“The Primacy of Tradition and Obedience to the Truth” — Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Charlotte Lecture

The following lecture was given on September 2, 2022, in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the auspices of the Charlotte Latin Mass Community. It may be considered an offering of gratitude for the upcoming fifteenth anniversary of the going-into-effect of Summorum Pontificum, a document whose underlying principle is true and will remain true. Videos of the lecture and the subsequent panel discussion with Gregory DiPippo, Christopher Owens, and Brian Williams are posted on YouTube; these videos are embedded below, after the notes).—PAK

The Primacy of Tradition and Obedience to the Truth

Peter A. Kwasniewski

September 2, 2022

I will begin my comments this evening with several quotations from Joseph Ratzinger, for I truly believe that his clarity of insight on certain key questions is unsurpassed. Whatever limitations there may be in his analysis of the liturgical question, and however much we bitterly deplore his decision to abandon the papal throne, it is the truth he discerned that forms the basis of the traditional movement.

On the 15th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum: “What we oppose to Traditionis custodes is not ‘non possumus’ but ‘non licet’: it is not permitted!” — Jean Madiran in defense of traditionalism

With July 7, 2022 we reach the fifteenth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio and come close to the first anniversary of Pope Francis’s attempt to cancel out its provisions in his own motu proprio. On this occasion Rorate publishes a translation of the following article by Rémi Fontaine (original here), based on three earlier articles at Le Salon beige on November 5, 2021, March 31, and June 1, 2022). The internal quotations are drawn from the writings of Jean Madiran.--PAK

The motu proprio Traditionis custodes of July 16, 2021 was felt like a blow:

—a slap in the face to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose letter and spirit of the motu proprio Summorum pontificum of 2007 taught and decreed almost the opposite of this unjust and accusatory text;

—a slap in the face to what could be called the “Ecclesia Dei” people, against whom he immediately and globally addresses a reckless judgment and with whom he breaks his word;

—a humiliation inflicted on the Church itself, “Jesus Christ spread and communicated” (Bossuet), by the offense thus brought to the principle of non-contradiction, which is incompatible with a “hermeneutic of rupture,” as well as to the natural and canonical law relative to the Mass.

In this way, one could rightly react by repeating the words of Our Lord before the High Priest, when a servant slapped him: “If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to what is wrong. If I have spoken well, why do you strike me?”