Will TLM Restrictions Work?

Success is Not Assured

Jacques Cathelineau, one of the leaders of the Vendee Uprising during the French Revolution. The Vendee Uprising has long been celebrated by French Traditionalists.

If you follow news in traditionalist circles, you know there is talk of further restrictions on the Latin Mass by Rome.  If you follow news outside of traditionalist circles, you know there is talk of further restrictions on the Latin Mass by Rome.  If you talk to Catholic bishops, there is talk of further restrictions on the Latin Mass by Rome, and several have voice public opposition to it.  (Including those with prominent episcopal sees such as Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco.)  Rome has even had non-Catholics writing to the Pope, begging him not to impose further restrictions on the Latin Mass.

In all of this time, Rome has not come out and said “there are no talks of imposing further restrictions of the Latin Mass, nor will there be any.”  What does this tell you?  That there have been talks about it, those talks have progressed quite far, and the Pope wants to keep open the option of further restricting the Latin Mass.    There were some rumors (not picked up by most journalists) that July 19^th would be the date of restrictions.  As of today, that has come and gone.  I am of the belief that, so long as Francis remains alive, he is going to make another move.  He desperately wants a legacy of importance.  All his other plans have either not given him that legacy or ended in disaster.  He needs to believe he is a man of consequence and will be remembered as a man of consequence.  Those in the Vatican who want to ban the TLM will manipulate the Pope into taking that plunge.  I also believe it will fail, and I’ll spend the next month or so here explaining why.  By the time I’m writing, these restrictions might indeed be in place.  This essays will be a bit longer, so I beg your indulgence.

Why would the Pope enact further restrictions?  To understand this, we need to understand Traditionis custodes, the document promulgated by Francis announcing restrictions on the Latin Mass (now 3 years old this weekend), and especially understand the accompanying letter.  A lot of people offer theories for why it was necessary, and none of them actually read the document.  Before I moved to substack, my final series at blogger was tracing the intellectual development of the document, and what would happen once the Bishops surprised everyone and mostly refused to implement it.  I said the following, in August of 2021:

The Pope could respond to the motu proprio mostly being ignored by attempting to compel bishops to crack down harder on the Latin Mass.  He might prevail on a few voices, but the general result is he will just increasingly make it worse.  He would have to change canon law in a blatantly pretextual fashion, or start removing Bishops from their sees because they won't crack down on their flock hard enough.

Why invest so much in this?  Contrary to some conventional wisdom, it isn’t mean tweets.  Mean tweets about the Pope or his papacy aren’t going to drive someone to bang their head into a brick wall until they bleed out.  Francis has lost a lot of his prestige and authority over Traditonis custodes.  Once bishops ignored an express directive from Rome, it made ignoring future express directives all the more easier.  (Looking at you, Fiducia supplicans)  What was that directive?

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.

It belongs to the diocesan bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the whole liturgical life of the particular Church entrusted to him, to regulate the liturgical celebrations of his diocese.  Therefore, it is his exclusive competence to authorize the use of the 1962 Roman Missal in his diocese, according to the guidelines of the Apostolic See.

The directive was that all bishops must accept that the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI is the “unique” expression of Roman Church’s prayer life.  The Traditional Latin Mass is a deviation from the Church’s official prayer, and can only be allowed according to the guidelines of the Apostolic See.  Many people saw this and said “he’s returning control of the Latin Mass to the local bishop, because Summorum Pontificum (which said the right to celebrate that Mass was the right of all priests as a result of their ordination) failed.  Yet this local control was always subject to the guidelines of the Apostolic See.  In the explanatory letter, Pope Francis issues one of those guidelines:

Indications about how to proceed in your dioceses are chiefly dictated by two principles: on the one hand, to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II

Francis is already warning the Bishops that any decision that isn’t made by them towards the eventual suppression of the Latin Mass is opposed to his will.  Earlier in that letter, he makes clear he intends to “re-establish” a “a single and identical prayer” for the Roman Rite.

The bishops responded to this will and guidelines with mostly a yawn.  Some Bishops eagerly implemented the decrees with a deliberate harshness, banning not just the TLM, but elements of liturgical reverence within the Novus Ordo such as ad orientem worship.  In many countries, TLM populations were small, so Bishops didn’t even really feel the need to bother.  In Germany, the liberal bishops engaged in a fun bit of trolling the Pope by ignoring the decree, despite their relative hostility to traditionalists.

This apathy to the Pope’s express will caused the predicted further crackdown, when the Pope changed Church law, removing from the local Bishop the right to decide how parishes are used in his diocese.  This was supposed to lead to parishes that had both the Novus Ordo and the TLM destroyed, as TLM’s were ushered off into Churches that were not regular parish Churches.  Again, a few more bishops complied.  Some only complied after the Apostolic Nuncio had to put incredible pressure on the Bishop to kick faithful Catholics outside a Church, and make them celebrate mass in a gymnasium instead.  (Somehow, this pressure by the nuncio would always leak to the faithful and press.)  Other Bishops engaged in a bit of malicious compliance (complying with the letter of the law only, so as to spite the lawgiver), citing the good faith arrangement of previous agreements(they had to continue, even if future arrangements would not be made), changing the nature of those TLM parishes so they could continue, etc.

In light of this, of course new restrictions are at least being talked about:  the previous restrictions have failed in their goal.  Three years after the motu proprio’s proclamation, we are no closer to the suppression of the Latin Mass the Pope expressly ordered all Bishops to work to.  If anything, we’re further from that moment than we were in 2021.  Rome can either accept that or adopt increasingly coercive measures.

While those measures might be debated, there are reasons to suspect there is hesitation on Rome’s behalf.  Two things have happened since then that have further eroded papal authority.  The first was Fiducia supplicans in December of 2023.  In it, the Pope said that priests could bless homosexual relationships by only blessing the individuals in the relationship, not the relationship itself.  He also expressly forbade bishops from developing any guidance to the contrary.  The Bishops of Africa responded by rejecting the document entirely, with certain African Bishops going so far as to call it “blasphemous.”  In Eastern Churches, canonical penalties were threatened for any priest who attempted to bless a homosexual relationship.  In the US, the legalistic experts among the Bishops used bureaucracy and legal loopholes to gut the document of any moral force, all while expressing fidelity to the Pope’s wishes.  The African Church issued a collective ultimatum to Francis, demanding he back down, or suffer further humiliation.  Francis backed down, explicitly bishops the right to declare the guidelines dead on arrival in their diocese.  He then gave public interviews in which he asserted, contrary to the explicit text of the document, that he only meant gay individuals could be blessed (which was always true), never the couple, despite the text explicitly saying this was directed towards homosexual couples.

The second was the “liturgical war” in the Syro-Malabar Church.  It has long been a goal of that Church to remove certain Western influences that were introduced into their Church following the Second Vatican Council, yet their Synod (their highest authority) also believed that moving gradually was more important than rigid uniformity.  Rome (long wanting to show the Orthodox and other Eastern communions that they are committed to this process) decided that the Synod wasn’t moving fast enough and ordered them to issue an ultimatum to priests in their eparchies (dioceses) to comply faster.  When the largest eparchy responded by a refusal, Rome set the Synod aside, and began leading negotiations personally.  These negotiations demanded complete and utter capitulation, lest they face excommunication.  Rome demanded they celebrate according to Roman wishes by a certain date, or face excommunication.  Most priests responded by complying… that one time.  Malicious compliance again entered.  Nowhere in the ultimatum did it say they had to celebrate according to Roman wishes every single liturgy, just that one.  The Pope used the appointment of a new head of the Syro-Malabar Church to issue an even stronger ultimatum, again promising excommunication for noncompliance.  This time the ultimatum was rejected entirely, the date came and went, and there was almost total rejection in that eparchy.  At this point, the Synod responded by opening negotiations with those priests, and offering what they were originally doing before Rome demanded a change.  This was eagerly accepted and has been presented to Rome as a fait accompli.  While Rome has yet to officially respond, no canonical penalties have taken place, and it is generally expected they will quietly acquiesce to reality on the ground.  (Luke Coppen of The Pillar has done much work covering this issue.)

Twice Rome has issued demands of bishops, and twice those demands have been rejected.  Rome is very weak right now.  Even when they make demands, they are finding they have far fewer methods of ensuring compliance than they originally thought.  Bishops may respond to further restrictions by malicious compliance, finding further loopholes to get around it.  They might use their discretion as bishops to prioritize implementation as their lowest priority.   They also might just flat out say no and have Rome engage in the third round of ecclesiastical chicken with the world’s bishops in one year.  Even if Rome “wins”, they lose, as any move made makes the ultimate game of ecclesiastical chicken with Germany’s “Synodal Way” harder.  Given these realities, is it really that surprising even committed ideologues are showing trepidation over a war they have no idea how to win?

I do not think this trepidation will hold forever.  This is why I also think traditionalists need to continue with the initiative they have seized over the past three years.  Continue to point out the failure of Traditionis custodes, not just because of non-compliance, but because its bad law.  Continue to advocate for its abolition by a successor.  Continue to advocate that bishops provide, within Church law, for their flocks.  Continue to make the case aggressively and in public that the TLM isn’t going away, no matter what an increasingly older and dying clique in Rome wants.  (The public celebration at the Eucharistic Congress, alongside the annual Chartres Pilgrimage are powerful signs of this.)  Most of all, we must not lose heart.  In this time of great tumult, God has decided to place us here to effect change, for one percent of the Roman Church to speak firmly, and have a Church of one billion shaken by that voice.  Take your faith in Jesus Christ seriously, and enter the fray.