In recent reports about Pope Francis's newly released autobiography, two aspects particularly caught my attention. First, the book recounts episodes from Fr. Jorge Bergoglio SJ's life in which he sought help from a psychiatrist. Second, it includes his now-traditional (ironic, isn't it?) critique of what a German website calls the “arch-conservative church representatives who continue to cling to the so-called Tridentine Mass.”
I reconstruct the Pope’s discourse based on the English version of the book (Pope Francis, Hope: The Autobiography, trans. R. Dixon, Kindle Edition). The Pope writes that those of us “clinging to the so-called Tridentine Mass” reduce the liturgy to ideology, that we are rigid—a rigidity often marked by “elegant and costly tailoring, lace, fancy trimmings, rochets.”
According to him, our attachment to tradition is not a “taste for tradition” or a “return to the sacred,” but “clerical ostentation” (or, as he calls it, “an ecclesiastic version of individualism”) and “sectarian worldliness.” He goes even further, claiming that this fondness for elaborate clothing, in his view, hides “serious imbalances, emotional deviation, behavioral difficulties, a personal problem that can be exploited.” He argues that traditionalist-leaning seminary candidates “hide their own personalities in closed and sectarian environments” and cause problems in seminaries (Francis mentions four such cases in “recent years”). Beyond this, he labels us as hypocritical, backward-looking, and utopian in our view of the past. And all of this, he declares, is “curious” and “interesting from a sociological point of view.”
In my opinion, there is a subtle yet identifiable connection between the therapy Fr. Bergoglio underwent and his attitude toward the traditionalist wing of the Church. And no, I’m not suggesting that Pope Francis suffers from a psychological disorder that triggers an anti-tradition paranoia. The problem lies not in the Holy Father’s mental state but rather in the fact that—perhaps influenced by his education and the success of his therapy (a mere conjecture, of course)—he believes in the explanatory power of psychology and, worse yet, permits himself to engage in pseudo-psychological analysis of an entire, vast, and internally diverse segment of the Church that he appears to utterly misunderstand.
What’s more, he does this precisely because he doesn’t understand us—because the behaviors and attitudes he observes do not fit into his cognitive framework. This pseudo-psychology serves as a hermeneutic tool, allowing him—if I may borrow from Polish literature—to “understand” Artur the same way Stomil does. Except there is only one Stomil, while there are thousands of Arturs, and of them, only a handful—likely very few—are actual Arturs.[*See note] Thus, the Pope Stomil’s “understanding” resembles reality as much as a proverbial electric chair resembles a regular chair.
Earlier, I mentioned that the Pope speaks about “us” in such pseudo-psychological terms. In truth, when I read Francis’s critique of traditionalists in his autobiography, I’m convinced that he’s not describing “us.” Rather, he is referring to a few individuals he may have encountered or heard about. Or perhaps—just as he attacked Sicilian clergy for wearing “grandmother’s lace”—he refers to people he’s seen in photographs. Or maybe, simply, he’s imagining.
Moreover, I can’t shake the feeling that anyone he has encountered in real life was probably a cleric (the emphasis on vestments only reinforces this), who, contrary to his oddly clerical perception, isn’t necessarily the central figure behind the movement for traditional liturgy. These encounters, associations, or fantasies—casually and with typical dogmatism and self-assuredness—are then generalized to include all those “clinging to the Tridentine Mass.”
Let me clarify: I’m not suggesting that the phenomena Francis describes are completely absent among “us” (although I would find it difficult to name anyone among my acquaintances who fully aligns with his sweeping “diagnoses”). The problem is that constructing such “psychoanalytical” explanations for the attitudes, desires, opinions, and actions of entire groups of Catholics—spanning countries, classes, cultures, and genders—is a monumental error and a flagrant reductionism.
It would be one thing if Francis kept these “diagnoses” private, for his own Stomil-like “understanding.” Indeed, before issuing Traditionis Custodes (TC), he mostly confined himself to such musings. His homilies at Casa Santa Marta, often interspersed with tirades against rigorists; his 2014 conversation with Czech bishops during their ad limina apostolorum visit; and his 2016 interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ, all suggested that this is how he viewed us. After TC, however, these “diagnoses” became the foundation for limiting access to the traditional liturgy, even declaring his intent to eradicate both it and those attached to it.
I can’t claim to know the actual role Pope Francis’s pseudo-psychological beliefs played in his decision to issue TC. But he himself seems to view them as the foundation—or at least the justification—for it.
In this sense, one could say that we—traditionalists—have experienced an extraordinary stroke of bad luck. It so happens that the person whose word constitutes law within the Church deems it entirely appropriate, even necessary, to play the role of researcher—or, at the very least, diagnostician—of our supposed psychological disorders and hidden motivations. He makes broad and erroneous generalizations based on his own attempts to understand people he fundamentally fails to comprehend. From this misreading, he concludes that we pose a threat. Consequently, in order to neutralize this “threat,” he restricts our (and in fact, all Catholics’) access to the traditional liturgy and aims to starve the entire intra-Church movement of its supporters into oblivion (“intra-Church,” since “independent” traditionalists are unaffected).
As an academic, I wonder: if Francis were to write an article based on his psychological speculations and submit it to a reputable social psychology journal, what reviews would it receive? How would his methodology, sample size, theoretical relevance, and conclusions be assessed?
But what am I saying? Unfortunately for us, he needn’t subject his ideas to any reviews or tests. Instead, he has the entire Church at his disposal, in which to implement them at will.
Tomasz Dekert, Ph.D.
[* The author refers here to the play Tango by Sławomir Mrożek. One of its central themes is the relationship between a man named Stomil and his son, Artur. This relationship is fraught with conflict and tension, stemming from their differing values and worldviews. Stomil, embodying artistic avant-garde and moral freedom, champions chaos and rejects tradition, which he views as a hallmark of modernity. Artur, on the other hand, is determined, even through force and threats of violence, to restore order, rules, and hierarchy, perceiving the lack of principles as both destructive and void.]
