Why I am not (quite, yet) a Traditionalist: Part I

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 05, 2025

Imagine that you are a young bachelor, having lunch with an old friend who has just married. Wreathed in smiles, radiating joy, he asks you: “Isn’t my wife the most beautiful woman in the world? Isn’t she just perfect?”

She is a very attractive woman; that much is beyond dispute. But perfect? Slim and athletic is one thing, but she’s downright skinny. Her nose is just a bit thick, accentuating the fact that her eyes are set unusually close together. The truth is, she’s not your type. You happen to be proof that not all gentlemen prefer blondes.

But unless you are completely obtuse you keep those opinions to yourself. You agree with your friend. If you have scruples about honesty you might stipulate that you haven’t seen every woman in the world, but his wife is certainly attractive. But he is looking for affirmation, not a detailed appraisal. You don’t want to prompt him to begin looking critically at the bridge of her nose, and wishing he could change her features just a bit. If he looks at his wife through the eyes of love, and sees perfect beauty, so much the better for him. And for her. For the whole world, really.

That’s how I feel, sometimes, when I talk with my Traditionalist friends. When they speak about the exquisite beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), I am loath to disagree. In fact I have no reason to disagree, because it is a magnificent liturgical form. Is it perfect? No. There are a few aspects of the TLM that I would like to change.

OK, so what changes would I recommend? I won’t say. There is no move afoot to revise the TLM, so my recommendations would be useless; they could only serve to encourage a critical attitude toward a beautiful liturgy. There are already more than enough wrongheaded criticisms of the TLM abroad; when the usual arguments arise my sympathies are with the Trads. As for the Trads themselves—who might at least understand the issues that I could raise, in a way that most Catholics would not—I wouldn’t want to tempt them to take a critical attitude toward the liturgy, any more than I would want the hypothetical newlywed to take a critical attitude about his wife’s nose.

The deadly critical attitude

The liturgy is an act of love, and a critical attitude eats away at love. If you go to Mass thinking about what parts of the liturgy might be changed, you are no longer focused on the Holy Sacrifice. So if my Trad friends devote themselves wholeheartedly to the Mass, thinking that the liturgy is perfect as it is, so much the better for them. And for me. We can all focus our attention on the Holy Sacrifice. Thinking about how that gesture might be improved, or that prayer reworded, only distracts us. We come to Mass to worship, not to act as liturgical critics.

But here is the curious thing: While many of my Traditionalist friends insist that absolutely nothing should be changed in the TLM, I know no one who feels the same way about the Novus Ordo liturgy. Every Catholic I know will happily offer suggestions as to how the NO could be improved. No one is, like our hypothetical friend the lovestruck groom, perfectly content with the NO exactly as it is.

To be sure there are many Catholics who love the Novus Ordo because they love the Mass. (I put myself in that category.) Some people are uncritical by nature; others put their critical faculties on hold during the act of worship. The vast majority of practicing Catholics attend the NO even if the TLM is available to them, so apparently they prefer the “Ordinary Form.” Still I would argue that no one loves the liturgical form itself, the way Trads love the TLM.

Of course one major reason why no one cherishes the precise form of the NO is that there is no precise form. With all its options and variations—some authorized, some abusive—the NO can take countless forms. The liturgical form of the Mass varies from parish to parish and from diocese to diocese, to say nothing of from country to country. I have certainly heard sincere Catholics say, “I love the way we celebrate Mass in our parish.” Still I have never heard, “I love the Novus Ordo.” Doesn’t that tell us something?

If the young newlywed says that he “adores” his wife, I am uncomfortable with the verb he has chosen, but I let it pass. (After all if he took his marriage vows from the old Book of Common Prayer, he said, “with my body I thee worship.”) If the Eucharistic liturgy is an act of love—in which both adoration and worship are entirely appropriate—then we should want to give ourselves entirely to it, without reservation, without wishing it could be changed.

The missed opportunity for reform

When Pope Paul VI promulgated the Novus Ordo, he acknowledged that the change would be painful, suggesting that the pain would come from letting go of old attachments. Almost three full generations later—long after the original designers of the NO are dead and gone—we are still feeling the pain, still struggling to discover a “new normal.” The general discontent with the liturgy can no longer be ascribed to old habits; notice that the appeal of the TLM seems strongest among young Catholics, who never experienced the pre-conciliar liturgy. The rising generation of Trads is not looking to go back to the old days; on the contrary they have discovered something that is—to them, at least—entirely new.

Defenders of the NO remind us that the Second Vatican Council called for liturgical reform. True. But the Eucharistic liturgy as it is experienced in a typical parish today is demonstrably not what Sacrosanctum Concilium recommended. For many years a cadre of dedicated Catholics (again I count myself as one) longed and labored for a “reform of the reform.” For a short time, during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, that effort seemed to bear fruit, especially with Summorum Pontificum and its call for “mutual enrichment” between the two forms of the liturgy. But that hopeful initiative was derailed, thoroughly and I suspect permanently, by Traditionis Custodes.

Even if the current draconian prescriptions of Traditionis Custodes are eased by the new Pontiff, what would “mutual enrichment” bring us? Could the Novus Ordo move closer to the TLM? Absolutely. But could the TLM move toward the NO? Probably not. Traditionalist lovers of the TLM, having been misled and mistreated for years, are understandably suspicious that any change is subversive, and would resist even the most benign alteration. Maybe in the 1960s, during the time of the Council, it was possible to carry out a modest liturgical reform. No longer. After decades of the liturgical wars, the wounds are too deep, the lines too clearly drawn.

Yet in the long run—and the Catholic Church always functions in the long run—the last of the liberal liturgists will die off, as well as (much later) the Traditionalists resentful of what has been taken from them. Meanwhile interest in the TLM will grow, with or without the acquiescence of the hierarchy, and zealous young priests will learn to celebrate the old liturgy even if it is not taught in seminaries. Finally, at some distant date, liturgical reform will be possible again.

And when it comes, what will that reform produce? I predict—with no fear of contradiction, since it will happen long after I am dead and gone—that the result will look much more like the TLM than the NO. Which is why, although I do not consider myself a Traditionalist—not quite, not yet—my sympathies are entirely with them. Through decades of liturgical famine and drought and pestilence, they have been preserving the seed corn.