The So-Called Agatha Christie Indult
How an Anglican crime novelist helped preserve the Traditional Latin Mass in England
Agatha Christie is famous for her mystery novels — and for her mysterious 1926 disappearance and reappearance (which itself has been the subject of multiple books and could be its own Deep Dive History post one day). But she’s also an unlikely hero to traditional Catholics, who credit the celebrated author with helping to save the Latin Mass in England following the Second Vatican Council.
I say unlikely because Agatha Christie lived out her life as a member of the Church of England — so why should she concern herself with the disappearance of the traditional forms of worship of the Catholic Church, a church to which she never belonged?
In order to answer that very reasonable question, we first have to look at what was going on within the Catholic Church at the time. Then, and only then, can we come to understand why a petition of famous British authors, artists, and intellectuals set out to protest that change, despite the lack of direct impact on their own worship.
For nearly two centuries, the liturgical tradition of the Catholic Church had continued on from the time of the Apostles, with certain efforts to codify the liturgy and its music occurring, yes, but not at the expense of the core wording of the liturgy itself. The form of the Mass used throughout the Roman Catholic Church, often called the Tridentine rite because it was codified at the Council of Trent in 1570, actually has much older roots than the word “Tridentine” could ever begin to imply.
Rather, 1570 simply marks the point at which local variants of the Mass were compiled into one, singular Rite for the entire Western Catholic Church (with the noted exception of the Ambrosian Rite of the Archdiocese of Milano, Italy — other Western traditional liturgies such as the Sarum Rite from England and the Gallician Rite could and possibly will be the subject of a future Deep Dive) which was published in the Roman Missal, although, in fact, the idea of using a singular Rite throughout the West had already been the general practice since the invention of the printing press. And, even before that, the form of the Mass used in Rome had been promoted for wider use by St. Francis of Assisi as early as 1223, from which point its use grew to include most of Europe.
The Roman Missal that came forth from the Council of Trent did not, therefore, represent a rupture with tradition or a work of innovation. Instead, it was a work of clarification that allowed for a more universal liturgy that would not vary, at least among Roman Catholics. In fact, it hardly differed at all from the Roman Missal of 1474, which was itself almost entirely a copy of what existed in the 13th century. And those books were, in turn, simply a compilation of liturgies that had been handed down, from bishop to priest, for centuries prior.
Just as the Church had worked to preserve Christian Scripture for future generations (even when vellum and scribes presented a heavy cost for doing so), the liturgy was also carefully and prayerfully preserved, almost entirely intact — and in the unchanging language of Latin, which did not, by its nature as a “dead language” morph with changing customs and generational linguistic differences the way the vernacular does.
And that Missal continued to be used, with only the smallest changes, generally additions of newly canonized saints and the 1961 addition of St. Joseph to the Roman Canon (the core part of the Mass which includes the consecration and had remained almost entirely constant since the 7th century) — at least until the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (commonly called Vatican II).
The changes that came in the wake of the Council were startling, even to outside eyes. A Rite that had survived revolutions, revolts, and, in England, the dissolution of the monasteries, was being replaced, nearly wholesale. While the New Order of the Mass (or, in Latin, the "Novus Ordo Missae”) was originally published in Latin and is, on rare occasion, celebrated in Latin, the text of the new Mass was substantially changed and the actual Masses found in parish churches around the world heavily mimicked Protestant liturgical innovations, especially the changes Archbishop Cranmer (who himself gutted the traditional liturgy for the newly established Church of England in the 16th century).
The priest, who had once face the high altar, leading the people in prayer, now faced the congregation. An emphasis on sacrifice was replaced with an emphasis on a common meal. The sacred host — the body and blood of Jesus Christ, according to Catholic theology — was placed on the recipient’s hands instead of on the tongue. The tone and tenor of sacred music was abruptly changed, with Gregorian chant (which has roots that can be traced to the Temple in Jerusalem in the time before Christ) and traditional hymns replaced with insipid pop inspired songs.
The Mass of the Ages was stripped bare and replaced with something resembling an act of communal performance art — and those innovations would only increase in time with the addition of altar girls and so-called “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion,” who became all too ordinary a sight in churches in almost all dioceses in virtually all Masses. Headcovering disappeared from the women and, eventually, ripped jeans and band tees would frequently replace suits on the men.
As Cardinal, the future Pope Benedict XVI would describe the changes made in the late 1960s thus: "In the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over the centuries and replaced it – as in a manufacturing process – with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product."
And that fabrication — that rupture with all that had come before — led to an overwelming sense of banality that did indeed trickle down to the people in the pews. Mass has become an activity rather than an act of worship. And, for many young people, it is an optional and not all that appealing activity, at that.
The liturgy in its traditional form — the liturgy that inspired countless saints, authors, artists, academics, and composers — must now be specially sought out and, at one time, was at risk of completely disappearing into the dust bin of history, to be found only in surviving old texts and never to be found on the altars of one’s local parish church.
And that, sadly, was by design.
But those with an appreciation for this great heritage did not go down without a fight.
In 1971, with clown themed Masses and even altar girls still a thing of the far off future, a petition with fifty-seven signatures made its way to Rome, officially called a “Statement by Scholars, Intellectuals, and Artists Living in England.” Reportedly, the name Pope Paul VI recognized first was that of Agatha Christie. And so she was often credit in both the press and in popular opinion with the indult, or permission, which was to result from the petition to save the Latin Mass in its traditional form.
Printed in alphabetical order, the list of those who signed the petition began with author and former Bright Young Thing Sir Harold Acton and included then-Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and author (and fellow Bright Young Thing) Nancy Mitford, along with authors, academics, classical musicians, and even an opera star. And, of course, Dame Agatha Christie and her second husband, archologist Sir Max Mallowan. They included among their number Anglicans and other Protestants as well as Jewish and even secular people, all of whom wished to implore the Pope to allow the traditional Mass to continue to be said in England.
But these luminaries of the arts and academia were not, by their own admission, “at this moment considering the religious or spiritual experience of millions of individuals,” but rather with the traditional rite itself, saying: “The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts — not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.”
They also were not, notably, requesting that the new version of the Mass be discontinued, though perhaps they would have done so if they’d had the ability to see the future of Catholic liturgy that would follow in the wake of the 1970 publication of Paul VI’s new Mass. Instead, they simply said that the petitioners “wish to call to the attention of the Holy See, the appalling responsibility it would incur in the history of the human spirit were it to refuse to allow the Traditional Mass to survive, even though this survival took place side by side with other liturgical forms.”
According to long repeated — though unsubstantiated — rumor, the Pope looked at the petition and said “ah, Agatha Christie” before approving an indult, or special permission, that “certain groups of the faithful may on special occasions be allowed to participate in the Mass celebrated according to the rites and texts of the former Roman missal.” But the version they would be allowed to use was one that was partially changed from the traditional forms of the Mass — although these changes were minor compared to those decided on in 1969 and promulgated in 1970. These Masses were, due to the text of the Indult, not a very frequent occurance, and priests needed to ask the permission of the local Bishop. Otherwise, the Mass in its traditional form was all but forbidden.
Traditional Catholics in England coined the affectionate moniker “Agatha Christie Indult” for this special permission. And this Indult allowed for the preservation of a form of the Latin Mass until the worldwide Indult of Pope John Paul II in 1984 and the wider permission for all priests to say the Latin Mass (providing they are trained to do so) by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
But why did Dame Agatha Christie put her own pen to paper to sign the petition to preserve the Mass?
We don’t have any documented writings that indicate how she came to sign it or her personal reasons why (beyond the fact that she clearly agreed with the substance of the petition itself), but we can make an educated guess.
One factor could have been her husband’s Catholic faith. Surely, she attended Mass with him at least on occasion when relatives and friends were married, baptised, and buried according to the traditional form.
Joseph Shaw, president of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales speculated in a 2021 email to the National Catholic register that: “Like practically everyone in the U.K. in 1971 who was blessed with an education and a social life, Christie was well aware of the Catholic liturgy: She would have experienced it at weddings and funerals, and Catholic beliefs and practices play a part in several of her stories.” He added, “It was part of universal culture.” He also added, “This liturgy was widely regarded by outsiders as something not only distinctive but uniquely impressive. They would no more want it to disappear than the Pyramids or the Mona Lisa.”
Regardless of her reasons, sign it she did — and an eighty-year-old Anglican murder mystery author in a mixed marriage became a symbol of resistance and a hero to traditional Catholics for generations to come.
Ultimately, the fear of the 1971 petitioners that “there is a plan to obliterate that Mass by the end of the current year” only paritally came to pass — and credit should be given to those who signed the petition, as well as to traditional Catholics (especially priests) who refused to let the Tridentine form of the Mass be forgotten.
Today, traditional liturgy is once again under fire as efforts to divide the faithful and push the traditions and patrimony of the Catholic faith to the fringe are once again at the forefront of Catholic news. And yet, while Mass attendance dwindles at the Masses said according to the Missal of Paul VI and 80% of young people who recieve the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Novus Ordo do not attend Mass as adults, Latin Masses are often celebrated in packed churches, before growing congregations with large families of young children. And the vast majority of those children go do on to continue to practice the Catholic faith.
The battle that was begun by Agatha Christie and her contemporaries was not won by any definition in 1971. And it is still not won today. In fact, whispers on the wind from Rome do not look good for those traditional Catholics who attend Masses said by diocean priests. It is rumored that Pope Francis intends to tighten his 2021 limits on the public celebration of the traditional form of the Mass.
But, if such a thing does come to pass, it is only one chapter in a long story — a story with Agatha Christie and an archologist and a Mitford sister and me. It’s a story that encompasses traditional Catholics who were not even born when the first attempts to supress the Mass of the Ages began. And it encompasses traditional Catholics not yet born. It’s a story that’s far from over, a book that even the Pope himself cannot burn.
Dive Deeper:
Full Text of the 1971 Petition
A Recollection on the 1971 Indult by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales
National Catholic Register: The Mystery of the Agatha Christie Indult