The years-long siege on the Traditional Latin Mass may be coming to an end under Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate. According to The Catholic Herald, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) has been in communication with the Vatican regarding the celebration of the Tridentine Mass, commonly called the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and named the Extraordinary Form of the Mass by the Late Pope Benedict XVI, who liberalized the old liturgy’s celebration in his 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Several reports have suggested that the apostolic nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendía, conveyed to the British bishops that they could receive a dispensation to have the TLM celebrated in their dioceses, should they request it.
The new reports out of Britain seemingly indicate a change in tactic from the Vatican, if not an official change in policy.
The late Pope Francis issued his sweeping motu proprio Traditionis Custodes in 2021, imposing stringent restrictions on the celebration of the old Mass, ostensibly in response to traditionalists’ schismatic rabble-rousing. (However, as I wrote for The American Spectator this summer, it appears either that the pontiff was deceived by his advisors or else he fabricated the pretense for throttling the flourishing Latin Mass community worldwide.) Subsequent rescripts, issued by Cardinal Arthur Roche of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, imposed further restrictions, such as barring the celebration of the TLM in parish churches.
Originally, Pope Francis had allowed individual bishops to determine whether or not to allow the celebration of the TLM in their dioceses. While many leapt at the opportunity to impose the pontiff’s liturgical restrictions, many also brushed off the motu proprio and simply stated that Latin Mass attendees in their dioceses were not problematic and would thus not be stripped of the worship they have come to know and love. In one of his rescripts, Roche took that authority from the bishops and reserved it for himself, requiring any bishop to submit a request to the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to allow the TLM to be celebrated in their dioceses.
The new reports out of Britain seemingly indicate a change in tactic from the Vatican, if not an official change in policy. Traditionis Custodes has not yet been rescinded, but Pope Leo XIV appears prepared to allow the TLM to be celebrated more widely. It is unlikely that the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments would offer dispensations to Britain’s bishops but refuse them to bishops around the world.
It is, however, fitting that this news emerges from England. When the Second Vatican Council was still ongoing, the English author and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh wrote a series of letters to his bishop, Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, expressing his concerns over the potential abrogation of the TLM. Waugh recounted the long history of English martyrs, whose devotion to the Mass led them to give their lives for the Catholic Faith:
This was the Mass for whose restoration the Elizabethan martyrs had gone to the scaffold. Saint Augustine [of Canterbury], St. Thomas à Becket, St. Thomas More, Challoner and Newman would have been perfectly at their ease among us; were, in fact, present there with us…. Their presence would not have been more palpable had we been making the responses aloud in the modern fashion.
After Pope St. Paul VI did abrogate the TLM, insisting that the Novus Ordo Missale would be the new standard, a group of British authors, artists, actors, and filmmakers wrote a letter to the Vatican asking that the old Mass not be abrogated, emphasizing its artistic, aesthetic, and cultural significance throughout history. Among the signatories were authors and Catholic converts Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge, art historian Kenneth Clark, poet Cecil Day-Lewis (father of the film actor), Waugh’s friend and fellow writer Nancy Mitford, and renowned mystery writer Agatha Christie.
Although Waugh had already passed away, Heenan recalled the author’s love for the Mass and personally delivered the letter to the pontiff. The story is that the Pope read the letter and, upon reviewing its signatories, exclaimed, “Ah! Agatha Christie!” He granted Britain’s bishops an indult to allow the TLM to be celebrated under limited circumstances. That indult has been nicknamed the Agatha Christie Indult, thanks to the pope’s comments.
Should the TLM become once again liberalized, as it was under Pope Benedict XVI, Waugh no doubt would find a sense of poetic justice in the fact that the dispensations were announced in England.
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