Defending Tradition: The Struggle for the Latin Mass Today

By the Titular Archbishop of Selsey

It is a curious thing, that the Church which once converted the world now seems intent on converting herself—away from what she once proclaimed, away from what she once adored. The recent episode in Cleveland, where the Holy See graciously “permits” two parishes to continue the traditional Latin Mass for two more years, is but the latest act in a long and weary play.

The faithful who have endured fifty years of exile—praying in borrowed chapels, basements, barns, and makeshift sanctuaries—are once again treated as troublesome guests at their own family table. They are fed with permissions, not sacraments; appeased with temporary “indults,” not fatherly assurances. When the shepherd’s staff becomes a bureaucratic pen, mercy turns to management, and the faithful are made to feel as tenants in their Father’s house.

The Fickleness of Policy and the Constancy of Faith

Since Traditionis Custodes, the Church has witnessed a remarkable inversion of pastoral principle. Where once shepherds strove to preserve unity in diversity, we now find diversity enforced in the name of a counterfeit unity. What is presented as “walking together” has too often become walking in circles—bishops issuing contradictory decrees, permissions granted then rescinded, tolerance followed by reprisal.

The faithful who love the ancient Mass are told one day that they are “custodians of division,” and the next that their devotion is a “gift to the Church.” They are praised for their reverence, then punished for their fidelity. It is a cycle of baiting and gaslighting—confusing, exhausting, and profoundly uncharitable. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and yet the very walls of tradition are being deliberately shaken by those who claim to protect it.

The Nature of True Obedience

Obedience in the Catholic sense has never meant servile compliance with novelty. It means docility to the truth, to the perennial faith once delivered to the saints. It was not obedience to error that sanctified Athanasius or preserved the Church in the Arian crisis, but obedience to God over men. So too today, the faithful who cling to the Mass of Ages do so not from rebellion but from fidelity—to Christ, to His Sacrifice, and to the unbroken voice of the Church through the centuries.

We obey the living Magisterium insofar as it is in harmony with the Deposit of Faith. When it departs from that harmony—when it demands acceptance of ambiguity as doctrine or novelty as norm—then silence and steadfastness become the truest form of obedience. To “recognise and resist” is not to abandon Peter, but to uphold the faith he was commanded to guard.

Why We Keep Our Distance

For this reason, the Old Roman Apostolate and the Priestly Society of St Pius X maintain a cautious distance from those structures which have allowed the faith and liturgy to be compromised. This is not separation born of pride, but of prudence. We cannot build upon shifting sand, nor pledge fidelity to documents that redefine truth by the fashions of the age.

The Tradition cannot be negotiated, parceled out by diocesan committees, or measured by Roman indulgence. It belongs not to any particular pontificate, but to the Mystical Body itself. The Mass of our forefathers is not an “extraordinary form”; it is the ordinary voice of the Church’s prayer across the centuries. To preserve it is not an act of nostalgia but an act of conscience.

The Light Beyond the Eclipse

What, then, are we to make of these alternating gestures—approval and suppression, concession and chastisement? They are the tremors of an institution in confusion, uncertain whether to embrace its inheritance or erase it. Yet the eclipse of truth is never its extinction.

There will come a time, perhaps sooner than many think, when the young priests who now whisper the Latin Mass in borrowed chapels will be the bishops of a new generation. Then, the Tradition will again be spoken aloud, not as an exception but as the norm. For the truth, once suppressed, has a way of breaking through the cracks of every false peace.

Until then, let us remain faithful—not to policies, but to principles; not to shifting decrees, but to the unchanging Word of God. Let us continue the work of sanctifying souls through the liturgy that formed saints, sustained martyrs, and glorified God for a thousand years before the present confusion began.

The Church may forget Herself for a time, but the Bride of Christ cannot divorce her own Tradition. The shepherds may falter, but the sheep still know the voice of the Shepherd. And we who keep that voice alive—however faintly, however scorned—do so not in defiance of the Church, but in defence of her soul.

Background at Nuntiatoria