The Undefeatable Prayer

C atholics who prefer what is called the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) have been praying and fretting about mere rumors for decades. Twenty years ago, I remember rumors of an imminent reconciliation between the pope and the breakaway traditionalist group the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which would have brought 500 Latin Mass priests into the universal Church. Months later, there were rumors in the opposite direction, of some terrible withdrawal of permission — a permission then called “the indult” — for saying the traditional Mass at all.

And so, I’ve learned to ignore most of the rumors as most of them go nowhere.

But currently, the church is approaching what feels like the beginning of the end of Pope Francis’s reign in St. Peter’s. And we are awash in rumors. One day, a French order of priests is told to hold up their upcoming ordinations because of concerns about their attachment to the church’s traditional form of worship. There are also soundings coming from the SSPX that they may seek to ordain one or more men as bishops to continue their work — the last time this was done, in 1988, it caused a split in the SSPX, and led to the excommunications of their new bishops and their founder. All around the church, bishops are rumored to be receiving an ominous silence from Rome when they ask the authorities in the Vatican to extend the permissions currently given to the TLM in their dioceses. And then we are hearing that the ideologues around Francis, anxious about the uncertainties of succession, are seeking to end the liturgy wars for good by banning the TLM from normal parishes entirely, and putting a final sunset on permission for religious orders to use it.

The papacy may wield tremendous authority in the Catholic scheme of things. But I don’t think that even that office is capable of defeating the TLM and abolishing the traditional liturgy of the church. Why?

Simply put: Pope Benedict’s argument for granting liberty to Catholics to attend the TLM is true, and comports with the deep truths of the faith. Pope Francis, in banning it, advanced a sociological argument that was untrue at the time he made it and proved more untrue in implementation. And then men around Francis who would ban it forever are advancing an argument that is revolutionary and counterintuitive in a self-defeating way.

So let’s review. The vast majority of Catholics in the 1970s adapted to the reformed, vernacular liturgy of the church, imposed on them by the pope and a Catholic episcopacy still in the throes of religious fervor from the Second Vatican Council. Pockets of resistance remained in France and Brazil. A letter to the pope from English cultural luminaries — including Nancy Mitford and Agatha Christie — asking for the Church to preserve its traditional liturgy as a vehicle for the great cultural works of art associated with it, led to a tiny “permission” for the TLM in England. English-speaking Catholic traditionalists from Evelyn Waugh to Michael Davies then encouraged resistance among English-speaking peoples globally.

Both traditionalists and progressives agreed that the TLM preserved the traditional theology of the church, and radical traditionalists and progressives agreed that the New Mass (Novus ordo) represented a new set of theological commitments. These arguments, however, never penetrated for the vast majority of Catholics. Pope Benedict then tried to clarify that the new rite and the Vatican Council itself must be understood as part of a continuous — not ruptured — tradition, that they must be the same faith. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too,” he wrote, “and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” In other words, it is natural for Catholics to desire this liturgy and ask for it, and it is proper for the Church to give it to them, because it expresses the Catholic faith itself.

Pope Francis’s rationale for restricting permission, taking the initiative away from individual priests and withdrawing it to within the Vatican walls, was that the partisans of the TLM tended to view themselves as a “true Church” apart from the vast majority of the Church, and that the TLM fostered division and rebellion. In fact, the pope and his ministers were conflating two different things: the astonishing rise of the TLM, particularly in America, with the overlapping but different rise of populist Church media on the internet — such as bloggers and YouTube celebrities — who were critical of the Francis pontificate in other ways. The fact was that most of the growth of the TLM under Benedict and Francis was within diocesan parishes and led by priests who said both the old and new liturgy, thereby demonstrating both their own, and their congregants’, loyalty to the whole Church.

Finally, there is the argument of the ideologues around Francis, which is the inverse of Benedict’s argument. They hold that there was in fact a rupture at the Second Vatican Council. A post-Vatican II Church, they hold, must have a post-Vatican II theology and ecclesiology. They want the TLM gone precisely because it cannot accommodate the new religion. For them, the very definition of “tradition” means change imposed from above.

If I may be bold enough to summarize their theological vision in simple terms: They wish to replace the Gospel itself. Instead of Christ graciously atoning for our sins and redeeming us out of a superabundance of love so that we might enjoy eternal beatitude, they pose a God who owes us acceptance based on our supreme dignity, entailed from the creation of the world and unsullied by mere sin. Christ’s action aims at liberating all men from prejudice and distinction — even those of faith — until the unity of mankind is achieved.

Not only are the bulk of Catholics uninterested in such a faith; if they have an ounce of faith themselves, they can depend on God himself to purify the Church. Whatever thunderbolts come from Rome, too many Catholics have internalized Benedict’s insight as their own instinct: The church has a duty to give me the Gospel truth.