Since the earliest days of the papacy, popes have exercised power outside of Rome primarily through judicial means. Even though the popes have always claimed legislative and executive power also, the realities of communication in the ancient world normally prevented the exercise of any such power. The popes effectively had power only on those who presented themselves before their courts, usually to appeal a decision made by a synod of bishops or by a patriarch.
Modern communication and society have greatly increased the potential for the executive or legislative authority by the pope, as has been demonstrated by the great John Paul II to the delight of his admirers and the consternation of his critics. But generally the governance of the Roman Catholic Church has been guided by tradition, and tradition definitely favors the judicial model of papal power. The pope reigns primarily by either approving or not approving the findings of his various courts, commissions, congregations, and other dicasteries, known collectively as the Roman Curia. Many of these dicasteries are likewise themselves courts of appeal. When a pope does otherwise, and issues a judgment by his own initiative, the document associated with a papal decree is called a motu proprio, and its issuance is something of a Big Deal.
And so Benedict's issuance of the Motu Proprio
Summorum Pontificum is only the second of his pontificate. This document makes it easier to celebrate the liturgy as published in the 1962 editions of the missal, the breviary, and the ritual. In particular it frees up the celebration of the older form of the mass, which has been blocked in many dioceses because of the hostility of the bishops to the old edition of the Roman rite.
This motu proprio has been rightly criticized as a blow to "collegiality", the notion that the pope rules the Church with the bishops, as opposed to lording over the bishops. So it is interesting to note that this motu proprio, although it is in fact an executive papal decree issued over the objections of the bishops, phrases itself as a judicial document. In particular, it opens by stating that the old edition of the liturgy has never been abrogated, which comes as news to most Catholics. Today, blogs are filled with hostile commentators questioning the theoretical legal basis for such a statement, but such questioning is in fact purely theoretical. Any legal realist has to recognize the fact that the highest court in Catholicism says the old edition was never abrogated, so we all must act as if wasn't. (In fact, the proponents of abrogation are having a hard time pointing to an explicit and unambiguous decree to that effect.) The motu proprio then goes on to place some executive restrictions on the use of the old edition. These restrictions are not nearly tight enough to satisfy Benedict's critics; to them he has effectively de-restricted the old mass and the rest of the old liturgy as well.
So the critics howl about a violation of collegiality, and about how the pope has made a grab at the power of the bishops, and yet this motu proprio will in all likelihood only add to the great popularity and prestige of Benedict, just like his predecessor John Paul gained popularity and respect in part by ignoring the demands of collegiality. It's not hard to understand why; in fact to some degree it is the same reason that the supreme court of the United States gained so much prestige in the sixties when it was grabbing power from the states. The popes, like the sixties supremes, stuck up for the little guys against the establishment.
John Paul stuck up for the guy in the pew when poncy academics wanted to use his church's pulpits to attack his faith; too often bishops and pastors were too weak to stand up to the academics. While Benedict's style is less confrontational than John Paul's was, he now shows that he too has the guts to stand up when persuasion fails.
Fans of the older edition of the liturgy have too often faced condescension, being told that their requests were being honored (if in fact they were) because their brittle old brains were not strong enough to accept or understand the new changes. Never mind that many of these fans were and are quite young. They were told that they were not educated enough to understand the theology of the new mass, never mind that the theology of the new mass is the same as that of the old, as any educated catholic could tell you. They were told that nostalgia had overcome their good sense, never mind that many were born after the new edition of the liturgy was published. They were vilified as sexists and anti-semites, and told that the old edition they wanted was rife with sexism and anti-semitism. Never mind that the fathers of Vatican II would have been surprised to hear these assertions and would have rejected them.
It seems rarely to have occurred to those thwarting the fans of the old edition that they might indeed be mature, intelligent adults who just happen to disagree with the critics of the old edition. That sort of oblivious attitude is common in cliques and in circles with a heavy atmosphere of clubbiness. And clubbiness is nothing more than the dark seamy underbelly of collegiality.
Such collegiality was on display when Bishop Anthony Bosco of the diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania was asked years ago, during the previous pontificate, whether he planned to allow the old edition of the missal to be used in his diocese. His response was that because the priests of his diocese were "pleading with" him not to allow the old edition, he would not. Who could blame the bishop for siding with his priests as they closed rank to do battle with their own flocks? But now His Excellency, like a state legislator, has been exempted from the need to take sides. The pope has thankfully taken the matter out of his hands.
The misgovernance of the bishops has done more to enhance the power of the papacy than any "power grabs" by the popes, much as the misgovernance of the states has led to our present imperial judiciary. This was most eloquently pointed out by his eminence Darius cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who said in an interview, "formally, the mass of St Pius V was never abolished. Surprisingly, those who set themselves up as authentic interpreters of Vatican II gave it an interpretation, in the field of the liturgy, so restrictive and so little respectful of the liberty of the faithful, as to make the Council seem even more coercive than the Council of Trent."
With this motu proprio Benedict has given justice to a despised minority. The fact that he has done so at the expense of some of the bishops' legitimate power will not bother the man in the pew, who doesn't worry much about the privileges or authority of those who condescend to, belittle, and sneer at him. Even the majority of pew sitters who, like me, do not much care which edition is used can recognize the difference between an oppressor and a liberator.
