Timeline

The responses, dated 4 December 2021, limited use of the older Rituale to canonically erected personal parishes, excluded the Pontificale, and allowed parish-church celebrations only where no other venue is available and outside the parish Mass schedule.

A Fourth Circuit panel upheld an October 12, 2021, district-court ruling that Baltimore could not prevent St. Michael's Media from holding a rally near the U.S. bishops' November meeting. The district judge had found likely viewpoint discrimination.

In a letter to USCCB president Archbishop José Gomez and to CDF officials, Carlo Maria Viganò argued that the CDF's 2020 note neglected proportionality, said there was a grave duty to refuse the vaccines, and asked bishops to support religious exemptions.

La Civiltà Cattolica published Pope Francis's 12 September conversation with Jesuits in Bratislava. In it he criticised an unnamed large Catholic TV channel that kept speaking ill of the pope, and called attacks on the Church the work of the devil. Observers widely read the remarks as aimed at EWTN, and an NCR editorial urged the U.S. bishops to reconsider their relationship with the network.

Two weeks after announcing that Crisis Publications, led by Eric Sammons, had acquired OnePeterFive from its founder Steve Skojec, the site named Timothy Flanders as editor. Skojec, who had written publicly about a crisis of faith earlier that year, stepped away from the site.

Three days after Traditionis custodes, the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica announced that use of the 1962 Missal or any other expression of the liturgy prior to 1970 was no longer authorised in the country, saying it saw no objective justification for it there. Supporters of the traditional Mass objected, and in August a priest was suspended for continuing to celebrate Mass in Latin.

The motu proprio declared the reformed liturgical books "the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite", made the 1962 Missal subject to the diocesan bishop's authorisation, barred new groups, and abrogated earlier norms not in conformity. Francis's accompanying letter cited a 2020 consultation of bishops.

Bishop William Callahan of La Crosse removed Fr. James Altman as pastor of St. James the Less "for an indeterminate period of time". Catholic World Report said the decree barred him from celebrating public Mass, preaching, assisting at marriages or administering baptism; Altman had drawn national attention with a 2020 video saying no Catholic can be a Democrat.

Corrispondenza Romana published, in Italian and English, Roberto de Mattei's article 'The Viganò Case: The Archbishop and His Double', alleging that many letters signed by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò had been written by one or more other people. Viganò responded that the allegation was completely false.

In an interview with Massimo Franco published on 1 March 2021, Benedict XVI defended his resignation as a decision taken in full awareness. The Associated Press reported that he said "there is only one pope". Benevacantist writers disputed the interview's significance.

YouTube terminated the LifeSiteNews channel, which had more than 300,000 subscribers, citing repeated violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy. LifeSiteNews said it was not told which video triggered the final strike and continued posting video on Rumble.

Four Catholic academics, Patrick Deneen, Gladden Pappin, Chad Pecknold and Adrian Vermeule, began publishing the Postliberal Order newsletter in 2021; a 2024 academic article dates the decision to launch it to November 2021 (LARB, UKSW article).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said receiving such vaccines is "morally acceptable" when ethically irreproachable vaccines are not available, and that doing so implies no moral endorsement of the use of fetal cell lines.

Cardinal Janis Pujats, Archbishops Tomash Peta and Jan Pawel Lenga, and Bishops Joseph Strickland and Athanasius Schneider argued that using vaccines developed with fetal cell lines "cannot be acceptable for Catholics".

The Holy See's report on Theodore McCarrick disputed Viganò's description of Benedict-era sanctions and said he had not acted on a 2012 request from Cardinal Marc Ouellet to assess allegations against McCarrick. Viganò denied the report's accusations in an EWTN interview.

A second open letter from Archbishop Viganò, dated 25 October 2020, described the World Economic Forum's 'Great Reset' as a plan by a global elite to subdue humanity through coercive measures. The Anti-Defamation League has described the letter as foundational to the Great Reset conspiracy theory.

Bishop Gilles Lemay of Amos disavowed the messages and prophecies of Fr. Michel Rodrigue, which had spread online, including via the site Countdown to the Kingdom. Bishop Robert Bourgon of Hearst-Moosonee followed six days later.

Responding to a 1 June essay by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Archbishop Viganò argued that the Council itself lay at the root of later deviations. After Vatican commentator Sandro Magister wrote that such a wholesale rejection stood at the brink of schism, Viganò defended the idea that the Council be forgotten.

An open letter from Archbishop Viganò dated 7 June 2020 and published by LifeSiteNews framed the pandemic and U.S. protests as part of a spiritual battle and described a 'deep state' and a 'deep church'. President Trump praised it on Twitter on 10 June.

Timothy Gordon, host of the Rules for Retrogrades podcast, lost his job at Garces Memorial, a Catholic high school in Bakersfield, California, after posting on 3 June 2020 that Black Lives Matter was a terrorist organisation. National Review's John Hirschauer, a friend of Gordon's, argued that the dismissal followed swiftly after the comment.

In June 2020 the Archdiocese of Detroit condemned language in a Church Militant video about Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington as racist and derogatory, and said the outlet was not affiliated with, endorsed or recommended by the archdiocese and was not a recognized Church apostolate.

In a March 2020 essay in The Atlantic, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule argued that originalism had outlived its usefulness for conservatives and proposed a constitutionalism directed toward the common good. The Atlantic published rebuttals by Garrett Epps and Randy Barnett days later (ABA Journal, Harvard Crimson, RNS).

Bishop Kevin Rhoades said the Church gives no cover to anti-Jewish bias. Press coverage read the statement as an indirect rebuke of E. Michael Jones, editor of the South Bend magazine Culture Wars.

During the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, five statues displayed at the Carmelite church of Santa Maria in Traspontina were taken early on 21 October 2019 and thrown into the Tiber; traditionalist and conservative critics had objected to them as idolatrous. On 25 October Pope Francis, speaking as bishop of Rome, asked pardon of those offended by their removal, and in November Austrian activist Alexander Tschugguel said he was one of those responsible.

On a flight to Mozambique, Pope Francis told the French journalist Nicolas Senèze, whose new book described a network of U.S. conservative critics and the outlets that amplify them, that it was an honour to be attacked by Americans. A Vatican spokesman later said the pope always considers criticism an honour, particularly from authoritative thinkers.

In a letter dated 25 June 2019, Cardinal Raymond Burke ended his association with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, writing that he did not think Frédéric Martel's book In the Closet of the Vatican should be made into a film. Steve Bannon had been promoting such a film. The episode was revisited in 2026 after Epstein-file messages about the film were released.

A motu proprio suppressed the Commission created in 1988 and assigned its tasks to a section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Taylor Marshall's book Infiltration argues that modernists and Marxists planned to subvert the Catholic Church from within. National Catholic Reporter reported that it topped several Amazon categories while drawing criticism from conservative Catholic outlets.

Italian journalist Marco Tosatti told the Associated Press that he had helped Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò write, rewrite and edit his 11-page testimony against Pope Francis during a three-hour session at Tosatti's home on 22 August 2018, and that he persuaded Viganò to cut claims that could not be documented.

Former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released an 11-page statement, published by two conservative U.S. Catholic websites during the pope's visit to Ireland, alleging that Francis had known of restrictions placed on Theodore McCarrick under Benedict XVI. He called on the pope to resign; Francis declined to respond in detail.

The Holy See published a new text of Catechism of the Catholic Church 2267, approved by Pope Francis in an audience with Cardinal Luis Ladaria on 11 May 2018, stating that the death penalty is 'inadmissible'. An accompanying letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, dated 1 August 2018, presented the change as an authentic development of doctrine in continuity with the preceding Magisterium.

Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen published Why Liberalism Failed, a widely discussed critique that became a reference point for the postliberal movement; his 2023 Regime Change was presented as its more prescriptive follow-up (Public Seminar, Publishers Weekly).

A 25-page letter to Pope Francis concerning Amoris laetitia, delivered on 11 August 2017 with 40 signatures from clergy and lay scholars including historian Roberto de Mattei, was made public after receiving no reply. The list later grew to 62 names; Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of St Pius X was then the only bishop among them.

A letter of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei signed by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, dated 27 March and published 4 April 2017, said Pope Francis had authorised local ordinaries to grant faculties for marriages of faithful who follow the SSPX — where possible with a diocesan priest receiving the consent, otherwise by delegating an SSPX priest. The letter acknowledged the Society's 'illegitimate canonical situation'; the SSPX General House thanked the pope.

Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner made public five yes-or-no questions (dubia) on Amoris laetitia that they had sent to Pope Francis and to Cardinal Gerhard Müller on 19 September 2016. The questions never received a public reply.

After about seven and a half years hosting Catholic Answers Live, Patrick Coffin left the programme to start his own media projects. He later used his podcast to argue that Pope Francis was an antipope, a claim Catholic Answers rebutted.

The post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, dated 19 March 2016, was presented by the Holy See. Its eighth chapter on discernment for people in so-called irregular situations became a focal point of traditionalist criticism over Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics; in 2026 Leo XIV convened bishops to mark its tenth anniversary.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate 4, the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews published a theological reflection, not a magisterial text. It states that the Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.

In a letter to Archbishop Rino Fisichella dated 1 September 2015, Pope Francis provided that the faithful approaching SSPX priests during the Jubilee Year of Mercy would receive valid and licit absolution; Vatican Radio noted that those priests otherwise lacked the faculties to hear confessions. In Misericordia et misera (dated 20 November 2016) he extended the provision beyond the Jubilee 'until further provisions are made'.

Nicholas Gruner, who founded the Fatima Crusaders (now The Fatima Center) in 1978 and whose canonical suspension was disputed for years, died while working in the Center's office in Fort Erie, Ontario.

In Nova Friburgo, Brazil, Richard Williamson, by then expelled from the SSPX, consecrated Fr. Jean-Michel Faure a bishop without a papal mandate. Under canon law both incurred automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.