Today, attention is focused on Rome, at the Palazzo del Santo Uffizio, headquarters of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, where Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández and Father Davide Pagliarini, superior general of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX), are meeting. The encounter takes place in a context of maximum tension regarding the liturgical issue and the institutional future of the Fraternity founded by Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre.
The meeting cannot be understood apart from the fracture introduced by Traditionis Custodes. That motu proprio effectively broke the previously recognized legal continuity of the traditional liturgy and subjected it to a regime of discretionary concession, dependent on revocable authorizations and variable criteria according to dioceses and bishops. To this day, there are no minimum stable guarantees of institutional survival for communities linked exclusively to the ancient Roman rite.
In that framework, the dialogue with the FSSPX does not only affect its canonical situation. A structural issue is at stake: whether Rome is willing to effectively recognize the sacramental continuity of the traditional rite or whether it maintains a system in which its existence depends on the changing will of local authority. A refusal from Rome to the Fraternity would open a scenario with two closed paths: on one hand, the consolidation of the absolute discretion established by Traditionis Custodes; on the other, turning its back on the largest and most widespread institution in the world organically linked to the traditional liturgy.
To this is added a disciplinary element that cannot be ignored. In recent years, the practice of blocking or delaying ordinations as a means of pressure has spread, with criteria perceived as arbitrary, especially when certain ecclesial realities “bother” or deviate from the marked line. This method, established during the pontificate of Francis and not formally claimed or corrected, aggravates the sense of insecurity: when the continuity of the clergy depends on opaque and revocable decisions, sacramental continuity is objectively at risk.
Therefore, today’s meeting is not a protocolary gesture. In fact, the liturgical horizon of the coming years is at stake in it. If Rome insists on a restrictive and discretionary model, without real guarantees, the result is a Church in which the sacramental life of those who remain linked to the traditional Mass can be de facto suffocated. For many faithful, the issue is no longer an aesthetic debate or one of preferences, but a question of continuity: whether the “Mass of the ages” will have a secured place or whether it will be exposed to a process of progressive exhaustion.