Restricting Tradition: Bishop Beckman's Controversial Changes

The Bishop of Knoxville has restricted the traditional Roman Mass, withdrawn a priest’s faculties over his association with an SSPX-related apostolate, and now instructed clergy to discontinue familiar communal prayers surrounding Mass. At what point does liturgical regulation become the practical dismantling of Catholic tradition?

Bishop Mark Beckman’s instruction concerning the Prayer to St Michael raises questions far beyond the place of a particular devotion. The Leonine Prayers remain a living practice among traditional Catholics, both within regular canonical structures and beyond them. Their continued recitation expresses a supernatural understanding of Catholic life which the Church herself once required the faithful to profess. Against the background of Knoxville’s recent treatment of traditional worship and clergy, the latest decision deserves examination not simply as an exercise of episcopal authority, but as evidence of an increasingly restrictive approach to the Catholic inheritance.

The Bishop of Knoxville has discovered another traditional Catholic practice from which the faithful must now be educated away. This time it is not the Mass of their forefathers, already withdrawn from three established parish communities, nor the ministry of a priest whose subsequent association with an SSPX-related apostolate has cost him his diocesan faculties. It is the communal recitation of prayers immediately before and after Mass, including the invocation of St Michael the Archangel. The prayer which generations of Catholics were required by Rome to recite after Low Mass is now considered sufficiently inappropriate in its customary setting to warrant an instruction that the practice be discontinued. Bishop Mark Beckman insists that his concern is liturgical integrity. There is no reason to doubt that this is his stated intention. The difficulty is that his latest decision belongs to a sequence whose cumulative effect is to make traditional Catholic worship and devotion progressively less visible within the ordinary life of his diocese.

Writing in the East Tennessee Catholic on 16 October 2026, Bishop Beckman explains that he has encountered parishes where congregations recite the Prayer to St Michael, the Prayer of St Francis, prayers to the Holy Ghost and other familiar devotions in immediate association with Mass. Invoking the postconciliar principle of noble simplicity, he argues that such prayers should not be added to the liturgy and states that he has asked priests to catechise their congregations as these customs are discontinued. His instruction expressly includes prayers recited before the entrance hymn and immediately after the dismissal.¹ This is an important distinction. The bishop has not prohibited private devotion to St Michael, nor has he denied the spiritual value of the prayer. He encourages its use in other circumstances. What he seeks to end is its familiar communal recitation in proximity to the Eucharistic celebration. His argument therefore depends upon a proposition which deserves rather more scrutiny than it receives: that a prayer offered immediately before or after Mass is somehow an addition to the Mass itself.

The Church has never been incapable of distinguishing between her prescribed liturgy and the devotions which accompany it. Indeed, the history of the Leonine Prayers demonstrates precisely the contrary. Introduced under Leo XIII in 1884, with the familiar shorter invocation of St Michael added in 1886, these prayers were recited after Low Mass by priest and people. Their intentions developed in response to the circumstances confronting the Holy See, and under Pius XI were directed particularly towards the suffering Church in Russia. They were not eccentric embellishments devised by overenthusiastic clergy, nor expressions of popular sentiment tolerated despite their questionable position. They were prescribed by the supreme ecclesiastical authority. Their place after Low Mass was deliberate and intelligible: the sacred rites had concluded, and the faithful remained together to offer additional supplications for the needs of the Church. The Pope who required them was not thereby confusing devotion with liturgy. Why should their voluntary recitation now be presumed to create precisely that confusion?

The instruction Inter Oecumenici, issued on 26 September 1964 and implemented the following March, suppressed the obligation to recite the Leonine Prayers.² That change belongs to the history of ecclesiastical discipline and should be acknowledged without qualification. Yet suppressing an obligation is not the same as condemning a devotion. Rome ceased to require the prayers after Low Mass; she did not pronounce their content unsuitable, their communal recitation objectionable, or their former association with the Eucharistic sacrifice spiritually harmful. The distinction is elementary, but it becomes indispensable when the reforms of the 1960s are treated not merely as changes to what the Church prescribes, but as evidence that what she formerly prescribed ought no longer to be practised. The absence of an obligation establishes freedom from the requirement. It does not establish a pastoral duty to discourage the observance.

Nor have the Leonine Prayers disappeared from Catholic life. Traditional Catholics continue to recite them after Low Mass in numerous communities, including those enjoying regular canonical recognition and others whose ecclesiastical circumstances remain irregular. The practice is not universal in every traditional chapel, but it remains sufficiently widespread to make nonsense of the suggestion that these prayers belong exclusively to the history books. They survive because Catholics have continued to regard them as spiritually valuable, just as generations before them did. Their preservation is not necessarily an act of protest against liturgical reform. It is an expression of continuity with a devotional inheritance which the Church herself cultivated. Whatever the precise juridical status of a particular community, the theological content of the prayer remains the same: the faithful invoke heavenly protection against a supernatural enemy whose existence and activity have not been altered by changes in ecclesiastical discipline.

This continuing observance gives the Knoxville controversy a particular significance. Bishop Beckman’s direction concerns communal prayers associated with celebrations of the reformed liturgy, not an explicit order addressed to every traditional Low Mass. Nevertheless, the practice he wishes to discontinue belongs recognisably to the same inheritance which traditional Catholics have continued to preserve. There is an uncomfortable contrast between communities where the faithful still kneel after Low Mass to invoke St Michael and parishes where Catholics attending the reformed rite are now being discouraged from reciting the same prayer together. The distinction between the two settings may be important for liturgical law; it does not explain why the devotion should be considered pastorally undesirable in one while remaining a cherished custom in the other. What is at issue is not the incorporation of the Leonine Prayers into the revised Missal, but the increasingly narrow space afforded to practices associated with the Church’s older religious life.

Knoxville’s recent history makes that question unavoidable. In October 2025, Bishop Beckman announced the ending of celebrations according to the 1962 Missal at Holy Ghost Church in Knoxville, St Mary in Johnson City and the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Chattanooga. The affected communities were directed towards the reformed Roman Missal, with assurances that Latin, Gregorian chant and traditional ceremonial could be retained within its provisions. Nuntiatoria examined the decision at the time, challenging the wisdom of depriving Catholics of the inherited worship through which their religious lives had been formed.³ There was subsequently an important clarification. Although the established parish celebrations ceased, a monthly Mass according to the 1962 Missal was retained at Christ Prince of Peace Retreat Center in Benton.⁴ The earlier suggestion that every authorised celebration had disappeared from the diocese must therefore be qualified. What had been removed was the ordinary parish provision, not every possible opportunity to attend the older Mass. The distinction matters, but it leaves the principal pastoral objection intact. A restricted monthly celebration elsewhere is not the continuation of a settled liturgical community within its accustomed parish.

The diocesan reporting from December 2025 is especially revealing because it records the faithful’s own explanations of their attachment to the traditional Mass. Converts described finding their spiritual home through the older liturgy; parishioners spoke of stability, reverence and the formation of their Catholic faith. Bishop Beckman acknowledged the depth of their attachment and expressed confidence that much of what they valued could be preserved within celebrations according to the reformed Missal. Yet the assumption that traditional Catholic worship consists principally of Latin, chant, silence and ceremonial misses something fundamental. The older Roman Mass is an integral liturgical inheritance, not an assemblage of aesthetic features transferable at will between different orders of worship. Its associated devotional practices likewise belong to a coherent religious culture which cannot be preserved merely by retaining selected outward characteristics.

In November 2025, Nuntiatoria returned to Knoxville while examining Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s criticism of the wider restrictions upon the traditional Roman liturgy.⁵ The concern was not simply that Catholics might lose access to a preferred ceremonial form. It was that restricting legitimate traditional worship within regular ecclesiastical structures could encourage some clergy and faithful to seek its fuller expression elsewhere, including in communities whose canonical circumstances remain disputed or irregular. The issue was one of pastoral consequences. A bishop may possess authority to restrict liturgical provision, but the withdrawal of that provision does not abolish the convictions which led the faithful to seek it. It changes where they must look for the worship which continues to nourish their faith.

The controversy surrounding Fr David Mary Engo subsequently gave that concern a local and concrete illustration. On 2 October 2026, the Diocese of Knoxville announced the withdrawal of all faculties, permissions and authorisations previously granted to him for public ministry within its territory, following his involvement with activities associated with and supportive of the Society of St Pius X. The diocese also declared that no proposed SSPX-related ministry had received episcopal approval.⁶ As Nuntiatoria observed on 5 October, Fr Engo was a priest with a substantial history of recognised Catholic ministry, including the foundation of a Franciscan community with episcopal approval, parish responsibilities, preaching and service to religious communities. He had been publicly presented by the Diocese of Knoxville as a preacher and teacher only months before the withdrawal of his faculties.⁷ His reasons for becoming associated with the proposed apostolate cannot be established merely from these circumstances, nor can the bishop’s earlier liturgical decisions be assumed to have caused them. The pastoral contradiction nevertheless remains. A diocese which has restricted traditional Catholic worship now finds itself confronting a ministry associated with a society offering precisely the liturgical inheritance which has become less accessible through ordinary diocesan provision.

The latest instruction concerning communal prayers extends that controversy beyond the traditional Mass and the SSPX. It affects Catholics attending the reformed liturgy who have retained devotions once familiar throughout the Roman Church. The decisions are juridically distinct, but their cumulative consequence deserves examination. In each case, an inherited expression of Catholic worship or devotion is subject to restriction, relocation or discontinuation. The explanation repeatedly concerns authority, liturgical discipline or ecclesiastical unity. None of those considerations is trivial. What becomes troubling is the apparent presumption that the survival of traditional practice is the difficulty requiring correction, rather than a legitimate feature of Catholic life which episcopal government ought ordinarily to foster.

Bishop Beckman’s argument concerning the Prayer to St Michael is particularly vulnerable because the Church’s own teaching on popular devotion anticipates precisely the problem he has created. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, published by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2001, insists that the sacred liturgy possesses an objective superiority over devotional exercises and must never be confused with them. Yet paragraph 74 also warns against eliminating legitimate devotions in the pursuit of liturgical purity, thereby leaving the faithful spiritually impoverished.⁸ The Directory does not treat the distinction between liturgy and devotion as a reason for their mutual exclusion. Properly ordered, they are complementary expressions of the Church’s worshipping life, with the liturgy retaining its rightful pre-eminence. It would be difficult to find a more pertinent warning against the assumption that removing familiar prayers from their customary communal setting necessarily represents liturgical progress.

The canonical position requires similar precision. Canon 838 recognises the diocesan bishop’s authority in liturgical matters, while canon 846 §1 requires fidelity to the approved liturgical books. Canon 839 expressly acknowledges the sanctifying activity of the Church through prayers and exercises of piety beyond the sacramental liturgy.⁹ No serious criticism of Bishop Beckman needs to deny his competence to regulate public devotions within the diocese. But the possession of authority does not settle every question concerning its prudent exercise. There is a decisive difference between prohibiting the insertion of an unauthorised prayer into Mass and discouraging an orthodox devotion offered after the liturgy has concluded. If a congregation mistakenly believes that the Prayer to St Michael forms an obligatory part of the reformed Mass, the misunderstanding can be corrected. If its timing interferes with the proper conclusion of the celebration or with opportunities for private thanksgiving, practical arrangements can be made. Neither circumstance establishes that the prayer should cease to be recited communally in association with Mass.

The approach adopted by other bishops demonstrates that such a conclusion is not demanded by universal liturgical discipline. In 2018, Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland encouraged the recitation of the Prayer to St Michael after Mass. The liturgist Fr Edward McNamara subsequently examined the question and explained why its voluntary recitation need not constitute an illicit alteration of the prescribed rites.¹⁰ His opinion is not an act of universal ecclesiastical legislation, but it confirms that preserving the integrity of the Roman Missal and encouraging the communal invocation of St Michael are not necessarily competing objectives. The distinction which Bishop Beckman wishes to teach his congregations could equally be taught while preserving their familiar devotion.

There is also the testimony of recent Pontiffs. On 24 April 1994, St John Paul II recalled the prayer introduced by Leo XIII and urged Catholics not to forget it, explicitly associating the invocation with the spiritual battle against the powers of darkness.¹¹ Pope Francis likewise called for the Prayer to St Michael to be recited at the conclusion of the Rosary during the ecclesiastical crisis of September 2018.¹² Neither intervention restored the former obligation to recite the Leonine Prayers after Low Mass. That is not their significance. Both reaffirmed the continuing value of a devotion whose original purpose had lost none of its urgency. The Church which ceased to require its recitation did not thereby consider its supernatural content embarrassing or its communal use spiritually obsolete.

This raises a further question, distinct from the canonical dispute but inseparable from its wider significance. Has the Prayer to St Michael become uncomfortable because of its association with traditional Catholicism, or because its language confronts supernatural realities which much contemporary religious discourse prefers to leave unspoken? The prayer names Satan, acknowledges the activity of evil spirits and invokes heavenly protection against the ruin of souls. It cannot be reduced to a general plea for moral improvement or psychological reassurance. Its premises belong to the revealed Faith: the existence of fallen angels, the reality of temptation, the spiritual combat of the Christian life and the necessity of divine assistance. St Paul teaches that Christians contend against spiritual powers of wickedness (Ephesians 6:12), while the Apocalypse depicts St Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon (Apocalypse 12:7–9). These are not picturesque survivals from a superstitious past. They belong to the Church’s understanding of the supernatural order.

It would be unjust to attribute disbelief in these realities to Bishop Beckman personally. His article expressly affirms the continuing need for angelic protection, and nothing in it establishes that he wishes to diminish belief in the devil or spiritual warfare. The criticism must therefore be directed towards the consequences of his instruction rather than motives which cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the wider theological context remains pertinent. In an ecclesiastical culture where sin is frequently discussed in psychological or social categories and where explicit reference to Satan, judgment and the powers of darkness can be conspicuously absent from ordinary preaching, the familiar communal invocation of St Michael serves a valuable doctrinal purpose. It reminds the faithful that the Church’s struggle is not exhausted by the visible conflicts of human society. Removing that prayer from its customary communal setting diminishes one opportunity for the congregation to profess together a truth which contemporary Catholicism can ill afford to neglect.

The suggestion that parishioners remain free to pray privately does not adequately answer the objection. Of course they do, and their personal devotional lives should be encouraged. But communal prayer possesses a formative character which cannot simply be transferred into individual observance. Children learn prayers by hearing them recited in church. Converts discover the Church’s devotional inheritance through participation in the habits of a worshipping congregation. Families are sustained by customs which connect them with generations of Catholics who prayed in the same words. The Rosary, litanies, processions, blessings and invocations of the saints have all contributed to the transmission of Catholic belief beyond the strictly prescribed liturgical rites. Their importance cannot be measured solely by the time they occupy or the legal status they possess. A prayer which takes less than a minute to recite may form part of a religious culture whose loss is considerably harder to repair.

This is the wider danger which the Knoxville controversies now illustrate. Traditional Catholicism is not merely a preference for a particular liturgical language or ceremonial style. It represents an inherited understanding of worship, doctrine, asceticism and devotion in which the supernatural realities of the Faith remain explicit. Its forms are capable of legitimate regulation, but their preservation cannot be treated as a pastoral inconvenience without consequences for the faithful who have received their Catholic identity through them. The restriction of the older Mass, the disciplinary confrontation surrounding an SSPX-associated ministry and the discouragement of customary communal prayers are not interchangeable events. Yet each contributes to the impression that the Church’s received traditions are welcome only under increasingly narrow conditions, while their ordinary expression is expected gradually to disappear.

That impression is not proof of a concealed anti-traditionalist programme. Bishop Beckman’s intentions may be entirely sincere, and the different decisions have different immediate explanations. The bishop is also entitled to expect respect for legitimate ecclesiastical authority. But governance must be judged by more than the sincerity of those exercising it or the existence of legal powers under which particular measures may be taken. The Church’s pastors are entrusted with an inheritance which they must preserve, cultivate and transmit. Authority exists for the good of souls and the safeguarding of the Faith. It is not vindicated merely by demonstrating what can lawfully be restricted. Where a practice is orthodox, historically sanctioned and demonstrably valued by the faithful, its continued existence should ordinarily count in its favour.

The earlier Nuntiatoria commentary on Knoxville warned that suppressing legitimate traditional worship might encourage the very estrangement from ordinary ecclesiastical structures which such policies claim to prevent. That argument has not been disproved by the events of the intervening year. The Fr Engo case raised the question of what happens when clergy and faithful seek traditional forms outside their customary diocesan provision. The present controversy takes the matter further, extending the restrictive approach to communal devotions among Catholics attending the reformed Mass itself. What began as a dispute over the authorised celebration of the older Roman rite now concerns the place of traditional Catholic piety within ordinary parish life. It is a development which ought to trouble Catholics who have never attended a traditional Latin Mass and have no intention of doing so.

For the issue is not whether every inherited custom must remain compulsory, whether every priest may regulate public worship according to personal preference, or whether bishops should be denied their proper authority. None of those propositions follows from a defence of the Leonine Prayers. The question is why a wholesome devotion which the Church once required, which traditional Catholics continue to preserve, and which subsequent Popes have commended should now be treated as something to be removed from its familiar communal setting. The bishop’s explanation establishes the importance of preserving the distinction between liturgy and devotion. It does not establish that discontinuing the Prayer to St Michael is necessary to preserve it. The same objective could be achieved by explaining that the Mass has concluded and that the congregation is now offering a separate prayer.

There is a profound irony in the choice of devotion at the centre of this dispute. The Prayer to St Michael was introduced because the Church understood that her dangers were not confined to political opposition, human weakness or institutional disorder. She faced a supernatural enemy, and her members needed the assistance of heaven. Ecclesiastical government remains necessary, but no degree of administrative uniformity can substitute for the spiritual weapons by which Catholics resist temptation and seek protection against evil. The faithful who remain after Mass to invoke St Michael are not presenting their bishop with a doctrinal problem. They are acknowledging an article of Catholic belief and asking for assistance in the struggle to which their baptism has committed them.

Knoxville has already withdrawn the traditional Roman Mass from its established parish communities, leaving only restricted provision elsewhere. It has withdrawn a priest’s diocesan faculties in circumstances associated with the emergence of an SSPX-related apostolate. It now seeks to discontinue familiar communal devotions surrounding Mass. Each measure may be defended separately, and none proves hostility towards traditional Catholicism as a matter of personal intention. Their cumulative effect, however, is to make the Church’s older liturgical and devotional inheritance less accessible within ordinary diocesan life. A policy which repeatedly produces that result cannot indefinitely avoid the question of whether it is serving ecclesiastical unity or contributing to the estrangement of Catholics who remain attached to what the Church herself once universally encouraged.

The Roman Church did not become more Catholic by ceasing to require the Leonine Prayers, nor would their voluntary recitation today make the Mass less Catholic. Their theological purpose survives every change in liturgical discipline because the realities to which they refer have not altered. Satan has not ceased to exist. The Church has not ceased to be militant. The faithful have not ceased to need heavenly protection. A bishop may determine how communal devotions are ordered within the churches entrusted to his care, but he should hesitate before discouraging prayers which preserve these truths in the consciousness of his people.

The most troubling feature of Knoxville’s latest instruction is not that Bishop Beckman questions the value of the Prayer to St Michael; he explicitly affirms it. It is that he apparently believes the Church’s devotional life will be better ordered when a congregation ceases to invoke the Archangel together immediately after Mass. Having already reduced the ordinary provision of traditional worship, the diocese now proposes to remove another familiar expression of the same supernatural Faith. The burden of explanation rests with those making that change, not with Catholics who continue to pray as Rome once instructed them.