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Kevin Tierney's avatar

The Agatha Christie Indult was also a realization by Paul VI that his attempt to entirely suppress the Latin Mass on the sly (only allowing elderly and infirm priests to say it privately) had failed in getting the Church to "move on". They accepted the reforms, but even then, they were never really embraced.

Once that Indult was signed, the survival of the Latin Mass was functionally inevitable.

It is said that Pope Francis is the spiritual successor not of JPII and Benedict, but Paul VI and his generation. Time will tell if he learnd the same lesson Paul did.

FWIW, I think Francis and his court WANT to ban the Latin Mass, but they can't figure out how to get there, and they are also aware that Fiducia supplicans changed everything. Its no longer a given directives from Rome will be implemented, and bishops no longer treat it a given that Rome will stick by its original decrees.

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ALT's avatar

The complete absence of excommunications of Syro-Malabar priests today might be further support for the non-implementation of Roman directives.

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Kevin Tierney's avatar

Something new happen?

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ALT's avatar

Something explicitly threatened in writing didn't happen. The Metropolitan? backed down. It's on the Pillar.

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Kevin Tierney's avatar

Just now read it. It's not just he "Backed down". He folded. Gave them what they wanted, and it was the obvious solution back when this mess started becoming hot agian.

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ALT's avatar

I think what they wanted was for the uniform liturgy to not be a thing anymore. What they got was for it to be something the laity can easily avoid.

It was one obvious solution. I can think of variants, like requiring each parish (not priest) to celebrate at least one Mass per week entirely ad orientem and at least one per week entirely ad populum and the rest as they please and forget the uniform liturgy entirely. The idea of just excommunicating everyone over it didn't occur to me.

I am somewhat amused that they began with 2 different ways of offering Divine Liturgy, decided there ought to be only one, came up with a compromise way, and now they have 3... https://xkcd.com/927/

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Sue Korlan's avatar

Sort of what happened at the Council of Pisa with Popes.

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