have all priests offering only one Form of the Mass for the Latin Rite
Then we wouldn’t have these foolish problems that arise because some in the Church who assist at one form of the Mass consider themselves intrinsically more holy, intrinsically more Catholic, intrinsically superior to anyone who attends the Ordinary Form of the Mass, simply because the Mass is in Latin. I love to offer Mass in Latin and “ad Orientem,” and I, as an orthodox, Roman Catholic priest offer Mass that way, but it doesn’t make me superior to my orthodox, Roman Catholic friends who have difficulties with Latin and offer Mass reverently in English and facing the people.
May God enlighten you and may He have mercy on your soul and the souls of all those whose comments were not only disrespectful, but even bordered on blasphemous.
If the Novus Ordo Mass / Church is so great, why then are:
— so many of your clergy in prison or committing suicide after being indicted for sexual activity with teenage males while no Vetus Ordo clergy appear to have ever given scandal in this manner?
— Novus ordo seminaries empty while all Vetus Ordo seminaries are full?
— Novus ordo female religious orders empty while all Vetus Ordo female religious orders are full?
— Novus ordo faithful reproductively sterile while Vetus Ordo faithful have a healthy birthrate,
— Novus ordo parishes 50% staffed by priests from the Third World rather than USA born priests?
As I mentioned in a previous post, the Military Archdiocese was created as a means to stop the stealing of priests from other diocese or religious orders. Due to laziness on the part of all Archbishops for the Military Services, no seminarians have every been incardinated into the Military Archdiocese which is a failure of ministry on the part of the Archbishops for the Military Services. The whole point of creating the Military Archdiocese was so that it could, in part, sponsor and incardinate its own seminarians.
Most of these arguments in support of the Novus Ordo are so silly, as they’re dealing with surface level issues like “music at Mass” and “reverence” and “ad orientem worship”. These things are of course important, but not really deal-breakers in terms markers of theological or philosophical superiority or validity. The Novus Ordo Masses, Sacraments, ecclesiology, canon law, catechisms, hierarchy, language, culture, mindset, etc. etc. are all tainted with implicit and explicit Modernist elements. That is what makes the entire “Novus Ordo package” inferior (and mostly opposed) to traditional, orthodox Catholicism as it exists in the pre-Vatican II world. And that orthodox, Catholic world is not limited to exclusively the TLM of the Latin Rite, as it includes all the other orthodox Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, which have mercifully been spared much of the destruction that has brought low the Latin Rite these past decades. It’s a far deeper and more complex issue than if something “looks” or “feels” orthodox in the Novus Ordo. If orthodoxy exists in the Novus Ordo Church, it’s only because the truth of traditional Catholicism is shining through a chink in the shabby curtains of the modernist-tainted Church of today, with most orthodox Novus Ordo priests having no clue as to the foundations of that true source. In all this, I’m not saying that the Novus Ordo is necessarily invalid, just far inferior to the true Roman Liturgy. The SSPX are correct in their view that the root of all these errors is the dogmatisation of Vatican II’s errors. IT WASN’T A PROPER ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, PEOPLE! CAN’T WE TAKE PAUL VI AT HIS WORD THAT IT WAS SOLELY A PASTORAL COUNCIL? IT DID NOT MAKE ANY PROPER DOGMATIC DECLARATIONS AND THEREFORE DOES NOT BIND THE FAITHFUL TO ASSENT. This is the key to the whole crisis. We converts coming from Protestantism can see this stuff as clear as day, but please look into it yourself if you doubt this position.
There is much that could be said here but I intend to cut to the chase: to serve as a chaplain in the military of the United States of America is not a right but a PRIVILEGE. His Grace Archbishop Broglio has determined that he needs priests that are able and willing to celebrate Mass according to the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. That’s his prerogative as successor to the Apostles and overseer of his archdiocese. Get over it.
What’s being lost in all the negativity and poutiness is the apparent welcome His Grace is willing to extend to priests able to celebrate Mass according to BOTH forms of the Roman Rite. This is cause for celebration as “mutual enrichment” could really get legs in the military archdiocese.
I love how supporters of the Vatican II and Novus Ordo religion appeal to authority and dogma when dealing with the trady community: “I’m the Vicar of Christ or his successor, so now go and do whatever I say because I am an absolute monarch.” That does not sound very “welcoming” and “enculturating” for those who are not interested in the bland and “bored housewife” liturgies that the Novus Ordo religion has become with their radical feminist worship services consisting of: altar girls, female Eucharist Ministers, female liturgical dancers, female commentators, female lectors, female piano bar music, female constructed felt banners, hymns to my feminist “feelings,” etc. If you did look very closely you would think you were at a meeting of a nutty group of Girl Scouts or an all-female group of Alcoholics Anoymous at Mass to share their feelings.
Trady Catholics would get a better reception from the Novus Ordo religion if they portrayed themselves as a Lost Tribe in the jungles of Africa who have not received the Vatican II enlightenment concerning the perfection of man. Then, White Vatican II bishops could politely and laughingly look down on the Tradies as ignorant savages who are not cultured and sophisticated like the White bishops who would then leave the savages alone with their unenlightened, pre-Vatican II religion and liturgy in the name of diversity and inclusion (the White bishop saying: “Look at me everybody, I am so wonderful because I let the Trady African savages have their Latin, Gregorian Chant, Communion on the tongue, etc.).
The fact of the matter is that Vatican II bishops are Hard Left, authoritarian, fascist ideologues who demand 100% complete submission and subjugation to their mind-control “cult” of the Vatican II religion of anti-Catholicism.
The expectation that a Vatican II and Novus Ordo bishop would have anything to do with tradyism is completely ridiculous to begin with. Most Vatican II bishops and clergy are promoted for the very fact that they are anti-Catholic and despise everything that occurred in the Catholic Church prior to 1963. To these clerics, 1963 and the opening of Vatican II was a Communist “Zero Year” where the forces of anti-Catholicism could ignore or eliminate the previous history of the Catholic Church as long as it was done under the banner of the “Spirit of the Council,” the “Spirit of the October 1917 Russian Revolution,” and/or the “Spirit of the 1789 French Revolution” all of which were specifically anti-Catholic and anti-religious revolutions that exalted the perfection of man. The Vatican II documents “Gaudium et Spes” and “Lumen Gentium” were both lifted right out of Freemasonry and the “Communist Manifesto” regarding the assertion of all three documents that man is on a long march to self-perfection without need of superstitions like religion. The dumb thing about the documents of Vatican II is that humanity was less than 20 years past World War II and the Vatican II bishops were spouting endless nonsense about man’s perfection. This proves that the typical bishop of that era was senile, stupid or a Communist infiltrator and they have not improved at all sense then (except for Card. Burke, etc.). Vatican II failed to condemn Communism because Vatican II was a Communist operation from start to finish including up today with Pope Francis demanding that North America and Europe babysit the Third World. Pope Francis’ snotty paternalism (i.e. “White man’s burden”) toward the Third World is so racist and disgusting that I could write about three books on that topic alone. Pope Francis’ call for a crusade for the destruction of Christianity in Europe and throughout the world and its replacement by and the supremacy of Islam would indicate that Francis is an anti-pope in line with his brother bishops who embrace Communism. What pope in his right mind calls for the destruction of Catholicism and it being replaced by Islam. The invading Islamic Army in Libya is even having its boats towed to Europe by the European Union countries’ navies. What kind of madness is this?
As I have mentioned before on this blog, Pope St. John XXIII specifically allowed for the Church to adopt, promote and propagandize for atheistic Communism in his 1963 encyclical “Pacem in Terris” beginning at paragraph 158. Because of “Pacem in Terris,” only committed atheists and anti-Catholics are normally admitted into Holy Orders for the exclusive purpose of destroying the Catholic Church. This accounts for the crisis in the Church today. The Communist infiltration of the Church theory is elaborated here: Dodd, “School of Darkness,” 1954, https://lccn.loc.gov/54010204
Has “His Grace Archbishop Broglio” done a geneology to see if he is related to the Bishop of Rome Bergoglio?
Are you a practising Catholic or an agent provocateur of the Hard Left?
The Litany for the Peasant’s Revolt for the Restoration of the Ancien Regime of the Roman Rite:
— We want incense, … pray for us …, etc.,
— We want Latin,
— We want Gregorian Chant,
— We want Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,
— We want “Asperges Me” on Sunday morning,
— We want Communion on the tongue,
— We want altar boys (i.e. real males, not one of your transgendered girlfriends),
— We want the “Propers” of the Mass sung in their full melismatic form according to the
1962 Graduale Romanum with organ accompaniment, etc.
Reply from On High to the Litany:
And you ain’t going to be gettin’ any, because that is not how the authoritarian, Communist, Hard Left rolls. Amen.
Mr. Knox, did you read the blog entry? The Archbishop is in no position to pick and choose. In his own words, the shortage of military priests is “dire” and “desperate.” Until YOU have to deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Korea without the sacraments, I’d appreciate you withholding your comments about people “pouting.” YOU get over it. No one is challenging the Archbishop’s episcopal authority. Canon Law says the lay faithful should make their wishes known to their sacred pastors. We are simply appealing to him to consider a more long-term way of seeing the crisis resolved by integrating the type of young men who are submitting themselves for sacerdotal formation today.
Sergeant Major, this isn’t about the nature and extent of our respective deployments, is it? Nor are we talking about a situation wherein the military will be utterly without priests. This is an unfair hyperbole with which His Grace is being whacked to pursue a particular agenda. Not classy.
That said, you are to be applauded for making your wishes and your perspective known to the *archbishop*. The next step would be to really try and *understand* where His Grace is coming from. Maybe you do but it’s too hard to accept because you find grave fault with the post-conciliar form of the Roman Rite? I don’t know. What I do know is that “mutual enrichment” is the way forward for the Latin Church.
“Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the [Missal of Bl Paul VI] would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness” Pope Benedict XVI, letter to bishops, July 2007.
+ To P. Knox from an orthodox, Roman Catholic priest:
All I can say to you is, God bless you for your pithy response to those who feel themselves superior to all Catholics simply because they attend Mass in Latin. You pierced through their ever-present negativity and wrote the truth. Thank you for your words.
Initially I was sympathetic, as I assumed these potential chaplains would offer the former Mass when called upon by the Traditional Mass Community but also minister to and celebrate for those Catholics who follow the ordinary form. Are these priests unwilling or unable to offer anything but the Tridentine Mass? What about their willingness to perform the ecumenical and interfaith duties military chaplains are required to do in accordance to military policy?
I think rather than spend a lot of taxpayer money on chaplains only doing a small part of their job, the better solution is that they be made contract chaplains to offer the Tridentine Mass for those seeking it.
The Constitutions of most trady religious orders of priests, such as:
— Fraternity of St. Peter,
— Institute of Christ the King,
— Society of St. Pius X, etc.
restrict members by vows or promises of obedience to their religious superior to only offer the Tridentine Mass, Sacraments and Breviary / Divine Office.
These trady priests would need a dispensation (not likely to be given) from their superior to licitly void that promise.
Confused as SSPX is outside the Church. The FSSP and ICKSP are within. Maybe I did not read correctly?
I am not a member of the SSPX, nor is there a chapel within two hours of where I live.
That being said, No. The SSPX is NOT outside The Church. Anyone who makes that statement needs to do some homework. The Pope (in this case Pope Francis) would not have granted the priests of the SSPX faculties to provide the sacraments (confession, etc).if they were outside The Church.
It should not be too difficult to search out for yourself if you do a “Google” search. I believe that The Pope clarified himself that he had given word that the SSPX would be ministering to its followers and those who desired or prefer to seek out the sacraments through the Traditional rite as late as the Year of Mercy which he (Pope Francis) declared some 3 or 4 years ago.
All the best,
Jeff
The only “ecumenical” and “interfaith” duties a priest has is to bring them to the One, True Faith out of their godlessness found in protestantism, judaism, islam or paganism.
Kurt, you are missing the point. These priests DO offer the Mass. They also absolve sins, marry, bury, heal, counsel, and minister on the battlefield. They do what Catholic military chaplains have done for nearly 200 years in the US Armed Forces. And no military chaplains can be tasked with ecumenical or interfaith duties. The reality is that now our Catholic military population is being siphoned off to protestant groups because there are so few Catholic chaplains and the ones we have so pro-Conciliar reform that they hasten the decline of the Church.
As a member of the USAF, who goes to a Traditional mass off base, due partially, but not least of all due to liturgical abuses I’ve seen and don’t want my children exposed to anymore, (including an argument from a priest insinuating that the paperwork for a Baptism was higher priority than the spiritual need for one, especially an infant) I hope a copy of this has been sent to all of the bishops of this Diocese.
My bona fides to leave comments about the U.S. Military Chaplaincy:
1. I was born at Letterman Army General Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco CA,
2. I was raised on or near U.S. Army forts in Germany and at Fort Sill, OK,
The Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) USA is a “parasite” and/or “leach” diocese that is constantly trying to “steal” priests from other diocese and/or religious orders. The AMS has full authority to incardinate men as seminarians but because it is cheap and lazy would rather spend the faithful’s money on something other than seminarians’ education such as parties for their five active bishops and palatial offices and apartments at staff headquarters in Washington D.C. including separate apartments / palaces / mansions for each of the five bishops (1 archbishop and 4 auxiliaries).
The “official” US military chaplaincy started with World War I and the Catholic Welfare Conference (precursor to the US Conference of Catholic Bishop) deciding that they wanted to recruit chaplains in a more centralized and organized fashion. Prior to and during World War I, each unit, organized on a state basis, was responsible for recruiting chaplains locally. During World War I and subsequently the following occurred:
— first military bishop appointment 1917
— created military vicariate in November 1939 as part of the Archdiocese of New York City,
— elevated to a military ordinariate 21 July 1986; headed by an Archbishop with three Auxiliary Bishops.
The pre-World War II policy of the U.S. government of only having a small “stand-by” military during peace time meant that you did not have a large military population needing to be served by full time and permanent military chaplains. This would justify the practice of only recruiting chaplains during war time through the current process of “borrowing” priests from other diocese and religious orders.
Post-World War II, the policy of the U.S. government is to maintain a large standing military throughout the world on a permanent basis. Since this large military population is going to be permanent it would make sense that AMS recruit its own seminarians and stop the parasite and leaching practices which it has been practicing for the last 100 years.
PRACTICAL REALITIES OF THE AMS LEACH AND PARASITE SYSTEM:
AMS has always been used as a “dumping” ground for problem priests from other diocese or religious orders. If a priest has a drinking or sexual abuse problem it was an easy matter to dump the unfit priest on the military in the hopes that being around masculine men would make a “man” out of him so he could get over some of his problems. So here was a typical situation where the military congregation was being used as “therapy” to help the dysfunctional priest get over his problem.
If the problem priest could not make it in the military, as a last resort, he would be sent to the “Clerical Maximum Security Prison” and “Devil’s Island” for drunk and sex offender priests otherwise known as the Monastery of the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs NM. 50% – 90% of the problem priest cases at this facility appear to be alumni of the military chaplaincy. See the books: McLoughlin, “Peoples Padre,” 1954, lccn.loc.gov/54006164; McLoughlin, “Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church,” 1962, lccn.loc.gov/62007778; France, “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal,” 2005, lccn.loc.gov/2003062973.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
The AMS needs to grow up and take responsibility for the education, incardination and ordination of its own seminarians and not expect all the other diocese and religious orders to do the work and foot the bill for them. The excuse is given that military chaplains can only serve up until age 62 and then they are automatically retired out of the Service. Retired chaplains would be a shoe in with their veteran’s preference for jobs with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons both of which recruit Catholic chaplains into the federal civil service. Excess chaplains could staff a AMS minor and/or major seminary which would be funded through the contributions of the faithful.
It should be kept in mind that the typical diocese in the US is a parasite and leach off the poor diocese of the Third World. In one mid-West archdiocese I know of, 60% of the priests are temporary contract priest from Africa, India and the Philippines. So while the typical American bishop is endlessly haranguing the faithful about helping the Third World, the bishop is out stealing priests from the poor countries of the world because he is too lazy and cheap to pay to send young men to the seminary.
The AMS culture of theft of priests from other diocese and religious orders does not work and only leads to problem priests being dumped on the AMS by the loaning diocese or religious order.
The good Bishop will find himself in the same situation many inner city dioceses are. They will lose people to the faith filled fundamentalist Protestant and Pentecostal sects. I cannot tell you the inroads made in Hispanic communities by storefront churches (who then buy “dead” traditional Protestant church buildings) because they offer something other than the “God Loves You” pablum. They actually challenge your faith and require you to live it.
The first rule of the “sociology of religions 101”: The religion must challenge and engage the member to be a better person. Any religion that embraces “the world,” as Catholicism has done since Vatican II, will loose members because it does not sufficiently engage and challenge the member to be a better person or otherwise hold his attention.
Islam is so successfull because:
— it is a cult of male bonding,
— at prayer, the Moslems are separated by gender,
— the men line up for prayer in a military formation of straight lines and must be
shoulder to shoulder with the next Moslem man. You can not sit off to the side by
yourself like an effeminate, cry-baby Christian,
— Islam is a cult of supremacy, i.e. we are better than non-Moslems so it gives you a
sense of superiority over other cultures even if you can’t read, write or have two
pennies to rub together,
— it gives its unemployed members something to do through endless conquest of non-
Moslem territories,
— it satisfies the basic male urge to rape, pillage and steal.
Another issue with ethnic minorities and the Catholic Church is the feminization and lesbianization of the main stream Catholic Church. Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has been totally submerged into the cult of feminism and lesbianism. In the 1960’s the cult centered around equal rights for women, where now, in most parishes, the women do everything which has an exclusionary effect on men. Examples would be:
— 100% altar girls in the sanctuary,
— 100% Eucharistic Ministers are females,
— 100% lectors are females,
— 100% greeters are females,
— 100% of the lay staff in the parish is female,
— 100% of the CCD teachers are female.
Other than the priest (and he is an obvious, effeminate, lisping and limp-wristed homosexual) there are no male role models for men and boys to look up to.
All ethnic minority cultures are patriarchal where the man leads the family. Hispanic and other minority cultures want a church which is led by men not a bunch of crazy, lesbian psychos. The typical Vatican II church is sterile and barren in appearance, like most Protestant churches, so it is not to much of a leap for the Hispanic to go to a Protestant church.
Most Protestant churches have a masculine ethos and all leadership positions are held by men as the evangelical Protestants take seriously St. Paul’s injunctions “Let your women keep silence in the churches,” 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 KJV. Obviously the Catholic Church is in total opposition to this with church women acting as “fag hags” (i.e. admiring sycophants) to the Catholic clergy and the women doing everything in the church as the effeminate and homosexual clergy play footsie with their boyfriends.
The last thing they want is traditional priests for military men and women. The traditional Latin mass is MANLY, it’s the manly form of the faith, the only faith Men marched off to conquer enemies with this very faith, they heard it said on Jeep hoods and in France in December of 1944 as my father did. As Ann Barnhardt said, the novus ordo scares off heterosexual men.. when you’re trying to undermine a society, a faith, a religion, etc, you try to eliminate belief in the supernatural, not stoke it.
Completely correct: The Catholic Mass has totally degenerated into a “fag hag” tea party with an obviously effeminate and homosexual priest surrounded by his squadrons of altar girls and female Eucharistics minister hussies which is completely revolting to the typical, heterosexual male. It all looks so bizzare and Luciferian, like some kind of female coven of Satanic witches and vampires presided over by their transgendered warlock.
Bottom line is this: The installation commander is responsible for the Religious Support Plan. The Novos Ordo is the Mass the majority of Catholics in the military know. Therefore, all Roman Catholic Priests must be authorized to pray the Novos Ordo Mass by there Superior/Bishop. In fact, the Vocation Director for the FSSP is aware of this and understands the requirement due to the unique need. When I was the Catholic Priest Recruiter for the US Army we had this discussion at the 2016 NCDVD Conference. If a TLM Priest is the only one at an installation, who will provide the Novos Ordo Mass? Or when deployed, in the field, during rotations, etc.? What if only two priests were at an installation and the Novos Ordo Priest is away, who will provide the coverage? Currently the US Army is no longer hiring contractor priests to work on installation and is ending the retiree recall. The CSM at Fort Hood knows this as his Commander is the one who authorizes the Traditional Mass and if the Extraordinary From is being said on Fort Hood, then the Priest has the faculties from the AMS to say Mass on post. And the headline is very misleading and offensive to those of us who serve as Catholic Priests in the Armed Forces. Please note, I will not be monitoring this page. Email me directly if you have a question or respond via the Facebook post.
By letter with Protocol No. 13/2007 of January 20th, 2010, the “Pontifical Council Ecclesia Dei,” an agency within the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” responded positively to a question whether a parish priest (pastor) or another priest may on his own initiative publicly celebrate the extraordinary form, along with the customary regular use of the new form, “so that the faithful, both young and old, can familiarize themselves with the old rites and benefit from their perceptible beauty and transcendence.” (See wikipedia: “Summorum Pontificum”).
Examples based on the letter with Protocol No. 13/2007:
— Within the structure of a typical diocese, a pastor of a parish, or his delegate, can offer the TLM any time the pastor sees fit, such as during the course of a Novus Ordo priest personnel shortage and the only priest available is bound by the rules of his religious order or his conscience to only offer the TLM. Thus, the TLM priest can offer the TLM Mass at a time scheduled for the Novus Order Mass when the pastor determines that no Novus Order priest is available to offer the scheduled Novus Order Mass.
— Within the military context, the “pastor” of the Catholic faithful on a military installation is the senior (or only, if just one is assigned) military ranking Catholic priest. This “pastor,” or his delegate, can offer the TLM any time the “pastor” sees fit, such as during the course of a Novus Ordo priest personnel shortage and the only priest available is bound by the rules of his religious order or his conscience to only offer the TLM. Thus, the TLM priest can offer the TLM Mass at a time scheduled for the Novus Order Mass when the pastor determines that no Novus Order priest is available to offer the scheduled Novus Order Mass.
The demographics of Novus Ordo priests versus TLM priests 100 years from now: The Novus Order priests will be an extinct species due to a lack of vocations and the only priests remaining will be TLM priests.
Dan, please contact me. Josh’s mom in North Georgia Medical Center (Gainesville, GA) undergoing 2 successive back surgeries. Have tried to contact Josh by email and phone without success. If you know how to contact him please let me know. Many thanks.
Bob
Correction and a clarification for those who have not served: In my initial read I missed that the Priest is a Chaplain. Chaplains only stay on an installation usually for three years (not sure for Navy or Air Force-Marines get their Chaplains from the Navy). The one rule told to every Chaplain is this: “Do not start something new as your replacement may not be able to provide it when you leave. If you start it, ensure those who attend understand that it may end when you leave. Remember you are only here for a short time.” In my 25 years service (I was enlisted and served in the Guard during my seminary years) I’ve seem this happen. Spanish Masses coming and going, along with other programs offered by other Chaplains. Now for a clarification: Although the AMS is an Archdiocese, it differs from civilian ones in a variety of ways. The Archbishop for the Military Services does not assign his Priests. He does not control assignments as we see in civilian dioceses. The Chief of Chaplains Office for the Army, Navy, Air Force determines the assignments of all Chaplains. For the Army, the new normal for a Catholic Chaplain to be assigned to a unit and support the installation on the weekends. Basically, if a FSSP Priest enters active duty, there is no guarantee he would be assigned to Fort Hood, TX. He may get it at some point but the tour will be two or three years. He may not be present on some weekends due to field/rotations or may be gone for a year due to deployment.
Hope this provides some context and understanding. Best solution: The FSSP authorizes their Priests who wish to serve in the military (Active, Guard, Reserve) be authorized to provide the Novos Ordo so they can fully support the Command Master Religious Program.
There is no charity here. This post blatantly mischaracterizes the situation and does nobody any good.
The analogy to the Eastern Catholic priests who serve as chaplains was obviously intended to show that what is needed are team players. You provide no evidence that the EF is being denied or discouraged at all; only that the AMS won’t recruit guys who refuse to do the OF as well when needed. That’s better treatment than you’ll get from most bishops. And this is the thanks he gets?
As a young priest who offers Mass in both the EF and OF, let me tell you that this sort of post (and the comments—oy!) only gives the traditionally-minded a bad name and sets back our cause.
Is it uncharitable to look for the root causes of the vocations crisis and propose long-term solutions? Is it uncharitable and unfair to point out that even in male-dominated societies such as the military that women and girls fill the preponderance of visible roles in liturgy, catechesis, and organization? Are we supposed to pray, pay, and obey, Father while the Catholic Church decays and declines precipitously before our very eyes?
And who says the EF is not the Roman Rite? As though rank and file Catholics cannot worship the Holy Trinity in this form? A very disturbing conclusion that we need the Novus Ordo because there must be something deficient about the TLM – when in fact, vocations were booming in this country in the years of the Angelic Pastor (Pope Pius XII) and have cratered since Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Missae.
Are we supposed to just sit down, shut up, and bless the decline, Reverend Fathers? I have skin in the game. I raised four children in the AMS and risked my life getting Catholic chaplains around the battlefields of Baghdad and Kandahar. This isn’t about polemics for me. My credentials are my years of investment in the AMS and in the Catholic Church.
Finally, are we supposed to be deaf and dumb when the US Army needs 330 Catholic chaplains and has just 70? In 2 years that 70 will be 50. Is recruiting from Nigeria, Ghana, the Philippines, India, Poland, and Latin America *really* the way to support Catholic men and women in uniform? Because that is the current strategy.
I’m not afraid to wrong about this, Fathers, but these are cold hard facts that demand a pastoral response. The current AMS policy is clear: better to have a priest shortage than to commission Traditional priests as military chaplains. I find that very disturbing.
“These two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi (ed. i.e. Tridentine v. Novus Ordo liturgy) will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi (rule of faith); FOR THEY ARE TWO USAGES OF THE ONE ROMAN RITE.” All caps and parenthetical clarifications (“ed…”) are mine.
See: Article 1, Paragraph 1, Sentence 3, Benedictus XVI, Litterae Apostolicae Summorum Pontificum motu proprio datae, 99 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 777 (2007) .
SGM Proctor,
Thank you for your service, and believe me, I am sympathetic to your concerns. I agree that the OF lamentably often tends to alienate men. I would like to see the EF offered more frequently and the OF offered more reverently. But your assumption that all the faithful will just be okay with attending the EF when they haven’t been prepared for it is unrealistic. (Nobody is saying that the EF isn’t the Roman Rite, or is somehow deficient.) It is certainly a worthy cause to fight for the availability of the EF on base, but understand the parameters in which you are working. The Archbishop’s demand that those who serve as chaplains be available to offer Mass also in the OF is reasonable and just.
I’m sorry but I don’t see a problem with the Bishop ‘s argument. Traditional Priests may have a preference for the Extraordinary Form, but should be able to offer the Ordinary Form to those who desire it. Catholics who only know one form of the Mass vastly outnumber Traditional Catholics, and chaplains can offer both. This article somehow gives the impression that for a FSSP Priest to offer the current Mass will taint him somehow. Didn’t St. Paul exhort those he Ordained to be all things to all men?
If you make a vow in religious life, you can’t just toss it aside like a piece of trash.
Trady priests make a vow (or similar canonical promise) of obedience to their religious superior and his successors to only offer the Tridentine Liturgy. It would be a fundamental change or disturbance to his life as a member of a religious order, community, etc. in asking him to change the very nature of his religious profession.
It would be like asking a:
— Jesuit priest to renounce the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and other characteristics of his order which he has vowed to promote because to do so would offend AMS priests or faithful who do not want to witness the charism of the Jesuits,
— Dominican priest (Order of Preachers) never to preach again if the AMS lesbian bureaucracy mandated no more preaching on certain topics (e.g. Mary, Rosary, etc.) that were fundamental to his order’s call to preach which he has vowed to promote because to do so would offend AMS priests or faithful who do not want to witness the charism of the Dominicans,
— Franciscan to renounce his vow of poverty and to live a luxurious life in a $10,000,000 apartment, drive a Rolls Royce and only eat at 5 star restaurant, etc., these violations being against the vows of his order because not to do so would offend AMS priests or faithful who do not want to witness the charism of the Franciscans.
As noted in the illustrations above, the idea that a religious order priest can be forced to renounce the fundamental vows of his religious profession to serve in the AMS is an act of archheresy on the part of Archbishop Berglio and his squawking parrots who have separated themselves from full communion with the Catholic Church.
A Jesuit priest would never be asked to renounce his vows as a Jesuit priest to serve in the AMS.
A Dominican priest would never be asked to renounce his vows as a Dominican priest to serve in the AMS.
A Franciscan priest would never be asked to renounce his vows as a Franciscan priest to serve in the AMS.
But, horror of horrors, it is perfectly acceptable, no, it is the absolute right thing to do, to blatantly and illegally and sacrilegiously demand that a Tridentine Mass religious order priest renounce the vows of his religious order mandating his exclusive offering of the Tridentine Mass and other liturgies.
Even a 14 year old minor seminarian who has not even received first tonsure and thus has not entered into the “clerical state” would know and understand, contrary to the position of Archbishop Berglio, etc., that a religious order priest cannot be compelled by a prelate who is an ordinary (i.e. a bishop, or anyone else) to renounce the religious order priest’s vows of profession to the religious life as a condition precedent for the religious order priest to receive faculties and minister in that diocese. For a prelate to ask a religious order priest to renounce his vows of profession to the religious life is an act of archheresy. A true, radical, Leftist, Communist ideologue could not have said it better.
In conclusion, it can be seen that Archbishop Berglio (nickname: “the Titanic is not sinking”) and his quickly disappearing presbyterate (what was reported on this blog?: the Army alone has allocated 330 priest positions by the Pentagon but due to the stupidity, incompetence and backward or non-thinking of the AMS will only have 50 priests available in 20 years) has been seduced by the Spirit of the World (Satan) in the Archbishop seeking the applause and approval of the people (i.e. women, i.e., radical feminist lesbians) in the Novus Ordo pews. The Communist Party has used the “soft” weapon of sex to destroy the Catholic Church. The prelacy has had its ears completely twisted to listen only the pretty words of the lesbians and feminists even as they have almost completely succeeded in sinking the bark of St. Peter.
It is not the job of a prelate to seek the applause of “The World” but to “Make disciples of all nations…” etc., to the point of being ready to shed blood. Dealing with uppity lesbians is not too much to ask, is it? If the only priests available for the AMW are Tridentine Mass priests then it is the will of God that the faithful will learn the “so called” Tridentine Mass (also known as the Apostolic Mass, the Immemorial Mass, the Mass of All Times, the Primitive Mass, etc.) like they did from year 33 A.D. (Last Supper) to the First Sunday in Advent 1964 A.D. (date of the implementation of the Communist takeover and Novus Ordo Missal of Pope “Blessed” Paul VI).
I have an idea: Once a year, Archbishop Berglio can consecrate 10 million hosts and mail them to all the military installations in the world and his feminist / lesbian / transgendered girl-boyfriends can preside over Communion services without any Tridentine Mass priests being around to make his friends go “cry-baby.” The most important thing in the world to Archbishop Berglio is not to upset his feminist / lesbian / transgendered girl-boyfriends. Mass problem solved. Thank you and I accept your Noble Peace Prize.
Correction: 50 priests available in TWO years on active duty for the US Army. Similar demographics apply to the Air Force and the Navy.
St. Paul was speaking of evangelizing Jews and Gentiles in the context of the 1st century when the temple was still standing in Jerusalem. He is certainly not talking about liturgy in that passage. You are all missing the most obvious point: AMS’s current policy is that it is better to have no priest at all than a TLM only priest. Please, defend that.
“But your assumption that all the faithful will just be okay with attending the EF when they haven’t been prepared for it is unrealistic.”
Oh, the irony!
Where was the preparation when the Mass of the Ages was unceremoniously mothballed and suppressed in 1970 and the Mass of Paul VI instantly required by everyone everywhere? Where was the consideration for the faithful who NEVER ASKED for a new order of Mass, never requested it in the vernacular (which the Council of Trent anathematizes in Session 22, Canon IX), and certainly never petitioned Rome to turn altars around, tear out communion rails, throw away chapel veils, ditch Gregorian chant, or to allow them to distribute holy communion!
the blog article title seems very unjust to the Archbishop. He didn’t say that he’d rather Soldiers go without the sacraments. That’s a childish conclusion — like a kid saying to his parent, “so you must want me to die then?!” or some similar exaggeration.
The Archbishop, as one can see from his letter, is no enemy of the TLM.
My takeaway from his letter is that he would be concerned about rank and file Catholics who may stop going to mass if the Novus Ordo was taken away and replaced by a liturgy totally foreign to them. He has that responsibility weighing on him.
That is exactly the problem:
Archbp. Broglio is more interested in pleasing “The Spirit of the World” (the Satanic harpies who have taken over the sanctuary) than in boldly proclaiming the Gospel. If the reality is that Novus Ordo priests are a near extinct species and the only way to keep the Novus Ordo Mass on life support is the wholesale importation of priests from the Third World who aren’t even US citizens and who can’t even give a simple homily in comprehensible English, then it is time to let TLM priests who are American citizens who can speak comprehensible English serve in the AMS.
Another solution: Archbp. Broglio can record his daily Mass on Youtube.com and declare that the Sunday Mass obligation is fulfilled by the faithful watching Youtube.com and PayPaling their Sunday collection contribution to Archbp. Broglio’s account.
Like the title of the article questions: Is it better to have no Mass at all than to have the TLM? The answer for Archbp. Broglio is yes. 1,000 TLM priests could volunteer to serve in the AMS and Archbp. Broglio would say no you can’t serve as Broglio rejects the “mutual enrichment” of Summorum Pontificum. Archbp. Broglio wants to totally destroy and annihilate the charism of the TLM priests as Broglio carries out his ultimate mandate of appeasing the Spirit of the World and eliminating the Mass and Sacraments for the AMS. Can you believe it? A pastor (Broglio) who wants to spiritually kill his own sheep by denying them the Bread of Life and the Cup of Eternal Salvation. Well what do you expect from the Church of Vatican II Communism?
Broglio’s importation of priests from the Third World who are not even U.S. citizens and who can barely speak English show the depth of Broglio’s commitment to promoting the agenda of the Hard Left: The Novus Ordo Mass must be promoted at all costs even as the number of Novus Ordo Mass priests is entering the extinction phase of their existence.
It is an insult to citizen-soldiers to impose non-U.S. citizen priests who can’t even speak basic English and who are culturally totally inept on our men and women in uniform. It is better to have a priest who is a citizen from the countries from the jungles of Africa or the Philippines than to have a priest who is a native born U.S. citizen who has made a religious vow to only offer the TLM according to the constitution of his religious order.
This is the state of the Catholic Church in the USA as it is operated by those who are devotees of the hard fascist Left and promoters of the cult of feminism and lesbianism.
Practical ideas like the AMS opening its own minor and major seminaries are totally disregarded because:
— that would take money away from Broglio and the other four AMS bishops as they lead their worldly life styles of each maintaining their separate episcopal mansion in DC to rival Cardinal Wuerl’s $43 million palace penthouse at 2200 California St., NW, Washington DC 20008. You know how our “preferential option for the poor” bishops like to out do each other in their pagan, lavish lifestyles and endless money for their boyfriends;
— doing so would put Broglio on the path to sainthood and that is the last thing an American prelate wants to do is live up to the lifestyle of our Lord (TB: “There is so much sinning to be done and money from widows and orphans to be stolen from the Sunday collection plate);
— there would be a flood of vocations if the minor and major seminaries were truly operated according to the norms of Summorum Pontificum and were equally observant of both forms of the Roman Rite until the Novus Ordo is finally extinct because nobody, especially young seminarians, believe in it. All seminaries that are exclusive to the Tridentine observance are totally full with a back log of 80% of the first year classes size. An AMS seminary could concentrate on the particular charism of serving the military community and develop a community spirit that is lacking in AMS clergy as most of them were sent by their bishop / superior to the AMS because they were problem or dysfunctional priests who needed to be goten rid of.
Instead, Broglio hobbles along in hopelessness without any inspiration from the Holy Spirit as he looks to his lesbian cadres about how to completely destroy the faith of the Catholics associated with the AMS.
John, I always appreciate your participation, but please maintain an appropriate tone of respect, particularly for His Excellency.
Andrew, that IS what is happening, man. C’mon! Really? The entire priest shortage means NO MASS of either form. Are you serious? Do the math. No one is being unfair to His Grace Archbishop Broglio. The choice in this particular case is between a TLM-only chaplain and no chaplain, and the AMS has opted for the latter.
John D. Hortont, your personal criticisms of his Grace Archbishop Broglio and your biting sarcasm are not helping our cause. Archbishop Broglio is a good and pious man and is doing what he believes is best. Please do not judge his motives or those of his auxillary bishops. Condemnation of the Archbishop is not going to advance our cause.
It’s a prudential judgment. There are tons of Catholics out there sitting in military pews who would resist a TLM-only chapel. That’s the facts. How many of these folks are you willing to lose to Protestant sects because of the TLM? You or I may try and play armchair archbishop and say how we’d lay down the law and/or bring them the real Gospel leading them to appreciate the TLM. Or we may say good riddance, anathena sit, we never knew you. But thanks be to God we are not bishops. The archbishop who will have to stand before God with that terrible weight of judgment on his shoulders is Timothy Broglio and he has exercised his prudential judgment in this matter.
Why not have the district superior of the SSPX petition to become an ecclesiastical endorsing agent? Serious question.
“Why not have the district superior of the SSPX petition to become an ecclesiastical endorsing agent? Serious question.”
The sole religious endorsing agency for the Pentegon for the Catholic faith in the USA is the AMS. So the SSPX would need to apply to the AMS.
The SSPX would need to be listed in the “Official Catholic Directory” lccn.loc.gov/01030961 which I think the USCCB and/or the Apostolic Nunciature to the United States has editorial control over.
This would require a decree of “establishment” (they use another “e” word which is not very polite) or a decree of regularization from the Vatican either of which would probably come from the “Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei” which is a subordinate agency within the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” which has sole jurisdiction over “religious orders” which are attached to the Tridentine Observance of the Western Rite. Once this is done, the SSPX would request being listed in the “Official Catholic Directory” which is the normal way that a Catholic “religious order” gets official recognition.
What you say is not in accord with public law or DOD regulations regarding ecclesiastical endorsing agencies.
The US Government does not chose who is Catholic and who is not.
Public law and DOD regulation lays out very simple criteria for becoming an endorsing agency. It’s not difficult and one need not provide some sort of apostolic bona fides or be listed in some “official Catholic directory” or appeal to the Vatican.
In fact it would be unconstitutional for any agency of the US government to engage in this type of behavior.
This is why no one every challenges the tax exempt status of any number of break-away Catholic chapels operating around the country. Or takes them to court for using the name “Catholic” as part of their organization.
The SSPX could almost as easy go into the Military Ordinariate as they go into any of the hundreds of ordinariates around the world. It’s not like the bar is lifted and the US Government defends Catholic unity and identity in the military any differently than the protect Catholic unity and identity in Peoria.
…..
My larger point was strategic. If the SSPX did this, it would probably give Archbishop Broglio a pause regarding his decision prohibiting TLM-only priests from joining the Military Archdiocese. He would not want Catholic priests operating separate and apart from his jurisdiction on the various camps, bases, and forts. For the sake of unity, he would likely reconsider his position.
My impression is that the whole reason for the creation of the Military Ordinariate under the Archdiocese of New York in 1939 and then its elevation to the status of an archdiocese in 1986 was for the convenience of the Pentegon so it would only have to deal with one entity when it came to the recruitment of Catholic chaplains?
How many are we willing to lose? Since the Novus Ordo is already protestantized, the question is mute……they are already there.
If you don’t mind driving 75 miles one way, they seem to have a Tridentine Mass every Sunday at 3:00 p.m. at the Cathedral in Austin (http://latinmassdir.org/location/st-mary-cathedral-austin/):
St Mary Cathedral
203 East 10th Street
Austin TX 78701
Contact person:
Greg Vidal
Tel (512) 476-6182
Email: office@smcaustin.org
Or maybe arrangement can be made, if this priest as available for additional assignments, for him to serve Ft. Hood on Sundays?
Can anyone imagine how it would have appeared to any and every Catholic prior to 1962 that one day the form of the Mass they offered weekly as had their ancestors for at least 14 centuries would one day be diagnosed as a cause that would make Catholics walk out of their chapels and churches? The Mass of the Ages a cause of offense to CATHOLICS? So much so, that an Archbishop would refuse to incardinate priests expert in that form of liturgy for fear of offending Catholics? Am I alone here to realize how bizarre this situation is?
“…the Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent. The canons of the rite definitively fixed at that time provided an insurmountable barrier to any heresy directed against the integrity of the Mystery.”
-Ottaviani Intervention, 25 September 1969
We have to deal with the facts as they are. The TLM is a foreign liturgy to the vast majority of the laity. Beyond just being foreign, the average Mass-going lay Catholic’s theological and spiritual formation is so poor that they in many cases, when exposed to the TLM, are repulsed by it. Yes, this is a very sad state of affairs.
Making the TLM the only option for Catholics of a particular region, while mitigating against uprisings and community fractures, would require a massive catechetical and spiritual undertaking on behalf of the priests involved. Have you found a priest willing to take over a large community of regular rank and file Catholics and lead an effort to go TLM-pure? I bet you’d be hard pressed to find one. In almost all cases, the priests from the TLM orders don’t have to deal with that level of resistance. They go to chapels operating for and by Tradition-friendly Catholic people. I don’t know of a single instance of a TLM priest taking over a town’s only church, without also having a diocesan Novus Ordo priest in residence with him
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John, we have been to the Cathedral Latin Mass many times, and their members were very helpful to us as we got started at Ft. Hood. As far as borrowing priests, I think you already know the answer to that one.
Of course you don’t, Andrew. The norm is simply to close the parish Church and have the few faithful left to go to the nearest parish not being shut down.
SGM; Well done, well done! I am entirely with you. I had the opportunity to meet His Grace. It was an eye opening experience.
I am with you and agree entirely with your position.
I have had some difficulty with a base Priest and services and lack of services as well.
I was approached by the Priest on the base I was assigned to and asked to take over from a general officer as the parish president. I asked the Priest to rethink his request, because I was full of “old and stupid ideas and principles”. The priest smiled and told me he knew and that it was the reason he wanted me to accept. I asked him to reconsider and look for someone else. After about a week, the Priest approached me again, and I knew that I was being pressured to accept the position. It turned down because I do not personally care for the ordinary form of the Mass (Novus Ordo) because I did not grow up with it and do not care for it. I tried to remain quiet and my wife and I kept to ourselves. We suspect that many people “looked up to us” in some way, and the Priest knew this. To me, I perceived that If I were the one who was at the head of his parish, it would give credibility to the actions he wanted taken. I sort of perceived this, but agreed out of a sense of duty. I quickly found out that my perceptions were correct. One of the first things he asked was how we could encourage the big population of military Catholics and their families to come to base for services instead of attending Mass off base. I told him that in my poor, uneducated thinking, the was a lack of the sacred and mystery of the Mass, an “awe” which I think that Catholics desire deeply in their souls, and they needed that which their parents and they knew as children and that there was a nostalgia for throughout the Universal Church. Bring that back, and it will be a beginning. When asked about having the Extraordinary Form said on base, he immediately said no, “the parishioners would not understand the Latin”. When I brought up the fact that the Universal Church had attended Mass with Latin – English (or name the language) missals until the current form came about. The priest immediately said, “we have a problem with less faithful in the pews because parishioners do not want to spend the more than one hour it takes to say a Traditional Mass”. I understood, it was clear, the priest did not want the Latin Mass in the parish. As time went on, the priest would come to me and discuss budgets and actions, blame them on the senior chaplain who was a protestant, and said that he had to play along. When I told him that he could stand on his own and point out that there were issues which Catholics have with regards to the issues which he had brought up to me, and that if he wanted me to stand with him, that we would stand together against the protestants taking percentages of the Catholic offerings and limiting Catholic influence by mandating that the Catholics had to support protestant evangelization and programming, the Priest told me that he did not want to stir up problems. When I told him that I had no problems acting as the President which he elected as the head of the parish, he again, knowing that I was prepared to take a stand, would not allow me to make any comment or take any action. More time went by and I found out that the Priest was far outside of the faith in many areas. I was even taken advantage of professionally. Finally, after almost three years, from one day to the next, my wife and I decided that we could no longer in good conscience serve and left. We have never turned back. Since, I have found out that we are the ones who have abandoned them. This priest should have been recalled many years ago. He eventually retired, and took a position as a contracted priest, and serves to this day. During my time there though, I witnessed many things which were very troubling. The acceptance of the Extraordinary Form though would never be permitted, and it was made evident. A Marine Corp (Colonel) priest without any priestly garments or indication that he was a priest drinking at the local American Legion. A Navy Admiral who had his own priest who refused to say Mass for the Base Parish. Even Combat deployments where we did not have a Priest to give the sacraments and Holy Week with no Mass.
SGM, you have done your duty and fought the good fight for service members and their families! Pointing out the obvious in offering the recommendation that His Grace look into, consider and support attracting Priests who practice and maintain the millennials old traditional and Divinely inspired ways is the logical course of action. It is perhaps the most expedient and timely course of action in looking to find priests who are also young enough and are willing to carry out a vocation of military oriented apostolate.
In my poor, uneducated way of thinking, it would appear as though His Grace simply does not support priests who principally are dedicated to the Extraordinary Form. I am first to say that I may be misunderstanding His Grace and his intentions. But, being a critical member of military community by his position, I am not sure how it is possible that he and his military staff would not utilize and follow the commonly used Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) which we use throughout the entire spectrum of military problem solving processes to come to a viable recommendation and solution to this critical issue.
Current military priests are great at telling the military faithful and their combined families about just how fortunate they are to have them on base. They tell us that because of the rapidly declining population of priests in the military that the faithful is simply going to have to get used to the idea that they are going to have to get used to going to seek out the sacraments and Mass off base.
Personally, I find this is unacceptable, if there is another viable course of action.
I am deeply saddened by your letter and this situation. I stand with you!
The question of “the faithful will be lost, confused and will not understand” is not a valid response. Just as with Catechism, the principal responsible for the education of the faithful is the individual – and the Priest!
Ignorance of the official language of the Roman Church was certainly not valid from the earliest of times up until Vatican II. Neither is it a valid comment that Roman Catholics can not attend an Eastern Rite – and they may even end up preferring one of the ancient Eastern Rites!
Dominus vobiscum!
Catholic Master Sergeant,
Et cum spiritu tuo!
Thank you for your detailed and passionate response. Time is not on the side of the rapidly aging Novus Ordo priesthood (http://destroyerofheresies.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-slow-death-of-novus-ordo-in-west.html).
As far as the military and TLM-only priests, this was not a theoretical – I had a priest waiting in the wings, young (38), fit, and wanting badly to serve as an Army chaplain. This was the occasion that precipitated the exchange between the good Archbishop and myself.
The fact is that the Traditional priests are younger – much younger than the Novus Ordo priests. The average age of a priest in the US today is 64; the average age of a priest in the FSSP is 37. A TLM-only chaplain can do everything a NO chaplain except the New Mass. They can preach, counsel, evangelize, baptize, perform weddings, funerals, and deploy to combat. And the Archbishop mistakenly uses the term “bi-ritual” here: the TLM is the Roman Rite. No a TLM-only priest is absolutely qualified to be a chaplain.
The other part is that all the arguments from the AMS are merely theoretical. The truth is, they have not ever allowed a TLM-only priest to become a chaplain so they simply DO NOT KNOW how it would work out at Fort Bragg or at Camp Lejeune. Its all risk-averse speculation, meanwhile the vocational crisis continues to spiral downward with each passing day. Our TLM priest at Fort Hood just hot the mandatory retirement age of 62 and had to retire. That’s one less Army chaplain and no replacement inbound.
Eventually, the problem will solve itself as there will ONLY be Latin Mass priests left to serve anyone. The Novus Ordo does not produce vocations, large families, or grow the Catholic Church. It attracts wicked men (sodomites) who destroy Catholic faith in any parish to which they are assigned. But these apostles of sin produce no good fruit and no amount of theoretical speculation can change that.
I want there to be priests around for my grandchildren. With the current trajectory of vocations that is far from assured, except among priests who offer the TLM. Like it or not, the future of Catholicism is Tradition.
Excerpts from Cardinal Robert Sarah’s address to the colloquium “The Source of the Future”:
“[W]hat is important above all, whether one is celebrating in the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Form, is to bring to the faithful something that they have a right to: the beauty of the liturgy, its sacrality, silence, recollection, the mystical dimension and adoration.”
“I vehemently refuse therefore to waste our time pitting one liturgy against another, or the Missal of Saint Pius V against that of Blessed Paul VI. Rather, it is a question of entering into the great silence of the liturgy, by allowing ourselves to be enriched by all the liturgical forms…..”
See more at: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/03/31/cardinal-sarahs-address-on-the-10th-anniversary-of-summorum-pontificum/
I liked the article and it answered many questions for me as a non-Catholic. I wanted to point out however, there was a more recent RC Priest MoH recipient; Fr Vincent Capodanno who died while serving the 1st Marine Division, 1967, Vietnam.
I think the shortage of priests in the AMS is the reflection of the crisis of priestly vocations happening in the US. Therefore the bishops are less willing to allow their priests to join the military because that can be a great loss. I believe that it’ll be very hard to recruit traditional priests for AD because they will have to do non- priestly tasks at the bases they are assigned at because such tasks will be in conflict with their very conservative mindset. Among those tasks can be sensitivity training in relation to same sex marriage, transgender issues etc. And not all the military bases can accommodate the celebration of the Latin Mass because all of the other religious groups as well as NO Catholics use the same chapels. The Catholic community at Fort Hood was very lucky that they gave them their own chapel
Saying that priests in traditional societies need to obtain permission to offer the Ordinary Form of the Mass is a moot point, since all priests of the Latin Church already have faculties to offer the Ordinary Form.
Cody, we are talking about priests who for the sake of conscience offer the Mass and administer the sacraments exclusively according to the 1962 liturgical books.
“form” in the sense Benedict is using it is just a synonym for “liturgical rite,” as opposed to canonical rite. Without clarification the Benedict quote is meaningless. There are many existing liturgical rites under the Latin canonical Rite. The TLM and the Novus Ordo are distinct liturgical rites, to deny this is to reject reality. Look to Klaus Gamber book and some of Fr Rippergers works where they discuss this.
The headline is misleading. It was not the AMS that stated that it would be better to not have the Sacraments than have them administered by Traditionalists. That was an inferencence drawn by Sergeant Major Proctor. Such misattributions do not help the cause of Traditionalism. Rather they provide people a means to question our honesty.
Misleading? Its only misleading if you cannot follow the logic. The Archbishop himself described the priest-chaplain shortage in 2015 as “desperate” and “dire.” Its only gotten worse since. The few chaplains still on active duty are older and some are not fit to deploy to combat zones. So turning down young, physically fit priests for chaplain service simply because they offer the Latin Mass exclusively is obviously a choice to go without rather than to take in whom the Lord is raising up for this generation of Catholic service members.
“Civil War” ….
Is correct.
I have seriously touched with this mission of the church to ensure that they got spiritual services in their field. God bless the families, the source of all vocations.
Thanks
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