We are very grateful to Mr Kevin Tierney for sharing with NLM this insightful essay on the failure of Traditionis Custodes, which I am sure our readers will find especially interesting in light of the upcoming extraordinary consistory. You can find more of his excellent writing on his Substack; He is also on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CatholicSmark
When the cardinals gather in Rome in January at the invitation of Pope Leo XIV, they will discuss, among other things, the sacred liturgy. While not explicitly named, everyone understands that, in this conversation, some of them will raise the topic of Traditionis custodes. To speculate, the ensuing discussion will likely center on how to preserve it while eliminating its worst aspects, such as the rescript that revoked the bishops’ right to regulate the liturgy in their dioceses. I think instead that the cardinals should discuss not how to mend Traditionis custodes, but how to end it.
While normally this discussion centers on why people prefer the TLM vs the Novus Ordo, I’d like to look at the legislation itself, and the culture in which that legislation came into being. A striking thing about Traditionis custodes (hereafter TC) was that the plan had a single point of failure. By his own words, Pope Francis promulgated TC to bring about liturgical uniformity within the Roman Rite, because only liturgical uniformity could faithfully honor the Second Vatican Council. (“This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.”) Since the bishop is the moderator of the liturgy in his diocese, Francis entrusted this task to the bishops… who mostly ignored it. This led to Francis changing Church law regarding the liturgy, removing the authority of the local bishop (in the Roman Rite) to regulate the sacred liturgy, and instead putting it in the hands of the head of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, whom he could more easily pressure into eliminating the TLM on a case-by-case basis. In doing so, he exposed TC’s single point of failure. |
| Dangerous counter-revolutionaries threatening the unity of the Faith! |
A single point of failure is an engineering concept where an entire system succeeds or fails based on one point. Many times, a single point of failure is ignored because of all the complex dynamics involved in a system, or the number of data points involved. When that one point fails, the entire system crashes, normally leading to long term disaster. For this reason, the first thing any smart design of a system does is abandon a single point of failure, by either adding redundancy (a backup) or diffusing the risk (distributing the cost of failure between points.)
Pope Francis proved that the person of the Roman Pontiff is TC’s single point of failure. As Diane Montagna revealed, when he asked the bishops for their opinion, the majority told him what he wanted to do was a bad idea. Francis responded to this by bypassing every norm of implementing a law, and demanding that it take immediate effect. He moved a change into a live environment, not knowing if it would work. When it was clear that it would not work, he doubled down on the single point of failure, by making enforcement dependent almost entirely on who is Pope. With the end of a pontificate, the desire to keep enforcing TC would be entirely in the hands of a successor, whose priorities might be very different. I think we have seen this with Leo. While some bishops have attempted to continue to implement the decree, Leo has shown himself far more amenable to the TLM’s continued existence. While some might say that Leo can fix this situation by being less oppressive, this does not change the fundamental reality of TC: few want it, and even fewer are invested in its success.
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| Solemn Mass celebrated by His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke in St Peter’s basilica on October 25th, during this year’s Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage. |
The second reason it should be rescinded is that TC fails to achieve its stated goal. The decree and the documents implementing it claim that a powerful sign of unity will be fostered in the Church because of these actions. I would simply ask the reader to look at the dioceses where this approach has been emphasized. Are Detroit and Charlotte centers of unity and visible communion? Are their bishops united with their pastors and laity? Are those bishops known for being well liked by their brother bishops? To ask these questions is to answer them.
The third reason TC should end is there is no realistic way to get to Yes. When you introduce a change into the world, you must have a way you can measure if it is successful, at which point you can say that “Yes, this worked” or “No, it didn’t.” At what point can you say that TC worked? Does anyone believe, in 2025, that the TLM is going to be abolished? If not, what are the options for getting to that point? The first option would be even greater centralization or a brute force ban of the TLM, options which, whatever their chance of success, just add even more pressure onto that single point of failure. The second would be a mass purging of bishops, and appointing outright yes-men in their place. This would destroy the authority of even bishops sympathetic to TC, and introduce into the dynamic a lot of bishops deprived of their jurisdiction, who would nonetheless still be admired by the faithful, while central authority would be held in contempt. Ecclesiastically speaking, bad things happen in that situation.
Faced with this reality, there will be a temptation to take measures which will turn the temperature down. The rescript could remain in place, but just ignored. Bishops would receive automatic approval to keep having the TLM celebrated, or Rome could drop that part entirely. The rescript could be removed, returning the issue to the bishops entirely. While all of these would be welcomed as short-term measures, they do not address the long-term instability of TC. Most bishops still do not want this decision, and are fine with leaving it to their priests. They either do not care about the TLM, or they want it preserved and encouraged. The younger a priest is, the more conservative he is, and the more at peace he is with the continued existence of the TLM, and not just in America.
Instead of trying to make a dying project work, the cardinals – and the Church at large – have a chance to introduce a new question: instead of trying to check off long desired ideological goals that have no relevance to today’s Catholics, what can we do to make it easier for Catholics to follow Christ?
