Catherine: Hello, Mark Lambert!
Mark: Hello, Catherine Bennett, how are you? Quiet, I am sitting great.
Catherine: I am fine. Gosh, what a busy day. We have rushed through our respective doors, having been out today, and more on that as soon as we are able to report on it. There is lots to share over the coming weeks. I did not get my lines right. Hello and welcome to Catholic Unscripted. I am Catherine Bennett.
Mark: And I am Mark Lambert.
Catherine: For anyone joining us for the first time, you are very welcome. We meet here on this platform and chat about Church matters, things going on in the culture and politics, all through a Catholic lens. We have many great guests, so if you are new to us, please check back over the conversations that we have had. You can find those on our channel.
Welcome to Carolyn, Lindsay, Lou, Alison, Paul, hello Barbara, Dermot, Arthur, and everybody else. Please remember that the reason we meet live in this slot every week is so that we can answer your questions and so that you can share your comments and thoughts on some of the matters going on since we last met. As it happens, Mark, it often does not work out that way, because we say we will start off with a little chat about this, and then that little chat becomes the whole show. We do have a little chat about something that has come up, but we really do want to hear from you. Tap away and post your questions. People have such tired eyes.
Mark: Well, it has been full on, has it not? A wonderful day, but a full day, and it is great to be working together.
Catherine: Yes, it is all good. Certainly nothing to complain about. So the news. Many of you will have seen our conversation with CEO Howard, which we put up a couple of days ago. What you have not seen, but what you can see later this evening, is a conversation we had with Peter Kwasniewski. It was really about the disastrous pontificate of Pope Francis and the book that has been written about that, but then we did veer into the SSPX consecrations again. Even before we spoke with Theo, this had come up two or three times since the SSPX announced that they would like to consecrate bishops this coming summer in July. It is clearly something that the Catholic world is talking about. Not everybody, but it is on people’s minds and in broadcasts and writings; you cannot escape it.
We have had a couple of conversations, and what we have not done yet is look at the responses from the bishops, most notably Muller, whom you wrote about. Maybe we can bring that up. I do not have that to hand. You might want to draw people’s attention to it. Cardinal Muller and Cardinal Sarah both contributed to this debate, warning against the planned consecrations. Then Bishop Schneider wrote a beautiful letter to Pope Leo, pleading with him to grant the apostolic mandate for the consecrations.
Of all those letters we have just mentioned, I found Bishop Schneider’s letter to be beautifully presented, with such love. He quotes Benedict and GK Chesterton. He gives some lovely examples and pleads with Leo to be the bridge builder that he has said he would like to be. Very astutely, he refers to Pope Leo’s homily, in which he was quoting Francis, in a sense, to say what synodality means if we are not listening, for example, to Bishop Schneider on the matter.
So, different responses. Let us begin with Müller, because you wrote about that. What can you tell us?
Mark: Yes, I think that is why it is so highly charged and why there is so much discussion around this, because of what it speaks to. I think the fundamental conflict is between those who left the SSPX because of the first set of consecrations, who you could say are now Ecclesia Dei. Peter gets into this really well, does he not? The FSSP and the ICKSP would argue that they are flourishing despite Traditionis Custodes.
It worries me that the SSPX is trying to force Leo into a decision. Joe Shaw, got a lot of criticism online, the Latin Mass Society chairman, for saying what good that does us. We need to work with the bishops and show them that we are not a threat. We do not want to get into an argument with them or oppose them. We want to work with them. I think that is what Schneider’s letter does beautifully, and it does not seem to be present in either Cardinal Sarah’s or Cardinal Muller’s interventions, but Schneider does it very well.
As Sigamo just said, the question he poses is how, in charity, can the Pope separate the faithful. I think the context he puts it in, the Vatican agreement with China, makes it very difficult. I understand that it needs to be considered within the Vatican’s approach to China. I take that on board. At the same time, it does look like hypocrisy to the faithful when you have this situation.
On the other side, the argument is that they have tried to find a way through with the SSPX time and again. At some point, what happens if in one hundred years they are still not reconciled?
Catherine: Peter addresses this, so people can judge for themselves in that conversation. His concerns are explained there. You can listen to that later.
The words of Bishop Schneider are, Most Holy Father, grant the apostolic mandate for the episcopal consecrations of the SSPX. You are also the father of your numerous sons and daughters, two generations of the faithful who have been cared for by the SSPX, who love the Pope and wish to be true sons and daughters of the Roman Church.
He says that Cardinal Victor Fernandez appears to be playing with words. You have to read the whole letter to understand the context. He gives a clear analogy of a fire chief. He says the situation is like a fire chief who tells the firefighters that they are only allowed to use new equipment. The firefighters know the new equipment is not as effective as the old equipment. In an emergency, when a house is on fire, they reach for the old equipment, but the fire chief insists that only the new equipment be used. Some continue with the new equipment, while others use the old equipment to help put out the fire. The main thing is that the fire is put out.
Catherine: Who told you that? Yeah, I think it is difficult, isn’t it? I think it is very easy with a podcast like this, and we get brilliant guests on like Theo. We get the erudite Peter Krasnovsky, learned men, learned historians, and theologians. It is very easy for it to become almost a theoretical thing. You and I were talking today about how great it is to talk about it, and who is right, and how we get to the bottom of it, and let us investigate. But most of this is not even a judgment about what is right or wrong at the moment; the reality is that most Catholics are not aware of any of this at all. They are living their lives, some incredibly faithfully in the Novus Ordo, and some want to get their kids into school. That was ever thus to some extent. You are right. Stop. No, do not start talking about pre Vatican two and medieval Catholics.
But we were talking, were we not, Mark, about what to do. Let us say it is right. I have got friends who live like this, and they say I do not know what is going on. I do not care what is going on. I want to live like a medieval Catholic with a massive family. I have got eight or nine kids. We have no telly. We live as if we are not in this century at all. We have totally rejected modernism, and as far as possible, we pay no heed to it. I think that is lovely. That is lovely, is it not? That is so nice and so peaceful.
Are you not fortunate that you did not come to see the truth of the church or come back to our holy mother after making about ten mistakes in your life? Are you not fortunate that you are not trying to manage the tension of a broken marriage or coming back to the faith after an abortive experience? You know what I mean. How do we minister to people who are not just getting married at twenty-one to another Catholic and living faithfully in this really wonderful environment? I am not saying it is not wonderful. Would we not all like to live like that? But you were saying what the reality is. We cannot to some extent. What can we do? This is how things are.
Mark: A lot of the conversations and arguments that we have heard seem to be very much rhetorical arguments based on hypothetical circumstances. This only happened because of that. But the reality is this is our reality. This is where we find ourselves, and we believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding us in a certain direction. This is the reality of the moment. This is where we are as a church. I think that there are some wonderful, amazing things that go on within the wider church. You cannot just cut yourself off from it. That is a kind of tribalism, and that is not the way that the church has worked. It has always been about passing it on. It has always been about transmission and oral transmission. The kerygma is the gospel preached. That is how we live it. This is the reality of it.
If it is not reaching broken people, if we are not reaching out to other people and sharing this wonderful piece of bread that we have found as a beggar, then what use is it to anyone? I just wanted to bring up that super chat there from consecrated soul because it is a really good point. Has the church ever taught that pastoral statements are like dogmas that cannot be corrected, as per Cardinal Tojo? I think that the council did not introduce new dogmas to save anyone. It did not abolish the moral law, and it did not redefine the Creed. It reaffirmed the same Eucharistic sacrifice, the same apostolic succession, the same divine constitution of the church. It is perfectly reasonable to question the prudential emphases that were part of the council teaching. You can debate the theological formulations. I enjoy doing that. But if you start to describe it as something like an infiltration of Protestant or secular precepts, then you have to demonstrate actual doctrinal contradiction.
I think it is very tempting to take the view that this is where it is, and all of that mess. I was talking to someone who said I do not agree with the SSPX earlier, and then they went somewhere and saw a poster in their church saying we are celebrating everyone together, Muslims, and they replied about two hours later saying I have changed my mind. We are all suffering with this.
I thought what Peter did was very well, Mark. I have to mention it because I want to encourage anyone who found the conversation with Theo difficult. He is very honest, very clear, and a great and learned man, but I think some viewers found it difficult because everyone is in different places. He clarified this understanding of evil. He said often, when we hear evil, we think only of moral evil. But people do not hear the word evil in a strict Thomistic sense of a deprivation.
He gave the example of eyesight. It is the deprivation of something according to its due good. A stone does not need to see, so you would not say a stone is blind, but for a man to be blind, because he should see, is a deprivation. In the strict Thomistic sense, you could call that an evil. But when we hear the word evil, we think moral evil. So we are conscious that we have a responsibility, and words are used and heard differently.
There are people who might listen and think are they saying I am evil? I do not mean to be evil. That is why we try to continue the conversation and clarify what is meant, and people can come back and ask is this what you meant, and we will try to do that in shows like this or in interviews we have had since.
Mark: I would really encourage you, Female Casey Royals fan, to watch the interview with Peter Kwasniewski because he says that everything you are saying there is wrong. There are abuses, but abuses happen in the old rite as well, before the Novus Ordo. I am not advocating for that. I want to see more reverent worship in general.
Come to Mass at my parish, where we have an extremely reverent Novus Ordo, and you will see the sacrifice of the Mass. Is it deficient in terms of things present in the old rite that have been thinned out in the new rite? Yes, of course. But you would see the similarities more easily if you go to a good reverent Novus Ordo Mass.
That is not to say otherwise. The real problem for me is that if you have not experienced it, and again, Peter brought this up, he used to be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion. My thoughts on that are that if you are going to Mass and you are a reader or an extraordinary minister, and I have had these conversations in the parish, people say you should not be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, and that is wounding because it is the pastor’s job to explain that, but they have not been told. It has either come from the bishop or elsewhere.
So you are in a situation where all these things need to happen. How is God going to sort it out, because God will sort it out one way or another. Our job is to work with Him. That is why I am an advocate for Summorum Pontificum, to have both rites and see where the Holy Spirit moves. Let us see which one flourishes. We know from 2007, when Summorum Pontificum was issued, what happened. So let us have more of that.
Catherine: Yes indeed. A live show is not… what was that?
Mark: I thought you were furiously reading comments
Catherine: I was reading something and reading comments, and then I thought that was a really good point. That is the nature of a conversation. You hear something and think yes I agree, and then you stop. Now my head is completely blank, so I cannot remember what I was going to say. Maybe it is time to go to the questions.
I think at the end of the day, this is a top-down problem. The average Catholic and Peter said this: “If you do not know, you do not know. So in terms of culpability, you are just trying to receive what is given. If the shepherds fail to feed you or catechise you well, then that is a problem with the wolves in sheep’s clothing, not necessarily the everyday Catholic.
He did say that once you do know, though, then you have a responsibility. So, for example, if you found out that serving at the altar as a girl is not in keeping with the constant teaching of the Church and should not be encouraged, then it would be wrong to pursue it anyway.
Mark: I don’t agree with Peter on that, because it’s like, it’s like receiving Communion in the hand. It is allowed, like it’s allowed by indole, and if you study it, you know, like all, all pastors should be saying, No, receive reverently, kneeling on the tongue. But you’ve got bishops like Michael Martin who are saying the opposite. So, you know, like, what, like, what are the faithful to do? You know? And it’s if you’re doing what you’re allowed to do. And you’ve got someone coming up to you saying, Oh, you shouldn’t be doing that. You should know that sounds holier than thou, doesn’t it? You know. Becomes problematic, and are these the things that we really should be?
You know that the whole of this discussion, to me, keeps reverberating in my ears, the words of God through the Old Testament, which is, I don’t care about your sacrifices. I want hearts. I want your hearts. And you know, I think liturgy is the spear point of that evangelization. So I’m not saying that it is the source and summit of our Christian life. It’s our public prayer. You know, that’s what I believe. But if it’s, if it comes down to this, the length of our phylacteries, then we’ve missed out on what God’s saying to us in Scripture, haven’t we?
Catherine: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I can see what you’re saying, but it could be seen the other way too. You know, you can say to someone that there shouldn’t be female lectors, I am using examples here, but there are many others and more and worse, you shouldn’t receive Communion in the hand. This is, you shouldn’t have girls serving. And they say, “Oh, you’re holier than thou. You’re holier than thou, and give the impression that you’re like, oh, look at the, you know, the length of my phylacteries. But in fact, there is pride the other way. There is pride the other way that says, I refuse to look at why that might be a problem, and I’m resolutely going to do this because I think girls should do it, or I think there is pride there.
So I think what the key is, we have to recognize in each one of us, we have to truly, you know, in prayer and discernment and honesty, reflect on whether there is an element of pride in what we’re saying, either side of the debate. On the side, like you’re saying, oh, well, you know, saying it matters whether they’re girls or not is just becoming a bit Pharisaical. But on the other hand, it actually does matter, and maybe resisting those who say it does can also be a bit Pharisaical. So the key for me is pride or humility, rather than this.
Mark: Doesn’t it? Because there are some people saying, you know, they could be saying anything, and they could be right or wrong. How do we tell? This is the point that I’m trying to make. The only way we tell is by going to Mother Church. You know, by going to the Church.
Catherine: You keep saying yourself about the fruits. Where are the fruits? You say, “How do we tell by the fact that all those churches are full of girls serving and all the boys have gone, have no vocations, no congregation, so you can see it.
Mark: This is the point. But the point is that it’s a deepening of your understanding. It’s a deepening of your life with Christ, as much as anything else. It’s a desire to draw nearer to Christ that encourages you to look into the tradition, you know. And what I’m saying is we can’t, yeah, like, you know, Mr Chewy says there, you know, aren’t we all called to holiness? Absolutely, that’s what I’m advocating for. That’s exactly my point.
Catherine: If I’m saying, when you look at the tradition, and you see, I don’t do it because I want to follow rules one and two. I see that rules one and two are from a loving God who has instituted a Church who’s feeding me. And whether I understand it or not at first, I have the humility to recognize that, rather than layer on my modernist lens and say, but it doesn’t seem to fit with what I understand now. I just think it can’t be put, it can’t be as simple as, if you’re saying this is the tradition, you’re just being Pharisaical and saying it’s all about the rules. It’s about, you know, it’s like Augustine’s love and do what thou wilt. You know, the whole of the law can be summed up. But then, if you truly love, then we see this is how you would live. This is how we would all live.
Mark: Yeah, well, and I’m not disagreeing with any of that. I’m just saying we can’t be too judgmental, and that’s what upsets me. You know, judgment, when, like, for people who are desperately trying to do what they’re, you know, they’re trying to be as Catholic as they can be, you know, I think it’s very dangerous if we start saying, like, what I’m saying is our approach has to be, look at this. It’s richer, it’s, you know, it’s more fruitful. It’s, you know what I mean? That’s sort of what I’m saying, rather than like, it doesn’t make friends and influence people. Sometimes, if you go around saying, you know.
Catherine: I know you’re worried about this, and I know you worry about whether you say, oh, you shouldn’t have girls serving, it will just upset people. But I don’t disagree with your approach and what you’re saying. But I, but you know, you never really fell away from the Church, and I did fall away, by the way, folks, if you don’t know my story and what brought me back and what I see bringing back my friends now at nearly 50, with broken pasts, is that tough teaching and that tough talking in love. That’s what I see. I don’t, you know, say no, mate, you can’t be serving if you’re a girl. Not all, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, and instead, I’ll just try to show that it’s got to be both. It’s got to be both. You’ve got this, yeah, I know I’m not, I suppose we’re just disagreeing about how you do it now, but all I’m saying is I don’t think we should avoid tough questions because we’re worried that a lovely little old woman who’s been reading all her life and loves Jesus is going to be really upset by it. I think something is either true and sets us free or is not. But I’m not saying you go around going, oh, you lot of heretics, get out.
Mark: We’ve seen a fair dose of that over this argument. And you know someone just said, who, you know, which is the true Church, the SSPX or the Vatican II Church? Like these are dangerous questions, I think.
Catherine: This is why the bishop should be, this is why the SSP should be allowed to consecrate bishops. I think you know that, because then these questions don’t arise, and you just have that unity that we’re all in under Peter in the Church. Anyway, Paul wants to know what people have given up for Lent, and you brought something else up. Sorry, sorry, yeah, it’s a fair point by Cath. Cath Mahal, oh Cath. Have you? Can you just let us know in the chat, have you found transport to the liturgy at Easter, to the Easter liturgy, and if not, people are watching. Cath is in Ireland, in Athlone, if I remember, and is looking for some help to get her to Church over the Easter period, for the pre-55, so I’ll leave that there for you guys. It’s all gone quiet.
Mark: Yeah, well, I suppose we’re all reading the comments. Yeah, they come fast now, don’t they, which is really good. Thank you, you know. And then that’s a great point. Humility receives the truth with joy, yeah. And it’s pride that reduces resistance; that is absolutely true. But I’m saying my point really is, how do you discern the truth? If you go to someone who thinks they know the truth, you know about one of these issues, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, they say, and you know that’s what they know, and the Church is saying, and their parish priest is saying, and you say to them, no, that’s not the truth, this is the truth. You know, how do they know what the truth is? Like you’re benefiting from your research and all of that sort of stuff. But that, you know, there is as likely to be put off. What I’m saying is, and look back on my, you know, if you look at my blog, I’ve been talking about all this stuff for decades, you know, and trying to convince people of the truth of it. But what I’m saying is, you do that by loving them, by showing them a deeper way, by explaining what the tradition is. And you know, what’s disappointing is that our priests don’t teach it. You know that we have got this variety of approaches, and that is the confusion at the heart of it that’s causing all the problems, really, and the duality of approaches, you know, I don’t know what we do about that, so I’m a cradle Catholic.
Catherine: Well, that’s the great scandal, like we’ve said already, isn’t it? It’s not the lay folk necessarily. It’s that they’ve been so badly led over the past 70, 80 years in particular. And I don’t disagree with you. I agree. You know, we have to speak truth in charity, and that doesn’t mean compromise. And you know, I’ve spoken a number of times about a priest I know, the most gentle soul, a truly orthodox, traditional priest, and he has helped so many souls through that loving, calm, careful, gentle approach. But people have come away and said to me, I didn’t like it. I loved him, loved what he was saying, but I was so uncomfortable hearing the truth. And that’s how that should happen, because I remember being puffed up with pride, and if you’re puffed up with pride, you should feel that bubble burst when you are gently and persuasively presented with the truth. But how do we do that? I mean, we could be here all night. Basically, it’s how we evangelize. And I agree, we don’t want to alienate and just wag fingers, and we have to pray, then we have to pray to be able to do that in the right way.
Mark: The thing about it is that, like in my experience, extremism only gets extreme, in the same way as liberalism only gets more liberal. And, you know, we want simple, populist sort of solutions to problems. So it’s very us, it’s very human to say, what is the truth? You know, I think someone put in there, isn’t it good that we know the truth? Well, sometimes the truth is complicated, you know. So like, sometimes you’ve had an abortion, and you want to be reconciled to Christ, and you don’t know how to do it. And you know, it takes someone to take you by the hand, to love you, and to show you that there is a way back and to help you find your way. And that, like it goes back to that analogy that I keep using for some reason, but I keep, you know, the Holy Spirit keeps putting in my head about Lourdes. You know that this is what we’ve got, this is what the Church is. You know, it’s this dysfunctional family. It’s a hospital for the sick, and it’s all of us, and we shouldn’t be excommunicating each other because we disagree about, you know, we’re all, yeah, we’re all sinners, yeah, I agree. Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. You know, you said earlier on that you’ve left the Church because of Judas. You know, that really makes me sad, because, you know, you should never leave Jesus because of Judas. And yes, we’ve had a rough time in the Church, but we’re better all together, fighting for the truth. You know, there’s no, this is the bark of Peter, and it’s the place to have the fight.
Catherine: And Jesus doesn’t give up on Peter when he is being very Peter, when he’s going around being Peter, which we all know from Scripture, you know, enthusiastically promising never to let him down, and then letting him down. And though that, you know, I remember, yeah, no, sorry, death by troll. That wasn’t a comment on you, by the way. It’s just a general statement. I was saying I’m not talking about your own personal circumstances, which I can’t comment on. But yes, this is the thing, and Peter can show us what it means to fall and get back up, and to make mistakes and begin again. And the thing is to reach those people who are broken, so broken by the world around them, and have made many mistakes, and are so traumatized and wounded by those mistakes that they go on, and it becomes this self-fulfilling thing. We have to be patient. We have to be patient because we want to say, here’s the truth, and then come on, you’re Catholic, what by Friday. And I’ve been with people for many years who are now slowly, slowly coming back to the faith and coming into the faith. And it’s a slow process, and it is frustrating. And I have to say, step back, you know, step, don’t get in the way. Because, as someone said here, any good work that you do is only by God’s grace that you’re able to do it. So it’s not about me imposing my view. It shouldn’t be about any of us imposing our view on what’s right. It’s about the truth, isn’t it, and it’s about how we help people access that.
Mark: Yeah, and that’s the important thing, is that we’re finding our way to Christ, isn’t it, and that if we’ve got Christ at the center of everything we’re doing and that desire to be close to Christ, then that’s what we should be focused on. I think, yeah.
Catherine: Going back to Sarah, I saw a comment way ago. I don’t know when, but it’s so far back I can’t find it now, but I saw it pop up asking what you thought of our friend John Henry Weston’s contribution today on Cardinal Sarah’s letter, that statement.
Mark: Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I love John Henry, but I thought it was really harsh. I thought his approach was really harsh, and he’s a friend, and, you know, I love him very much, and I know that he’s got this apocalyptic view of things, and I think that that’s like, we’re allies, and we both share concerns. We all share concerns about the Church and that sort of thing, but I think he has got a very apocalyptic sort of idea of where we are in the Church. And I’m not convinced yet that that’s where we are, you know. I’m not convinced that it’s quite that bad. Yeah, I don’t know what you think.
Catherine: Barbara Elms asked us to pray for her youngest daughter, who seems to be slowly finding her way back to the faith. Indeed, we will, Barbara, always. We are trying to pray. We did over the weekend, but we’ll be praying through Lent with some reflections from the liturgical year, Dom Prosper’s Liturgical Year, and we will keep them in our prayers. We always keep in our prayers all the viewers and your families, even if we don’t know people by name. So you can be sure of that. And it’s a wonderful thing to hear that, by the way, Barbara, that’s great, slowly but surely, the Hound of Heaven is going to pull her back. Appeal to Our Lady, those who stay close to Our Lady, she will, you know, do anything we request of Our Lady, she will take to her Son and intercede on our behalf. Well, there are so many comments, Mark, I’m slightly struggling to keep up with them. Yeah, I am, actually.
Mark: And thank you so much, everyone, for joining in and for your opinions. They’re all really appreciated. We do appreciate the conversation, and I think it’s important that’s what we’re here for, really, is to have that conversation, that conversation together with you. And you know, we’re two lay Catholics. We’re just telling you how we see it, really. And so obviously everyone’s entitled to say whatever they think, whatever they think about it, I suppose.
Catherine: And we love, and we have, you’re going to start, we do, we do have to see God’s hand in us doing what we’re doing. And you know, your great loss in your life and your great suffering has, God brings good forth, good out of the most tragic of circumstances, the most, the deepest suffering, and has clearly done so in your life and all my past. He’s clearly using for good, and that’s got to be good, you know, that’s not, that’s not the way the greatest theologians, but I think it gives that, you know. We love the tradition of the Church. I only attend the traditional liturgy now, and find it very difficult the prospect of attending a Novus Ordo. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love people. I love people. You know, I love people.
I long to see them, allow God to love them, and to see the truth. And I think both our paths have maybe helped in that way, to reach out in that way, please God. Lots of people are praying the Rosary for Lent, good, it’s great to pray the Rosary. I don’t, I saw Trump, I can’t even get into Trump right now because it seems I’m connected to anything else. Oh, Robert Cassidy says we’re agreeing with each other. We mostly do, don’t we, Mark? Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, and I think we probably, yeah, like you say, we probably were even then when it seemed we weren’t, but we were getting there. Oh, we’re tired today, folks, sorry about that. We’ve had a long day, yeah, after 10 and up early and out. These job things are tough, right? We’re down to our last six or seven minutes.
Now’s your time, jump in, ask a question on anything, anything you feel you want to ask during this Lenten season, and we’ll bring it up on the screen.
Mark: Absolutely.
Catherine: Oh, the USA beat Canada, football is now renamed to soccer for four years.
Mark: It always was football, was always football. Wouldn’t it?
Catherine: You don’t like football, do you?
Mark: I’m just not really bothered, right? I hate all the money and everything involved in it, and I feel like it’s robbing the poor people, really. You know, it used to be when I used to go when I was a kid, it was sort of working man’s Saturdays, but now you have to be a millionaire to be able to afford a ticket.
Catherine: Oh gosh, yeah. Campbell is asking, does anyone else walk while they pray the Rosary? Yeah, I do often because I’ve got two dogs. I pray the Novena to Our Lady Undoer of Knots, because, well, there are so many knots in our lives. And really, I would implore you, not just my life, you know, our life. I would implore you to pray that novena; it is such a powerful novena, and Our Lady has been so good to me in my life. And it takes about 20 minutes all in all, and I pray that as I walk the dog. So not only that, but yes, I do pray and walk, walk and pray.
Oh, I know what I wanted to ask, because it’s a question about this. Schneider makes the point through his article, and you guys can go and check it out if you haven’t already, that actually, the punishment or excommunication is not necessary if the SSPX consecrates bishops. So some people are drawing attention to that, saying they don’t need to be. They might go ahead anyway. But does this really require excommunication? Do you have any comments on that?
Mark: Yeah, I thought Schneiders. So this is Diane Montani, who has got the full Schneider lowdown here, which is on our Substack. So you know, if you go to Substack and search Diane Montagne, but you have to make sure, as Robert Cassidy and I found out the other day, you have to make sure that you spell it right, D, I, A, N, E, M, O, N, T, A, G, N, A. You can read the whole thing there. But I mean, you know, it really is beautifully written. And I think that, like that, is one of the points that he makes really, really well. And we’ve heard it before, Catherine, haven’t we, that you know, 500 years ago, you know, it was not always possible, if a bishop died, it was not always possible to get the Pope’s permission before a bishop was ordained. And, but you know, I think he might, I just think he makes some beautiful points that we want to all be brothers. That’s his approach to it. And you know, that we want to, we are a family, and why would you, it could be a beautiful thing. And I really like that about it. I really liked his approach there.
Catherine: So it’s a really, really lovely letter. And do check it out. It’s beautiful. Having a laugh now,
Mark: Traditional pre-Vatican II football.
Catherine: I like traditional football. Yeah, definitely. You know, I’m a traditionalist. You know that my kids joke about that. When we were, I, we were hiding the telly with a blanket. I know, we’re a traditional family, quick, cover it. That’s a joke. We don’t do that.
Mark: Mr. Chewy here says, “Why are extraordinary ministers so ubiquitous? Oh, if only I knew. I mean, I’d say that it’s probably, like, this is a really deep question about the way that the liturgy changed, and the removal, you know, as Theo was saying, of that sacrifice. There’s a really good book by a priest called McGuckian about this, The Sacrifice of the Mass, and how there was this attempt in the Novus Ordo to make it about a table meal, a shared meal, and to remove that sacramental dimension to it. And I think that, as you know, the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion are not in the documents of Vatican II, but part of the movement was when they started having the bread and the wine, when they started having the chalice and the ciborium, the body and the blood distributed. And as we’ve lost clergy, we’re not able to do that without assistance. The priest isn’t able to have Communion under both kinds. I mean, they’re, I’m not saying it’s not possible to do it, of course it is. But you know, that’s fundamentally what led to this. And it’s like a slippery slope, isn’t it? These things just become the norm, and then everyone, you know, and this is the thing, thankfully, in my parish, we don’t have things like that, thank God, and we don’t have girl altar servers. I mean, and that’s, I think it’s more a lack of judgment than judgment, but that’s kind of where we are.
Catherine: So I think what’s apparent is that a lot of these things have become the norm, but began as defiance, really. You know, I think I spoke about being an altar server when I was a young girl, before 1985, and that was before John Paul II said, you know, leave it to the bishops. So there were a lot of priests already defying, acting in defiance of the Church, and it became the norm. It was just expected, everywhere you went, they were saying, let’s have the girls as well as the boys. And then when they’re all doing it, Pope John Paul II felt, well, what do I do, excommunicate everyone, or how do you manage these things? So I think the big, but also like Mark’s always saying, go back to the texts, because when you do, you find actually that there’s no text saying the priest can sit down and have an altar, it’s not like that. That is not what the Church teaches. So what we’re seeing, I think, is a widespread norm that is not really encouraged by the Church at all, and that’s why, where you have faithful pastors who know the teaching, who know how to say the Mass and how it should be, you won’t see that, you won’t see those kinds of abuses.
Catherine Bennett, can you discuss how the body of the Church would be helped if the Pope excommunicates all those following what some call the spirit of Vatican II, for example, allowing girls and allowing this and allowing that? Is that what the question was, Mark?
Mark: Yeah, I suppose, yeah. I mean, I don’t really know what “cigar mode” meant, but I assume what he means is how can that be good if, I mean, he won’t be excommunicating all of the SSPX faithful. And I think that the Vatican has been very careful in the language that it uses in that regard. It’s just about the juridical issue of the appointment. And I’ve written about this, so you can look up the details in the articles if you want to go into it. But this is the trouble we get into, all this technical discussion, and I don’t know how much good it is really.
Catherine: And the problem is that you want this unity, but people are, I can see the point. You know, you and I talked about this the other day. Well, the Pope could just sweep it all away. You’re all, get out, all of you, get out, all of you, get out. You’re all doing this; you shouldn’t. Get out. And you can see that would be, wouldn’t that be great? That would be great clarity. But as you said, when you see some of the actions of Pope, I know I said John Bon Jovi there for the second, weren’t they, from the point of view of, oh, I want to allow this because I love it, it was rather an attempt to try and hold together. It was that attempt at unity. So I think what we’re always faced with is, do you want anathema, excommunication, and have that small church? Now I don’t, you know, many might say, even myself, well, yeah, if that’s what it takes. But that isn’t what’s happened. So what’s happened is instead we’ve had this attempt at holding this huge kind of thing together, this broken hospital of wheat and tares and everything, and holding it in unity. And then this is why we’re seeing what we see. But who knows what will happen in 100 years? We’re still in the shadow of the Council, 200, 300, 400.
Mark: And this is an organism. It’s not, this is the thing people think. It’s like a corporation with a CEO and managers to carry it out, and it’s not. It’s simply not what the Church is. Just to Kieran’s little point here about Bishop Heiner Wilmer. You know, I tweeted earlier on, if they want to, if the Vatican’s itching to excommunicate someone, he would be a really good candidate. But the reason that the Germans aren’t being persecuted and the SSPX are potentially going to be excommunicated if they go ahead without a mandate is that it’s two completely distinct positions, two completely different juridical perspectives. And so it does seem like, you know, a two-tier sort of policing, doesn’t it, as we say here in the UK.
Catherine: So obviously, you were showing me earlier a Green Party member who delivered a speech in Urdu, weren’t you? It was quite amusing because we couldn’t understand Urdu, but we just kept hearing Islamophobia, yeah, Islamophobia, and something else, oh, Reform bad, yeah, but she, I don’t know who she is, but it was an attempt to curry favour with those who speak Urdu.
Mark: Right, time for me to go and boil my head, I think, after that long old day. If that’s all right?
Catherine: As G. K. Chesterton said, and Schneider quoted, when you enter the Church, you’re meant to remove your hat, not your head. Great going, yeah. So yeah, we’ll keep, sorry if we didn’t, if you felt we didn’t answer your, I see that Cigar Mode corrected or made clearer his question. So sorry if you felt we hadn’t answered that very well. My view on that is, I do hope and pray that the SSPX are allowed, are given that apostolic mandate, that’s my hope, like Schneider. God bless, and see you next week. Look out, go now, have a quick cup of tea, put the kettle on, and by the time you come back, you’ll see on our channel a great chat with Peter Kwasniewski, so look out for that, and we’ll be back with you live next week.
Mark: Until then, thanks, guys, God bless you all.