Traditionis Custodes:
AN ACT OF WEAKNESS by CRISTIANA DE MAGISTRIS
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fter a calm and careful reading of the recent motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, with none of the acrimony and indignation that a biased and draconian document like this one almost inevitably arouses, the text seems not an act of strength but of weakness, a song of the swan that, nearing his end, does not sing with a more beautiful voice but with a louder one. The document presents a number of canonical anomalies that jurists will have to examine carefully. The priority for us is to dwell on a single point, the liturgical, whose scope seems absolutely revolutionary and untenable. Article 1 of the document, as if to set the tone for everything that follows, states: “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite”. There is much that could be said about that “in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II”, seeing that the missal of Paul VI – as has been amply demonstrated – went far beyond the conciliar dictate, coining a liturgy from scratch, in complete discontinuity not only with the tradition epitomised in the missal of St Pius V but also with the will of the council fathers themselves. In any case, this liturgy made “at the drafting table” (Cardinal Ratzinger) can no longer be considered part of the Roman Rite. No less a personality than Monsignor Gamber affirmed this vigorously after the new missal went into effect. The new liturgy is a “Ritus modernus”, he said, no longer a “Ritus Romanus”. Fr Louis Bouyer, a member of the Liturgical Movement, who on the whole was in favour of the conciliar innovations, was forced to affirm: “We must speak clearly: today there is in the Catholic Church practically no liturgy worthy of this name”. “Today,” Monsignor Gamber stressed, referring to the reformed liturgy, “we find ourselves before the ruins of an almost bimillennial Tradition.” Fr Joseph Gelineau, one of the supporters of the renewal, was able to say: “Let those who, like
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me, have known and sung a solemn Gregorian Mass in Latin remember it, if they can. Let them compare it with the Mass we have now. It is not only the words, the melodies, and some of the gestures that are different. To tell the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This must be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists (le rite romain tel que nous avons connu n’existe plus). It has been destroyed (il est détruit).” That the Roman Rite no longer survives in the reformed missal of Paul VI is affirmed by liturgist friends and enemies of Tradition. Therefore, the reformed missal, as Klaus Gamber states, deserves the title of missal modernus but not romanus. In the light of these elementary liturgical considerations, how is Article 1 of the motu proprio to be understood? To which is added the surprising and tendentious statement in the letter to the bishops: “It must therefore be maintained that the Roman Rite, adapted many times over the course of the centuries according to the needs of the day, not only be preserved but renewed ‘in faithful observance of the Tradition’. Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements CAL X M ARIA E
