The steely determination of Pope Francis to implement his critical Mass reforms
Pope Francis is prepared to face down those who continue to promote a Church within a Church.
The further tightening of restrictions on the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Mass is aimed at a small number of US bishops who have been seeking legal loopholes to block the return to liturgical unity.
Later this month, Pope Francis will mark a decade since his election as Bishop of Rome. As the anniversary approached, he offered a striking reminder of what is at stake in the implementation of the reforms at the heart of this pontificate. On 21 February 2023, a papal rescript – a response of the Pope to a question – confirmed that a bishop must have a dispensation from the Holy See if he wishes to allow Mass to be celebrated in a parish church in his diocese in its pre-Second Vatican Council form, or if he wants to erect personal parishes dedicated to the pre-conciliar liturgies.
The rescript, signed by the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, the Yorkshire-born Cardinal Arthur Roche, approved by Francis a day earlier, also confirms that newly ordained priests need Rome’s approval to celebrate the Mass using the 1962 Missal. The reforms of the Second Vatican Council provide the foundation stones for this pontificate and Francis has called the path of liturgical reform begun by the council “irreversible”. While it allows for some exceptions, the latest legal act underlines Pope Francis’ steely determination to ensure the liturgical books promulgated by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II are what these popes and the Council fathers intended them to be: the unique expression of worship in the Roman Rite.
But the rescript also points to the resistance that Francis has faced in implementing his reforms. This ruling was necessary because some in the Church, mainly in the United States, remain deeply opposed to Francis’ vision and have sought to create legal confusion in order to block his reforms. The apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes issued by the Pope on 16 July 2021 re-imposed restrictions on the pre-Vatican II liturgies that Pope Benedict XVI had lifted in 2007 with his ruling Summorum Pontificum. Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the reform of liturgy, envisaged that the old form of the rite would only be celebrated by aged and sick priests.
In a letter accompanying Traditionis Custodes Francis said that the concessions granted by John Paul II and then by Benedict had been “exploited” by traditionalists to “encourage disagreements” in the Church and “expose her to the peril of division”. It refers to how traditionalist leaders had promoted the celebration of the Mass with the 1962 Missal, a phenomenon in the English-speaking Catholic world. At one point, 21 of the 70 parishes of the Diocese of Arlington in the United States offered the pre-Vatican II liturgies, while The Tablet has reported on the divisions caused in Ledbury, Herefordshire (2021) and in Blackfen, south-east London (2009) when the pre-conciliar liturgy was imposed on these two parishes. One Rome-based church source told me that Pope Francis had become concerned about how the older form of the liturgy was being used to undermine unity in the years since his election.
The restrictions Francis placed on the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Mass, the source stressed, were primarily designed to stop it from becoming a “club” or being used to create an “alternative church”. Traditionis Custodes seeks to prevent the creation of a parallel Church by ensuring that Masses in the pre-conciliar form are not celebrated in parish churches, and that bishops consult Rome before newly ordained priests are allowed to celebrate the older form of the liturgy. Follow-up guidelines, released by Cardinal Roche in December 2021, ruled that the Holy See’s liturgy office must give dispensations before either can happen. But several bishops and canon lawyers in the United States sought ways to avoid implementing the new laws. They argued that canon 87 of the code of canon law, which gives a bishop the right to dispense believers in his diocese from “universal and particular disciplinary laws”, applied to the papal legislation. This approach was adopted by Archbishops Alexander Sample in Portland, Oregon, and Samuel Aquila in Denver, along with Bishop Glenn Provost in Lake Charles, Louisiana and Bishop Thomas Paprocki in Springfield, Illinois.
The editors of The Pillar website, both canon lawyers, made similar arguments. Professor Kurt Martens, a canon law expert at the Catholic University of America, says: “Dispensations are not meant to undermine universal law. What we have seen in the case of Traditionis Custodes is that some have used the power of dispensation to undermine the effectiveness of the papal universal law.” Canon 87 would often be invoked by a bishop in the US for something like dispensing Catholics from the obligation to fast if the feast of St Patrick falls on a Friday in Lent. But the Church’s legal code says a bishop cannot use canon 87 to dispense the faithful from laws reserved to the Holy See.
The church source in Rome told me the rescript was released primarily to tackle erroneous arguments being made in the US. It also showed that Cardinal Roche had been working to implement the wishes of the Pope, despite the claim from some quarters that he had overstepped his authority. While some suggested the December 2021 follow-up guidelines issued by Roche’s office were not binding, the cardinal told me in an interview last year that the Pope himself had signed them off. The older form of the rite (sometimes called the Tridentine Rite, after the 1570 Council of Trent at which the Mass in its late-medieval state was codified) requires the priest to say the prayers of the Mass in Latin, often inaudibly, and while facing ad orientem (with his back to the people). Women are not permitted on the altar. Devotees are drawn to its otherworldly, antique style, including the periods of silence and a sense of mystery.
Some of those who attend these Masses are sceptical of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and deeply opposed to the Francis pontificate. The celebration of the liturgy goes to the heart of the council’s vision, underlined by the principle lex orandi, lex credendi: how we pray is how we believe. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the constitution on the sacred liturgy, was the first document produced by the council, which the council fathers voted in favour of by a majority of 2,147 to 4. It expresses the desire for a liturgy which promotes the active participation of all believers, which in turn is reflected in the council’s constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and its recovery of the biblical and early priesthood of all believers. While some in the Church, including some bishops, have not been happy with all the changes to the liturgy in the years after the Council, there is no doubt the council fathers wanted significant reforms. An ecumenical council is the Church’s highest authority. This is one of the reasons why the Pope has taken such a tough line on those who insist on continuing to celebrate the pre-1962 liturgies as if the Second Vatican Council never happened. “If you don’t follow the council or you interpret it in your own way,” Francis said in 2021, “you do not stand with the Church.”
The resistance to liturgical reform is not widespread, but neither is it going away. Following the release of the rescript, Cardinal Roche was accused of unwarranted interference in the bishop’s role as overseer of the liturgy in his diocese. Bishop Paprocki, the incoming chair of the US bishops’ committee on canonical affairs and Church governance, told the Catholic News Agency: “I think the local diocesan bishops are much more in tune with what’s going on in their diocese than an office in Rome.” But use of the pre-Vatican II Roman Missal has always been a pastoral concession overseen by the Holy See.
With Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI effectively removed the bishop’s authority to regulate the older form of the rite by saying any group could request it. Francis has restored the bishop’s authority to regulate the use of preconciliar liturgies, although within certain limits. “It was always clear from Traditionis Custodes that dispensations and permissions were reserved to the Holy See: a diocesan bishop can only permit the use of the 1962 Missal in his diocese within the parameters set by the Holy See,” Professor Martens told me. “The rescript is simply a confirmation of what we already knew.” He likened the Pope to “a good educator and professor” who knows he “needs to repeat what should have already been known the first time around” to those in the class who hadn’t grasped things straight away.
In the pre-Vatican II Mass the priest says the prayers in Latin – often inaudibly – with his back to the congregation How will this play out on the ground? While the rescript is primarily aimed at some dioceses and groups in the US, it is likely to affect dioceses elsewhere, including in England, Wales and Scotland. In Cardinal Roche’s home diocese of Leeds (which he led from 2004 to 2012), Bishop Marcus Stock has said that all celebrations of Mass according to the 1962 Missal in parish churches will cease. In the Archdiocese of Glasgow, a spokesman said that Masses using the pre-conciliar liturgical books in parish churches were being reduced from three to two, and that the archdiocese has sought approval for this from the Holy See.
In the Archdiocese of Cardiff and Diocese of Menevia – both led by Archbishop Mark O’Toole – a spokesman said the provision of the older form of the liturgy is under review, and the archbishop is collaborating with the Vatican. In Portsmouth, Bishop Philip Egan told me that most of the old rite Masses in his diocese are celebrated in non-parish churches or are moving away from them, although he said the rescript “will make me look again at this matter”. In the Diocese of Nottingham, where the bishop is Patrick McKinney, a spokesperson said the pastoral care of those attached to the older form of the rite is “paramount” and provision will continue until they hear back from Rome. It is understood that Roche’s office will grant, and has been granting, permissions for Masses using the 1962 Missal to be said in parish churches. As Francis approaches a landmark moment in his pontificate, he has shown he is prepared to face down those bishops and groups who continue to resist the vision of the council and promote a Church-within-a Church with a liturgical life frozen in the sixteenth century. He is determined to protect the unity of the Church, even at the risk of appearing inflexible.
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