The Traditional Latin Mass Explained

1. Is the Traditional Latin Mass Still Allowed?

The Traditional Latin Mass is still celebrated in the Catholic Church, and since 16 July 2021 it has been celebrated on the terms the diocesan bishop sets. That date is when Pope Francis issued the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which gives the bishop of each diocese exclusive competence to authorise use of the Roman Missal of 1962, following the norms of the Apostolic See. A Catholic who wants to attend the older Mass is asking a diocesan question rather than a universal one: what has my bishop authorised, and where.

That is the short answer, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not mean. The 1962 Missal has not been forbidden. Permission to use it moved from every priest, where Summorum Pontificum had placed it in 2007, back to the bishop, where the indults of 1984 and 1988 had placed it before. Some dioceses have several authorised locations with Sunday Masses every week. Others have one. Others have none, because the bishop has judged that the conditions in the document are not met locally.

What the Governing Documents Actually Say

Two texts govern the question today, and reading them in order removes most of the confusion.

• Summorum Pontificum (7 July 2007, in force 14 September 2007). Pope Benedict XVI treated the Missal of Paul VI as the ordinary expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite and the Missal of 1962 as an extraordinary expression of the same rite, and stated that the older Missal was never abrogated.
• Traditionis Custodes (16 July 2021). Pope Francis states in article 1 that the liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, and in article 2 that it belongs exclusively to the diocesan bishop to authorise the use of the 1962 Missal in his diocese. Article 8 abrogates earlier norms to the extent that they conflict with it.

Everything else on this page is the story of how the Church arrived at those two paragraphs, and what a Catholic attached to the older Mass should do about them now.

2. What the Traditional Latin Mass Is

The Traditional Latin Mass is the celebration of the Roman Rite according to the Roman Missal as it stood in the typical edition of 1962, promulgated by Pope John XXIII. People call it by several names: the Tridentine Mass, after the Council of Trent whose reform produced the printed missal of 1570; the usus antiquior, the older use; the extraordinary form, using the vocabulary of Summorum Pontificum; and the vetus ordo, the old order, in contrast to the novus ordo of 1969. The names carry arguments with them, and they all point at the same book.

What a Visitor Notices First

A Catholic walking into the older Mass for the first time meets a liturgy that is recognisably the same sacrament and noticeably different in shape. The most visible features:

• Latin throughout. The homily is in the vernacular, and the readings are commonly repeated in the vernacular before the homily. The prayers of the Mass are Latin.
• The priest and people face the same direction. The priest stands at the head of the congregation facing the altar and the east, ad orientem, turning to the people for the greetings and the sermon.
• The Roman Canon, prayed quietly. There is one Eucharistic Prayer, the ancient Roman Canon, and from the Sanctus to the doxology the priest prays it in a low voice, with the congregation kneeling in silence.
• Prayers at the foot of the altar. The Mass opens with Psalm 42 in the Latin numbering (Psalm 43 in most English Bibles) and the Confiteor, prayed between priest and servers before the priest ascends.
• The Last Gospel. The prologue of Saint John, John 1:1-14, is read at the end of Mass.
• Gregorian chant and polyphony as the proper music, with the propers of the day sung from the Graduale.
• Communion kneeling and on the tongue, at an altar rail where one exists, distributed by the priest.
• A one-year lectionary. The same epistle and gospel return on the same Sunday every year.

Low, Sung, and Solemn

The older Missal knows three grades of celebration. Low Mass is said by one priest with a server or two, largely in silence, and takes well under an hour. Sung Mass, Missa cantata, adds a choir and sung propers. Solemn High Mass adds a deacon and subdeacon, incense, and the full ceremonial. A parish that offers the older Mass on a Sunday is usually offering a Sung Mass.

The theology celebrated in both forms of the Roman Rite is one theology. The Mass is the sacrifice of Calvary made present, offered by Christ through the ministry of the priest, and the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of the Lord. Our guide to the Catholic Mass and its structure covers that theology and the parts of the liturgy in full, and our guide to the Eucharist and the Real Presence covers what the Church holds happens at the consecration. This page stays with the historical and legal question of the older form.

3. Where the Roman Rite Came From

The Roman Rite grew over roughly sixteen centuries before it was ever printed, and knowing that growth is the best protection against two opposite mistakes: treating the 1962 Missal as if it dropped from heaven complete, and treating it as if it were a late medieval invention with no claim on Catholic memory.

From Greek to Latin

The Church at Rome celebrated in Greek in its earliest generations, and the shift to Latin was substantially complete by the fourth century. The oldest layers of the Roman Canon are attested in the late fourth century in the catechetical work De Sacramentis, associated with Saint Ambrose of Milan, which quotes eucharistic prayers strikingly close to the Canon that Catholics still hear. The Roman Canon is one of the oldest continuously used eucharistic prayers in Christianity, and its survival in both the 1962 Missal and the Missal of Paul VI is a real continuity between them.

Sacramentaries, Franks, and Local Uses

Roman liturgical texts circulated in collections known as sacramentaries: the Veronese or Leonine collection, the Gelasian, and the Gregorian sacramentary sent north in the Carolingian period. Charlemagne pressed the Roman books on his territories in the interest of uniformity, and what came back to Rome afterwards was a Roman liturgy enriched by Frankish additions. Much of the ceremonial that later became standard entered the rite in this way.

Across the Middle Ages the Roman Rite existed in many local versions called uses: Sarum in England, the use of Lyon, of Braga, of Paris, and the distinct rites of religious orders such as the Dominicans, Carmelites, and Carthusians. Diocesan uses differed in prayers, calendar, and ceremonial while remaining recognisably Roman. In the thirteenth century the Missal of the Roman Curia, carried across Europe by the Franciscans, became the most widely diffused single version. Printing then multiplied editions, and by the sixteenth century the variety had become a practical problem of quality control.

The Fathers read Malachi's prophecy of a pure offering among the nations as a prophecy of the Eucharist, and the Council of Trent cited it when it taught on the sacrifice of the Mass. The rite that carries that offering has taken many shapes in many languages, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes the principle explicit: the liturgy has an unchangeable part, divinely instituted, and parts open to change which the Church can and sometimes must adapt (CCC 1205). The same Catechism lists the liturgical traditions in current use in the Church, Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean among them (CCC 1203).

4. Quo Primum and What It Did

Quo Primum is the apostolic constitution by which Pope Saint Pius V promulgated the reformed Roman Missal on 14 July 1570, carrying out a mandate the Council of Trent had left to the Holy See. The bull imposed the Missal of the Roman Curia, revised by a commission working from ancient manuscripts, on the whole Latin Church, and it made one significant exception: churches and orders that could show a rite in continuous use for more than two hundred years were free to keep it. That exemption is why the Ambrosian Rite in Milan, the Mozarabic Rite in Toledo, and the Dominican, Carmelite, and Carthusian rites survived the Tridentine reform.

The Traditionalist Reading

The text of Quo Primum is strong. It grants priests the perpetual right to use this missal, forbids anyone to add to it or take from it, and states that the document is to stand in perpetuity, with a warning against those who presume to alter it. Catholics attached to the older Mass have read those clauses for fifty years as a standing papal grant that no later authority may withdraw. The reading is not frivolous. The words are there, they are emphatic, and they were meant to end the confusion of many competing printed missals.

The Canonical Response

The Church's own answer is that Quo Primum is a disciplinary law of the Roman Pontiff, and that a pope's disciplinary law binds his successors in charity while leaving their authority intact. A pope cannot bind a future pope's power to legislate on discipline, since each holds the same office with the same authority. The evidence that this is how the Church itself read the bull is that the Roman Missal was revised repeatedly afterwards by popes who venerated Pius V: Clement VIII in 1604, Urban VIII in 1634, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, whose reform of the psalter and rubrics from 1911 substantially reordered the Roman office and calendar, Pius XII, whose restored Holy Week rites of 1955 replaced ceremonies of great antiquity, and John XXIII, whose 1962 edition is the one traditional communities now use.

That last point carries weight in this argument. The Missal that Quo Primum is invoked to protect is the 1962 book, which reached its shape through four centuries of papal revision of exactly the kind the bull is said to forbid. For the wider Catholic principle at work here, that the living Church hands on what she has received and is competent to govern the form in which she hands it on, see our guide to Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium.

5. Vatican II and the Missal of Paul VI

The Second Vatican Council opened its work with the liturgy, approving the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on 4 December 1963 by an overwhelming majority of the world's bishops. The constitution called for a general restoration of the liturgical books so that the rites would be simpler, clearer, and easier for the faithful to enter into, and it stated the goal in a phrase that has been quoted ever since: full, conscious, and active participation by all the people, which is demanded by the nature of the liturgy itself and is their right and duty by baptism (Sacrosanctum Concilium 14).

What the Constitution Said About Latin

The text on language is more balanced than either side's summary of it. Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 states that the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites, and then permits a wider use of the vernacular, especially in the readings and some prayers and chants, leaving the extent to the territorial bodies of bishops with confirmation by the Holy See. Article 54 asks that the faithful be able to say or sing together in Latin the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass that belong to them. Article 116 gives Gregorian chant pride of place as the chant proper to the Roman liturgy.

What followed went further than those articles by themselves would suggest, through a series of later decisions by the competent authority. The work of revision was carried out by the Consilium for the implementation of the constitution, whose secretary was Annibale Bugnini, and the vernacular was extended in stages until entire celebrations in the vernacular were permitted.

The Revised Missal

Pope Paul VI promulgated the revised Roman Missal by the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum on 3 April 1969. The new Order of Mass came into use on the First Sunday of Advent 1969, and the first typical edition of the Missal was published in 1970. The principal changes:

• A three-year Sunday lectionary and a two-year weekday cycle, greatly expanding the Scripture read at Mass, answering the Council's call for a richer fare from the table of God's word (Sacrosanctum Concilium 51).
• Three new Eucharistic Prayers alongside the Roman Canon, which was retained as Eucharistic Prayer I.
• The vernacular, in translations prepared by conferences of bishops and confirmed by Rome.
• A revised offertory, built on Jewish table blessings, in place of the older offertory prayers.
• A simplified calendar and a reduced set of rubrical repetitions, with the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last Gospel no longer part of the Order of Mass.
• Concelebration restored, communion under both kinds permitted in defined circumstances, and a wide range of options left to the celebrant.

The Critique, Stated Fairly

Catholics who resisted the reform made specific complaints, and they deserve to be stated in their own terms. They held that the revision was produced by a commission rather than grown over time, and that a liturgy assembled in a decade differs in kind from one that developed over centuries. They held that the new offertory prayers speak less explicitly of sacrifice and propitiation than the ones they replaced. They held that the breadth of options placed the shape of each celebration in the hands of the individual priest, and that this weakened the sense that the liturgy is received rather than composed. They pointed to the collapse of Gregorian chant and Latin in practice, against the plain words of the constitution. Some of these criticisms have since been made, in different language, by churchmen wholly committed to the reform, and Pope Benedict XVI's writings on the liturgy engage them at length.

The Church's judgement on the Missal itself has been consistent throughout. It is valid, it is licit, and it is the ordinary expression of the Roman Rite. Every pope since Paul VI has celebrated it. The Catechism states the underlying rule for all of this: the lex orandi and the lex credendi stand together, the Church's prayer expresses her faith, and no sacramental minister may modify the liturgy at will (CCC 1124-1125). That rule cuts against liturgical improvisation in either direction.

6. The Indults: 1971, 1984, 1988

Between the reform of 1969 and the general permission of 2007, the older Mass was celebrated under indults, which are particular permissions granted against the general law. Three of them shaped the movement.

1971: England and Wales

Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, petitioned Pope Paul VI for permission to retain occasional celebrations of the older Mass in England and Wales, and the permission was granted in 1971. The petition is remembered as the Agatha Christie indult because a group of writers, scholars, and artists, among them the novelist Agatha Christie, had signed a public appeal asking that the ancient rite be preserved as a work of Western culture. The permission was narrow in scope and set the pattern for what followed: the older Mass as a concession, granted by authority, for particular groups.

1984: Quattuor Abhinc Annos

On 3 October 1984 the Congregation for Divine Worship issued the letter Quattuor Abhinc Annos, giving diocesan bishops the faculty to permit the 1962 Missal for priests and faithful who requested it. The permission carried conditions. Those making the request had to make it publicly clear that they had no part with those who question the legitimacy and doctrinal soundness of the Roman Missal promulgated by Paul VI in 1970. Celebrations were to take place outside parish churches, at times the bishop set, using the 1962 text without mixing it with the newer rite. The doctrinal condition is important for understanding everything after it. From the beginning, Rome distinguished attachment to the older form from rejection of the newer one, and granted permission for the first while refusing it to the second.

1988: The Consecrations and Ecclesia Dei

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, consecrated four bishops on 30 June 1988 without a papal mandate, after negotiations with the Holy See had produced a protocol that he then declined to carry through. Pope Saint John Paul II responded on 2 July 1988 with the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei adflicta, which declared the consecrations a schismatic act, stated that the excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See had been incurred by those involved, and appealed to those attached to the older liturgy to remain in full communion. The same document established the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and asked bishops for a wide and generous application of the 1984 permission.

Priests who left the Society rather than accept the consecrations founded the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter in 1988, and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest followed in 1990. These communities use the older books with full canonical standing, and they are the reason a Catholic today can attend the older Mass in unquestioned communion with Rome.

7. Summorum Pontificum (2007)

Summorum Pontificum is the motu proprio by which Pope Benedict XVI, on 7 July 2007, made the 1962 Missal generally available in the Latin Church, effective 14 September 2007. Its governing idea was that the two missals are two usages of the single Roman Rite. Article 1 called the Missal of Paul VI the ordinary expression of the lex orandi and the Missal of 1962 an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi, and stated that the older Missal was never abrogated.

What It Permitted

• Any priest of the Latin Rite could celebrate with the 1962 Missal without permission from anyone, in Masses celebrated without a congregation, and the faithful could ask to be admitted to such celebrations.
• In parishes where a stable group of faithful attached to the older tradition existed, the pastor was to willingly accede to their requests for the older Mass, taking care that the good of the whole parish was served (article 5).
• The older ritual could be used for baptisms, marriages, penance, and anointing where the good of souls suggested it, and confirmation by the bishop.
• Recourse to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei was available where a pastor or bishop declined a request.

In a letter to the bishops of the world accompanying the document, Benedict XVI explained his intention. He wrote that what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and cannot be suddenly prohibited altogether or judged harmful. He also said plainly that the two forms would not lead to any division in the Church's lex credendi, and that the Missal of Paul VI remained the normal form. In 2011 the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei issued the instruction Universae Ecclesiae, clarifying the application of the motu proprio, including that a stable group could be made up of people from different parishes and that priests using the Missal needed sufficient Latin and knowledge of the rite.

What It Produced

The years after 2007 saw the older Mass spread into ordinary parishes, in many places celebrated by diocesan priests alongside the parish's usual schedule. Communities formed, families with children became a visible presence, and the traditional institutes drew seminarians. Alongside that growth, and in some places tangled with it, a public argument developed in which the reformed liturgy and the Second Vatican Council were treated by some as errors to be undone. Both of those outcomes are part of the record, and the second is the one the next document names.

8. Traditionis Custodes (2021)

Traditionis Custodes is the motu proprio issued by Pope Francis on 16 July 2021, taking effect immediately, which restored to diocesan bishops the sole authority to permit the 1962 Missal. It followed a consultation of the world's bishops on the application of Summorum Pontificum, conducted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2020, whose results the Pope said had prompted him to act.

The Articles

• Article 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.
• Article 2. The diocesan bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the liturgical life of his particular Church, regulates the liturgical celebrations of his diocese, and it belongs to him to authorise the use of the 1962 Missal, following the norms of the Apostolic See.
• Article 3. In dioceses where groups already celebrate with the older Missal, the bishop is to determine that these groups do not deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform, of the dictates of the Second Vatican Council, and of the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs; to designate places where the faithful may gather, without erecting new personal parishes; to set the days; to have the readings proclaimed in the vernacular in translations approved by the bishops' conferences; and to appoint a priest as delegate for these celebrations.
• Article 4. Priests ordained after the publication of the document who wish to use the 1962 Missal must submit a formal request to the diocesan bishop, who is to consult the Apostolic See before granting authorisation.
• Article 5. Priests already celebrating with the older Missal are to request from the bishop the authorisation to continue.
• Articles 6 and 7. Institutes of consecrated life erected by the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei pass to the competence of the dicastery for religious, and the dicasteries for divine worship and for religious exercise the authority of the Holy See in these matters.
• Article 8. Previous norms, instructions, permissions, and customs that do not conform to this motu proprio are abrogated.

The Reason Given

In the letter to bishops published with the document, Pope Francis wrote that the concessions of his predecessors had been used to widen the gaps and reinforce the divergences that the earlier permissions were meant to heal, and that the responses of the bishops revealed a use of the older Missal characterised in places by a rejection of the Second Vatican Council and of the liturgical books issued under its authority. He set out the aim of the new norms as the restoration of unity in a single expression of the Roman Rite, and he asked the bishops to care pastorally for the faithful attached to the older form while leading them back to the celebration of the reformed liturgy.

What Followed

Three later acts belong to the same story. On 18 December 2021 the Congregation for Divine Worship published Responsa ad dubia, answering questions bishops had raised about applying the motu proprio, including the use of parish churches, the use of the older ritual books for other sacraments, and the permissions required by priests. On 29 June 2022 Pope Francis issued the apostolic letter Desiderio Desideravi on the liturgical formation of the People of God, which sets out a positive account of what the reform was for and asks for an end to polemics about the liturgy. In February 2023 a rescript reserved certain dispensations to the Dicastery for Divine Worship, including permission to use parish churches and to authorise newly ordained priests.

Application has varied a great deal between dioceses, because the documents leave real discretion to the bishop and bishops have exercised it differently. The practical consequence for a reader is the one stated at the top of this page: ask your own diocese. And because this is an area where the law has moved several times in fifty years, treat any summary, including this one, as a description of the documents rather than as a guarantee of what is available in your city this Sunday.

Sources: all magisterial documents cited on this page are published on vatican.va, and dates given are the dates of the documents themselves. No reliable global count exists of how many Catholics attend the older Mass or how many locations are authorised, so no attendance figures are given here.

9. How to Attend the Older Mass Licitly

Attending the Traditional Latin Mass in full communion with the Church means attending a celebration your diocesan bishop has authorised, offered by a priest who has his permission. Everything practical follows from that one test, and it is a question you are entitled to ask politely of any community you visit.

Finding One

1. Check the diocesan website first. Many dioceses list the authorised locations and Mass times directly, since the bishop is the one who designated them.
2. Call the chancery or a parish office. A diocesan office can tell you what has been approved and where, which no third-party directory can guarantee.
3. Look for the traditional institutes. The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, along with the Institute of the Good Shepherd and several monastic communities, serve many authorised locations and publish their own apostolate lists.
4. Ask the direct question. Is this celebration authorised by the diocesan bishop. A community in good standing will answer plainly and will not be offended by the question.

Your Sunday Obligation

The Sunday obligation is satisfied by assisting at Mass celebrated in any Catholic rite, so a Catholic who attends an authorised celebration of the older Mass has fulfilled it, and so has a Catholic who attends the parish Mass in the vernacular. The obligation attaches to the Mass rather than to a form of it. A Catholic with no authorised older Mass within reach is under no burden of conscience for going to the parish down the road, and should go.

Your First Time

• Take a hand missal with the Latin and English in parallel columns, or borrow one from the table at the door. Follow the ordinary at first and let the propers go.
• Expect long silences. The Canon is prayed quietly. The silence is the point, and the standard counsel of the older tradition is to pray along, offering yourself with the offering on the altar.
• Watch the congregation for when to kneel, stand, and sit. Customs differ slightly between communities.
• Communion is received kneeling and on the tongue, at the rail where there is one. Approach when your row does. If you are unsure of your standing to receive, or you have not been to confession in some time, go to confession first, which is good counsel before any Mass.
• Dress as you would for anything you take seriously. Many women wear a veil at these celebrations. No rule obliges you to, and no one will mind either way.

If There Is None Near You

A great deal of what draws people to the older Mass is available in the ordinary form, and asking your pastor for it costs nothing. Latin for the Ordinary, Gregorian chant for the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, celebration ad orientem, communion at a rail, sung Vespers, incense, silence after communion: all of these are permitted in the Missal of Paul VI, and Sacrosanctum Concilium itself asks for the chant and the Latin ordinary. Our guides to the liturgical calendar, liturgical vestments, and liturgical colours cover the shared inheritance both forms carry.

10. The Line Between Attachment and Rejection

The line that matters in this whole subject runs between loving the older Mass and denying the Church's judgement about the newer one. A Catholic may prefer the 1962 Missal, attend it every Sunday it is available, raise children on it, and find the reformed liturgy less nourishing, and remain in complete good standing. A Catholic who holds that the Mass of Paul VI is invalid, or that the Second Vatican Council taught error, or that the popes who promulgated these books lost their office, has crossed from preference into a position the Church rejects.

The Validity of the Mass of Paul VI

The Catholic Church teaches that the Mass of Paul VI is valid, licit, and the ordinary expression of the Roman Rite. That teaching rests on the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the sacred liturgy, exercised in Missale Romanum in 1969 and reaffirmed by every pope since, and on the principle stated at Trent that the Church holds power over the administration of the sacraments in what does not touch their substance. The matter, form, and intention of the Eucharist are present in the reformed rite, the Roman Canon it inherits is the oldest prayer in the Latin liturgy, and the sacrifice offered is the one sacrifice of Christ (CCC 1367).

The Society of Saint Pius X

The Society of Saint Pius X holds that the Council's teaching on religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality broke with prior magisterium, and that the reformed liturgy, while valid when the sacramental essentials are present, is harmful in what it fails to express about the sacrifice of the Mass. The Society understands itself as Catholic, loyal to the papacy in principle, and in a state of necessity that justifies operating without regular canonical mission. That is its own account, and it should be understood before it is answered.

The canonical facts stand as follows. Pope Benedict XVI remitted the excommunications of the four bishops consecrated in 1988 in January 2009, and the Holy See stated at the same time that the Society has no canonical status in the Church and that its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries. Pope Francis granted the Society's priests the faculty to absolve validly and licitly during the Jubilee of Mercy in 2015, and extended that faculty afterwards in Misericordia et Misera (2016). In 2017 the Holy See provided for the validity of marriages celebrated in Society chapels through delegation given by the local ordinary. Doctrinal discussions between the Society and Rome have taken place without producing a canonical agreement. Our guide to the SSPX and the question of schism works through that canonical history in full.

On attending Society Masses, the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei answered private inquiries over the years to the effect that these Masses are valid, that assisting at one can satisfy the Sunday obligation, and that habitual attendance is nevertheless inadvisable where it involves adhering to the Society's stance against the Council and the reformed liturgy or gradually separating a family from the life of the diocese. A Catholic weighing this should take the practical question seriously: where will your children learn what the Church teaches about herself.

Sedevacantism

Sedevacantism is the position that the Roman see has been vacant since some point in the twentieth century, on the ground that a true pope could not have promulgated the acts in question. The Catholic answer is the promise of Christ that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church he builds on Peter (Matthew 16:18), together with the visibility of the Church, which cannot subsist as a body without a knowable hierarchy. A position that requires the Church to have vanished for decades in order to preserve one's own judgement about the liturgy has abandoned the doctrine it set out to defend. Our guide to the papacy and the office of Peter covers what Catholics hold about the office and its limits.

11. What Draws Catholics to the Older Mass

Catholics drawn to the Traditional Latin Mass usually describe the same handful of things, and taking those descriptions seriously is the beginning of any honest treatment of this subject. The attachment is rarely about nostalgia, since many of those attending today were born long after 1970 and have no memory of the older liturgy at all.

What They Say They Find

• Silence. The quiet Canon gives a stretch of time in which nothing is said to the congregation and the congregation is left to pray. People who have found prayer difficult often say this is where it became possible.
• The sense of sacrifice. The older prayers speak explicitly and repeatedly of offering, propitiation, and the immaculate victim. Catholics attached to the rite say this vocabulary formed their understanding of what the Mass is.
• Orientation. Priest and people facing the same way reads visibly as a body turned toward God together rather than a group turned toward a speaker.
• Stability. The texts do not change from parish to parish or priest to priest. A traveller finds the same Mass everywhere, and a child learns it by repetition.
• Beauty. Chant, polyphony, ceremonial, and silence are the ordinary condition of these celebrations rather than an achievement of an unusually good parish.
• Continuity. The sense of praying words that Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, and the martyrs prayed carries real weight for people who feel cut off from Christian history.

The Answer From the Other Side, Also Stated Fairly

Catholics committed to the reform answer that the Council sought exactly what most parishes had lacked: Scripture read broadly rather than in a narrow annual cycle, prayers understood by those praying them, and a congregation genuinely doing the liturgy rather than watching it. They point out that the Roman Canon remains available in the reformed Missal, that Latin and chant remain permitted and encouraged, and that reverent celebration is a matter of how the reformed books are used. They add that a form of the Mass received by the overwhelming majority of the world's Catholics for over fifty years cannot be treated as a rupture with the faith without judging the Church herself.

Both descriptions can be true at once. A Catholic can hold that the reform was legitimate and that its execution in many places was poor, and this is close to what Benedict XVI argued for decades as a theologian. Recovering silence, chant, and reverence is work that belongs to the whole Roman Rite. For the wider landscape of Christian bodies and their worship, see our map of the Christian denominations and our guide to the Eastern Orthodox churches, whose ancient liturgies have never been through a reform of this kind and whose experience is frequently cited in this argument.

12. How to Live With This Question

A Catholic living inside this dispute has a short list of duties, and following them will keep almost anyone out of trouble. They are ordinary Catholic duties rather than special ones invented for a liturgical argument.

Practical Counsel

• Obey your bishop. He is the moderator of the liturgical life of your diocese, in the reformed law and in the older one alike. Petition him, write to him respectfully, and accept his decision.
• Go to Mass. Every Sunday, whatever form is available. Missing Mass to make a point about the liturgy inverts the whole reason for caring about the liturgy.
• Drop the contempt. Sneering at the parish Mass, or at the people who love the older one, poisons the argument on both sides. Contempt for other Catholics is a sin regardless of which missal one prefers.
• Learn the Mass you attend. Read the prayers, learn the words of the Canon, follow the readings. Most Catholics in either camp could describe their preference more fluently than they could explain the offertory.
• Keep the sacraments regular. Confession, communion, prayer at home. The liturgy war has claimed a lot of Catholics who won the argument and stopped praying.
• Pray for unity, which is the thing Christ asked for on the night before he died (John 17:21).

The Urgency That Belongs Here

No one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), and the account each of us gives will be an account of a life rather than of a liturgical opinion. The question that will matter is whether you went to Mass, whether you confessed your sins, whether you forgave, whether you fed the hungry, whether you prayed. Whichever missal you love, use the time you have. A Catholic who spends ten years arguing about the rite and does not pray it has lost the years.

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