Bishops Swimming Against the Tide

As the Church enters a new shift rightward, bishops heroically battle their flocks in defense of the status quo

Serge Mazet’s The Myth of Sisyphus

When the church entered its revolutionary phase of the 1970s, centuries long custom, tradition and institutions were smashed under the guise of a popular mandate for reform. Those who favored aggiornamento (the attempt to modernize the Church into the present era, aka the 1970s) claimed a popular mandate of the Second Vatican Council, as well as the (relatively) popular reception of the liturgical reform. (Among those who remained in the Church.) For several decades, it was argued that those who favored the reintroduction of older customs and practices (such as kneeling, traditional architecture, etc) were a small reactionary minority who was standing in the way of progress.

As we moved further away from the Second Vatican Council, this began to slowly (sometimes glacially) change. Between the usual revolutionary current (where yesterday’s revolutionaries decide that they must conserve their changes and stop the revolution), apathy for further change, or a small but growing and passionate counterrevolution, the Church began shifting away from future revolution. The latter JPII and Benedict XVI years were years of ultimately ending the revolution of Vatican II, and finding what could be reintegrated. Eucharistic adoration returned. Access to the TLM was liberalized. Receiving communion kneeling and/or on the tongue increased in popularity. Folk music of the 70s faded. When Francis became pope in 2013, he was alarmed by these trends, being a child of the revolution, and himself saying the formative years of his life were the 1970s that everyone was moving from. He attempted to return the Church to the 1970s and early 80s, away from the John Paul II and Benedictine consensus.

I look at recent events in these lights, as a small assortment of allies of Pope Francis (or at least conventional Vatican thinking) have adopted increasingly vocal and public attempts to restore the 1970s, by force if necessary. In Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote a pastoral letter discouraging kneeling, attacking the reason Catholics kneel for communion as a sign of deficient theology. In the diocese of Wheeling Charleston (the one diocese for West Virginia), Bishop Brennan attacked the reasons the majority of Catholics in the country kneel after the Lamb of God as inconsistent with the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, demanded obedience, and then told those who questioned his decision to stop caring, as there were far more important things to care about. (Which raises the question why he himself so clearly cares if nobody should care.) Finally, in the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Dolan (through his diocesan infrastructure) sent out a mailing to priests warning them not to reintroduce altar rails in liturgical renovations, as their restoration would call into question the liturgical reforms of the Council, and norms within the United States. By their own admission, the requests for altar rails are “gathering steam.”

What are we to make of these increasingly hostile bishops adopting increasingly hostile rhetoric towards their flocks and pastors? I think the first thing to note is that these actions come not from strength, but weakness. Blase Cupich, despite being bishop for nearly a decade in Chicago, is still treated as an outsider by a substantial minority (if not plurality/majority) of his flock. Bishop Brennan is still trying to rebuild the trust and credibility of the Catholic Church in West Virginia, after the previous bishop left in disgrace over wild corruption, covering up of abuse, and potentially engaging in abuse himself. The Archdiocese of New York shrinks every year, and comes closer to the brink of bankruptcy. It is in this context that the wider shift to conservative and traditional positions is occuring in the American Church, and these bishops lack the credibility (and in Cupich’s case the language) of speaking to their flock. They do not smell like their sheep. They smell like the office desks they are increasingly confined to.

Each Bishop also acknowledges the growing popularity of the practices they are condemning or proscribing. Even though all of these instances concern the Novus Ordo only, the Bishops explicitly view their actions as defending the integrity of the liturgical reform of 1969. Nobody involved believes that their kneeling for communion is the first step of restoring the TLM. Yet for these bishops, acknowledging that these practices are gaining in popularity is a threat to the entire worldview they defend: that these practices were unpopular, bad, and kept the Church from Christ.

The final point is that these bishops have all made a conscious choice to introduce discord into their dioceses, believing it an acceptable risk that must be fought head on. Kneeling isn’t dividing the diocese of Chicago. Bishop Brennan’s decision on kneeling is likely going to be unenforceable, as if people don’t want to stand, they can always sit. If they can sit, why can’t they kneel? If someone is traveling through (since almost everyone else kneels after the Lamb of God), is a priest going to make an issue? Such a decree is nearly impossible to enforce long term. The only thing its going to do is annoy and anger those who like kneeling in his diocese, and will react with hostility and anger to something they like being taken away without cause. In New York, they realize that what they are prohibiting will continue to gain steam, yet they will have to devote increasing time to reminding people why this thing that is becoming more popular is actually bad.

I think this is likely to become a bigger problem over the next decade, as bishops (and probably popes) increasingly out of step with their flocks will have to increasingly attempt to enforce compliance on things that people just don’t want to do, increasing the risk of what we saw with Fiducia supplicans in 2024: A large portion of the worlds episcopate telling the Pope we’re not doing what you want, you can either bend the knee or go to war. That’s a dangerous position for a leader who lacks an army.