Fr. Murray: ‘I think Pope Leo would be well advised to put Traditionis Custodes in the shredder’

Canon lawyer Father Gerald Murray proposed renewed freedom for the Traditional Latin Mass as a potential enticement to those who attend SSPX Masses.

(LifeSiteNews) — Canon lawyer Father Gerald Murray called for the total eradication of the Latin Mass-suppressing document Traditionis Custodes in the wake of the Vatican’s declared excommunication of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bishops. During an EWTN episode of “The Prayerful Posse,” Murray proposed renewed freedom for the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) as a potential help for those who attend SSPX Masses but “don’t want to associate with the schism.”

Murray referred to the Vatican’s allegation that the SSPX is in schism after the Holy See’s declared latae sententiae excommunication of its bishops after they participated in episcopal consecrations without a papal mandate. Murray himself has clarified that the Vatican has not effectively excommunicated SSPX priests or the laity who attend SSPX Masses. The canon lawyer told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo that the Church “should offer the TLM much more widely” by “returning to the provisions of Summorum Pontificum” and revoking Traditionis Custodes because it reversed most of the freedom to offer the TLM recognized by Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio.

Summorum Pontificum declared that it is “permitted to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass” according to the 1962 missal, that it was “never abrogated,” and that “the priest needs no permission from the Apostolic See or from his own Ordinary (bishop)” to offer the traditional Latin Mass. The motu proprio affirmed what was already definitively authorized by the 1570 bull Quo Primum, which declared that the traditional Mass “may freely and lawfully be used” “in perpetuity.” “This Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure,” declared Quo Primum, which added that it could not be “revoked or modified but remains always valid and retains its full force.”

In this respect, Traditionis Custodes contradicts Quo Primum and thus arguably is not binding. Catholic commentator Robert Royal speculated that such an expansion of TLM permissions would not be enough to convince “committed” attendees of SSPX Masses to move to other Latin Mass communities. He rightly pointed out that the SSPX controversy goes beyond the Mass itself.

Before the episcopal consecrations, Pope Leo XIV criticized the SSPX for failing to fully accept portions of the Second Vatican Council. While Royal lamented that the SSPX has a “stubbornness about what’s happened since Vatican II,” his statement does not do justice to the SSPX’s position on the council. The Society and its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, have repeatedly and firmly insisted that certain parts of Vatican II texts contradict perennial magisterial Church teaching, and it is this dedication to clarity about perennial Church teaching that poses a stumbling block to the SSPX’s recognition by the Vatican.

For example, the SSPX has highlighted problems with Dignitatis Humanae, which states that “This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom,” in apparent contradiction to Pope Pius IX’s Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, which condemns the idea that “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” Another document highlighted as problematic by the SSPX is Unitatis Redintegratio, which states that “during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.”

This seems to contradict the repeated teaching of the Church, as expressed by, for example, Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in which he condemned interreligious gatherings and stated, “ ... this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics.” Nostra Aetate also heretically claims that “in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery” and that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.”