In the year 2010, a priest decided he needed to preach on something urgent to his congregation. His congregation could be classified as “rad-trad,” even by those like myself who hated the term. They were still within the diocese, but their connection to the diocese was very tenuous. They were hyper-critical of the hierarchy at every turn, even when the Bishop did everything he could to integrate trads. The priest (whose reputation with his flock was ironclad) decided he would spend the year educating his congregation on the Second Vatican Council and how to interpret it in harmony with tradition. This was very modest: five minutes every Sunday, after a brief 3-4 minute homily. He was certain this was a pressing need for the flock, and that certainty lasted not even two months. He canceled because of the criticism he got from his flock. The criticism surprised him. Everyone there accepted the Council, they just wanted people to stop talking about it.

This experience was a load-bearing event for me, and 16 years later it still informs much of what I write about. Most online discourse (including by those who are trads) is not very useful or relevant. The things we discuss online aren’t what is often discussed in the pews, even by those who we are otherwise aligned with. I’d like to try and outline why the response tends to be apathy regarding the Second Vatican Council, and not just among traditionalists.

The biggest reason for this apathy is that, sixty years later, we can’t say what Catholics have to accept regarding Vatican II. This became most prominent in the pathetic kabuki theater between Rome and the SSPX. When the subject of Vatican II came up, Rome could not define what the SSPX had to accept, and the SSPX could not define what from Vatican II they actually rejected. This exposed what smart people have known forever: Vatican II didn’t define anything, and you can’t reject that which isn’t defined. That doesn’t mean it’s not authoritative, but you can’t end any discussion with “it’s an ecumenical council.” Nobody pays attention to language, they pay attention to actions. You can say Vatican II is super important all you want, but if you cannot define one thing people have to believe regarding its teaching, you do not believe it is that important. Why should people adopt a standard you clearly don’t believe in?

A second reason for apathy is that since Vatican II cannot be defined, even popes have had different visions about its teachings. Pope Francis said in 2016 that states must be secular. This was in line with previous Vatican practice after the Council, where state religions were tied to empty pews after the 1960s. In 2026 Leo praised the city-state of Monaco for…. having Catholicism as the state religion. I suppose you could construct some lengthy exegesis on how these positions aren’t contradictory, but the simple answer is they are contradictory, but popes are allowed to be contradictory in the prudential realm. Even if commonality with Protestants is understood, it’s a simple fact conversion is emphasized more in 2026 than 1975. These changes are all defensible only because Vatican II and her reforms never actually taught otherwise, despite the discourse.

A third reason is the progression of Father Time. I have been told that my attitude towards Vatican II “undermines” a council that had been over for 17 years before I was born. The antipathy towards Vatican II comes from those whose grandparents have no real memory before Vatican II. (Your memories at age 10 or 15 don’t count.) In 2025, Bishop Erik Varden offered an insight that the wider Church has yet to ingest about what time has done to the memory of Vatican II:

The collective remembrance of what the council and its aftermath felt like has faded… Today’s young Catholics are not ungrateful for the council’s great gifts, but unable to proceed with their grandparents’ mindsets, uninclined to flog dead horses, unenthused by fossilised projects of aggiornamento when the sun has set on the giorno by which they were defined.

Today’s Catholics have no real attachment to a council which defined nothing, expects nothing, and is tied mostly to an era of chaos. They are grateful in the same way that one is grateful to the past in general: it shapes who we are today. Yet most importantly they are ready to move on. They do not think about Vatican II. They will not read its documents outside of research or a paper they may have to write. There will be sentences that inspire, every other sentence will be skipped over. In this, Vatican II will become like every other council. The generation formed by Vatican II (either pro or con) has and will continue to struggle with future generations having this apathy, and we will learn that the teacher of Ecclesiastes was right: there is truly nothing new under the sun.

Understood through this lens, most of the attempts to make people care fall short. We were often told that ecumenical councils took at least one generation to be understood. Once that passed in 2010, we are now told (a sentiment echoed by Pope Francis) that ecumenical councils take a century to work themselves out. It never dawns upon the one stating this that the argument works both ways. During that time (insert arbitrary date here), the original enthusiasm passes, and more sober assessments are conducted. As time goes on, points which were viewed as indispensable to understanding the Council become quite dispensable. Like anything else, not getting caught up in momentary exuberance allows you to look at things with the clearest eyes.

Against this backdrop, Leo XIV has decided to lead the Church once more into the breach. He is devoting his Wednesday audiences to explaining what the Council really meant. For the content creator online, it can be a goldmine. For the average Catholic, it will almost certainly be treated like every other Wednesday audience: completely ignored. If I could be so bold as to offer an alternative, it would be show, don’t tell. Stop talking about what was meant, and start talking about what was, and what is. If it was better, say it, with evidence. If it wasn’t, admit it. We could then learn from its success, its failure, or its unfinished work.

This can’t be done because nobody can say with a straight face it was a great success. On the liturgy (where Leo spent most of his time so far) he has already spoken about the sad state of liturgical affairs today, sixty years after the Council. In the popes backyard, an Italian Archbishop admitted Italy, sixty years later, still doesn’t know how to celebrate the Novus Ordo seriously.

I do not offer this as a way to harm Vatican II. I offer this as a way to allow it to take its proper place among the ecumenical councils of the Church. Until we are willing to treat it as a past event that is one of twenty-one (as opposed to an ongoing process), it cannot be embedded within the hearts of men. If we continue to treat it as the prism through which all must be understood, that continued apathy is not a prediction. It is a spoiler.

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Give what you want

To the person who has never attended a TLM, this seems like the most important one. To the person who regularly attends a TLM, there is no question more annoying. The majority of us there do not know Latin in-depth, and that has never been a barrier to participating. When I first began dating my now wife, we went to a TLM, and she was lost. I redirected her to the correct spot in her Missal. She asked afterwards how I knew where the priest was, even though he was praying inaudibly. Told her to watch where the priest was positioned. At certain points, he went to one side of the altar or another. At certain times he prayed with his hands outstretched, or made certain motions. If you got lost on the words, there were always other cues. This is true for the Novus Ordo as well. Even if it is in the vernacular, someone who attends Mass for the first time is going to be lost, but if they learn those non-verbal cues, suddenly Mass makes more sense.

Too often people treat Mass like a textbook or a lecture, when in reality it is a ritual. A ritual has several consistent things in place so people can always know where they are, once they learn that ritual. At its worst this can become an empty ritual and formula, but in almost every other circumstance, it helps ground the participant.

Another way of looking at this is that there is a difference between a common language, and a vernacular. A true vernacular is a language in its everyday usage. When William Shakespeare wrote his plays, that was not how those characters would have necessarily spoken in a real life setting. The vernacular used to also be known as the vulgar, and even when not profane, it is far more rough around the edges. This did not make what was said any less powerful or meaningful. The idea that the liturgy should be a true vernacular was a very modern idea birthed in the 1950s that the Church was abandoning by Benedict XVI with his changes to the way the Novus Ordo was translated into popular languages (particularly English), reforms that have mostly been accepted even by the liturgical non-traditionalist.

This is a concept everyone understands. In certain environments or disciplines, one speaks or writes differently. Primarily this is done as a way of telling the audience that this needs to be taken seriously, because it is different from the everyday speech. Another reason is to demonstrate something is timeless. I cannot understand the way a 17 year old talks with their friends, and in 25 years they will not be able to understand a 17 year old talking with their friends. You move out of the vernacular as a way to speak in a way that not everyone may understand, but everyone can learn.

Finally, its a lot harder to have a liturgy war when its just one unchanging language. In that one unchanging language, words tend to mean one thing. When words can mean multiple things (or change to mean things over time), that is where clashes and struggles begin. While these kind of clashes are inevitable, that one language that is unchanging mitigates that a lot. If the liturgy is always in the vernacular, then I need to always learn the particular vernacular (and all its hidden nuances) of that particular region. In ecclesiastical Latin? Consubstantialim Patri or fiat voluntas tua will mean the same thing to me that it meant to people in earlier ages. We had to learn the same text in the same fashion, and out of that shared learning, an identity is born.

I am not a dogmatist on the Latin language. Our Eastern brethren use their common language (though not the vernacular) for their liturgies today, and that’s fine. Everyone in my family that attends Mass attends in their common language, and that’s not a point of friction for me. Yet I do think once you realize that the language you worship in every Sunday is almost certainly not the vernacular, then you can understand why a traditionalist finds solace in the Latin language, and how that doesn’t hinder their ability to understand Mass, because language is ultimately a tool towards understanding, like everything else in the liturgy: there for our benefit, and our salvation.

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That I did not write about it gives the game away. Instead of writing about the urgent risk to the TLM, or how we need to keep the flame alive after our suppression, I was able to play Palworld upon its launch and lose myself in it over the last two weeks. I did so safe in my belief that the Latin Mass was secure, and that the trajectory has not changed. At its heart, Traditionis custodes is an unpopular piece of legislation that relies entirely on a dead pope and how he saw the world. In the time since its promulgation, it has not grown in popularity, and whenever it is mentioned in public, the ratio of opposition to support is still quite lopsided. This state of affairs is further damaged by its supporters being unable to understand why TC has not taken root, and we traditionalists understand the nature of our attackers all to well.

It is said that all of the focus on the TLM makes little sense, as only two percent of American Catholics attend a TLM regularly, and only 13% have gone once in the last five years, per Pew. That is 1 in 50 of registered Catholics. yet it is one in 16 of those who attend Mass every Sunday. The TLM is also heavily skewed demographically. Among those 40 or younger, people are more comfortable with the TLM. This younger minority cares about the TLM a lot more than the wider Catholic public cares about restricting it. For anyone who studies history or politics, this is a classic case of the motivated minority. The easiest long term solution to a dedicated minority is the indifferent majority just offers a concession.

This is even more true when the current status quo is unpopular. By and large, the priesthood and episcopate in the United States have had an attitude of indifference to hostility towards Traditionis. Some will counter that this opposition is more to the disruptive nature of the decree, rather than some deep seated love of the TLM, or a surge in demand from the laity. These individuals will say this with a certain degree of smugness, not realizing they don’t understand anything. I think I can speak for most attending the TLM within the Church: we are fine with most people attending a Novus Ordo. We don’t like a lot of things about it, but we also know where time is. Even the Novus Ordo of 2026 isn’t the Novus Ordo of 2000, and the Novus Ordo of 2000 was not the Novus Ordo of 1975. Irrespective of the status of the TLM, the Novus Ordo is on an inevitable path of slow (painstakingly slow) reform where the majority of criticisms traditionalists launched at it are silently acknowledged and reformed. All we ask for is the freedom to contribute to that moment through what Benedict termed mutual enrichment. By Benedict’s own admission, the Novus Ordo needed firm grounding in tradition, and the TLM is the best way to ensure that. We may never return to the way where everyone in the Roman Rite worshipped the exact same way, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

That spirit of inflexible tolerance (of insistence upon accommodation while still understanding reality) is contrasted with the dying gasps of those who want to maintain and advance the status quo. A good example of this is America Magazine Associate Editor Zac Davis, who viewed Pope Francis moves necessary for all traditionalists, because at one time when he attended the Latin Mass, he was an arrogant jerk. Mind you, he is more humble now attending the Novus Ordo, and he wants the Pope to make sure that everyone is afforded the opportunity to be as humble as he is, by force if necessary. Much has already been said of the deeply deranged writers at Where Peter is and their anti-traditionalism which is mostly a struggle session with their own pasts and their own relationships. You may foolishly think these individuals are right, but you need to be pretty in the weeds (and extremely online) to see this. To this day, most people still look at the TLM not as a threat to the Church, but as a curiosity that they can either indulge or safely ignore. Davis can accuse the world of being as horrible of a person as he was/is, but he who indicts the world convicts only himself.

This mentality is also on display in the highest echelons of the Church, such as a recent interview DDW Prefect Arthur Roche gave, in which he confidently predicted that there is no going back, Traditionis custodes is the future of the Church, and that Leo will ensure this. I think people put too much stock into what Leo does/doesn’t think. The case against Traditionis is straightforward: something that doesn’t have enthusiasm right away will not gain enthusiasm a decade or more from now. It will become less popular, and maintaining it will become less important. On the other side, traditionalists will not lower their intensity for the TLM or its liberty. The Pope who recognizes this will save the Church a lot of headache and have greater opportunity for renewal. It might as well be Leo, but it can/will be someone else if it is not him. That being said, Roche has a very self-interested reason to say TC won’t get overturned. If it does, then he will be looked at as the enforcer of a dead decree, and that almost everything he did as DDW prefect was not only unncessary, it was counterproductive. Roche’s activity regarding Traditionis was so flagrantly illegal he needed the Pope to change Church law to make it legal. If the decree collapses, his incompetence and malice will be the story, not “he brought unity to the Church and finally completed the will of the Second Vatican Council.”

Unlike many, I wasn’t that discouraged by anything Roche said in the recent interview. Roche also said at first TC would be applied to the FSSP. It wasn’t. To this day, Traditionis requires bishops to eliminate the TLM from parishes, a goal that has mostly failed. Yes, some bishops have enacted it with gusto, but the fallout/controversy from it makes most bishops skittish, and they do nothing instead. He is likely not to last past the year. Maybe his replacement continues in dedication, but he does not change the fundamental reality outlined here. Sometimes the Church has to exhaust every other option before doing the right thing, and all we can do is pray they come to that decision sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I’m not going anywhere, and that dedicated minority who prefers the TLM isn’t going anywhere. Given this reality, maybe it is time to talk terms?

Give What you Want

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When we talk about the Catholic Church, there is a dimension that is often missed. When we speak of “the Church”, we often mean “the hierarch”, or, more often “The Pope.” When we speak of the Church as a “mystical body”, it is often meant as a way to talk about those outside the visible boundaries of the Church and the degree to which they belong. That’s a shame. The mystical body exists within the visible confines of the Church as well; it is just more than the hierarchy.

This thought has been on my mind lately regarding the SSPX and their illicit consecrations, for which 6 bishops earned an excommunication. In the leadup to those consecrations, the Superior General of the SSPX, Fr Davide Pagliarani, justified a “state of necessity” with the following words:

It is sad to acknowledge, but it is a fact that, in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation. Missing, in particular, are both the integral preaching of Catholic truth and morality, and the worthy administration of the sacraments as the Church has always done.

After the very predictable backlash at the idea that Catholics outside the SSPX cannot find the means of salvation, Fr. Pagliarani explained himself as follows: (I quote at length to accurately convey his words):

In an ordinary parish or pastoral centre, that is, in a place where one preaches in conformity with current doctrinal orientations, is the Catholic Faith still taught in its full integrity? Is the catechism provided for children still Catholic and capable of forming them for their whole life?

Are the very delicate and very pressing questions of conjugal morality, or of access to the Eucharist in irregular situations, still addressed in conformity with the law of the Church? Is the sacrament of penance still administered with a genuine sense of Redemption and of sin, of its gravity and its consequences?…

To all these questions—and to others of a similar nature—the Society of Saint Pius X gives a clear and coherent answer; and then, starting from this analysis, because the reality is unavoidable, it comes to ascertain the ‘state of necessity’.

Fr. Pagliarani bases the SSPX position on the average Catholic parish in the Western Church: a situation where the average parish is so bad, this justifies the position of the SSPX to consecrate bishops outside the visible hierarchy. From a theological perspective, this is clearly wrong. One finds the ordinary means of salvation through three things: hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17), believing, and then being baptized (Mark 16:16). The sacramental life of the Church exists to preserve and strengthen the grace you receive at baptism. That this is not emphasized enough in churches is true, but beside the point: even in your crappy parish, you can be assured you have the means of salvation.

History has had several instances where the average parish was quite bad. Corruption reigned supreme, and you can find instance after instance of movements trying to restore parish life for ordinary Catholics. The mendicant orders (examples today being Augustinians, Franciscans and Dominicans) sent preachers who traveled to villages because preaching, to the extent it existed at all, was quite poor. As Eamon Duffy demonstrated in The Stripping of the Altars, English Catholicism before the Reformation was rife with reform movements (often heavily lay influenced) that viewed the average parish experience as terrible, and tried to reform it. None of these necessitated consecrating bishops outside of Church auspices. (Even in a far more decentralized Church, there were still certain arrangements required for the consecration of a Bishop.)

Furthermore, Fr. Pagliarani is wrong by the very criterion he lists. When Church authorities tried to change discipline on divorce and remarriage (leading to a functional change in sacramental teaching), Rome was resisted by churches fundamentally in the East, the United States, and Africa. In all three areas, the Bishops were a reflection of the laity. Francis’ attempt to bless gay marriage was met with widespread resistance from those same areas of the Church. The more involved the laity is in a local Church, the more likely that region would be described as “conservative.” In the United States, the resurgence in confession and Eucharistic adoration is best seen through the prism of age: the younger a priest is, the likelier he is to emphasize these things. They also emphasize these things because that is what the faithful want. Those parishes which grow are the ones that emphasize these things, even within the Novus Ordo. Is that the average Catholic parish? No, but who says average is the standard?

When we expand our understanding of the Church beyond the juridical creation of the parish, his assertion is even weaker. Does anyone think with a straight face the average Catholic village in Nigeria doesn’t understand the truths about homosexuality? Do we think St. Paul Street Evangelization and FOCUS believe in religious indifferentism? Charismatics not only heavily promote Marian devotion and adoration, they are the most reliable pipeline for future traditionalists there is. Within the visible communion of the Church, traditionalists work alongside these organizations, not in opposition to them. These individuals are traditionalists of the heart. Our only difference is we insist that the Church cannot truly advance into the future until she comes to terms with her past, and only through a healthy understanding of tradition is that possible.

Far from helping these people, the July 1st consecrations make them the biggest victims.

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The face of Catholic commentary has changed much in the last 20+ years I’ve been writing. I am beginning to enter the phase I find it hard to identify with a lot of the newer writers, even those I tend to agree with. There’s just a generational gap. Its an unfamiliar feeling at the age of 43, and I still have trouble adjusting to it. That adjustment is however delayed when I realize that a lot of the new names recycle the same old arguments, and I get a chance to consider the argument in a way that I did not in my 20s or 30s.

The argument today goes something like this: People love to talk about the collapse after the Second Vatican Council, but never about how poorly everyone was formed before the Council. Was this really the golden age traditionalists claim? I want to leave aside for the moment few if any traditionalists think this, and those who do tend to be freshly exposed to a world they didn’t know about. I want to take the argument seriously. This is difficult since a lot of people who say this are not being sincere, so we will gauge our response based on how sincere you believe the individual to be.

Tongue in Cheek

For the one who isn’t very sincere, it is easy to respond to him as thus. Agree with him that people were poorly formed in their theology and spirituality before the council, but make him own those words. Make him own the idea this poor formation extended beyond the faceless laity in the pews, and to the priests, bishops, and yes, even the Popes who presided over the Council and implemented the liturgical changes. These men were products of their ages, and if that age was one of poor formation, they were likely influenced by it in some way. Should this inspire you to think the Council and liturgical changes were good ideas, as they were steered by the third string of Catholicism? There’s an inherently clericalist argument here when they talk about the bad formation of Catholics before the council: it is always meant to be the average person in the pews. They were stupid, didn’t realize what was going on at Mass, and so when presented with a chance to be something better, they instead chose to give us the insipid suburban liturgies everyone loathes. I don’t believe this, but if you’re going to make this argument, you need to point out exactly why those who oversaw the council and the liturgical changes were not products of their environment.

Robbing Agency

The second reason this is a poor argument is because it reduces people to products of said environment. There’s nothing unique or interesting about the individual, if their formation was “bad”, they are inevitably bad. This also reduces their culpability during the chaos and instead places the blame upon impersonal institutions or forces no longer around. This kind of argument is best examined through the lens of historical example.

In the world of the French Revolution, a lot changed in a very short amount of time, before arguably becoming the very thing it looked to replace. After the overthrow of the monarchy, France descended into a decade long anarchy at breakneck speed. What began as a series of taxation reforms to bring the French Monarchy out of bankruptcy devolved into hundreds of soldiers marching in organized fashion into villages and shooting anything that moved. A series of arguments about parish priests receiving more money for their parishes devolved into those same priests being stripped naked, bound together with naked nuns and drowned into the river in a ceremony called a “Republican Baptism”, in many cases carried out by people who once were in a Church.

Responding to our interlocutor, was Louis XVI responsible for the infernal columns, because he was the leader of a bloated and collapsing monarchy? Were bishops responsible for the ghoulish “baptisms” because parishes were often deprived of resources in the ancien regime? Anyone who would argue that way would be instantly dismissed as someone trying to run propaganda for bad institutions or regimes. Eventually people are responsible for their own actions, and you cannot blame the way you were raised. The Catholicism of the 1950s had problems, but you cannot say the chaos of the 1970s is its byproduct.

Chesterton’s Fence

The correct argument is not that the 1950s were ideal, but they were certainly better than the 1960s. That we may (or may not) be better off 70 years later is just as much a product of human nature (which abhors anarchy) than it was some grand design at an Ecumenical Council. We saw on the grandest scale possible Chesterton’s fence. Rather than attempt to explain it, the author himself can do so:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." (Cheserton, The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, p. 29)

The era of reform (sometimes done in service of the Council, sometimes in defiance of it) was the era where the Church ripped the fence out just because the current audience didn’t think it was necessary. This may have been poor formation, or it may have just been they abandoned that formation and sincerely believed something that was wrong. A good formation yesterday is no assurance of doing the right thing today, because formation is a constant process. What followed after the Council was a realization (by reformer, revolutionary, and everything in between) that something had to be built in place of the fence they tore down in haste. During this time, people predictably responded to incentives. If the Church didn’t know what she wanted, everyone would try to figure it out on their own, and chaos predictably ensued. While a fence was inevitably rebuilt, that fence was not built as well as what preceded it, where even the weaknesses of the old fence now look like strengths.

When traditionalists point out the collapse after the Council, it is not in recreating a golden age, but in reminding people that if we follow the same disregard for the fence, we will inevitably wind up in the same spot, because human nature is quite predictable in its unpredictability.

Give what you want

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As the SSPX declared their intent to illegally consecrate four bishops, people kept asking me if I would write on it. If you’ll notice, I didn’t write about it here. I wrote one article at The Pillar that was only tangentially about the consecrations, and more about my belief that tradition is worth fighting for while remaining in communion with Rome. I declined mostly because I felt I couldn’t add anything unique to the discourse. Everyone knows I’m sympathetic to the SSPX but opposed the consecrations, and everyone knows the reasons why. What’s the point? Now that the consecrations have occurred and the decrees have been issued, a lot of people are asking one question: what now? I hope here I can provide something useful.

The first point of order is that one can accept and side with Rome on this, while still thinking they handled this poorly. Yes, Leo should have met with the SSPX. His final appeal was far too little, far too late. There was little to lose in such a meeting, and much to potentially gain. If nothing else, Leo could have taken the mantle of an energetic father who cast aside his persona to try to save the family. Instead he farmed out the work to subordinates. While I do not think the actual negotiations were done poorly or in bad faith, it was such low hanging fruit not taking it was a real missed opportunity. Now there will be endless debate throughout history if Leo could have done more, rather than taking 15 minutes out of six months to prove he could not.

While one need not find fault with the negotiations, one can certainly find fault with how Rome responded after the consecrations. The excommunication, explanatory note, and then the abjuration of errors for both the laity and priests attached to the Society are clearly the work of a committee lacking any formal vision, in some cases directly competing with each other. The decree of excommunication was correctly limited to the Bishops and their consecrators, as they were the ones guilty of a crime. The explanatory note (which while potentially interesting is not authoritative in and of itself) quotes a 1996 decision which says it can be reasonably inferred that the clerics in the Society “formally adhere” to the rupture, and would probably also be subject to the excommunication. The 2026 explanatory note did away with the probably, making clear that those priests who remained with the Society shared the fate of the Bishops. This warning was also given to the laity, again referencing the 1996 document. It is possible for the laity to “formally adhere” to the schism, but Rome made clear bringing such a case against a lay faithful who attends an SSPX chapel is an incredibly high bar. After this a formula of abjuration was released for clerics and laity.

In this world, how is producing a document that laity should sign not undermining that guidance? Since there will be few if any cases brought against the laity, of what purpose is the document? It is performative. The DDF continued this performative approach by announcing that all Society Confessions and marriages are now invalid. This would seem to make sense, in that the sacraments require faculties those likely excommunicated clerics now lack. There’s only one problem with this: those faculties came from papal edict. An explanatory note cannot take the place of papal edict. The only way those faculties can be revoked is by papal act.

While one may presume this has happened, it would certainly be easy to produce the decree if it did. We also have a very high profile case where a curial prefect got ahead of himself and did something illegal. During the implementation of Traditionis custodes, Dicastery for Divine Worship Prefect Arthur Roche informed bishops that all permission for the TLM must go through him. Almost every Bishop told him to pound sand and ignored his decree. As this back and forth intensified, The Pillar asked a simple question: does Roche have the authority to do this? Because it doesn’t look like he does. His Eminence loudly asserted his authority, and within 72 hours Pope Francis changed Church law, revoking the right of Bishops to govern liturgical matters in their diocese whenever the TLM was involved. Roche’s action was legal only after that decree. As a result, the legitimacy of Traditionis custodes was severely undermined, and many of the people Pope Francis needed the most were now implacable foes of the decree. If we want priests and lay faithful to stop defending the Society, we should not violate Church law and transparency in the process. I fully suspect within the next week or two Pope Leo will publicly revoke the previous authority Francis bestowed on the SSPX. It will be logical and proper, yet the way it has been handled so far has been neither.

The SSPX position has been no better. As Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society noted, there is a shocking indifference to the gray zone the flocks of the SSPX now find themselves in. They are in a true canonical limbo in many cases. They seem not to care, but then they write letters professing their fidelity to the Church and their desire to help the faithful. One new Bishop also gave a homily which was, let us dispense with the nice rhetoric, proximate to heresy. When speaking of the hierarchal Church whose mandate he felt was unneeded for his consecration, the new Bishop Michael Goldade said the following:

It kills the supernatural life, the sources of grace & has placed man in the place of God.

One can say that he simply means that the crisis in the Church is draining the Church of her vibrancy, which is a true enough statement. Yet the “sources of grace” for the Catholic Church are the sacraments. The Catholic Church has extensively litigated if the bad behavior and beliefs of clerics in otherwise good standing invalidates the sacraments, and has condemned any who profess that. That he spent the first hour of his episcopate seeming to relitigate this very ancient question is not a sign that the SSPX is headed in a good direction. He sounded a lot like former SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, who was expelled from the Society and spent the last few years of his life as an internet Bishop consecrating dubious priests for a box of Cracker Jacks.

I labor at length about the errors of everyone involved here because we need to see clearly before we can proceed. The very first thing the Society and the Church (both its clerics and its members, up to and including the Pope) should do is an examination of conscience. Have you, by acts of commission or omission, made this schism possible or easier? What must now change?

The very first priority should be towards the faithful in the pews. While the abjuration formula used is mostly performative, within that formula there is a path forward. In it the Church requires very little about Vatican II to be accepted. She only requires that what is taught in Lumen Gentium 25 (on the nature of the magisterium and papal authority, even when not speaking ex cathedra) be believed. The Church is not treating the SSPX as heretics in their “rejection” of Vatican II. She is treating them as in schism because the Society refuses to accept the ability of the Church to bind and loose when it applies to them, and them alone.

The decree also makes clear there are areas of Vatican II and subsequent reforms which can be difficult to reconcile with tradition, and there is even the possibility they cannot. In this situation, one is to undertake a respectful and positive discussion within the Church, and to at the very least hold that, even if something else should be done, these things can be reconciled in some form with previous tradition. This formula is remarkably similar to what Archbishop Lefebvre at first signed with the Catholic Church, and later reneged on. One can easily say Vatican II happened, and while it did not teach error, it also did not teach the full truth, which can be done going forward. This will become the default position as Vatican II is claimed by Father Time, and like all ecumenical councils its shortcomings can be not only discussed but accepted. We must internalize this if we are to bring about reconciliation.

We must also undo anything that unncessarily stands in the way to reunion. The Church has made clear in its abjuration formula to priests that they can remain attached to the TLM, so long as they accept that profession. While it does not say they can continue to celebrate it, it is inevitable that there will be a priest who returns to full communion under a Bishop and is allowed to celebrate the TLM. Once that is done, it will be a fair question to ask why that individual priest is allowed something but the otherwise obedient diocesan priest isn’t. The same goes for the laity. After the excommunication, Archbishop Earl Hebda implored any SSPX follower in his diocese to come to one of the Latin Masses he has established. Traditionis custodes currently says that it is the goal of the Catholic Church to eradicate the TLM, and leave it as a piece of history, an artifact of a time when Catholics were not united in worship. You cannot appeal to the SSPX effectively so long as Traditionis exists as law. The Bishops might believe it is about Dignitatis Humanae. The priests might. The overwhelming majority of laity who attend are there for the TLM. I know and appreciate individuals who say that Leo decisively overruling his predecessor sets a bad precedent, as the TLM becomes a hot potato every new pope will restrict or permit based on his personal mood. I would ask them to consider an alternative reality: Traditionis is dying on the vine, and its failure is already being judged, and will be judged for all time. At some point a good father and good leader has to be able to admit something isn’t working.

I offer no advice to the SSPX because I am not with them, and never have been. They have chosen a side that I am not on. I can only offer advice to my fellow Catholics who remain in communion with Rome: schisms have historically been exacerbated and sometimes entirely driven by the bad behavior of the Church. This remains so even if the schismatic is guilty of his own sin. If we truly take unity seriously, then we must look not only for what we must uphold, but what we must let go to achieve unity. The first thing to go should be our egos. After that, unity can take root.

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The discourse around the SSPX is viewed mostly through the prism of obedience. For clerics, this makes sense. When you become a priest in the Catholic Church, you are making a radical commitment to no longer live for yourself, but for the Catholic Church. This includes acting through the visible communion and hierarchy. For the laity, things are a bit different. Even in excommunicating the 6 clerics involved in the consecration (and making it clear Rome views those clerics who remain as formally adhering to schism), the documents referenced spell out why such pronouncements will not be forthcoming to the laity. The bar is higher, and instead all the Church can do is warn how the laity can formally adhere, rather than lay out a process for how the laities involvement regarding the SSPX will be adjudicated. (This will not satisfy conservatives cosplaying the religious life without its obligations, but we should spend as little time as possible satisfying their stupid objections.)

For the laity, I think the problem of the SSPX is the problem of faith. When I say faith, I do not mean the Catholic faith, once for all delivered to (and through) the saints as we typically understand it. The laity supporting the SSPX have that faith, and often have it in spades. They are orthodox Catholics, and attempts to compare them to Protestants should be rejected full stop. (This was confirmed by the curial prefect who deals with Protestants more than anyone, Cardinal Koch.) When I say faith, I mean instead “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Heb 11:1) that goes right to the core off our relationship to God. I think those who are supporting the SSPX (beyond mere attendance) risk a lack of faith.

We are like Abraham, leaving our previous life to dwell within a land God appointed for us. While we will not become the scion of billions, out of our work (in our own little way) the Church is built for future generations. While we dwell in that land, we are to trust that God will provide, even when it seems absurd. He promised Abraham a son through his elderly and barren wife, and the response was laughter. We traditionalists have a mission which may generate laughter as much(if not more) than inspiration. We have a few hundred thousand people, a few thousand priests, maybe 5 or 6 supporting Bishops, and we have decided to stick with what we know, when everyone demands otherwise. We expect not only to survive, but thrive. With almost no evidence, we have asserted that in centuries time, the passing fades of the current age will indeed pass, but we will remain. The Church will not look as she did in 1950, but she will be influenced by 1950 far more than 1970.

Those who support the SSPX often mock this faith. They point to the very real difficulties. They point to the hostile episcopate. They point to Bishops trying, even still to this day, to end the Latin Mass. They point to the pointless bureaucracy of synodality, where we “discern”, sleep, and discern some more in an infinite loop. They look around and see all these insipid liturgies inside buildings which are called parishes but are really an ecclesiastical Bill Knapps: eternity’s waiting room. They point these things out, and point out having faith in “modernist Rome” is absurd. They are sadly correct.

Where they err is in following the example of Sarah. Knowing that providing a son sounded impossible, she advised her husband to instead secure a lineage through her maidservant Hagar. God’s blessing took too long, so we’re going to speed up the process. It is said that without Bishops, the SSPX will die, and all of tradition with them, so let’s ignore the normal rules. Let’s ask the Pope to ignore us, and let us do what we want. For those who think our victory lies through the SSPX, it is not truth they lack, it is trust.

Some may stop the story here, but I think we need to continue it. Sarah and Abraham, despite being foolish, were not cast off entirely. The promise made to them was kept, and they bore a son. The doubting faith of Abram is Genesis 16 is replaced by the unwavering faith of Abraham in Genesis 22. God’s promise was no less absurd in those ensuing six chapters. What changed was Abraham’s trust, and beginning to understand. Abraham believed in Gods promise because He loved and trusted God. He saw the benefits in his daily life. He believed in God because he wanted God’s glory to be manifest through Him. I think this lesson is often forgot by us traditionalists: why we are doing this. We aren’t doing it for the Latin Mass in and of itself, for tradition, or even the Catholic Faith. Those things will exist without us. We are doing it so that the glory of God may be manifest in this world. When the Epistle today talks about us being buried into Christ’s death, we are raised with Christ’s rising. This is something fundamentally absurd that God requires us to trust Him on. What is more absurd? That which our elders threw off which may be returned to (a story as old as time in all the classics), or that a dead body will breathe again? It is this spirit that animated the followers of Jesus in today’s Gospel, heading out deep into the desert, ignoring all their needs save the need to hear an important message. Seeing that, Christ had compassion upon them and fed them, multiplying loaves from the smallest of amounts so everyone had their fill. When I look at all the Latin Mass communities who have stayed in the land they were called to, they always find a way to have ordinations, even if they lack a Bishop of their own. God didn’t call to them to the land without the means to provide.

For the laity who think the SSPX is necessary, meditate on that reality. To the confused Catholic who has remained within the land, worshipping as his Fathers did: build well. Use good soil, plant well. Put your faith in the Lord, and it will be rewarded.

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A quiet revolution is taking place within the Catholic Church. Given the nature of revolutions, this may seem like a contradiction in terms. This quiet revolution centers around the Second Vatican Council. For the last sixty years, Catholics have debated the nature of the Council, and whether it teaches error. (This debate has as its most visible sign the clash between the Society of St. Pius X and Rome.) Amid these debates, the true quiet revolution took place: time began to claim the Second Vatican Council.

Through the mid-1960s and the 1970s, theologians and commentators treated Vatican II as the Church chartering a bold new direction, or at the very least a recalibration of the Church’s priorities thanks to the fallout from modernization of the secular world. The pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict emphasized increasing continuity with the pre-conciliar era (at least doctrinally), which had the effect of increasing the Council’s acceptance, but decreasing its relevance. The debate around the council is shifting from “did it teach error” (a charge easily defended in the negative) to “did it speak the truth?”

While online discourse would reject this and insist all is fine with Vatican II, the hierarchy seems to view things differently. Bishop Varden speaks of the risks of a Church that has forgotten the “collective remembrance” of Vatican II in both the era before and during the council. Pope Leo XIV is delivering a weekly address explaining the texts of the council to the faithful in his Wednesday audiences. In his response to the SSPX, Cardinal Fernandez (in his role as Prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) admits that on several points of dispute, there is in fact no consensus position on what the Council says.

Against this backdrop I read an interview given by the now-retired Cardinal Sean O’Malley to the Catholic publication Aleteia. In the interview, he offers some interesting reflections on the first year of Pope Leo and the challenges he faces, particularly with regards to synodality. In an attempt to extol synodality (a new way of discerning God’s will), the Cardinal says the following:

“If we would have had that kind of approach to the implementation of Vatican II, I think it could have happened much smoother.”

Whether the Cardinal realizes this or not, he has made quite the admission against interest. He is implying heavily that, in implementing the Council, things were not just ‘rough’, but that the Church did not discern God’s will, and implemented the Council in a way God did not want. I have questions!

• Granting the Church had God’s will during the council, at what point did she stop listening?

• What were the ways in which she stopped listening? Concrete examples, please.

• Who were the individuals who stopped listening?

• Were there areas where the Church did discern God’s will correctly in implementing Vatican II?

• What were they, and how did they differ from other points where the Church was not properly listening to and discerning God’s will?

• At what point did the Church start correctly discerning God’s will with regards to what he wanted Vatican II to be? How does one know?

• Are there areas where, sixty years later, the Church is still not properly discerning what God’s will was regarding Vatican II?

Cardinal O’Malley has not thought these things through, because this was a mostly cynical exercise. The Church has invested much into what it calls synodality, but which most of the faithful view as pointless bureaucracy. Roughly 1-2% of the Church participated in the now decade-long synodal process, a turnout several percentage points below what Pope Francis said would mark a failure. The Synod itself is currently advertising the process with individuals in their 70s and above as the face of the process, an indication of more than they realize: everyone but the elderly activist has tuned out. Pope Leo has correctly understood there is “resistance” to the process of synodality, but does not realize the resistance is apathy. In attempting to prop up something nobody cares about, Cardinal O’Malley says this thing you don’t care about might have saved the last six decades of chaos and trouble, thinking nothing of how the Church presented itself during those six decades. Just as the Cardinal defends synodality as a way to fix the mess that was Vatican II (something that was denied as a mess right until the moment it wasn’t), so in the future the next current thing will be defended as a way to fix the mess that is synodality.

That does not mean we should not take him (and the Church) up on his idea. Popes and historians often note—most recently Pope Francis—that a century must pass before people fully appreciate the impact of an ecumenical council. They make this claim assuming its importance will be appreciated in the 2060s. What if that assumption ends up proving that the Second Vatican Council actually didn’t matter that much? What if it turns out a lot of the debates that the Church focused on regarding Vatican II matter shockingly little in the long term?

In all likelihood, Catholics in 2060 will view very little of the past 60 years as necessary to believe to defend the Second Vatican Council. Up until 2021, nobody seriously believed accepting Vatican II required the abolition of the Latin Mass, and for all Roman Catholics to abandon every other usage and celebrate only the Novus Ordo, a policy Pope Francis codified in his motu proprio, Traditionis custodes. From 2021-2025, some individuals pretended this was required by Vatican II. Once Francis died, most stopped pretending this was required. The question naturally arises: between now and 2060, what else will we understand better, and what else will we stop pretending on? The only way to truly discern God’s will is to ask at what extent our own will clouds it. Is the Church willing to have that discussion?

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Writers generate a lot of text when asked to reflect on the first year of a new pope. Most of it is slop. As I don’t have a book to sell, that won’t be one of these columns. Instead, I’d like to look at how the Church has received Robert Prevost as Pope in the first year, and what it says about the Church he must now lead.

When Joseph Ratzinger accepted his election, I had a burst of joy and euphoria. When Jorge Bergoglio accepted his election, like many others I had a very uneasy feeling. With Prevost? “Hmph, that’s interesting" was my reply when my wife mentioned that he was elected. I knew of the name, but mostly of him as a man with a low profile despite having a very high profile job.

Whether it was his papal motto or his early addresses, it was clear that the theme of unity would play an important part in the thought of the new Leo XIV. He wants a united Church tackling new and difficult questions, and he wants a united Church because the Church craves that unity. While we have the same sacraments, it is clear that different sections of the Church are going their own way. Region (Germany vs Africa), ideology (liberal, conservative and everything in between), and even age (young vs old) polarize today’s Church. Healthy competition and challenging of ideas is a good and necessary thing for the Church, but that is not what we are getting. We are instead a Church that is tired of the debates surrounding the Second Vatican Council. We are tired of the reignited liturgical wars. We are tired of the abuse and corruption. We are tired of various figures in the Church chasing political ends and trends. Leo’s theme of unity is not about what side “won” those debates, but a reminder to others that while we argue endlessly among each other, the world is undergoing a radical change which presents unheard-of challenge and opportunity for the Church.

Has he fulfilled that mission? Of course not, he’s been Pope for a year, and that included a two-month vacation/retreat that popes typically have. Yet I think he has given the Church a genuine good faith effort at showing he is genuine about peace. He cannot offer a lasting peace, but he can offer an armistice. He offers various factions within the Church something they can approve of, while (this is very important) not going out of his way to antagonize anyone. Pope Francis loved to antagonize people. Whether it was his nature as a pugilist (something all writers can understand!) or some conspiratorial belief that chaos creates opportunity, Francis was always feuding with somebody in the Church.

With Leo it is different. Within his first month as Pope, he looked at a liturgical dispute Francis was involved in with local Catholics in India (where the Pope demanded apologies and they responded by burning him and his representative in effigy) and decided it just wasn’t worth it: he immediately accepted the same local compromise Francis had refused, declared victory, and sent Francis’ personal representative to a very comfortable (and otherwise well-earned) retirement. He immediately welcomed a long list of cardinals Francis had shunned as his enemies, while also making clear that he would still meet and do business with individuals those former enemies couldn’t stand. While he offered no long-term solution to the widespread unpopularity of Traditionis custodes, he encouraged people to give him ideas on how the Church could extract herself from the problem, and emphasized local Bishops should be as welcoming as possible in the meantime.

On areas where he has been required to be firm, he has not been firm in a new direction. With the SSPX, he has continued the tradition of adopting a firmer line (arguably firmer than Francis) on not granting further concessions without real concrete steps towards reunion. They have an offer for reintegration into the Church as a canonical entity and are allowed to discuss what Vatican II actually means. (Something the Church is clear she doesn’t even really know the answer to.) Yet this offer has zero wiggle room for a second generation of episcopal consecrations in defiance of papal permission.

With the Germans he did not so much as offer a new opposition as he made public previous attempts to rebuke the Germans. Francis preferred diplomacy in private, as that gave him maximum flexibility to be as conciliatory or as hardline as possible, and to switch between them as necessary. Leo is returning a sense of transparency and predictability to Vatican diplomacy.

These are very modest moves which are akin more to an armistice than a peace treaty. During an armistice you stop fighting, and you take further acts of de-escalation. You prepare for negotiating a lasting peace. Also, during this time you occasionally have to show your resolve and willingness to continue previous fights if it is required. While everyone understands the temporary nature of an armistice, it has to be followed up by concrete decisions by both sides as to what they want in a peace. It is here that Leo’s pontificate will face its greatest danger. The will of the Roman Pontiff is given great treatment in theology manuals and lay hagiography. In a messy world, that will is not self-authenticating. Leo will have to achieve a lasting peace, not just desire it.

This is where I think most assessments of Leo go astray. They look for actions he has taken, and predict what they think will happen next, often with a very high degree of certainty not borne out by the facts or later events. I think it is far more interesting to look at how the Church has received the papacy of Leo one year in. Gone are the days where the Pope can be reasonably expected to fashion the Church in his image. Instead, Leo will be moving with the Church, not against it.

It is here I think there will be cause for optimism. People genuinely want peace. Traditionalists were often deeply critical (and rightly so) of Francis, to the point they were viewed by Francis and his court as intractable opponents of the modern papacy. With Leo, that has mostly dissipated. There will always be people trying to grift or convince others he is more of the same, but by and large they are falling on deaf ears. Traditionalist commentators are all begging for money and dealing with a decreased demand for rage bait. Much of the deceased Pope’s former inner circle of media apparatchiks are still around but increasingly talking to themselves. The SSPX finds their path facing opposition not just from Rome, but within traditionalist communities the world over, some even within the Society. When it comes to the Germans, we find a Church less and less sympathetic to their demands. With regards to the status of the Latin Mass, the general attitude is one of apathy towards continuing restrictions, but also apathy towards any long-term solution.

The attention economy under Leo is dramatically different than during the years of Francis, and this signals a changing Church. Those expecting Leo to be a dramatic crusader on anything are almost certainly trying to steal from your wallet. There are no letters from Leo calling for a new crusade on your favorite issue. What you are likely to see is decisive action when the unity of the Church needs to be protected, but otherwise expect Leo to be led by events and trends in the Church far more often than leading them. This will often be true even when he wishes it were not so. Perhaps that is how the Spirit may truly speak to us, that Leo’s pontificate might be the first pontificate in roughly 60 years that isn’t about the office holder.

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A recent report from veteran Vatican journalist Nico Spuntoni (mentioned in English at Diane Montagna’s Substack) mentions that Rome:

“… is concerned about the pastoral care of the persons (i.e. clergy) connected to the Society who do not intend to remain in it after a further break with Rome.”

This should come as no surprise, as the Church has historically tried to limit the fallout of excommunications and schisms. Yet this presents an interesting question: what can Rome offer in terms of “pastoral” care to priests affiliated with the Society?

I know there are some of my brethren who think Rome’s response will be quite limited, but I think that is a risky proposition. In the eyes of Rome, the Society will now have had two generations of episcopal lineage consecrated in opposition to Rome. The 1988 consecrations did not necessarily (and did not in the end) create a parallel hierarchy. The act of illicitly consecrated bishops consecrating their successors illicitly effectively creates a parallel hierarchy. There seems to be no end game: Rome granting approval of a Bishop would not solve the SSPX’s desire to remain independent of any Roman jurisdiction. The risk of a permanent schism is real in a way that arguably was not in 1988.

In light of the severity of this, Rome would want to offer ways to reconcile priests who are not ready for such a move. Yet what can Rome offer? Concessions on the Traditional Latin Mass would be an obvious start, but why should they be believed? Francis demonstrated that it matters not if a move is injurious to souls and opposed by the majority of the world’s bishops. If the pope gets out of bed and thinks something is a good idea, he can make it Church law. He may be limited in enacting such law, but it is hard to build a culture of good faith once the bell has been rung. In a move of supreme irony, the pope who was most favorable to the SSPX might be the pope who made their schism impossible to avoid.

Even if such concessions were granted, the logical question would be raised: why did you not do this to begin with? Why are you only doing so now to prevent a catastrophe? In the end, the Church will have to encounter and swallow a bitter pill if she wants to avoid a permanent schism: a pope made a mistake, and we are now taking action to correct that mistake. Yet what certainty is there a future pope will not conclude this concession was a mistake? Furthermore, if the Church made a mistake with the Latin Mass, did she make any other mistakes surrounding the Second Vatican Council? What if the majority of chaos in the subsequent 60 years could have been avoided had the Church just adopted the attitude of “first, do no harm” when carrying out reform? Institutions will go to great lengths to avoid admitting a mistake, because of how much their authority is damaged.

Yet I am not sure Rome “wins” in this fight if the Society goes their own way. Yes, they win in an eschatological sense in that the gates of hell will not prevail. What makes this “win” any different from the Church “winning” a century after the fact with the Three Chapters schism, a schism that future historians admit was unnecessary, and would have been avoided had the Church had better leadership?

What is the Church fighting to preserve, outside of the principle Rome has to approve every episcopal consecration, something relatively recent in Church history, and even now only sustained by a series of legal fictions in concordats with authoritarian regimes? Vatican II? By Cardinal Fernandez’s own admission, the Church doesn’t know what to require acceptance on for Vatican II, or what, 60 years later, the Council actually taught on several key matters.

It is obvious that Rome should make concessions on things like the Traditional Latin Mass, and even offer priests who want to be in union with Rome a way to live out their charism under the aegis of the Holy Father, with potentially even their own bishop in the future. Yet those concessions can’t exist in a vacuum, and require admitting those above mistakes, which in the long term make such offers less likely, not more.

I sympathize much with the SSPX, but not with their position. I defend Rome despite my belief that Rome has contributed much to this situation. I think Catholics, especially traditionalists, are called to navigate this situation with grace and humility. We are called to remember three things:

1. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.

2. Schisms are just as much (if not more) a product of bad Catholics/leaders than the sinful nature of those in rebellion.

3. We are called to partake in the life of the Church despite these two true statements.

With that in mind, we must implore both Rome and Écône to do all that they can to preserve unity, starting with admitting their faults. Only with such humility can true reconciliation be possible, and the absence of such humility is as good of a sign as to whether either are serious about reconciliation.

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Not long after he became Pope, Leo XIV sat down for an interview with Crux’s Elise Allen. In that interview, Allen (to her credit) asked directly about the Traditional Latin Mass. While ultimately non-committal, he expressed hope he could sit down and talk to those who advocated for the TLM, and that its status was “on the agenda.” Since then, what you think about the TLM has influenced what you see. TLM restrictions tightened in Detroit and Charlotte. Though it was ignored, Cardinal Roche put forth a defense of Traditionis custodes during the meeting of Cardinals. (The Cardinals punted on the question of the liturgy overall, something that seemed to annoy Leo, who reminded them the issue would have to be discussed at their next gathering in July.)

On the other hand, Leo regularly met with sources friendly to traditionalists, from clerics such as Cardinal Burke to laymen such as Stephen Bullivant. The Chartres Pilgrimage was a rousing success, and Rome was far warmer to it than any time during Francis’ pontificate, where officials threatened to restrict pilgrims’ ability to access churches. Prelates such as Cardinal Eijk publicly celebrated the TLM, a move he did not seem comfortable making before 2026. What we have not seen is any statement from Leo himself in public.

On March 18th, 2026, that changed. In a letter to the French Episcopal Conference, Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin (acting as the official mouthpiece for the pope) stated that it was the Holy Father’s wish that the Holy Spirit “suggest to you concrete solutions that will allow for the generous inclusion of those sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo, in accordance with the guidelines established by the Second Vatican Council regarding the Liturgy.” In understanding these words, we need to be careful about what we do not know and what we do know. Once we establish that, we can then infer how things may proceed.

What We Don’t Know

The first thing we do not know is what the bishops actually proposed during their meetings. For example, Mike Lewis of Where Peter Is talks about “the proposals” of the French Episcopal Conference based on an English translation of an article in La Croix. When reading the article, one finds there is actually no “proposal” from any bishops, as a body or individually. There are vague assessments of vibes, and a few points of discussion from bishops who want to maintain the status quo in some form. Lewis extrapolates from this that English-speaking commentators are hiding the truth from their audience that French journalists (Lewis names not one) openly speak of: that the French bishops are proposing something stricter than Traditionis custodes. They may indeed do that, but La Croix is not saying that.

We also do not know the mind of the Pope, likely because he has not made up his mind yet. Individuals like me or even Mr. Lewis can talk about the obvious solutions (and I would defend the obviousness of said solutions) through our own ideological prisms. The Church is bigger than us, and the office of the Pope is not a vehicle for personal ideology, but an office to assist in shepherding the flock of God.

We also should not presume some independent action by the bishops as a result of these deliberations. Church law as it currently stands forbids bishops any semblance of independence regarding the TLM: they cannot grant permission for it unless a Curial Prefect says it is okay. They cannot allow a new priest to say it. They are even forbidden (technically) from allowing the faithful to have coffee in a church basement following Mass. They are forbidden from letting their flocks know about the Mass in church bulletins. That bishops have ignored some of these mandates does not change the reality that no bishop is going to put his name to a public action directly contravening Church law. This and any future discussions are deliberative and consultative, not action-oriented.

What We Do Know

We can glean what we do know from the text Leo sent to the bishops. He did not mention Traditionis custodes. He has repeatedly been given the opportunity to publicly defend and extol his predecessor’s legislation, something he has repeatedly declined to do, just as he has also demurred from criticizing it. The President of the French Bishops’ Conference has stated that Leo told him in January to personally explore paths to “reducing tensions” surrounding the TLM. That he asked this of Cardinal Aveline is at the very least interesting given the Cardinal’s friendliness to the Latin Mass (he has celebrated it and spoken kindly of traditionalists in France), yet His Eminence is an unabashed theological liberal.

What we also know is that Leo asked bishops to talk about the future of the Latin Mass in a country where the implementation of Traditionis custodes has been limited at best. Even granting that the French bishops have a negative attitude about traditionalists, only 20% of them have attempted to implement Francis’ decree, five years in. If the bishops are discussing the fate of the Latin Mass, this is not among a group of bishops who love the decree restricting it. This speaks to the general unpopularity of the decree, even among those not inclined to traditionalists.

What We Can Speculate

What follows next is speculation; readers should not treat these as predictions or spoilers. While not definitive, I think we can make reasonable inferences. The first inference is that Traditionis custodes has failed to provide much clarity on this issue after five years. I also believe it is reasonable to infer that the energy behind its further implementation has stalled. The decree was never very popular, hence why Francis had to revoke the right of bishops to decide how to implement it. In doing that, he centralized all decisions in Rome in the person of two individuals: the Prefect of the DDW, and the Holy Father himself. What would happen if a future pope were not so inclined towards aggressive enforcement? I think we are at that point. Whatever the thoughts of Leo on the merits of TC, there is undeniably less energy in its enforcement.

We can also reasonably infer that Leo has learned the lesson of his predecessor. When Francis was looking to ban the Latin Mass, he asked his brother bishops what they thought. The response was, to say the least, tepid. Very few bishops viewed this as a pressing theological issue, and those that did largely agreed with Francis’ predecessor Benedict XVI, who removed most restrictions around the TLM. Francis ignored them and issued Traditionis anyway, and most bishops to this day have done the bare minimum in implementing it. As Leo has repeatedly said unity is a theme of his pontificate, it makes sense to ask those same bishops Francis ignored for proposals (and they are just that, proposals) on how to solve the issue.

We can also reasonably infer that Leo wants a more permanent solution. Benedict’s successor revoked Summorum Pontificum. People are asking Leo to look at Traditionis custodes. Once Leo dies, it is reasonable to assert someone will ask his successor to look at what Leo said on this issue. Whatever settlement happens needs to be something the Church can live with for the foreseeable future. You cannot get that through the Pope governing alone.

A final point of inference is that Traditionis will not get any more popular as time goes on. There was a belief that the Pope attaching his name to such restrictions would make them above reproach and settle the issue. That did not happen with Francis, and there is no reason to think Leo doubling down on those restrictions would suddenly make everyone be silent. Demographically, younger priests and younger Catholics are fine with the TLM, even if they don’t attend it. Any elaborate solution that leaves the restrictions mostly in place has to grapple with the reality that few want to continue navigating and enforcing this problem; they want to move past it.

The reader is free to disagree with these inferences, yet I think they point to a world where the Pope’s opinion is of both supreme and minimal importance regarding this issue. Leo has shown a willingness to respond to intractable problems he inherited from his predecessor by simply refusing to fight his predecessor’s battles. Could this be one of them?

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When discussing issues within Catholicism today, it is helpful to remember that while problems may have a theological element, there is more to the Church than just her theology. Many of her problems are similar to problems found in any large and venerable institution. One of these problems is the failure to fall in love with the problem.

The concept of falling in love with a problem is a mentality that focuses on understanding the problem inside and out, before even thinking about a solution. While solving a problem can bring great fame and prestige, the desire to solve a problem can lead you to often propose a bad solution. To truly solve a problem, you must first understand every facet of it that you can: what the problem is, why it exists, how it developed, and where solutions might lie.

A recent letter by the Abbot of Solesmes, Dom Geoffroy Kemlin, showcases this mentality. In this letter (reproduced in English by Rorate Caeli, alongside an interview), Dom Kemlin advocates a rather creative liturgical reform: taking the Ordinary of the Traditional Latin Mass and inserting it into the Novus Ordo, while keeping the modern Propers, Lectionary and Calendar. He does so with both a solution and aspiration in mind: to bring about true liturgical unity, and to clear up misconceptions about traditionalists who “instrumentalize the Mass and use it as an identity banner.” (He himself is not sure this exists, just that it is said.) I find this a classic case of falling in love with a solution, rather than the problem.

I would argue that the problem is not that traditionalists “instrumentalize the Mass” and “use it as an identity banner.” Not only is this something he is not sure of, we now know the Bishops made clear to Francis that this was not a serious problem. Even when implementing the decree, Bishops often made clear that the problem they were trying to correct was not prevalent in their dioceses. (How this makes sense I leave up to the reader.) The real problem is one his interviewer hints at, and which the Abbot’s plan clearly contradicts, despite his protest: Traditionis custodes.

While the decree mentions unity, the energy of the decree was behind an eventual ban of the Latin Mass. Without that ban, not only could there be no unity, Francis believed we were betraying the Council. You can argue over whether or not that’s true all you want, and it might make for an interesting theological debate. That debate turns into a problem when you look reality square in the face: The Traditional Latin Mass is not going to be banned, no matter what a Church decree says. We are roughly five years removed from the Pope’s decree, and most of the energy in furthering its mandate died with its author. The problem is we have the full force of Church law currently oriented towards something that few want, and even among those few defenders, they cannot articulate a way to achieve it beyond hoping to wait out a group of people who have proven surprisingly resilient at waiting out Church authorities over the past six decades.

Another way this fails to understand the problem is that it fails to take into account how this is a problem for those impacted. For a monk, the Abbot is remarkably online, buried deep in a dispute that takes place among a very exclusive group: liturgy nerds online or clerics in periodicals. If you are reading this and nod in agreement, it is good to remember that we are not the median traditionalist. The median individual impacted by this dispute has no strong opinions on Vatican II, even if they are in an SSPX chapel. The median Catholic in the Novus Ordo is generally happy with their Mass, even if they want some externals changed. (Better music, chant, incense, for the person in the pews to shut up so you can pray, etc.) This dispute is a problem because it has fundamentally disrupted the lives of faithful Catholics. Flourishing Latin Mass communities were shuttered and dispersed. Parishes that celebrated both side by side are now divided, and in many instances, their future as a Novus Ordo community is now in doubt. To the extent your average Catholic hears about how the liturgical disputes impact people, it is in regards to people no longer being able to attend something the Church admits is holy and lawful, and not being able to make sense of it beyond “someone in Rome thinks this is a good idea, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I think this is where discussion needs to center on: the Church has introduced something incredibly disruptive, and it has created a toxic environment. This could possibly be justified if there was some larger goal that would be obtained, but that goal is unattainable. We haven’t even gotten to the theological issues from such a change, which even the Abbot admits would require careful implementation and explanation. Before you can even get to that, you have to ask: who is this solution for?

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The battle over the importance of the territorial parish is less a fight about the parish, and more about the question of community. What makes a community? Is it blood? Soil? Boundaries on a map? Ideas? While all of these are examples of community, they have limits. Brother can fight brother in civil war, and while they remain part of the same family, they are not the same community. Boundaries on maps change over time, and lands that belonged to one community thousands of years ago are now completely part of another community.

God gives us a different basis of community. Community in the Bible stems not from the actions of man, but the actions of God upon man. In the Old Testament, circumcision was God’s sign of His covenant with Israel. This prefigured the ultimate sign, baptism. You can lose your neighborhood, your tribe, your nation, and your culture, but you don’t lose community as a Christian. Though I may be in Toledo, at the consecration I am instantly united not just with every Catholic around the world, but every one of God’s people throughout salvation history.

If community is based on God’s action in baptism, how is it maintained? Those baptized can fall away. Our parishes (even the ones we choose for ourselves) are full of baptized people who may in fact not be on the right side at the Day of Judgment. God chooses to make that communion based on two things: His Love and Divine Revelation. While the baptized can make a parish, only God’s Love and Truth can sustain it.

God gave us free will so that we may choose the good. When you choose a parish (even a territorial one), are you prioritizing your relationship with God? Are you basing that choice upon His truth, or on your preferences? Sometimes you “like the homily” because it challenges you to give more to God. If we should fault people who go to a parish because they want to be holier and more involved, argue why this is the case. Their choice is certainly not abandoning their community, for as pointed above, our community is based ultimately on baptism.

Having dispensed with that argument, others present a worry that if parishes are only communities of voluntary choice, then people will inevitably be excluded. As a parent of children with special needs, I take this argument seriously. My children have been excluded from the life of the Church at multiple parishes. Both my wife and I have been present at parishes where we were either made to feel unwelcome by the congregation, or explicitly told we were not welcome if we could not “keep our child under control.” Yet I have experienced that feeling in both my territorial parish and in parishes of my own choosing. I have experienced this in the Novus Ordo and the Latin Mass. The liturgy cannot escape the reality that flawed humans are involved in worship. The solution is the same no matter where you go: a priest who governs the flock makes clear that radical inclusion of all is a cornerstone of that parish.

Another worry is that if you leave your neighborhood for a parish, you won’t know the neighborhood that parish is in. You won’t know the widows or the hungry. To this I can only argue from experience, and from what I have been told in my travels as a traditionalist. When I traveled to Cleveland, I met with a friend who lived in the area. When he found out I went to the Latin Mass regularly, he said, “You know St. Stephen’s? The food bank is packed from the people who go there.” Roughly 90–95% of the congregation at St. Stephen’s was not part of the geographic location that parish was meant to serve. No doubt this happens at several Novus Ordo parishes as well. Far too often this discourse occurs based on what could go wrong, rather than what has.

The risks above are valid, yet these are not risks that happen because people choose their parish. They happen because human nature is what it is. You can always abuse freedom. There is a real debate going on in the Church over the roots and basis of community. We can choose not to engage in it, but that just means it will go on without your input. I invite those who look down on these Catholics to put forth their own cases with these principles in mind.

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At the center of the crisis in Catholicism is a crisis of identity. The doctrinal crisis impacting the Church during the Second Vatican Council revolves around identity: what do we believe? The polarization in the Church that exploded during the reign of Francis revolves around identity: who is my brother, and how do I relate to him? This crisis of identity often follows profound change: so much has changed, and a lot of hard work is required to figure out how you fit in with the new world.

This crisis of identity came to mind as I read the work of Patrick Neve when he argued against what he calls “parish-shopping.” In the work, we find a writer confused about his own identity: he often criticizes that which he does not understand. He also exhibits a tendency common among today’s Catholic pundits and influencers: a tendency to micromanage situations they do not understand. This always ends disastrously.

There has long been a phenomenon of “church hopping” where people change where they attend frequently because of the typical imperfections you will find in any community. In many areas of American Protestantism, this is how you get thousands of splinter communities and denominations. Had Mr. Neve simply been writing about this, he probably would not have received the pushback he encountered. Instead, he defined “Church shopping” as “someone who drives 30 minutes to Mass, passing three parishes along the way.” Most Catholics cannot even identify their territorial parish, and would not know where to look to learn those borders. This is because territory is more a juridical reality than a practical one.

When you read the Code of Canon Law devoted to parishes (Book II, Chapter VI, Canon 518 specifically), you find that parishes exist as an administrative unit for expediency and efficiency sake from the perspective of a diocese. When we talk about the individual obligations of Catholics, there is nowhere an obligation to attend Mass at the parish that covers your geographic location. The Church designs these structures to serve, not to be served.

In the world of horse carriages and foot traffic, few people had a practical reason to attend Mass beyond their territorial parish. The automobile can move more in five minutes than your feet can in an hour, dramatically expanding possibilities. I know individuals like the ones Mr. Neve describes, who drive 20-30 minutes to Mass, and pass several parishes on the way. Yet they aren’t parish shopping. That parish was the parish they grew up in, and continues to be their home, no matter what lines on a diocesan map say. Those maps are made for pastors, not for the faithful. We can think of a lot of perfectly valid reasons like this, and I’m sure that if you press Mr. Neve on this, he will concede that isn’t an issue.

Thankfully, the Church has given thought to this issue, and shows this foresight by what she doesn’t say, and why she doesn’t say it. A bad parish can kill faith faster than a few people can spend decades building it. Bureaucracy by its very nature will respond slowly to a priest ruining that community. People will vote with their feet if they have the means available to them. They will find thriving parishes that know the needs of the community in the pews, not on a map.

I’d like to offer an example from my own experience as the father of two autistic children. One of those children will not sit in pews when he goes to Mass, for a variety of reasons only parents of children with autism will understand. At my “territorial” parish (within the Novus Ordo), they will typically be warm in assisting if I ask them. When I was unable to attend that parish one day, I went to a parish 5 miles down the road. At that parish, an usher instinctively knew what was happening and brought out chairs for us without even needing to be asked. When he saw us there the next week, he informed the other ushers that when they saw me and my son, they were not to look for a place for us to sit, but instead bring us chairs. Yes, I could do something about that at my territorial parish and start doing x or y. At that point it becomes something in which you factor in time and effort. Given the challenge of attending Mass to begin with in this circumstance, is it wrong to go with those who understand without being told? This is before you even factor in questions fundamental to Catholic identity such as doctrine and worship.

In an age of dwindling Mass attendance, it is ecclesiological suicide to force people to belong to a parish they don’t want to be at. Church law recognizes this reality by placing the obligation to attend Mass “anywhere in a Catholic rite”, not “at a Catholic rite within a geographic map.” If people can choose, they are going to choose. Parishes can adapt to that reality or die. Of the 7 Churches St. John wrote to in Revelation, all 7 had ceased to exist or were shadows of a distant past by the 7th century, even if Christianity continued. Mr. Neve should ponder that sobering reality more when he tells faithful Catholics to abandon their brother for lines on a map.

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When people talk about the Traditional Latin Mass, there are few things everyone agrees upon. There is, however, one point that is generally accepted: The TLM is part of something bigger, and that “something bigger” is the Second Vatican Council. Paul VI believed that the only way to truly advance the Novus Ordo (which he believed the fulfillment of Vatican II) was to restrict the TLM. As part of his attempts to end the division surrounding Vatican II, Pope John Paul II (and Benedict XVI) tried to separate the two: one could have the TLM so long as they accepted the validity of both the Novus Ordo and Vatican II. This peace was unfortunately short lived, as 13 years later Pope Francis reinstituted the old ways: you can have the Second Vatican Council, or the TLM: you cannot have both.

Defenders of this position will point out the numerous and lengthy critiques of the Second Vatican Council from traditionalists, with a smug “see, this is why Francis was right.” I don’t think this really tells us anything though. There is a false history that everyone received a council with humble docility and without event, something which is amusing to anyone who has studied a single page of Church history. Six of the seven ecumenical councils accepted by Catholics and Orthodox came about due to questions raised by the first council. The Council of Trent was not fully implemented until the 1700s throughout Europe. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium is largely an attempt to make sense of the discussion, debates, and problems that arose after an unfinished First Vatican Council’s Pastor Aeturnus. Are traditionalist critiques really that different?

I think one area that separates traditionalist critiques of Vatican II from previous eras is something that those traditionalists have no control over: The Church has never articulated what it means to get to yes. In any negotiation or attempt at compromise or consensus, the goal is to get to yes, with “yes” being defined as accepting something that everybody can agree on, even if certain personalities would rather something else be done. These individuals understand that the principle they are advocating for is bigger than the egos and individuals involved in the discussion, and that means you let personal preferences fade for the overall goal. What is that overall yes for Vatican II?

This exists for other Councils where dispute happens. Nobody says you must “accept Trent” when we engage in discussion with Protestants. We say you must “accept Trent” and its canons on Justification or the Mass as a Propitiatory Sacrifice. Even within those confines, what one must accept tends to be very narrow. You must reject “faith alone” according to a very particular definition, and only that definition. The Church accepts diversity and discussion outside of that narrow definition. For Trent, getting to yes means accepting those very narrow parameters under which she issued certain decrees.

What is the point of yes on religious liberty? Ecumenism? The authority of the local bishop in relation to not only Rome, but his brother bishops in a similar region? There is no “yes”, because the Church is still trying to figure out what the bare minimum of acceptance is, sixty years later. It seems the only “yes” that exists for the Church is “Vatican II”, whatever it is, whatever it taught, is good, and however one defines Vatican II, it is irreformable. This is not a serious proposition. When you start your negotiation by saying everything must be accepted, what you are telling people is that nothing actually needs to be accepted, this isn’t a position of strength, but of smoke and mirrors.

Perversely, it encourages those with the worst opinion on Vatican II to dig their heels in. If the Church cannot agree on what Vatican II means, the end result is just as likely to be “it means nothing.” If it means nothing, then why bother trying to accept it? The more the meaning of something becomes convoluted over time, the less relevant it becomes to individuals further away from the time in which the event happened. Without getting to yes, Vatican II becomes just another moment in history that passes, to the point where people no longer live their lives defined by it. As Bishop Varden insightfully said, the collective memory of Vatican II is fading. The younger generations of Catholics aren’t trying to solve what Vatican II meant. They’re accepting it as a valid council and moving on.

The end result of that moving on is going to be a hard reality for many to accept: for future generations, very little of Vatican II will be viewed as necessary. We endured sixty years of debate and chaos for:

• Forced Conversions are bad

• Liturgy in the vernacular is okay but not required

• Protestants reading a Bible is God calling them

• Jews as a race are not guilty of Christ’s death. (Something which may become more relevant with time.)

Were the last 60 years of chaos worth it? If this had been all Vatican II required, how much chaos would we have avoided? Maybe you think one or two other points should be added or subtracted, but the overall trend is clear: the majority of what the Council said will not be accepted or rejected, so much as passed over. That this is similar to every Council in history is small comfort for those who viewed Vatican II as the most important council in history.

The traditionalist position (whatever that may be) regarding the Second Vatican Council can be wrong in its particulars, but directionally correct. This is a hard pill to swallow for the last sixty years of leaders within the Church, yet medicine is often hard to take but beneficial for the body. Failing to take it doesn’t make the problem go away, it just leads to you being a victim of that problem. If you want to blunt the traditionalist critique of Vatican II, figure out what yes means, before you are no longer the one figuring it out.

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When asked about how the Church will approach the Latin Mass during his pontificate, Leo answered by attempting to reframe the discussion. For him, the question should not be about Latin, because “you can say Mass in Latin right now”, if one means the “Vatican II Rite". Realizing that the problem was about more than the Latin language, Leo said that the issue was “very complicated” and something “we need to talk about” in a synodal fashion. In response to this, a lot of individuals argued the TLM is unnecessary, and “why can’t you just go to the Novus Ordo in Latin?” While the average traditionalist will roll their eyes at this question, it is a discussion we must have, so we might as well set the boundaries. Let’s talk about why trying to force people into a Latin Novus Ordo is a bad idea.

While normally this leads to discussions about the merits/demerits of both liturgies, I would like to start somewhere different. The primary reason to oppose trying to force everyone into a Latin Novus Ordo is that a Latin Novus Ordo is, and always has been, rarer than a TLM. Answering a pastoral problem (how to deal with those for whom the TLM is the way they worship God) with a solution that exists mostly as an academic exercise is not a pastoral solution. We cannot dissolve the Church and elect another more to our liking; we must deal with the Church as she exists.

I would instead take the discussion in another direction. Why does it matter that it is rare, and that people choose the TLM? When Francis asked the world’s bishops if this was a problem, almost all of them said it wasn’t. Priests on the ground don’t think this is a problem, especially the younger ones. This is beginning to look a lot like certain people are mad the Church has changed since 1970, and they are becoming increasingly worried about their legacy as their days become increasingly numbered.

Realizing that “because I don’t like it” is a terrible reason to abolish something, people will settle on the idea that something changed about the Church after Vatican II, and therefore the liturgy must change. The first problem with this idea is it is a tell that things have not in fact changed that much. If you need to impose a change from on high to reflect the reality of change, that change isn’t very organic; it is forced. Such force relies entirely on the identity of the enforcer, and that identity changes. The Traditional Latin Mass has survived and grown in a Church that has been institutionally hostile to it for 49 of those 56 years since the promulgation of the Novus Ordo. How long will that enforcer care?

The second, larger problem is that if such a change is necessary, it implies Vatican II is the very thing its defenders have long denied: a new religion. The Novus Ordo becomes the euphemism for a new religion. It is not enough to say that Vatican II has a “new ecclesiology”, or conception of a Church. The Catholic Church has today, and has had over time, multiple ecclesiological views and they are typically only banned when they are heretical. Even with schisms, the Church tries to provide a way for groups to maintain their ecclesiology, just in communion with the global Church. If you are saying an ecclesiology is no longer valid, then you are saying something has changed with belief, not expression. If it is a new belief, it is a new religion.

Before Traditionis custodes, the Church avoided this kind of talk for a very obvious reason: The Catholic Church doesn’t do new religions. One of the primary arguments for its validity is the unbroken line of succession from the Apostles. In 2000 years, she has consistently preached and believed in one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. If she has changed her belief, then she has changed her nature, and she will change it again. The Church is reduced to a fad, the latest in a present thing that is forgotten when a new present thing is found. To embrace this line of thinking is not only contrary to the nature of Catholicism, it is ultimately self-defeating.

While Leo’s exact views are unknown (and I would argue that is because he currently does not have a position), I do think he offers some interesting tidbits. He refers to the Novus Ordo as the “Vatican II Rite.” Reliable news outlets have reported sources mentioning his belief that since there are many rites within the Church, one shouldn’t exclude the TLM. This is almost certainly a wiser (even if more novel) approach than one which assumes the TLM must go away and that our job is to make that transition easier. Only once we reject that approach can we intelligently talk about why people aren’t choosing the Novus Ordo, yet this discussion must be grounded in reality. The question “why not the Novus Ordo in Latin” is the wrong question.

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When Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes in 2021, he departed from the norm in a way that arguably led to later problems. Francis bypassed the usual norms of gradually implementing documents (with requisite study periods about potential impact), instead demanding the decree take effect immediately. He and his court decided that speed was of the essence, and that it would be presented to the world as a fait accompli. In this sense, it was kind of an ecclesiastical Schlieffen Plan. Yet like its historical counterpart, its failure has led Rome to micromanage an inevitable defeat, the latest being Pope Leo now allegedly adopting a policy of generosity towards the TLM, while still keeping Traditionis custodes (TC) on the books.

For the uninitiated, the Schlieffen Plan was a German strategy for WW1, whereby Germany would launch a lightning invasion of France by moving swiftly through the Low Countries (The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg), rather than engaging the French along the French/German border. In practice, the plan was a failure. Getting through Belgium proved to be far more difficult than anticipated, and the French used the inherent advantages of defense to deny the Germans a decisive battle, and allowed the Allies to launch a counterattack that became the Battle of the Marne. It was here the Schlieffen Plan was exposed as a failure. Germany had arguably lost WW1 a month into the fighting, and they spent the next four years trying to grind the Allies into a surrender that never came.

While obviously less bloody, I see a lesson to be learned with regards to Traditionis custodes. Like the Schlieffen Plan, Francis intended to deliver a quick knockout blow. Everyone would just implement the decree, and the Latin Mass would be gone. Like the Schlieffen Plan, it very quickly descended into a slog and stalemate. Like the Schlieffen Plan, its inevitable failure was certain the second it did not immediately succeed. Like the Schlieffen Plan, its failure (and the extent to which it was even a plan) will fascinate Church historians the way the former does military historians.

While I for one welcome any attempt to be more permissive towards the TLM, I do think one needs to point out that you can either have the TLM, or you can have Traditionis custodes. In the long term, you cannot have both. The text of Traditionis itself is quite small, with the meat of the decree being around 600 words. What animated the decree was the 2300-word explanatory letter in which Francis made clear that the end goal of Traditionis custodes was the abolition of the TLM, and the success of the TLM not only meant the failure of Traditionis, but of the Second Vatican Council itself. What Leo is attempting to do is to separate Traditionis custodes (which is authoritative) from that explanatory letter (which is far less so, and was subject to revision the second Francis stopped breathing.) If The Pillar is correct, Leo’s thinking is that “as there are many different rites in the Church, there’s no reason to exclude the TLM.” You can arrive at this conclusion and still be harmonious with the actual legislative text of TC. You cannot arrive at this conclusion and still be harmonious with that explanatory letter and subsequent legislation where Francis (frustrated bishops were not implementing the decree) abolished their role envisioned by Vatican II as the guardians of the liturgy within their diocese.

While creative, I think it is still likely to fail. The current system has bishops asking for an exemption from the 2023 rescript every two years, while also working towards an inevitable “return” of everyone to the Novus Ordo. Allegedly Leo is having the head of the DDW “be more generous” in the granting of that approval. There is anecdotal evidence that this is indeed what has been happening. Whereas approvals had been nearly nonexistent in the beginning of 2025 (around the two year anniversary of the rescript), the DDW granted several approvals after Leo became pope that were reported publicly. (Possibly even more that weren’t.) Since Leo has become Pope, the exile of both Cardinals Burke and Sarah has ended, with the two now welcomed back into polite Vatican company. Leo even permitted Burke to celebrate a TLM in St. Peter’s Basilica. Once verboten, you are beginning to see the return of the TLM on an as-needed basis within the Vatican.

While this may turn down the temperature in the short term, it is unlikely that Bishops will want to ask for a second permission, especially if the first is so readily granted. What is the point of asking if it is going to be granted unless circumstances require otherwise? At that point, the Rescript is likely dead, and Rome just lets Bishops do as they wish. At this point, you are likely to see many Bishops who had no inclination to enforce the decree return to allowing, on a limited basis, the TLM within their dioceses.

Unfortunately for Traditionis, this doesn’t help in the long term. In dioceses like Detroit and Charlotte, the faithful are denied a Latin Mass whose continued existence is now all but assured, and often on the flimsiest of justifications. Defenders of the decree (and those in authority) will have to answer the question why something which is good and holy for one group of Catholics is now a dangerous and forbidden thing for others, and the dividing line is an imaginary line on a map. As the continued existence of the TLM becomes a reality, only the terminally online bloggers and clout chasing ideologues will advocate for its continued marginalization, akin to Japanese soldiers on remote islands still fighting WW2 in the 1960s. (Admit it, you laugh at the idea of a future pope coming to America to tell Mike Lewis it’s okay to stop fighting.)

The end game is likely to be where Rome allows priests to say the TLM with few restrictions. The local Bishop will be allowed to restrict the TLM if he can show cause. That this is essentially what Traditionis tried to overturn will be something that everyone acknowledges but nobody can say publicly. So the farce will continue. We should be happy that Leo is adopting an attitude of generosity. We should also point out that the best generosity would be to just abandon a plan that was always questionable in theory and a disaster in reality. Then, like the Schlieffen Plan, Traditionis custodes can become the subject of academic debate, a relic of an age that no longer exists.

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When we talk about the various disputes today in the Catholic Church, it is mostly through a discussion of ideas or personalities. Catholicism is or isn’t what Pope Francis or Vatican II or Benedict XVI said. It is or isn’t identified with this or that fad, and this either infuriates or inspires you. This is important, but Catholicism is more than this. In addition to the big celebrities or big texts, there is a different Catholicism: what I would call the Catholic vibe.

Vibes are often attributed to a gut feeling, and since your gut is often spectacularly wrong, it is distrusted, and we put our faith in something else. Or, as a coworker tells me “In God we trust, but all others bring data.” I am reminded of this in light of the latest finding by Stephen White and his colleagues, released by The Catholic Project, on the changing perception of the Catholic priesthood among her priests. White is one of Catholicism’s more fascinating writers, using data to understand the vibes.

What he finds is a rather remarkable transformation among the American priesthood. This matches with other studies throughout Europe, in which the younger the priest, the more directionally conservative he is. While conservative can be lost in various political disputes, I think a good understanding of directionally conservative is an idea of a Church that promotes a healthy distance from the ideas and events that guide the age. This is opposed by the more progressive impulse which views the current age as the most important. For the last 60 years, that has been Vatican II, and for the last decade, that has been Pope Francis.

What is the evidence of this directional conservatism? I think one example is the current views on the importance of Synodality. Synodality has been a defining initiative of the last decade under Pope Francis, and yet just as many say it was a “waste of time” (37) vs those who do not (39). Yet this number changes the younger the priest is. While 3 in 4 priests ordained before 1980 (the first truly “Vatican II” generation) view synodality as an important priority, that number plummets to below 1 in 3 for those ordained after 2000. Yet they do not seem to be drifting too far into the nationalist/populist spirit sweeping the West. Most see themselves as political moderates, placing a priority on refugee/immigrant assistance and poverty reduction. So we aren’t seeing MAGA priests, so much as seeing priests who are more skeptical of the pet priorities of the last 60 years, where the Church hierarchy was known more for their politics (even during the JPII era) than their religion.

This is borne out by two of the more fascinating trends: as the priests become less involved in hot button political issues of the day or ecclesiastical trends, they are creating their own trend: that trend towards reinforcing the basics of Catholicism, primarily surrounding her worship. Whereas only 57% of priests before 1980 viewed Eucharistic adoration a priority, nearly 9 in 10 of priests ordained after 2000 do. In news that will surprise nobody remotely interested in the topic, 11% of priests before 1980 view access to the TLM important. For priests after 2000? 40%.

Although beyond their scope, the trend probably grows more pronounced the further you move from 2000. I think it is likely that among those priests ordained since 2020, probably one in five (or fewer!) view synodality important, and it is almost certain a majority of priests ordained after 2020 view access to the TLM as a priority. This has profound ramifications for how the Church operates over the next 10-20 years.

First and foremost, anyone who expects a profound transformation of these trends is likely deluding themselves. Priests are far more likely to grow even more directionally conservative than directionally progressive. This presents a real challenge for somebody like Pope Leo, who is clearly as worried as Francis was about this directional shift (just today he complained about those “resisting” synodality), yet has far more goodwill among younger priests than Francis did. There will be a temptation to think that the issue was mainly Francis, and with him dead, a crafty pope can guide the Church back into a direction that finally, after 70 years, implements Vatican II authentically.

I think this is a serious misreading of the room. Most younger priests (and laity) view Vatican II as mostly implemented, a past event. As Archbishop Varden noted, today’s faithful (priests included) are grateful for the fruits of the Council, but they don’t view it their mission to carry out Vatican II. They are not pro or anti Vatican II so much as past Vatican II. Likewise with the TLM, Leo may wonder what all the fuss is about, since, after all, you can have the Novus Ordo in Latin. The reality is the younger the priest and the younger the Catholic, they look at it completely differently. For them, forbidding the TLM is akin to forbidding your heritage. Even if you live in today’s world, most aren’t comfortable with saying their heritage of the past is bad. Most who view access to the TLM a priority celebrate the Novus Ordo daily; they share the same sentiment Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI) had: to go to war against the TLM is for the Church to go to war against herself. Given that understanding, one can see why it’s likely more than half of the youngest priests favor greater access to the TLM.

That this shift is real does not always translate into real change. Pope Francis issued Traditionis custodes precisely because he saw this change in young priests, and was terrified by it. Bishops in some US dioceses have accelerated a persecution of those who favor conservative liturgical practices (well beyond just access to the TLM) not because they are trying to shape a new generation, but because they are trying to stop the new generation from shaping everyone else. What has changed is the cost of going against the grain continues to rise. Pope Leo himself learned this when he gave an unscripted interview inartfully, and now goes out of his way to avoid talking to the press. Bishops in Charlotte and Detroit govern apart from their clergy, most who do not celebrate the TLM, yet most who hold them in contempt. If the years from 1970-2020 were how the Church related to the Second Vatican Council, the next 50 years will be in how the Church relates to the vibe shift currently underway.

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Look, it was probably inevitable.

Since ascending to the throne as Leo XIV, Robert Prevost has kept a notably low profile as Pope, and that low profile won universal adulation. After the various public interventions of the Francis pontificate, Catholics appeared to welcome a Pope who stayed out of the spotlight. This was never sustainable, and we were reminded of that last week when he offered his opinion on whether or not Richard Durbin should be celebrated by the Archdiocese of Chicago despite his record on abortion.

I am not going to offer much of any commentary on Leo’s words, because I think they are a Rorschach test of how one views the office of the papacy overall. The most I will say is that I think Leo found a fork in the road, and he took it. He did not say Durbin should have been offered the award from the Diocese of Chicago, but he did say that we should engage these individuals. He mostly speculated rather than making a bold statement one way or the other, since, by his own admission, he was not familiar with the situation on the ground. He didn’t say Durbin’s position could be reconciled with Catholicism, but mostly in the sense he wondered if any politician could be expected to be aligned with the Gospel in America. I would not read too much into Leo’s views beyond what you were already reading into him.

What I would like to focus on is the response, or the lack thereof. If you think the Pope was trying to defend Durbin and Cupich, Cupich announced Durbin had “withdrawn” his name from consideration. (Almost certainly Cardinal Cupich suggested this to him.) Cupich himself issued a rather humiliating statement defending himself in light of the withdrawal. If the pope was riding to the rescue, he clearly didn’t help.

While I don’t think it’s clear he was trying to ride to the rescue, it also didn’t seem to matter to US Bishops what he was thinking. The USCCB was reportedly preparing a document on the matter, and it was almost certainly going to be opposed to the man who, just 9 months ago, was the most powerful Cardinal in America. It appears that the USCCB informed Rome of their intentions, but did not seem interested in seeking guidance on the matter. The USCCB will be meeting shortly as part of their schedule, and it is likely there will be no change: abortion will remain the pre-eminent (though not sole) issue in their eyes. I am reminded of the McCarrick affair, where US Bishops routinely shelved stronger statements against a pedophile because there was fear it was done without Rome’s instruction. Those days are gone.

I think this will be a story that is underreported but increasingly true as we go through Leo’s pontificate. Rightly or wrongly, his words will matter less, at least for the foreseeable future. The Church struggled with credibility before the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio, who as Francis made a bet that increased favor from mainstream outlets would help restore the respectability of the Church right as those same institutions went into a death spiral of credibility with their wider public. In announcing Durbin’s “withdrawal” of consideration, Cardinal Cupich mused whether it would be an appropriate instance of synodality for the laity and bishops to dialogue with each other on these approaches. What His Eminence does not seem to realize is that this has been happening for quite some time. It is only now has His Eminence decided he should grace us with his presence. Even more, the question is mostly resolved: those in positions of power have made up their mind, and are moving in a direction opposite of the good Cardinal and potentially Rome. I would invite the reader to save these words, as they will become important later.

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As Leo enters the fall, observers expect his papacy to truly begin. He will need to appoint new heads in Curial dicasteries, most important being the Dicastery of Bishops he once led. He will have to make major decisions. For Leo, this was a summer of retreat at Castel Gandfalo. Now, so the narrative goes, the work begins.

There is much talk about if Leo will be in continuity with Francis. This is something interesting in and of itself, because people now need evidence for what was once always a given: popes govern broadly in continuity with their predecessors. During this time people in various factions look at this or that piece of news, and predict with great confidence what this means. For example, the online hack Richard Raho has said that the Pope having a private audience with James Martin means that Leo will continue everything Francis did regarding how to approach homosexuality. His biographer Elise Allen has instead issued caution, that on homosexuality we may see a Pope more willing to draw lines on this issue. We will have to see what happens when decisions reach his desk. Instead, I’d like to look at two recent decisions the Pope made that may offer us some potentially significant insight into his style

The first regards the ending of the exile of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. During the pontificate of Francis, the Pope gradually ostracized and exiled the Cardinal from polite company. Francis removed Burke from several of his curial dicasteries. He made remarks that many interpreted as insensitive, talking about a Cardinal who was in intensive care during COVID as a cautionary tale to those who weren’t vaccinated, as everyone understood that poor fellow was Burke. In a change of law that only applied to Cardinal Burke, the Pope changed his living accomodations and the price he would pay for them. (Everyone else had their living accomodations subsidized.) Francis made it clear he despised the man, and went out of his way to punish him.

With the ascension of Leo to the Throne of Peter, that seems to have changed. They famously were spotted talking during the conclave. He quickly granted a private audience to the man, and we now see what that audience was (at least partially) about. The Pope has reversed his predecessor in now allowing the TLM to be celebrated at St. Peter’s as part of a pilgrimage, something Francis had not allowed the past few years. Not only has Leo allowed it, the celebrant for this Mass will be Cardinal Burke.

Another piece of news regards the ending of what could be called the “liturgical war” in India. This was something that has been covered extensively here. Indeed, my first post on Substack was about what traditionalists could learn from it. While its details are far too much to recount, a brief summation could be that Pope Francis had a lot of difficulty getting his way on how local Catholics in India celebrate their liturgy. He sent a personal emissary. He delivered several heartfelt pleas for compliance. He threatened excommunication and other punitive measures. He helped rearrange the leadership of the Syro-Malabar Church and demanded they step up their attempts to force compliance. The response of the local Church was one of defiance. Upon the death of Francis, an agreement seemed even further away than when Rome had gotten involved in 2023.

With the ascension of Leo to the throne of Peter, something changed. The Vatican quickly affirmed a deal Francis had rejected. Its terms were a compromise that was strikingly similar to compromises proposed when the Pope first started demanding action: priests would offer both, with the liturgy the Synod called for being given precedence going forward. (Indeed, I mentioned this compromise as the likely result back in 2023.) With that, a seemingly intractable dispute was ended.

What do these pieces of information tell us? I think they tell us that Pope Leo has indeed broken from his predecessor in one instance: he is committed to governing in the world that exists, not the fantasy world of one’s dreams. The Pope’s treatment of Cardinal Burke was not just a disgrace, it was a mistake. Burke’s name and influence increased as a result of this persecution, and even many defenders of the Pope on other things viewed his actions as petty and counterproductive. I do not think this move necessarily signals anything regarding Leo on Traditionis custodes. (Though I am persuaded by the argument of Massimo Faggioli, in that it will be a lot tougher long term to argue against dioceses allowing the TLM to continue when it is celebrated within the Vatican’s most important church.) I think Leo recognized that the attempt to isolate and blackball Burke was a disaster, and that it was a lot easier to just do something different.

Likewise, the dispute in India had been an abject disaster for Francis. He and his emissary were burned in effigy. Francis could not find local individuals to enforce his mandates. The synod had made clear that while they would give it the good old college try out of obedience, their preference was a negotiated settlement. As he was attempting to project strength against the German Church, he radiated weakness in this dispute. Leo almost certainly agrees with Francis that the way forward is what was originally proposed: accepting the liturgical change the Synod had decreed. That goal was simply understood as unobtainable, so Leo simply accepted defeat.

Make no mistake: both of these were defeats for what Francis was trying to accomplish, and the papacy will suffer a loss of some prestige on both retreats. Yet these were goals that either served nobody or could not be obtained given the world we live in. On matters of doctrine, you can make that stand, as truth is occasionally unpopular. On matters of principle or discipline? A leader regularly has to make hard decisions on when to be flexible with principles, and when to relax discipline, lest you alienate those you govern.

I think this will be one area where Leo is markedly different: he will have that flexibility. Francis’ pontificate was uncompromisingly rigid. To Francis, his principles and his discipline were his doctrine. One could look at his pontificate as a series of defeats because he refused to separate the two:

• His failure at both Synods on the Family to get the Church to embrace a more liberal attitude regarding divorce and communion.

• The collapse of the Amazon Synod

• Everything regarding the affair of the Chilean Bishops in 2018 and sex abuse in general

• His failure to achieve anything beyond a token implementation of Traditionis custodes from bishops, leading to him revoking the bishops ancient right to regulate liturgical affairs in his diocese.

• The near universal backlash towards Fiducia supplicans, leading to the Church in Africa demanding and forcing the Pope’s concession on the issue.

I do not know the degree to which Leo will continue some of Francis’ more controversial approaches. I do think that, unlike Francis, he will accept that a loss of a battle is not the loss of a war, and that retreating in good order is sometimes necessary.

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