VATICAN CITY, 26 August 2026 — In recent months a number of prominent attempts have been made to double down on the party line that the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council conforms to the Council’s own desires and is beyond criticism, and that the older liturgical rites have little, if any, place in the life of the Church.
One only need recall three recent examples: Cardinal Arthur Roche’s July 29 interview with The Tablet; the subsequent article in the secular Spanish daily La Razón claiming that Cardinal Roche’s discredited report on the liturgy — distributed to Cardinals at Pope Leo XIV’s first extraordinary consistory — conveys the mind of the Pope on the traditional Roman rite; and Andrea Grillo’s recent assertion that “the old rite has no longer existed since the approval of the Novus Ordo.”
The latest appeared today at the Pope’s general audience, in his final catechesis on the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Dom Alcuin Reid, an internationally recognized liturgical scholar — whose doctoral work on liturgical reform was published as The Organic Development of the Liturgy, with a preface by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger — offers some analysis and commentary.
Liturgy Wars—The Latest Volley: A Papal “Thus”
Dom Alcuin Reid
Popes are busy men and rightly have drafters assisting them in preparing discourses. When speaking on particular subjects these drafts often originate in the relevant dicastery or department of the Roman Curia, and it is almost certain that the General Audience addresses of recent months on the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, originated in the Dicastery for Divine Worship. There is nothing exceptional about that and, for the most part, the General Audience addresses have been a reasonable liturgical catechesis making good points at times.
Today’s General Audience address, however, was not about the liturgy itself. Rather, it waded into the political minefield of what has become known in recent decades as “the liturgy wars”, the central issue of which is whether the liturgical reform following the Council was in fact faithful to the mandate given by the Council (and organic development of the liturgy as article 23 of the Constitution required). If it was not, the rites promulgated subsequently could be legitimately questioned and even be set aside in favour of the unreformed rites or be subjected to a “reform of the reform” that seeks to be faithful to the Council’s actual directives.
Once delivered, a draft becomes a Papal text, and to have the Pope express an opinion in a discourse (let us be clear, a General Audience address is not of itself a binding, infallible teaching) is certainly a coup of some importance. And in his general audience today the Holy Father — intentionally or not — has certainly rallied the troops of those on the Vatican II fundamentalist side of the war (who cling to the reformed rites more rigidly than any so-called ‘traditionalist’ ever known).
He did so in the simple line: “the liturgical reform promoted by the Second Vatican Council is thus firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church.” His “thus” implies a deduction and a decision that the demands of Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 23 that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” were respected. And if they were, there would be no problem — there would be no grounds for talk about a “reform of the reform” or of a need to continue to celebrate the unreformed rites.
The problem is, however, that whoever in the Dicastery of Divine Worship most probably put these words in the mouth of the Holy Father has had him utter the greatest liturgical non-sequitur of the past sixty or so years. So too, whilst the “thus” is clearly believed by the drafter, it does not follow from the evidence produced in the text. An undergraduate in any reputable faculty would have such work returned to him as unsatisfactory.
There are many instances of inadequate drafting here: the Council called for a renewal of the Sacred Liturgy (“instauratio”) not for it to be “streamlined” — an a posteriori term which clearly indicates what in fact the partisans of the newer rites wish to believe. The Magisterium did not positively intervene in the history of the liturgy to adapt its forms to the needs of different eras; it extended local developments to the universal Church or added them to the Roman use by way of example, which was often then imitated elsewhere. As the likes of Cardinal Ratzinger observed, what happened following the most recent ecumenical Council had never been seen in the history of the Church until then. No centralized liturgical dicastery (the Sacred Congregation for Rites) existed until the latter part of the sixteenth century. Even then, it had no mandate to overhaul the liturgy periodically. Local Churches and religious orders maintained their own traditional rites. A radical reform of the liturgical rites was not in fact necessary in order to make the liturgy more accessible after the Second Vatican Council — a reality that the full, conscious, actual and extraordinarily fruitful participation in the unreformed rites today makes perfectly clear. One could note much more, but there are perhaps three more important issues to underline.
The first issue is the unfortunate yet enthusiastic citation of Cardinal Montini’s 1962 letter in which the future Paul VI asserts that the liturgy is “on the one hand…a vehicle for divine teaching; on the other…a voice in dialogue with God.” The problem is that whilst the liturgy is indeed formative, it is not primarily didactic or catechetical. It is cultic activity, i.e., it is worship and forms us as Christians by drawing us into the divine at work in and through its sacred rites. So too, the liturgy is not dialoguing with God in any modern sense of “dialogue” whereby we sit down as equal partners to work out some solution. The liturgy is the privileged place where we listen to God’s Word attentively and receptively and participate in the fruits of Christ’s saving action and respond appropriately through the conversion of our lives and by faithfully living out our vocation and Christian mission. To be fair, later on the text does cite Paul VI’s address at the closing of the Second Session of the Council in which he rightly describes the liturgy as “the primary source of that divine exchange in which the life of God is communicated to us”. Paul VI’s drafters were clearly better. So too is Sacrosanctum Concilium’s own theology of the liturgy (see especially articles 7-8).
The second is this rather pedestrian exegesis of article 48[1]:
“Through the Church’s ritual actions, whilst the memorial of the work of salvation is celebrated, the opportunity is provided to experience a true relationship with God, coming into contact with the salvific event. Since the gestures, the words of the sacred liturgy are critical to realizing this experience, the participation of the faithful cannot be passive.”
None of this is false, but it is anaemic — and the Holy Father deserves better for his discourse.
For the Sacred Liturgy is not an “opportunity” (amongst others) to experience a true relationship with God. It is, as the Council teaches, the “summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows.” (Constitution, art. 10) That is, it enjoys a primacy, an objectivity in the Christian life to which other “opportunities” are subordinate.
In this context “the gestures and words” are not merely “critical to realising this experience,” they are the very vehicles of this privileged divine encounter itself — hence the terms “sacred liturgy” and “sacred rites.” The complex of actions and words that constitute a liturgical rite thereby take on a sacrality, they themselves become sacramentals. Incense, Latin, Gregorian chant and praying Eastward are not of the same status as the use of bread and wine and the Lord’s own words at Mass, clearly, but the Church has rightly employed them in her tradition not simply appropriate as elements of the liturgical rites, but as more than apposite ones that have become privileged by their use in the Church’s tradition. This is precisely why the Second Vatican Council did not call for their abolition or replacement, but instead underlined their privileged place in the Western rite whilst calling for widespread liturgical formation of clergy and laity to facilitate full, actual and conscious participation in the rites of which they are important pillars so as further to nourish and sustain Christian life and mission.
Here we touch on the third issue: the distinction between divine, immutable elements, and seemingly merely human elements, in the liturgy. This distinction leads to a downplaying of the latter which, it is said, “admit of various modifications, as the needs of the age, circumstance and the good of souls may require.” To a certain extent, this is true, and the liturgy has developed (organically) in history. But at another level this distinction is pernicious in that it permits a reduction of anything not “immutable” to the level of almost changeable at whim. This is not what the Council intended at all but, as Cardinal Ratzinger observed, it can become:
“the wrong path up which we might be led by a Neoscholastic sacramental theology that is disconnected from the living form of the Liturgy. On that basis, people might reduce the ‘substance’ to the matter and form of the sacrament and say: Bread and wine are the matter of the sacrament; the words of institution are its form. Only these two things are really necessary; everything else is changeable … As long as the material gifts are there, and the words of institution are spoken, then everything else is freely disposable.”
The drafter can perhaps be forgiven for this error: the subtleties involved are quite advanced, but they are nevertheless real, and ignorance of them does risk reducing the liturgical rites to matters of passing preference (as the various abuse of the modern rites demonstrate so clearly). The Council called for an instauratio (renewal) of the rites in continuity, not a substantial rupture with the received liturgical tradition that edited and remade them according to the preferences of those involved whilst preserving only what was necessary for sacramental validity.
Recent decades have seen a considerable body of scholarship examine all these issues — amongst them of course the future Pope Benedict XVI himself. Pope Leo is not himself a liturgical scholar — and there is no reason he should be. However, the Holy Father should be served and supported by those who can furnish him with less embarrassing and, shall we say, more “inclusive” texts.
Unfortunately, today’s General Audience text will be read more as the scoring of a political point by some and will be experienced as a disappointing blow by others. I am sure that the Holy Father intends or wills neither. His Holiness’ constant calls for unity and inclusivity whilst respecting legitimate diversity stand above such politicking. So too does sound scholarship and actual liturgical history.
Let us continue to pray for the Holy Father, particularly that in respect of the Sacred Liturgy, he shall indeed promote a policy of inclusivity and mutual respect, eschewing the ploys of those who would use his words to advance their cause. Pope Benedict offered some sound advice in respect of the liturgy wars: “Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.” His policies led to liturgical peace. Pope Leo may do well to revisit them.
[1] 48. The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ’s faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed by God’s word and be nourished at the table of the Lord’s body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves; through Christ the Mediator, they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally God may be all in all.
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Is there any question now as to why there is utter confusion among the faithful?
Prayer to Preserve the Traditional Mass by
Jordan Low
Let us Pray. O God, in Whom there is no change or
shadow of alteration, Thou didst give inspiration and
courage to Thy Saints through the unfathomable graces
of the immemorial Mass. Grant unto us, we beg Thee,
through their intercession, the wider restoration of the
sacred, traditional liturgical rites, that we may rejoice in
the consolation of their graces and be strengthened to
serve Thee in imitation of the courage and fidelity of Holy
Mary, St. Joseph and all Thy Saints.
Amen.