A noted French Catholic historian has questioned why traditional Catholics are being marginalized, victimized and excluded instead of being consulted on why their churches are full while non-traditional ones are emptying.
Writing in the French national newspaper Le Figaro Feb. 23, Christophe Dickès pointed out that traditional Catholics make up just 4% of French Catholics and are among the few regular churchgoers in the country, but for two years permissions that the two previous popes had granted them have been removed.
“The Lenten season for traditionalist Catholics is starting with a bang,” Dickès began his commentary, referring to the recent rescript, signed on Pope Francis’ behalf by Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, which “drastically reduces the freedom of bishops and their autonomy” to allow the Traditional Latin Mass in their dioceses.
The move, which followed earlier restrictions that began in 2021 with the Pope’s motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition), was “contrary to the very spirit that the Pope wished to give to his pontificate,” said Dickès, whose latest book, Saint Peter, Mystery and Evidence, a biography of St. Peter, won a prestigious French Academy last year.
And yet traditional Catholics, he said, “catechize their children,” often within the family, “by teaching them the Ten Commandments and the prayers that Catholics should know.” These parents also “try to preserve their children from the cancel culture” by placing them, at great personal sacrifice, in private schools, knowing that education is “worth all the treasures in the world, especially religious education provided by priests.”
But Dickès, who attends both the ancient and modern liturgy, contended that those who prefer the Mass in Latin do so “not because they prefer the universal language of the Church, nor out of snobbery” but rather because of a “verticality and sacredness in the rite, improperly called Tridentine, that is less evident in the ‘communal’ rite of the Paul VI Mass.” Pointing to preferences for the priest facing east, or versus Deum (towards God), he said the faithful “pray in a silent face-to-face encounter with God.”
Traditional Catholics, he asserted, want to remain in full communion with Rome, knowing that “the Church derives her unity not from the liturgy but from the profession of the same faith,” and aware that other valid forms of the Roman Rite exist (Anglican and Zairean) as well as other rites recognized by Rome (Alexandrian, Byzantine, Armenian).
Dickès therefore questioned why those who attend the ancient form of the Roman rite are being “singled out” for restrictions, especially as they “fill their churches when many others are emptying.” Perhaps these faithful, he wondered, are what Benedict XVI called “creative minorities,” prompting “conversions and vocations.”
“The trads are making their fig tree bloom, but it doesn’t seem to matter,” he continued, as there appears to be no will to consult them. “We could have tried to receive the leaders of the [traditional] institutes and fraternities in order to listen to them,” Dickès mused, adding that they could also have been invited to better integrate themselves with the Church, just as the Society of St. Pius X and the Anglicans did during Benedict’s pontificate. Furthermore, he said traditional laity could have been invited to play a role, given the current emphasis on input from the grassroots.
“But this did not happen,” he said. “Only the superior of the Fraternity of St. Peter was received” — a reference to an exemption the Pope made to the traditional priestly fraternity a year ago — while a group of laity, led by mothers of priests concerned for the future of their sons who were called to celebrate Mass according to the older rite, last year walked nearly 1,000 miles to present a petition to the Pope.
“They were received in barely three minutes,” Dickès recalled, “a drop of hope in an ocean of indifference.” During that march, a member of the Emmanuel community, “moved by compassion,” walked a little way with the group, creating a bridge. “She was welcomed with tears,” Dickès said, “and loved in the words of Tertullian: ‘See how they love each other.’”
Dickès, who has written several books on the papacy and the Vatican, closed by mentioning the hostility many traditional Catholics experience within the Church, including the insults they receive.
“They are nihilists, we are told, or restorationists. One English critic even considers them to be the new Jansenists! They are told to recognize the Second Vatican Council when the overwhelming majority of [their accusers] have not read and will never read the Second Vatican Council. Nor will most of the faithful who attend the Paul VI Mass.
“They are criticized for their ecclesiology without asking whether the 96% of Catholics who do not practice have one,” Dickès said. “Basically, they want to re-educate them. By choice or by force.
“Synodality seems to be in fashion,” he said, “but ‘they’ have only one right: to suffer in silence.”
Edward Pentin
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