My new book Is the Pope Catholic? Variations on a Traditionalist Theme is a translation of a book I wrote in Swedish in 2024. It is part of the ebook series Uppsala Studies in Church History, available open-access (see link below).

‘Traditionalist Catholics’ rarely call themselves traditionalists. In this study, I still use the concept to refer to individuals and groups who, to varying degrees, oppose the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the post-conciliar developments in the Catholic Church. The term is thus analytical and almost universally accepted by scholars.

The ‘traditionalists’ see themselves as Catholics, or traditional Catholics, and emphatically claim that it is the church leadership, or at least its majority, that has departed from traditional Catholic doctrine, not them. They adhere to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Roman Rite of 1570 (albeit in revised versions), and oppose the new Order of Mass, promulgated in 1969 and commonly called the Novus Ordo, which they consider to include substantial changes and therefore unacceptable. For them, Traditionalist Catholicism is just true Catholicism.

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