Faithfulness to Tradition will carry us forward.

     Just the other day I gave a lecture in German to a closed group. It bore the provocative title:  „Die alte Messe ist die Zukunft der Kirche.“ which is to say: The old Mass is the Future of the Church. Besides developing my central thesis, I expressed my gratitude to the early stalwarts who back long before Summorum Pontificum remained constant in upholding and celebrating the Mass of the Ages. I made the point that they, often in their long-suffering and at great personal sacrifice, made it possible to pass the torch to a younger generation very much caught up and enthused by the Vetus Ordo.

      Quite unexpectedly, an old friend, who had attended, sent me a short but profound thank you note for my words and witness in favor of the Vetus Ordo. In essence, he told me he had never hoped to see the day when someone with a position like mine in the Church, an archbishop and apostolic nuncio, would express such clear support both for the old Mass and for the sacrifices of this priest's life spent in passing on this priceless gift. He explained that recognizing a real pastoral need, to serve good people who could not reconcile themselves to the new Mass, he had left parish life in 1975 to serve exclusively wherever in Switzerland people so hungered. He had offered Mass in all kinds of different places when no church could be found to welcome his tiny groups.

   He spoke of the particular suffering caused by a decision of the Swiss Bishops' Conference in 1977, forbidding the use of Catholic churches for the celebration of the old Mass on the pretext that it was divisive. Bishop Vonderach of Chur allowed the old Mass notwithstanding in three churches of his diocese, incurring the wrath of the German Bishops' Conference. To my way of thinking, this type of intolerance is a clear attestation of the double standard used to push its modernizing and iconoclastic agenda, permitting folly and excluding true devotion.

   At the end of his note, my priest friend quoted, from 1976, the president of the  Abgeordnetenversammlung des Schweizerischen Evangelischen Kirchenbundes, Dr. Peter Vogelsanger, Pfarrer am Fraumünster in Zürich, who rejoiced in the reformation which had broken out in the Catholic Church subsequent to the II Vatican Council, for all practical purposes embracing with 400 years delay the "good old Reform"... My friend expressed dread at the thought of being a Catholic who died with something of the like on his conscience.

        In the question and answer exchange after my talk the other day, I could not help but discover myself in many ways falling short of the singleness of purpose which ought to be mine in defending my thesis: The old Mass is the Future of the Church... God forgive me and give me time, let's say, to come clean. God's people deserve no less!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI