The tone of despair in this post is unwarranted, and seems to be informed by a poor grasp of church history and the amount of time reform can take. Some examples: The Arian controversy lasted for over a century, during which time some churches were in the hands of Arians and some in the hands of Catholics. The liturgical life must have been a mess, and we know from St. Basil the Great that the faithful in some places were reduced to worshiping outside of buildings, in the middle of the desert. If you were born near the start of this crisis and lived a very long life, you wouldn’t have seen the end of it. Regardless, you stayed faithful to the Nicene faith. The iconoclasm controversy too lasted for over a century, in the course of which icons were smashed and Christians who venerated them were tortured and sometimes martyred. There was a partial restoration (comparable to Summorum), then a savage reversal (comparable to Traditionis), and then a final triumph of orthodoxy. Again, if you were born at the start of this crisis and lived a very long life, you would not have seen the end of it; but that was no reason to stop venerating icons and relics. Moving forward, the abuses of pluralism (holding multiple sees), absenteeism (holding a see but never living there), investiture (receiving sees from a king or emperor), and commendatory appointments (a man receiving the revenues of multiple offices while never ruling as abbot) took centuries to overthrow, in spite of the fact that they greatly crippled the Church. On the liturgical front: one pope (Clement VII) authorized the novel breviary of Cardinal Quiñones, another (Paul III) approved it in 1536, and yet a third (Pius V) suppressed it in 1568 as a rupture from tradition. Urban VIII’s meddling with the breviary in order to satisfy Baroque admirers of classical Latin, never accepted by the monastic orders, was partially undone by Paul VI when he restored some of the original texts in the Liturgia Horarum (even if that book has problems of its own). Gregorian chant existed in a state of corruption for centuries before its melodies were restored by the monks of Solesmes with the support of Pius X. One could go on and on with examples of how major and minor problems took decades and sometimes centuries to resolve. Church history does not take place at the speed of tweets and podcasts; it is more like God himself: “But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8). This may not be consoling for someone who suffers under a bad liturgical situation, but it helps to keep things in perspective, reminding us that our duty is, on the one hand, to pray, do penance, and beg the Lord for intervention, and on the other hand to work for real solutions and seek out better alternatives for ourselves (e.g., by moving from one place to another). In this way we recognize the God is the Lord of history and that He has given us intelligence and free will to navigate the crisis. Lastly, it is very misleading, because far too vague, to talk about “6 popes who supported the Novus Ordo.” John Paul I hardly counts. That leaves us with Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV. The first key difference is that Montini, Wojtyla, and Ratzinger were all deeply formed by the traditional Roman rite they celebrated for years, so even when they took up the new rite, they were celebrating it with eyes and a mind rooted in tradition. In a certain sense, they informed the Novus Ordo body with a Vetus Ordo soul. Ratzinger, of course, famously critiqued the liturgical reform in a hundred ways we need not go into here. Bergoglio was the first pope to be ordained in the new rite and never to have celebrated the old rite—and it showed, in every way. Although Prevost suffers under the same liturgical deracination, he’s sufficiently younger to have dodged some of the worst absurdities of the Age of Aquarius, and brings to the liturgy a sense of decorum and respect for tradition that, frankly, is sorely lacking in many clergy of his generation. My point is that none of this quite adds up to “6 popes who radically reject tradition and ideologically wish to impose the new rite at all costs.” The picture is rather more complex (as one would expect): Paul VI expressed regret for the loss of the old rite that he himself overthrew, and already began giving permissions for the old rite to continue (no doubt temporarily, in his mind); John Paul II opened that door wider with the worldwide indult; Benedict XVI threw the door wide open in 2007 and influenced a huge number of clergy who either celebrate or admire the Vetus Ordo, which now manifestly has a permanent place in the Church. The saga of “liturgical renewal” in the Church is far from over, and if I were a betting man, I’d be placing a lot of bets on the old rite at this time.