New Evidence Confirms CDF Report, Eroding Vatican Narrative on TLM Restrictions

More evidence has come to light confirming the authenticity of the sections I published last week from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s final report on its 2020 survey of bishops concerning the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter liberalizing the traditional Roman liturgy.

The sections I published on July 1 comprised the CDF report’s overall assessment of the survey results and a collection of quotations from bishops that were meant to give Pope Francis an overall representation of their responses.

Since publishing that story, I have obtained the Vatican protocol number for the CDF final report. Additionally, I have obtained the introduction to its Second Part, which confirms that the overall assessment constituted the official “opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” to which Pope Francis refers in Traditionis Custodes.

This follows Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni’s comments last week in which he downplayed the sections of the CDF final report that I published on July 1. He said he would not confirm the sections’ authenticity, that they “presumably” were only a “very partial and incomplete” part of the decision-making process that led to Pope Francis issuing Traditionis Custodes, and that other documents and “confidential reports” went into the Pope’s decision, something that the Vatican had not revealed until now.

But Bruni’s comments raise more questions than they answer. In his accompanying letter to Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis made it clear that it was the responses to the 2020 CDF survey that persuaded him “of the need to intervene,” even though—as has now come to light—the CDF’s overall assessment concluded that “the majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire stated that making legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum would cause more harm than good.”

So if there were, as Bruni states, additional documents and confidential reports that went into the decision-making process that led to Traditionis Custodes, something the Vatican claimed only after the details of the survey results were disclosed on July 1, those documents would logically have to prove that the CDF final report inaccurately represented what the majority of responding bishops said, and therefore that Pope Francis had the support of the greater part of the episcopate when he imposed TC’s restrictions on the traditional Roman liturgy.

This raises the question: if what Matteo Bruni says is true, why did Pope Francis not refer to those “additional documents” in Traditionis Custodes, given that they presumably gave him the basis for his decision to “abrogate” Summorum Pontificum?

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