Supporters of the extraordinary form of the liturgy have welcomed the announcement that the traditional Latin Mass will be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica as part of an annual traditionalist pilgrimage to Rome in October.
The Mass, expected to be celebrated according to the 1962 Missal, will be the first time that rubric is used in St. Peter’s and in connection with the annual event since 2021, the year Pope Francis issued the motu proprio Traditionis custodes, heavily restricting the celebration of the old form of the liturgy.
The potential papal semiotics of the event, which required Pope Leo XIV’s personal approval, are interesting. The significance of allowing the return of the TLM to the main altar of the Church’s most globally visible basilica can be debated, but not denied.
Although a final, previously scheduled, TLM Mass was permitted to go ahead in 2021 in the immediate wake of Traditionis, no similar celebrations have been allowed since, even when the 2022 Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage was led by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Italian bishops’ conference president and close collaborator of Pope Francis. And under the tenure of the current archpriest of St. Peter’s, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, even the celebration of the ordinary form of the liturgy in the basilica has been tightly proscribed.
But if the decision to reauthorize the use of the old liturgy in the highest profile venue the Church has signals some new openness to liturgical traditionalists under Pope Leo, how might it play out across the wider Church?
The answer may hinge on how, exactly, Pope Leo sees the issue of the extraordinary form — is it a question of liturgy, unity, or ecclesiology?
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Pope Leo’s personal liturgical preferences remain a common topic of speculation among Vatican watchers.
He has, at least in comparison with his immediate predecessor, seemed to demonstrate a comfortable embrace with more customary aspects of papal liturgical ceremony while also showing an obvious deep personal spiritual investment in the Eucharistic celebration, visibly tearing up during some liturgies.
At the same time, while rumors and second-hand accounts have surfaced in some quarters that the pope may, as a bishop, have himself offered the Mass according to the old rite, no firm reports of him actually having done so have emerged.
Rather, the priests and lay people who knew him well and worked closely with him during his time as a bishop in Peru report that he was liturgically particular, with a keen interest in reverence and conformity to the rubrics, but not ideological. In short, a committed “say the black, do the red” bishop.
Priests in his former Diocese of Chiclayo recall both Leo’s insistence on Mass being celebrated well, and his patience and pastoral approach to correcting excesses and abuses when he encountered them.
If this is an accurate reflection of the pope’s attitude, it would make sense that an appeal for an event like the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage might find favor with him, presented as group motivated primarily by sincerity of devotion to a form of divine worship, rather than liturgy as a vehicle for ecclesiastical politics.
Similarly, Leo has spent the early months of his pontificate entertaining all sides of the ecclesiastical spectrum, with figures as divergent as Cardinal Raymond Burke and Fr. James Martin, SJ, receiving private audiences and coming away encouraged.
As such, many have predicted some new, more inclusive settlement around the celebration of the extraordinary form, which remains tightly restricted, with some seeing the news of the October Mass in St. Peter’s as a signal of things to come.
But what form could such a new settlement take?
So far, Leo has eschewed major innovations of his own, or revisions of his predecessor’s provisions. And, although some commentators expect an eventual unveiling of a Leonine program for Church governance, it remains equally possible, if not more likely, that the 69-year old pope may instead opt for a lengthy and more gradual pontificate of incremental and organic development.
If so, a major canonical change to Traditionis custodes seems unlikely, at least in the medium term, even more so a wholesale repeal hoped for by some. But the current law could be substantially changed in its application with little formal papal intervention and accompanying examples of action, like the October Mass.
Given the rigorous restrictions of Traditionis custodes, and the even more proscriptive accompanying instructions on its implementation from the Dicastery for Divine Worship — which goes so far as to regulate the publication of Mass times in parish bulletins — most observers agree that the current law can only be enforced as-written with a concerted exercise of will from the Vatican.
The early indications are that such a will to enforce the law is lessening, if not altogether lacking.
While some dioceses were granted initial dispensations from the norms of Traditionis for a two-year transition period, under Francis it was understood that no further extensions would be granted. Already under Leo, though, the Dicastery for Divine Worship has begun extending such dispensations and even entertaining new ones, for an additional two years.
The most likely immediate form any new settlement around the TLM might take is to simply make it understood that the dicastery has adopted a new practice of dispensing dioceses from Traditionis whenever asked, maintaining formal Vatican control of the extraordinary form everywhere while effectively liberalizing its application.
The extent to which such a new settlement would be welcomed by lay faithful devoted to the TLM, and by bishops sympathetic to them, is likely to be limited, however.
In dioceses like Charlotte and Detroit, both of which have seen new measures and decrees from local bishops in recent months making clear that the full force of Traditionis will be applied there, liturgically traditional Catholics will likely derive small encouragement from events like the October Mass in St. Peter’s, and cold comfort from dispensation grated to communities elsewhere.
On the other hand, some groups, even if they benefit directly from a renewed dispensation, seem likely to push harder for a more wholesale revision to Francis’ restrictions, arguing that Traditionis custodes was presented on a false premise that the world’s bishops found TLM communities to be theologically subversive and pastorally divisive.
To carry weight before the pope, though, such an argument would probably need to be couched as sincere desire to satisfy authentic liturgical devotion — as it no doubt is for so many communities — and effectively distanced from fringe but often prominent voices within the traditionalist movement who openly associate the old liturgy with a “more valid” or even singularly effective form of worship over the ordinary form of the liturgy.
So long as such Vatican Council II-skeptic voices can be identified by Traditionis’ defenders, any formal abrogation of its norms seems unlikely to materialize.
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Apart from those directly affected by its provisions, though, Traditionis custodes had many critics from what could otherwise be called the liturgically centrist or moderate sections of the Church.
The objections raised from those quarters were less to do with the merits and criticisms of the extraordinary form and its adherents and more to do with the ecclesiology of the motu proprio, which appeared to directly undercut the teachings of Vatican Council II supposedly to defend them.
As was noted at the time, while the norms of Traditonis custodes were strict and in places controversially received, they were also subject to the general authority of the local diocesan bishops to dispense as they deemed prudent for the faithful entrusted to their care.
This power, especially in regards the liturgy, is rooted in the understanding of the office of bishop as articulated in Vatican II, most notably Lumen Gentium, the council’s dogmatic constitution, which taught that “the pastoral office, or the habitual and daily care of their sheep, is entrusted to [the diocesan bishop] completely.”
Explaining that local bishops are successors to the apostles in their own right, the council taught that bishops are not “to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiffs, for they exercise an authority that is proper to them.”
This ecclesiology was reflected in the text of Traditionis itself, which stated that “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.” But this “exclusive competence” was then explicitly stripped away by the Dicastery for Divine Worship in a set of rescripts approved by Francis.
Restoring the proper authority and discretion to diocesan bishops would require only lifting the provisions of these separate rescripts, making it a medium-term option open to Leo which could radically reset the implementation of the Francis-era norms without actually touching the legal standing of Traditionis itself.
Such a reform also could be presented as less of a direct papal intervention in the liturgy wars and more a move to reinforce and safeguard the legacy of Vatican Council II itself.
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Of course, while Leo’s decision to address directly or not the status of the extraordinary form remains keenly anticipated, broader questions about liturgy and authority remain unanswered in the Church.
Alongside the implementation of the norms of Traditionis custodes, several U.S. bishops have moved to issue new and sometimes sweeping restrictions on the celebration of the ordinary form of the liturgy.
Such local episcopal policies have included bans on the celebration of the ordinary form ad orientem, or in Latin, suppression of pious practices like the recitation of the St. Michael’s Prayer after Mass, regulation of kneeling during the consecration and reception of Communion kneeling or on the tongue, even when these are explicitly allowed as legitimate choices in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.
At the same time, some bishops have pushed ahead with liturgical practices which seem to cut against both popular local sentiment and the guidelines of local bishops’ conferences, like the Bishop of Charlotte’s recent mandating of the use of screens in Masses said in a school chapel.
Many Catholics have long perceived Vatican liturgical discipline and priorities as asymmetrical, by accident or design. And to many observers no lasting peace in the liturgy wars seems likely — or even possible — as long as the only possible outcomes are viewed as total victory for one side or another.
In this sense, Leo has a wider window of opportunity to work with, one which could suit a gradualist and moderate approach to governance and sit well with a man with a reputation for preferring liturgical reverence and precision.
If the pope opted for a two-pronged approach to the current situation, quietly scaling back Roman overreach on the TLM in the short term, while steering Vatican efforts and attention towards wider liturgical reverence within approved alternatives, he could perhaps make real progress towards harmony, as opposed to uniformity.
If he did so concertedly over the timeline of the next decade and a half, a period of coming demographic turnover in Church leadership, Leo could also do more to cement the liturgical and ecclesiological legacy of Vatican Council II than any of his immediate predecessors.