AS WE ALL KNOW, AMERICANS ARE PRAGMATIC AND THUS OUR AMERICAN POPE, POPE LEO XIV IS PRAGMATIC AND HE MUST APPRECIATE WHAT BISHOP SCHNEIDER SAID TO HIM ABOUT THE TLM—AS AN AMERICAN, I CAN’T IMAGINE THAT HIS HOLINESS WOULD NOT AGREE WITH THE GOOD BISHOP SCHNEIDER..

Bishop Athanasius Schneider advised Pope Leo not to continue with pastoral documents that can be undone by other popes, thus pitting pope against pope, bishop against bishop, priest against priest, laymen against laymen.

Bishop Schneider advised Pope Leo, “do a more solemn document, not just a Motu Proprio as Benedict XVI did and then the anti-Motu Proprio of Pope Francis, Traditionis Custodes.”…”I think it would not be so fitting to again do an anti-Motu Proprio against Traditionis Custodes, but simply a more solemn document than the Motu Proprios.” …”Do a new regularization of the entire issue of the TLM, again independently of the Motu Proprios. Do a new solemn regularization with this, giving the complete freedom and the co-existence of both forms, pacific co-existence, with no limitations and impediments of both forms.”

My comments: I would add, especially for parishes who celebrate both forms of the one Roman Rite, that ad orientem and kneeling for Holy Communion be allowed in the Bugnini Form of the Mass without interference from local bishops.

 It seems to me that the pragmatism of Bishop Schneider’s proposal would be appealing to our American Pope an American pragmatist. And it would create the unity that the Church needs and Pope Leo so dearly desires. If Pope Leo promulgated a more solemn document concerning the freedom to celebrate both forms of the one Roman Rite for dioceses, priests and parishes, this would solve the ideology of discontinuity that has been the lived reality of the Church since Vatican II as the heterodox left’s interpretation of Vatican II pitted the institutional Church after Vatican II with the institutional Church prior to Vatican II. They also pitted pre-Vatican II Catholics against post Vatican II Catholics. 

The whole ethos was discontinuity and marginalizing those who wanted continuity between the Second Vatican Council and what preceded it as well as the Mass prior to the Council and what Vatican II actually sought for its reform before Bishop Bugnini embraced the “spirit of Vatican II discontinuity”, rather than the actual continuity of Vatican II with what preceded. Refinement in Continuity (reform implies bad, wrong, nasty, unwanted) is the language that should be used. Leave reform as the language for sinners in need of repentance and reconciliation in light of Christ and His Splendor of Truth.