UPDATED and Edited 7/20/21 — No response of the type I had suggested occurred on July 20th, so I’ve changed the title to “Soon” from “July 20th”. However, I still expect some type of document responding to the decision of Pope Francis, as discussed below.

Note also (added 7/21/21) that LifeSiteNews has posted a petition on the TLM here. However, it is not the type of petition that I had thought would be devised.

This would be in the form of a public document, accusing Pope Francis of very grave offenses and asking for people to sign it. And it will be worse than past documents of this type. The worst of the previous documents was the Open Letter, which accused Pope Francis of the canonical delict of heresy (i.e. formal heresy). I think this next document will be worse, in that it will declare the Roman Pontiff to be not the true and valid Pope. And then this document will become the basis for a schism whereby TLM communities and priests do not even attempt to comply with Traditionis Custodes.

The reason I think this is that July 16th, today, was the anniversary of the excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople by the papal legates, and then the response from the Patriarch was on July 20th. That’s about the right amount of time for this type of document, in the present time, to be written and agreed by the usual accusers of Pope Francis.

I could be wrong about the date. But there is no way that the Papal accusers just take this with faith and obedience, with humility, meekness, and subjection to authority. Their usual reaction is to write a document and have lots of persons sign it.

The problem they face is that there is nothing else they can accuse Pope Francis of. They already have accused him of heresy, apostasy, idolatry. They held a conference about whether the Pope could be deposed. They held a conference claiming this is the end times. They’ve accused him of being associated with the Antichrist. So the problem is how can they write yet another document, that does anything, that has any effect, that says anything more?

The only step left for them is to declare that Pope Francis is an antipope, that by virtue of heresy and other grave failings of faith, he has lost his jurisdiction. For all the ancient fathers of the Church, as Bellarmine says, held that manifest heretics soon lose all jurisdiction. They might warn him and offer the two corrections of Titus:

{3:10} Avoid a man who is a heretic, after the first and second correction,
{3:11} knowing that one who is like this has been subverted, and that he offends; for he has been condemned by his own judgment.

Or they might just claim he has had enough “corrections” and declare him to be not the valid Pope. That is blatant formal schism on their part, carrying the penalty of automatic excommunication. Priests who sign such a document will not receive permission to say the Latin Mass.

That is what I expect from them.

To the faithful of the Church, I say: put your faith in the words of Jesus, that each Pope is the Rock on which the Church is founded, and that the Church cannot fail, nor can the gates of Hell prevail over that Church or that Rock which is Her foundation. Then Jesus gave Peter and his successors the charism of never failing faith. So this decision by Pope Francis cannot be a grave failure of faith, nor can it be a grave error to choose the Novus Ordo for the Roman Rite as the ordinary form. The Church is indefectible precisely because She has the Pope with his never failing faith as Her Rock. So truth in the Holy Spirit by trusting in the Pope.

Ronald L. Conte Jr.