Why I Signed “An Open Letter From the Americas to Pope Francis”

Dr Chapp explains his reasons for signing the "Open Letter". It is open for signature by the average pew sitter as well. You may sign the letter here.

From Catholic World Report

By Larry Chapp, PhD

I reject the suppression of the old Mass and its banishment to a few backwaters as a move almost guaranteed to remove that liturgy from the Church’s treasury and memory and to place it instead into the hands of those who would weaponize it against the Church.

On July 15th, an open letter to Pope Francis was released which asked him not to allow any further restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass (TLM). Titled “An Open Letter from the Americas to Pope Francis”, it appeared a few weeks after a similar letter was made public in the UK, spearheaded by the Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan.

I was asked to sign the Letter from the Americas and, after some careful consideration, decided to do so. Since its release, many people have written to me asking why I would sign such a letter, which, according to some of my critics, is an act of disrespect to the Pope. I would like to offer a short response to those concerns.

I was at first reluctant to sign the letter for two reasons.

First, it appears at a cursory glance as something purely reactive—and this reaction was founded upon unsubstantiated rumors that a new document from the Vatican was about to be released, allegedly going to nuke the TLM once and for all. If I have learned anything in my life (sadly, usually after the fact), it is not to trust rumors coming out of the Vatican. Therefore, I was reluctant to sign a letter based upon a foundation as flimsy as the latest gossip from curial magpies.

However, reputable reporters I trust and admire seemed confident in their sources—sources who assured them such a document did indeed exist and was merely waiting upon papal approval for its public release. Furthermore, the claim had a certain prima facie plausibility given the fact Traditionis Custodes had already established that the current Vatican has a jeweler’s eye for even the smallest pieces of evidence the TLM had spawned communities harboring a festering discontent toward Vatican II, the Novus Ordo, and every papal sneeze during this pontificate.

Therefore, I signed the letter despite my reservations about curial gossip, owing to the trust I have in certain reporters (a trust which remains) and the fact that the dicastery for Divine Worship under the leadership of Archbishop Arthur Roche has been, to say the least, no friend of the TLM. My gut tells me such a document does (or did?) exist but that once this information was leaked, the negative reaction caused the Vatican to draw back lest it have a new Fiducia Supplicans fiasco on its hands. If that is true, then perhaps open letters like the one I signed may have actually had some effect.

The second source of my initial reluctance to sign the letter is more serious: my desire not to be identified as a supporter of the traditionalist movement. Because I am not a supporter of that movement—even if I can sympathize with its consternation over the current re-empowering of the flower child, felt banner Catholicism of my youth, now made even more annoying with the addition of rainbow sprinkles on the gelato of the “Church on the move”.

My reluctance to show public support for the TLM lest I be identified as a closet traditionalist is grounded in a justified reaction to the many negative elements therein. I hasten to add that I reject the mischaracterizations of “most trads” as an angry and irrational mob of heresy-hunting dragoons. The vast majority are just orthodox Catholics looking for a haven from our pornified culture and our rudderless Church—a Church more interested, it seems, in the “peripheries” of sexual minorities than with the peripheries of our beleaguered families. And if those families prefer the TLM, I think they should be allowed to have access to it.

Nevertheless, whatever their actual numbers, there is a pervasive and significant presence in the traditionalist movement of folks who do indeed reject Vatican II tout court as a word salad of modernist heresies and who refuse to attend a Novus Ordo Mass on the pretext that such a Mass is invalid, heretical, and the product of Freemasonry. Such folks often express to me that they would attend an SSPX parish before a Novus Ordo one, and so I know they exist and do so in larger numbers than some traditionalists want to admit.

Fortunately, I actually know many traditionalists, I read their most popular publications, and I follow them on social media. I know that I am not inventing a straw man and so I am always amused when traditionalists write to me bitterly complaining about my horrible stereotyping, only to have them confirm the thing they are denying in the invective that follows.

There is also a not-so-veiled practical sede vacantism running like a vein of lead through the bedrock of the movement. Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and especially John Paul II, are vilified as modernist purveyors of false ecumenism, religious relativism, religious freedom (the theological bête noire of most traditionalists), and liturgical chicanery. This element in the movement is a dark blight on its soul that cannot be ignored. It is the product of a failure of theological intelligence and imagination insofar as it is largely a coping mechanism devoid of theological content that attempts to deal with the cognitive dissonance of a modern Church in conflict with itself. And, in true reductive style, the answer they give to the dissonance is to imagine an idyllic time before it existed. Except that it did not, which seems lost on them.

I simply have no desire to be associated with any movement that views John Paul II as a dangerous modernist heretic. There is simply something deeply amiss with a movement, to cite another example, that views Bishop Robert Barron as a squishy liberal. Bishop Barron is a liberal? Really? Somebody needs to tell that to Michael Sean Winters and Massimo Faggioli. Such claims are just high silliness and they alienate potential allies to their cause (folks like me) with the sheer nastiness and superficiality of their various fulminations.

So, given all of that, why did I sign the letter? For four main reasons.

First, I think the TLM is a beautiful liturgy with a truly ancient provenance that is spiritually fruitful and aesthetically uplifting when done well. It was the Church’s liturgy for centuries and has spawned works of artistic genius in music, architecture, and the visual arts. For example, would the architectural grandeur of gothic churches have ever been invented for today’s horizontalist liturgical emphasis? I think not. And the beauty of the spiritual and artistic progeny of the old Mass belongs to the entire Church and her patrimony and it should never have been suppressed, even as the legitimate liturgical reform moved forward—a reform movement I think was necessary.

Therefore, ironically, I reject the suppression of the old Mass and its banishment to a few backwaters as a move almost guaranteed to remove that liturgy from the Church’s treasury and memory and to place it instead into the hands of those who would weaponize it against the Church. The more broadly it is available, the less will it become a talisman of a faux recusant resistance to the contemporary magisterium.

Second, although I support the Novus Ordo as the expression of the liturgical reform and I in no way reject its legitimacy (and even affirm the unique beauty of its “noble simplicity”), I think it has been a mistake to treat the liturgical reforms as a “one and done” kind of deal where any future tweaking of that liturgy is disallowed. After all, the liturgical changes were sweeping, swift, and rather radical, so why should it just be assumed they got everything correct right out of the gate? Why the defensiveness where every question about the reform is treated as an act of disobedience to the Pope? And how does one make the claim the Novus Ordo is now set in stone when its very existence is proof that no liturgy is set in stone?

Therefore, I think Pope Benedict XVI, in issuing Summorum Pontificum, got it right. He was correct to hope for a gradual cross-fertilization of the two liturgies. And the fact that after only a few short years such a process had not yet happened should not be an indication the attempt was flawed in principle and a failure in practice. I am a firm believer in the so-called “reform of the reform” of the liturgy and there are some hopeful signs emerging in the work of people like Adam Bartlett with his “Source and Summit” resources that should not be casually dismissed or ignored. I think that this process of reform requires an “all hands on deck” approach (Todos! Todos!) where all voices are heard and all constructive input is welcomed no matter the source.

Perhaps, instead of a synod on synods, we should have a synod on the liturgy where all such voices are heard. Indeed, a good case could be made that the heart and soul of any true synodality is the fact that the whole Church is present in the Eucharistic celebration of the local Church. Therefore, a healthy synodality requires a healthy liturgy.

Third, I signed the letter because I am a firm believer in ad orientem worship and I support the cross-fertilization of this element of the old Mass into the new. And the reason why I support it has nothing to do with aesthetics. I support it because I think worship where the priest faces the people fosters clericalism. I know many priests who primarily celebrate the Novus Ordo who, when celebrating the TLM, speak of its liberating effects wherein the priest ceases to be the focus of attention, where he does not have to be “on”, and where he can lose himself in the liturgical action wherein “He must increase and I must decrease”. The priest faces East, along with the people, and carries them on his back.

But all too often the priest in many parishes becomes a “show” and even takes it upon himself to alter the words of the liturgy (especially with “gendered” words). This can obviously happen as well even in ad orientem worship and so it is no guarantee against liturgical clericalism. But I would wager that it is far less frequent since it is, in its essence, less clericalistic.

Finally, I support wide access to the TLM because I think it is the pastorally sensitive thing to do. I mentioned earlier my critique of elements within the traditionalist movement. But I also acknowledge that those people are Catholics too and worthy of pastoral accompaniment. I do not think it wise, therefore, to further the radicalization by trying to stomp it out with acts of raw authority in which the true root causes of the malaise are never addressed. Does this Pope not speak all the time of the need to accompany those on the peripheries? Is that not why he turns a blind eye to the proliferation of “Pride” Masses? So we can “build a bridge” to those sexual peripheries in highly questionable ways, but we must burn the bridge to the traditionalist periphery? The former is deemed to be “wounded sheep in need of a shepherd”. The latter is just dismissed as “indietrists” who require a quick slap across the face.

Therefore, I consider Traditionis Custodes to be a failure of pastoral governance. A draconian overreaction that blinds the Church to the fact that there are devout and devoted Catholics who want a different “experience” of liturgy from that which is available in most parishes. Even though I am not a traditionalist, I share their liturgical dissatisfaction with the banality of so many parish liturgies.

And so I signed the letter and I am glad that I did. I do not think it is an act of disobedience. Instead, I view it as an act of ecclesial solidarity with a wounded periphery in the Church and an affirmation of a profound treasure that should not be lost.