The Coffee Monks of Cody Wyoming

A Discalced Carmelite friar 

prepares to take his vows.

“They seem to be very good monks, but they aren’t Carmelites”  I was at a forum celebrating the fifth centenary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Avila when a member of the audience asked the panel of speakers about the “Mystic Monks” coffee producers of Cody Wyoming.   The speaker went on to explain: “Carmel is a family of religious friars, cloistered nuns, and various congregations of Third Order Sisters as well as affiliated laity that date back to the early 13^th century when Saint Albert of Jerusalem wrote a “Formula for Life” (Formula Vitae) for a small band of lay hermits who lived on Mount Carmel. Within a few years of their foundation, the lay hermits had become formal religious; their Formula Vitae, a religious Rule; and they themselves aggregated into the Mendicant Friars along with other Lay hermit groups such as today’s Franciscans and Augustinians.  For two and a half centuries there were only Carmelite men but then in the middle of the fifteenth century the Order began receiving women as nuns as well as Laity into a “Third Order.”  In the nineteenth century groups of apostolic women affiliated with one or the other branch of the Carmelite Order.   In the last decade of the sixteenth century the Order was split between the reform movement led by Saints Teresa and John of the Cross and the original branch of the Order.  The reformed group became known as the Discalced Carmelite Order, the original group is known simply as “The Carmelites.”  To  be a Carmelite, part of the Carmelite family, you must be affiliated to one of these two Pontifically recognized families, even if your group is not a Pontifical Right Community but a local diocesan community.  The monks in Cody are not affiliated with either group and are not recognized by the Carmelite family as authentic Carmelites.  But they do make great coffee none the less.”

I took the speaker’s suggestion and I called each of the Provincial Offices of both the Carmelite Order and the Order of Discalced Carmelites and each gave me the same response that the “Carmelite Monks” of Cody Wyoming are not affiliated in any way with the Carmelite Order or with the Discalced Carmelites.  One of the Provincial Offices gave me this description of the origins of the Monks:

“In the late 1980’s a diocesan priest with ties to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Lake Elmo MN wished to establish a community of Carmelite hermits.  The nuns gave him some land on which to build their hermitage and the good Father gathered his community.  Although they enjoyed the good will of the nuns they had no canonical ties to the larger Carmelite Order and their founder more or less pieced together what he thought Carmelite hermits should be, borrowing a lot of the customs from the nuns.  Their hope was to be received into the Discalced Carmelites but when they approached the Discalced Carmelite authorities in Rome they were rejected because while the Discalced Carmelites value the tradition of hermits they do not see it as a permanent vocation.  In the Discalced Carmelite Tradition, friars go to a hermitage for a period of between two and five years but then return to a more apostolic life.  Being turned down by the Discalced Carmelites, the founder approached the Carmelites who were more open to the idea of an eremitical life.  They were received into the Carmelite Order in the early 1990’s, but the subprior of the group was not happy with the proposed affiliation to the Carmelite Order and left with several of the brothers to form the Carmelite Monks.  They had never received a proper novitiate in the Carmelites before they left and their subsequent development indicates that while they know some of the “fluff” in the Carmelite Tradition, they miss the substance of Carmelite Life and Spirituality.”

I was referred to a Carmelite historian who for many years taught Carmelite history and spirituality and I asked him “If the original hermits on Mount Carmel were monks, why is it so impossible for these monks to be considered to be authentic Carmelites?”  The professor explained:

“The hermits on Mount Carmel weren’t monks.  There never have been “monks” in the Carmelite tradition.  There were two types of hermits in the 12^th and 13^th centuries.  There were monastic hermits such as the Camaldolese or the Carthusians or even individual monks in cenobitic abbeys who had permission to live as hermits on the monastic grounds or one of the abbey’s granges.  And there were lay hermits who were men who consecrated themselves to live without personal property and support themselves by manual labor and alms.  They also dedicated themselves to live without corporate wealth and shunned big monasteries and the sort of institutions the monks had for support.  Lay hermits tended to live in smaller groups, often attached to an insignificant church which other priests did not want.  Their convents (they called their houses “convents” or friaries or priories and avoided the word “monastery” to describe their home) were functional but very simple compared to the great monastic abbeys.  The lay hermits gave themselves to prayer and to a limited apostolate of what we would call today “street-corner preaching” as well as work with lepers and others on the margins of society.  The hermits on Mount Carmel were of this lay hermit sort, not of the monastic model.  Other religious orders today who have their origins in the lay hermit movement are the Franciscans and Augustinians.  The Monks at Cody seem to have adopted the Monastic Model, notably the Carthusian idea of a large Church surrounded by a cloister containing the “hermit houses” or multi-room cells of the Carthusian or Camaldolese or Vallambrosian models.  This is totally foreign to the Carmelite tradition which both on Mount Carmel and in the Teresian Reform avoided display in favor of a simplicity that testified to the corporate poverty of the Mendicant movement.”

“Another difference—and an essential one—is that Carmelite men were never enclosed or “cloistered.”  Carmelite nuns are traditionally enclosed because at the time the first houses of Carmelite women were established, it was canon law for all religious women in vows to be cloistered.  I always tell the nuns when I am doing workshops that they are cloistered not because they are Carmelites, but because they are women.  To “cloister” the men is a bit of an historical anachronism, a sign that these fellows in Cody are “making it up as they go along.”  They have this romanticized version of the Carmel and its heritage that is more Sir Walter Scott’s novels than Saint Albert’s Rule.  I am not saying that they aren’t good men or that they don’t make great coffee or even that they are good monks: but they aren’t Carmelites.  They don’t understand the heritage.”

Another idiosyncrasy that was pointed out is that while the Carmelite Monks claim to be attached to the Discalced Carmelite Tradition, they use—without any canonical authority—the post-Tridentine version of the Carmelite Rite.  The Discalced Carmelites, from the time of their separation from the Carmelite Order, renounced the distinctive Carmelite Rite for the Roman Rite as found in the 1570 Missal of Pius V. While some Carmelite friars have been given permission to use the old Rite, this authorization has not been extended to the Discalced Carmelites since it never was part of their heritage.  The Local Bishop can, of course, give any priest authorization for the 1570 Roman Missal, and indeed according to some interpretations of Summorum Pontificum, such permission is not even needed.  Permission to use the medieval or Tridentine versions of the specific religious orders is restricted to members of those Orders and so is not available to the Monks at Cody since they are not recognized as members of the Carmelite Order. 

“What the Monks seem to have grabbed at are the particular customs of the Order in the sixteenth century—things like having a skull on the tables in the refectory to remind us of our mortality, or the use of the ‘discipline’ (the scourge or small whip used on penitential days for self-flagellation).  They like customs such as ‘kneeling out’ when late for choir or refectory or the monastic tonsure or the Solemn Salve Regina on Saturday evenings.  There is nothing wrong with much of this stuff, but it isn’t at the heart of Carmel.  The Cody monastery is more about playing at Religious Life than the serious spiritual heritage of Carmel.”

What is going on here is what is going on in much of the Church where neo-traditionalism has set in.  there is an attempt to refashion the present into an idealized and romanticized version of the past.  It reduces the Church to an ecclesiastical Colonial Williamsburg rather than a community of Disciples with the Divine Mission of heralding the Kingdom of God. It betrays a lack of historical knowledge and an ability to critically evaluate the data of the past in determining the present and charting the future. It is no way for our Church to go.  It is not what Pope Francis is about and it isn’t even an authentic interpretation of the agenda that Pope Benedict had for the Church.   But the boys in Cody do make great coffee.  Ya gotta give ‘em that. 

As We See The New Dark Ages On The Horizon

I had dinner Saturday evening with an old friend from graduate school along with her husband and two sons.  The older son is a student in the pre-theology program of Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.  In the course of dinner he told me that “many” of his colleagues in the college seminary program do not accept Pope Francis as the legitimate pope, claiming that “their pope” is Pope Benedict.  The objections are that Pope Francis is too liberal, he is a Jesuit and not a diocesan priest, that he favors liberation theology, that he is not strong enough against homosexuality and/or abortion, that he has “abandoned” Summorum Pontificum and the (alleged) program of Pope Benedict to re-institute the Tridentine Mass as the official Liturgy of the Catholic Church.  There are some also, the young man told us, who believe that Pope Benedict was coerced into abdicating and thus is resignation is not valid. 

Now this could just be the wild imagination of a 20 year old.  The young man himself doesn’t—or at least didn’t in the conversation—dispute the authority of Pope Francis.  His family are pretty middle-of-the-road Catholics, somewhat more conservative in their piety than I, but who attend Mass in English. Their father teaches CCD in their parish.  I have been to their parish for Mass and it is a pretty typical middle of the road parish.  They are very involved in social outreach to the poor and in particular with immigrants from Latin America.  Their faith is important to them and while the parents were encouraging their son to tell me about this submarine culture in the seminary, they themselves seemed pretty unnerved by it. 

And Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall is one of the better seminaries today.  I mean this is no Mount Saint Mary’s, or Immaculate Heart or Holy Trinity (Irving). The Archdiocese of Newark has had its ups and downs regarding its archbishops, but it has a fine presbyterate.  There are many first-rate parishes served by priests of the Archdiocese.  The Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River has long had an excellent reputation way beyond the Archdiocese of Newark for a “Vatican II” style parish.  Fathers Thomas Ivory and Tom Kleissler of the Archdiocee of Newark was responsible for the RENEW program that swept American parishes in the ‘80’s.  Father Frank McNulty of the Archdiocese of Newark was the priest chosen to address Pope John Paul on behalf of all the priests of the United States during the Pontiff’s 1987 visit to the United States.  The late Monsignor John Osterreicher (d. 1993) was a theological consultant for the Second Vatican Council and was on the team of theologians who drafted the decree Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on non-Christian religions that changed so much in the world of inter-religious dialogue and which especially cleared the Jews of complicity in the death of Jesus. 

“Submarine Seminarians” are not a rarity these days but they bode ill for the Church.  They go through the system saying everything they are supposed to say, concealing their true thoughts and beliefs, impervious to the sound theology being given them in their classes.  They are able to parrot back what their professors say but they have developed their own particular Catholicism, unique to them and their clique, and keep it under wraps until they are ordained.  All one has to do is look at the Diocese of Madison or the Diocese of Lincoln or the Diocese of Arlington and see the damage to the faith of the People of God these crypto-schismatics can wreak. 

Now the good news—such as it is—is that this problem is manifest at the College level and hopefully is discovered and weeded out before these burgeoning schismatics and sedevacantists advance to public ministry.  Immaculate Conception has some fine professors on its theological faculty and hopefully as these young enthusiasts are exposed to the authentic teaching of the Church their intellects—and their faith—will mature.  But if not, the road looks even rockier ahead and the threat of schism grows darker.

On a somewhat related note of seminarian dysfunction, the famous blogging priest, Father Z (Father John Zuhlsdorf) was appalled when attending a recent “Pontifical Mass at the Throne” in his adopted diocese of Madison WI (you would have to go to Madison, or through the Looking Glass, to find a Pontifical Mass at the Throne these days) the seminarians appeared “nude.”  Well it is not nearly as interesting as it sounds.  What Father Z meant by “nude” was uncovered in as that they lacked birettas.  You may not remember birettas.  They are the snappy little headpieces worn by the clergy of yester-year (and prelates of today).  They consist of a somewhat squared cap topped by three  or (in the case of some religious) four “horns” or raised ridges and centered by (except for those same religious and members of the Sacred College) a pom-pom or tassel.  The origins of the biretta is the academic hat for university scholars but it crept into church use in the sixteenth century.  Father Z is just appalled, beside himself with indignation, at the lack of proper headgear for these seminarians and has started a fund provide the young men with the old hat.  Good grief.  It looks like sanity no longer has critical mass in our seminaries.  

A Response to Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism

My previous post elicited the following comment and I want to respond to it, not in the comments section, but as a posting of its own because the questioner raises some important points that I had intended to expand on as a follow-up to the posting “Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism.”  The correspondent writes:

Weren't these people around pre-SP anyway? Is the objection that they are now able to have TLM more freely and openly rather than going to the SSPX or being hidden away in a side-chapel once a month at 4pm on a Sunday? If one was to substitute "Orthodox" for traditionalist, and "Byzantine rite" for TLM in this kind of analysis, wouldn't one be inclined to note that the "authority structures" in the Church were being used in a way inimical to ecumenism... that the tendency to see schism purely as the other side's lack of submission to a particular council betrayed an authoritarian totalitarianism? And that this attitude might be part of the problem?

Yes, right from the time that the liturgical changes began to be introduced in Lent of 1964 there were some priests who at first ignored them—keeping to the 1962 Missal—and then began a somewhat organized resistance to them.  Prominent among those who refused the changes was Father Gommar de Pauw, a Belgian born priest who was a professor and later Dean at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmetsburg Maryland.  Father De Pauw was named a Monsignor by Paul VI, but when the liturgical changes began, Monsignor DePauw founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement and in 1968 established a Catholic Chapel, the Ave Maria Chapel, independent of any Episcopal authority in Westbury Long Island.  While Father DePauw and his followers rejected the Liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council there efforts were directed beyond the liturgy; according to the website of the “Catholic Traditionalist Movement” they “worked to reverse the edicts of the 1962 - 1965 Vatican II.”   Father DePauw had made it very clear that he was opposed to the entire conciliar agenda despite the fact that he had served as one of the theological consultants to the Council.  In that role he was an aide to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the arch-opponent of any and all of the doctrinal developments that came out of the Council and in particular an opponent of ecumenism and religious freedom. 

In some ways, DePauw’s resistance to the liturgical changes that followed the Council “jumped the gun” as the 1962 Missal remained in force—albeit with various modifications permitted—until the issuance of the 1970 Missal and the Novus Ordo Missae. While DePauw resisted from the get-go, others—and most notably Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the former Archbishop of Dakar in Africa and former Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, (the Spiritans)—simply used the 1962 Rite without availing themselves of the proposed changes.  The 1970 promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae mandating of the New Missal as the exclusive manual for the liturgy made that clinging to the 1962 Missal impossible as, contrary to various stories to the contrary, the use of the old Rite was then proscribed.  In 1971 Archbishop Lefebvre opened a seminary for those who wished to follow more Traditional liturgy and theology.  He initially had permission of the local bishop-a requirement to run a seminary—but when this permission was withdrawn in 1975, he continued to run the seminary as an institution independent of Church authority. (Lefebvre was an Archbishop, but having no See—he was retired—he also had not authority.)  In 1976 Lefebvre ordained priests without the permission of the local bishop and was,  suspended a divinis, the usual punishment for this action.   He ignored the suspension and continued to function as a priest and as a bishop.  Certainly from this time, Archbishop Lefebvre can be seen to be in schism.  In 1988 he ordained four bishops without the required papal bulls, an act which brings an automatic excommunication.  The Congregation of Bishops in Rome declared this to be a formal act of schism.   Though the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre was posthumously lifted, as were the excommunications of the bishops whom he ordained, according to Rome’s decrees they remain in schism and to this day Catholics may not receive the Sacraments from priests of Lefebvre’s movement except in danger of death. 

Lefebvre’s schism has itself had several schisms and we have talked about them in previous postings.  Most notable among them are the movements led by Bishops Daniel Dolan, Donald Sanborn, and Clarence Kelly.  The various churches and chapels associated with these prelates offer only the pre-conciliar rites and are all in schism from the Catholic Church.  You will find in these chapels and churches that not only is the liturgy the pre-conciliar rite but the catechetical programs teach only what was held prior to the Council and do not incorporate any of the Conciliar decrees into their teaching.  Even in places where the TLM is celebrated in accordance with Church policy, one rarely finds the catechetical instruction to reflect the teachings of the Council. 

While the 1970 Missal was imposed on the entire Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Paul VI granted several indults to individual priests or parishes to celebrate the pre-conciliar liturgy.  The former Jesuit, the late Malachi Martin, claimed to have one such indult.  At the request of a group of English and Welsh intellectuals and writers, Paul VI gave the Bishops of England and Wales permission to permit an occasional celebration of the usus antiquior (the older rite) of the Mass.  This was not meant to permit the use of the rite on a regular basis and it is often called the “Agatha Christie Indult” because it was when he saw the name of the famous author of murder mysteries (which the Pope enjoyed tremendously) among the petitioners, that Pope Paul approved the petition.  Ironically Ms. Christie, like many others who signed the petition, was a Protestant and their interests were purely aesthetic and antiquarian.  Very few of these indults were granted, and none for regular celebration of the pre-Conciliar Rite.  The fact that an indult was required—and an indult to be granted by the Pope alone—belies the frequently-made claim that that priests had always been permitted to celebrate the rite at their own discretion.

The first step towards a more general use of the older liturgical books came in 1984 with Pope John Paul’s motu proprio, Ecclesia Dei.  Even here, however, the permission was quite restricted as the priest needed the permission of the local bishop, a permission granted rather selectively by most bishops.  It was only with Summorum Pontificum that the individual priest was granted the right to celebrate the usus antiquior at his own discretion.  Even that is somewhat debated as Pope Benedict wrote the bishops that their prerogative in assuring that the pastoral needs of the faithful were not compromised, that is that the bishop, to fulfill the pastoral need of the faithful, could instruct a priest as to which rite he may use.  There are still occasional conflicts between local ordinaries who want the clergy to celebrate the Novus Ordo in their parishes and individual priests who assert their personal ritght to celebrate according to the 1962 Missal.  One of the criticisms of Jorge Bergoglio when he was elected as Pope Francis is that during his tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aires there was no TLM in his Archdiocese.  Pope Francis has shown himself notably disinterested in the TLM but no priest from Buenos Aires has come forward with the claim that he was prohibited from celebrating in the old rite.  Archbishop Bergoglio certainly did not encourage the TLM but neither can it be shown—at least from any evidence that I have seen—that he blocked its use.  Colleagues of mine in Argentina and other South American Countries have said that there is not the same interest in reviving the pre-conciliar rites that we have in North America. 

So to respond to your first question, yes there were those who attended the TLM before Summorum Pontificum, but except in rare cases to attend the TLM before the 1984 Ecclesia Dei,  one would have had to resort to groups who were in formal schism.  Today Catholics can attend the TLM in Churches that are in full communion with the Holy See.  But the question remains: in those churches are they professing and practicing the same faith as in churches that follow the Novus Ordo?  Are the Church’s teachings and practices as set forth in the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican being faithful presented to the faithful and are those teachings being put into practice? Have Catholics who attend these churches and chapels been instructed in the decrees Nostra Aetate, Unitatis Reintegratio, Dignitas Humanae, Dei Verbum, etc.  and do they submit to these teachings?  Do Catholics who attend these chapels and churches recognize the validity of the Sacraments as administered in the contemporary Roman Rite?  Do they give assent to the ordinary magisterium as it has been presented in the Encyclicals of the last six Popes?  Very frankly, my contacts with many (not all) “traditionalist” Catholics show that they are for the greater part ignorant of the teachings of the Council and do not agree with them when those teachings are explained even by such moderate voices as Father Robert Barron. 

As for how “schism” is used polemically, I agree with you that this term is bandied about on both the right and the left as a threat by those who disagree with what those on the opposite end of the spectrum are proposing as authentic Catholicism.  But that is not how I am using it.  I am using the term schism as a rejection of the authority of the sitting Pope.  I would say that those who formally rejected the authority of Pope Benedict found themselves in schism.  Those individuals or groups, for example, who supported the various ordinations or episcopal ordinations of women priests or bishops or attended liturgies presided over by illicitly ordained (we will pass over the issued of validity at this point, illicit is sufficient for schism) priests or bishops are in the same sort of schismatic raft as those who participate in the liturgies of Archbishops Lefebvre’s SSPX.  In the same way those who participate in the liturgies of various independent Catholic chapels—even though their clergy are validly ordained—are in schism.  I would think that the Benedictine Women of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison WS, once a formal congregation of Roman Catholic religious, have crossed the line into schism.  I think the various independent groups that identify themselves as part of the “Old Catholic Church” are in formal schism.   

The shoe is on the other foot nowadays, however, with Pope Francis.   There are many among the neo-traditionalists who seriously question his teaching, his policies, and his decisions.  That alone doesn’t put them into schism but if he comes out with teachings in the ordinary magisterium (encyclicals) which they publicly reject, that would be a different issue.  If the 2015 Synod does not work out to their satisfaction and they refuse to accept the Pope’s ratification of the synod documents, that could be another issue.  If they start—and this is the more likely scenario—rejecting the authority of the local bishops who support Pope Francis, that too could be another issue.  I don’t think it is far fetched that individual groups, and not all necessarily followers of the TLM, with their priests will begin to turn against Pope Francis and publicly reject his leadership.  That would place them in schism.

Moreover, and a second reading of your question makes this further point pertinent, a refusal to accept the teachings of an Ecumenical Council also places one in schism.  One can certainly disagree with a Conciliar teaching just as one can disagree with a papal statement without finding oneself in schism, but any sort of public or formal rejection of a Council would place one outside the Communion of the Church.  The teachings of the Councils, just like papal teachings, are not optional.  Indeed the teachings of a Council would be even more obligatory that the ordinary papal magisterium as Conciliar decrees are historically considered, like infallible papal pronouncements, to be part of the extraordinary magisterium.  Of course one is only bound to a Conciliar teaching to the extent and in the sense that the Church teaches it but acceptance of the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council are not optional.  Pope Benedict made this very clear in his dealings with the SSPX and it continues to be the main block to their return to the Unity of the Church.  

Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism

Pope Benedict will be remembered primarily for two things.  One will be his resignation as it established the precedent that a pope can resign, something which had not happened for centuries, and because it had not happened for centuries had been ruled out as an option by several recent popes who suffered from a debilitating old age, namely Popes Pius XII and John Paul II.  (This is not to say that Pope Benedict had become debilitated for while he seems to have the normal infirmities of age, he otherwise appears to be in good health for his 87 years.)

The second legacy that Benedict has left the Church may have far more deleterious consequences in years to come, namely the revival and diffusion of the pre-Conciliar Liturgy to which he gave somewhat of a carte blanche with the promulgation of  the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum on July 7, 2007.  This more-or-less unrestricted permission for priests to celebrate the pre-Conciliar Liturgy at their own discretion is the very manure that is providing the nutrients for a nascent schism that is threatening the unity of the Church by creating a separate and self-defining Catholic movement with ties to the Holy See that are, at best, tenuous.

The problem is not the traditional Liturgy itself.  This Liturgy served the Church well for four centuries.  Nor is the problem a lack of Liturgical uniformity;  the Church—it all its different Rites ranging from the Mozarabic in the West to the Syro-Malankar in the East—has long flourished with a wide variety of Rites.  Moreover, with the inculturation of the Liturgy called for by the Second Vatican Council we need, if anything, a wider variety of Rites in the Western Church to reflect the cultural diversity of the Catholic faithful.  The problem is that an unforeseen consequence of Summorum Pontificum is the development of two separate Churches  that not only practice vastly different rites, but have two differing sets of beliefs, two separate hierarchies, and two magisteria. 

The vision of Pope Benedict to expand the use of the pre-conciliar rite, the usus antiquior (the older usage) of the Roman Rite, was that it would be an alternative choice for the same worshippers who normally attend the Novus Ordo Missae (new Order of Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970).   The same people, Pope Benedict hoped, would use both rites interchangeably.  In fact, it has worked out quite differently.  Less than 3% of those Catholics in the United States who attend Sunday Mass weekly attend the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) while the vast majority of American Catholics have shown no interest in the pre-conciliar rites.  Granted, some attend the TLM when it is available and otherwise attend the Novus Ordo, but they are few and far between.  Most Catholics who attend the TLM feel no obligation to attend Mass when only the Novus Ordo is available; and I suspect that most who are used to the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite would feel no obligation to attend the TLM if it were their only option. 

While there are some who prefer the TLM for aesthetic reasons—finding it more “solemn,” more “meditative,” or more “beautiful,” the majority of those who attend have issues not only with the “new liturgy” but with the Second Vatican Council itself and particularly with the Conciliar teachings on Ecumenism, Inter-religious dialogue, and Religious Liberty.  If they looked at the Conciliar decrees more carefully they would be certain to have difficulties with Dei Verbum (The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) and Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World.)   Many who have looked at the Conciliar documents—and frankly there are not that many who have in either the “New Liturgy” or the “Old Mass” camps—have other piques particular to their own opinions and ideas, but by and large those who attend the Pre-Conciliar Rites do not accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.  They are anxious for their children to be catechized by the pre-conciliar Baltimore Catechism which does not reflect the teaching of the Church these last fifty years.  They have formed what up to now has been a “Church within the Church” but which, especially under the pontificate of Pope Francis, threatens to become open schism.   There seems to be a particular rejection of the Church’s efforts at and after the Second Vatican Council to better appreciate the unique position of the Jewish people in the plan of Salvation as there is a much higher incidence of anti-Semitism on the part of neo-traditionalists. 

A significant number of adherents of the usus antiquior do not recognize the validity of the revised rites.  This was a concern of Pope Benedict in granting permission for the wider use of the pre-conciliar rites.  Benedict had insisted upon a recognition of the equal validity of both rites, but the number of parents who insist on their children being baptized and confirmed according the older rites belies their acceptance of the sacramental validity of the new ones.  Moreover, more and more traditionalists are insisting that their priests have been ordained in the pre-conciliar rite, again expressing a hesitancy (at best) regarding the validity of the Reforms of Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council. 

Up to now the Church has held together under the strain of two distinct liturgies and two differing sets of beliefs by having one single hierarchy, but that too is starting to show fissures.  The appointment of Blase Cupich as Archbishop of Chicago has created a panic among many neo-traditionalists in the Midwest.   The authority of Cardinals Wuerl, Dolan, and O’Malley has been flouted by many in their own Archdioceses.  Michael Voris, spokesperson for many neo-trads has been openly encouraging rebellion against the above Bishops and others whom he deems to be unfaithful to authentic Catholic teaching.  On the other hand Cardinal Burke—whose remarks disparaging the leadership of Pope Francis have been the most outspoken public criticisms of any pope since Cardinal Lucien Buonaparte whose open mockery of Pius IX was the delight of Roman anti-clericalism in the second half of the 19^th century—has created a “Burke faction” in the Church distinct from those who admire and trust the leadership of Pope Francis.  Burke’s protégés among the American hierarchy, notably Bishop Robert Finn and Archbishops Salvatore Cordileone and William Lori, on the other hand, are often held up to criticism and even contempt by progressive Catholics in their dioceses. 

The fracture in the hierarchy creates a crises in the magisterium as many in the neo-traditional camp, including those who attend the Novus Ordo Mass in their parishes have grown very distrustful of Pope Francis.  While less than 3% of weekly Churchgoers attend the “old Mass,” estimates are that somewhere between 10 and 12 percent of American Catholics disagree with Pope Francis on his efforts to reconcile the divorced and remarried and gay Catholics to the Church and probably a greater percentage would disagree with him on social issues such as the welcoming of immigrants, the unsuitability of the death penalty, and the need for a more just distribution of wealth.   Cardinal Burke’s criticisms of Pope Francis and the direction in which the Pope is leading the Church has set him up in the minds of many as the “true voice” of Catholicism even as Michael Voris has replaced the bishops for many American Catholics. 

Only time will tell the what the results of this fracture will be.  It is another case of the toothpaste won’t go back into the tube, though this time with the neo-traditionalist brand.  It is too late to suppress the TLM as that would make the schism immediate, but it is hard to see that Pope Benedict’s long term legacy will not be anything but the emergence of a new Church claiming to authentic and traditional Catholicism.