Traditionalist Catholicism is a movement encompassing members of the Catholic Church which emphasizes beliefs, practices, customs, traditions, liturgical forms, devotions and presentations of teaching associated with the Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).[1] Of particular emphasis among traditionalist Catholics is the Tridentine Mass, a form of the Roman Rite largely replaced in general use by the post-Second Vatican Council Mass of Paul VI.
Traditionalist Catholics were disturbed by the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council, which some feel stripped the liturgy of its outward sacredness, eroding faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.[2] Many also see present teachings on ecumenism as blurring the distinction between Catholics and other Christians. Traditional Catholicism is conservative in its philosophy and worldview, promotes a modest style of dressing and teaches a complementarian view of gender roles as opposed to liberal feminism.[3]
History
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, conservative Catholics opposed to or uncomfortable with the social and liturgical changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council began to coalesce.[4] In 1973, the Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (ORCM) was founded by two priests, Francis E. Fenton and Robert McKenna, that set up chapels in many parts of North America for the preservation of the Tridentine Mass.[4] Those priests that participated in this were listed as being on a leave of absence by their bishops, who disapproved of their actions.[4]
The Istituto Mater Boni Consilii (IMBC) was founded in the 20th century. It is a sedeprivationist religious congregation of clergy who were dissatisfied with the SSPX's position on the Pope, that is the position of acknowledging John Paul II as pope but disobeying him. Sedeprivationists hold that the current occupant of the papal office is a duly-elected pope, but he lacks the authority and ability to teach or to govern unless he recants the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council.[6]
Some Catholics took the position of sedevacantism, which teaches Pope John XXIII and his successors are heretics and therefore cannot be considered popes, and that the Catholic Church's sacraments are not valid. The Society of Saint Pius V (SSPV), sedevacantist, broke off from Lefebvre.
Other groups known as Conclavists have elected their own popes in opposition to the men generally considered by the world to be the true popes.
Since the Second Vatican Council, several traditionalist organizations have been started with or have subsequently obtained approval from the Catholic Church.
Communities viewed by the Holy See as having irregular status
Other traditionalist communities recognize the current leadership of the Catholic Church, but are viewed by the Holy See as having an irregular canonical status.[7][failed verification]
In January 2009 the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops remitted the excommunications which the Congregation had declared to have been incurred by the Society's bishops in 1988.[8]
More recently, the Vatican has granted priests of the SSPX the authority to hear confessions and has authorised local ordinaries, in certain circumstances, to grant delegation to SSPX priests to act as the qualified witness required for valid celebration of marriage.[9] The Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Silver City, New Mexico, which is affiliated with the SSPX, is seeking Vatican approval through the society.[10]
Sedeprivationists hold that the current occupant of the papal office is a duly-elected pope, but he lacks the authority and ability to teach or to govern unless he recants the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council.[6] Sedeprivationists teach that the popes from Pope John XXIII onward fall into this category.[6]
Sedevacantists hold that the Vatican II popes have forfeited their position through their acceptance of heretical teachings connected with the Second Vatican Council and consequently there is at present no known true pope.[12] They conclude, on the basis of their rejection of the revised Mass rite and their rejection of certain aspects of postconciliar Church teaching as false, that the popes involved are also false.[13] This is a minority position among traditionalist Catholics[12][14] and a highly divisive one,[13][14] so that many who hold it prefer to say nothing of their view,[13] while other sedevacantists have accepted episcopal ordination from sources such as Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục.[14]
Conclavism is the belief and practice of some who, claiming that all recent occupants of the papal see are not true popes, elect someone else and propose him as the true pope to whom the allegiance of Catholics is due.
Responding to a comment that some consider tradition in a rigid way, Pope Francis remarked in 2016 that "there’s a traditionalism that is a rigid fundamentalism; this is not good. Fidelity on the other hand implies growth. In transmitting the deposit of faith from one epoch to another, tradition grows and consolidates itself with the passing of time, as St Vincent of Lérins said [...] 'The dogma of the Christian religion too must follow these laws. It progresses, consolidates itself with the years, developing itself with time, deepening itself with age'.”[15]
There is some tension between different traditionalist groups at the official level: the SSPX, for example, condemns the FSSP and attendance at its Masses.[16]
Traditionalists' assessment of Vatican II
Traditionalists claim that substantive changes have taken place in Catholic teaching and practice since the Second Vatican Council.[citation needed]
The SSPX denounces a teaching on collegiality that attributes to the bishops of the world a share, with the Pope, of responsibility for the Church's governance in a way that they claim is destructive of papal authority and encourages a "national" church mentality that undermines the primacy of the Holy See. They also claim that national bishops' conferences, whose influence was greatly increased following the Council, "diminish the personal responsibility of bishop[s]" within their dioceses.[17]
Criticism of the Traditionalists' positions
Those who in response to these criticisms by certain traditionalists defend the decisions of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent changes made by the Holy See make the following counterclaims:
They say that the criticisms are false, exaggerated, or lacking appreciation of the organic character of Tradition, and give as examples traditionalist criticisms that Dignitatis humanae contradicts the Church's earlier teaching on religious liberty.[18]
They say that traditionalists who claim that there has been a break from and discontinuity with the Church's traditional teaching are displaying a Protestant attitude of "private judgement" on matters of doctrine, instead of accepting the guidance of the Magisterium of the Church.[19]
They say that traditionalists of this kind treat papal authority in much the same way as the dissident, liberal Catholics. While liberals believe that, on sexual matters, "the Pope can teach whatever he wants... but whether or not he should be listened to is very much an open question", the stance of certain traditionalists on the reform of the Mass liturgy and contemporary teachings on ecumenism and religious liberty amounts to the view that, on these issues, "faithful Catholics are always free to resist [the Pope's] folly.... As theories of religious dissent go, Catholic liberals couldn't ask for anything more."[20]
Reception
Integrism is traditionalist Catholicism that integrates social and political contexts. Kay Chadwick described Catholic integrism as a holding "anti-Masonic, anti-liberal and anti-Communist" political objectives. She also noted its alignment with the right-wing press and an annual Parisian Joan of Arc procession with participation by both integrists and National Front supporters. A Tridentine Mass was celebrated before the annual National Front party meeting. Lefebvre was fined in France for "racial defamation" and "incitement to racial hatred" for proposing the removal of immigrants – particularly Muslims – from Europe. Lefebvre also supported Latin American dictatorships, Charles Maurras, Philippe Pétain, and the continued occupation of French Algeria.[21]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) used the term radical traditionalist Catholics to refer to those who "may make up the largest single group of serious anti-Semites in America, subscribe to an ideology that is rejected by the Vatican and some 70 million mainstream American Catholics. Many of their leaders have been condemned and even excommunicated by the official church."[22] The SPLC claims that adherents of radical traditional Catholicism "routinely pillory Jews as 'the perpetual enemy of Christ'",[22][23] reject the ecumenical efforts of the Vatican, and sometimes assert that all recent Popes are illegitimate.[22] The SPLC says that adherents are "incensed by the liberalizing reforms" of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) which condemned hatred for Jewish people and "rejected the accusation that Jews are collectively responsible for deicide in the form of the crucifixion of Christ"[22] and that "Radical traditional Catholics" also embrace "extremely conservative social ideals with respect to women."[22]
The SPLC clarifies, however, "Radical traditionalists are not the same as Catholics who call themselves 'traditionalists' — people who prefer the old Latin Mass to the mass now typically said in vernacular languages — although the radicals, as well, like their liturgy in Latin."[22]
Practices
Rite of Mass
Altar of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, erected in 1700 and still used today. It faces both east and versus populum (towards the people).
The best-known and most visible sign of Catholic traditionalism is an attachment to the form that the Roman Rite liturgy of the Mass had before the liturgical reform of 1969–1970, in the various editions of the Roman Missal published between 1570 and 1962. This form is generally known as the Tridentine Mass, though traditionalists usually prefer to call it the Traditional Mass. Many refer to it as the Latin Mass, though Latin is the language also of the official text of the post-Vatican II Mass, to which vernacular translations are obliged to conform, and canon law states that "the eucharistic celebration is to be carried out in the Latin language or in another language provided that the liturgical texts have been legitimately approved."[24] In his 2007 motu proprioSummorum PontificumPope Benedict XVI relaxed the regulations on use of the 1962 Missal, designating it "an" extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, as opposed to "the" ordinary or normal form, as revised successively by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.[25][26]
The Pope ruled that priests of the Latin Church can freely choose between the 1962 Roman Missal and the later edition "in Masses celebrated without the people".[27] Such celebrations may be attended by those who spontaneously ask to be allowed.[28] Priests in charge of churches can permit stable groups of laypeople attached to the earlier form to have Mass celebrated for them in that form, provided that the celebrating priest is "qualified to [celebrate] and not juridically impeded".[29] The Society of Saint Pius X welcomed the document, but referred to "difficulties that still remain", including "disputed doctrinal issues" and the notice of excommunication that still affected its bishops.[30]
In 2021, Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes, amending and abrogating parts of Summorum Pontificum.[31]
Individual and private devotions
Some traditionalist Catholics stress on following customs prevailing immediately before the Second Vatican Council, such as the following:
Kneeling to receive Communion directly upon the tongue, under the Host species alone, and from the hand of a cleric rather than a layperson. The SSPX regards the practice of receiving communion in the hand (though ancient[32][33] and authorised by the Holy See[34]) as an abuse.[35]
Women wearing a headcovering when praying at home and when worshipping inside a church which the 1917 Code of Canon Law required.[36] Many Traditionalist Catholic women wear a veil, a hat, or a headscarf when praying at home and when worshipping inside a church.[37]
Clothing and lifestyle
Traditional Catholics, with respect to male and female gender roles, adhere to the doctrine of complementarianism.[38]
The standards of clothing among Traditional Catholics, based on instructions given by Pope Pius XI and consequently promoted by the Purity Crusade of Mary Immaculate, is referred to as "Mary-like Modesty", which includes for women, wearing sleeves "extending at least to the elbows" and "skirts reaching below the knees", as well as having a neckline no more than two inches with the rest of the bodice fully covered.[39][40]
Richard Williamson, then a bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X, stated that "women's trousers, as worn today, short or long, modest or immodest, tight or loose, open or disguised (like the "culottes”), are an assault upon woman's womanhood and so they represent a deep-lying revolt against the order willed by God."[41]
It is commonplace for women who identify as traditionalist Catholics to wear a head covering (veil) while praying at home and attending celebrations of the Mass.[37]
Since the Second Vatican Council, various Eastern Catholic Churches have removed some practices and emphases that were derived from those of the Latin Church. Opposition to this has been given relatively high publicity with regard to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
In the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, liturgical de-latinization began with the 1930s corrections of the liturgical books by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. According to his biographer Cyril Korolevsky, Metropolitan Andrey opposed use of coercion against those who remained attached to Latin liturgical practices, fearing that any attempt to do so would lead to a Greek-Catholic equivalent of the 1666 Schism within the Russian Orthodox Church.[46]
De-latinization in the UGCC gained further momentum with the 1964 decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum of the Second Vatican Council) and several subsequent documents. Latinizations were discarded within the Ukrainian diaspora, while among Byzantine Catholics in Western Ukraine, forced into a clandestine existence following the Soviet ban on the UGCC, the latinizations remained, "an important component of their underground practices".[47] In response, some priests, nuns, and candidates for the priesthood found themselves, "forced towards the periphery of the church since 1989 because of their wish to 'keep the tradition'." In some eparchies, particularly those of Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil-Zboriv, the bishops would immediately suspend any priest who, "displayed his inclination toward 'traditionalist' practices".[48]
Vlad Naumescu reports that an article in the February 2003 issue of Patriayarkhat, the official journal of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, written by a student of the Ukrainian Catholic University, which since its 1994 foundation has been, "the strongest progressive voice within the Church". The article named priests and parishes in every eparchy in Ukraine as being involved in "a well-organized movement" and who described themselves as "traditionalists". According to the article, they constituted "a parallel structure" with connections with the Society of St. Pius X and with a charismatic leader in Fr. Basil Kovpak, the Pastor of St. Peter and Paul's Church in the suburb of Lviv-Riasne.[49]
According to Vlad Naumescu, "Religious life in a traditionalist parish followed the model of the 'underground church.' Devotions were more intense, with each priest promoting his parish as a 'place of pilgrimage' for the neighboring areas, thus drawing larger crowds on Sunday than his local parish could provide. On Sundays and feast days, religious services took place three times a day (in Riasne), and the Sunday liturgy lasted for two and a half to three hours. The main religious celebrations took place outside the church in the middle of the neighborhood, and on every occasion traditionalists organized long processions through the entire locality. The community was strongly united by its common opponent, re-enacting the model of the 'defender of faith' common to times of repression. This model, which presupposes clear-cut attitudes and a firm moral stance, mobilized the community and reproduced the former determination of the 'underground' believers."[50]
Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat
The Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat (SSJK), which operates a seminary, Basilian convent, and numerous parishes, receives priestly orders from the bishops of the SSPX. Its superior, Father Basil Kovpak, has accused the UGCC hierarchy of using intense psychological pressure against priests who are reluctant or unwilling to de-Latinise.
Fr. John Jenkins, an SSPX priest who was present, later remarked, "We were all very edified by their piety, and I myself was astonished by the resemblance of the atmosphere amongst the seminarians with that which I knew in the seminary – this in spite of the difference of language, nationality and even rite."[51]
Archeparch Ihor Vozniak of Lviv, the Archeparchy in which the PSSJ is most active, denounced the ordinations as a "criminal act", and condemned Fr. Kovpak's participation in the ceremony. He stressed that the two priests whom Bishop Williamson had ordained would not receive faculties within the Archeparchy.[52] Officials of the Lviv archdiocese said that Kovpak could face excommunication, and that "'he deceives the church by declaring that he is a Greek (Byzantine) Catholic priest,' while supporting a group [SSPX] that uses the old Latin liturgy exclusively, eschewing the Byzantine tradition, and does not maintain allegiance to the Holy See."[53]
Father Kovpak's excommunication process was restarted by the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and was confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 23 November 2007.[54]
Sedevacantism and Conclavism in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei was founded in July 1988 in the wake of Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei. Pope Benedict XVI was a member of the Commission during his tenure as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Speaking on 16 May 2007 to the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Cardinal Castrillón, the current head of the Commission, stated that his department had been founded for the care of those "traditionalist Catholics" who, while discontented with the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, had broken with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, "because they disagreed with his schismatic action in ordaining Bishops without the required papal mandate". He added that at present the Commission's activity is not limited to the service of those Catholics, nor to "the efforts undertaken to end the regrettable schismatic situation and secure the return of those brethren belonging to the Fraternity of Saint Pius X to full communion." It extends also, he said, to "satisfying the just aspirations of people, unrelated to the two aforementioned groups, who, because of their specific sensitiveness, wish to keep alive the earlier Latin liturgy in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments."[59]
The conferring of holy orders may be valid but illicit.[60] The Catholic Church considers the orders of traditionalist clergy who are in good standing with the Holy See, such as the clergy of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter or the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, to be both valid and licit. It sees as valid but illicit the orders of the bishops and priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, and accordingly considers them to be forbidden by law to exercise priestly offices, but still technically priests.[61]
In 2005, Catholic World News reported that "the Vatican" estimated the number of those served by the Fraternity of St Peter, the Society of St Pius X and similar groups at "close to 1 million".[62]
The SSPX had priests resident in 37 countries and priests on mission in 35 more in 2018.[63] The next largest, the FSSP, served 129 dioceses in the previous year and were in charge of 40 personal parishes.[64]
This is a list of notable traditionalist Catholic groups. Some are in full communion with the Holy See; some have irregular status according to doctrines and disciplines of the Catholic Church.
^Schar, Amanda. "Feminism and Faith: How Women Find Empowerment in the Roman Catholic Church" (2019). Celebration of Learning.
^Moczar, Diane (2013). The Church Under Attack: Five Hundred Years that Split the Church and Scattered the Flock. Sophia Institute Press. p. 202. ISBN978-1-933184-93-7.
^Cyril Korolevsky, Metropolitan Andrew (1868-1944), Translated and Edited by Fr. Serge Keleher. Stauropegion Brotherhood, Lviv, 1993.
^ Stéphanie Mahieu and Vlad Naumescu (2008), Churches In-between: Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe, Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. Page 162, Footnote 10.
^ Stéphanie Mahieu and Vlad Naumescu (2008), Churches In-between: Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe, Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. Pages 164-165.
^The Holy See likewise declared SSPX priests "suspended from exercising their priestly functions" (Letter of Monsignor Camille Perl, Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission Archived 2 February 2003 at the Wayback Machine). A minority of them - ordained before 1976 by archbishop Marcel Lefebvre for the SSPX - remain incardinated in several European dioceses. They are thus in the same position as excommunicated Kovpak, who is incardinated in the Ukrainian Archdiocese of Lviv. The newly ordained clergy, however, are not incardinated into any Ukrainian Catholic diocese, and thus are not clergy of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.
^Catholic World News: Byzantine Catholics decry Lefebvrite inroads into Ukraine The accusation of "eschewing the Byzantine tradition" refers to Father Kovpak's championing of Latinising elements which were followed by Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since the 17th century, but forcibly purged following the Second Vatican Council.
Peter Jan Margry (2019), "The Global Network of Deviant Revelatory Marian Movements", in: Chris Maunder (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mary (New York: Oxford University Press, p. 662-683; ISBN 978-0-198792550.
Hull, Geoffrey (2010). The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church, 1995, rpt. T&T Clark/Continuum, London. ISBN978-0-567-44220-8
