The Impossible Unity of a Church in a Conciliar State
Can the Church be pacified outside of the unity of the faith? This is the impossibility with which Pope Leo is confronted. To date, he has enjoyed a broadly favorable assessment: those Catholics who identify with the previous pontificate, that of Pope Francis, have welcomed the assurance of continuity in substance, whereas those whom Pope Francis had, on the contrary, ill-treated or exasperated have credited him with a fortunate change in style, earnestness and piety, despite the anxiety caused them by successive appointments and other actions. But this relatively fragile convergence is not the peace of the Church.
Eighteen Months of Pontificate
It is as the continuator of the Bergoglian interpretation of the Council that Robert Prevost was propelled by a group of cardinals toward the election of 8 May 2025. In political terms, inadequate but very practical, one might say that Leo XIV was elected as a center-left conciliar candidate. With the understanding that he was brought to the Supreme Pontificate not only to pursue, but above all to salvage this heritage which Pope Francis himself had jeopardized through his character, his excesses and his contradictions. It was therefore necessary to give this legacy a more pacified presentation. This is what Pope Prevost, an earnest, pious, methodical man, for whom continuing the application of Vatican II is a duty of conscience, intends to do.
One can sum up the achievements of the Bergoglian pontificate in two or three of its texts, one confirming the liberal-mindedness of Vatican II from the standpoint of ecclesiology, by extending it to the domain of morality, the other consecrating the re-foundational character of the conciliar liturgy:
- Amoris lætitia has indeed opened breaches of “mercy” in the indissolubility of marriage (the possibility of welcoming sacramentally persons in situations of “fragility,” that is, of giving access to absolution and communion to divorced-and-remarried persons who remain in their state), in addition to the breaches opened by the declaration Fiducia supplicans [1];
- Traditionis custodes has reduced the traditional rite to the level of a very tightly regulated tolerance.
Francis has thus swept away, probably definitively, the moderate interpretation of the Council, that of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The latter had reached out to the traditional and conservative circles nostalgic for the liturgy and doctrine of yesteryear, for various motives (as a way to reclaim these faithful and keep them in the fold, but also in order to remedy the theological and liturgical “excesses”). One may therefore say of Pope Leo that he places himself in the resolutely conciliar line of Pope Francis, but that he would like to assume this heritage in a pacified manner. Which is the same thing as endeavoring to draw a square circle.
He moreover began with an anti-Marian act, as un-pacifying as can possibly be. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published the doctrinal note Mater populi fidelis on the 4th of November 2025, denying the advisability of applying to the Blessed Virgin the titles of Coredemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces, despite the use that several popes made of them and the theological explanation they gave of them. Inspired by a Jansenist-type mistrust of an “exaggerated” Marian cult, the implications of the subordinate but specific cooperation of the Virgin Mary in the work of salvation, by virtue of her divine motherhood, have been reduced.
Then came the confirmation of the apostolic exhortation Amoris lætitia of 2016, through the celebration of its tenth anniversary, with the organization of a meeting of all the presidents of the episcopal conferences, with the intention of taking stock of its application. This confirmation of a Bergoglian act might appear more prudent. Indeed, the contested passages of chapter VIII of the exhortation are evoked by the pope only allusively (“accompany, discern and integrate fragility,” quoting AL, in his message of March 19, 2026). Yet Amoris lætitia is described by him as a “luminous message of hope.” Its liberal provisions are in no way called into question (the priest and the divorced-and-remarried faithful walk together, assessing the latter’s situation thanks to criteria of discernment, and if it is determined that the latter’s conscience, through his journey of faith, is positively enlightened regarding his situation, then the priest pastorally sanctions his access to the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist).
As for the confirmation of Traditionis custodes, besides the fact that the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, Arthur Roche, has renewed statements on its being maintained, there is, in addition to the refusal to authorize the international Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage to celebrate Mass in Saint Peter’s in Rome, the astonishing prohibition, notified by the Substitute of the Secretariat of State, against entering in procession in order to pray therein, as if Catholics attached to the traditional liturgy were suspect by nature.
What “Pontifical Agenda”?
The papal trip to France at the end of September speaks volumes about Leo’s pontifical “agenda.” The pope benefited from a very favorable conjuncture: President Macron having spontaneously offered the Concorde–Champs-Élysées axis, up to and beyond the Arch of Triumph, for the pope’s main Mass; the broad media coverage of the visit, which echoed and reinforced public interest; the satisfaction for French Catholics of re-emerging momentarily in the public sphere; the split-second organization supervised by Cardinal Aveline; and the deliberate choice of a traditional-style staging, after the manner of the Puy du Fou theme park, at the national stadium for 80,000 very conservative, even traditional, young Catholics.
The main thorn for this trip was that France had just adopted, on the 18th of August, an assisted-suicide law which Pope Leo was expected to reprobate, and which he indeed did: “No human law can ever cause the loss of the certainty of your dignity. On the contrary, it is in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that the temptation to grant death under the guise of false compassion must be firmly rejected” (Lourdes, 27th of September).
The reprobation of abortion (constitutionalized!) was more allusive. And Leo XIV refrained from referring to the institution of same-sex “marriage.” These condemnations, which culminated in “what is legal is not necessarily moral” (27th of September), only implicitly denounced the illegitimacy of unjust laws. In fact, the pontiff, rather than a binding teaching for society, was simply setting out the Catholic viewpoint. He moreover specified that “according to the Church’s conception of the separation between the Church and politics, or between Church and State, [I had] not crossed that line” (reply to a journalist’s question on the return flight, on the 28th of September).
One may regret it, but it is a fact: since the 19th century, the authorities of the Church have opted for recognition of the “established powers” inspired by the principles of the Revolution, and thus for the detachment of civil laws, issuing from the general will, from natural law. More seriously, since Vatican II, they have ceased to condemn these new principles magisterially. They thus find themselves today in a situation where they routinely deal with the representatives of political powers who issue legislation ever more clearly in rupture with the law of God. The solution – heroic, as is the confession of the faith in difficult circumstances – would be to have only purely instrumental relations with powers regarded as de facto powers, in the way the Holy See dealt with the Communist states (though it is true that, even in that case, there were and are complacencies, as seen with Cardinal Casaroli’s Ostpolitik and today in the agreements with China).
Pope Leo’s remarks on laïcité (French-style secularism) were moreover of the greatest interest for understanding his conception of it. It must be specified that the first draft of the papal speeches had been prepared, as is customary, by a French prelate, whose horizon was laïcité à la française, but was thereafter revised by the pontiff himself and his secretariat. All in all, the pope’s words marked two inflections, without claiming that each came strictly from one source or the other. Thus, in the address at the Élysée Palace on the 25th of September, one found:
- A warm approval of the achievements of the Enlightenment and of the Rights of Man, equated with religious freedom. “To the famous thinkers of the Renaissance, then of the Grand Siècle, would succeed those of the Enlightenment, thanks to whom France would then bring to the world genuine conquests, among which is the recognition of the Rights of Man, inscribed in the very nature of the human person, in particular religious freedom. This permanent attention to the dignity inherent in every human person finds an echo in your national motto. Liberty, equality and fraternity are not mere words carved on the pediments of your public buildings, but they refer to universal ethical demands that also find in the Gospel message an inexhaustible source of inspiration and fulfillment.”
- But also a plea for a laïcité leaning toward American-style religious liberty. “The true understanding of laïcité does not involve excluding the religious dimension, but on the contrary knowing how to draw benefit from it as an educational resource. […] A just laïcité therefore does not consist in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in working so that the State and religious institutions dialogue together and join their forces in the service of the common good.”
In a word, we remain light-years away from the model of a true Christian society: we are living in post-conciliar times.
A Touch of Latin in the Novus Ordo
A theme recurs constantly in Leo XIV’s remarks on the liturgy: welcoming diverse sensibilities, but within the framework of the conciliar liturgical norms.
His clearest remarks on the subject of the ancient liturgy, very brief moreover, are found in a few paragraphs of his book of interviews with the journalist Elise Ann Allen, Pope Leo XIV: In His Own Words – The Definitive Biography of the New Leader of the Catholic Church[2]. According to him, the appeal of the Tridentine Mass would come from the “abuses” all too often committed in the celebration of the new liturgy: “I think sometimes the, say, ‘abuse’ of the liturgy from what we call the Vatican II Mass, was not helpful for people who were looking for a deeper experience of prayer, of contact with the mystery of faith that they seemed to find in the celebration of the Tridentine Mass.” It would therefore suffice to celebrate the new liturgy worthily in order to wean those who feel nostalgia for the old one away from it: “If we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?”
He knew that the liturgical problem is a more burning issue in France than anywhere else, that it is even “traumatic” there, as Jean-Marie Guénois of Le Figaro[3] puts it. The pontiff’s remarks were merely allusive, but remained along the same lines: welcoming the ancient liturgy, but with the ultimate aim of integrating the faithful into acceptance of the new liturgy.
Thus, before the trip, in a message to the bishops of France dated the 18th of March, sent in his name by Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, he had mentioned the “growth of communities linked to the Vetus Ordo.” He asked the bishops to find “concrete solutions,” indicating his policy line to them: “to generously include people sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo,” not purely and simply, but “while duly respecting the orientations intended by the Second Vatican Council regarding the liturgy.” Similar remarks are found in the “Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change,” Venite ad me, from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, published this past 22nd of October, which speaks of allowing the faithful “to encounter the various liturgical sensibilities present within the tradition of the Catholic Church” but “with due respect for the liturgical norms currently in force.” (n° 94).
The papal liturgy in Paris, Lourdes and Metz was particularly “dignified”, run with clockwork precision, with beautiful vestments and a few Latin chants. Noteworthy were these words from the homily at Vespers at Notre-Dame on the 25th of September, which followed a passage regretting the all too frequent “abuses” in celebrations: “The liturgy remains, in this sense, a reflection of life. Eucharistic joy asserts itself and spreads wherever harmony is rediscovered, wherever dignity is reborn, wherever authority becomes service, wherever freedom resumes its course. This is the greatest gift we can share. Therefore, do put communion with the Successor of Peter and with the Church before your personal sensibilities, in order to cultivate the unity of the people of God.”
At Lourdes, likewise, to the bishops of France, on the 27th of September: “To these stakes is added another challenge that may give rise to a certain concern for the future: that of unity. […] This unity is not a flat uniformity but allows every authentically Catholic sensibility to converge naturally in a common profession of faith, through obedience to the legitimate pastors, and in particular to the Successor of Peter, ‘a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion’ (LG, n° 18). This is a dynamic unity that is nourished by the Tradition of the Church – from the Fathers to the Second Vatican Council – and by the post-conciliar Magisterium. Moreover, it is enriched in reciprocal dialogue, starting from faith, according to a synodal style that we have been seeking to deepen in recent times.”
In order to consider Pope Leo’s relations with the traditional rite, one must also take into account the astonishing severity he showed toward that bastion of the traditional liturgy, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), after the episcopal consecrations carried out at Écône on this past 1st of July. The declaration of the excommunication of the consecrators and the consecrated by a decree on the part of Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the 2nd of July, was to be expected. But in addition, an explanatory note immediately followed the decree, stating that the sacred ministers, priests and deacons of the SSPX were “in a state of schism and [were to] therefore be considered schismatics, being subject to the excommunication provided for by law (can. 1364 § 1 CIC)[4].” A mere note thus cast out of the Church, without any trial, some 800 SSPX priests. Rome pressed for this separation, as if to rid itself of the burden of the liturgical secession.
However, it is not excluded that the inscrutable Leo XIV may come to adopt a greater degree of tolerance in the face of the persistence of the traditional liturgy, of its youthfulness, of its fecundity in vocations and of the relatively significant number of the faithful attached to it, all the more so that this is occurring within an institution that is gradually vanishing socially. But for now, we remain with the full application of Traditionis custodes and of the principle laid down in its n° 1: “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”
It is true, however, that whereas under Francis no permission was granted to say the traditional Mass to priests ordained after 2021 who requested it, a few, very rare, have been granted under Leo XIV, among them those granted to the four new priests of the Missionaries of Divine Mercy. But the restrictions of Traditionis custodes continue to apply: thus, in the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, severe restrictions on the traditional Mass have been put in place since Sunday 20th of September in the communities served by the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri (the traditional celebrations being replaced once a month by the Novus Ordo and the other sacraments being prohibited).
Back in Rome on the 30th of September, before his hospitalization at the Gemelli clinic, Pope Leo received Bishop Tomáš Holub of Plzeň in the Czech Republic, one of the champions of synodality, who came to speak to him in particular about the generalization of lay communion from the chalice, supposedly inherited from the permissions granted in the 15th century to the moderate Hussites, the Utraquists (communion under both species, sub utraque specie). The same bishop, in an article, “Synodality and the Novus Ordo Missae”, published on the 21st of July on the blog Come Se Non, run by the renowned Andrea Grillo, professor at the Saint Anselm Institute, declared that, as such, the Vetus Ordo expresses an ecclesiology that “no longer meets today’s needs.” The Novus Ordo is henceforth the norm, commented Andrea Grillo, within which nothing prevents the inclusion of the expressions of various sensibilities.
Bishop Tomáš Holub is right: the Vetus Ordo is not a matter of mere sensibility, but of another ecclesiology. It is as illusory to seek to pass it through the filter of the reformed liturgy as to seek to harmonize Mortalium animos of Pius XI (which affirms that true unity can only come about through a return to the Catholic Church on the part of those who are separated from it) with the ecumenism of Unitatis redintegratio.
The Impossible Unity
The restoration of liturgical unity will therefore be Leo XIV’s cross to bear, as it has been for all the popes who have preceded him since the Council. However, one circumstance is in his favor, that of the renewal of generations. The organizers of the papal trip to France had moreover targeted – they had hardly any choice – a young Catholic public, “who love the Mass in Latin,” as the bishops of France say, with mixed feelings. Yet, these young traditional generations, whom one might call “neo-traditionalists,” are very fluid, attending traditional Masses but also “dignified” new liturgies, those celebrated in a “reverent” manner. “Reverent” or “dignified” like the pope’s Masses?
Yet, the ancient liturgy is essentially dignified and reverent to its very core (not merely in the manner of its celebration). Being, in itself, unfamiliar and unassimilable, in the good sense of these words, it remains a gold standard for young conservative priests and for the young faithful who are said to harbor identitarian sentiments. Supposing that a new “dignified” and “abuse-free” liturgy could become the norm, which is the stuff of dreams, the principal “abuse” will always be that it is new. As such, it will remain powerless, far weaker than the traditional forms of worship in expressing the lex credendi. Indeed, sixty years after Paul VI’s reform, with its “liturgical devastation” and its “massacre of the rite”[5], it is paradoxically the liturgy it sought to dethrone which remains ever young and ever new.
Its secret, so to speak, is that it is eminently doctrinal, according to the literary genre that is its own. Moreover, its celebration is, in actual fact, always accompanied by the teaching of the ancient doctrine: if, in many large and medium-sized French cities, the ancient Mass sees its congregation constantly growing, it is notably because the priests who celebrate it likewise offer children a solid old-school catechesis.
One cannot restore unity through adherence to the magisterium of Vatican II, which is as hazy as that of Trent is clear. And the same can be said of the two Masses. Symptomatic in this regard is the fact that the bishops, who were once upon a time said to be guardians of the faith, now seek to be guardians of unity. Of this unity, neither the more conservative popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, nor Francis, the more progressive pope, were able even to maintain the mere fiction of such a unity. Leo XIV, who has inherited the legacy of Francis and more broadly that of Vatican II, will be able to fare no better.
Fr. Claude Barthe
[1] It should be stressed that while this document has become infamous for allowing the blessing of same-sex couples, it has, more broadly, sanctioned the blessing of “couples in irregular situations,” in other words divorced-and-remarried couples, for whom blessings were already relatively common.
[2] Ebury Vine Editions, 2026. Cf. the article on the website of Crux: Pope Leo speaks to Crux’s Elise Ann Allen about LGBTQ+ issues and the liturgy.
[3] Broadcast “En quête d’esprit”, hosted by Aymeric Pourbaix, on the channel CNews, on the 13th of September, in which the chief organizer of the papal trip, Cardinal Aveline, president of the Bishops’ Conference, took part.
[4] This text is meant to draw on a note by Bishop Herranz, President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, dated the 24th of August 1996, in which he gives his opinion (offering “some considerations and suggestions”) on the canonical situation of the SSPX priests, whom he judged to be manifesting a “formal adherence” to the schism, (an opinion that was not heeded in 2009, when it seemed necessary only to lift the excommunication of the SSPX bishops).
[5] Cristina Campo, Les Impardonnables, Gallimard, 1992.