Face to Face with Romanism

The entire Traditionalist world seems to be waiting with trepidation for whatever Pope Francis will be doing to Summorum Pontificum and the celebration of the Latin Mass worldwide. It’s noteworthy that the entire process has been conducted in secrecy by the Vatican and certain episcopal initiates. That those reported to be in the forefront of the anti-SP effort – such as Cardinal Parolin or, for that matter, the Pope himself – do not necessarily enjoy the best of reputations or authority at this very moment is no hindrance to their ability to initiate global liturgical changes. And on this issue, (as opposed to, let’s say, the German Synodal Path) papal power in the eyes of the European Church establishment is unlimited. Consider the statements of Professor Georg Bier in the online publication of the German Catholic Church :

As a matter of principle it is possible for the Pope to completely abolish again this form of the Mass ( the Traditional Mass -SC). The Pope as supreme legislator can always decree whatever he deems to be most beneficial for the Church... (According to the author, however, for tactical reasons abolition of the Traditional Mass is unlikely -SC). There will be at most moderate restrictions – but as a matter of principle the Pope has all possibilities. 1)

In Bier’s view, both Summorum Pontificum and the document Pope Francis is crafting are governed entirely by material and political considerations and tactical expediency. The passage in Summorum Pontificum which seems to expressly limit the authority of the Church to abolish the Traditional Mass is dismissed by Bier as a “dodge” or “trick” by Benedict to preserve continuity with his predecessor – no theological issue here.

Reading these words today, I was struck once again by the link between centralized ultramontane absolutism and liturgical, moral, and theological experimentation (the latter, of course, taking in 2021 a reactionary, defensive form!). The totally arbitrary and unlimited Papal authority described in the quote above contrasts with the historical role and self-understanding of the Papacy in the “greatest of centuries” (the 13th) or in the Counter-Reformation. In my view, the Catholic Church’s dysfunctional structures and organizational principles continue to exercise a highly negative influence, blocking true reform and spiritual development

Two recent articles, dealing with issues arising in unrelated contexts, have neatly identified this highly problematic situation for the Church. First, Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society, has this to say in his review of Una Voce: the History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003 ( by Leo Darroch):

The first (episode Shaw considered – SC) is the interview and associated correspondence which took place between de Saventham (the head of Una Voce International – SC) and Archbishop (later, Cardinal) Giovanni Benelli, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in 1976…. . De Saventham summarised Benelli’s position in a letter to him following the meeting:

Your Excellency has urged us to espouse as a matter of conscience the new forms of the Church’s public cult… Although the character of irreformability only attaches to definitions, promulgated ex cathedra in matters of faith and morals, [you asserted that] the assent due to the acts of the Sovereign Pontiff ought equally to express itself in humble obedience to those of his acts which merely concern the discipline or other nondoctrinal aspects of the government of the Church. For there also, you said, it is the same one and indivisible charisma which guarantees that all these acts cannot but be ordered towards the true and certain good of the Church. Consequently, you could only consider as reckless and irreconcilable with a proper ecclesiology all demands or initiatives which implied that the utility of such and such an act of government duly promulgated by the reigning Pontiff or under his authority could be a subject of discussion or even contestation.

Cardinal Benelli did not dispute the accuracy of this summary. What it amounts to—as Dr de Savanthem goes on to explain at some length, though not in these terms—is an extreme Ultramontanism, the view that imbues the reigning Pope’s prudential decisions with something close to infallibility, and his wishes with a force approaching that of Divine Law. 
The prevalence of such attitudes in a Rome is part of the explanation of why things were so difficult for Una Voce in the 1970s and later.

Second, Bronwen McShea considers a case of excessive Vatican intervention in local artistic issues in the 1920’s but draws broader conclusions ( “When Rome Policed Art,” First Things (August 2021):

(After the Council) [T]he new generation of churchmen, once in power, redirected the Church toward a warm embrace of the modern world. The irony is that in doing so, through the decrees of Vatican II and in the ­Council’s aftermath, they preserved and strengthened centralized mechanisms of ecclesiastical control, not just over doctrine and worship, but also over cultural judgments and sensibilities. Rome and the clerical hierarchy were suddenly airing out a Church that supposedly had been stifling and stale inside for many centuries. Now, “openness” was not optional: ­Dialogue became the order of the day. The modernized engines of ecclesiastical governance were revved up for aggiornamento, which the laity and lower clergy would get, whether they wanted it or not. Even Maritain, late in life in The Peasant of the Garonne, would rue this turnabout.

Much as they had with theology and the liturgical reform, the bishops oversaw a rushed, coordinated aesthetic revolution. Old-fashioned crucifixes, paintings, statues, stained-glass windows, and even sacred vessels were cast aside for modern ones—beautiful, well-crafted, and elegant in some cases, but ugly, kitschy, and blasphemous in countless others. Vatican-­issued and chancery-stamped statements, more revisions of canon law, an­d conferences paved the way. Ordinary Catholics stood by—­bewildered, often—as the styles of art that had been ­forcefully opposed by their mitered shepherds just a few years before were now promoted by them. All manner of Expressionist, Cubist, Fauvist, and Abstract works began to populate cathedrals and small-town ­churches. Sacred spaces were bulldozed, whitewashed, and reconstructed. And a great deal of fine artwork—crafted lovingly and donated by the laity of past eras—disappeared overnight.

….

In view of the complex history of which Servaes (the Belgian artist referenced by McShea’s article – SC) was a part, it is worth considering whether more mature modern approaches to sacred art would have developed organically, in creative dialogue with the wider culture and ancient traditions, had Vatican bureaucrats and their defenders in the early twentieth century behaved more, not less, like their Tridentine-era predecessors. Vatican I and Vatican II both effected highly centralized, Rome-driven reform. They may appear in some respects antithetical, but they ran on the same rails. The centralizing impulse of the age seduced Rome into censoring experimental artists in ways that Tridentine and medieval Church officials had not imagined necessary or even possible. Then, by the mid-twentieth century, mortified by the Church’s cultural marginalization, the hierarchy tried to reverse it with an even heavier hand—f­oisting a sloppy and destructive aesthetic revolution on the Church to accompany the dramatic liturgical and theological reorientations.

1. Bier, Georg (“Professor for Canon Law and the History of Canon Law at the University of Freiburg”) as interviewed by Christoph Hartmann, “How the Pope could limit the celebration of the pre-Conciliar Mass,“ Katholisch.de (07/14/2021) (in German)