“Traditionis Custodes” the Wrong Approach to Unity

Various reactions to Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes remind me very much of a natural phenomenon: the spontaneous combustion of a massive pile of animal manure. Such piles are rarely the product of one lone bull. This pile came from at least two different herds. Social media is excellent for allowing toxic subcultures to collect and generate heat but lousy for spreading them out when they begin to smolder. With all due filial respect to the pope, here are my observations and thoughts concerning what could be the single biggest mistake Francis has made in his controversial pontificate.

Against Taking Bloggers Seriously

1. It’s a mistake to think that any Internet writer, let alone a radical traditionalist, represents a community more significant than the sum of their followers. To assume that all members of a particular group or subculture think alike is very convenient. There’s also a very convenient category for such an assumption: bigotry. Suppose you ask why traditionalists don’t exercise greater social control over the bilious demagogues who purport to represent them. The answer is simple: The vast majority of people—even traditionalists—have more imperative, more engaging, and more fulfilling things to do with their lives than watchdog social media.
2. On one of my (now defunct) blogs, I posted a reminder: “The Holy Catholic Church teaches infallibly on matters of faith and morals. Catholic bloggers do not.” We have authority only so far as we cite the magisterial teachings of the Church with fidelity and respect. Beyond those boundaries, our opinions aren’t authoritative simply because they’re published. If we possess professional credentials, we can qualify as experts in those fields—and only those fields. But nobody has to take us to be authorities, let alone prophets anointed by God to cast His judgment upon the wicked.
3. That we Internet writers and bloggers are neither infallible authorities nor community representatives ought to be so much common sense. However, social media’s bias toward sensationalism allows both leftist and rightist radicals to become polarizing centers of attention (“influencers”). From these positions, they can drive public debate on hot topics and shape (rather, distort) our perceptions of them. Moreover, reciprocity widens the polarization and heightens the extremism, as the two poles react to each other’s disrespect with greater contempt. Finally, they treat each other as community representatives, making nutpicking that much easier.

Traditionis Custodes “Used a Chainsaw”

4. Someone convinced Pope Francis that the rad-trad cranks really do represent the traditionalist community. Most likely, it wasn’t the consensus of bishops to which his letter refers. Instead, it was probably a handful of cardinals and archbishops to whom he feels especially close in mind or heart. Furthermore, they managed to convince him that traditionalists pose an existential threat to the Church. By contrast, many bishops, such as Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, have no such concerns about traditionalists and have made it clear they’re in no hurry to implement Traditionis Custodes.
5. As I have argued above, the conviction of danger from traditionalists is without sufficient empirical foundation. Using rad-trad demagogues to justify the conviction is much like using Islamic terrorists as an excuse to ghettoize all Moslems (except that Islamic terrorists do pose a real threat). That’s where the “silence gives consent” argument falls apart from being applied too broadly. In the real world, we don’t all live in segregated, homogeneous villages—or prestigious university campuses—where we can terrorize each other into conformity. That kind of community belongs only in dystopian fiction.
6. Traditionis Custodes, not to put too fine a point on it, was gratuitous and heavy-handed, like using a cast-iron skillet to swat a fly. To say the radicals among the traditionalists are to blame for the motu proprio is only to highlight the injustice and pastoral insensitivity Pope Francis displayed in restricting access to the TLM for the thousands who aren’t radicals. Moreover, Francis implicitly cast every traditionalist community into disrepute as heretical and schismatic, a manifest act of rash judgment. Rather than end division, the pope simply fanned the flames of the division higher.

Upon reflection, it seems that in addressing the “problems” of the traditional Latin Mass community—real or perceived—Pope Francis used a chainsaw when only a scalpel was needed. We need to understand the Holy Father’s genuine concern[] while also supporting the TLM faithful. (Bp. Thomas Tobin of Providence, RI)

Big Enough for Both Ordos

7. Ironically, Francis has taken a linguistically and logically fallacious position similar to people Scott Eric Alt has labeled “Latin Mass Onlyist,” such as Fr. David Nix: that different words necessarily mean different voices. They can mean disunity of prayer, which is why liturgical abuse is a problem. But if it were always the case, there should be no room for the Eastern churches’ different liturgical and linguistic traditions, let alone translation into other languages. There should also be only one Eucharistic prayer, not eight, and no distinctive “high” and “low” Masses. That’s not what Sacrosanctum Concilium envisaged.
8. Pope Francis premises his argument on the position that the Novus Ordo is a reform and advance of the tradition behind the Vetus Ordo, and thus a continuity. But to then argue that celebration of the Vetus Ordo means praying in a different voice from the rest of the Church is to fall back into the “hermeneutic of rupture.” That Vatican II and the Novus Ordo constitute a break from the past is a position taken not only by radical traditionalists but also by liberal “spirit of Vatican II” doctrinal dissidents. Francis cannot have it both ways.
9. We may picture Pope Francis and Fr. Nix as two gunslingers in a bad Western movie, both in agreement that “this Church ain’t big enough for the both of us!” But in fact, the Church is big enough for both Novus and Vetus Ordos, as well as the other linguistic and liturgical traditions of the Church. Sacrosanctum Concilium declared “all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity” and that they desired “to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way” (SC 4). Unicity of voice isn’t the liturgical straitjacket Francis supposes.

Enriching the Novus Ordo

10. It wouldn’t be quite right to say that Traditionis Custodes left the problem of liturgical abuse completely unaddressed. Using a particular rite as grounds for a sinful “more Catholic than thou” pride is a kind of liturgical abuse. Nevertheless, Pope Francis offered very little guidance to the bishops for ensuring liturgical fidelity and proper reverence at Novus Ordo Masses, even while demanding that they wean traditionalists off the usus antiquior. It’s as if his admission that abuses occur were pro forma, half-heartedly acknowledging a problem he’d given up worrying about a long time ago.
11. Liturgical abuse and lack of reverence aren’t problems with the liturgy, but rather with the celebrants and, more often than not, the liturgists they retain. As Timothy Kirchoff pointed out, older Catholics raised on the Mass of Pius V often witnessed irreverence and abuses before Vatican II. The people who saw a need for liturgical reform and enthusiastically embraced vernacular Masses were also raised in the TLM. By contrast, many orthodox Catholics can attest to having attended reverential NO Masses. Not to be flippant, but a good show requires good direction and stage management.
12. Note that Traditionis Custodes doesn’t restrict Latin Masses. It only restricts the usus antiquior. Did you know priests can celebrate the Novus Ordo in Latin? That they can celebrate it ad orientem, with incense, bells, and chanting? That the addition of such elements can elevate a vernacular Mass? (I once attended such a Mass at a Cistercian monastery, where the monks chanted the responses in plainsong.) Yes, we go to Mass to worship God and receive the Body and Blood of His Son, not to be entertained or indulge in our aesthetics. However, the right atmosphere facilitates reverence.
13. Although Benedict XVI wrote that the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms could be “mutually enriching,” I suspect he thought that the Novus Ordo would benefit more from people’s greater exposure to the TLM. The proposition that universal reimposition of the TLM would solve all the Church’s problems is false and misguided. However, gradual reintroduction of traditional “high” elements to the NO Mass may be a path forward. The problem with tying worship to “the spirit of the times” is that the times are always changing, while in the Mass, we seek a God tied to neither clock nor calendar.

Conclusion

The battle over Traditionis Custodes isn’t really about the liturgy. Instead, the TLM functions as a political Rorschach inkblot into which rad-trad and progressive activist bloggers can project their tribal narratives and biases about the past. (“This liturgy is the centerpiece of a movement of racist nationalism that threatens the rest of us,” screams one hysterical tweet. “Suppress it. Crush it.”) It’s the culture wars masquerading as concern about felt banners and guitars. As one priest put it, without social media, many of these Internet “grifters” would “just be that guy sending mean emails to everyone.”

Regulation of the liturgy is a disciplinary matter. Such matters are by their nature “only for now”; that is, only for so long as the conditions exist which make them necessary. A future pontiff may reverse Traditionis Custodes just as Francis reversed Summorum Pontificum and Ecclesia Dei, for better or worse reasons. But it’s hard to see how this future pope can undo the damage Francis has done to his legacy. True unification, I believe, won’t come unless we take the Benedictine path of synthesis—that is unless we stop writing off traditionalists’ concerns as mere matters of taste.