Reports: Vatican planning to enforce a ‘final’ ban of Traditional Latin Mass, likely on July 16

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Reports: Vatican planning to enforce a ‘final’ ban of Traditional Latin Mass, likely on July 16
Sources told Rorate Caeli that Vatican officials want to ban the Latin Mass in a manner ‘as wide, final, and irreversible as possible,’ and a source informed LifeSiteNews that this ban is likely to be issued on the three-year anniversary of Traditionis Custodes.



Rome-Italy-10-24-2015. Holy Pontifical Mass in an ancient rite at the Saint Peter's Chair, Mass in Latin, in the Basilica of Saint Peter's in the Vatican, 

pilgrimage Summorum Pontificum
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Jun 18, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — Several “credible” sources informed a traditional Catholic media outlet that the Vatican is planning to issue a document “banning” the Traditional Latin Mass, and a source informed LifeSiteNews that this will likely occur on July 16.

“An attempt is being made to implement, as soon as possible, a Vatican document with a stringent, radical, and final solution banning the Traditional Latin Mass,” reported Rorate Caeli on Monday, which attributed the news to “the most credible sources, in different continents,” including from “circles close to” Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect for the Dicastery for Divine Worship.

These sources are reportedly “the very same… who first revealed that a document like Traditionis Custodes would come” and also “revealed to Rorate that the Vatican had sent out a survey to bishops” on their implementation of the TLM following Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which allowed widespread use of the Latin Mass.

Those planning this “final” suppression of the TLM are said by Rorate to be “frustrated” with the “apparently slow results” of Pope Francis’ Latin Mass-restricting document Traditionis Custodes, particularly in the U.S. and France, and “want to ban it and shut it down everywhere and immediately.”

These Vatican prelates, which by implication include Pope Francis and at least require his consent, reportedly wish to make this Latin Mass ban “as wide, final and irreversible as possible.” Rorate Caeli is urging people in all states of life to “prevent the ban from becoming a concrete measure.”

LifeSiteNews has received information indicating that a likely date for these expected  restrictions is July 16, the anniversary of the implementation of Traditionis Custodes.

Cardinal Raymond Burke recently highlighted the fact that Traditionis Custodes has in one sense backfired, because it has intensified and multiplied attraction to the Mass of the Ages. The cardinal stated:

If the intention with the latest legislation Traditionis Custodes and other documents which followed it was to discourage or to decrease the attraction of the holy liturgy according to the Usus Antiquior, it had, I would say, the exactly opposite effect.

“This,” he added, “should not be surprising. One has to think that a form of the Roman rite which has nourished so profoundly and produced so many saints, the declared saints, even let’s say hidden saints, it is not possible that this rite be canceled, that it be eliminated from the life of the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI himself clarified through his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that the Latin Mass was never abolished and that no priest needs his bishop’s permission to offer it, stating, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”

Following Traditionis Custodes, Cardinal Burke affirmed that the traditional liturgy is not something that can be excluded from the “valid expression of the lex orandi.”

“It is a question of an objective reality of divine grace which cannot be changed by a mere act of the will of even the highest ecclesiastical authority,” wrote the cardinal in 2021.

In accordance with this idea, liturgical scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has written that priests must resist attempts to restrict the Latin Mass, including through Traditionis Custodes and its accompanying Responsa ad dubia “regardless of threats or penalties,” since obedience to these documents would undermine the very mission of the holy Catholic Church.

‘The traditional Mass belongs to the most intimate part of the common good in the Church. Restricting it, pushing it into ghettos, and ultimately planning its demise can have no legitimacy. This law is not a law of the Church because, as St. Thomas [Aquinas] says, a law against the common good is no valid law,’” he said in a speech during the 2021 Catholic Identity Conference.

True obedience “is always obedience to GOD, whether immediately or mediately,” explained Kwasniewski. Therefore, if any authority commands something contrary to God’s divine or natural law, “We must obey God rather than men,” as is declared in the Acts of the Apostles and affirmed by Pope Leo XIII.

Kwasniewski made the point that “the traditional liturgical worship of the Church, her lex orandi (law of prayer),” is a “fundamental” “expression of her lex credendi, (law of belief), one that cannot be contradicted or abolished or heavily rewritten without rejecting the Spirit-led continuity of the Catholic Church as a whole.”

To drive this home, he quoted the solemn words of St. Pius V’s bull Quo Primum, which he noted “is not ‘just a disciplinary document’ that can be readily set aside or contradicted by his successors; it is a document de rebus fidei et morum, concerning matters of faith and morals, and therefore not susceptible to being set aside by a later pontiff” – something acknowledged by “his successors who, whenever they published a new edition of the missal, were careful to preface it with Quo Primum, showing that they accepted and embraced that which Pius V had codified and canonized.”

Quo Primum states:

In virtue of Our Apostolic authority, We grant and concede in perpetuity that, for the chanting or reading of the Mass in any church whatsoever, this Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used. Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare and ordain… that this present document cannot be revoked or modified, but remains always valid and retains its full force… Would anyone, however, presume to commit such an act [i.e., altering Quo Primum], he should know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.