Spring 2006 |
Volume 11, Number 2 |
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In what might prove to be a step forward for the traditional Latin liturgy, France now has a new community of priests attached exclusively to the old Mass. Based in the diocese of Bordeaux, it is called the Institute of the Good Shepherd (Institut du Bon Pasteur), and was founded on 8 September, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin’s Nativity.
Announcing the group’s establishment, Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, Rome’s Prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, described it as a “Society of Apostolic Life”. The Institute has now been formally welcomed by Bordeaux’s Archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who is also President of the French Episcopal Conference. Its director is Father Philippe Laguérie, who had been pastor of the Society of St Pius X’s church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris, but was expelled by the SSPX in 2004.
Already the Institute has openly stated that its own rite - rite propre, to use the French phrase - is the Traditional Latin Mass, as guaranteed in its Statutes’ Clause 2, which speaks of “the exclusive use of the Gregorian liturgy.” Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos himself specifically emphasised, when speaking with members of the Institute, the centrality of the traditional rite to its operations. So it is not a matter of having to seek permission from Rome to say the old Mass; such permission is built into the Institute’s existence. This guarantee has been plausibly interpreted as a defence against Church bureaucrats attempting to force Institute priests to say the Novus Ordo Mass (in addition to the TLM) as the price of episcopal acceptance. Seven years ago, similar attempts were made to compel priests of the Fraternity of St Peter and the Institute of Christ the King to celebrate both the new and the old Masses.
Pontifical right
The Institute of the Good Shepherd is set up according to pontifical right, meaning that it answers directly to the Holy See, and can incardinate priests and deacons without necessarily needing to go through local diocesan authorities. It is the first such society to have been founded during Pope Benedict XVI’s reign.
Le Figaro quoted Fr Laguérie as making very optimistic comments at the Bordeaux church of Saint-Eloi, where the Institute will be based. “One may say, I believe,” Fr Laguérie observed there, “that this giant step which has just been taken is, not only for us but for all the Church, the sign, the preparation, the propaedeutics of this document which shall be released, certainly in November, in which the rights of the Traditional Mass shall be restored in all their dignity.”
Of course, if this assessment proved sanguine, it would not be the first time that traditional Catholics have had their hopes raised by media speculation concerning such an announcement, only to have them dashed when the appointed time passed without official action having taken place. The talks of August 2005 between the Holy Father and the SSPX’s Superior-General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, were widely predicted to usher in a Universal Indult for the traditional rite. Then, shortly before Easter 2006, the Catholic rumour mill worked overtime with proclamations that a definitive document on the traditional liturgy would be issued within days. No such document emerged.
Yet hope is nothing if not a Catholic virtue. The foundation of the Institute of the Good Shepherd just might turn out to have been a small advance along the road toward a Catholic restoration.
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