Feature, Not Bug

Father Donald Kloster, of the US Diocese of Bridgeport, has published a very courageous letter in favour of the Traditional Latin Mass, demanding that the Bishops take action to promote it as the only cure to the present illness of the Church. His arguments are many and all extremely powerful. The link is here.

However, it seems to me that the good priest is not considering (or, more likely, not mentioning) a fundamental trait of, I am sure, too many Bishops in the Western part of the Church: they are simply not interested in what works, and they are simply not interested in the spiritual health of their sheep, because they have lost the faith.

Call me cynical, but it appears to me that, when we have good and courageous religious, they are very often simple priests or friars. As to the bishops, with the notable exceptions we read about here and there (at times, because they are persecuted by the Vatican), they seem to me to be tired, disinterested, opportunistic political beings, desirous to manage a decline that leaves them utterly indifferent in a way that allows them to leave the years remaining to them in a comfortable way.

If your garden variety bishop really believed in God, and really believed that he will be judged according to how he has cared for his sheep, he would be terrified of his inaction and would prefer many times to undergo persecution at the hands of Francis rather than exchanging a couple of quiet decades for his eternal salvation. Leaving aside all the mess caused by Vatican II in the last decades, already the last eleven years show what kind of responsibility a bishop is attracting on himself. Certainly, they can make excuses of various kind for themselves, “prudence” certainly being the most frequent. But again, in the presence of the actual situation the very thinking that it be “prudent” for a bishop not to react to this state of things – and to the state of things constantly being pushed by Francis – must, surely, be indicative of a serious lack of the proper Catholic faith.

Where, therefore, the good Father Kloster sees a bug, I see a feature. A feature caused by decades of horrible episcopal appointments, including those of JP II and Benedict XVI, which led to the promotion of timid administrators rather than fearless warriors. With Francis, of course, the situation got even worse, as Zanchetta was one of his first, and perhaps the very first of Francis’ appointments, thus showing to everybody how the man thinks and operates.

The way out of this is that, hopefully, at some point the Lord, in His Goodness, will give us either better Bishops, or will improve the thinking of some of those we already have. But realistically, we should not expect a mass conversion to Catholicism in people who are ordained, and have shown for decades that they don’t care.

We are in the hands of the Lord. But many, many thanks to Heaven for courageous priests like Father Kloster.