In a June 4 article headlined “Young Trads: ‘Bishops Must Seek a New Balance,’” French Catholic historian Christophe Dickès recalled a video, made soon after Pope Francis imposed sweeping restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass with his July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, in which a group of young French Catholics made clear their love for the old form of the Mass was not ideological.
They were not “grumpy, old fashioned, and even less, separatist,” Dickès observed, but were instead attached to the traditional rite because of its “transcendence, its verticality, and its orientation towards the East.” There was no desire to dissent, he said, but rather they addressed the Pope, saying: “We are your sheep.”
But he noted that almost two years later, Rome has rejected such appeals.
“Worse still,” Dickès said, “legal blindspots” in Traditionis Custodes led to further restrictions via Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, who “had the Pope sign another text reducing episcopal power in this area to almost nothing” — what Dickès described as “squeezing the lemon until the pips squeak.”
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“Much has been said about this policy, which is out of step with the spirit of decentralization that the Pope wished to give his pontificate,” Dickès noted. “While the progressive wing of the Church keeps repeating the need to put an end to the pyramidal organization of the Church, this does not seem to be accepted when it comes to the traditionalist world.”
These trends “urgently demand, contrary to the orientation adopted by Rome, bringing the traditional Mass back into the bosom of dioceses.” Furthermore, “bishops must imperatively reclaim the fullness of their prerogatives in liturgical matters, in accordance with the ‘healthy decentralization’ whose merits Pope Francis often praises.”
Recalling Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s recent disclosure that Benedict XVI considered Traditionis Custodes “a mistake” when he found out about it in L’Osservatore Romano, Dickès also pointed out that bishops also were surprised by the restrictions that the Vatican “justified by a survey of dioceses, the results of which were never made public” — and which, according to a report by Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, were mostly favorable to the old rite.
Dickès then referred to a May 26 survey by La Croix that questioned 4,000 young French Catholics who will be part of the 32,000 from France heading to World Youth Day in Lisbon in August.
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38% of the young people questioned said they appreciated the Latin Mass, while 40% had nothing against it, even if the rite did not correspond to their expectations.” In addition, the recent annual traditional pilgrimage over Pentecost from Paris to Chartres attracted a record number of young pilgrims, causing the organizers to end registrations early.
“The reality on the ground as expressed in this survey reveals a complexity that no longer corresponds to the progressive/traditionalist polarity of the 1970s,” Dickès observed. In this respect, he said, there is an “astonishing parallel” between the La Croix survey and the video made by the young Catholic faithful in 2021. “These young people present an astonishingly modern face, making the world aware of the hope that lies within them,” he said.
Second La Croix Article
In another article in La Croix headlined “The Chartres Pilgrimage Has Become the Symbol of a Fundamental Movement,” Jean-Bernard, a contributor to the French traditional Catholic monthly La Nef, highlighted a growing “objective risk” of a “consolidation of parallel communities located outside the diocesan structures.” This is a danger, he said, which has been “considerably amplified by Traditionis Custodes” whose “key idea, in essence, has been to isolate the traditionalists” outside these diocesan structures “in order to avoid any publicity or propagation given to this rite.”
Recalling the Pope’s restrictions, he said the “traditional Mass can no longer, in principle, be celebrated in the parish,” and noted another “visible effect” of the restrictions: “diocesan seminaries emptying in favor of the formation houses of traditionalist communities.”
These trends, he said, therefore “urgently demand, contrary to the orientation adopted by Rome, bringing the traditional Mass back into the bosom of dioceses.” Furthermore, he said, “bishops must imperatively reclaim the fullness of their prerogatives in liturgical matters, in accordance with the ‘healthy decentralization’ whose merits Pope Francis often praises.”
Read the rest here.
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