The pope placed new restrictions on where the old Latin Mass can be celebrated and who can celebrate it, and will require new permissions from local bishops.
Pope Francis took a significant step toward putting the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgy solidly on the side of modernization on Friday by cracking down on the use of the old Latin Mass, essentially reversing a decision by his conservative predecessor.
The move to restrict the use of an old Latin rite in celebrating Mass dealt a blow to conservatives, who have long complained that the pope is diluting the traditions of the church.
Francis placed new restrictions on where and by whom the traditional Latin Mass can be celebrated and required new permissions from local bishops for its use.
Francis’ new law, issued only days after his release from the hospital for colon surgery — amid questions about whether his recent health scare would slow him down, or speed up his upheavals — was an indication that the pope intends to press ahead with his agenda for the church.
His latest salvo in the church’s so-called liturgy wars came weeks after conservative American bishops, many of whom are attached to the old Latin Mass, essentially shrugged off the Vatican’s strong guidance to slow down a potential confrontation with President Biden over his support for abortion rights. In recent days, influential prelates in Rome have also argued that Francis had not followed through on his promises to modernize the church.
But Francis’ action on Friday was bold and concrete. He wrote that he believed champions of the old Latin Mass were exploiting it to oppose more recent church reforms and to divide the faithful. In the 1960s, the church sought to make the faith more accessible with liturgy in living languages that made use of modern idioms in its prayer books.
In subsequent decades, traditionalists recoiled and conservative pontiffs let the Latin Mass come back, which included priests facing the altar and not the congregation, saying older prayers and, most importantly, using solely the Latin language.
Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had relaxed restrictions on the old Latin Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, in 2007. It was a move seen as reflective of a shift toward traditionalism.
In statements released by the Vatican on Friday, Francis argued that the change, designed to bring unity to the church and its most traditionalist and schismatic corners back into the fold, had become a cause of division and a cudgel for conservative opponents of the Second Vatican Council, the major church meetings of the 1960s that ushered in many modernizing measures.
Francis cited those measures in explaining his law, called “Traditionis Custodes.” Many analysts see Francis’ pontificate as the restoration of engagement with the modern world after three decades of leadership by conservative popes.
Doubting the council, Francis wrote in a document explaining his motivations for the new law, is “to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church,” and associating only the old rite with what traditionalists often call the “true Church” led only to division.
Francis argued that those traditionalists had essentially taken advantage of the kindness of his predecessors. The 16th-century Tridentine Mass was replaced after the Second Vatican Council with a new standard version approved in 1970. Nevertheless, some traditionalists insisted on celebrating it and rejected the new version as a corruption.
In 1983, Pope John Paul II sought to heal a rift with a schismatic, traditionalist movement by asking bishops to grant the request of the faithful who wished to use the old Latin Mass. But Francis said some traditionalists exploited that decision to effectively create a parallel liturgical universe.
Benedict clearly put his weight, and that of the whole church, on the side of the old rite in 2007 when he increased access to the traditional Latin Mass. He argued that, among other things, it appealed to young people and that the two forms, old and new, “would enrich one another.”
But Francis argued that things had shaken out differently.
The Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, once led by Benedict, conducted a survey of bishops that showed, Francis wrote, “a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.”
He wrote that his bishops believed that a byproduct of Benedict’s 2007 decision had been division in the church.
Francis made it clear that bishops must make sure that groups celebrating the old Latin Mass “do not deny the validity and the legitimacy” of the standard liturgy.
He gave local bishops more flexibility in regulating liturgical celebrations and deciding whether and where the old Latin Mass could be used and that it shouldn’t be celebrated in newly established personal parishes “tied more to the desire and wishes of individual priests” than to the faithful.
Priests celebrating old Latin Masses now require authorization from their bishop, and in some cases bishops will need to consult with the Vatican before granting approval.
This was not Francis’s first foray into conflicts over liturgy, which, especially in the English-speaking church, have divided liberals and conservatives for decades. In October 2017, he gave national bishop conferences greater authority in translating liturgical language.
That decision followed several crackdowns on Cardinal Robert Sarah, a hero to Vatican traditionalists. In 2014, Francis chose Cardinal Sarah, who is from Guinea, to run the Vatican department with liturgical oversight, but then quickly isolated him, surrounding him with papal allies.
In 2016, when Cardinal Sarah called for priests to celebrate Mass with their backs to the congregation, Francis issued an unusual public rebuke. In 2017, Cardinal Sarah sent a letter honoring Benedict’s support of the Latin Mass, asserting that “modern liturgy” had caused devastation and schism. Benedict wrote that “the liturgy is in good hands,” in an afterword to a book by the cardinal.
But in February of this year, Francis removed the church’s prayer book from Cardinal Sarah’s hands, accepting his resignation despite frequently allowing cardinals to serve after the retirement age of 75.
Church conservatives had recently applauded Francis’ decisions, including his setting aside of a vote by bishops to allow married priests in limited situations, and expressing concerns about a gay rights bill making its way through the Italian Parliament. But with Friday’s law, they were not happy. Some of them, were simply enraged.
“Shocking, and terrifying,” Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run out of the United States, declared on Friday. “Francis HATES US. Francis HATES Tradition. Francis HATES all that is good and beautiful.”
It added, “FRANCIS WILL DIE, THE LATIN MASS WILL LIVE FOREVER.”
Supporters of Francis said such overblown statements by opponents demonstrated the necessity of a correction to Benedict’s policies.
“What they are saying about Pope Francis’ decision makes a very good argument for Pope Francis’ decision,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Villanova University who has written extensively on this issue.
While he agreed with Francis that the spread of the old Latin Mass had been used to undermine the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, he was surprised by the new law. “This is more radical than most of us expected,” he said.
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