Just before Christmas, a fellow Catholic writer described me as an “ex-traditionalist.” He didn’t mean it as an insult. Just the opposite, if anything. Once upon a time, this fellow had also been a devout Latin-Masser. But eventually he became disillusioned with the movement’s rhetoric, and now prefers the Novus Ordo.
Anyway, the description—“ex-traditionalist”—made me chuckle. And then it made me kind of sad.
If you knew me only as a friend, you’d probably think I was a trad. I was received into the Catholic Church at a parish in the Archdiocese of Boston that celebrates the Latin Mass. After we got married, I joined the parish my wife’s family attends. It’s under the care of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a religious order that only celebrates the Vetus Ordo. So, I’ve attended Latin Mass almost exclusively since I became a Catholic.
But, if you knew me only as a writer, I can see how you’d think I’d turned against the traditionalist movement. I used to write for rad-trad publications like The Remnant. I spoke at the Catholic Identity Conference alongside Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Dr. Taylor Marshall. Lately, though, I’ve written a few articles criticizing the traditionalist movement.
My line has always been more or less the same. A tiny minority of Latin-Massers (bloggers, vloggers, and social-media trolls) give the Latin Mass community a bad name. That bad name is the reason why our bishops are trying to stamp out the Latin Mass. So, we—the moderate majority—must restore our good name by actively distancing ourselves from those extremists.
Of course, we shouldn’t have to. We should expect the bishops to be more fair-minded in their judgments. But that’s not going to happen. And if the bishops do decide to suppress the Latin Mass, it’s going to be suppressed. The Church is an absolute monarchy, not a democracy; there’s no court of appeal for that sort of thing. When they blow the whistle, the game is over.
Yet here’s the thing: Many of my trad friends argue that an order to suppress the Latin Mass would be unjust and unlawful. Priests would therefore be justified in disobeying their bishops by continuing to celebrate the Vetus Ordo. The laity would also be justified in disobeying their bishops by attending those “underground” Masses.
I’m never quite sure why they make this claim. Do they think that the Tridentine Mass is the only valid Mass? Do they believe that the Church lost its authority to regulate the liturgy after 1570? I don’t mean to be flip; I just don’t understand the rationale.
To be clear, I believe that suppressing the Latin Mass is unnecessary and unjustified. I believe it would cause tremendous spiritual harm to the faithful—and the Church—without any meaningful benefit. I believe that would be a very bad decision on the Pope’s part. I don’t think he should do it. But I see no reason to deny that he can do it. It’s possible for a papal order to be stupid and valid at the same time.
The Vatican does not have a duty to accommodate our liturgical preferences. If it did, I would only attend the Sarum Rite.
That’s my take, anyway. And like I said, I have friends who disagree. They argue (quite respectfully) that, for a real traditionalist, the Latin Mass isn’t a “preference.” It’s integral to his faith-life. If you would obey a papal order to abandon the Latin Mass, you’re not actually a trad at all.
Of my friends who take this line, many of them worship with the Society of St. Pius X. Most of them, however do not. And that’s what throws me for a loop. After all, there’s a word for folks who believe that the Latin Mass ought to be preserved even at the expense of full communion with Rome. They’re called Lefebvrists.
By the way, I don’t say that as an insult. I have much sympathy and admiration for my Lefebvrist friends. But I’m not a Lefebvrist myself. If the Vatican did suppress the Latin Mass, I would stop attending the Latin Mass.
Now, maybe you disagree! If so, I won’t judge. I’m a strict Newmanite when it comes to matters of conscience. We all have to follow that “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.” But, here, my conscience tells me to obey the Pope. That is to say, I couldn’t justify disobeying such an order to myself… much as I would like to.
So, maybe I’m not a real traditionalist. But if so, I’m not really an “ex-traditionalist” either; I was never really a trad to begin with. And that’s just as well! Like I said, the label means nothing to me. I find that -isms tend to narrow the mind. At least, they narrow my mind. When the Pope hands down a new edict, I want to ask myself, “How would a Christian respond?”—not, “How would a trad respond?”
That, I think, is why Robert Cardinal Sarah asked us not to use the T-word at all:
Some, if not many, people, call you “traditionalists.” Sometimes you even call yourselves “traditional Catholics” or hyphenate yourselves in a similar way. Please do this no longer.
You do not belong in a box on the shelf or in a museum of curiosities. You are not traditionalists: you are Catholics of the Roman Rite as am I and as is the Holy Father. You are not second-class or somehow peculiar members of the Catholic Church because of your life of worship and your spiritual practices, which were those of innumerable saints.
You are called by God, as is every baptized person, to take your full place in the life and mission of the Church in the world of today, not to be shut up in—or worse, to retreat into—a ghetto in which defensiveness and introspection reign and stifle the Christian witness and mission to the world you too are called to give.
That’s eminently sound advice.
Why am I saying all of this? Well, a couple of years ago, I noticed a startling trend: traditionalists and conservatives began to turn against Benedict XVI, of all people.
They started by retroactively condemning his decision to resign the papacy in 2013—which, of course, made way for Pope Francis. When Benedict first stepped down, they were just sad to see him go. Now, they accuse him of abandoning his post.
Then it became fashionable to criticize his early theological work. His involvement with the “New Theology” crowd and his work as a peritus at Vatican II was taken as proof that Benedict was a crypto-Modernist.
Finally, after Traditionis Custodes was handed down in 2021, Benedict was condemned for making his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum too weak. After all, Summorum merely points out that neither Vatican II nor Paul VI ever officially abrogated the Latin Mass. Therefore, every priest of the Roman Rite is entitled to use the rubrics of 1962 whenever they choose. And as Benedict’s critics point out, it’s a simple matter for any future pontiff to officially abrogate the Latin Mass.
Why hadn’t Benedict used stronger language? Why hadn’t he guaranteed the right of all Roman priests to celebrate use the 1962 rubrics forever and ever?
The first two points are too foolish to address. But I think the third one merits a response. Simply put: As pope, Benedict was authorized to regulate the liturgy. He could not, however, use that authority to limit or abolish future popes’ authority to regulate the liturgy. Benedict did as much as he could to restore these pre-conciliar traditions while respecting the limits of his office.
In that sense, Benedict resisted the Spirit of Vatican II while also resisting the Spirit of Vatican I. He was loathe for the papacy to become a spiritual despotism. Over and over, he refused to use his office as a means of advancing his own personal agenda. Or, as Thomas Pink might put it, he never blurred the lines between his Vatican’s “official theology” and the Church’s magisterial teaching.
It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? Benedict XVI was the greatest theologian ever to serve as pope. And yet, unlike so many of his predecessors (and his successor!), he had no illusion that being pope somehow made him a better theologian—or liturgist, or economist, or ethicist, or environmental scientist, or… Well, you get the idea.
Some of you must also have read that Pope Francis, who celebrated Benedict’s funeral Mass, chose to use Eucharistic Prayer III. It’s hard not to read this as a slap in the face for the dead pontiff. Among traditional Catholics (sorry, Cardinal Sarah) the very words “Eucharistic Prayer III” are a joke, like “lay participation” or “Dan Schutte” or “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.” The prayers were written by the Council Fathers of Vatican II. And, if you read them, it shows. EP3 is very… Sixties.
At the very least, Francis was totally indifferent to his predecessor’s own wishes. He paid no attention to the sort of funeral Benedict would have wanted for himself. What’s more likely, of course, is that the new Vatican regime wanted to make a point: that Benedict’s legacy would follow him into the grave. (And that, by the way, is what I mean by the Spirit of Vatican I.)
Some of Benedict’s Traditionalist critics are calling it just desserts. “Well,” they say, “he always insisted that Vatican II was basically fine. He spent his whole life pushing the ‘hermeneutic of continuity.’ And after all, Eucharistic Prayer III was established by the Council! So, why should Benedict have minded?”
This assumes there are only two paths available to Catholics: Lefebvrism or Modernism. If you’re not trying to abolish the Novus Ordo and negate Vatican II, you may as well become a Jesuit. Again, I have friends in the SSPX who say that’s exactly the choice we face. And, again, I see their point! But I don’t think it’s quite so black-and-white.
Neither did Benedict. He made that much clear in his last major interview, when a journalist asked the pope emeritus why Summorum Pontificum was so “timid.” Benedict explained:
I have always said, and even still say, that it was important that something which was previously the most sacred thing in the Church to people should not suddenly be completely forbidden. . . . It was important for me that the Church is one with herself inwardly, with her own past; that what was previously holy to her is not somehow wrong now. The rite must develop. In that sense reform is appropriate. But the continuity must not be ruptured.
Benedict simply wasn’t convinced that Vatican II itself departed from the historic traditions of the Catholic Church. He wasn’t convinced that its documents contained errors.
For whatever it’s worth, Lefebvrists are mostly concerned with one specific document: Dignitatis Humanae, Paul VI’s constitution on religious liberty. (Here, as always, Thomas Pink is outstanding.)
The Council Fathers also approved very few of the liturgical “reforms” implemented after the Council. They insisted that the Latin language and Gregorian chant remain normative in worship. They assumed priests would continue to celebrate Mass ad orientem—facing East—and not versus populum, or facing the people. They certainly didn’t authorize common liturgical abuses, like the regular use of “Eucharistic Ministers.”
Again, it wasn’t that Benedict was thrilled about these post-conciliar “reforms.” It’s that he could not, in good conscience, lay all the blame on Vatican II.
Yet Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity” cut both ways, because Lefebvrists aren’t the only ones who espouse the “hermeneutic of rupture.” The Modernists do, too. Like the Lefebvrists, they believe the Council Fathers of Vatican II broke with Catholicism’s ancient and apostolic traditions. The difference is, they take this rupture as license to remake the Church in their own image.
Benedict was far, far more concerned with the Modernists’ vision of rupture than he was with the Lefebvrists’. And for good reason. He accepted that, five hundred years after the Council of Trent, some “updating” was necessary—inevitable, even. Yet he demanded that all such reforms be in perfect harmony with the pre-conciliar Church.
That’s why few have doubted Benedict’s devotion to Catholicism’s ancient traditions, and yet no one’s really comfortable calling him a “traditionalist.” He never denied that the pre-conciliar Church needed to be reformed; nor did he deny that the post-conciliar Church needed to be reformed. He was a partisan of neither Trent nor Vatican II. He assumed that change was necessary—inevitable—but insisted that any change must be in harmony with the immutable beliefs and practices of the Universal Church.
This makes Benedict sound like a sort of milquetoast centrist. And I’m afraid that’s why so many Traditionalists grew to resent him. We judge him by the terms of our latest hot-button debates. During the Francis papacy, more and more of us came to believe that Vatican II “institutionalized” Modernism. We insist that the Church today must be viewed through the lens of the Council. If you’re happy with the state of things in 2022, you may defend Vatican II. If not, you must reject it completely.
The pope emeritus disagreed. And here, I think, is why:
Benedict felt that both Traditionalists and Modernists place too much emphasis on the Council. It just isn’t as radical as either its supporters or its detractors claim. It wasn’t significant enough to become the Church’s whole center of gravity. He didn’t see what all the fuss is about.
Or, rather, he did see what the fuss was about—and it wasn’t Vatican II. Not really. It wasn’t theology, or ecclesiology, or even liturgy. Rather, powerful Modernists in the Roman Curia used Vatican II as an excuse to shove their agenda down everyone’s throats.
These Modernists did real harm to the Church. Benedict never would have denied that. But Vatican II didn’t put thousands of subversive progressives into power overnight. They’d already worked their way to the highest levels of the Vatican bureaucracy. The Council merely gave this fifth column a chance to set their plans into motion.
Some of you might know that I wrote an article for The American Conservative back in October making this same argument. And I’m sure it’s presumptuous to assume that Pope Benedict XVI agreed with me. For whatever it’s worth, though, I try my best to agree with Benedict, because my beliefs were deeply informed by his. And I’d cite just one example.
Contrary to what most commentators say, Summorum Pontificum did not “restore” our priests’ right to say the Latin Mass. Rather, Benedict asserted that their right had never been abrogated in the first place. This motu proprio—the most significant document of his papacy—was really arguing that certain bad actors in the Vatican had illegally and deceitfully suppressed the 1962 rubrics.
No one denies that, from the standpoint of canon law, Benedict was right. The Latin Mass was never officially suppressed. Even Traditionis Custodes admits as much. And it’s here that Benedict’s traditionalist critics would chime in, saying that he (Benedict) simply didn’t do enough. He should have changed canon law to ensure that the Latin Mass was available to future generations. And, hey, maybe they’re right! But let’s set that aside for a moment. There’s a much larger point to be made, and it’s this:
From 2007 until 2021, the Church’s official teaching was that every single priest of the Roman Rite was free to celebrate the Latin Mass by right of his ordination. From 2007 until (at least!) 2013, the Vatican actively encouraged the clergy to do so. And yet there wasn’t a single diocese anywhere in the world where a priest felt comfortable celebrating the Latin Mass publicly without his bishop’s permission. Even in “good dioceses,” pastors were routinely punished for using the Extraordinary Form without the chancery’s permission.
Clearly, this isn’t about Vatican II. This has nothing to do with “official Church policy.” This is about individual members of the hierarchy abusing their authority to deny priests their canonical rights in order to suppress the Latin Mass.
Now I probably sound like a wingnut. And, to be clear, I’m not saying there’s a grand conspiracy to subvert the Vetus Ordo. Unfortunately, abuses of this nature are common everywhere in the Church.
For instance, did you know it’s still technically illicit for laymen to routinely distribute the Eucharist? According to canon law (910 §1), “The ordinary minister of holy communion is a bishop, presbyter, or deacon.” The clergy are only supposed to deputize the laity in moments of urgent need—for instance, if there are 1,500 people at an Easter Mass, and only one priest. That’s why “Eucharistic Ministers” are properly known as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. They’re supposed to be just that: extra-ordinary, not the norm.
This is why Benedict refused to put all the blame on Vatican II. Even when the post-conciliar Church upholds these pre-conciliar traditions, they’re routinely ignored by bishops and priests. Rome’s “official teaching” is basically irrelevant.
And here, too, it cuts both ways. Look at how poorly received Traditionis Custodes was by the bishops. According to one study, only 29 bishops have fully complied with Francis’s motu proprio. Meanwhile, 176 bishops have maintained or expanded access to the Extraordinary Form. Here in the United States, over 90 percent of bishops have refused to fully enforce Traditionis.
Now, I happen to think that’s good news. Very good news. But it shows that most bishops really aren’t paying much attention to what goes on in Rome. They won’t go out of their way to uphold or suppress the Church’s traditions.
There can be no “reform”—of either a conservative or a progressive nature—when the huge majority of clerics are happy to do their own thing. We can’t assume that the Church will go forwards (or backwards!) if basically none of the bishops are acting in concert. Vatican II is as irrelevant as Summorum Pontificum is as irrelevant as Traditionis Custodes.
Trads relished this disunity in 2021, just as progressives relished it in 2007. But at the end of the day, these divisions speak to a grave disease. The Church is the Body of Christ—and, right now, all the different body-parts are doing their own thing. The house of God is divided against itself.
That, I think, troubled Benedict more than anything else. The Church’s “official policy” meant a great deal to him. As Pope, he wanted to get it right. But he was deeply disturbed by the fact that, no matter what the Church’s policies were on any given day, they were sure to be ignored.
The Church Militant is in disarray. Its generals have no respect for the commander-in-chief. The junior officers have no respect for staff HQ. And discipline among the line infantry has completely broken down. Really, it doesn’t matter whether the marching-orders are good or bad when you know they’re going to be ignored altogether.
That’s why, in my obituary for Pope Benedict, I didn’t focus on Summorum Pontificum or his theological writings or his tenure at the CDF. Those things matter, of course. They matter a great deal. Yet I believe that, at some level, he knew that he wouldn’t be a successful churchman.
Benedict recognized that popes lack the authority to have any real one-to-one influence on the Church. Maybe he could have made some lasting changes if he’d been able to corral the Roman Curia, but that wasn’t going to happen. He made a valiant effort to purge the Vatican bureaucracy of corrupt and faithless actors, but he knew that work couldn’t be accomplished in the course of a single papacy.
As early as 1969—four years after Vatican II was closed—he realized that the Church’s future no longer rested in its traditional centers of power. Rather, he said,
It seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that it was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.
He spent the rest of his career, both as a theologian and a bishop, developing this theme. Its full expression came, I think, in his 1997 prophecy about the “mustard seed”:
Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more and more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world—that let God in.
Benedict realized that the two “swords” of Christendom, the (institutional) Church and the State, were unequal to the challenges posed by the modern world. The West is now mission territory. If and when the Christian Faith is restored in these lands, it won’t be thanks to any popes or politicians. No: the future of the Church rests with ordinary men and women who, like the first Christians, devote their whole selves—mind, body, and soul—to Jesus Christ.
Some of those women will be nuns. Some of the men will be priests and brothers. There might even be a couple of politicians thrown into the mix. But this faithful remnant, these “mustard seeds,” will have one thing in common: they will take personal responsibility for the Gospel. They will live entirely for Christ—and, when the time comes, they will die for Him.
This goes so far beyond “lay participation,” so far beyond the “universal call to holiness.” Pope Benedict wanted Jesus Christ to be our whole reality, our raison d’être. Our reason for being.
That’s why Benedict makes all our potty little -isms sound like parish hall gossip. Modernism is not enough. Traditionalism is not enough. We have Jesus Christ, or we have nothing. Nothing at all.
Benedict XVI was a prophet. That will become clear in the years and centuries to come.
I was sad when I learned of his death—though, to be honest, I thought I would be much sadder. Maybe it’s not so surprising. He fought the good fight; he finished his course; he kept the faith. I miss him terribly, but now he has a crown of righteousness. And I can’t begrudge him that.
Rest in peace, Joseph Ratzinger. Please pray for us.