traditionalist Catholicism

In 2026 the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a Roman Catholic priestly society with about half a million adherents—in a global population of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics—consecrated four new bishops. The event made international headlines. Why was this news? First, in the Roman Catholic Church, only the pope has the authority to select bishops, who are then officially confirmed by an archbishop and two other bishops. The SSPX does not have the pope’s approval to create new bishops.

This leads to the second reason why this was news: The SSPX is one of several groups that practice traditionalist Catholicism, a form of Roman Catholicism that observes traditions of the church that have been restricted since the 1960s, especially the celebration of the Latin mass. Traditionalism is an outgrowth of the most significant reform movement enacted by the Roman Catholic Church in centuries: the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). In the 21st century traditionalism has become a lightning rod of debate in Catholicism, sparking concern about a major schism (a break in the unity of the church).

Background: Vatican II and the new Catholicism

To understand traditionalist Catholicism, it’s helpful to understand just how much the church changed after the Second Vatican Council, commonly called Vatican II. In 1959 Pope John XXIII called for an ecumenical council. His mission was to foster spiritual renewal and unity among Christians and bring the nearly 2,000-year-old church in line with the changes of modern society. The pope called it aggiornamento—Italian for “bringing up to date.” Three years later the council opened in Rome with a massive assembly of bishops, other clergy, and theologians from around the world. Vatican II met repeatedly through 1965, by which time John XXIII had died and Pope Paul VI was leading the church.

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The changes instituted by Vatican II utterly transformed Roman Catholicism, most controversially with the mass, the church’s central act of worship. For centuries the mass had been performed in Latin; now Catholics could worship in their own local languages. According to the council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, this change was made to encourage laypeople to actively participate in the mass. Indeed, for the first time, laypeople were invited to serve as lectors or eucharistic ministers. The liturgy also changed so that priests faced the congregation during mass, whereas before they had spent a good part of the service facing the altar. In place of solemn hymns, some churches introduced folk music into their Sunday services (dubbed “guitar masses”). The church also issued documents that promoted dialogue with Jews and Muslims, condemned antisemitism, and called for Catholics to focus on social justice in their communities.

Traditionalist Catholicism developed as certain people rejected many of these changes, although the movement eventually included people who simply prefer the older ornate rituals and sense of mystery—the “smells and bells” experience—of their faith.

Who are the traditionalist Catholics?

Much of the debate on traditionalist Catholicism centers on the traditional Latin mass, a form of worship that was officially replaced by the vernacular mass (the novus ordo, or “new order”) in 1970. Relatively few dioceses allow the Latin mass, but some Catholics would like to see its widespread return. The Latin mass has especially appealed to priests ordained after 2000, a generation born well after Vatican II.

Along with the Latin mass, adherents of traditional Catholicism tend to be attracted to other rituals or devotional practices associated with the pre-Vatican II (or preconciliar) church, such as praying the rosary daily or weekly, choosing to receive the Communion host on the tongue while kneeling instead of in the hands while standing, and, in the case of women, covering the head at mass. Before Vatican II many women satisfied this latter requirement simply by wearing a hat, a scarf, or even a napkin or handkerchief pinned to the top of their heads. Traditionalist women more often opt for a lace veil or mantilla.

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Key traditionalist figures and groups

Among the notable people who have played a role in the rise of the traditionalist movement are the following figures.

The Belgian-born Gommar DePauw served as a parish priest and a professor of canon law in the United States after World War II. He participated in Vatican II as a theological adviser, but he objected to the changes to the liturgy. In 1964 he founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, which caused the archbishop of his diocese (Baltimore) to suspend him from celebrating mass and administering sacraments. After appealing to the Vatican’s head of the Holy Office (conservative Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani), DePauw was placed under the jurisdiction of a diocese in Italy, which enabled him to continue in the priesthood. However, he remained in the United States, where he established a church in New York that used the traditional Latin liturgy. DePauw declared the modern liturgy “a songfest with the overtones of a hootenanny,” and he urged Catholics to launch a “counter-reformation” and become “rebels for Christ’s cause.” He often blamed liberalism for Vatican II. In 1967 DePauw said of Paul VI, “The pope speaks some beautiful words, but what good does this do if he lets the liberals do what they want?” He died in 2005 at age 86.

Who Was Pius X?

The SSPX is named for Pope Pius X, a staunchly conservative pontiff who reigned from 1903 to 1914 and attempted to repress Modernism, an intellectual movement that sought to reinterpret traditional Roman Catholic teaching in the light of 19th-century philosophical, historical, and psychological theories.

Marcel Lefebvre was a French archbishop who attended Vatican II as a Council Father, which gave him the power to vote on documents. He disagreed with the more liberal Council Fathers, especially on a document addressing religious freedom, which he claimed contained theological errors introduced by liberal clerics. Years later he characterized Vatican II as “the adulterous marriage of the Church with liberal ideas” and called the novus ordo a “bastard rite.”

In 1970 Lefebvre founded the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in Switzerland. He clashed with the papacy on and off throughout the 1970s, until Paul VI finally suspended him from his priestly and episcopal duties. In the 1980s Pope John Paul II attempted a more conciliatory approach and tried to negotiate with Lefebvre and his group. When Lefebvre defied John Paul’s authority and consecrated new bishops in 1988, he and the bishops were excommunicated. Lefebvre died in 1991 at age 85. After his death, the church and the SSPX resolved some of their differences, and the excommunication was lifted. But the group’s consecration of four new bishops in July 2026 caused another schism, and the SSPX’s bishops were promptly excommunicated.

Mother Angelica was a Poor Clare nun who founded the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in 1981 in Alabama after building a small following through her series of radio programs, televised talks, and religious books. Before EWTN, Mother Angelica had taped her programs at a secular TV station. But she decided to start her own network when the station aired a film that she considered to be “blasphemous.” EWTN grew into a worldwide religious media empire, with 11 networks and 24-hour programming in multiple languages, a newspaper, a website, and many other branches. Although not strictly traditionalist, EWTN is known for its conservative viewpoint, and it features traditionalist programming and commentators who advocate for the movement. Mother Angelica died in 2016 at age 92.

Of the 21st-century Roman Catholic cardinals, Raymond Burke of the United States, Gerhard Müller of Germany, and Robert Sarah of Guinea have expressed strong support for the traditionalist movement. They were especially vocal in 2021, after Pope Francis issued an apostolic letter that reinstated limitations on the celebration of the Latin mass that had been loosened by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The three cardinals called the limitations “drastic” and “severe,” although they have also argued that the two traditions can be reconciled.

Conservatism and controversy

Traditionalist Catholicism is associated with social and political conservatism, yet not all conservative Catholics are traditionalists. For example, Opus Dei, a global group of laypeople and clergy that has attracted controversy for its affiliation with right-wing politicians in several countries, is not traditionalist. It was founded in Spain in 1928, decades before Vatican II, and its members profess strong allegiance to the pope. Indeed, this is true of many conservative—and liberal—Roman Catholics: They may disagree with the church’s teachings on certain issues, such as immigration or abortion, but they generally remain faithful and support the papacy.

Some traditionalist groups in the United States have been deemed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of antisemitic statements made by members and leaders. The SPLC differentiates between most traditionalist Catholics and radical traditionalists (sometimes called “rad trads,” a pejorative term), many of whom have rejected one of the most important documents of Vatican II, Nostra aetate (Latin: “In Our Time”), a 1965 papal declaration that denounced the traditional accusation that the Jews killed Christ, recognized the legitimacy of Judaism and Islam, and condemned antisemitism.

The SPLC traces radical traditionalist ideology to several priests who made blatantly antisemitic pronouncements before and after Vatican II, including Denis Fahey, Charles E. Coughlin, and Leonard Feeney (who was excommunicated). Among the contemporary groups deemed radical by the SPLC are the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in New Hampshire, and several publications and their publishers, such as Culture Wars, The Remnant, and The Fatima Crusader.

How have the popes responded?

All the popes who have reigned since Vatican II have firmly upheld its reforms. However, most have had to contend with dissenters or attempt to steer traditionalists back to the church’s modern teachings. Among the modern popes, Benedict XVI is viewed as having been the most sympathetic to the traditionalist movement. In what was seen as a major encouragement to traditionalist groups, in 2007 Benedict issued an apostolic letter (Summorum pontificum; “Of the Supreme Pontiffs”) that essentially allowed any priest to celebrate either the traditional Latin mass or the modern rite. Benedict stated that parish priests “should willingly accede” to groups who favored the Latin mass if there was a stable community to support it. However, he also stressed the importance of maintaining unity in the church. Notably, it was Benedict who lifted the excommunication on the SSPX’s bishops, although they remained canonically irregular.

By contrast, many traditionalists viewed Francis’s papacy as “hostile” or overly restrictive to the movement. Although he approved several provisions that gave some legitimacy to SSPX priests’ pastoral functions, he also made statements in which he called the liturgical reforms of Vatican II “irreversible” and likened newly ordained priests’ attraction to traditionalism to clericalism (the practice of giving excessive power to the authority of the clergy). In 2021 Francis issued the apostolic letter Traditionis custodes (“Guardians of the Tradition”); much to many traditionalists’ consternation, it reinstated some of the church’s restrictions on the celebration of the Latin mass.

Elected in May 2025, Leo XIV made several statements in the first year of his papacy lamenting the divisions over the traditional Latin mass. Within days of his election, he gave a speech to the College of Cardinals in which he asked them to renew their commitment to the teachings of Vatican II. Yet several months later he allowed Cardinal Burke to celebrate a traditional Latin mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the request of a traditionalist lay group that had made a pilgrimage to Rome.

Perhaps Leo’s most revealing statement on the movement came in June 2026, a few weeks before the SSPX consecrated new bishops without papal permission. Leo told reporters:

Certainly, division among Christians is always a painful point, but they refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with various points of the Second Vatican Council. If they make that choice, I am sorry, but we must move forward.