Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 11/13/2026 4:12:03 PM PST by ebb tide
What if the Catholics most frequently accused of dividing the Church are, in fact, among those most eager to belong to it? And what if Rome’s attempts to contain the traditional Latin Mass have inadvertently encouraged precisely the separatism they were intended to prevent?
Traditionalist Catholics occupy a peculiar position in the Church: attracting young families, fostering committed communities and preserving a liturgical inheritance that was once universal, while simultaneously finding themselves objects of suspicion and restriction. Yet remarkably little empirical research has examined who these Catholics actually are.
In Trads: Latin Mass Catholics in the United States, sociologists Stephen Cranney and Stephen Bullivant seek to remedy that deficiency. Drawing on surveys, interviews and fieldwork, they uncover a world more complex than either its admirers or detractors might suppose.
Bullivant, who recently discussed the research with Pope Leo XIV, spoke to the Catholic Herald about traditionalist Catholics, the contradictions of Traditionis Custodes and whether Benedict XVI’s liturgical peace might yet be recovered.
Jan C. Bentz: Stephen, your new book, Trads, has just appeared. How did the project originate?
Stephen Bullivant: I’ve known Stephen Cranney, a Latter-day Saint sociologist and demographer, for some time. We’d previously collaborated on studies concerning Theodore McCarrick’s social networks and related subjects.
A few years ago, Stephen approached me about research he was conducting through a Catholic research nonprofit. They had already surveyed Catholics who attended the traditional Latin Mass and those who did not, and were also undertaking interviews. The thought arose that these studies might form the basis of a book.
I’d written extensively about Vatican II and its aftermath, particularly in Britain and America, and had researched traditional Latin Mass Catholics in Britain. It was a world I knew reasonably well.
There was clearly a book to be written. The subject generated enormous discussion, yet remarkably little seemed to correspond to the congregations I’d actually encountered.
The sociological question was fascinating. Here was a group that, even according to its critics, appeared to be bucking wider pastoral trends. Traditional Latin Mass communities attract young Catholics and families and exhibit high levels of religious commitment. Ordinarily, these would seem precisely the characteristics the Church would wish to encourage. Yet that hasn’t always been the response.
Bentz: One striking finding is that traditional Latin Mass attendees frequently attend the Novus Ordo as well. Yet I’ve encountered bishops who insist that traditionalist Catholics must be introduced to the newer liturgy. Why shouldn’t the same principle apply in reverse? If mutual familiarity is desirable, shouldn’t Novus Ordo Catholics also be encouraged to experience the traditional Mass?
Bullivant: That’s an important point. People often imagine someone who attends the traditional Latin Mass exclusively and for whom that preference constitutes a central part of their identity. But the reality is considerably more varied.
Many regularly attend both forms. Others attend the older liturgy once a month, when travelling, or after driving several hours to reach a church. Some attend it during the week and the Novus Ordo on Sundays. The population of Catholics who value the traditional liturgy is much larger than the number attending it on any particular Sunday might suggest.
The same is true of clergy. Most traditional Latin Masses in the United States are still celebrated by diocesan priests, many of whom celebrate the Novus Ordo far more frequently.
Consider Chicago, where the traditional Mass may be permitted on the second, third and fourth Sundays of the month but not the first, and where its celebration is restricted on Christmas and Easter. The apparent assumption is that these Catholics need to be made to attend the Novus Ordo. Yet our research offers little support for the idea that most would otherwise attend the older liturgy exclusively.
The notion that traditionalists constitute an entirely separate population from ordinary Catholics is misleading. The Church ordinarily celebrates its liturgical diversity. Yet the traditional Latin Mass is frequently treated as an exception.
Bentz: I’ve noticed a curious distinction between the Society of St Pius X and the former Ecclesia Dei institutes. Within the SSPX, the liturgy seems less central to the community’s distinctive identity. Its schools, catechesis, youth activities and wider cultural life form a comprehensive Catholic environment in which the liturgy occupies its natural place.
In some Ecclesia Dei communities, by contrast, preserving the liturgy can become almost the defining characteristic of Catholic identity. Might the constant struggle to defend it risk obscuring the wider Christian life it is meant to nourish?
Bullivant: That’s a fascinating observation, and I hadn’t quite thought about it in those terms. Sociologically, it makes sense.
For an Ecclesia Dei community, the liturgy is precisely what distinguishes it from the surrounding Catholic world. For the SSPX, however, that distinction is insufficient. There may be an FSSP parish nearby celebrating exactly the same liturgy, so the Society necessarily has other reasons for understanding itself as distinct.
Historically, the SSPX was never concerned exclusively with the liturgy. For a considerable period it used the 1965 Missal, I believe, and in Archbishop Lefebvre’s earlier writings, liturgical reform appears as one issue among much wider concerns about developments within the Church.
Bentz: Does your research substantiate the concern that traditional Latin Mass attendees reject Vatican II? Is this characteristic of these communities generally?
Bullivant: The evidence suggests a much more complicated picture. The first difficulty is methodological. Traditional Latin Mass attendees are a relatively small population, making a nationally representative sample extraordinarily difficult to obtain.
A Pew Research Center study of American Catholics included thousands of respondents but only 27 who attended the traditional Latin Mass. Drawing conclusions about an entire population from such a small subgroup is problematic.
We therefore surveyed Catholics at locations where the traditional Mass was celebrated, including parishes offering both forms. This allowed us to compare attendees of the traditional Mass with Novus Ordo Catholics in the same parishes.
It’s not a perfect comparison. Those parishes may already be more conservative than American Catholicism generally. But that also helps distinguish attitudes associated specifically with the traditional liturgy from those characteristic of conservative Catholics more broadly.
What we found was that traditional Latin Mass attendees are certainly not overwhelmingly opposed to Vatican II.
When asked whether they agreed with the Council’s teachings – admittedly a peculiar question, since what does agreement with an entire council actually mean? – substantially more expressed agreement than disagreement.
At the same time, opposition was more prevalent among traditional Latin Mass attendees than among our comparison group.
Both statements are true. Those affirming Vatican II considerably outnumber those rejecting it within traditionalist communities. Equally, rejection is disproportionately represented there.
The distinction between relative and absolute proportions is crucial. If you’re looking for Catholics who reject Vatican II, you’re more likely to encounter them in traditional Latin Mass settings. But if you’re looking for the typical traditional Latin Mass attendee, rejection of Vatican II is certainly not the defining characteristic.
Bentz: Let me ask an uncomfortable question. Are people attracted to the traditional liturgy because they’re politically conservative, or does participation in these communities gradually make them more conservative?
Bullivant: They certainly skew heavily towards political conservatism, particularly towards the Republican Party. That doesn’t mean there aren’t Democrats. We interviewed some, especially in university towns.
For many, abortion is an especially important issue, including among Democrats. Massgoing American Catholics have generally tended to lean somewhat Republican, but that tendency is considerably more pronounced in traditional Latin Mass communities.
There is overlap between what attracts people to the liturgy and a broader conservative world-view: family life, traditional dress, adherence to Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. Political, theological and liturgical orientations often correlate, although never perfectly.
But when you ask people how they discovered the traditional Mass, the stories are remarkably varied. We devote an entire chapter to why people came and why they stayed.
Usually, friends invited them along, or they happened upon a church and were struck by the beauty. We encountered one young man whose interest came from his admiration for Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic who’d written about the traditional Mass. But that was exceptional.
People generally weren’t describing some grand ideological project to restore Western civilisation. Their reasons were much more immediate and personal.
Of course, we’re social beings. Spending time among conservatives may shape your outlook. You may hear sermons about abortion or other moral questions that you’d be less likely to encounter elsewhere.
So influence may run both ways, but people’s initial reasons for discovering the liturgy are often quite different from the political explanations outsiders assume.
Bentz: You and Stephen Cranney recently met Pope Leo XIV. What impression did he make? Did you find him receptive, and was there any indication of his attitude towards traditionalist Catholics?
Bullivant: He was extremely warm and welcoming. We were astonished to be granted an audience at all, and that seemed in itself a sign of openness.
He’s an extraordinarily busy man. That morning he was meeting the head of the World Bank and political leaders, yet he found 30 minutes to speak with two researchers about a forthcoming book.
He gives very little away, however. He’s not particularly chatty about his own views. He listens carefully, and I suspect that’s a very good quality in a Pope: listening to different perspectives without immediately revealing what he thinks.
As an American, he knew some of the places and contexts we discussed. He seemed thoroughly on top of his brief. We certainly didn’t have to explain who these Catholics were.
Bentz: Let me put this polemically: Are traditional Latin Mass communities places where Catholics discover a positive sense of belonging, or do they attract people whose identity is built around opposition – people who simply enjoy being contrary?
Bullivant: My experience, both through the interviews and through years of irregularly attending traditional Latin Masses myself, is overwhelmingly of warm, welcoming communities.
Much of the fieldwork is rather ordinary. You attend Mass, count the congregation, observe ages and backgrounds, and then speak with people afterwards, often over coffee and doughnuts.
What you encounter are people who love their faith and have a particular affection for a particular liturgy. They don’t strike me as radically different from Catholics attending Mass at an Oratory, whether in the older or newer form.
There are visible differences. American traditional congregations tend to dress more formally, and you see more mantillas, although that’s increasingly common among younger Catholics at the Novus Ordo too.
But you don’t feel you’ve entered an entirely different religious world.
One of the strongest themes was community. Young families spoke about finding others who took their faith seriously. In contemporary America, that can be increasingly difficult. These congregations span different ages, backgrounds and ethnicities, but people repeatedly told us: this is somewhere we feel at home.
There was also genuine hurt about how traditionalists are portrayed, including by people in Rome. We repeatedly heard variations of the same sentiment: If only they actually knew us.
People recognised the unpleasant personalities associated with traditionalism online. They encountered them on social media themselves. But they felt those individuals were being mistaken for ordinary parish life.
Some converts even encountered more hostility from nominally Catholic relatives than from committed Protestants. A Baptist relative might respect their religious commitment, even if Catholicism seemed unfamiliar. A culturally Catholic relative might instead ask, “What on earth is this?”
That sense of being misunderstood, especially by fellow Catholics, was something we encountered repeatedly.
Bentz: Given those findings, what advice would you offer a bishop responsible for traditional Latin Mass communities in his diocese?
Bullivant: First, get to know the communities themselves. A bishop may have hundreds of parishes and only a handful celebrating the traditional Mass. He may know relatively little about them beyond the stereotypes.
Of course, particular communities may have particular problems. Those should be addressed. But they cannot simply be attributed to everyone attending the traditional Mass.
We spoke with bishops who understood that Traditionis Custodes was a universal measure, addressing circumstances that might be quite different in France, Brazil or elsewhere. They knew their own communities, or at least their priests, and had no particular concerns. Some spoke very highly of those priests.
Yet Traditionis Custodes obliged bishops who hadn’t experienced a problem to address one they didn’t believe existed. They faced considerable bureaucratic difficulties simply preserving the status quo.
There are bishops who believe they have a serious problem. Perhaps some do. But for the great majority, the traditional Latin Mass is hardly their most pressing concern.
Very few bishops are lying awake thinking, “We have too many young families and young adults who take their faith seriously. How can we get rid of some of them?”
I’d encourage bishops to trust their own experience of the communities in their care rather than assume that problems alleged elsewhere necessarily exist in their dioceses.
Bentz: Historians and sociologists dislike predicting the future, but as a philosopher I’ll ask anyway. Can the liturgical peace that many experienced under Benedict XVI – or at least the movement towards it – ever return?
Bullivant: That’s a very good question. Remember that Summorum Pontificum lasted from 2007 to 2021. We think of it as the Benedict XVI era, but most of those years actually fell under Francis.
The underlying idea was that lingering divisions could best be healed by normalising the traditional Mass within ordinary parish life. Ideally, it would simply be one of the liturgical celebrations available, with its attendees participating fully in the parish.
It wouldn’t be something edgy or controversial. You might attend the traditional Mass on Tuesday simply because that’s what your parish celebrates on Tuesday. It’s part of our heritage, with particular emphases on silence and contemplation. We needn’t insist that one form is better. It’s good to have both.
Now consider the problem Traditionis Custodes was intended to address: traditionalists supposedly creating a parallel Church, attending the older liturgy exclusively and developing separatist attitudes.
Even if that diagnosis were correct – and I’m not convinced it is – surely you’d want to encourage ordinary parishes to celebrate the traditional Mass, with priests who celebrate the Novus Ordo nine times out of ten?
Instead, those are precisely the traditional Masses that have become hardest to maintain.
One of the easiest ways for a bishop to preserve provision is to establish a shrine or oratory served by the FSSP or Institute of Christ the King, where people can attend exclusively and receive all their sacraments according to the older rites.
Personally, I don’t think that’s a problem at all. But if separatism was the problem, it’s a terrible solution. At the level of pastoral strategy, it makes no sense.
As for liturgical peace, Pope Leo may already be helping simply by allowing time to pass, listening to all sides and avoiding another confrontation.
Remember the hurt. Families had attended the traditional Mass for years, encouraged by a Pope who said its wider availability was a good thing. They’d built friendships and communities. Then suddenly they’re told it’s bad for them and bad for everyone else, and perhaps they must drive another hour so their children can see their friends.
Any parish closure causes pain. Over time, some of that subsides, especially without further restrictions.
At the end of the book, we suggest constructive steps Pope Leo – or a future Pope – might take.
I don’t imagine simply repealing Traditionis Custodes would necessarily help. It could reignite the controversy as another repudiation of a predecessor. Since Paul VI – with the exception of John Paul I’s brief reign – successive popes have made significant changes concerning the traditional liturgy. That continual whiplash isn’t good for the Church. Catholics shouldn’t simply wait for the next Pope to reverse everything again.
But there are many ways to ease the situation.
One would be to return discretion to diocesan bishops. At present, certain permissions must go to Rome. The idea that someone in Rome makes detailed decisions about dioceses they’ve never heard of is extraordinary. Let local bishops decide.
Rome could also permit personal parishes again, reduce bureaucracy and signal that the traditional liturgy remains a valued part of Catholic life.
Then there’s ordinary pastoral engagement. Bishops used to visit traditional Mass communities and administer confirmations. They might need someone to guide them through the ceremonies, but that’s hardly insurmountable.
A bishop visiting a Ukrainian Catholic liturgy might also be unfamiliar with aspects of it. Yet he goes because these are Catholics in his care.
I suspect some bishops became reluctant to be photographed in mitre and vestments at traditional ceremonies after Traditionis Custodes, perhaps preferring to delegate confirmations or insist on the newer rites. That’s unfortunate.
One very simple gesture would be for Pope Leo, as Bishop of Rome, to visit a traditional Latin Mass community in his own diocese, perhaps to administer confirmations. Rome has several such communities, and the older liturgy remained relatively accessible there even under Francis.
That would signal to the wider Church that this is simply a normal part of Catholic life.
There are ways to take much of the heat out of the controversy without another dramatic legislative intervention. And I suspect those ordinary pastoral gestures could do a great deal to restore the peace everyone says they want.
Stephen Cranney and Stephen Bullivant, Trads: Latin Mass Catholics in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026), ISBN 9780197843901.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Some converts (to the TLM) even encountered more hostility from nominally Catholic relatives than from committed Protestants. A Baptist relative might respect their religious commitment, even if Catholicism seemed unfamiliar. A culturally Catholic relative might instead ask, “What on earth is this?”
That sense of being misunderstood, especially by fellow Catholics, was something we encountered repeatedly.
Without basis, without charity, Pope Francis and his advisors stripped that venerable gem away from Catholics almost entirely.
“Peter asked Jesus, “Domine, quo vadis?” which translates from Latin to “Lord, whither goest thou?” (or “Lord, where are you going?”). Jesus responded, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again,” which filled Peter with shame for escaping. Realizing his duty, Peter turned back to Rome, where he faced martyrdom and was ultimately crucified upside down.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.