(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of Faith and Reason, John-Henry Westen, Father Charles Murr, and Frank Wright discuss Pope Francis’ new memoir, specifically his criticism of priests and faithful devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and his alleged comparison of Trump to Hitler, pro-LGBT Cardinal McElroy’s appointment as the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., Biden awarding Pope Francis the Medal of Freedom during his last days in office, the Los Angeles wildfires destroying the homes of both celebrities and ordinary Catholics, and more.
The panel began the episode by discussing Pope Francis’ new memoir, Hope, released last week, in which the Pontiff accused young Catholic priests who like to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) of having a “mental imbalance.” Francis also accused devotees of the TLM of practicing “backwardism” and “sectarian worldliness.”
Westen emphasized that the Pope showed a sentiment of “disgusting hatred” for the TLM.
Murr underscored how inappropriate it was for the Holy Father to call out these priests, his spiritual children, publicly in a book, which he finds very disturbing.
“My father wouldn’t do that to his children, not in public. You don’t do that to kids. This man, who’s the Holy Father, has no problem ridiculing his sons in public. There’s something very wrong,” the priest said.
Murr then highlighted how the Pope seems to have an obsession with trying to stamp out the Latin Mass. But noting a recent Latin Mass conference he attended in Brazil, which also had thousands of young people in attendance, he stressed that these efforts won’t succeed.
“I just got back from Brazil, there were a thousand people at a conference, they’re all young people attending the Latin Mass conference, incredible! It’s growing all over the place, and they can’t control it. This has got to be driving somebody crazy, I’m sure, and it’s become an obsession,” he said.
Wright emphasized that the use of the dead Latin language in the Mass unifies the Church and contrasted that unity with the “Babelization” of the Mass in the vernacular language.
“Now, if you think about it, Latin is the lingua franca of the Catholic faith. This is the idea that Latin if you listen to it and learn a bit of it, everybody can go to the Mass and take what they can understand from it. For that reason, it’s also the same everywhere because it’s the Catholic doctrine. Now, if you replace that with the multiplicity of languages and dialects, and so on, you get Babel, don’t you? You get the Babelization of the Mass,” Wright said.
“No, [Latin] has a purpose, it’s a unifying purpose, it is the language of the faith, and it’s accessible to everyone. And it’s worked for well about 1,500 years, so I see no reason to replace it,” he added.
Wright then compared the Holy Father’s remarks to how the Bolsheviks labeled their political enemies.
“And it’s worth noting the designating of political enemies was a technique that was favored by the Bolsheviks, designating them as mentally ill. And, of course, if you can say people are mentally ill, then you don’t have to listen to them because they’re mad,” Wright said.
“And why are they mad here? Well, because their opinions disagree with yours. But crucially, what this is aimed at doing is destroying the norms of the Catholic Church, which are the inherited cultural behaviors of the Church, which in this case is the Catholic doctrine itself. It’s an extremely serious move, and it’s a very insidious tactic that’s been employed to do it, but it’s one that has over 100 years of history to it,” he added.
Later in the episode, the panel turned to news from the United States, where devastating wildfires recently scorched the Los Angeles area, destroying the homes of celebrities like Mel Gibson as well as ordinary citizens, including a faithful Catholic family who beautifully expressed their faith by singing the Regina Caeli even as their home was left in ashes.
Murr said that as he watched that video and saw the family’s clear piety, he was waiting for the camera to zoom in on their house, standing miraculously because of their faith. But he realized that their accepting of the will of God was indeed a miracle.
“The miracle of the acceptance of the will of God for these people. I mean, this was outstanding to just accept. ‘Alright, here we are, we have each other,’’ the priest said.
“To have six adult children to get together with their parents and to sing a laud to the Blessed Virgin Mary at such a disaster shows an outstanding faith. There is the miracle, not the house that hasn’t been burned down, but the miracle of the faith that sustained all of that,” he added.
For more discussion on Pope Francis’ fresh criticism of the Traditional Latin Mass in his memoir, a Catholic family’s unshakable faith after the LA wildfires burned down their house, and much more, tune in to this episode of Faith and Reason.
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