Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome I: John Bugay falls down a hole into Wonderland.

t is irony, and worse than irony, to pon­der. The very same lyser­gic, Fran­cis-bash­ing acid, which one can buy—almost on a dai­ly basis now—Mr. John Bugay, that trip­py anti-Catholic man in Pitts­burgh, is also being sold by some Catholic blog­gers them­selves; many of them the most sane and well-inten­tioned souls this side of Pur­ga­to­ry.

Now, obvi­ous­ly, one expects all this from Mr. Bugay. I will dis­patch with him. But I don’t intend to con­clude my review of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome (PFDS) in Pitts­burgh. PFDS is a men­tal fog—a hookah-inhaled hallucinogen—that has put a lot of already stoned minds, and some sharp ones that should know bet­ter, into a tripped-out pur­ple haze: whether of para­noia (Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ists), pink ele­phant sit­ings (lib­er­al media and Catholic pro­gres­sives) or a hazy and tire­some spir­i­tu­al cer­ti­tude (Mr. Bugay). If you suf­fer from it, con­sid­er this series of posts your chance to get clean. Log­ic and truth are the best and only anti­dotes for any trip, how­ev­er bad. Feed your head.

MR. BUGAY GOES CHASING RABBITS

Anti-Catholi­cism has long been John Bugay’s hookah. Thus on Sep­tem­ber 17, in search of more weed to feed his addic­tion, he took an Alice-dive down the rab­bit hole and chased after the pan­icked rumor, of dubi­ous ori­gin and mar­gin­al authen­tic­i­ty, that Pope Fran­cis was going to throw the Latin Mass under the bus, to the wolves, into the fire, out the win­dow, and a host of oth­er clichés, and leave it for dead. To announce this fast and cred­u­lous tum­ble into Won­der­land, Mr. Bugay post­ed an arti­cle on his blog, with the absurd and dis­hon­est title “Pope Fran­cis vs. Pope Bene­dict.”

The sub­ject was Fran­cis’s recent dis­ci­pli­nary action against the Fran­cis­can Fri­ars of the Immac­u­late (FFI). Unless per­mis­sion is giv­en, the con­gre­ga­tion is now for­bid­den to cel­e­brate Mass in the usus antiquior, or Tri­den­tine rite, as had been allowed by Bene­dict XVI’s motu pro­prio Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum. In his great care and con­cern to get the sto­ry right, Mr. Bugay cit­ed a source. One source: this arti­cle by San­dro Mag­is­ter in Chiesa. We shall need to sort out what it says and, just as impor­tant, what it does not say:

In real­i­ty, the free­dom to cel­e­brate the Mass in the ancient rite that Pope Joseph Ratzinger had guar­an­teed for all with the motu pro­prio “Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum” no longer has uni­ver­sal exten­sion today, because it has been revoked by his suc­ces­sor for one reli­gious con­gre­ga­tion and con­se­quent­ly also for the faith­ful who attend­ed its Mass­es.

Oh. So why was it revoked, and why for just this one con­gre­ga­tion? Does Pope Fran­cis have a Jesuit­’s score to set­tle against the Fran­cis­cans? That would seem to be an obvi­ous ques­tion. But Mr. Mag­is­ter does not say, at least not here. As for Mr. Bugay, he blasts his post out before an anx­ious world and does not ask:

Many lovers of tra­di­tion are afraid, in fact that this restric­tion placed on one of the pil­lars of the pon­tif­i­cate of Bene­dict XVI will soon become a more gen­er­al imped­i­ment.

Oh. Scared, huh? Afraid, huh? So it’s mere fear we now appeal to? And what—in cer­tain terms, may I ask—tells us that this fear has any tan­gi­ble basis?  No one says; no one asks; least of all the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. Bugay.

And what does PR con­clude from all this? Well, first he says that “it is a clear case of Pope Fran­cis vs. Pope Bene­dict on ‘Litur­gi­cal Reform.’ ” Next, he says that “one pope has shot down the deep­est desires of a pre­vi­ous pope.” Then, he says that “the ‘thoughts of Joseph Ratzinger’ have been snuffed out by this new and pop­u­lar pope.” Last, and with an orig­i­nal­i­ty of lan­guage that must be praised, he calls Pope Fran­cis a “wolf in sheep­’s cloth­ing.”

Now at this point, if you have been pay­ing atten­tion, you may be ask­ing the same ques­tion that occurs to my curi­ous mind: Why does Mr. Bugay care?  Does he have a stake in which form of the Mass is allowed, which not? He calls Fran­cis a “wolf in sheep­’s cloth­ing” for cast­ing the Tri­den­tine Mass to the four winds. Am I thus to con­clude that Mr. Bugay is an advo­cate of Latin? Has he missed the incense all these years? Does he lay awake nights, unable to sleep, at the thought of just one more chant? Am I to believe that, if the Latin Mass were to be man­dat­ed for all time, he would beat a path back to the Catholic Church? Is any­one else smok­ing this?

But no. For Mr. Bugay, the Mass is a heresy whether it’s said in Latin or the ver­nac­u­lar. It is a heresy whether it’s said in the form of Trent or the form of Paul VI. It is a heresy whether it includes Gre­go­ri­an chant or hip hop, clouds of incense or clouds of the Mary. So why is the poor, des­per­ate man div­ing after this rab­bit? After years away from the Church, does he have no place left to go but into the ground? Let’s look at his post and see:

For faith­ful Roman Catholics every­where who take com­fort in the secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of Roman Catholi­cism over the cen­turies, one pope has now shot down the deep­est desires of a pre­vi­ous pope.

Oh. So there it is. Did you catch how Mr. Bugay frames the issue?  Yes, that all-impor­tant first para­graph! You see, he means for us to believe that Fran­cis’s tar­get prac­tice at Latin and incense are some­how at odds with “secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.” He means for us to ques­tion whether the Church is tru­ly as unchang­ing as Catholic apol­o­gists claim it is. That’s the trip he’s on; and his real point is to tempt the read­er with this green leaf.

But what Mr. Bugay does not say is that the “secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty” of the Catholic Church is a func­tion of its unchang­ing doc­trines. Even a man as Mary-bewitched as he ought to know that. The form of the litur­gy, how­ev­er, may cer­tain­ly be changed, and no one has ever said oth­er­wise. Even the Tri­den­tine Mass has been around for few­er than 500 years. There was a time when it was as new­fan­gled as the Novus Ordo. All this is inside base­ball; it effects the truth of the Catholic Church not one whit, and it should not have Mr. Bugay as tied in knots as he appar­ent­ly is. He cares about it just to the extent that he can use it as a weapon against the uni­ty of the Church. Why, I ask, would any of us want to buy that drug?

REMEMBER WHAT THE DORMOUSE SAID

Yet a deep­er ques­tion remains:  Is Pope Fran­cis sup­press­ing the Latin Mass?  Are the fears to which Mr. Mag­is­ter refers built on rock or on sand?  For insight into that ques­tion, let us go first to a man whose love for and defense of the usus antiquior is nev­er in ques­tion: the Inim­itable Fr. Z.  On July 29—a full two months before Mr. Bugay began drop­ping acid into his hookah—this is what Fr. Z had to say on the top­ic of Pope Fran­cis and the FFI.  First he gave key back­ground:

There was divi­sion among the FFIs about Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum, their use of the old­er form of the Mass, and crit­i­cisms made by some of Vat­i­can II.

Oh. Well, that would seem to be impor­tant. You can’t just go mouthing off against Vat­i­can II. But nei­ther Mr. Bugay nor Mr. Mag­is­ter men­tion this. I won­der why that is. But there’s more:

After Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum, a fac­tion with­in the FFIs were mak­ing the Extra­or­di­nary Form the only form.

Oh. Well, that would seem to be impor­tant. What­ev­er else it did, Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum did not sup­press the Novus Ordo. Uni­ver­sæ Eccel­siæ 19 (2007), set­ting the norms of SP, makes clear that groups sup­press­ing the OF are not to be tol­er­at­ed. But some in the FFI crossed that line into full-blown Latin Mass Only­ism:

Divi­sion ensued.  A Vis­i­ta­tion result­ed. … The FFIs will now have super­vi­sion, because they could­n’t get along over this mat­ter.

Oh. Well, that would seem to be impor­tant. Con­text hap­pens.  Now, Fr. Z is spec­u­lat­ing at this point, but the gist of what he says is that the tra­di­tion­al­ists with­in the FFI pushed for the usus antiquior in too hard-core a man­ner, the lib­er­als pushed back, and the tra­di­tion­al­ists lost ground in the end. Rome had to step in to stop the chil­dren from fight­ing. Says Fr. Z:

[I don’t think] Pope Fran­cis is … against the usus antiquior. Fran­cis, how­ev­er, was a Jesuit, a reli­gious.  He was a provin­cial. In his day, Fr. Bergoglio dealt with huge divi­sions in his com­mu­ni­ty. He has insights into prob­lems in reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties. … He hit the “reboot” but­ton for them. …

In any event, this decree prob­a­bly has more to do with a mat­ter inter­nal to a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty than it does with the old­er form of the Mass, though the old­er form was an issue of the divi­sion.

Two days lat­er, on July 31—still long before Mr. Bugay post­ed his dumb article—the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter (hard­ly an obscure source) pub­lished news of a state­ment from Fr. Alfon­so Bruno, one of the FFI spokes­men. One would guess he might know what was going on; and he con­firms Fr. Z’s words. The issue, Fr. Bruno says, is not the usus antiquior but “a small group in pow­er” with close ties to the schis­mat­ic Soci­ety of St. Pius X.

Oh. Well, that would seem to be impor­tant. On his blog Mary Vic­trix, Fr. Ange­lo Geiger, also of the FFI, said this:

The restric­tions on our com­mu­ni­ty are spe­cif­ic to us and have been put in place for rea­sons spe­cif­ic to us. Pope Fran­cis [Pay atten­tion now, Mr. Bugay.] has not con­tra­dict­ed Pope Bene­dict.  The vis­i­ta­tion of our com­mu­ni­ty began under Pope Bene­dict—[Oh, it began under Bene­dict, did it? Well, my, how a lit­tle fact changes things!]—and the Com­mis­sion was rec­om­mend­ed by Car­di­nal João Braz de Aviz who was appoint­ed to the Con­gre­ga­tion by Pope Bene­dict.

What is being report­ed in the press and what has tran­spired with­in our com­mu­ni­ty over the course of a num­ber of years are two dif­fer­ent things. [To think of that!]

As for Mr. Magister—Mr. Bugay’s one and only source—the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter quotes Fr. Geiger as say­ing that he is “sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing some­thing he can only spec­u­late about.”

Oh. Well, my, how Mr. Bugay is mak­ing his bed with Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ists in his cam­paign against the Church!

To be sure, Fr. Z does not want Latin Mass-lov­ing Catholics to hurt their own goals, and he insists they not get morose. Bash­ing Vat­i­can II, Fr. Z says in his blog article—pay atten­tion, Trads—is not wise. All that said, he also hard­ly believes that Fran­cis is out to do dam­age to Sum­mo­rum Pon­tif­i­cum. The “tough love” he refers to in his title is for Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ists, not for Pope Fran­cis.

So all this is a wee bit more com­plex than Mr. Bugay makes it out to be.  Truth be told, it has a lot more to do with an issue inter­nal to the Church and to one reli­gious con­gre­ga­tion, as well as to litur­gi­cal dif­fer­ences among Catholics, than it has any­thing to do with the polem­i­cal rogue and his tire­some haze and bur­ble.  For an anti-Catholic sen­sa­tion­al­ist who turned his back on the Church years ago, Mr. Bugay sure can’t shut up about the pope. He may have to come down from that trip by his own work.

But one would think he would take some care to get his facts straight before blub­ber­ing all over his blog. The sources I cit­ed above were avail­able months before and could eas­i­ly have been found. But what Mr. Bugay does is to find one source—a source that affirms what he wants to believe. And rather than look more deeply into the facts, he leaps down the rab­bit hole and finds him­self smack in Won­der­land.

The form of the Mass is our own con­cern, Mr. Bugay, and we will hash it out on our own. The day you go to Con­fes­sion and return to the Church and show you care about the truth will be the day that I lis­ten to what you have to say about the litur­gy.

 

Post­script [2/3/15]. Fr. Ange­lo Mary Geiger, FFI, con­tin­ues his good work of clar­i­fy­ing what he calls in one arti­cle the “pater­nal solic­i­tude” of Pope Fran­cis for the fri­ars and defend­ing him against attacks from the “Cryp­to-Lefeb­vrists” at Rorate Cæli and oth­er like-mind­ed blogs. See here. See here. See here. See here. See here. And fol­low his blog Mary Vic­trix.

Pope Fran­cis con­tin­ues to search for a suit­able house for the FFI in Rome. For now, the sem­i­nar­i­ans are con­tin­u­ing their stud­ies at a pon­tif­i­cal uni­ver­si­ty there.