Pope Leo XIV has been speaking about one of the hottest of hot-button topics in Catholic Church discourse lately: The so-called “liturgy wars” that have been going on for decades in the wake of Vatican II.
As Crux Now’s Managing Editor has noted in May, one of Leo’s goals out of the gate has been to “take down the temperature” in the Church, so it is reasonable to wonder: Why this, and why now?
There’s an old saying about how sometimes the only way out is through, and this may be one of the cases to which the expression applies.
Leo appears to understand that he can’t shed light on liturgical matters without generating some heat, so he is proceeding carefully, in a way that shows he knows what he is getting into.
Here’s what he said.
In remarks during one of his recent weekly General Audiences on Vatican II’s liturgical document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the pope said the need to reform the liturgy had been stressed by several popes before the Council.
“The liturgical reform promoted by the Second Vatican Council is thus firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church,” the pope said on Aug. 26.
“Indeed, since the liturgy is a living entity, throughout the centuries it has always been subject to developments and changes,” Leo said.
The pontiff had been speaking about Sacrosanctum Concilium since May, as part of his first weekly catechetical series, looking at the documents of Vatican II.
Leo never mentioned the liturgy wars directly, but they were there and he alluded to them. He acknowledged the tensions that have been present since the Mass of Paul VI was put into use in 1970.
“A correct understanding of [the new Mass] also enables us to reject the abuses that occurred in certain sectors of the Church during the post-Conciliar period,” Leo said.
The pontiff also acknowledged that abuses, “unfortunately, still occur from time to time today, where some of the principles underlying the reform itself have been taken to extremes or misunderstood.”
That framing is important.
The “revolution” in the Catholic Church after Vatican II is often misdiagnosed.
Clergy and religious both changed their theological beliefs – and even often left their vocations in droves – just a couple of years after the Council.
Vatican II obviously exposed problems; it didn’t create them.
Most of those who stayed often focused on the problems that existed before the Council and realized that changes were necessary. They observed that many of those who left either became more liberal in their religious practice or became non-practicing.
Others often joined more conservative Protestant denominations.
For decades, the most prominent dispute over how to bring people back to the Church was about advocating a more “liberal” Catholicism or becoming more “Evangelical” in worship.
The traditionalist Catholics were largely excluded from the debate, especially since many of them became affiliated with the canonically irregular Society of Saint Pius X.
It was also the case, however, that ordinary Catholics still desired many of the more traditional aspects of Catholicism, especially in the celebration of things like weddings, funerals, and baptisms.
I worked in a diocese in the 1990s, and one of my tasks was answering the calls from people with random questions about the Church.
One question I often received was, “Where can I find a pretty church for my marriage?”
“Why are new churches so ugly?” Young women constantly asked me, sometimes in tears.
Why?
Not to put too fine a point on it: Because lots of the people asking the question weren’t going regularly to Mass, while the people who were going regularly would also often read books telling them the ugly churches were more in keeping with what the “early Church” wanted.
The “conservative Catholics” in the U.S. were often greatly influenced by the conversion of many Protestant pastors in the 80s and early 90s, who often spoke about what they experienced when visiting a Catholic Mass: Weekly communion, the biblical basis of the Mass they heard in English, and other things they would not have experienced so readily before the Council, and even less readily before the 1900s.
It was the time of “the Reform of the Reform” that emphasized the use of the Paul VI Mass in the reverent and traditional way, the thing Pope Leo XIV is advocating now.
Starting in the late 1980s, however, the “pre-Vatican II” Mass became more widely available, and more and more “conservative” Catholics began attending it as the 21st millennium approached.
This is not to say the “Reform of the Reform” died.
Church buildings became more traditional in their architecture, many liturgies adopted more traditional elements, and data show that new priests were generally more conservative.
Even so, “say the black, do the red” – i.e. careful and deliberate attention to the prescribed liturgical words and actions – can lead to a wide variety in liturgical celebration, whether you want a “conservative” or “liberal” liturgy.
In many parts of the US, bishops had often dealt with this by developing “Your parish is the church you go to!” attitudes, meaning “liberals” went to the parish they liked and “conservatives” went to the parish they liked.
This means in many parishes, most practicing Catholics think “everyone” thinks just like they do. It also means no parish is territorial, and non-practicing Catholics – and non-Catholics – aren’t being evangelized and are left out of the discussion.
In that state of things in parish life, whenever a bishop decides to “unify” his diocese, what he does is pick a side, and that legitimately upsets the people on the other side(s).
It also creates whiplash for parishioners, who experience change after change (after change) in their liturgies, each time being told the new way is correct (with the strong implication, at the very least, that the previous way was wrong).
It’s whiplash, because that is what their last priest/bishop said when he arrived and changed everything.
Catholic writer Amy Welborn spoke about this on X, noting the generational conflict over the liturgy.
“In a listening Church, in a Church in which the Spirit speaks, not just through the hierarchy, but through the whole People of God, one would think that open-minded dialogue and listening would be a priority in relation to this issue,” she writes.
This is an important point, but an “open-minded dialogue” can easily turn into a heated argument.
Pope Leo has been at pains to bring unity to the Catholic Church, noting the Church is ultimately a family.
However, sometimes a heated argument is the only way to end a family dispute.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome