Five Years of Injustice Against Tradition-loving Catholics

'Traditionis Custodes' contains the seeds of its own destruction

Photo by Lance Grandahl

Five years ago today, Pope Francis promulgated a motu proprio sardonically called Traditionis Custodes [TC], “guardians of tradition,” in which he dismantled the ways in which Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum had actually set in motion an organic process of recovering tradition. As many know by now, the word traditio in Latin can mean “betrayal” or “treachery,” and custos can mean “jailer” or “prison-guard,” so my preferred translation of the document is “Prison-guards of Treachery.” For that, in fact, is what the document came to mean for countless Catholics whose local TLM communities were shattered, whose budding life was cut down by the enforcement of this Herodian text.

My initial reaction on July 16, 2021, was an article published at The Remnant: “Traditionis Custodes: The New Atom Bomb.” I stand by every word and punctuation mark of that article. A few days later, on July 21, I did an extensive interview with Gerhard Eger: “Dr. Kwasniewski on Traditionis Custodes: Worst Papal Document in History.”

My Pelican+ colleague Michael Haynes, the Vatican correspondent for The Catholic Herald, asked me the other day what kind of effects I think TC has had in its run of five years. There is so much that could be said about this document and its contradictory effects. Here are a few thoughts.

On the positive side, TC greatly increased public awareness, both among Catholics and among non-Catholics, of the issue of the traditional Latin Mass itself; it brought more attention to communities that celebrate it, which often experienced significant growth in the wake of the motu proprio. Given the internet age we live in, TC was bound to alert a huge number of people to the long-standing critique of the liturgical reform that is now readily found online, together with a rich array of catechetical, devotional, and musical resources for the old rite.

In short, Pope Francis gave the traditional movement a massive advertising campaign it could never have afforded even if it had pooled all its resources into a common coffer. Let’s not forget that a similar boost had already occurred prior to the motu proprio thanks to the experience of Catholics during Covidtide, when TLM priests—Ecclesia Dei, SSPX, and diocesan—often went to far greater lengths to keep churches open and the faithful cared for than their mainstream counterparts. And, very recently, we are witnessing a new boost in attention and attendance thanks to the highly publicized actions of the SSPX and the Vatican’s draconian response.

It seems that every step the Vatican takes to “control” the dreaded trad virus only makes it spread the more. The older men and clerical attachés who sit in the Roman offices do not seem to have figured out yet that we are living in a new period dictated by the speed and crowd-pooled resources of the internet, where an institution no longer has complete control of the narrative—where, indeed, a narrative quickly turn against an institution when it is perceived as striving for a manipulative, hypocritical, or ridiculous control over the people it claims to serve.

Moreover, many Catholics began to question a certain version of ultramontanism (or, in my preferred formulation, hyperpapalism) that led to a reductio ad absurdum of a pope canceling out centuries of tradition, even millennia, and acting as if words can mean whatever he wants them to mean—shades of Alice in Wonderland. We don’t live there, we live in the world God has created by His Providence, in a Church whose traditions are likewise unfolded by His Providence. We have an objective duty to receive our inheritance and pass it on. Our failure to do so harms us grievously.