This is Dr Joseph Shaw's 'Briefing' to supporters of the Latin Mass Society. You can join the email list for these occasional briefings here.
At the recent Consistory of Cardinals in Rome, Arthur, Cardinal Roche, distributed a short text on the liturgy to those assembled, which is critical of the Traditional Mass. Readers can see my analysis of the arguments employed there on the FIUV website here [reposted to Rorate Caeli below]. In this Bulletin I want to take a step back to consider its wider implications.
As I note in my analysis, this text does not respond to the criticisms that have been made of the official justification of Traditionis custodes, but simply reiterates this justification, at greater length. The argument is that liturgical pluralism undermines the unity of the Church. Critics have pointed out that the Church has always fostered a plurality of Rites and Usages, with Vatican II itself supporting this policy. Cardinal Roche’s text does nothing to address this. Is there a good kind of pluralism to be distinguished from a bad kind? Is there a difference between a pluralism of Rites (as in Eastern and Western) and pluralism within the Western Rite? Is there a difference between the pluralism represented by the Ordinariate or the (reformed) Ambrosian Rite of Milan, and the pluralism of Ordinary and Extraordinary Form, that we need to understand? There might be arguments along these lines, but no the defender of Traditionis custodes has made a serious attempt to set them out. They have just repeated the original claim, that pluralism is a problem, and in this text Cardinal Roche does so all over again.
What are we to make of this?
If you control the ‘information space’ sufficiently tightly, it can be rational to refuse to answer criticisms, because by answering you give publicity to criticisms which they would not otherwise have had. Now it is true that the Dicastery for Divine Worship doesn’t control social media, or books and articles, but a lot of people in important roles in the Church will never hear, or if they hear will not take seriously, voices dissenting from the official view.
Another explanation, which is not incompatible with the above, is of course that they simply have no arguments. I doubt that they believe this themselves, however. Perhaps what they would say is that the criticisms are obviously nonsense, but rebutting them would require too long a detour through basic principles to be worth doing. This comes back to the idea that the critics should not be dignified with a response.
What this amounts to is a resort to institutional power, rather than reasoned argument. There is an ecclesial establishment which is quite hostile to the Traditional Mass, and those members who are more open-minded are generally not inclined to take issue with the official position, while it remains official. There need therefore be no dialogue, no meeting of minds.
How different things were in the past. At the eve of the Council, and for a long time after, the ‘progressive’ position seemed to have the support of all the scholars and all the ‘forward thinking’ liturgists. They seemed to have all the energy and all the ideas. The opposition appeared to be limited to the most antiquated cardinals and old women with their rosaries. This was a somewhat misleading impression, in fact, but it did look that way.
Today, however, all the energy, all the new ideas, the young scholars, and even a great many of the priests engaged in exciting pastoral initiatives, are trying to recover Tradition, in one way or another. (The UK's liberal Tablet last week featured Abbot Hugh Allen of the Norbertines as someone leading such an initiative in south London; he is a well-known supporter of the TLM.) The establishment can ignore us, but increasingly progressive parishes are being kept afloat, if at all, by older women. Only these ones tend not to pray the rosary.
Tradition was overthrown in the 1960s because despite conservatives holding key positions – think of John XXIII on Latin, Archbishop Lefebvre organising preparatory schemas for Vatican II, or Cardinal Ottaviani running the Holy Office – they were perceived as having lost the argument, and the new generation with new ideas was carrying all before them.
Today the roles are reversed. We know what the outcome is going to be. We just don’t know how long it is going to take to get there.
