"A kind of clerical terror"- even progressives are sickened at the Pope's way of governing

A Synodal Church open....but not too all.... because too open.....Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon remains in the crosshairs

 

Paix Liurgique devoted our Letter 942 of June 19, 2023 to the scandalous trial for non-conformism that Pope Francis' Rome is bringing against the Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, Mgr Rey . The conclusion, however, is slow in coming. Once again, in recent days, the Apostolic Nuncio Celestino Migliore, responsible for bringing the bishop back into line, has spoken to the Pope about his case.

The true crime of the Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon

As we said in this Letter, the real crime of which Mgr Dominique Rey is accused is that of having broken down the barriers between "extraordinary" and "ordinary" priests.

This diocese, the only one in France to ignore the vocations crisis, had exemplarily applied the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. In September 2005, two years before Summorum Pontificum, it established its own parish, Saint-François-de-Paule, dedicated to the Tridentine liturgy, and entrusted to the Missionaries of Mercy, who are also dedicated to the evangelization of Muslims.

To our knowledge, Mgr Rey is the only bishop in France to have ordained priests in the Extraordinary Form for his own diocese (it had been thought that the Diocese of Lyon, with Mgr Batut as auxiliary, would follow suit, but the experiment came to a halt after the ordination of a diocesan cleric to minor orders). And this same Mgr Rey invited the "ordinary" ordinands of his diocese to learn to celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form too.

He is the only one to have allowed his parish priests to decide freely to respond to requests for traditional Mass from "stable groups". Yet it is only within the usual parish framework that the mutual enrichment of liturgical forms called for by Benedict XVI and the rebirth of lasting Catholic unity can take place. Where the same parish priest celebrated both forms of the Roman Rite in the same church, as was the case in a number of parishes in the diocese, this mutual enrichment of the two forms of the Roman Rite found the right conditions to go beyond mere wishful thinking.

In so doing, Mgr Rey was teaching a lesson to traditionalists themselves, urging them to break out of the ghetto, however legal and comfortable it may be. As the vicar of a good parish put it: "Here, we've rediscovered liturgical peace. Saturday's early mass is attended by around sixty people, while on Sundays some forty faithful attend the Low Mass, celebrated at 9 a.m. according to the Paul VI missal. At 10 a.m., the High Mass according to the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite gathers the bulk of the troops (120 people) and finally, at 11:30 a.m., the traditional mass, which is gradually finding its place." And the parishioners were happy with this diversity, which reinforced their sense of Catholicity and Romanity.

The Fréjus-Toulon example was also a benchmark in that it enabled us to measure the reality of the faithful's demand for traditional liturgy. Because it is most often denied, and because opinion surveys carried out by independent professionals are boycotted, the setting up of a celebration by the parish priest himself is the best way of establishing that there is a real demand that is only waiting to grow.

Did you say "Synodal Church"?

In June 2022, at a time when synodality was the hotly debated topic in every diocese in France, Cardinal Ouellet, then Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, issued the astonishing news that the ordinations to be carried out by Mgr Rey had been prohibited. This was followed by a canonical visitation, which began last February, under the guidance of the Congregation for Bishops, with two of the most hostile visitors to the local bishop: Mgr Antoine Hérouard, former General Secretary of the CEF, former Rector of the French Seminary in Rome, former Apostolic Delegate for the Lourdes Shrine, recently appointed Archbishop of Dijon, and Mgr Joël Mercier, former Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy.

Jean-Marie Guénois, in Le Figaro of June 3, 2022, spoke of an "ecclesial scandal". The word is strong," he wrote, "but it is justified. How can the Vatican and those who endorsed this decision, which a priori targets the ecclesial options of the Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, take hostage ten young seminarians [4 future priests, 6 future deacons] who are not responsible for the problem? There are undoubtedly too many priestly ordinations in France...".

Referring to the current Roman Pontiff's way of governing, La Croix's Fr. Michel Kubler, in a talk given in Lourdes on the occasion of the national pilgrimage on August 13 on "Les dix chantiers du Pape François- the six buildings sites of Pope Francis", said he was in perfect harmony with his ecclesiological line, but that he disapproved of his violent way of governing. Michel Kubler, who knows Rome well, where from 2018 to 2022 he administered what is known as "Les Pieux Établissements de la France à Rome et à Lorette-The Pious Establishments of France in Rome and Loretto" on behalf of the French Embassy to the Holy See, was thus expressing the thoughts of quite a few "left-wing" ecclesiastics. This was confirmed by Jean-Marie Guénois in his aforementioned article on the ordinations ban: "Collective punishment in an authoritarian mode does not go down well in the French Catholic community. Even on the left, which doesn't hold Archbishop Rey dear and is surprised by the "violence" of the procedure. The authoritarianism deplored by many in the Vatican at the end of Francis' pontificate must not be allowed to create a kind of clerical terror in the Catholic Church, at a time when all we can talk about is synodality!

Is the Church really "open and welcoming to all"?

At the welcome ceremony for WYD in Lisbon, before the astonishing gathering of young Catholics, particularly French, whose ecclesial sensitivity was even more astonishing to the Church's executives (they had discovered by a La Croix of May 25, carried out on a sample of 4,000 young Catholics preparing to go to the WYD in Lisbon, that 38%, more than a third of the young French pilgrims in Lisbon, said they appreciated "the Latin Mass"), the Pope, abandoning the pages of a speech carefully prepared by his collaborators, improvised in Spanish. As always in such cases, he launched into very concrete, almost down-to-earth considerations, as he likes them to do in order to be in direct touch with his audience. Then he delivered a message of "openness": the Church is open to all, "todos, todos, todos!" A message he had the delighted youngsters repeat: "todos, todos, todos!"

And isn't this one of the key themes of the Instrumentum laboris for the Synod of Bishops, which will meet in Rome next October to discuss Synodality? Indeed, number 26 seems to echo the Lisbon speech and vice versa: "A synodal Church is an open and welcoming Church. It is open to all. This movement of the Spirit crosses every boundary to draw everyone into its dynamism."

But above all, applying the principle to the liturgy, number 47 proclaims: "It is in liturgical action, and in particular in the celebration of the Eucharist, that the Church experiences every day a radical unity in the same prayer, but in the diversity of languages and rites: this is a key point of synodality. From this point of view, the diversity of rites in the one Catholic Church is an authentic blessing, to be protected and promoted, as has been experienced on several occasions during the Continental Assemblies."

A "key point of synodality", an "authentic blessing to be protected and promoted": the Church, in the celebration of the Eucharist, experiences every day a radical unity in the diversity of languages and rites.

Synodality, diversity, openness to all. And yet, as Jean-Marie Guénois puts it, "a kind of clerical terror" prevails. The French bishop who really applied these principles is being eliminated.

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