The Traditional Latin Mass Is Beautiful (and Reformable)
Why all faithful Catholics must respect the Church’s judgment that liturgical reform was pastorally warranted
Vatican II is a valid ecumenical council of the Catholic Church.
This is not a matter of opinion. Its validity is affirmed by the Pope, the episcopate in union with him, and every subsequent pontificate. To deny this is to depart from Catholic ecclesiology.Catholics are bound to give religious submission of intellect and will to the authentic Magisterium when it teaches on matters of faith and morals, including through valid ecumenical councils.
Disciplinary and pastoral judgments of the Magisterium, while not demanding the same interior assent as dogmatic and doctrinal teachings, nevertheless require reverent respect and obedient compliance insofar as they are legitimately promulgated.Vatican II authoritatively judged that a reform of the Roman liturgy was pastorally warranted.
The Council did not permit reform as an optional experiment; it mandated it. The bishops judged, overwhelmingly, the received form of the Roman Rite was judged to admit of and benefit from reform for the good of the Church. This judgment belongs to the Church’s authentic magisterial authority, exercised in a pastoral and disciplinary mode.Therefore, Catholics are bound to respect the Church’s authority to judge that some reform of the preconciliar Roman liturgy was pastorally warranted.
One may debate how the liturgical reform was carried out, critique particular prudential decisions, or advocate a “reform of the reform.” However, one may not licitly deny the authority of the Church to judge that a reform of the liturgy was pastorally opportune and to mandate such reform through an ecumenical council.
Even if the post-conciliar implementation exceeded what was envisioned by the conciliar texts, one cannot reject the council’s authoritative determination, expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium, that some reform of the Roman liturgy was warranted and legitimately undertaken.To claim that the 1962 Missal was so complete or sufficient as to admit of no legitimate reform in principle is incompatible with the authoritative judgment of an ecumenical council.
This is not merely a neutral historical preference but an ecclesiological claim, insofar as it implicitly rejects the competence and authority of the bishops of the world, acting in union with the Pope, to judge that some reform of the Roman liturgy was pastorally warranted.Appeals to Tradition do not justify this rejection.
Appeals to Tradition cannot justify rejecting the authoritative judgment of an ecumenical council. In Catholic theology, Tradition is not a static artifact of the past, but the living transmission of the faith entrusted to the apostles and handed on through their successors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.The vote of the Council underscores the weight of this judgment.
At Vatican II, 2,147 bishops voted in favor of liturgical reform, with only 4 opposed. This near-unanimity is a powerful sign of ecclesial consensus and moral certainty regarding the legitimacy of reform, even if not a guarantee of prudential perfection.Invoking the Holy Spirit cuts against the claim of liturgical perfection.
If Catholics believe, as they must, that the Holy Spirit preserves ecumenical councils from error when they exercise their authentic magisterium, particularly in their authoritative judgments concerning faith, morals, and the Church’s competence to act, then to deny the legitimacy of the Council’s determination that reform was pastorally warranted is to deny the Church’s authority to make such judgments.
One may love the Traditional Latin Mass. One may prefer it. One may even argue that the postconciliar reform was flawed, excessive, or imprudent in its execution. But a Catholic may not claim that the Roman liturgy was beyond the need or legitimacy of any reform without rejecting the authority of an ecumenical council to judge that some reform was pastorally warranted.
OBJECTION: VII did not call for “reform".
Dom Alcuin Reed recently published a scathing response on Diane Montagne’s blog to Cardinal Arthur Roche’s briefing to the College of Cardinals on whether VII called to “reform” the Liturgy. He writes:
“So too, we must be clear that the Second Vatican Council called for a liturgical “instaurationem”—a renewal of the liturgy—in continuity with the aims of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century liturgical movement. “Instaurare” appears more than twenty times in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The words “reformare” or “reformatio” were not used by the Council Fathers. They did not anticipate or authorise a positivistic “reform,” but a renewal in organic continuity with the received tradition.”
RESPONSE: This objection ultimately rests on a semantic distinction that cannot bear the theological weight placed upon it.
The claim that Vatican II did not call for “reform” because it preferred the term instauratio rather than reformatio is ultimately a semantic maneuver that fails to engage the substance of the Council’s teaching.
It is true that Sacrosanctum Concilium frequently uses instaurare rather than reformare. But this distinction does not bear the argumentative weight traditionalists place upon it. The English term “reform” was explicitly approved by the Holy See as a legitimate translation of instaurare, and Vatican-approved vernacular editions consistently render the Council’s mandate in reformative language. The Church herself has therefore already settled this supposed linguistic dispute.
More importantly, the conceptual difference between reformare and instaurare does not rescue the objection. While reformare can connote fixing something gravely deficient, instaurare means to restore, renew, purify, and reorder, which necessarily presupposes that change is required for the sake of improvement relative to present conditions. One cannot meaningfully “renew” or “restore” a thing without judging that it stands in need of renewal.
That judgment, that the liturgy required change for the good of the Church, is precisely what Vatican II authoritatively made.
Moreover, the Council did not merely gesture vaguely toward renewal. It specified numerous substantial changes to the received Roman liturgy, including:
Simplification of rites for “noble simplicity” and the removal of “useless repetitions” (SC 34, 50).
Expanded use of the vernacular in the Mass and sacraments (SC 36, 54, 63).
Restoration of elements long absent from the Roman Rite, such as the Prayer of the Faithful (SC 53), the adult catechumenate (SC 64), and a vastly expanded lectionary with greater emphasis on Scripture (SC 35, 51).
Revision of sacramental rites (baptism, confirmation, penance, marriage, anointing) and of the Divine Office itself (SC 66–82; 88–93).
Authorization of new forms and adaptations where pastorally advantageous, including abbreviated rites and continuous rites (SC 68, 74).
A reorientation of the liturgy toward active participation by the laity, described as a primary goal of reform (SC 14, 30).
To deny that these constitute reform, in any intelligible sense of the word, is simply implausible.
Dom Alcuin Reid argues that Vatican II did not call for reform because “reform,” in contemporary usage, implies a “positivistic reordering of the liturgy according to external criteria imposed by authority.”
But this definition begs the question.
Standard English usage, such as Merriam-Webster, defines reform as “to put or change into an improved form or condition.” That definition fits Vatican II’s stated aims exactly. The Council judged that the liturgy could and should be improved, pastorally, catechetically, and participatively, and therefore mandated change.
Attempting to smuggle in a narrow, ideologically loaded definition of “reform” in order to deny this conclusion is simply the manifestation of an ideological bias.
The insistence that Vatican II did not judge the Tridentine Mass to be in need of improvement rests not on textual evidence, but on an a priori ideological commitment to the idea that the 1962 Missal was already optimal and therefore untouchable.
But this commitment is incompatible with the Council’s teaching.
The Council Fathers deliberately avoided language that suggested rupture, opting instead for a hermeneutic of continuity. That choice of language, however, does not negate the fact that they authorized changes far more extensive than the “glacial,” centuries-long micro-adjustments often proposed by contemporary traditionalists as the only legitimate form of liturgical development.
One may reasonably argue that the postconciliar implementation exceeded the bounds of continuity envisioned by the Council. That is a legitimate debate. What one may not argue is that the only valid way to alter the Roman liturgy would have been imperceptible, near-static modification over centuries, when the Council itself mandated changes that went well beyond that model.
OBJECTION: Sacrosanctum Concilium concerns discipline, not doctrine, and therefore intellectual disagreement is permitted.
Code of Canon Law canon 212 §3 says:
“According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church…”
Canon 212 presumes such disagreement is exercised within a posture of ecclesial communion, respect for authority, and continued obedience to law.
This means:
Faithful may disagree with disciplinary decisions
They may express that disagreement
Even publicly, if done properly
So disagreement itself is not illicit.
But what is NOT permitted is: refusal to obey a legitimate law while it is in force, public contempt for Church authority, encouraging others to disobey, treating disciplinary disagreement as doctrinal error, or claiming the Magisterium has lost authority because of discipline.
I rarely see traditionalists follow proper Canon law when it comes to disagreeing with the Magisterium on the reform of the liturgy. Instead, I see traditionalists foment public contempt for anything post-VII and treating VII as promoting manifest doctrinal error while stirring up animosity against the Holy See, which also violates Canon law.
Nevertheless, even if one has disagreements with the reform of the liturgy, one must agree that:
Reform as such was legitimate
The Church had authority to implement it
Where some contemporary traditionalist rhetoric goes awry is in claims such as:
“The Pope had no authority to restrict the TLM.”
“Obedience here is optional because the policy is wrong.”
“The 1962 Missal was perfect and needed no reform.”
“Rome has defected, so resistance is justified.”
“Encouraging clergy or laity to ignore or violate current law”
I like your writings, but I respectfully disagree with you on this.
While I share many of your concerns, I would highly recommend reading more of Ratzinger on this. A lot could be said, but I'll just say this:
Sacrosanctum Concilium presupposed the existing Roman liturgy as received and venerable tradition. It speaks of limited reform for pastoral reasons, but not as some kind of inherent correction or deficiency. So framing it as “Therefore, Catholics are bound to assent to the judgment that the preconciliar Roman liturgy was in need of reform” is not what the Council says nor how Ratzinger saw it. Vatican II did not judge the 1962 Missal as such to be “in need of reform” in the strong sense you seem to use here. To further emphasize th point - the Council mandated this reform within the clearly defined principles of organic development, continuity with tradition, and preservation of the substance of the rites and Ratzinger’s critiques were precisely that what followed often violated these very principles. He famously wrote that after the Council, the liturgy was no longer something that grew organically, but something that was manufactured. A mandate for reform cannot be equated with blanket approval of every later reform carried out in its name.
Tradition is indeed living, but neither is it plastic. It has an inner continuity and should not be dismantled and reconstructed at will. The old rite was never juridically abolished, and therefore it was always permitted. This became explicit in Summorum Pontificum. I know "trads" land in all sorts of camps, but I think Ratzinger/Benedict's writings and "reform of the reform" project as well as JPII (ecclesia dei) give us the most helpful guidance. There are numerous theological opinions, with loads of lay people asserting opinions as fact. I believe we ought to listen to these men who were Council Fathers to learn about the Council - men who God raised up to be the Popes of His Church.