The removal of the traditional Roman Mass from three Tennessee parishes, Pope Leo XIV’s warnings about worship that fails to foster communion, and the Vatican’s celebration of sixty years of interreligious dialogue expose a persistent difficulty in Rome’s pastoral policy. Catholics attached to their own liturgical inheritance encounter restrictions while ecclesiastical authorities commend accommodation, listening and respect in almost every other direction.
In October 2025, Catholics attending the traditional Roman Mass at Holy Ghost Church in Knoxville, St Mary’s in Johnson City and the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Chattanooga were informed that their established celebrations according to the 1962 Missal would cease. Bishop Mark Beckman had decided to implement the restrictions of Traditionis custodes, bringing these communities into conformity with the liturgical policy introduced by Francis in July 2021. The faithful were assured that Latin, Gregorian chant, traditional ceremonial and other familiar elements could remain within celebrations of the revised Roman Missal. Their attachment to the older liturgy was acknowledged, their disappointment anticipated, and their cooperation requested.¹
There was a certain administrative neatness about the arrangement. The parishes would continue, the priests would remain, and the revised liturgy could be celebrated with considerable solemnity. The difficulty was that the faithful had not merely requested Latin hymns or an occasional thurible. They had sought the continued celebration of a particular form of the Roman liturgy, with its inherited prayers, offertory, calendar, ceremonial and theological expression. These could not simply be transferred wholesale into the Missal promulgated after the Second Vatican Council.
The distinction is neither obscure nor pedantic. The traditional Roman Mass is more than a collection of aesthetic preferences, just as the post-conciliar reform was more than a translation into the vernacular. The liturgical books prescribe different arrangements of prayers and ceremonies, reflecting different stages in the historical development of Roman worship. To assure Catholics that they may retain Gregorian chant while withdrawing the Missal to which they are attached is rather like assuring a congregation that its church has not been altered because the stained-glass windows remain. The windows may be splendid. They are not the whole building.
Bishop Beckman’s decision did not arise in isolation. The diocesan account subsequently published in December 2025 records that his predecessor had sought an extension from Rome in March 2023 and that the Dicastery for Divine Worship contacted Beckman while he was still bishop-elect, asking him to revisit the implementation of Traditionis custodes. The bishop therefore faced a question already under consideration by the Holy See. Practical difficulties concerning alternative accommodation and priests familiar with the older liturgy were also raised.²
These circumstances deserve acknowledgement. They establish that the bishop was operating within a restrictive Roman policy rather than merely expressing a personal preference against traditional worship. They do not, however, resolve the question of whether the policy itself was pastorally justified.
At a listening session on 5 November 2025, parishioners described the spiritual benefits they had received from the older Mass. Some spoke of conversion and renewed religious practice; others explained the distances they travelled to attend it. Eric Laschon, for example, had made a seventy-two-mile journey each way from Kentucky to Holy Ghost for eleven years. Michael Dunn described an intellectual conversion which had deepened into a conversion of heart. These were not anonymous expressions of ideological resistance. They were accounts of particular Catholic lives, presented to the bishop by those directly affected.²
The diocese did retain a concession. As of 13 November 2026, Christ Prince of Peace Retreat Centre in Benton continues to advertise monthly Masses according to the 1962 Missal, including celebrations on 15 November and 13 December, with further dates published for 2027.³ The traditional Mass has therefore not disappeared entirely from the diocese, and it would be inaccurate to suggest otherwise. What has disappeared is its established place in the ordinary Sunday life of the three parish communities.
A monthly evening celebration at a retreat centre is not the equivalent of a regular parish Mass around which families have organised their religious lives. That distinction matters especially when the justification for the change is ecclesiastical communion.
At Chattanooga, Father J. David Carter addressed the impending transition in his homily of 12 October 2025, subsequently published by the Basilica under the title Treasures New and Old: Unity in Faith Post-Traditionis Custodes. His explanation included the practical difficulties of maintaining different liturgical calendars and the shortage of clergy trained to celebrate the older Mass. He also appealed repeatedly to the duty of obedience and the importance of remaining in communion with the successor of St Peter.⁴
There is nothing objectionable in a priest reminding Catholics of their obligation to respect legitimate ecclesiastical authority. The difficulty lay in the language used to frame their attachment to the traditional liturgy. Carter warned against adopting a Protestant attitude towards authority, even telling distressed parishioners, “don’t be Protestant”. His concern was that Catholics might place their own judgement above that of the Church’s pastors, particularly if they sought refuge in communities whose canonical position was irregular.
Yet these parishioners had not established an independent congregation or repudiated their bishop. They had attended Mass in a diocesan church, celebrated by a diocesan priest, according to a Missal whose use had been permitted by the Holy See. Indeed, the Basilica had celebrated the older liturgy since Christmas 2014, with a regular weekly celebration established in 2020. What had been encouraged as legitimate Catholic worship was now being discussed in terms that brought the danger of Protestant separation uncomfortably close to the faithful’s understandable distress.
Carter’s warning about the Society of St Pius X was qualified by reference to its irregular canonical position and the possibility of rupture where participation involved rejection of legitimate authority. That qualification should be preserved. Nevertheless, the pastoral contradiction remains. Catholics were losing their established traditional Mass while being discouraged from seeking the same liturgy elsewhere.
His concluding assurance, “We are not losing the Mass. We are gaining unity”, expressed the intended purpose of the transition. It did not demonstrate that the transition would achieve it.
The Church has never taught that every prudential decision of ecclesiastical government becomes wise merely because it is lawfully promulgated. Episcopal authority is real, necessary and divinely constituted, but its exercise remains ordered towards the salvation of souls. A bishop may possess the authority to impose a restriction while still being obliged to explain how that restriction serves the spiritual welfare of those affected.
The evidence presented by the Knoxville faithful deserved more than sympathetic acknowledgement. It required an answer to the substantive question they had raised: what spiritual harm was being remedied by withdrawing the older liturgy from these communities?
Leo XIV and the worship that numbs the heart
The Tennessee announcements coincided with remarks by Pope Leo XIV during the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality on 12 October 2025. Reflecting upon the Gospel account of the ten lepers, the Pope warned that “some forms of worship do not foster communion with others and can numb our hearts”.⁵
The sentence was subsequently circulated as though Leo had condemned the traditional Roman Mass itself. The published homily does not sustain that interpretation. He was addressing religious observance which fails to produce gratitude, charity and concern for one’s neighbour. He did not identify the older Roman liturgy, and there is no evidence in the text that his words were intended as a direct comment upon the Tennessee decisions.
That distinction is important, especially when the controversy concerns the relationship between truth and ecclesiastical authority. It would hardly strengthen the defence of Catholic Tradition to attribute to the Pope a statement he did not make.
Nevertheless, his warning supplies an appropriate criterion by which to examine the policy being pursued under his pontificate.
If religious observance can become spiritually harmful when it produces indifference towards others, ecclesiastical government can also become pastorally defective when its exercise disregards the spiritual needs of those subject to it. The faithful must practise charity towards their bishops, but bishops must exercise charity towards the faithful. The obligation is reciprocal, although the responsibilities differ.
One cannot infer from attendance at the traditional Mass that a Catholic is indifferent to the poor, hostile towards other Catholics or unwilling to accept legitimate authority. Such conclusions require evidence concerning actual beliefs and conduct. A congregation may contain uncharitable individuals, as may any other congregation. Their faults cannot reasonably be attributed to the liturgy itself.
There is a deeper theological consideration. The Mass is the unbloody sacramental offering of Christ’s sacrifice, the supreme act of the Church’s public worship. It is necessarily ecclesial, and its fruits include the sanctification and unity of the faithful. Yet the communion it establishes is founded upon union with Christ and participation in His sacrifice. Fellowship among worshippers derives its Christian character from that supernatural reality.
When liturgical discussion concentrates upon social relationships without adequate reference to the sacrificial and supernatural character of worship, it risks confusing the effects of the Mass with its principal end. The danger is particularly acute when the language of communion becomes the principal justification for restricting a received liturgical tradition.
The Council of Trent defended the Church’s approved sacramental rites against those who regarded inherited ceremonies as dispensable at the discretion of individual ministers. Canon 13 of its seventh session condemned contempt for the Church’s received and approved rites and their arbitrary alteration.⁶
That canon must be interpreted accurately. It does not establish that every subsequent liturgical reform authorised by the Apostolic See is forbidden. Nor did St Pius V’s Quo primum of 1570 deprive his successors of legislative authority over ecclesiastical discipline. The Roman Missal continued to undergo revisions after Trent, and Paul VI explicitly acknowledged the work of Pius V when promulgating the revised Missal in 1969.⁷
The stronger argument concerns the relationship between authority and continuity. The traditional Roman liturgy was the ordinary worship of countless generations of Catholics. Its prayers and ceremonies nourished saints, formed priests, sustained missionaries and accompanied the faithful through persecution, war and profound social change. Such a tradition cannot reasonably be treated as intrinsically suspect merely because a later liturgical reform has been promulgated.
Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum recognised the importance of this inheritance. Francis’s Traditionis custodes reversed the juridical settlement established in 2007, alleging that the earlier permissions had sometimes been employed to deepen divisions within the Church. The accompanying letter made clear that the ultimate intention was to bring Catholics attached to the older books towards the reformed liturgy.⁸
There were undoubtedly instances in which liturgical attachment became entangled with rejection of legitimate ecclesiastical authority. Those instances deserve examination. They do not justify treating every congregation attached to the older Missal as though its members shared the same disposition.
A disciplinary measure directed towards an identifiable abuse can be proportionate. A general restriction imposed upon peaceful communities requires a different and more demanding justification.
The dialogue Rome finds possible elsewhere
While the Tennessee communities were learning that their established traditional Masses would end, the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue was preparing its annual message to Hindus for Deepavali. Published on 11 October 2025, the message commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of Nostra aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on relations with non-Christian religions.⁹
The dicastery offered greetings to Hindus celebrating the festival of lights and encouraged cooperation between Christians and Hindus in promoting peace. Its language reflected the Vatican’s established approach to interreligious relations, emphasising mutual understanding, respect and common action for the welfare of humanity.
The document did not instruct Catholics to participate in Hindu worship. Nor does offering civil greetings to adherents of another religion constitute an act of religious syncretism. The distinction between cooperation for the common good and participation in false worship is elementary to Catholic moral theology, and it should not be obscured for the sake of a more dramatic accusation.
There remains, however, a substantial question concerning the theological direction of contemporary interreligious dialogue.
Nostra aetate acknowledged elements of truth and goodness among non-Christian religions while retaining the Church’s duty to proclaim Jesus Christ. The declaration did not abolish the missionary commission or teach that all religions are equally salvific. Catholic doctrine continues to profess Christ as the unique Redeemer of mankind and the Catholic Church as the society He founded for the salvation of souls.
Yet the language employed in subsequent interreligious initiatives has frequently concentrated upon peace, fraternity and reciprocal understanding, with considerably less attention to the necessity of conversion and the supernatural claims of the Catholic faith. This tendency has been examined in previous Nuntiatoria commentary concerning Assisi, the Abu Dhabi declaration and the place of evangelisation in contemporary ecclesiastical policy.
There is an important distinction between recognising the natural virtues of those outside the Church and suggesting that their religious traditions constitute alternative paths possessing the same salvific authority as the Gospel. The former is entirely compatible with Catholic doctrine. The latter is not.
The Vatican’s Deepavali message must be judged according to what it actually says. Its emphasis upon cooperation does not, by itself, establish doctrinal indifferentism. Nevertheless, its publication alongside the restrictions imposed upon traditional Catholics presents a striking disparity in pastoral disposition.
Rome can speak warmly of preserving mutual respect between religious communities whose doctrines are incompatible. It can commend the spiritual and cultural inheritance of non-Christian peoples. It can encourage dialogue without demanding that the participants first surrender the distinctive characteristics of their traditions.
Yet Catholics attached to the traditional Roman liturgy are increasingly told that ecclesiastical unity requires their eventual acceptance of a different liturgical settlement.
The situations are not canonically identical. The Holy See possesses jurisdiction over Catholic worship which it does not possess over Hindu religious practice. Nevertheless, both situations engage the Church’s responsibility to exercise charity, preserve truth and respect the legitimate spiritual needs of persons.
It is therefore reasonable to ask why accommodation is so readily commended as a principle of relations beyond the Church while being treated with increasing suspicion when requested by Catholics attached to the Church’s own inherited worship.
The evidence of Leo’s pontificate
The events of October 2025 can now be considered against a fuller record of Leo XIV’s pontificate.
In July 2026, Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, declared that Leo would neither change Traditionis custodes nor restore Summorum Pontificum. Nuntiatoria examined the statement in Cardinal Roche’s Disclosure: Traditionis Custodes, Écône and the Limits of Leo XIV’s Reconciliation, published on 31 July, and returned to the question in Who Speaks for Leo? Sarah, Roche and a Law That Could Wither, on 28 August.¹⁰
The distinction established in those articles remains essential. Roche’s public declaration was an assertion about papal intentions, not itself an act of papal legislation. The cardinal may have been accurately describing the Pope’s position, but his interview did not possess the juridical force of a papal decision.
Cardinal Robert Sarah offered a different approach, suggesting that the restrictions might gradually lose their practical force through more generous implementation, even without immediate formal repeal. Such a policy would have permitted the Holy See to address existing pastoral difficulties without requiring Leo publicly to repudiate his predecessor.
No comparable general relaxation has followed.
In Tradition Behind the Fence, published on 24 October, Nuntiatoria examined the restrictions imposed upon traditional pilgrims in Rome and the continuing application of the legislation. The refusal of permission for traditional celebrations in St Peter’s Basilica, together with restrictions affecting a proposed pilgrimage procession, supplied further evidence that the present policy was being actively maintained.¹¹
The question became still more pointed on 1 November in Every Voice — Except the Old Mass?, which examined Leo’s appointment of Father Giacomo Costa SJ and Sister Elena Massimi FMA as undersecretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod. Massimi had previously been associated with a favourable assessment of Traditionis custodes. The article asked whether an ecclesiastical programme so emphatically committed to listening could genuinely accommodate Catholics whose liturgical preferences were unwelcome to those responsible for implementing the programme.¹²
The Knoxville experience supplies a concrete answer to part of that question. The bishop listened to the faithful. Their testimony was recorded. The established parish Masses nevertheless ended.
There is a difference between permitting people to speak and allowing their evidence to influence a decision. Listening may conclude with disagreement, but when ecclesiastical authorities repeatedly invite consultation while maintaining a predetermined policy, the language of participation begins to lose credibility.
Leo’s own catecheses on liturgical reform in May and August 2026 provide further context. He defended the principles of the Second Vatican Council and the reform which followed it, while acknowledging the importance of organic development and continuity with tradition.¹³
These statements are significant because organic development presupposes a real relationship between what is inherited and what is subsequently introduced. The legitimacy of liturgical reform does not require the older form to be regarded as spiritually defective. Nor does fidelity to the Council require every Catholic to conclude that the preceding liturgical tradition has become an obstacle to ecclesiastical unity.
Archbishop Héctor Aguer’s final interview, published by AdVaticanum on 9 November 2026, brought the question of liturgical reconciliation into sharper focus. The Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata had served as an auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires and had known Jorge Mario Bergoglio for more than four decades. His criticism of the policies introduced under Francis therefore came from considerable personal and ecclesiastical experience. Speaking during Leo XIV’s visit to Argentina, Aguer argued that the restrictions imposed upon the traditional Roman liturgy had damaged ecclesiastical peace and failed to appreciate the growing interest in traditional worship among younger Catholics. His proposed remedy was unequivocal: “The fundamental solution is to return to Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI”, thereby repealing Traditionis custodes.¹⁴
Aguer’s observations concerning synodality were equally pertinent. He recalled that communion had always belonged to the Church’s understanding of herself, and that the Synod of Bishops existed to serve that communion within the divinely constituted hierarchical order. The contemporary emphasis upon participation could not legitimately become a means of diminishing episcopal responsibility or placing established Catholic doctrine and discipline at the disposal of an ecclesiastical consultation. There was an evident connection between that concern and the treatment of traditional Catholics: consultation becomes a peculiar exercise when the faithful are encouraged to speak but the substance of their requests is excluded from serious consideration.
Aguer died on 10 November 2026, the day after the interview appeared. His final intervention consequently carries a poignancy which requires no embellishment. Having witnessed the changes of the preceding pontificate at close quarters, he appealed to Leo XIV for a restoration of liturgical peace through the recovery of Benedict XVI’s settlement. The appeal deserves consideration on its merits, particularly when the continued application of Traditionis custodes is producing precisely the estrangement which its defenders claim the legislation was intended to overcome.
The Society of St Pius X and the consequences of exclusion
The restrictions in Tennessee also illuminate the continuing dispute between Rome and the Society of St Pius X.
Father Carter’s warning against seeking the traditional Mass through the Society reflected legitimate concerns about canonical regularity. Yet the circumstances in which that warning was delivered deserve attention. The faithful were being deprived of the established diocesan celebration they had attended, while being cautioned against alternatives where the same liturgy remained available.
The Society’s subsequent episcopal consecrations on 1 July 2026 brought the question of necessity into sharper focus. In Crisis is the Cause; Necessity is the Effect, published on 6 September, Nuntiatoria distinguished three propositions which are too often conflated: that a grave ecclesiastical crisis exists, that such a crisis creates a state of necessity, and that episcopal consecrations without pontifical mandate constitute a necessary and proportionate remedy.¹⁵
The first does not automatically establish the second, and neither proves the third.
Canon 1013 requires a pontifical mandate for episcopal consecration. Canon 1387 provides for an automatic excommunication in cases of consecration without such a mandate, subject to the general provisions of penal law. Canons 1323 and 1324 address circumstances which may exclude or diminish penal imputability, including necessity and certain forms of mistaken judgement concerning necessity. These provisions do not themselves confer canonical mission or authorise a prohibited consecration.
The Society’s canonical arguments must therefore be examined according to their merits. The existence of valid sacraments cannot be made to resolve every question of lawful ministry, while the Society’s irregular status cannot justify declaring every lay Catholic who attends its chapels personally guilty of schism.
The wider pastoral question remains. When bishops remove established traditional Masses from diocesan parishes, they create circumstances in which some Catholics will seek the older liturgy outside the ordinary diocesan provision. Their subsequent decisions remain their own responsibility, but ecclesiastical authorities cannot reasonably ignore the foreseeable consequences of the restrictions they impose.
A policy intended to strengthen communion should be examined according to whether it actually does so.
In Knoxville, the available evidence establishes that traditional Catholics attended diocesan Masses, received pastoral care from diocesan priests and sought to preserve their existing place within the life of their parishes. The policy required them to surrender that arrangement. Whether it has produced greater ecclesiastical unity is a question requiring evidence, not merely repetition of the stated intention.
The communion that matters
Catholic communion is neither a sentiment nor an administrative convenience. It rests upon the profession of the same faith, participation in the sacraments and submission to legitimate ecclesiastical authority, animated by supernatural charity. These elements cannot be separated without injury to the Church’s visible and spiritual unity.
Authority is indispensable to that communion. So is fidelity to the doctrine and worship entrusted to the Church. A bishop’s responsibility extends beyond securing compliance with legislation; it includes preserving the spiritual welfare of those committed to his care.
The Tennessee restrictions reveal the practical consequences when liturgical unity is pursued through the withdrawal of an established tradition. The faithful were offered sympathy, consultation and a limited alternative. What they requested was the continued celebration of the Mass which had nourished their religious lives, and that request was refused.
Meanwhile, the Holy See continues to speak of respect, encounter and accommodation in its relations with other religions. The theological and juridical circumstances differ, but the contrast in pastoral disposition remains difficult to explain.
Leo XIV’s warning against worship that numbs the heart was directed towards religious observance lacking charity. It is a warning which ecclesiastical authorities themselves ought to consider when exercising their jurisdiction. The traditional Mass does not become an obstacle to communion merely because its continued celebration complicates a preferred administrative settlement.
After more than five years of Traditionis custodes, Rome has had ample opportunity to demonstrate that its restrictions produce the unity they promise. The experience of Knoxville, considered alongside the continuing controversies examined by Nuntiatoria, suggests that the evidence remains far from conclusive.
The faithful who asked to retain their traditional Mass were not asking Rome to invent something new for them. They were asking to continue worshipping according to what Rome had handed down.
1. Diocese of Knoxville, Letter Regarding Traditionis Custodes, 14 October 2025.
2. East Tennessee Catholic, Bishop Implements Traditionis Custodes, December 2025.
3. Christ Prince of Peace Retreat Centre, Worship and Mass Calendar, accessed 13 November 2026.
4. Fr J. David Carter, Treasures New and Old: Unity in Faith Post-Traditionis Custodes, 12 October 2025.
5. Pope Leo XIV, Homily for the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality, 12 October 2025.
6. Council of Trent, Session VII, Canons on the Sacraments in General, 3 March 1547, canon 13.
7. Pope St Pius V, Quo primum, 14 July 1570; Pope Paul VI, Missale Romanum, 3 April 1969.
8. Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007; Pope Francis, Traditionis custodes, 16 July 2021.
9. Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, Message for Deepavali 2025, 11 October 2025; Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate, 28 October 1965.
10. Nuntiatoria, Cardinal Roche’s Disclosure: Traditionis Custodes, Écône and the Limits of Leo XIV’s Reconciliation, 31 July 2026; Nuntiatoria, Who Speaks for Leo? Sarah, Roche and a Law That Could Wither, 28 August 2026.
11. Nuntiatoria, Tradition Behind the Fence, 24 October 2026.
12. Nuntiatoria, Every Voice — Except the Old Mass?, 1 November 2026.
13. Pope Leo XIV, General Audience, 27 May 2026; Pope Leo XIV, General Audience, 26 August 2026.
14. AdVaticanum, Exclusive Interview: Archbishop Aguer on the Papal Visit to Argentina and the Legacy of Pope Francis, 9 November 2026.
15. Nuntiatoria, Crisis is the Cause; Necessity is the Effect, 6 September 2026; Nuntiatoria, That’s Just Paranoia? Dr Joseph Shaw and the Crisis Beyond the Latin Mass, 26 October 2026; Code of Canon Law (1983), Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church, canon 1387.
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