In a move that I think should be applauded by the traditional minded, Bishop Renato Corti of Novara, Itay, has suspended 3 priests who refused to celebrate the “ordinary form” of the Mass on Sunday, according to the newspaper La Stampa.

Fathers Alberto Secci, Stefano Coggiola and Marco Pizzocchi refused to celebrate Sunday Masses after Bishop Corti said that they could not exclusively celebrate the traditional Latin Mass.

Good. How can you be a priest and refuse to celebrate a valid form of the Roman rite? How can you disobey your bishop? Disobedience is disobedience. This kind of rigidness is not the kind of thing that helps the cause of the extraordinary form, it hurts.

Anyone that loves the TLM and applauded Summorum Ponitifcum should also applaud Bishop Corti’s decisive actions.

Update:
Rorate Reports that the translation that led to the above is not a good one and the situation is a little different than it originally appeared.

Actually, the La Stampa report does not say that they were suspended, but that they “suspended” themselves (“il parroco…si รจ autosospeso”) – that they went “on strike” (“sciopero”) because they were ordered to celebrate the Latin Mass only once every Sunday and only in the afternoon, even though most faithful in their parishes prefer the Traditional Mass (this was the “interpretative” decision of their Bishop which motivated their protest). The episcopal Vicar for the region managed to send priests to celebrate the New Mass in Italian (for a very small number of faithful).