Can the Vatican Ban the Latin Mass? Catechism Says “No”

Lately in Rome, the city where rumors are often reliable news, murmurs have been circulating that the Vatican may soon impose a more rigorous edict of suppression for the Traditional Latin Mass, and perhaps for other rites as well (e.g., the sacraments and divine office).

Should such an edict appear, it will once again raise two major questions of “practical theology” for universal debate, namely: (a) Does the Roman Pontiff have authority to prohibit the offering or attendance of the traditional Roman Rite? (b) If the pope were to declare such a prohibition (validly or not), would the faithful be obliged in conscience to comply, per the virtue of holy obedience?

In lieu of an extensive theological treatment, we might engage the simple wisdom of any First Communicant and “look it up in the catechism.”

Testimony of Traditional Catechisms

After thousands of hours analyzing scores of catechisms from across the centuries,¹ the current state of research behind the Tradivox project indicates that, whereas many catechisms have answered the second question (and/or the first only indirectly), only one official Catholic catechism has ever answered both questions directly.

Before exploring those answers, we should point out that over the past few generations, the virtue of obedience has been widely conflated with external compliance—especially with the directives of the higher clergy.² Although the continuing scandal of clerical abuse and cover-ups has rightly shaken this simplistic conception, one needn’t look further than the great catechisms of yesteryear to find the notion of “obedience=compliance” flatly rejected. Over the past few generations, the virtue of obedience has been widely conflated with external compliance—especially with the directives of the higher clergy.Tweet This

Instead, perennial Catholic catechesis maintains that we must respectfully comply with the commands of all legitimate superiors in the family, state, and Church unless they are inducements to sin. While the explanations and examples of what qualifies as a sinful command provide a fascinating study in the catechetical tradition (something beyond the scope of this article), we may sum them up neatly: any order that undermines or contradicts right reason, natural or positive divine law, or the received doctrine, morals, and rites of the Church must not be obeyed.³

So striking are the assertions of some old catechisms on this score that today’s less-informed Catholic may find them a bit jarring.

Take the catechism of the world-renowned Jesuit St. Peter Canisius: familiar with hierarchs that harmed Catholic liturgy and undermined right doctrine, Canisius was sent to minister in the archdiocese of Cologne when it was still being governed by the heretical Archbishop Hermann von Wied. In his Large Catechism, written around that time, Canisius would write reprovingly of those who contemn the Church’s customary teaching or rites of worship,⁴ and when asking: “What conception ought we to have of evil priests?” he answers:

We do owe faith and obedience unto those only who, being lawfully ordained and sent by bishops, do profess the sound doctrine of the Church. But of others we must carefully beware, as of enemies and pestiferous persons.⁵

When compared to the overblown “blind obedience” mindset that later became common in the Church (due in part to Jesuit influence, ironically), this can sound more like a declaration of Protestantism or ecclesiastical anarchy than an articulation of Catholic faith and morals. Even so, it comes from a Doctor of the Church and the patron saint of catechists; and indeed, it was the standard fare of Catholic schoolrooms in former times.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, that venerable grandaddy of conciliar catechisms (and still the most authoritative catechism in print), in its overview of the nature and limits of virtuous obedience, similarly affirms:

While it may seem strange, we are not excused from highly honoring [wicked pastors] even when they show themselves hostile and implacable toward us.… However, should their commands be wicked or unjust, they should not be obeyed, since in such a case they rule not according to their rightful authority, but according to injustice and perversity.⁶

Trent being highly indebted to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, we should also cite the Angelic Doctor’s own catechesis on this point—which, in a rather surprising comparison, equates obedience to unjust commands with a kind of idolatry:

By their actions, [some] show that they believe in many gods…. In the same category are all those who obey temporal rulers more than God, in that which they ought not; such actually set these up as gods.⁷

Heirs of Aquinas, two eminent Dominicans would also write superb catechisms just a few years before the French Revolution. In them, the faulty commands of superiors—even popes—are held as decrees that must not be obeyed, yet without necessarily vitiating the authority of the superior.⁸

Framing such noncompliance as a positive moral duty would become increasingly common with the rise of secular states, and among the countless other examples that could be cited, we can end with the esteemed catechism of Fr. Joseph Deharbe. First appearing in German just before the turn of the 20th century,⁹ it reminded students the world over:

When are parents, superiors, and sovereigns not to be obeyed? When they command anything unlawful before God. ‘We ought to obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29). Examples: Joseph in the house of Potiphar; Susanna; the three young men at Babylon; the seven Machabees; the apostles before the council.¹⁰

Catechism Answers Now

This same framework of “limited obedience” is still retained in the most recent (2018) edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Although not without other doctrinal difficulties,¹¹ this text similarly affirms that in all societies, authority “must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good.”¹² It continues:

A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law. Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence.¹³

Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience.¹⁴

While these principles obviously apply to our second question of whether a ban on the Latin Mass or other elements of the Roman Rite would be morally binding, they still do not answer the first—that is, whether a pope holds the authority to even decree such a prohibition.

There is one catechism, however, that offers robust answers to both: Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith (2023), which stands as the first canonically-approved catechism to ever engage these questions in detail. 

Credo, issued under imprimatur by Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan and hailed around the world as a brilliant summary of faith and morals for our time, provides answers that are eminently clear, concise, and direct—warranting citation without further commentary:

Is the pope obliged to faithfully maintain the Church’s traditional liturgical rites?

Yes. The early medieval Papal Oath affirms: “I promise to keep inviolate the discipline and the liturgy of the Church as I have found them and as they were transmitted by my holy Predecessors,” and the Papal Oath decreed by the Council of Constance echoes: “I will follow and observe in every way the rite handed down of the ecclesiastical sacraments of the Catholic Church.”¹⁵

Can a pope abrogate a liturgical rite of immemorial custom in the Church?

No. Just as a pope cannot forbid or abrogate the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed or substitute a new formula for them, neither can he abrogate traditional, millennium-old rites of Mass and the sacraments or forbid their use. This applies as much to Eastern as to Western rites.¹⁶

Could the traditional Roman Rite ever be legitimately forbidden for the entire Church?

No. It rests upon divine, apostolic, and ancient pontifical usage, and bears the canonical force of immemorial custom; it can never be abrogated or forbidden.¹⁷

Must we comply with the prohibition of traditional Catholic liturgical rites?

No. “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. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.” The rites of venerable antiquity form a sacred and constitutive part of the common patrimony of the Church, and not even the highest ecclesiastical authority has power to proscribe them.¹⁸

Is any act of disobedience to a command of the pope by itself schismatic?

No. One is not schismatic if he resists a pope or refuses to obey a particular teaching or command of his that is manifestly contrary to natural or divine law, or that would harm or undermine the integrity of the Catholic Faith or the sacredness of the liturgy. In such cases, disobedience and resistance to the pope is permissible and sometimes obligatory.¹⁹

For decades, Catholic and non-Catholics²⁰ alike have been confused by a strange and imposed sense of “forbidding” made to surround the traditional Roman Rite—the same rite once universally treasured as most holy, most praiseworthy, most worthy of devotion; the love of countless saints and mystics, “the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven.”²¹

Thankfully, if a Catholic should ever need to defend his sacred heritage from misguided attempts to suppress it in the future, he now has a reliable Catholic catechism to reference for support.

1. For the most outstanding classical catechisms republished as a legacy hardback series, see Seng, Aaron, ed. Tradivox Catholic Catechism Index. 20 vols. Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2020–25.
2. Anyone seeking a further study on this virtue and its relevance today would be well rewarded by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s True Obedience in the Church (2022).
3. This obviously leaves aside the relevant but more complex considerations of personal conscience.
4. What is to be thought of such as reject and make no account of the traditions of the Church? These doth the word of God reprove and condemn when it appointeth traditions to be observed.… They resist the power and ordinance of God, and purchase damnation unto themselves thereby.… The customs of the Church, especially those that are not against faith, are so to be observed, as they were delivered from our ancestors.” Peter Canisius, Large Catechism, in Tradivox, 9:57–58.
5. Ibid, 129.
6. Pope Pius V, Catechism of the Council of Trent, in Tradivox, 7:435.
7. Thomas Aquinas, The Catechetical Instructions of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Tradivox, 6:28.
8. “[We are obliged] to love and honor our parents and superiors, whether ecclesiastical or civil; to be obedient to them both in word and deed…in everything that is not contrary to the commandments of God or the Church: for if their commands should be against either, it would not be at all permitted to obey them” (Andrew Donlevy, The Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in Tradivox, 5:35). “Some popes have abused their power by carrying their claims higher than justice or conscience would allow.… Whilst men are peccable (as popes are) they may abuse their authority; but to infer from the abuse of power, a forfeiture of all just authority granted by God, is as downright nonsense as to think that parents have forfeited all divine and natural right over their children, because many have exceeded in the exercise of it” (Thomas Burke, A Catechism Moral and Controversial, in Tradivox, 5:211).
9. Deharbe’s catechism was among the most ubiquitous in print from the 1850s to World War II, with editions in virtually every Western language, and many Eastern as well.
10. Joseph Deharbe, “A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion,” in Tradivox, 14:304.
11. Something this author has addressed elsewhere in the pages of Crisis Magazine.
12. Pope John Paul II, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2019), n. 1902.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid, n. 1903.
15. Athanasius Schneider, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2023), 314.
16. Ibid, 315.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid, 185.
19. Ibid, 79.
20. The run-up to the famous “Agatha Christie Indult” offered an early and striking illustration of non-Catholic consternation at the prospective prohibition of the Traditional Latin Mass.
21. The oft-quoted accolade of the great Fr. Frederick William Faber (1814–1863).