[Catholic Caucus] Latin Mass suppression left this monastery to face ‘sacramental euthanasia’

LifeSite News ^ | August 17, 2026 | Gaetano Masciullo

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[Catholic Caucus] Latin Mass suppression left this monastery to face ‘sacramental euthanasia’

Dom Alcuin Reid, founding prior of a traditional Benedictine monastery, called Latin Mass restrictions a product of 'narrow-minded Vatican II extremists.'

A French Benedictine monastery revealed that Pope Francis’s restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) left it without the ordinations needed to sustain its sacramental life.

On August 16, Ad Vaticanum published an interview with Dom Alcuin Reid, founding prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Provence, France. Reid described how Pope Francis’ 2021 restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass affected his community, saying the monastery ultimately accepted ordinations from another Catholic bishop after its own were blocked.

“We would be a monastery that was fatally haemorrhaging, and we simply cannot permit that,” Reid said, explaining why the community continued its traditional liturgical life despite the restrictions.

Reid said that Traditionis Custodes, together with what he described as the “ongoing persecution” of the monastery’s founding bishop, Dominique Rey, prevented ordinations that the community needed. The monastery celebrates ordinations according to the older rites, including the minor orders, and he said the resulting situation left the community facing “the threat of sacramental euthanasia.”

“A monastery without Mass — the beating heart of our life — is no living monastery at all,” Reid added.

After “prayer and consultation,” the monastery therefore decided to receive ordinations from another Catholic bishop, according to Reid. He acknowledged that the decision carried “canonical consequences,” but said the community considered preserving its sacramental life preferable to allowing it to die involuntarily. He added that the monastery is working with the relevant authorities to regularize its situation.

Asked whether Pope Leo XIV might eventually remove the restrictions imposed by Traditionis Custodes, Reid said he could not predict “how, when or whether” the Pope would act. He said, however, that he prays for the Pope every day and hopes he will find a way to address what Reid called “the open wound in the liturgical life of the Church” inherited from his predecessor.

Recalling Cardinal Robert Sarah’s recent statement, according to which Francis’ motu proprio “now simply needs to be set aside,” Reid also defined Traditionis Custodes as “one of the last desperate and embarrassing salvos of a particular generation of narrow-minded Vatican II extremists.”

Reid pointed to Pope Benedict XVI’s earlier statement that what previous generations regarded as sacred “remains sacred and great for us too,” adding that Benedict argued the Church should preserve the “riches” developed in her faith and prayer and “give them their proper place."

He also acknowledged that many Catholics were waiting for concrete measures from Pope Leo, and that the delay led others to become critical of the new pontificate.

Speaking about the post-conciliar liturgical reform, Reid argued that it went far beyond what Sacrosanctum Concilium mandated, a point he says is now firmly established in serious scholarship. While affirming the Council’s genuine principles, he insists that these were never properly implemented because clergy and faithful were not first formed in the spirit of the liturgy, as the Council itself required.

The rush to innovate produced a rupture between the Council’s intentions and the reforms enacted, leaving the modern rites weakened at their foundations. Reid notes that attempts to enrich the Novus Ordo with more traditional elements are positive, “but it does not solve the fundamental problem,” especially after official resistance to any “reform of the reform” and the claim that the modern rite is the sole form of the Roman Rite.

Ironically, he added, the very principles of Sacrosanctum Concilium are most fully realized in celebrations of the older, unreformed liturgy, where the faithful participate deeply and fruitfully, raising the uncomfortable question of whether the post-conciliar “massive and disproportionate structural change to the liturgy … was necessary at all.”

READ: Cardinal Burke: Catholics must ‘fight’ for Latin Mass ‘even at the cost of suffering’

At the monastery itself, Reid said, the liturgical practice did not change. The community continues to celebrate the older rites in their entirety, which he described as its “raison d’être.” Each day, the monks sing the eight traditional hours of the Divine Office, including Prime, and celebrate conventual Mass according to the older Roman and monastic uses. The community also observes Ember Days and Rogation processions, publicly venerates its relics on saints’ feast days and celebrates Holy Week according to the pre-1955 rites.

The monastery was “amongst the first” to receive permission from the Holy See to use those older Holy Week rites. Its younger members also decided several years ago to restore the singing of Matins entirely to Gregorian melodies rather than reciting it on a monotone.

The monastery was established at the invitation of then-Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon. After initially operating from a diocesan presbytery, the community purchased its current property in 2020: more than 80 acres outside Brignoles featuring a 10th-century Romanesque church. Reid said the monks are working with authorities on “restoration, preservation and expansion” of the historic site.

The community follows the Rule of St. Benedict’s injunction to “put nothing before the work of God” and applies to its worship the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: quantum potes, tantum aude (“dare to do as much as you can”).

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TOPICS: Catholic; Theology; Worship
KEYWORDS: dictatorpope; frankenchurch; synodalchurch; vcii

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After “prayer and consultation,” the monastery therefore decided to receive ordinations from another Catholic bishop, according to Reid. He acknowledged that the decision carried “canonical consequences,” but said the community considered preserving its sacramental life preferable to allowing it to die involuntarily. He added that the monastery is working with the relevant authorities to regularize its situation.

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