During his recent trip to Budapest, Hungary, Pope Francis shared his rationale behind the significant changes he made to the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. He asserted that the permissions granted by his predecessors had been exploited ideologically, causing a move towards what he termed “backwardness” – a reaction against modernity.
Francis spoke to a group of Jesuits, expressing his concern about a “nostalgic disease” which he believed was impacting the Church. To curtail this, he made it mandatory for priests ordained post-July 2021 to secure approval from their bishop and the Vatican to perform Mass using the pre-Vatican II, 1962 liturgical books, also known as the Latin Mass.
These alterations were made official in the 2021 decree, Traditionis Custodes. Pope Francis expressed his belief that previous pastoral policies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being misused to regress rather than progress.
Francis’ changes to the Latin Mass have greatly curtailed the use of the 1962 Roman Missal, a move that contrasts sharply with the stance of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict had recognized the rights of all priests to perform Mass using the 1962 Missal.
Responding to a question about aligning the Church with modernity, as deliberated during the Second Vatican Council, Francis stated that the Council’s implementation was still ongoing, despite considerable resistance.
He concluded by emphasizing the importance of progress, drawing parallels with the growth of a tree and citing St. Vincent of Lérins, who wrote about the progressive nature of Christian dogma.
His words were published by the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica yesterday:
“I wouldn’t know how to answer that theoretically, but I certainly know that the Council is still being applied. It takes a century for a Council to be assimilated, they say. And I know the resistance to its decrees is terrible. There is incredible support for restorationism, what I call “indietrismo” (backwardness), as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:39) says: “But we do not belong to those who shrink back.” The flow of history and grace goes from the roots upward like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. But without this flow you remain a mummy. Going backwards does not preserve life, ever. You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age. But this is a change from the bottom up. The danger today is indietrismo, the reaction against the modern. It is a nostalgic disease. This is why I decided that now the permission to celebrate according to the Roman Missal of 1962 is mandatory for all newly consecrated priests. After all the necessary consultations, I decided this because I saw that the good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward. It was necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors.”
