On Tradition, Authority, & the Latin Mass

 

Further Thoughts on Traditionis Custodes and Ecclesial Authority

A Note on Scope and Intent

After reflecting on Saturday’s discussion, I realized that my point may have sounded more polemical in conversation than I intended. My actual argument is narrower — and more structural — than that. What follows is not primarily a critique of attachment to the older rite, which I respect and even share to some extent. Nor is it an attempt to defend every prudential aspect of Traditionis Custodes. Rather, it is an attempt to explain what I take to be the underlying ecclesiological and institutional logic behind the Vatican’s actions, whether or not one ultimately agrees with them.

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Hello, everyone.

It was good to meet you all on Saturday. I wanted to follow up, in particular, on a few of the things that G. and I touched on. This is partly because I don’t think I articulated my position as clearly as I’d have liked at the moment, and partly because I think the questions are philosophically rich and the discussion worth continuing.

During the relevant conversation — one of many we had that day — my central claim was that Pope Francis’s restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass (“TLM”), per Traditionis Custodes (“TC,” 2021), need (and indeed ought) not be read as hostility toward the rite itself.¹ 

A more plausible reading, I suggested, is that the Vatican was responding to a pastoral and ecclesiological risk: namely, that TLM communities have, in a significant number of cases, become environments where everyday Catholics are systematically exposed to the view that the post-conciliar Magisterium is something in the vicinity of “corrupt,” “heretical,” or otherwise “illegitimate,” that the Novus Ordo (“NO”) sacraments are dubious, and that the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II”) represents a “rupture,” rather than a development, of Catholic Tradition. 

it is important for me to emphasize: This is not my personal “reading” of TC. The Vatican’s own accompanying letter to TC names exactly these concerns.

G.’s rebuttal (if I recollect correctly) was that Catholics attending the NO are — equally and oppositely — exposed to harmful heterodox tendencies in a more liberal or progressive direction, but that this risk hasn’t been treated as grounds for restricting the NO. 

I want to explain why I think this comparison, while superficially symmetrical, doesn’t hold up.

The first issue is one of authority. On Catholic principles, the Magisterium is the Church’s final and authoritative arbiter of what constitutes orthodox development versus doctrinally dangerous innovation. it is worth remembering that the Vatican isn’t merely some self-professed “arbiter” of theological tastes. For Catholics, of course, it is literally the formal arbitrator, empowered to bind consciences and resolve disputes.

By that standard, the Vatican’s consistent endorsement of the NO as doctrinally and sacramentally legitimate is itself a theological datum Catholics cannot casually dismiss as merely administrative or stylistic preference.

Going further, it is worth observing that some of what Traditionalists label unacceptably liberal or progressive in NO contexts may simply be — in the authoritative judgment of the Holy See — within the ordinary range of legitimate post-conciliar theology. (Personal æsthetic judgments notwithstanding!) 

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not arguing that the above means there are no bona fide abuses in authorized NO contexts. There are! 

But — and here’s perhaps the most salient feature of regulatory asymmetry that G. complained about — the NO-associated abuses are not, in the main, structurally oriented toward delegitimizing the papacy or undermining confidence in the Church’s sacramental life.

The second issue is the distinction between (what I’ll call) incidental and structural risk. A heterodox homily delivered by a single priest in a suburban parish is — on the face of it — best seen as an individual failure. As lamentable, potentially destructive, and in need of correction as this sort of failure is, it is in a sense incidental.¹ In any case, it is a far cry (in my view) from the widespread structural failures crystallized within numerous streams of Traditionalism (including, but not limited to, the Society of Saint Pius X, or “SSPX”).

The SSPX, for example, is a subculture with its own publications, networks, chapels, and ideological formation programs (including dedicated seminaries) that systematically frame the post-conciliar Church as having deviated from, or betrayed, “authentic Tradition.”

This is a phenomenon of a different magnitude from isolated parish-level abuses.

it is not a comparison of two kinds of bad homilizing — one too left-leaning, the other too right-leaning. It is a comparison between individual, local failures and an organized alternative magisterium.

However, as I began by stating during the in-person confab, I’ll also acknowledge a significant complicating factor. The internet is almost certainly a more powerful vector for Traditionalist radicalization than any physical parish, and TC doesn’t touch that. That’s a real limitation of the policy. But I’d argue it is a limitation imposed by jurisdictional reality: The Vatican can regulate what falls under its canonical authority, not what happens on YouTube. If anything, this provides a further compelling reason for taking seriously the institutional expressions of Traditionalism that are within TC’s reach — not for abandoning governance altogether.

Finally, I want to name (what I think is) the deeper tension in the Traditionalist position. I say this not to be polemical but because I think it is a genuine intellectual puzzle worth confronting and engaging honestly. 

Traditionalists often — and rightly — emphasize that the Church is “not a democracy” and that the pope governs with real authority. But, in practice, that principle seems to be applied all too selectively: Summorum Pontificum was a legitimate exercise of papal authority; Traditionis Custodes apparently was not. The SSPX formally “recognizes” the pope while simultaneously “resisting” him — practically subordinating the exercise of papal authority to the Society’s own judgments about “Tradition” whenever the two appear to conflict. 

This pattern — affirming a strong hierarchical papacy when the pope agrees with you, but pivoting toward the language of consultation, subsidiarity, or dissenting voices when he does not — begins to look less like a principled ecclesiology and more like preference. 

I think that tension deserves a direct answer, and I’d be genuinely interested in G.’s or anyone else’s rationale for it.

As our host and organizer, M., put it somewhere on the invitation: This is a discussion among gentlemen. So, I hope and trust that this would go without saying. But, for absolute clarity, I’ll say anyway that none of this is meant as a personal critique of anyone’s devotion to the older rite, which I respect (and even share to some extent). 

Rather, it is a question about governance, authority, and the coherence of the ecclesiological principles being assumed or invoked. I think those are worth making precise and getting right.

I am looking forward to continuing the conversation.

In Christ,

Matthew Bell

P.S. For anyone interested in continuing some of these discussions, I occasionally write longer-form essays over at The SynchroMystic on theology, philosophy, Church history, and religion in public life. A few pieces that may be relevant to conversations we touched on Saturday include essays on St. Augustine and Neoplatonism, the philosophical problem of evil, theories of the soul, Catholic crypto-history, Protestant apocalypticism, and contemporary religious movements.

A few examples:

• “Was St. Augustine a Neoplatonist?”
• “The Philosophical Problem of Evil”
• “11 Views of the Soul”
• “Rome and the American Republic”
• “Crypto-Protestants in Rome”
• “10 Figures the Bible Never Named”

https://matthewjbell.substack.com

Notes:

¹ Francis’s letter, summarized, basically makes the following claims. Vatican II willed that the liturgy be reformed. But some Catholics had and have an attachment to antecedent forms of worship. For the sake of Catholic unity (“ecclesial communion”), Popes John Paul II (Ecclesia Dei, 1988) and Benedict XVI (Summorum Pontificum, 2007) extended permissions — in the former’s case, an “indult,” and in the latter’s case, a liberalized “general permission” — for certain congregations and priests to use an earlier version of the Roman Missal (i.e., Pope John XXIII’s 1962 edition). However, these days — according to feedback provided to the Vatican by diocesan bishops — some of the previously authorized groups “deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform, dictated by Vatican Council II and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs”. Therefore, in conformity with “the wishes expressed by the episcopate” as well as “with the decrees of Vatican Council II,” Francis says he “considered it appropriate …for ecclesial communion” to require that any congregation or priest currently celebrating the pre-Vatican-II rite apply to the governing bishop for re-authorization and submit to his decision — which could only but given insofar as the requesting group does not deny the validity of (what Benedict VI himself called) the Ordinary Rite. Recall that Benedict XVI had written that “the Roman Missal promulgated by …Pius V and revised by …John XXIII” was “never abrogated” and should ever “be considered an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi of the Church …” as is “the ordinary expression,” namely, “[t]he Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI”. It should not be obscured or forgotten that Benedict XVI was speaking about the pre-Vatican-II rite in and of itself; whereas, Francis expressed concerns about the beliefs held by the congregations celebrating (or seeking to celebrate) the unabrogated extraordinary rite. ^↩

² Notice that, the way I’m using the word, the opposite (so to speak) of “incidental” would be something like the word fundamental. When I say, “a heterodox homily is incidental,” I mean (something like) that — if said homily is truly heterodox, then (by definition) it isn’t sanctioned by the Vatican. Now, let’s say that an interlocutor rejoins as follows. “You say ‘incidental.’ But I say, ‘The problem is precisely that these truly heterodox homilies are sanctioned by the Vatican. The failure is, therefore, fundamental’.” I confess that I cannot understand this rejoinder except if I construe “fundamental” along the following line, as tantamount to the claim that the current Vatican has defected from the truth. This seems straightforwardly expandable into this sort of argument. (1.) If the Magisterium of the True Church does not defect from the truth, then — as an organization — it does not promote or teach false doctrine. (2.) The current Vatican organization does promote or teach false doctrine (as evidenced by its sanctioning of truly heterodox homilies). (3.) Therefore, the current Vatican is not the Magisterium of the True Church. ^↩