Pope Francis has died

got 'em

> He did it because things in the church with TLM were getting weird.

What’s “weird” is in the eye of the beholder - a lot of stuff Francis saw as “weird”, JP2 and B16 may have seen as significantly less “weird”; conversely, JP2 and B16 may well have seen some of Francis’ own decisions as “weird”.

I know one of the big complaints against TLM communities is that many of them question the validity of Vatican II. But, given B16 as a young theologian authored his famous (in the rarified subfield of Catholic/Orthodox ecumenical theology) “Ratzinger proposal”, that reunion with the Orthodox should not require them to accept post-schism councils as binding - which implicitly downgrades the authority of all 13 post-schism councils from Lateran I to Vatican II inclusive, [0] maybe he’d view doubting Vatican II a bit more charitably than Francis ever could. And, among the more liberal/progressive-leaning Catholics (for whom Francis rather obviously had a significant degree of sympathy), there’s a long tradition of questioning the validity of Vatican I - and I suspect Francis was much more sympathetic to doubting the first than the second.

And then there’s also the Eastern Catholic followers of the late Lebanese Melkite archbishop Elias Zoghby, who rejected the ecumenicity of Vatican II (despite being one of its Fathers) on the grounds that a genuinely ecumenical council would require full Orthodox participation, hence denying that status to all post-schism councils - I suspect Francis would have seen that as much less “weird”, despite its superficial overlap with traditionalist views on Vatican II, since he’d be more sympathetic to the motivations behind it. Zoghby’s opposition to Vatican II’s validity wasn’t solely a matter of abstract theological principle, it was also about its substance - at it, he argued that Eastern Catholics should be allowed to observe the traditional Eastern leniency on divorce rather than being forced to conform to the Latin Church’s principled opposition to it, but he lost that argument-but yet again, likely something Francis had more sympathy for than the Latin traditionalist objections to the council’s substance

[0] there is also the problem of the 8th council, which is a pre-schism council; there are two competing claimants to the title of “Fourth Council of Constantinople”, the first in 869-870, the second in 879-880; Catholics accept the first as the 8th ecumenical council and reject the second as invalid; Orthodox reject the first as invalid and accept the second, but disagree among themselves as to whether to class it as the 8th ecumenical council or as sub-ecumenical; and then there’s also the Quinisext Council of 692 (aka Council in Trullo), which many Orthodox view as quasi-ecumenical, Catholics as local to the East; and then the fact that some Orthodox claim one of their own post-schism councils as ecumenical (the fifth council of Constantinople, 1341-1368) - Ratzinger’s proposal didn’t address these conciliar esoterica, but maybe they aren’t that important given so few get worked up about them

I don't think TLM is intended to obscure anything; I claim instead that it is used as a tool of obscurantism for a fringe movement within the church. Everything you're saying that's good about TLM, I agree with. I'm the weirdo on the thread that actually took Latin, and, thanks to a work experience with a Latin scholar (hey Jon!) currently reads a little bit of Latin for fun.

I would claim as well that most people who attend TLM services do not in fact have any fluency in Latin, and would in support of that argument (but not that much support because I'm not going to take the time to dig up the source right now) point out the English bishop's observation that TLM-enthusiast priests in his diocese couldn't pass a simple Latin test.

I am not a Catholic.

I am not sure which label I should use for myself besides Christian as in 'follower of Christ', who tries to follow the Bible as accurately as possible, believing it to be the direct and absolute message from God.

Which indeed makes me incompatible with Catholicism.

The Vatican first condemned antisemitism by name in 1928, so I don't think disagreeing even with Nostra aetate necessarily has antisemitism as a consequence. The perennial problem with antisemitism, however, is nobody (Jews included) can agree on how to define it, and how essential Nostra aetate is to ruling it out for Catholics may depend on how broad or narrow a definition of it you adopt.