The Beginning of the End of Traditionis Custodes
The Leaking Begins
A Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated at the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena at the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, Sept. 15, 2017 (Photo: Edward Pentin)
When Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes (severely limiting the Latin Mass), a funny thing happened in the first 48 hours: most bishops shrugged. Even allies of the pope used their authority in church law to dispense themselves from the decree while “studying” its potential impact. In many dioceses around the world, that “studying” is still ongoing. This was a funny thing, because if you read the accompanying letter of Pope Francis explaining his decision, we find the following:
With the passage of thirteen years, I instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to circulate a questionnaire to the Bishops regarding the implementation of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene. Regrettably, the pastoral objective of my Predecessors, who had intended “to do everything possible to ensure that all those who truly possessed the desire for unity would find it possible to remain in this unity or to rediscover it anew”, has often been seriously disregarded. An opportunity offered by St. John Paul II and, with even greater magnanimity, by Benedict XVI, intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities, was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.
After laying his various concerns about both traditionalists and the Latin Mass itself, he announces that the very situation the bishops describe “constrains” him to act in defense of the unity of the Church:
In defense of the unity of the Body of Christ, I am constrained to revoke the faculty granted by my Predecessors. The distorted use that has been made of this faculty is contrary to the intentions that led to granting the freedom to celebrate the Mass with the Missale Romanum of 1962. Because “liturgical celebrations are not private actions, but celebrations of the Church, which is the sacrament of unity”, they must be carried out in communion with the Church. Vatican Council II, while it reaffirmed the external bonds of incorporation in the Church — the profession of faith, the sacraments, of communion — affirmed with St. Augustine that to remain in the Church not only “with the body” but also “with the heart” is a condition for salvation.
To hear the Pope tell it, the Bishops were describing a liturgical anarchy where subversive traditionalists were presenting a serious danger to the Church, and the only way this could be mitigated was by revoking Summorum Pontificum’s liberalizing approach. In attempting to square this perceived reality with the actual responses of the Bishops, traditionalists had a pretty easy answer: the Pope was fibbing, or had a case of willful tunnel vision, where he only heard voices telling him what he already wanted to hear. For statements like this, several defenders of TC found it outrageous to even suggest it, even as bishops continued to decline to act, and the Pope revoked the authority he “granted” to Bishops in TC in a later rescript, now reserving to himself and the CDW(now DDW) prefect the authority to permit the Latin Mass.
It is in this context that Diane Montagna offers a truly fascinating leak: someone in Rome leaked her the executive summary of the survey, which was accepted by the DDF and almost certainly given to Francis. (Montagna’s story of Francis yanking the copy out of Ladaria’s hands may or may not be apocryphal, but I don’t think anyone seriously is suggesting that it did not end up in Francis’ lap. Given the results, such a move would be a grave scandal and insubordination by a curial prefect.) In outlining a position that could be described as the consensus, the bishops said that:
The liturgical peace and unity was threatened not by the Latin Mass, but a small minority of Bishops trying to stop it from being offered in their dioceses
Summorum Pontificum was not done for the SSPX (contrary to the articulation of Francis in TC)
Most bishops were fine with SP and with the existence of the Latin Mass
That some traditionalists did indeed have extreme opinions, but it was not fair to generalize, and the appropriate response was responsive pastoral care by bishops, not a crackdown.
She provides the full document in both English and Italian, and it is well worth checking out. What are we to make of this?
The first point is that the document is almost certainly authentic. It is a detailed document and includes admissions against interest of traditionalists: that there were indeed Bishops who favored the suppression of the Latin Mass, or a return to the 1984/88 indult, and that Rome did indeed view certain aspects of traditionalist thought concerning that warranted a real response. (Even if that response was pastoral engagement and dialog.)
The document also lines up with what happened after. If this was the response sent to Rome (that regulating or abolishing the TLM would do more harm than good), then it is no surprise that bishops were doing whatever they could to avoid implementing the decree, using their legal rights to avoid being put in a situation they disagreed with.
Assuming that the document is indeed authentic, what are the explanations that mitigate the Pope’s action here. I think we can all agree, if the pope lied, that is very bad. (At least for now, there will eventually be someone who will defend it I’m sure!)
Sample Bias
The first argument is advanced that the executive summary is not a representative sample of the bishop’s feelings on the matter. The easiest answer to that is to compare the letter to how the episcopal body around the world acted: their hesitation to implementation suggests it was a representative sample. The problem with this argument is it cuts both ways: one could credibly argue that it was instead Pope Francis who engaged in a bit of sampling bias, filtering out the summary presented to him (by people he asked to do it), and instead only focusing on a few small voices who told him what he wanted to hear. This was not an attempt to learn about a situation before acting, but to search for a pretext. Given the episcopal response to TC, and how he had to revoke the authority of bishops to decide the matter within 18 months of its promulgation, who is the likelier offender here?
The Pope is Answerable to God Alone
In this defense the presentation of the DDF summary is compared to another executive summary: that of what the Church should do about birth control. NYT columnist and The Lamp editor Matthew Walther correctly predicted this would be the response used by defenders of TC, and those of us who doubted their cynicism should put some respect on his name.
I think this argument fails for a few reasons. The first is that nobody doubts that the Pope is not bound by what a commission tells him, even if he asked that commission to give him their uncensored opinion. Yet I would say that if this is the argument you are taking, then the first one is precluded. It is clearly a representative sample, and the Pope is not bound by it.
The second is that the Pope made clear he was rejecting that view presented to him. He was not trying to tell people that the Bishops agreed with him. Anyone who tries to say otherwise needs to stop. Any reasonable person would interpret TC and come away with the conclusion that the bishops wanted this. The stated purpose of TC was to return authority on this matter to the bishops. Francis is clearly trying to present a picture that he knows is not real. That is the issue under dispute, not an imaginary straw man (and those making this claim know its imaginary) of whether the Pope is obligated to follow his advisors.
It’s the Blasted Grand Vizier
This defense is one that anyone who studies history during the times of monarchies would understand: the King is blameless, it is all his ministers who fed him false information. Under this scenario, ideological hacks who wanted to destroy the Latin Mass selectively suppressed this information, and only gave the Pope information that confirmed the TLM had to go. Then the innocent Pope, reading the facts only as presented to him, acted.
This defense robs the Holy Father of any agency and transforms him from the Supreme Pontiff (with several advanced theological degrees) into a bumbling moron living in a fantasy world. This defense also falls apart because it is an error of fact: the survey was not commissioned by Cardinal Roche or Andrea Grillo. (Not that they would necessarily engage in such a move, just that they are known opponents of the TLM and closely involved in the authoring of TC.) It was carried out by what used to be The Pontifical Commission of Ecclesia Dei, and its results were approved by DDF head Luis Ladaria Ferrer, a Cardinal of the Church for whom the Latin Mass has never seemed to be a pressing issue. As mentioned above, such a move would be a gross case of insubordination, and a slandering of the Cardinals name if he knowingly withheld evidence from the Pope.
Furthermore, as the implementation of TC continued to hit roadblock after roadblock, would not Pope Francis, as a responsible ruler, ask why they are not using the authority the results he saw had them asking for? Would he not ask any of those bishops through the nuncio or ad limina visits about this matter and get the truth?
What (I Think) Happened
Instead of these silly narratives, I think I can offer a more coherent one. It certainly doesn’t paint Francis in a positive light, but it is not our job to paint him in a positive light, even more so now that he’s dead and the misguided belief we must always prop up the current leader no longer applies. I think it also is consistent with who Francis is by his own words.
Pope Francis deeply believes that the flourishing of the Latin Mass was a threat to the council. Yet he also felt that most believed as he did, and that death was a long way away, so why rush it? Time was on his side, and after a successful papacy in which he successfully shaped the Church’s outlook for over a decade, people would come around.
The survey was a wakeup call that this was not in fact the case. Though he commissioned it, he was kind of obligated: Universae Ecclesiae called for precisely this survey after 10 years. The Pope ignoring it would be something people noticed. He saw that the worlds’ Bishops were in fact not of one mind with him on this. This was followed by the Pope nearly dying from an attack of what was believed to be diverticulitis, an extremely painful occurrence which would remind anyone in their 80s of their fragility and dwindling time on earth. He realized that once he was dead, the odds of someone banning the Latin Mass were next to zero. It was now or never. How does one deal with that fact, and that the bishops already told him this was a bad idea? Simple: Spin. Use lawyerly language. Most importantly, the worlds’ bishops (at this point) are not aware of what they have said to Rome. Maybe we can paint a picture favorable to us, and everyone will accept the fait accompli. Remember, when TC was promulgated, it was treated by both the pope and his defenders as a fait accompli: the Latin Mass was now on the road to extinction, and this would be imminent. The Pope even makes clear in the explanatory letter that TC was a temporary measure to allow bishops to decide how best to suppress the Latin Mass in their diocese. If called on it, the Pope can say he didn’t lie, he just interpreted the results differently or was privy to secret information.
This was less “lying” and more controlling the field of information, not letting others know what you know. At least, this is how someone will rationalize it. Powerful people do this kind of rationalization all the time. Is it really a stretch to say a Pope wouldn’t engage in such word games to get what he wanted?
If anyone tried this with a confessor, they would be called out for lying. The Church’s prohibition on lying exists not just to avoid stating error, but to affirmatively be truthful in all that you say. This kind of approach also ignores what happens to the system of authority when (and they inevitably will) start also doing this, employing word games and obfuscation to get their selfish agenda. I’ll tell you where it ends: Matthew 23 and the Korban rule, where the Pharisees would reinterpret the law to exempt themselves from its moral precepts. One might even say it’s the equivalent of theology by footnote.
What we can say is this type of legislation and governance isn’t sustainable. Laws built on lies and half-truths might be valid laws, but they cannot remain laws. They will inevitably crumble as support for them wanes. Law cannot change reality; it can only frame it. The maintenance of that frame is not self-serving. This requires work, and people are not going to continue to waste time and effort into holding up a status quo that isn’t real. The choice before Leo XIV is if he wants to acknowledge the reality the bishops tried to tell Francis now, or later. He likely won’t like later.
There is more to the story than many of the bishops didn’t implement TC. Define that. There were many other places, primarily more rural or semi-urban, where people were asking for the TLM under SP. along about 2020, we thought we were making headways and that the bishop would allow it soon. Then wham, TC, and all communication stopped. These places are not included in the statistics because our Masses were not “shut down,” but rather progress toward full SP implementation was halted. In our area, after TC, we pretty much can’t even talk about the TLM anymore. It’s hush hush.
My take on it was that the survey was issued as a pretext and then was used to ban the TLM- that is, PF was a political figure and operated by insincerities. If it hadn’t been for Diane Montagna, no-one would have known how the bishops viewed their TLM parishioners. I read comments by the bishops at the time the survey was leaked and they were the opposite of critical - high praise actually, and their characterisation of the TLM crowd was pretty accurate. That is, they are generally reverent, community-minded, respectful- pretty much the opposite of the descriptions by Pope Francis. The whole manoeuvring that we were subject to was so socialist and gas-lighting. It is pretty appalling when a pope lies, but people should stop talking niceties and speak the truth. Socialism does not see lying as bad, merely a means to an end, and any mechanism that achieves the objective is allowed. Whether or not we are looking at socialism, per se, we are certainly witnessing socialist techniques and any person who breaches the approved narrative had better be prepared for the ‘point and shriek’ response - another tactic. The thing is - people have been cowed by these disproportionate responses but everyone has to call it when they see it and be prepared to say that the person justifying the action does not actually believe it but is telling lies.