Paix liturgique

This letter will reach you a few days before the episcopal consecrations in Écône. On the one hand, Rome is addressing the SSPX problem solely through sanctions, instead of establishing a direct and paternal dialogue with the Society; on the other hand, it seems to want to curtail the official celebration of this liturgy (by priests of Ecclesia Dei communities and diocesan priests) essentially by forcing them to adopt a bi-ritualistic approach.

But the French bishops, on the ground, know that this is not so simple and that the traditional liturgy is right there, in the middle of the landscape, and is by nature a kind of sanctuary with which they must come to terms.

The magazine Golias, in its May 20, 2026 issue, specifically addressed the issue od how the French bishops are handling the questions relating to this liturgy (“Critical Analysis of the Interview Granted to La Nef by the Head of Liturgical Affairs of the Episcopal Conference”). Indeed, in an interview with La Nef for its May 2026 issue, Bishop Olivier de Cagny of Évreux, responsible for liturgical affairs within the French Episcopal Conference, addressed this “delicate topic.”

According to Golias, he addressed it “with the typical episcopal rhetoric for resolving liturgical tensions: a measured tone, the rejection of direct contraposition, the emphasis on the ‘spiritual fruits’ of traditional sensibilities, and the insistence on ecclesial communion.” However, “the constitutive features of the Vetus Ordo—the explicit affirmation of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist as a real offering to God; the primacy of the ad Deum orientation, which demonstrates that the liturgy is ordered first and foremost to God rather than to the assembly; the hierarchical and stable structuring of the rite, where the specific role of the priest appears in a clearly differentiated manner; the strong symbolic density based on gestures, words, and forms inherited from tradition and relatively free from the arbitrariness of innovation»—are very different from the constitutive features of the reform. The latter “places greater emphasis on immediate intelligibility, the visible participation of the assembly, the extensive use of the vernacular language, greater ritual flexibility, and an accentuation of the communal dimension of the celebration,” and entails “a change in theological emphasis.”

In other words, the difference between the Vetus Ordo and the Novus Ordo is ecclesiological: it cannot «be reduced to a legitimate variation of expression within the same Eucharistic faith, but rather implies two distinct—if not opposing—conceptions of the liturgy itself.» To quell the tensions, there is a tendency «to neutralize their doctrinal significance by reformulating them as matters of style or sensibility, in favor of a logic of managing ecclesial coexistence and appeasement.” This generates “an apparent institutional stability, but at the cost of weakening the doctrinal clarity of the liturgical forms.”

In the absence of unity, we are left with a certain cohesion, "achieved not through clarifying the sense of the rite, but through suspending its explicit doctrinal qualification.” In other words, the fundamental doctrinal debate is obscured. For it is evident that two such different laws of prayer are based on two different laws of faith. “However, when it becomes structural, this suspension tends to reverse the classical relationship between lex orandi (the law of prayer) and lex credendi (the law of faith): the liturgy no longer clearly expresses the common faith, but becomes a space where two implicit and unformulated understandings coexist.”

It is impossible not to agree. However, I would like to make two observations:

- It is not only the French bishops who reject doctrinal clarification; the entire Church, since the Second Vatican Council, has invented a “pastoral teaching” that can introduce variations on previous magisterium with complete impunity, since it is no longer bound by infallibility.

- In the current situation, no one can prevail: the traditionalists, who rely on the sense of faith, are growing, but remain a minority; the modernists, who hold all the hierarchical positions, cannot even achieve a semblance of unity. Therefore, a certain degree of coexistence must be accepted, which, actually, allows the traditional liturgy to flourish. It is true nonetheless that the maximalist coexistence organized by Summorum Pontificum was obviously superior to the coexistence of tolerance of Traditionis Custodes.

But this is still too much. Golias and an influential part of the Roman Curia keep running a campaign against this tolerance in favor of the traditional liturgy. Reading Golias's article, measured in style but radical in substance, one would think that... one was reading the analysis submitted by an official of the Dicastery for Divine Worship. "It is here that a deeper tension with the very nature of the Church is revealed. The Church is not to be understood primarily as an organization of balances to be managed among different sensibilities, but as a sacramental body, that is, a visible and spiritual reality structured by its liturgical forms, which express and transmit the faith. The liturgy, therefore, is not simply a space for institutional adaptation: it is a constitutive element of the truth of the Church.” In other words: we must choose between the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council and traditional ecclesiology.

If that were the case, our choice would already be made. And, in practical terms, provisionally, as one might say in a judicial proceeding prior to a definitive judgment on the merits of the case, we wish to benefit from the freedom to practice the Tridentine liturgy. Precisely, what we ask of the Archbishop of Paris by praying our rosaries at 10 rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame, Monday to Friday, from 13:00 to 13:30, at Saint-Georges de La Villette, 114 avenue Simon Bolivar, on Wednesdays and Fridays at 17:00, in front of Notre-Dame du Travail, on Sundays at 6:18:15.