Pope Francis restricts use of the old Missal and the Tridentine Mass

Pope Francis has restored restrictions on the pre-reform Latin Mass, commonly known as the Tridentine. It is scarcely noticeable, but a drama of almost schismatic proportions is now unfolding in the Catholic world.

What does this mean? No, the Pope has not yet forbidden priests to say Mass in Latin, though talk of it is already in the air. But he has already restricted the use of the old Missal.

The Missal is the principal liturgical book of Catholicism: a collection of the texts, canons, prayers, calendar and rubrics required for the service. It arose in the Middle Ages, was confirmed as a single, unalterable corpus after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and was promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570. In Orthodoxy the nearest analogue of the Missal is the Sluzhebnik (Priest's Service Book).

Until 1970 this book too existed in a more or less uniform state, with minor amendments: the addition of saints and feast days, changes to the wording of prayers and the hours of worship. But after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) it was substantially revised. Remember this: whenever a renewal of the rite is spoken of in the Church, the fundamental thesis of the unity of the Latin rite and of the Catholic Church at once rises up as an obstacle to it.

The chief difference between the new Missal and the old is that Catholics the world over could now celebrate Mass in their own native language. Despite the publication of the new Book (recall how in The Devil Wears Prada Miranda Priestly called by that name the hand-assembled issue of the magazine from which the entire print run was made; Missals around the world are likewise printed and translated from the copy issued by the Pope), many remote or stubborn dioceses went on serving by the old Missal. In 1988 John Paul II set restrictions on the use of the old Missal: the Tridentine Mass was to be brought to an end. In 2007 the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI issued the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, which relaxed these restrictions and permitted the old Missal to be used freely, designating it the "extraordinary form". Like his other predecessors over the past fifty years, Benedict looked back and toyed with the idea of a return to a four-hundred-year-old tradition.

In the days of John Paul II a faction of traditionalists even appeared within the Church, headed by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which was quite openly called schismatic, since it rejected the lawful reforms of a duly convened Ecumenical Council. The more conservative Ratzinger found a way to bring these priests out of open opposition, proposing that due honour be paid to their age-long loyalty to the old Missal and recognising the dissenters from Vatican II not as a schismatic faction but as a pseudo-schismatic one.

Since then a certain traditionalist revival can be observed in the Church, along with a growing number of parishes that serve by the old Missal. Generally speaking, if you know the peremptory style of rule of Francis, who grew up and was formed under the politics of Peronism, he intends to put an end to this "old-fashionedness". The Kazakhstani bishop Athanasius Schneider, known for his conservative views, believes that the traditional Mass will in the end prevail, as the truer one.

Is it true that the old rite has so many adherents? For a Catholic population of a billion, most of it in poor Latin America, Africa and Asia, it is naturally few, but for a fashionable movement within the establishment and an emerging trend it is enough. If we speak of the prosperous Catholic communities of the USA, France, Britain and Italy, there thousands of parishes have remained faithful to the Tridentine Mass. The trouble is not that the epithet "perfidious" was removed from the prayer for the Jews, which is actually a good thing; the trouble is the loss of the Tridentine Mass with its solemnity, pomp, vestments, incense and pealing bells. The modern world is too uniform, ugly and soulless to give up so easily such beautiful and ancient traditions. I urge you not to pass by the banners of the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) movement: if they are few, it does not mean they are unimportant.