Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
I found my way into saying the Traditional Latin Mass a year after my ordination in 2018. Saying the TLM has changed my life and drawn me closer into our Lord’s sacrifice. I have suggested your book
Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright and the documentary
Mass of the Ages as resources to educate others about the significance of the TLM. The motu proprio
Traditionis Custodes has certainly shown people’s true colors when it comes to the liturgical life of the Church.
In an interview you did with Cameron O’Hearn, you mentioned that there were liturgical rites older than 200 years that
Quo Primum did not suppress, but that most of them died out over time. Do you have a list of these liturgical rites that were not suppressed by
Quo Primum but which eventually dissolved anyway? Is there also a comprehensive list of liturgical rites that
Quo Primum actually
did effectively suppress because they were younger than the two-century span he posited?
I would also love to read any academic sources on this subject to educate others on what a liturgical rite actually is. Most people do not realize how many liturgical rites exist or have existed. My hope is that the Traditional Latin Mass will not have to compete for the title “Roman Rite” and will someday simply be acknowledged as
the Roman Rite bequeathed to us from across the centuries. Indeed, I have pondered the idea of the Novus Ordo just dissolving over time, as apparently did some of these local liturgical rites, instead of a Pope someday strictly banning it. Most Catholics start scratching their heads when I suggest that the Novus Ordo is likely to lose its hold and dissolve over time, but I really believe this is true.
Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback
Dear Father,
You are one of many priests I know who have been so seized with “Eucharistic amazement” through the traditional Latin Mass that they seek to join a fully traditional society of apostolic life or religious order. You may have seen the article I wrote about a priest’s
crisis of conscience; many are they who have experienced similar awakenings.
I’m not aware of a simple list of suppressed or defunct rites (or, in most cases, more accurately “uses”), but we can say that there were many in England alone that the Reformation tragically swept away. Sarum was only the most famous. Similarly, the Mozarabic rite was nearly extinguished throughout Spain, surviving eventually only in Toledo, so in a way it can be considered a rite that died away and would have disappeared had not Cardinal Cisneros personally intervened. The rites of Lyons and of Braga were once quite prominent yet barely survive today, with just a handful of clergy who know how to do them.
It would have been ideal had Pope Francis left alone the “Pax Benedictina” of the two “forms.” Yes, one can object to the coherence of the
idea, but on the ground it was working as a
modus operandi. The “market forces,” so to speak, would have slowly but surely increased the share of the TLM, and the NOM would eventually have peacefully given up the ghost—especially because younger clergy would keep nudging it closer and closer to the TLM until a smooth adoption of the old rite would, in fact, be the logical
and pastorally appropriate step. But the late pope allowed himself to be persuaded (or maybe he really believed it) that an all-out war against the TLM was necessary to rid the Church of the last impediment to the glorious revolution marked by Vatican II and its (putative) reforms, and so, now, we will be in the trenches for a while, and the stakes will be higher. Somehow this too is in God’s plan.
I posed your question to another learned fellow, who wrote this interesting reply:
“Basically,
every diocese in Latin Christendom had its own use, plus independent monasteries and monastic congregations, plus religious orders, plus some important collegiate churches. Look at the list of uses at
Usuarium: it’s huge! Of course, often several dioceses would share the same use, differing only in patronal feasts, and some of the newer dioceses such as in Finland and the Baltic just copied the Dominican use (also adding patronal feasts), so one would have to determine what constitutes an independent “use” and by what standards one may differentiate between uses—a question that exercises many a fine mind. Another difficulty is that a large number of pre-Tridentine books have not survived the ravages of time, especially in smaller dioceses, so we have precious little information about how the liturgy was celebrated there. Generally,
no diocese outside of Italy imported their books from Rome, prior to
Quo Primum; smaller and poorer dioceses imported them from bigger neighboring dioceses, almost always the metropolitan See.
“To carry out the project, one would have to determine
when and
why each diocese adopted the Roman rite, and what it means concretely to adopt the Roman rite—as many French dioceses at least amended their books
ad Romani formam or
ex decreto concilii Tridentini without actually outright adopting the
Breviarium Romanum. But at any rate, any diocese that was itself older than 200 years would have been free to keep its own use. St Pius V’s bull was probably aimed at novelties such as the Quiñones breviary and the Ferrari hymnal (both of which,
nota bene, had received papal approbation from his predecessors!) rather than against any local use as such.
“The only scholar I know who has even attempted an overview of this transition to the Roman rite is Dom Guéranger in his
Institutions liturgiques: he not only gives detailed information about the French dioceses but also discusses, in more general terms, dioceses in the rest of Christendom. (Happily, Os Justi Press has published the meatiest parts of Gueranger’s
Liturgical Institutions.)
“Based on Guéranger’s research, I’d say one of the most important reasons many dioceses changed to the Roman rite was financial considerations; it was cheaper to buy the Tridentine books than to publish their own, although it is surprising how many non-French dioceses did
not adopt the Roman books until as late as the 19th century, such as the city and region of Cologne. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that many dioceses and religious orders experienced pressure to adopt the Roman books, despite what St Pius V actually said. (The ‘Spirit of the Trent,’ if you will!)
“An attempt to list
all the proper uses would therefore be almost impossible without a lot of research, and in any case it would end up being mostly a list of all the dioceses that existed in the late Middle Ages.
“A final note about the term ‘uses’: liturgical uses are probably comparable to languages, in the sense that before the erection of firm borders between European nation-states there were seldom strict boundaries between languages, but rather a continuum existed that makes it difficult to mark where exactly one language stops and another one begins. And like languages, there were several ‘dialects’ of what one might classify as a single liturgical use. But no one has yet ventured to identify and classify all the liturgical dialects of Latin Christendom.”
With my very best regards,
Dr. Kwasniewski
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| From a Sarum Rite Mass in Illinois, 2025, done with local episcopal permission |
Dear Dr. K,
Your colleague has provided much insight about the defunct liturgical rites. I realize that finding a complete list of former rites would be difficult considering that Latin Christendom had many dioceses and religious orders. Taking a look at Dom Gueranger’s
Institutions liturgiques should provide some insight into what content these former rites contained. I’m delighted to hear that a translation has finally been published. It sounds like a keeper for my liturgical library.
I do believe St. Pius V was correct in promulgating his bull
Quo Primum, considering how many local rites or uses there were. The Protestant Revolution was wreaking havoc in Europe and there was a need to make sure the liturgy was teaching Catholics what the Church actually believed. Making possible the adoption of a unified way of worship was crucial for handing down the Faith in the midst of this religious revolution spreading across Europe. Studying the content of the defunct liturgical rites might give us insight into why certain parts of Europe were better able to, or more eager to, accept the Missal of St. Pius V than others. Did these rites already look similar to the TLM? Were there unworthy novelties that needed to be rooted out? Were certain regions able to adapt quicker than others?
The late Msgr. Klaus Gamber hints in his book
The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background that the Novus Ordo essentially fosters a creation of multiple rites due to the vast amount of options in the missal: “As we all know, we now have an abundance of individual ‘rites,’ since so many priests now design their own liturgy, just as they please. In this environment, can we really talk about a unity of a liturgical rite?” (p. 95).
I believe that studying the vast number of defunct liturgical rites can teach us about how to promote the TLM amidst a myriad of local “rites” that the Novus Ordo has
de facto created. The options of the Novus Ordo create multiple variations of the sacred liturgy that Catholics deal with on a regular basis; this, added to linguistic differences, yields a confusing and chaotic map. Perhaps studying how the TLM conquered (as it were) a plethora of local rites would yield strategies beneficial to us today.
Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback
(I must say, Father raises here a very interesting parallel I hadn’t thought of before: how today’s situation of plurality might be compared to that of the late medieval period, suggesting the desirability of a new imposition of
the once and future Roman Rite. May God someday bestow this immense gift on us by the hands of a future St. Pius V!)
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