Hold Firmly to Christ
With reasonable success, I have tried to keep my nose out of Church politics after the disastrous and demoralizing news that broke over the summer of 2018. It just so happened that the summer of 2018 coincided with the beginning of my official conversion process—something that, due to where I converted and was brought into the Church, took approximately a year. My family and I walked into Catholicism with our eyes already open, in other words; we knew how bad the situation was.
Vatican politics, USCCB politics, and Catholic society politics in general aren’t fun to watch unfold. Unlike secular politics, in which little hope for positive change is usually found but plenty of dark mirth can be had—sometimes, anyway—the politics of our prelates has souls on the line. Poor decisions in catechesis, misplaced efforts of “ecumenism” in search of “dialogue”, the toleration of shepherds advocating total moral abasement, and a seemingly widespread embrace of secular politics or money at the expense of Catholic social teaching—these are not merely commonplace, and not merely the talking points of anti-Catholic moderns, but failings of the Church that make it excruciatingly difficult for many sincere members of the flock to enter by the narrow gate.
It would be remiss of any observer of the Church to see what has happened over the last century and consider Our Lord’s words in Matthew chapter seven, and to see so many of our prelates constructing billboards alongside the broad road that leads to destruction. Such billboards, unfortunately, do not display messages of condemnation, guidance, loving correction, and directions toward the narrow gate, either; they come instead painted in rainbows, issuing apologias for Judas, or espousing the salvation of all. Even access to the Sacraments, as we found out last year during Covidtide, was something worthy of suspension by our prelates—and all over fears of a virus only marginally more deadly, as we’re finding out, than a bad flu.
To a certain degree, the hierarchy has always been the biggest obstacle when it came to proper evangelization. Modern takes about hypocrisy stoke Donatist sentiments among those outside of the Church; “okay,” many ask the faithful, “your arguments regarding natural theology and the historical claims of the Church might be valid, but how do you expect me to accept your pope?” Some may find this line of reasoning silly—an average Catholic almost certainly would, at least one from a hundred years ago. Papal primacy, however, in an age of hyper-socialization and mass media, has taken on new meanings. But so too has the general role of the supreme pontiff adapted. For better? I don’t know. For worse? Apparently.
It probably goes without saying that I’m not Papa Francis’ biggest fan. He seems to word things with intentional ambiguities, so that those in the Church who constitute the obvious fifth column are able to run in all sorts of wild directions. But important distinctions are worth making; there is the pope that the media wants you to see, and then there’s the pope as we can actually understand him.
The secular media wants Pope Francis to be their pope: the head of the Catholic Church who will finally accept homosexual unions (absurdly called marriages), bless same-sex couples, and, eventually, reverse the teachings of Humane Vitae. They want women to be priests, priests to be married, marriage to be homosexual, and homosexuals to be open and active in the episcopate. But why those outside of the Church care so much about these things should make any faithful Catholic hesitant to even grant their inquests the time of day. It’s a pretty blatant and obvious humiliation ritual: “we only like you Catholics when you do what we say, and we’re telling you now to reverse things that cannot be reversed without sacrificing your faith in the process. The Episcopalians and the Anglicans did it, so why can’t you?”
That isn’t going to happen. At least, not in any official capacity. In more practical terms, we’ll just have to see. German bishops, who openly defied the pope on the topic of blessing same-sex unions just a few months ago, have so far seen no blow-back from Rome. If there’s been any, none of it has been made public—and in a world of information access increasingly oriented toward public theater, neglecting public blow-back is only one step removed from tacit acceptance.
Both the secular media, as well as much of the reactionary Catholic media, will present the pope in what we can at least agree is his most negative light. The reactionaries do it in order to profit off of some understandable grievances and outrages, while the secular press does the same in order to continue spreading discord among Catholics. As for the pope himself, well, we only have his own actions and words to go by, and they’re confusing enough as it is.
Or at least, they were, until yesterday. His most recent motu proprio, Traditionis Custodes, makes pretty clear what his position is liturgically and socially: the Tridentine Mass, which cannot be abrogated, must be restricted. The “experiment”, as it’s referred to in the document, of allowing what was never supposed to be restricted in the first place, looks like it’s coming to an end. To put this in perspective, a brief look at what the differences between the two forms of liturgy are is prudent. Why the Mass cannot simply be dismissed, and defusing the most typical arguments defending its mid-century revisions are both crucial steps to putting Traditionis Custodes into context.
The Missal of 1570 and Its Reforms
Up until 1570, different orders of the Latin Rite were celebrated without difficulty. Prior to 1570, in fact, the supreme pontiff hadn’t once issued legal decrees according to liturgy; despite the heresies the Church had combated up until that point, there had scarcely been any need. But let us remember the state of Christianity in Europe at that time: fractured, chaotic, and disintegrating by the decade. Quo Primum, the papal bull that first promulgated the Tridentine form of the Mass,sat almost perfectly in between two of the most defining moments of the Protestant revolution; it had been fifty-three years since Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door in Wittenberg, and it would be another forty-eight before emissaries from the Empire were defenestrated in Prague.
Considering the liturgical elements of the Protestant grievances—particularly those of Calvin and Luther—it was no doubt fitting for the Church to come to some standardized consensus regarding the Latin Rite. When one reads into the liturgical flexibility of the middle ages—the heresies and social unrest caused by Jan Hus’ movement come to mind—then the standardization seems appropriate not just as a response to the then-relevant Protestant threat, but in response to generations of liturgical inconsistency that opened the door to such a threat in the first place.
Father Raymond Dulac expounds on this with great succinctness:
[T]he process of the Protestant disintegration of the rites of the Mass had to be stopped. It was favoured by the innumerable variations of Catholic Missals and by the abuses which the fathers narrowed down to three principal ones: superstition, irreverence and avarice.
Already in Bologna, on 28th November 1547, a Commission was charged by the Council with finding abuses or errors “relative to the Mass, Indulgences, Purgatory and monastic vows” (Act., Goerresgesell Edition, I, 723).
But it was especially in 1562 that this objective came more into focus: a new Commission of seven Fathers was formed in July. It drew up a catalogue of abuses of all sorts, then a summary, and finally a list of nine canons which were submitted for discussion at the Council in September.1
The consolidation of the Latin Rite was done in the interest of combating both the Protestant heresies—all of whose heresiarchs directly attacked the Mass itself—and the ostensible causes for the Protestant revolution itself. There’s no argument that the Church was in need of reform toward the end of the middle ages, but it was the Council of Trent, not the actions or writings of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, or Cranmer, which took the shape of that reform. This is the important thing to remember with regard to the Tridentine order of the Mass: it was not something invented at the Council, nor was it the a radical reform implemented in the interests of appeasing acknowledged special interest groups in the Church. It was partly a defensive measure, partly a reformative measure, but wholly a measure that fundamentally preserved the forms of the Mass that were affected.
This topic is one that deserves (and has received) far more attention than is necessary to cover here. It is only in the interests of comparing it to the Pauline order of 1970, understood as the Novus Ordo Missae today. Volumes have been published as to how radically the means and methods of its reformers were at variance with those in the sixteenth century. Current apologists of the New Order will frequently invoke the results of Trent in order to defend the liturgical changes implemented in the 1960s, but a simple—and even brief—comparison of the 1962 Missal and that of 1970 is enough to suggest otherwise. The mild additions thereafter also come to mind. A dive into the methods used by the reformers of the sixties, to say nothing of both their stated goals and unstated interests, only makes such a comparison to these even less tenable. There should be no argument that the changes in the Latin Rite were radical and unprecedented, and to a degree, even unforeseen.
Please note, too, that I refer here specifically to the changes authorized by St. Paul VI. The implementation of these changes, and the radical departures from the official Novus Ordo Missae that became commonplace across Europe and America, are altogether different stories. The standard go-to criticisms of the New Order such as widespread adoption of Communion in the hand, or extraordinary ministers, or the flagrant and bizarre aesthetic additions to the ceremony in the interests of “ecumenism”—these are separate subjects altogether.
None of this, however, would have mattered much had the 1970 Missal not been inflicted with such abandon. Those Catholics who persevered through the 70s (of whom I obviously cannot count myself), will remember the suppression of the Tridentine form. They remember when the altars were ripped out, when the altar rails were demolished, and when their priests were censured. And they remember what was offered to them instead. Some of these grievances were addressed and rectified under the pontificate of St. John Paul II. Some weren’t. It remained the case for most of the laity that until 2007, the Tridentine form of the Mass could not be found being celebrated by anyone except the SSPX—the canonical status of which at the time was in doubt.
The question is this: could the Tridentine order of the Mass be abrogated? Legally, as the order is considered a product of the Council of Trent, it could lose a certain canonical status. However, practically speaking, as the order was not invented by the Council but rather consolidated from the recognized and existing Roman Rite of the period, it can’t. As Michael Davies wrote,
The Roman Missal promulgated by Quo Primum does not exist in virtue of this Bull, i.e., by a personal decree of St. Pius V. Count Neri Capponi explains that the Bull added the sanctions of positive law to the weight of customary law, and that the consensus of canonists is that, in such a case, should the positive law be abrogated, the customary law remains operative. Positive law does not abrogate customary law but is added to it.2
“Positive law does not abrogate customary law but is added to it.” The importance of this understanding is not to be understated; indeed, there’s a de facto understanding that this is part of what makes law an effective mediator in the secular world, as well. The Tridentine order was, in effect, the Latin Rite, and in this way it pre-existed even Quo Primum and the missal of St. Pius V. This is the fundamental difference between the Mass as it was put to order by 1570 and that which was promulgated four hundred years later.
This is also the root of the problem. The New Order of the Mass was promulgated under the assumption—and it was received with the assumption—that it was fundamentally the same Rite, and therefore the same Mass, as the order it was effectively replacing. But where the reforms of previous popes had made only mild alterations to the otherwise identical missal and rubrics of St. Pius V, the missal of 1970 resulted in celebrations of the Mass that were difficult to recognize. The reform was so radical as to be aptly considered revolutionary, at least by traditionalists. And on this point, there’s little argument to be made to the contrary; when you can’t recognize what has been instituted under the auspices of ‘reform’, you can’t call it a reform anymore. Whether this was due to the 1970 Missal itself or due to the errors embraced by some of its celebrants and tacitly ignored by so many of their superiors can be hard to make out, and for our purposes here, that’s ultimately irrelevant. What is obvious is this: something went horribly wrong in 1968, and one of the results was a radical alteration to the liturgy of the Church. That much should not be up for debate.
Summorum Pontificum and Traditionis Custodes
As may be well-known to readers of the Pillarist, Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum in 2007. Those who haven’t read it might try to tell you that this re-authorized the public celebration of the Tridentine form, and at least in any practical sense, they’re right. From this apostolic letter, the proliferation of both the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) and the Institute of Christ the King (ICKSP) became far more widespread than their reach had previously been. No longer did a Catholic have to fear the celebration of the Tridentine form to be a schismatic act.
But actually read Summorum, or talk to someone who has, and you find out pretty quickly that this was not really the case. Although in practice, it seemed like it ‘re-authorized’ its celebration, in truth Summorum recognized, according to its first article, that the “Roman Missal, which was promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962”, was “never abrogated”3. In other words, contrary to lay Catholic experience for about thirty years, the Mass of their fathers was still legal in its celebration. In a single statement, Pope Benedict put to rest the canonical frustrations of so many Roman lawyers over those decades; the Tridentine form had never been abrogated, and the suppressions that had taken place were, well, things best not to speak of at any length.
The letter continues, and this is where things start to get confusing in today’s context:
The Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi (rule of prayer) of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. The Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V and revised by Blessed John XXIII is nonetheless to be considered an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi of the Church and duly honoured for its venerable and ancient usage. These two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi (rule of faith); for they are two usages of the one Roman rite.4
In case you ever wondered why the Mass of the ages was considered “extraordinary”, while the Mass promulgated in 1970 was “ordinary”, you can see here where the differentiation came from. It was Pope Benedict’s intention and presumption that “these two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division of the Church’s lex credendi”; his optimism was warranted, perhaps, when we consider how intimately he was involved with the Second Vatican Council in the first place.
Yesterday’s motu proprio, however, effectively undoes this assumption. Whether a traditionalist, a conservative, or a liberal Catholic believe that the different orders of the Mass have resulted in a split in the congruity of the Faith is irrelevant, at this point. The Holy See, or at least this pontificate, is on the record as proclaiming that it has:
The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.5
There is only one Mass, and that Mass is contained in the missal of Paul VI, or so the letter seems to be saying. What this means in any practical sense, when considered in light of how that Mass has been promulgated and how its abuses have been tacitly ignored by so much of the clergy, is neither up for debate nor even willing to be clarified. This isn’t about standardizing a Mass, and it’s not about promoting unity. That the document expresses the interests of the current pontiff to “press on ever more in the constant search for ecclesial communion” by restricting the celebration of the traditional form of the Mass is striking, to say the least.
Needless to say, that doesn’t bode well. Despite the obvious contradiction of the Pope Emeritus, his (still-living) predecessor, the document’s practical value does not openly disregard the reality of the Tridentine form. Rather, it seeks specific suppression of it, even if it stops short of explicitly stating as such. Read it yourself. Talk to your priest about it, if you’re able. Among its implications are that dispensation for a priest to celebrate the Tridentine form will be reduced to lines analogous to “may-issue” status of concealed-carry permits in the United States. Express permission is required by the bishop, but he must first “consult” the Holy See6—and what this means, although I can guess, is not explained. Priests who already celebrate it, at the very least, need only their bishop’s stated approval7.
Nonetheless, we can try to rationalize our way out of bad news. The document briefly mentions what is required of a priest to celebrate the Tridentine form:
This priest should be suited for this responsibility, skilled in the use of the Missale Romanum antecedent to the reform of 1970, possess a knowledge of the Latin language sufficient for a thorough comprehension of the rubrics and liturgical texts, and be animated by a lively pastoral charity and by a sense of ecclesial communion. This priest should have at heart not only the correct celebration of the liturgy, but also the pastoral and spiritual care of the faithful.8
While this may sink the ship for a number of currently-celebrating diocesan priests—to say nothing of those members of their flock that eagerly desire the old Latin form—there is something to be said for increasing the bare-minimum requirements of those who seek to offer the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Granted, one might easily fire back, “sure, but why not make this the standard for all priests?” Valid point, particularly when we consider that the Sacrifice offered in the Tridentine form is the same as that offered under the New Order. You’ll have to ask the Holy See about that.
There is something else to be said about this division, however. Despite, as mentioned, the interest in promoting unity, the cordoning off of the Tridentine form off to specific societies ordered toward its preservation returns a very obvious, unignorable distinction between “the Latin Mass-goers” and “everybody else”. Secondly, that the bishops are vested with the complete authority over diocesan celebrations of the Tridentine form creates visible distinctions between dioceses split across liturgical lines. Neither of these things promote unity in the Church, and neither seem to promote the well being of the flock at large. And yet, it’s hard not to see these probable consequences as anything other than expected and intentional.
The silver lining is a silver lining nonetheless, however. Hopefully, greater standards on the celebration of the form means that the priests who do celebrate it will be nothing short of fanatical in their devotion. And if there is anything that the Church needs, now or ever, it is exactly such fanaticism.
What Happens Now
The fallout from all of this has been fairly predictable, although unfortunate. As of yet, there’s no clear pattern as to how the bishops will implement this. In anticipation of this document, the bishop of Dijon, France kicked the FSSP out of his diocese, leaving three hundred faithful suddenly left without their spiritual shepherds. The statement from the diocese included the following:
The fact that the faithful will now be entrusted to diocesan priests will only strengthen their communion with the diocesan Church.
Pray for our brothers in Dijon! Meanwhile, in the US, there have been welcoming reports on social media of bishops already granting their diocesan TLM-celebrants authority to celebrate the Tridentine Mass. It’s only been a day, after all. It’s going to take at least a week for this to get sorted out, and even longer than that to judge how deeply this affects the practice of the liturgy. I wouldn’t get my hopes up, but at the same time, it’s important to guard against too much pessimism or despair, as well.
Worrying, too, is the extent of the division seen between Catholics on social media. We should do best to remember that Twitter isn’t real life, but we can’t ignore the extent of its reach or the reality of how it shapes social narrative. That any Catholic, much less so many, would express glee and relish in satisfaction at the news of a liturgy’s abolition is nothing sort of reprehensible. They seem possessed by the fear of that boogeyman mad-Trad who brought this letter upon himself because he couldn’t behave—partly because so much of the Church has a vested interest in maligning those who seek the Tridentine liturgy as schismatics, or worse. The reality is that most of us just want the Sacraments, and if we have a choice about it, we prefer them delivered in a way most visibly consistent with the Church’s doctrines and authority. If the Holy See is going to try to decree, without explanation and against reason, to deny this choice, and demand that we submit to certain revolutions that were made commonplace after the 1970s, then of course some of us are going to be alarmed, upset, and confused.
And then there are those who feign ignorance of the issue and will try to treat the letter as if it was of the same relevancy as what typically passes for modern day encyclicals. To them, I can only ask the simple question: does the liturgy matter, or doesn’t it? If it doesn’t matter, then why is the older form being limited? If it does, then why put on airs of ambivalence? There’s something appropriate to be had in ignoring the politics and documents that are issued from Rome. This one, however, is not such a document. Making light of those who have already or may soon lose access to the Tridentine form is wholly inappropriate.
The place that Traditionis Custodes occupies in the present climate is one that tacitly acknowledges that the Church post-Vatican II—the “Post-Conciliar Church,” according to some traditionalists—is indeed different from the Church that came before. This is a claim long-denied by nearly all prelates and clergy, and even most of the laity. Traditionis Custodes practically says out loud what had before been largely only implied: “The liturgy before 1970 was different. Yes, it was changed. Yes, radically so. Yes, it should be the standard liturgy. Yes, this refers to the rites and forms of public prayer surrounding the Mass. Yes, parts of it are unrecognizable. No, you are not allowed to ask why. No, you should not want the old way back. No, there’s nothing wrong with the old way. No, you should not ask any more questions.”
Pragmatically, we should write to our bishops if we fear that the Tridentine Mass will again be suspended, even if by rights, it shouldn’t be. We should write also to our bishops who, fortunately, have made open statements of their support for the continued celebration of the Tridentine form. Vocal, obvious support may be even more important at this time than the airing of grievances.
We should also remind our priests that they have our support. We should organize, even if without an official capacity to support our efforts, into prayer groups. Community is important, after all.
But most of all, we should pray. We should pray for our bishops, especially those who decide to restrict the Mass in their dioceses. We should pray for our priests, who very obviously want not to be prohibited from celebrating the Mass of their fathers, and those whom, as in the case of Dijon, were bodily removed from their flock. We should pray for each other, and for ourselves, that we do not fall into any sins of indiscretion in the wake of what can only be described as a robbery. And we should pray for the Holy Father, not only—or even specifically—that he comes around to our point of view, but that the will of God be most fully realized, and that the Pope, as well as ourselves, may be granted the graces to cooperate more fully with it.
We can speak to ourselves of dark times ahead, and maybe that’s true. But let us not sin against faith, hope, or charity. Whatever hardship we receive in life we were born for. These are our times to live through, and our times to do with as we can. But these are our times also to become saints.
1Dulac, Raymond, “Saint Pius V’s Bull Promulgating the Restored Roman Missal”, Itineraires 162 [April 1972], reprinted In Defence of the Roman Mass, trans. Peadar Walsh (Te Deum Press, 2020), 279.
2Davies, Michael, Pope Paul’s New Mass, (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2009), 11.
3Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, Art. 1.
4Ibid.
5Francis, Traditionis Custodes, Art. 1.
6Ibid, Article 4.
7Ibid, Article 5.
8Ibid, Article 3, Section 4.
