On July 1, on her Substack, Vatican journalist Diane Montagna released a leaked report from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)[1] in response to the 2020 global consultation with bishops on the implementation of Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (SP), which liberalized the use of the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal (colloquially called the TLM). In addition to this “overall assessment” (which was presumably written by one or more CDF officials), Montagna also released a document made up of curated quotations from individual dioceses’ responses to the survey.

These documents (the authenticity of which the Vatican has not confirmed) have prompted some traditionalists to push Pope Leo XIV to weigh in directly on the use of the TLM in the Church, something he has not yet done in the weeks since his election. Nicole Winfield of AP News wrote that “the documents could add pressure on Leo to try to pacify the liturgical divisions that spread, especially in the United States, during Francis’ 12-year papacy.” Winfield quoted Joseph Shaw of the UK’s Latin Mass Society as asserting that Pope Leo’s input is needed “urgently.”

The Leaked Documents

In her blog post, Montagna states that the two newly leaked documents – 14 pages in total – are part of a 224-page final report given to Pope Francis by the CDF on the worldwide consultation of bishops in February 2021. The five-page overall assessment document repeatedly praises SP and the good fruit that has allegedly come from it. Its opening paragraph concludes that SP “succeeded in affirming the equal dignity of the two forms of the same Roman Rite, thereby fostering the conditions for genuine liturgical peace, with a view also to a possible future unity of the two forms.”

The nine-page Collection of quotations document contains approximately 65 quotations from the bishops’ responses to the survey, identified by diocese. Interestingly, certain diocesan responses were quoted multiple times in this document. For example, San Francisco is quoted three times and the French diocese of Tarbes et Lourdes is quoted four times. The overall assessment does not provide any numbers or otherwise useful data, unfortunately. That said, considering there are more than 2,000 Latin Rite dioceses in the world – and if at least a few hundred responded to the survey – the multiple quotes from open TLM supporters such as San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone suggests that the document’s compiler engaged in some partisan cherry-picking.

Notably, the collection does not quote the devastating response to the survey from the French bishops’ conference, nor from any US dioceses with bishops who have faced problems with traditionalist groups and priests. Further, the overall assessment states that bishops in Spanish-speaking regions “in general, seem to show little interest in” SP and that the Italian bishops as a whole “do not hold the Forma extraordinaria and its related provisions in high regard, with a few exceptions.”

The only quotation from a Spanish-speaking country in the collection is from the Mexican bishops’ conference and it doesn’t even mention the TLM, nor does it give any context that suggests the bishops are referring to the TLM:

“The Episcopal Conference of Mexico believes that authentic liturgical formation is indispensable at all levels” (CEM general report).

Meanwhile, many of the quotes taken from Italian dioceses include warnings that restricting the TLM would only worsen the situation, such as:

“I certainly believe that Summorum Pontificum cannot simply be revoked. Doing so would create more problems than we want to solve” (Diocese of Pitigliano-Sovana-Orbetello, Italy, response to question 9).

The compiler of the collection does not specify what these “problems” are, however — only that this bishop does not want to face them.

Finally, the collection does not contain a single quote from Brazil, where bishops have struggled with problematic traditionalist groups, including Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), for decades. Cardinal Odilo Scherer of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, Brazil, likewise, has had significant problems with traditionalist priests in his archdiocese and has spoken out forcefully against the ideology.

Pope Francis a “liar”?

On July 16, 2021, Pope Francis promulgated the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (TC), which abrogated SP and established new and more restrictive guidelines on the celebration of the TLM. In his letter to the bishops accompanying TC, Francis wrote that his predecessors’ attempts to foster Church unity by widening access to the TLM “was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

With the release of these documents, Montagna suggests that this leak provides a smoking gun exposing as unfounded Pope Francis’s stated reasons for releasing TC. She writes, “The overall assessment directly contradicts, therefore, the stated rationale for imposing Traditionis Custodes and raises serious questions about its credibility.”

Taking the overall assessment at its word, Montagna claims, “what the Vatican’s overall assessment reveals is that the ‘gaps’, ‘divergences’, and ‘disagreements’ stem more from a level of nescience, prejudice and resistance of a minority of bishops to Summorum Pontificum than from any problems originating from adherents to the traditional Roman liturgy.”

Following Montagna’s leaks, traditionalists in Catholic media and their sympathizers have pushed the claim that Pope Francis lied in giving justifications for TC. The traditionalist and openly antisemitic YouTube program “Catholics Unscripted” stated that the leak “demonstrates that Pope Francis deceived the faithful when issuing Traditionis Custodes.”  Crisis magazine editor Eric Sammons claimed on X, “Almost everyone knew it was a lie from the beginning — both the supporters & critics of TC.”

A “discarnate ideology”

Yet Pope Francis never stated that his decision was based on the survey results. He said the survey was among the factors that helped lead him to his decision. In his accompanying letter to TC, Francis stated that “the results have been carefully considered in the light of experience that has matured during these years” (emphasis added).

It’s also likely that Francis did not consider the overall assessment to be a genuine synthesis of bishops’ responses, but a position paper arguing for the retention of SP. In the same letter, Francis wrote, “having considered the wishes expressed by the episcopate and having heard the opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I now desire, with this Apostolic Letter, to press on ever more in the constant search for ecclesial communion” (emphasis added).

Francis said he “considered the wishes” of the world’s bishops (presumably found in the 210 missing pages, assuming the CDF chose to include them all), and that he “heard the opinion” of the CDF. Because, to put it frankly, the overall assessment reads like a tract by an apologist for traditionalism. Anyone familiar with Pope Francis’s position on the traditionalist ideology should know that such a hollow propaganda piece that doesn’t even mention (let alone acknowledge) the harmful tenets of the traditionalist agenda or the extremism of its public mouthpieces is as worthless as the paper it’s printed on. The document is not reassurance that the TLM movement is not a problem, it is a sign that the problem had become manifest in the Roman Curia.

Beyond Francis’s own words, Vatican officials and insiders have said from the beginning that the survey was part of Pope Francis’s consultation process, but not the decisive factor in his decision. For example, in an interview with Cindy Wooden of Catholic News Service just days after the promulgation of TC, Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, then serving as Adjunct Secretary of the CDF, explained that Pope Francis’s “rationale for the abrogation of all previous provisions in this area is not based on the results of the questionnaire but only occasioned by them.”

What, according to Archbishop Di Noia, was the reason Pope Francis abrogated SP? “The decisive point is there for all to behold: the evident and ongoing betrayal of the intentions of the two pontiffs who permitted the celebration of the 1962 Missal to draw traditionalists back into the unity of the church. What the Holy Father is saying is that the TLM movement is working for objectives that are precisely contrary to what St. John Paul and Benedict XVI hoped for.”

In other words, Di Noia was pointing out what has been obvious since Francis was elected pope – especially since the publication of the four cardinals’ so-called “dubia” in 2016 and the racist moral panic fiasco that took place outside the Amazon Synod in 2019 – that a dangerous, harmful, spiritually abusive ideology is pervasive in the traditionalist movement. It is a form of religious fundamentalism that harms souls and fractures unity in the Church. It paints Jesus Christ as a wrathful figure and replaces love of God and neighbor with harsh judgement and threats of hell. For a pope not to address this directly and decisively would be pontifical negligence.

Archbishop Di Noia’s diagnosis is reflected in a 2021 blog post by papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, writing about the decision to promulgate TC and quoting a source close to Pope Francis who said the late pope was compelled to “deal with the growth of this discarnate ideology with charity, understanding, and courage to put things in their place.” Ivereigh commented, “The words ‘growth’ and ‘put things in their place’ are suggestive: this is an effort to lay down boundaries and to forestall an expansion.”

The CDF’s overall assessment frames the TLM debate as a matter of “liturgical peace,” when it is really – and has always been – about ecclesiology, doctrine, theology, authority, and the Primacy of the Successor of Peter. Attempts to quell division on these matters by placating traditionalists with access to the TLM has allowed them to openly promote their toxic approach to the Catholic faith.

Lingering Questions

Besides being part of an obvious attempt to pressure Pope Leo into wading into the liturgy wars (which would likely backfire spectacularly) and another chance for reactionary Catholics to attack Pope Francis’s legacy, these leaked documents leave us with some lingering questions.

The first, obviously, is about the missing 210 pages. Assuming the CDF official(s) who compiled the report didn’t cull the responses they disliked from the final product, the real report is in these pages. In theory, it contains the responses of the French bishops and moderate prelates like Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago in addition to the traditionalist-leaning bishops that were overrepresented in the leaked collection.

Another question is about the “second” CDF report. Where is that? Or is the leaked document the second one and we’re missing the first? In October 2021, Diane Montagna spoke about another rumored CDF report – one that seemed to cause a great deal of worry among traditionalists. She said:

“Reliable sources have confirmed that while the main report was being prepared, CDF superiors commissioned a second report in order to be sure that the main report reflected the feedback of the bishops.

The Congregation allegedly had to be sure that the main report didn’t just come to the usual conclusions, e.g. that the traditional Mass is a positive element in the life of the Church, etc., etc., etc.

The second report was therefore billed as a sort of second opinion, a check on the main report. CDF superiors therefore commissioned an official within the doctrinal section to write his own report.”

She continued:

“It is unknown if Pope Francis read the second report, or if he received it before or after the main report. It’s been kept very quiet.

But what is coming to light, and we will look at this matter next, is that Traditionis Custodes does not reflect the premises or conclusions of the main detailed report.

So the question is: does it reflect the premises and conclusions of another report? Could this be the second report? Or could it perhaps not reflect the conclusions of any report but have been crafted otherwise?”

Given the highly partisan nature of the overall assessment, one hopes that another set of eyes looked over the responses and provided an accurate synthesis of the bishops’ words, rather than an op-ed about the great “success” of SP.

A third question has to do with the authorship of the overall assessment. In the same October 2021 talk, Montagna describes a plenary meeting of the CDF in January 2020. This is the type of meeting where the members of the dicastery (mostly bishops and cardinals) travel to Rome to discuss doctrinal matters and advise the prefect and the pope on related issues. Here is her account:

In Cardinal Ladaria’s absence, the assembly was chaired by CDF secretary, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi. Morandi, some of you may remember, was appointed to the CDF as undersecretary in 2015 before three officials were removed under Cardinal Müller. When Cardinal Müller was “ousted” in 2017, and Cardinal Ladaria was appointed Prefect, Morandi was promoted to secretary.

Also present at the January 29, 2020 plenary session were other members of the CDF, including Vatican Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin; Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for the Bishops; Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education; Cardinal Beniamino Stella, then-Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, American Cardinals Sean Patrick O’Malley and Donald Wuerl; Italian Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization; Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who serves as an adjunct secretary for the CDF; French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, French Archbishop Roland Minnerath, and others. The Pope would not have been at this sort of meeting.

According to reliable sources, Cardinal Parolin, Cardinal Ouellet and Cardinal Versaldi were leading the discussion and piloting it in a definite direction.

To give you a taste of what was said, one cardinal—who is considered more of an “acolyte” than a gang leader—expressed some alarm that close to 13,000 young people had registered for the Chartres pilgrimage. He said we need to get to the bottom of why these young people are attracted to the traditional Mass and explained to the others present that many of these young people have “psychological and sociological problems.” The cardinal in question has a background in canon law and psychology, so his remarks about “psychological problems” would have carried more weight, especially with bishops and cardinals who are not familiar with the traditional Latin Mass or Latin Mass circles.

Another cardinal said that from the little experience he had, “these groups don’t accept change” and they “participate without concelebrating.”

The CDF should therefore ask for a “concrete sign of communion, of the recognition of the validity of the Mass of Paul VI,” he insisted, adding that “we can’t go on like this.”

He seconded the concern that these groups attract young people and asked that concrete ways be found to demonstrate that these people are in the Church.

Note that the members of the CDF (as opposed to staff members) clearly did not share the same opinions as whoever wrote the alleged “official” CDF report. In other words, the overall assessment very likely does not reflect the views of the CDF at the time, but rather of an employee (or multiple employees) of the CDF. As Montagna suggests, the members of the CDF were (rightly) concerned about traditionalists’ orthodoxy and fidelity to the Church, not the external matters that concerned the author of the overall assessment.

The final question is what, if anything, Pope Leo will do about all this. In these early days of his papacy he has avoided public statements about the traditionalist movement and the TLM, but as the first pope born in the US and having served for two years as the prefect for the Dicastery for Bishops (where he had to deal with dissenting bishops such as Joseph Strickland), he likely understands the problems better than Pope Francis did. Surely he, like Archbishop Di Noia, witnessed the disgraceful and vile reactions of traditionalists to TC. He knows the situation and the stakes, and he’s likely already discerning his response.

Pray that when he acts, it will benefit the unity of the Church.

Note

[1] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) in June 2022. The former name will be used in this article when mentioning events and documents that predate the name change.

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Image: By Andrewgardner1 – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102588576