Summorum Pontificum Archives

Summorum Pontificum

It would have been better if Summorum Pontificum had been left alone

March 28, 2023

On February 21, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, headed by prefect Cardinal Arthur Roche, issued a rescript, empowering Cardinal Roche with absolute and arbitrary power to grant or deny exceptions to Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio letter, Traditionis Custodes, which severely restricts celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).

Curbs on Traditional Latin Mass ‘broke Pope Benedict’s heart’

January 04, 2023

New curbs on the Traditional Latin Mass “broke Pope Benedict’s heart”, according to his private secretary. Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the closest confidant of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, revealed that the de facto reversal of his policies to liberate the Old Mass came as a heavy blow to the former pontiff, who died on Saturday at

Squabbling over the Old Rite

August 29, 2021

The internal debate about the Latin Mass has little effect on the Church’s outreach and is unlikely to reverse the decline of Catholicism in the West

Threats to the Extraordinary Form

August 01, 2021

Pope Benedict lived up to his title of pontifex, or bridge-builder, when he allowed the wider use of the Tridentine rite – more properly the Extraordinary Form of the Mass – in the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum of 2007. There has been 13 years for this concession to advance its stated aim: to foster reconciliation

Traditionis Custodes: When “professional Catholic” squabbling spills over

July 27, 2021

For millions of Catholics around the world who find comfort in the traditional Latin Mass, the fights of the rectory and professional Catholic class have once again struck them at home.

Francis could do what he did, but that’s not the crucial thing

July 21, 2021

Pope Francis has placed very significant restrictions on the saying of the old Mass, abrogating the much more permissive or generous policy of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. It is the pope’s call to make. I hope people will accept it or work within proper channels to modify the restrictions. Pope Francis himself could reverse

Summorum Pontificum a restoration after a gross impoverishment

July 18, 2021

Though it has just been rejected by his successor, Benedict XVI’s motu propio Summorum Pontificum made many people happy when he issued it in 2007. Liturgical scholar Alcuin Reid celebrated the statement as a needed application of the real intentions of the Second Vatican Council. He had reason to say this. A monk of the

Twelve quick thoughts on Pope Francis dropping his long-expected bomb on the traditional latin Mass

July 16, 2021

1) In his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis says St. John Paul II’s indults were only meant to heal the breach with Archbishop Lefebvre, not to have the traditional latin Mass as a continuing reality in the Church (my paraphrase). He quotes Pope Benedict XVI on “allowing” the TLM, which seems to buttress the point