This year the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, has refused permission for the celebration of the services of the pre-Vatican II Easter Triduum in his diocese. These services have taken place in the Archdiocese of Westminster since the 1990s, and have attracted up to 200 people, including many of those served by the various Traditional Latin Masses (TLM) celebrated on Sundays in the archdiocese.
Cardinal Nichols first noted that he is “waiting for the judgment of the Holy See on which, if any, parish church may be used for the celebration of Mass according to the Missal antecedent to the reform of 1970”. Then he said that he would not permit the Triduum, “for the sake of the wider provision”. His Eminence apparently feels that axing the Triduum services in anticipation of the decision of the Dicastery for Divine Worship will work out for the best in terms of the other TLMs that take place in the archdiocese.
All over the world, groups of Catholic faithful are waiting to hear whether they will lose their local TLM, not by a decision of their local bishop, and not directly by fiat of Pope Francis, but according to the judgement of a handful of men sitting in Rome’s Via Della Conciliazione, leafing through reports and recommendations from scores of dioceses. Some decisions have already been made, and we can see the range of possibilities. In one diocese existing provision will be left alone; in another, it will be halved; in yet another, it may disappear altogether. The process is entirely opaque; there is no appeal; each permission incurs a fee of €250.
What considerations make the crucial difference? If a bishop can demonstrate that he has already taken the pruning-shears to the celebration of what Pope Benedict XVI called “the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer”, does this soften their hearts, as Cardinal Nichols seems to imply? Then again, do they prefer to permit Masses attended by small numbers of old people, or does the pastoral value of a Mass packed out with the young, converts, and families, make them hesitate to forbid it? Or would it help, like old Menenius appealing to the pitiless Corialanus, if they considered a particular case after a good lunch?
On the one hand, the official documents tell us that the TLM can be permitted in light of the “good” of the faithful: it is good for them after all, at least in their concrete circumstances. On the other hand, TLMs that are permitted may not be advertised in parish Mass schedules, lest this amount to “promoting” a form of the liturgy that moulded the spirituality of so many of the Church’s saints, doctors, and popes. It seems that the good that this liturgy can do should not be applied to a greater number of souls, if that can be avoided. The food for the wayfarer, and medicine for the sick, is to be hidden in a broom cupboard, while the Church in the rich world laments shrinking congregations, a lack of family formation, and a collapse of vocations.
This is not so different from the era before the Traditional Latin Mass was liberated by Pope Benedict in 2007, but today we have a twist. The Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) is an institute of 368 priests who celebrate only the TLM. They are allowed to celebrate this Mass in specified churches all over the world, essentially without let or hindrance, and are joined in doing this by the priests of many similar institutes and communities: the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, several Benedictine monasteries, the Apostolic Administration of St John Vianney in Campos, Brazil, and so on. These are not under the authority of the Dicastery of Divine Worship, and a friendly policy towards them was recently confirmed by Pope Francis personally.
Then again, eager to heal divisions in the Church, Pope Francis allows the 700 or so TLM-saying priests of another organisation, the Society of Pope Pius X – which accepts his authority in theory but not in practice, and operates without official mandate – to hear confessions in the traditional form and to officiate at the Sacrament of Matrimony: both things in principle forbidden to diocesan priests.
Many of Pope Francis’s supporters have a strong dislike of the TLM, and this appears to animate the Dicastery for Divine Worship, but it is not the considered view of Pope Francis himself. This is, after all, a papacy of exceptions to rules and tacking in unexpected directions. In fact, official inconsistency in relation to the TLM has a long history. Pope Francis’s 2021 restriction of the TLM was a concession to a certain group of people in the Church, but their victory was incomplete.
As this papacy enters its final stages, it may also turn out to be short-lived. When the wind changes direction again, we will have the weary work of undoing the damage that has been done, not only to the Church’s pastoral outreach, but to her credibility. Meanwhile, we watch and pray.
Joseph Shaw is chairman of the Latin Mass Society and President of Una Voce International.
(Photo: Screenshot taken from www.usccb.org, website for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)
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