Seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) prepare to receive minor orders at Wigratzbad
Since Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes in 2021, congregations attending the pre-Vatican II Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), have been living on borrowed time. Pope Francis announced that he wished to enforce “single and identical prayer” and to this end deprecated the use of parish churches for the liturgy of the TLM. The Dicastery for Divine Worship later explained that “the exclusion of the parish church is intended to affirm that the celebration of the Eucharist according to the previous rite, being a concession limited to these groups, is not part of the ordinary life of the parish community.” On February 21 the Pope approved a rescript, signed by Cardinal Arthur Roche, to the effect that permission for the continuing use of parish churches for the TLM was “reserved to the Holy See”. Local bishops could not allow it on their own authority.
There are many puzzling things about this situation, but here I shall focus on two. One is the spiritual benefit some Catholics receive from the Traditional Mass; the other is the value of this liturgy to the Church as a whole. That those who attend this Mass typically benefit, spiritually, from doing so, seems to be taken for granted by the documents restricting it: they repeatedly refer to their “good” as a potential justification for allowing celebrations to continue. The Holy See is not claiming that attending the Traditional Mass is bad because this liturgy is theologically misleading, or inculcates a false spirituality.
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