Pope Francis to crack down on Latin mass

Any serious move to limit the element of choice will provoke a backlash from some cardinals down and the grassroots up.

Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

A fresh row is brewing in the Catholic Church, with Pope Francis reportedly preparing to crack down on the resurgent traditional Latin mass.

The traditional mass evolved through the early centuries of the church and was largely unchanged for about 1500 years until the late 1960s. But in recent years, ironically, along with Pentecostal Protestantism, it has become one of the fastest growing areas of Christianity worldwide, including in Australia.

The Latin rite was given fresh impetus by Saint John Paul II in the late 1980s and by pope Benedict in 2007. Australian priest Father Terence Naughtin, who says it every Sunday in Albury and Wangaratta said it was “one growth area of the church and we have very few of them”.

The trend has emerged across the world, but especially in France where as many as half of student priests are studying in Latin-rite seminaries. It has also gained traction in the US among many of the fastest growing orders of priests and nuns.

A week ago, Vatican media outlets reported that Francis told the Italian bishops in a closed meeting on May 24 that reform of Benedict’s 2007 apostolic letter on the traditional mass was “imminent”.

Benedict’s letter affirmed the right of all priests to say mass using the traditional rite (now known as the “extraordinary form”), without the permission of bishops. The letter also clarified the fact that the traditional mass was never abrogated by Vatican II.

Francis reportedly told the Italian bishops that three drafts of a document on the matter had been produced.

Any serious move to crack down and limit the element of choice will provoke a backlash from some cardinals down and the grassroots up. When individual masses were banned at the 45 altars and 11 chapels in St Peter’s Basilica in March, the old rite was singled out for extra restrictions. It has been limited to a small chapel in the crypt and allowed to be said at four specific times between 7am and 9am.

Brisbane schoolteacher Ronan Reilly, 29, president of the Latin Mass Society of Australia, said people of all ages attended old rite masses every Sunday across capital cities and provincial centres. Most attendees were young families, with many in their 20s and 30s, including new converts. They were attracted by the permanence and transcendence of the liturgy, he said.

In some parishes, priests offered both forms of the Mass, Mr Reilly said.

In a weekend letter to his parishioners, Glen Tattersall, parish priest of Melbourne’s old rite parish, Saint John Henry Newman at Caulfield North, predicted that the forthcoming Vatican document “will likely constitute a significant attempt to roll back all the gains of the last 30 or more years, to return the traditional Mass and those who celebrate or attend it to the ghetto”.

Father Tattersall also posed the question: “Theoretically, could a Pope abolish or abrogate the traditional Mass?” The pope’s power is supreme on earth, he said, “but supreme does not mean absolute and unfettered. How could a pope possibly legislate validly in a way that would be so clearly contrary to the good of souls and the unity of the church?”

In a column in April, US Jesuit Thomas Reese, who normally advocates a liberal approach to church governance, took an authoritarian stand, paradoxically, arguing that “children and young people should not be allowed to attend” the traditional mass.

“The church needs to be clear that it wants the unreformed liturgy to disappear and will only allow it out of pastoral kindness to older people who do not understand the need for change,” Father Reese wrote.