Summorum Pontificum

1. Art. 1The Missal of Paul VI is the “ordinary expression” of the Roman Rite’s lex orandi, and the 1962 Missal is an “extraordinary expression” of the same lex orandi.
2. Art. 2In Masses without a congregation, any Latin-rite priest may use either Missal, on any day except the Easter Triduum, and needs no permission.
3. Art. 5 § 1; Art. 7A parish priest should willingly accede to the requests of a stable group of the faithful who want the 1962 Missal, and the group may take its request to the bishop if it is refused.
4. Art. 10The local bishop may set up a personal parish, or appoint a rector or chaplain, for the older form.
5. Art. 9 §§ 1, 3The older rites of Baptism, Marriage, Penance and Anointing of the Sick may be used with the parish priest’s agreement, and clerics may use the 1962 Breviary.

It sets aside the conditions of the earlier permissions, the 1984 indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos and the 1988 motu proprio Ecclesia Dei: the text says that the conditions they laid down “are now replaced as follows” (Art. 1). Much of it was later changed by Traditionis Custodes (2021).

• What people say: It makes the 1962 Missal a separate rite of its own.

  What the text says: The text calls the two Missals “two usages of the one Roman rite” (Art. 1). Art. 1

• What people say: A priest needed the bishop’s permission to say the 1962 Mass.

  What the text says: For Masses without a congregation, the text says the priest “needs no permission from the Apostolic See or from his own Ordinary” (Art. 2). Art. 2

• What people say: Summorum Pontificum is still in force exactly as written.

  What the text says: Traditionis Custodes (2021) changed much of it, and its Article 8 sets aside earlier norms that do not conform to it. See the Traditionis Custodes explainer. Traditionis Custodes, Art. 8

• “These two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi”

  Art. 1

• “the priest needs no permission from the Apostolic See or from his own Ordinary.”

  Art. 2

• “never abrogated, as an extraordinary form of the Church’s Liturgy”

  Preamble and Art. 1