In response to the cruelly misnamed Vatican decree “Traditionis Custodes,” both the archdiocese of Washington and the diocese of Arlington have announced their intent to suppress celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass within their jurisdictions.

The Modernist pseudo-church has spoken. The “hermeneutic of continuity” has once and for all been exposed as a lie from the Father of Lies.

A well-founded alternative to Modernist “Catholicism” is the Society of St. Pius X, which rejects the errors of Modernism and Vatican 2 and has maintained Catholic liturgy and teaching unbroken from its inception in 1970.

SSPX conducts a worldwide missionary apostolate, including a chapel in Maryland and several in Virginia.

We beg our readers to renounce Modernism, and all its works, and all its empty promises.

The reflexive argument of those who would ignore the full implications of the Modernist pestilence in the Church is approximately this:

“Would God abandon his people for 60 years?” (Or however long it’s been since the imposition of the Novus Ordo / end of Vatican 2 / election of Paul VI / John XXIII / . . . )

What an astounding suggestion.

God loves us madly enough to have endowed us with free will. Seemingly not satisfied with that, He further exhibited the madness of His love by dying on a Cross to clean up the messes we make when we misuse the free will He has given us.

Prime exhibits of which have been our eager acceptance of the Modernist apple when it was held out to us—and then our ceaseless demands for even more such apples!

And His Precious Blood—which He shed at the Circumcision, the Agony, the Passion, the Crucifixion—still goes right on redeeming us. Right down to this very instant.

And we act, ninety-nine percent of the time (at least), as if we couldn’t care less.

Who abandoned Whom?

We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.

We recognize that after the middle of the Twentieth Century, the doctrine and liturgy of this indefectible Church have been encroached upon by Modernist doctrine and liturgy. This infernal work has been carried out by the very men who are responsible for preserving Catholic doctrine and liturgy.

The Thesis of Cassiciacum (machine translation, discussion) suggests how Catholics may reconcile the apparent contradictions within the current situation.

Pray to Our Lady for the purification of the Church in the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart.

Confession is the Sacrament of Penance. (Reconciliation is what God effects through the priest. Penance, the work of a lifetime, is our part in it.)

The confessional is not where we go to confess someone else’s sins (e.g., “Daisy made me do it!”). It is not where we go to shed crocodile tears for insufficient virtue-signaling.

The confessional is where we go to confess our share of responsibility for Christ’s Passion and Dereliction.

Beg God for humility and you’ll make a good Confession.

Then beg Our Lord for the strength and fortitude to embrace His Cross, and your penances will be fruitful.

Then cultivate an attitude of humility and contrition, and your Communions will make you a saint.

The Eucharist, Catholics are taught, is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament.

Sacraments are visible signs instituted by Christ to give us His grace. Our Lord knew what He was doing here. He created us to receive truth through our sight, our smell, our touch—all our human senses—and to be accessible to our reason (thus Catholics speak of the “age of reason”).

Our Lord made sanctifying grace easy for us. It is easy to sense at Holy Mass that a sacrifice is being performed. Our reason, informed by our senses, tells us that Holy Mass is true worship.

Modernists know what they are doing, too. They have distorted every single sacrament as far as they could—most tragically, by obscuring the sacrificial meaning of the Eucharist. Then they claim that nothing has changed!

It might seem easy to fall for such a contradiction. But Catholics know better. The evidence is right in front of our senses, as we view the Modernist wreckage of Catholic doctrine and worship. It is easy to sense at a Novus Ordo ceremony that worship is not taken seriously (“not too seriously,” they might smile).

Our reason, informed by our senses, tells us that Modernism is false, that its claims are lies.

The Catholic sense tells us to avoid Modernism, its proponents, its ceremonies, its buildings.

Pray to the Holy Ghost that, by His gifts, the Catholic sense may always govern our reason.

The Catholic commentariat has no shortage of pundits who assert, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that Vatican 2 hasn’t failed—it’s just never been tried!

We were reminded of that by a George Weigel column last week and by this meme that made the rounds about the same time.

Our adaptation of the above recipe substitutes “Vatican 2” for socialism (the two not being incompatible), and lost souls for skulls. Serve cold.

We renounce the modernist Vatican 2 establishment, and all its works, and all its empty promises, and exhort our readers to do likewise.

Pray. Perform the works of mercy. Do penance, as Our Lady has repeatedly begged of a deaf world. Cultivate humility (you can’t get to Heaven without it).

Thank you for your support of DC Latin Mass.