Can Pope Leo afford to wait on ‘Traditionis custodes’?
Emerging tensions over Traditionis custodes seem at times to be exacerbating the issues it was meant to address.
New restrictions on the celebration of both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the liturgy will take effect in the Archdiocese of Detroit from July 1st, Archbishop Edward Weisenburger has decreed.
The new norms, which include the restriction of the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass to four designated regional sites and a personal parish, as well as prohibiting the celebration of Mass ad orientem in the ordinary form, are to implement fully the provisions of Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes.
The Detroit norms follow similar measures which were announced in the Diocese of Charlotte earlier this month, but subsequently delayed until October by Bishop Michael Martin.
As in the case of Charlotte, Archbishop Weisenburger’s announcement — made by canonical decree and accompanied by a letter to local Catholics on June 13 — has generated considerable pushback from Catholics, both locally and online, who favor the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
Rorate Caeli, the traditionalist website which first reported the announcement, accused the archbishop of “obviously enjoy[ing] being a cruel anti-liturgical enforcer,” while noting the archbishop could have asked the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for an extension to the period granted for the full implementation period of Traditionis custodes.
Several dioceses, including Charlotte, have been allowed to continue with transitional arrangements until October of this year.
The announcements in Detroit and Charlotte highlight the ongoing controversy over the implementation of Traditionis custodes nearly four years after its promulgation, and the mounting hopes among TLM communities that Pope Leo XIV may revisit its provisions.
But while expectations of a papal intervention mount, the pope himself has not given any public indication of any plans he may have to revisit the issue, or in what time frame he might choose to do so.
In the meantime, the ongoing implementation of Traditionis custodes continues to generate pushback in some dioceses and may even be creating and exacerbating some of the pastoral challenges it was meant to address.
So, what options does Pope Leo have in considering the issue, and how urgently might he need to act?
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The letter, decree and accompanying norms of Archbishop Weisenburger, initially publicly available but later restricted on the archdiocesan website this weekend, make clear the archbishop is seeking to follow the “direction” of Pope Francis’ motu proprio and subsequent instructions issued by the Dicastery for Divine Worship.
“There are two goods which must come together as we move forward,” the archbishop wrote, “the pastoral care of these faithful as well as fidelity to the Holy Father's call for the Ordinary form of the Mass to become the ‘unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite’.”
“The unity of our Catholic faith need not be diminished by diversity. Likewise, fidelity to Christ is only possible if we remain faithful to the Church, under the leadership of our Pope and the local bishop,” Weisenburger concluded.
Critics of the archbishop’s decision to press ahead with implementing Traditionis custodes in the archdiocese contend that the “leadership of our pope” on the matter has yet to be demonstrated and, in line with similar instances in other diocese, have called for effectively a pause until Pope Leo indicates what, if anything, he might choose to say or do on the subject.
And it is clear the matter has been brought to Leo’s attention. In a video circulated online, Cardinal Raymund Burke related to the Latin Mass Society’s 60th Anniversary Conference that he had raised the subject with the new pope.
But, although Cardinal Burke expressed his “hope that [Leo] will, as soon as it is possible, take up the study of this question and try to restore the situation as it was after Summorum Pontificum,” he gave no indication of how the pope received his request.
While many have insisted that local bishops halt implementation of Traditionis custodes until Leo makes his mind known, absent some indication of a papal intention to act immediately, waiting for Leo could prove an indefinite endeavor.
It is worth recalling that despite expectations of imminent papal action, Francis waited some eight years into his own pontificate to reverse Benedict XVI’s provisions in Summorum Pontificum, effectively granting universal license to celebrate the extraordinary form.
Nevertheless, part of the expectation on local bishops now to cease implementing papal law following a change of pope is itself a legacy of the Francis era.
Under Pope Francis, many canonists, curial officials, and diocesan chanceries felt that the rule of law in the Church had become dependent directly on active papal will to enforce it, across a range of issues, liturgical, penal, procedural, and administrative.
As such, while Traditionis custodes remains the operative law of the Church, many now feel a similar standard of personal endorsement should be expected of Leo prior to bishops making any changes which could be disruptive to the lives of local communities.
Of course, in much the same way as bishops sympathetic to the Traditional Latin Mass continued to rely upon and govern under the norms of Summorum Pontificum for many years under Pope Francis, others now will feel equally justified in asserting that silence from the new pope presumes his endorsement of the current law.
Leo himself might reasonably wish to wait for a few months, if not years, to firmly grasp the ecclesiastical third rail which the TLM has become in the life of the Church, taking time first to establish the general tone of his pontificate and deal with his own preferred priorities.
But the emerging tension over the full implementation of Traditionis custodes is only likely to increase — especially if, as seems likely, it becomes visibly asymmetrical across dioceses.
More to the point, absent a clear and coherent papal vision for Traditionis custodes, the motu proprio could end up creating and exacerbating some of the very problems it supposedly is meant to address.
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One of Francis’ stated concerns in issuing Traditionis custodes was to foster ecclesiastical communion at the local levels of the Church and address what he saw as a kind of parallel ecclesiastical reality developing around TLM celebrations.
Francis specifically warned about and against the older form of the liturgy becoming a locus for and expression of a rejection of the Second Vatican Council by some. At the same time, there was a concern that authentic liturgical diversity had been replaced by division between communities, with Catholics devoted to the extraordinary form becoming detached from the wider pastoral reality of dioceses.
The extent to which this concern has some grounding was perhaps underlined in Detroit this weekend, when some Catholics pushed back on a statement from Archbishop Weisenburger made to accompany his new restrictions on the TLM:
“Those gathered for the celebration of Mass using the 1962 Missale Romanum are reminded that you belong to a parish for which priests are assigned for full care of souls and from whom the Faithful receive such care. Participation in this Mass is not a substitute for such care and the obligation to support your parish community.”
Canonically, the archbishop was stating a simple fact. Catholics in a diocese do, by law, belong to a parish and, including in Detroit, unless they are enrolled in a canonically defined personal parish, it is defined by default by territory.
Of course, the lived reality in Detroit and in many American dioceses is rather less cut-and-dried. Many Catholics opt to worship and affiliate with parishes other than their territorial parish for a variety of reasons including marked differences in liturgical style and reverence, music, affiliation to parish schools, preferences for particular priests and preaching styles, and a host of other reasons.
Parishes themselves, as a matter of administrative policy and notwithstanding the requirements of canon law, often recognize parishioners primarily, if not exclusively, via formal registration, not place of residence.
And many dioceses do not make maps of parish boundaries especially accessible, making it difficult for some Catholics to even know for sure to which territorial parish they are supposed to belong.
Whatever the plain intention of canon law may be, the reality of “parish shopping” is deeply ingrained in at least some areas of American Catholic practice, and by no means limited to those who favor the TLM.
However, if a stated aim of Traditionis custodes is to enhance communion in parishes and prevent self-segregation amongst Catholics according to liturgical preferences, the evidence, in some places at least, is that it has had the opposite effect.
Some parishes in some dioceses have seen their congregations decimated by the barring of TLM Mass from parish churches, as previously regular attendees move to designated non-parish sites, effectively suppressing what were previously large liturgically diverse communities bound up in the common life of the parish.
And many other Catholics might read Archbishop Weisenburger’s “reminder” about their “obligations” to territoriality and question if the full care of their souls is really being met always and everywhere — especially given his prohibition of the celebration of the ordinary form of the Mass ad orientem, while insisting that “unity of our Catholic faith need not be diminished by diversity.”
Intentionally or not, the impression is forming in dioceses like Detroit and Charlotte that what local bishops have in mind is not “diversity” or even real communion, but an ecclesiastical monoculture created and enforced by episcopal decree.
At the same time, many of those who feel aggrieved by changes to episcopal policy appeal to certain actions by Pope Leo — like his preference for singing public prayers like the Regina Caeli in Latin — as proof that what their own desires are legitimate.
How long the pope can wait before giving some indication of his mind on this is an open question.
But if a trend emerges of bishops appearing to combine a maximalist approach to the implementation of Traditionis custodes with imposing their own preferences on the celebration of the ordinary form of the liturgy, it could end up creating and deepening exactly the kind of divisions and resentments virtually every pope since the council has said they want to avoid.
Honestly, revert back to Summorum Pontificum so that people can calm the heck down.
And definitely bishops need to stop quashing traditional-flavored liturgical expressions like ad orientem. While it's highly unlikely imo that the dust in the liturgical ambiguity left in wake of the last ecumenical council is going to settle with a return to the Extraordinary form as standard (which I personally am glad of), at least in America and France a person would have to be totally blindheaded not to see that the overall trajectory is toward a traditional expression of liturgy. That's not a polemic; it's a fact. The bishops trying to quash that should probably, if you will, "get with the times".
All of this was forseeable in the first weekend TC was promulgated, when Pope Francis demanded every bishop use their authority to ban every Latin Mass.... and the Bishops demurred. It was clear at that point TC had failed, and eventually the stage would be set.
Even if Leo were to continue it, he would need to exercise an extrarodinary amount of power to enforce it, and hope the blowback would be minimal. I don't think it would be. I think a lot of the goodwill he's building up would be nuked, and he would likely find these issues even harder to solve than Francis did.
I say this as an obvious traditionalist, but the smart and obvious move is plain. Whether or not they are willing to make it is something different entirely.