There is something unfair in every call to unity; not unfair in a profound sense, but in a sense of fairness. Calling for unity always carries the risk of messianism, of naivety, of ignoring the concrete nuances in which some sides have more reason than others. And there is also a risk of pride: who is one to call for unity? Who is one to assume that lecturing position? No one.
That is why this call is made from the lowest position. From that of the simple faithful, without great experience, without great studies in the matter and without any authority. From the back pew of the church, where sometimes things are seen that are not seen from the trenches.
The concern is that the battle for the Church is being fought today on several fronts at once, and each of them can be a good fight, and even an essential fight. In recent weeks, however, the feeling is one of absolute division. That everything is reproaches and stones thrown between the defenders of Tradition.
The diocesan priests
There are many priests who suffer the blow of incomprehension and loneliness for defending Tradition in their dioceses. Brilliant priests, with extraordinary academic records, who are sidelined and assigned to the most remote tasks for a single reason: the fear of their bishops that their sensitivity to the traditional liturgy, to doctrine, to Catholicism without adjectives, will generate a contagious effect and shine forth. And they suffer that loneliness without the umbrella of any strong structure: without a fraternity to shelter them, without their own chapels and without an institution to protect them.
I have seen the fruits of those marginalized priests. They help many faithful, convert many souls and serve the Church from their difficult position. They are a contagious example for other young priests and diocesan seminarians who do not yet have such a deep grasp of the battle. They are on the front line, and their fight is as hard as it is valuable.
And yet, sometimes they also receive arrows from within. It must hurt to be leaving your cassock in tatters and have people come and call you a modernist or question the validity of the sacraments you celebrate. It can be maintained that the new Mass is not bad because it contains any evil, but because of the absence of important elements; and it can also be maintained (which is another way of saying the same thing) that within the sacraments there is always a good. In no case is there reason to crush those who fight for Tradition from within the dioceses, living alongside the new rites. The traditional Mass illuminates and attracts by itself, and the harm caused by minimizing the liturgy or amputating some of its parts is also fought on that front.
We are many faithful who, with the current liturgy, first discover the importance of the grace of the sacraments in our lives and only later, in a process of constant conversion, discover in the traditional Mass a realm where that grace unfolds with greater depth in our spiritual life. There is a path to Tradition that many of us humbly walk alongside priests like these, who are knee-deep in mud and not in defensive watchtowers.
The traditional institutes: the fight from within
Those who fight for Tradition within the official structures from religious institutes, with more or less years of history, deserve the same respect, and also admiration. They do difficult work, probably impossible to match from the other fronts: they know the bishops of the world, they sit with them, they challenge them; sometimes they simply put a mirror in front of them and go back home with nothing. And they learn to take setbacks smiling at their own, enduring, looking for cracks and spaces to grow. They sustain ever-better seminaries and wage a decisive fight in hand-to-hand combat with the hierarchy: almost all the bishops of the world will have to sit at some point with one of these institutes, see themselves in that mirror and allow themselves to be challenged.
They are finding small spaces, sometimes marginal, occasionally larger. And they show us that part of the fight consists in permeating those bishops more inclined to understand the importance of preserving tradition; that of the thousands of bishops in the world, there are some. It is a partial solution, like all of them, but it is a real fight that saves many souls. Because let us not forget: we are here for the salvation of souls, and when we invoke that this is the most important thing, it is for everyone.
And yet, caricatures sometimes fall on them as well. It is profoundly unjust to slander them as traitors or renegades for having chosen a necessary role, one that truly opens cracks and brings many souls closer to the sacraments. They are good priests, with good seminaries, who manage authorized chapels and, at times, parishes.
The Society of Saint Pius X: the fight from the open air
There is, finally, a third front: that of the Society of Saint Pius X and its priests, who for decades have sustained seminaries, chapels and sacraments in canonical open air. One may discuss whether or not there exists a sufficient state of necessity. But, honestly, no one can deny what is the only motive for their disobedience: the conviction that it is indispensable for their seminaries to continue functioning; the conviction that the situation of extreme necessity in the Church is such that an unacceptable risk is run for souls if the priesthood and the Mass are not maintained in a work that is not subject to the abolitionist arbitrariness of a disoriented curia.
Whether shared or not, no one can say that it is an unfounded analysis. No one can seriously maintain that they consecrate bishops to usurp jurisdictions, appropriate episcopal palaces or build, hand in hand with political power, a parallel Church, as has happened in the real schisms of history. We are speaking of a fraternity of priests who want to give continuity to their seminaries and continue bringing the sacraments to the faithful. A fraternity that has waited almost forty years, until its two bishops are already very old, to consecrate the same number of bishops it consecrated four decades ago, when it had five times fewer priests. They apply, that is, a principle of minimalism: they have waited an entire generation to take this painful step with the sole aim of guaranteeing basic continuity. There is no schismatic intention. No one intends to create a parallel authority or usurp anything; not even the new bishops receive any hierarchical rank within the Fraternity itself. They are priests dedicated to sacramental continuity, and that is the motive for their disobedience.
Perhaps we do not share that disobedience, neither in its forms nor in its timing; perhaps we even consider it dispensable. But let us not destroy them. Let us not rub in supposed excommunications that are more than questionable. Let us not label them as schismatics, as non-Catholics, as outcasts. Their battle is that of the Church: the salvation of souls, the sacraments, the priesthood and the Mass of all time. And when in that fight we shoot arrows at one another, there is only one who rejoices.
The hierarchy: filial respect, firmness and hope
A final key to unity remains: indulgence toward the non-modernist hierarchy. Toward that generation of bishops, cardinals and popes formed in decades of enormous ecclesial confusion, in disoriented and often destructive parish and diocesan environments. They come from a very specific mental framework in which speaking of recovering Tradition simply sounds absurd. With them the relationship must be one of respect, humility, firmness and hope.
Because many are challenged by example: that of the diocesan priest who gives battle in solitude, that of the institutes that openly defend the traditional Mass within the official structures, and also that of the Society of Saint Pius X itself, whose dialogue with the bishops converts and teaches by example. Toward those who are not militants of modernism or of destruction, and we all know how to identify them, they must be won over with patience, with persistence and with example, from filial respect. That is also a substantial part of unity: a unity that includes the Pope and many bishops.
What is at stake
No one is more or less pure in the battle for the Church. Each front has its own bitterness: that of the solitary soldier in his parish, that of the negotiator who returns home with nothing, that of the one who bears the stigma of disobedience. Let us think of all these keys and all these fronts from unity, not from constant questioning and division.