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Not exactly a question, but definitely small-scale (or niche) and probably not a good topic for the main thread:
Pope Leo has granted an exemption for a parish in Texas to continue the Traditional Latin Mass
Early this year, the Diocese of Charlotte, NC issued, then delayed, a reduction in the number of locations for the TLM. The open secret is that the Vatican probably told the Bishop "slow your roll, guy!"
Is this enough evidence, now, to develop some cautious optimism about restrictions on the TLM easing?
No. The pope is on summer vacation and unlikely to have been the decision maker on this one, even if it bears his name.
I had a feeling you'd reply with some knowledge. Much appreciated.
Un-restricting the TLM and normalized SSPX relations are the two things I've watching for. I believe I'll be watching for some time.
TC is too unpopular with the first world bishops, and not really asked for by the Latin American or third world ones, to stick around. That doesn't mean Summorum Pontificum is coming back but it has to get loosened for political reasons.
What do you mean by 'normalized'.
There is a tendency for conservative Catholics in the Anglosphere to wait eagerly for a big, beautiful deal that isn't coming, and won't be anytime soon, and claim that nothing short of a big, beautiful deal makes any difference. TBH, the conservative American bishops want a big, beautiful deal. But no one else does. The Vatican doesn't particularly want a big, beautiful deal. The bishops in other locations the SSPX is present in don't want a big, beautiful deal(what they do want varies, of course). The liberals don't want a big, beautiful deal. The other Latin mass groups don't particularly care for a big, beautiful deal. The society itself doesn't want a big, beautiful deal. Instead the gradual process of increasingly regular legal status, relations, etc which has been happening since 2007, didn't cease under Francis, and is probably going to continue on roughly the same trajectory makes the society, the Vatican, the French bishops, etc very happy. French bishops don't want to be stuck answering for the society's far right political associations if the French deep state steps up the cordon sanitaire against FN(which the SSPX officially supported since the Jean-Marie le Pen days), and other European bishops are mostly leery of the same situation developing; SSPX leadership has literally been prosecuted for hate speech and this is, well, Europe. But they also don't want to take the risk of a hardline attitude towards the SSPX, and most of them like the flexibility to grant faculties and negotiate with them. The Vatican doesn't want a big, beautiful deal it can be beholden too- especially given the SSPX history of playing hardball- and doesn't want the political blowback of whatever deal might get announced. It also appreciates the SSPX's influence among 'independent/irregular' groups of a traditional persuasion. And the society enjoys the flexibility of not having a formal deal, obviously, but they also don't want the attention of anti-far-right secular politicians, or a blowback from the terms of such a deal, or whatever, and, crucially, they don't envision themselves as a permanent organization. The SSPX's conception of its own future is that it will dissolve itself upon accomplishing its goals of banishing modernism from the church- part of their confidence that this will happen is psychohistory and conspiracy theories about apocalyptic prophecies, of course, but they also see themselves as well on track to accomplish them over a long enough timeframe(and they do not think in terms of years or even decades) by their own metrics. The regular Latin mass groups see the irregularity as an insurance policy for themselves.
Instead everyone gets what they want, except for conservative Americans. The SSPX gets to make steady progress on their plans measured in centuries. The French bishops and liberals get a convenient way to distance themselves from icky right wingers, but without declaring them to be in schism. The Vatican doesn't have to deal with everything a big beautiful deal would entail. The FSSP and ICK(who control the negotiating commissions, either directly or through sympathizers) get their insurance policy. The bishops of persecuted Christians in parts of Asia get society priests to violate local laws for them with plausible deniability(no, I will not provide a source, although SSPX clergy who are appropriately placed will discuss it freely if asked in person). Nobody has to give a particular interpretation of certain passages of Vatican II quasi-official endorsement(this disappoints conservative American bishops, who broadly do not hate VII but also identify the 'hermaneutic of rupture' or 'supercouncil thesis' as a primary problem in the church today. They're also mostly canon lawyers who are used to dealing with a markedly more cliquish and sectarian local church than is the global norm- as I keep pointing out, tradcath is, in the US, one part of a collage of different conservative Catholic movements, all of which would be reckoned as basically concerned with orthodoxy, socially conservative, and highly devout. It might be the biggest but is definitely a top five, and highly religious Catholics in the US are increasingly picky about where they go to mass.). Nobody has to sort out what's going on with the SSPX's associated religious orders, everywhere all at once, or their chapels that local bishops don't like, or whatever.
You gave an effortful and illuminating reply, so I'll do my best to answer your question.
When I say 'normalized', I suppose what I'm after boils down to two points.
A consensus that the SSPX is not schismatic and that attending their liturgy and receiving the Eucharist is fine and not illicit. This lets more people attend the TLM in parishes / dioceses that lack one.
The ability (built on point number 1) for SSPX clergy to evangelize and catechize. Regardless of one's political opinions regarding the SSPX, their seminarians come out extremely well educated and theologically solid. This cannot necessarily be said about many diocesan seminarians - with the major caveat that the variance across the USA can be quite large. I don't need to recapitulate the how and why of really bad liturgies emerging in the 70s and 80s, but suffice it to say, part of the cause was sub-par seminary training and study for priests of that generation. Although it does seem like the younger generation takes it more seriously, I met a friend-of-a-friend priest in his early thirties who, beer in hand at a wedding, announced he was "really into astrology." I'm not going as far as saying he's heretical or satanic. Quite the opposite - he was "father friendly / youth pastor / acoustic guitar" levels of spiritually flaccid. I wasn't scandalized, I was disappointed that this was a fairly recent product of a seminary.
The SSPX, I believe, has ordained just over 1,000 priests now (USA and rest of the world). That's 1,000 theologically sound clergymen who could be used for a whole variety of projects that require a strong theological foundation.
Regarding your excellent outline of the political realities regarding the SSPX, Vatican, and various groups of bishops, it all makes sense to me and I understand exactly the odd situation of conservative American Bishops. As a country, we always kind of make whatever the 'thing' is into our own, don't we?
Online tradcaths are mostly that - online. If every rando posting DEUS VULT memes would simply go to Mass regularly, we'd probably see some real demographic change across parishes. IRL tradcaths are too busy having big families and experimenting with various levels of crunchy-ness (small scale farming, local produce, raw milk etc. etc.) The theologically rigorous folks I try to spend time with also frame TLM discussion exactly as you did; TC isn't popular and needs to be loosened, but we probably aren't going to revert to Summorum Pontificum. My bet is that we'll get to a spot where any parish that goes to the trouble of requesting approval for a TLM probably gets it from their Bishop unless there are very peculiar circumstances. This would, I hope, lead to more diocesan priests seeking training in the Extraordinary Rite.
Again, what do you mean by ‘consensus’? The Vatican does not consider them in schism. The people who call them schismatic are mostly unhinged polemicists, either of the sort that unironically use phrases like ‘schismatic from the council’ or boosters of particular movements which have unrelated bad blood.
Diocesan bishops can give whatever faculties they want to SSPX priests, same as for FSSP or ICK priests. This happens at lower, but not much lower, rates. American and French bishops like using priest who regularly celebrate both rites for major diocesan initiatives but you don’t find FSSP priests doing this stuff either, even if they’re over represented as exorcists.
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