Although short, this sentence summarizes what the Holy Father, Pope Francis, wrote in Traditiones Custodes. More precisely, the fragment echoed by Staples’ statement is found in Pope Francis’s letter to the bishops accompanying the mentioned document:
“I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite. I take comfort in this decision from the fact that, after the Council of Trent, St. Pius V also abrogated all the rites that could not claim a proven antiquity, establishing for the whole Latin Church a single Missale Romanum.”[i]
The decision was made in the name of a principle that is indeed one of the most important –found in the Christian Credo which explicitly names the four essential traits of the Church of our Lord, Jesus Christ: “unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam” (i.e., “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”). In the case of Tim Staples’ response inspired by Pope Francis, it is therefore about the unity of the Church. This unity must be reflected in the “reformed” Liturgy of Pope Paul VI.
Dr. Kwasniewski, however, shows that Pope Francis/Tim Staples’s interpretation is based on a completely erroneous understanding of the liturgical history. As is evident from the article written by Dr. Joseph Shaw, “St Pius V and the Mass,”[ii] there is an “enormous difference” (Dr. Kwasniewski) between what Pius V and Paul VI did. If for the understanding of this radical difference a good knowledge of liturgical history is required, the meanings of replacing the Roman Catholic liturgy with the liturgy of Pope Paul VI have been unequivocally explained by Pope Benedict XVI.
The lesson of an ancient pagan wise man, the Greek Socrates, is fully confirmed: only those who can do the greatest good can also do the greatest evil.
Pope Benedict XVI about the replacement of the Traditional Catholic Liturgy
In an interview with Peter Seewald published in 2005, he described thus what was done with the Traditional Catholic Liturgy as follows:
“The old building was demolished, and another was build. But setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of scholarly work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something ‘made,’ not something given in advance.”[iii]
Although these words were not fully reflected in Summorum Pontificum (2007), they undoubtedly originate from it as well as from the most quoted statement in the letter to the bishops accompanying the pontifical document: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”[iv] Pope Benedict XVI proposed the criterion of organic development of the Holy Liturgy, a criterion that allows us to discern the rupture between the Liturgy of Pope Pius V and that of Pope Paul VI.
Specifically, the latter cannot be considered the “liturgy of the Church” – because it was artificially created, manufactured by “experts,” and imposed through illicit authoritative decisions. From this perspective, the comparison between the liturgical decisions of Pius V and Pope Francis’s decision to definitively prohibit the liturgy of the ages is unacceptable if not scandalous. In fact, what the latter prohibited is precisely the intact liturgy transmitted by the former, leaving it be celebrated, unaltered, until the end of history. Why is this not visible to Pope Francis and Tim Staples – but also to other authors like John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Father Thomas Weinandy O.F.M.?
A way of thinking marked by hybris
Firstly, no one affected by what Dr. Kwasniewski calls “hyperpapalism” will accept that a pope can make a mistake of such proportions. For if the Pope is 100% inspired the Holy Spirit in all he teaches and does, how could he make a mistake in such a grave matter? Then, let us not forget that the principles underlying the liturgical revolution are evolution and adaptation (i.e., aggiornamento). Accompanied by the ecumenist axiom, which was inscribed, during the pontificate of John Paul II, in the Church’s canon law, these principles do not allow any deviation from the path set in the context of the Second Vatican Council.
And we know that, according to the divine graces conferred upon sacred offices, no one can do more good [and therefore more evil] than the hierarchs of the Church: the bishops, the cardinals, the Holy Father.
The first principle, evolution (= what is newer is always better), is anti-traditional. For those who represent it, everything older is deficient and obsolete. That is exactly the opposite of how Christians faithful to Sacred Tradition think. Most texts of the Second Vatican Council contain, explicitly or implicitly, this premise. Overall, it animates the rethinking of any Christian content already received from ancestors, whether it be faith itself, Christian morality grounded on the ten commandments, or the Church’s liturgy. For example, in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), it is stated that “both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify” (art. 21). An attentive reader immediately notices the hidden premise: the texts of the Mass already existing at that time did not express sufficiently clearly the things they signified. The liturgy used over millennia by so many saints was deficient. Therefore, it needed to be improved, modified, and ultimately replaced. Pope Paul VI was the one who acknowledged this and wanted to remedy the “deficiencies.” The enormity of such an attitude cannot be sufficiently emphasized.
As for adaptation, those who participate in the Holy Liturgy are no longer required to change their lives so that they may be in a state of sanctifying grace. On the contrary, what needs to be changed is the ritual – which must be adapted to the “needs of the faithful.” This intrusion of humanism into the Church is unprecedented. From that moment until today, everything has been done to lower the standards of holiness so much that, practically, conversion is no longer necessary. Specifically, based on the new vision, the mystical body of Christ the Savior has become a club with vague and obscure rules where “anything goes.” Of course, anything – except true Tradition and those who preserve and represent it.
The word “adaptation” and all its derivatives are repeated hundreds of times in the conciliar and post-conciliar documents. Everything must be completely and radically “aggiornato.” The supreme goal of the Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI was “to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1). Today, when we already know all the subspecies of the new ritual, from tango liturgies to circus liturgies, we have no doubt about the nature of the “adaptations” demanded so insistently. The only thing that all those with eyes to see have understood very well is that these are not for the betterment of the Church and the faithful. For God is no longer honored as He Himself requires, but as those “scholars” mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI have established.
What a non-Catholic understood
A few weeks ago I had a discussion with a friend who belongs to the Eastern “Orthodox” Church that is not in communion with Rome. Knowing from the press the content of the apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, he asked me for details. When I explained how, essentially, what happened in the 70s – when the Roman Catholic Liturgy was forbidden – is now repeating, he was shocked. He immediately remarked that something is deeply wrong. A non-Catholic therefore instantly perceives that such a prohibition is absurd and, as Pope Benedict XVI said, something unprecedented “in the entire history of the liturgy.”
Furthermore, discussing with him, we together discovered an example that allows for an even deeper understanding of the enormity of the situation: what Pope Paul VI did, now repeated by Pope Francis, is akin to the hierarchs of Byzantine faithful suddenly banning the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. They would replace it with another liturgy, cobbled together from pieces of the old one. My friend was shaken by the idea of such a hypothetical change. At the same time, he told me that although some faithful would strongly react to such a “reform,” there would be enough who would appreciate the change in the name of “renewal,” “evolution,” and “liturgical progress.” Nothing new under the sun, right?
But what impressed me the most was his spontaneous question: “How can you possibly ban the Liturgy?” After understanding well what I described to him, he stated categorically that something is absolutely wrong with what is happening. The lesson of an ancient pagan wise man, the Greek Socrates, is fully confirmed: only those who can do the greatest good can also do the greatest evil. And we know that, according to the divine graces conferred upon sacred offices, no one can do more good than the hierarchs of the Church: the bishops, the cardinals, the Holy Father.
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[i] Link: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2021/documents/20210716-lettera-vescovi-liturgia.html
[ii] Dr. Shaw’s text can be read here: https://voiceofthefamily.com/st-pius-v-and-the-mass/ [Accessed: 18 March 2024]
[iii] I am quoting the English translation of the interview: Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI. An Intimate Portrait, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008, p. 204. Here is the entire passage exactly as it appears in the work translated at Ignatius Press: “When a new Missale was introduced, the Mass book the priest uses at the altar, this, for the ‘star theologian,’ crossed a final limit. For what was completely new was the fact that use of the previous Missal was the same time forbidden. ‘There had never been anything like that’, declared Ratzinger with horror, ‘in the entire history of the liturgy.’ He found the signs alarming: ‘The old building was demolished, and another was built.’ That the old plans and the same building materials were used was not the problem. ‘But setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the result of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of scholarly work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something made, not something given in advance’.”
[iv] The full English translation is available on the Vatican website: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070707_lettera-vescovi.html [Accessed: 18 March 2024]
