The TLM Returns to Rome…as TC Totters?

Is the permission to celebrate the TLM in St Peter's for the Summorum Ponificum Pilgrimage just a quirk, or a sign of a sea change in Rome?

From Crisis

By Sean Fitzpatrick

Another crack has appeared in the tottering tower that is Traditionis Custodes.  

After last summer’s devastating (and damning) leak that most Catholic bishops did not request a restriction of the Traditional Latin Mass—as the late Pope Francis indicated they did—another crack has appeared in the tottering tower that is Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis’ motu proprio which severely and strangely restricted the celebration of the Tridentine Rite the world over. 

In a surprising and welcome bit of news, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV gave approval for Cardinal Raymond Burke to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on October 25th for the 14th annual Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage for Catholics dedicated to the ancient liturgy. This represents a return to form for this event, as the Usus Antiquior was disallowed since 2022, shortly after the release of Traditionis Custodes.

In a rather dramatic reversal, Cardinal Burke will celebrate a Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Altar of the Chair. His Eminence’s involvement is in itself striking, since Cardinal Burke suffered several public chastisements under the former pontificate. Many may recall how the highly partisan Pope Francis called Burke an anti-vaccination “enemy” before withdrawing the cardinal’s Vatican residence and pension. Now, in the wake of a private audience with his fellow American Leo XIV, who congratulated him on his 50th priestly anniversary, Burke is back with the Latin Mass in tow.

Though Catholics were recently dismayed by Pope Leo’s meeting with wildly problematic queer advocate Fr. James Martin, they might now be encouraged by this demonstration of tolerance for the Latin Mass which suffered unjustly under the seemingly vindictive legislation of the Francis papacy. While the meeting with Martin signaled a continuation of the open-armed, liberal confusion of Francis, this decision signals, on the other hand, a genuine gesture by Leo to heal the rifts in the Church and acknowledge the bedrock validity and liceity of the TLM.

Make no mistake, Traditionis Custodes was and still is terribly divisive—which is deeply ironic since its whole purported raison d’être was to dispel so-called divisions caused by adherence to the Latin Mass, that magnet for those with what Francis called the “disease of nostalgia.” Again, Burke is back, having championed the persecuted Mass of the Ages through the last years of Pope Francis’ pontificate, and now he is bringing it back to Rome.

Again, Cardinal Burke has been a strong voice of criticism and even dissent regarding the late pontiff’s apparent crusade against the traditional liturgy of the Church, making his position as celebrant for this Mass so much more poignant. The 77-year-old canon lawyer cardinal never minced his words on the matter:

Every valid celebration of a sacrament, by the very fact that it is a sacrament, is also, beyond any ecclesiastical legislation, an act of worship and, therefore, also a profession of faith. In that sense, it is not possible to exclude the Roman Missal, according to the UA, as a valid expression of the lex orandi and, therefore, of the lex credendi of the Church. It is a question of an objective reality of divine grace which cannot be changed by a mere act of the will of even the highest ecclesiastical authority.

Traditionis Custodes was, to be blunt, an inappropriate exercise of papal authority—because by it, Francis purported to act with an authority he simply didn’t have. The results were an undermining of the Church’s judicious and generous diversity, attacking it from within with obscure and fishy language regarding a “unique expression” of the Roman Rite, which sounds more like a call for uniformity than unification. 

At the very least, TC was outside the spirit of the pope’s duty to defend and preserve the deposit of faith and be a servant of tradition. Francis’ motu proprio rode roughshod over centuries of precedent, clashing constantly with canon law and also opposing Pope Benedict XVI’s own celebrated motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, where he stated that anything that was good for the Church for a thousand years could not suddenly be bad for it:

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. 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. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.

Though it may be wishful thinking to regard this news from Rome as a foretelling of Pope Leo’s inclination to dismantle Francis’ spurious legislation, Catholics must hope that Leo will consider it. TC is a messy legislative sham that should be shelved. It never even fulfilled the qualifications of a law as being clear and according to reason given its inconsistent call for “working to return to a unitary form of celebration” while ensuring the rights of Ecclesia Dei, a group dedicated to the Traditional Latin Mass.

Despite its internal weaknesses and flaws, any law may be established by promulgation, but its validity and confirmation depend on its acceptance. Laws that are rejected are often abrogated, history shows, and given the almost universally embattled reception of TC, it cannot be said that it was received and therefore has not been rendered binding.

And even beyond these important technicalities is the point that Cardinal Burke has been making loud and clear: the pope does not have the power to abolish any established liturgical rite of the Church founded on apostolic tradition. The TLM is irrevocably part of the law of prayer of the Church, and the motion of TC to uphold the liturgical books of St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II as the sole law of prayer for the Church is a motion of abolishment for the TLM. TC’s “in with the new and out with the old” directive is, in fact, the exact opposite of what the Church is and what the Church has always done.

It is still the early days for the pontificate of Leo XIV. And, in this day and age of information overload, there is much wisdom in refraining from scrutinizing and analyzing every little move and every little comment from the pope. The media-saturated, ink-stained, chaotic Francis papacy is a testimony of what can come from too much attention to every word that comes from the mouth of the pope as opposed to every word that comes from the mouth of God. 

That said, Catholics should have a faithful eye and an ear out for Rome as the Vicar of Christ undertakes the burden of tending the flock toward salvation, remembering that even the pope can lead the Church astray. History is scattered with popes who failed in their papal duty, and Catholics must cling to the things that don’t change when change is in the wind. The liturgy can change in its accidents—as it has over the march of time—but the liturgical, sacrificial doctrine and mystery at the core of the Mass cannot.

This perhaps isolated allowance for the Traditional Latin Mass by Leo XIV at St. Peter’s may not be the sharp and radical shift that the Church needs on this vital matter pertaining to divine worship and the liturgy, but it is plenty to hope and pray on. Traditionis Custodes was a false move, an error, that limits the scope of the Church’s universal mission and dodges apostolic tradition in the specious name of dubbing custodians of tradition. The foundations are cracking, and a toppling may be nigh.