After ‘Traditionis,’ is reforming the reform still ok?

How impact of 'Traditionis custodes' surpasses the Traditional Latin Mass

When Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes in 2021, the impact on Catholics who worship in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass was immediate and apparent: Masses offered according to older liturgical rubrics were strictly curtailed around the world, and only a relatively limited number of priests were allowed to celebrate them.

Bishop James Wall celebrates the Ordinary Form of the liturgy using the ad orientem posture. Credit: Diocese of Gallup.

The instant effect of the motu proprio was to undo much of the Church’s openness to older liturgical reforms initiated by Pope Benedict’s XVI’s Summorum pontificum, in favor, Pope Francis said, of liturgical unity centered around “the liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II … the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”

In that immediate sense, Traditionis custodes has most impacted the relatively small number of Catholics with attachment or devotion to older liturgical uses, most of them concentrated in the United States and in Europe.

But almost four years after its promulgation, it seems clear that the motu proprio is likely to affect a far broader swath of practicing Catholics, in ways not directly connected to the Extraordinary Form at all.

In truth, the pope’s directive has initiated a cultural change, which would seem to aim at effectively grinding to a halt a broader Benedict XVI-era initiative — the so-called “reform of the reform” of the Church’s liturgical tradition, which aspired to bring common liturgical practice into closer conformity with the actual texts of Vatican Council II.

In fact, more than 40 months after Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes, some U.S. Catholics are asking a clear question about the present and the future of liturgy: Is “reforming the reform” still permitted at all?

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Few experts or observers dispute that the implementation of a new Roman Missal after the Second Vatican Council brought with it a period of widespread liturgical experimentation, which was marked by the introduction and normalization of liturgical practices that were not explicitly called for (or even sanctioned) by either Vatican Council II or the ensuring liturgical documents.

Of course, the history of liturgy is complex, and few historians would argue that the period immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council was itself an era of high beauty, art, or reverence in the liturgy.

But it is the case that at the same time the Missal changed, liturgical practice in the United States began to downplay customary practices, musical settings, and architectural styles, in favor of modern hymnody and vernacular worship, and with zeal to move away from the “old ways” that preceded the council.

Prevailing thought in the post-conciliar period was that the aggiornamento called for by the Second Vatican Council should bring “fresh air” into the liturgy — but zeal for that approach often took on a life of its own, without — by many accounts — sufficient reference to truth, goodness, or beauty.

Pope St. John Paul II understood the power of sacred worship — and urged widespread devotion to Eucharistic adoration. But he was not generally regarded as especially interested in questions of liturgical style in the same way as his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, who urged that the contemporary liturgical rubrics be interpreted and implemented with reference to the Church’s historical liturgical patrimony, and with special attention to the transcendent power of beauty to affect conversion, and to give worship per se proper to God.

Benedict’s liturgical attention gave life to a movement, the “reform of the reform,” which attracted priests and bishops interested in drawing from ancient and customary liturgical practices, even as they celebrated the 1970 Roman Missal.

For the whole of the Benedictine pontificate, that movement gained traction in the U.S., among lay people, clerics, and seminarians.

Even after Pope Francis criticized the term openly in 2016 — and seemingly the dispositions that went along with it — “reform of the reform” approaches to liturgy mostly remained prevalent in the United States in the early years of the Francis pontificate, with bishops continuing to implement elements of the approach, especially the ad orientem posture of worship, at their own cathedrals.

Of course, that was controversial, and even before the promulgation of Traditionis custodes at least two U.S. bishops restricted the ad orientem posture in early 2020.

But even at the Vatican, the reform of the reform approach had a champion in Cardinal Robert Sarah, who in 2014 was appointed by Francis prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, and remained in that post until February 2021.

Still, when Francis issued Traditionis custodes, the tide began to shift for the Church’s approach to the ordinary form of the liturgy.

In the months after the motu proprio was issued, several bishops placed new restrictions on the ad orientem posture, even while it was not addressed by Traditionis itself.

Across the country, those restrictions have continued to be issued, with bishops explicitly referencing the pope’s motu proprio to push back against priests who say their people want reforms to local liturgical praxis while still keeping faithfully to the reforms of Vatican Council II.

In short, observers have suggested since 2021 that Traditionis custodes has given bishops the message that the pope, and his most influential advisers in the U.S., are eager to see even the trappings of traditional forms of worship downplayed in the celebration of the liturgy’s ordinary form.

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In recent months, a triptych of episcopal statements suggests an acceleration to that trend.

In early December, the Archdiocese of New York notified pastors that, when renovating older churches, they should not reinstall communion rails in places where they had previously been removed.

While “some pastors have been inquiring about reinstalling an altar rail,” the archdiocese said “there is no need for it” — even, apparently, when the integrity of architectural design in a sacred space calls for one.

“To install a rail would suggest a posture other than the [General Instruction of the Roman Missal’s] stated norm,” the archdiocese said, namely that “the normal posture of the reception of Communion is standing.”

Days after the NY archdiocese issued its statement, Cardinal Blase Cupich published a column in his diocesan newspaper, in which the cardinal seemed to argue that Catholics who kneel to receive Holy Communion — a permitted posture, according to Church’s liturgical rubrics — “engage in a gesture that calls attention to oneself or disrupts the flow of the procession.”

And in early January, Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston announced that Catholics in his diocese would be required to continue standing after the Agnus Dei, even while kneeling is the ordinary posture in the United States.

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When it wrote last month about a growing desire among Catholics to receive the Eucharist kneeling, the Archdiocese of New York said that “no one is sure where the impetus for this is originating, but it seems to be picking up a bit of steam.”

That sentiment points to the irony of Traditionis custodes’ impact on the ordinary form.

When the pope promulgated the motu proprio, he made clear that the goal was “concord and unity” — that liturgical unity would foster a deeper communion among Catholics.

But in truth, Traditionis custodes seems to have had the opposite effect.

While a growing number of Catholics are interested in “reform of the reform” style reforms to the Church’s liturgy, a cadre of bishops, taking signals from Rome, are moving in a very different direction.

If anything, that seems to have led to discord, not concord, and to division, not unity.

Francis has emphasizes that bishops are the “guardians of tradition.” But at least some of them seem to be at odds with the very Catholics looking for the symbolism and customs of the Church’s liturgical traditions.