A Liturgy from Hell

Then, in July 2021, Pope Francis issued his infamous document on the liturgy, titled Traditionis Custodes (“Guardians of Tradition”), which was, in fact, a wholesale attack on tradition. This papal edict abruptly abrogated Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum, which freed Catholics to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass without needing anyone’s permission. That document had given us hope that it might eventually be possible to correct Pope Paul’s disastrous mistake. But alas, the new document takes away that hope, seeking to suppress the old Mass by regulating it to death, contradicting Summorum Pontificum, which stated that no one in the Church has the authority to do such a thing. And authority is really what much of the controversy is about. Does anyone have the authority to do what Pope Francis has tried to do in Traditionis Custodes? Or is it an unlawful act, null and void, hence lacking any claim on our obedience? To answer this, I will begin with some points about the nature of papal authority.