On 2 August Ad Vaticanum published the remarks of Card. Sarah about the Traditional Latin Liturgy of the Roman, Latin Church. Read it there, but here’s a summary of the piece with my added emphases and comments (aka “zisking”).
Essentially, Card. Sarah describes the Church’s present crisis as one of doctrinal confusion, weakened preaching, liturgical disorder, and inadequate formation. [In short, everything fundamental for a sound Catholic identity.] Renewal, he argues, must begin with prayer, silence, reverence, and faithful transmission of the Gospel rather than accommodation to secular culture. [Notable absence: synodality (aka “walking together”)]
His strongest criticism concerns the conflict between Catholics attached to the older Roman rite and defenders of the reformed liturgy. He calls this division “a true and proper sin” because the liturgy should be the “source of the Church’s communion,” not an ideological weapon. Catholics must not treat one another as enemies over ritual forms. [When someone is kicking you in the gut while you are down, it is hard to view them as your ally.]
Sarah insists that “no one has authority over the rites” as though they were personal or bureaucratic property. “The liturgy belongs to God.” Priests, bishops, and cardinals receive the Church’s worship; they do not own it. An inherited rite cannot simply be treated as nonexistent by administrative decree.
He therefore favors Benedict XVI’s “balanced, pastoral and theologically well-founded” approach, permitting the older and newer forms to coexist peacefully within the Church. Such coexistence would allow each to enrich the other and would give the faithful access to the silence, depth, and continuity they seek. [That doesn’t sound like synodality to me. Allow for personal choices?!?]
Sarah also acknowledges excesses among traditionalists, while noting that many reactions arise from abuses in celebrations of the newer rite. The faithful have a right to the Church’s liturgy, not to ceremonies reshaped according to a celebrant’s “caprice.” [One which side of things does THAT usually occur?]
The broader remedy is “formation, and again formation” for bishops, priests, and laity. True unity will come through doctrinal fidelity, reverent worship, correction of abuses, and an end to coercive liturgical factionalism. [Again we return to the concept of Catholic identity. If you don’t know your faith, your liturgical rites by which you fulfill the virtue of Religion, you don’t have a sound Catholic identity.]
On the other hand, also at Ad Vaticanum, The Windy Cardinal, had his own divergent views on the TLM, etc. (Really, about the people who want the TLM, I think.)
Card. Cupich argues that disputes over the Traditional Latin Mass and other ecclesial controversies weaken the Church’s credibility in addressing war, environmental problems, and global concerns. Internal forces that “tear apart unity,” [There’s the current all-important shiboleth] he says, diminish the authority of the Church’s witness. Outsiders may reasonably question why they should heed an institution marked by “discord and division” within its own household. [Of course we were being marginalized in the public square before because our identity is so eroded, Catholics today are so unaware of the Faith that they have no way to articulate it in the public square. It is NOT the liturgical issues. Cupich, for example, considers Sen Durbin someone deserving an award.]
Cupich links this appeal for unity with synodality. Resistance to synodal processes, he suggests, often reflects fear that engagement with contemporary questions will sever the Church from tradition. Catholics should trust that “the Spirit of Christ is at work” and that the sensus fidelium enables the faithful to address new problems without abandoning the faith. Synodality promotes “shared responsibility” through greater lay participation in evangelization, catechesis, pastoral planning, and consultation. [The problem with that flimsy appeal to the sensus fidelium is that you have to be a member of the FIDELES to have it! And that is NOT the current situation. See my remarks above. But wait… “walking together” will be the remedy for unity.]
He identifies three priorities for the coming decade: continuing the renewal begun by the Second Vatican Council, maintaining environmental advocacy, and promoting peace. [Notable absence? How about salvation of souls? We can consider the Church’s messaging ad intra and ad extra, for within the Church to her members and outward to the world But both of those have to be rooted in the Great Commission, which was not for environmental advocacy or “world peace”, but salvation in Jesus Christ mediated through the one, holy and apostolic Catholic Church which He founded and which, batterd and buffeted from without and from within, perdures today.] He also warns that just-war doctrine, originally intended to restrain conflict, can be misused as “a licence to act.” [I suspect that those who say that JWT has to be revisited today could not, if pressed, articulate what it is.]
The article argues, however, that Cupich’s own governance conflicts with his condemnation of division. His implementation of Traditionis custodes prohibited the older Mass on first Sundays and major feasts and imposed conditions concerning the postconciliar liturgy. The Institute of Christ the King consequently suspended public Masses and confessions at its Chicago shrine rather than accept those conditions. The article maintains that such restrictions increased alienation and may have driven some Catholics toward the Society of St Pius X.
It also cites Cupich’s proposed award to Senator Dick Durbin, despite Durbin’s support for legal abortion and Bishop Thomas Paprocki’s prohibition against his receiving Holy Communion. Durbin declined the award after episcopal protests. The article concludes that Cupich applies his concern for unity selectively, condemning conflict over the Latin Mass while pursuing policies that themselves generate serious ecclesial division.
So, in summary:
Sarah and Cupich both think that conflict over the Traditional Latin Mass harms ecclesial unity, but they propose very different remedies.
Sarah approaches the problem through reconciliation and liturgical continuity. He regards hostility between supporters of the older and newer forms as “a true and proper sin” because the liturgy should create communion. Since “the liturgy belongs to God,” no ecclesiastical authority should treat an inherited rite as disposable property. His solution is peaceful coexistence. Unity is achieved by protecting legitimate diversity within a common faith and hierarchy.
Cupich approaches the issue principally through institutional discipline and conformity to authority dressed in the guise the reforms following the Council. He argues that internal “discord and division” weaken the Church’s public credibility and distract from wider over arching priorities such as synodality, peace, and environmental responsibility. His response is therefore regulatory: the imposition of will. The older rite is restricted in order to force a single liturgical direction and prevent it from becoming a focal point of resistance to the all-important Second Vatican Council.
Sarah calls for differences within unity. Cupich would impose uniformity as a means of securing unity.
Cardinal Cupich rarely says anything worth putting in print.
It is hard to suggest that just war theory should be suppressed when his own policy on Liturgy is that one must be crushed for the other to thrive. If he believed in the sensus fidelium then wouldn’t the prudent approach be to allow the coexistence of both forms and let the sensus fidelium inform the rites in unity through Our Lord Jesus Christ?
Cardinal Cupich, Roche, and others like them know full well what the sensus fidelium and unity are pointing towards which is why they feel the need to dictate their personal desires rather than follow the faith. They are nothing more than petty dictators trying to force their own will.
The people governing the Church have almost always had an issue with liturgical diversity. Conflicts between Roman rite and Gallican, Roman and Byzantine, Constantinople replacing the liturgies of Alexandria and Antioch, Armenians being persecuted for over 1,500 years due to their rite, Jesuits causing a civil war in Ethiopia in the 1600s, etcetera. It’s been a disaster for a really long time. Thankfully Vatican 2 has given the eastern rites freedom to be themselves, though that’s still very a much a work in progress. It took until 2016 for Francis, not JP 2 or Benedict, to allow easterners to ordain married men in the diaspora.
I don’t see how the TLM and NO co-exist with limited numbers of priests and parishes, no one is equally happy with both, and the NO will almost always get preference and trads get worn down by being ghettoized. Who gets the good Sunday Mass slot? Who gets holy days? Will a bishop confirm in the old rite? We want our tradition, all of it, all the time
It is not clear from Ad Vaticanum what the relationship is between Niwa Limba’s article and Cardinal Rober Sarah’s interview with Il Foglio editor-in-chief Matteo Matzuzzi (to which no link is provided: I have not searched for it – to feed into a translation machine given how weak my Italian is). But as presented, his quoted words disappoint, sounding close to obtuse or disingenuous.
“It is a drama, indeed a true and proper sin, that on an essential theme such as the liturgy there should be a kind of war.” Just whose “true and proper sin”? It sounds like an articulation of something like a ‘Just “Liturgical-Wars” Teaching’ is called for.
If “it is unthinkable that on liturgical themes—indeed I would say ritual ones—there should be such opposition and such fierce confrontations” – when the “unthinkable” so clearly exists, the details of – again, whose – “opposition and such fierce confrontations” to and concerning what, exactly?
“Some excesses on the part of those attached to the extraordinary form are, in part, justified by the dramatic and widespread abuses of the liturgy of the ordinary form” – which “excesses” on the part of whom, in which “part”?
Perhaps, having (as I take it) chose to have his arms include “Sufficit tibi gratia mea”, Cardinal Sarah addresses “the dramatic and widespread abuses” and their perpetrators with something more like the detail and force St. Paul exhibited with respect to the erring Corinthians in the rest of the interview.
As I understand synodality – to the extent it has been articulated for the average lay Dominican in the pews to understand – it consists of always being willing to listen to the other first, so that the Spirit may fill the process of decision making in the Church. Not to first offer or attempt to impose a position, but to first seek to hear the other, and ensure the other feels heard. What is more synodal than Summorum Pontificum – to ensure the contemporary Church is in unity with the history and tradition of the Church? Does not, and did not Pope Benedict XVI say, the TLM informs the NO liturgy, in its practice and its theology? Will not a more faithfully celebrated liturgy, rooted truly in our worship of the Triune God, be more Spirit filled from this dialogue? How could in not be? My only suggestion for a return to the freedom of expression for the Latin Rite, would be to align the calendars so that there is not a belief that one form of the Rite’s liturgy is forever consigned to a historical calendar and, thus, history, while the other form continues to move with the groanings of the Spirit in the Church. They should both travel this pilgrim journey.
Hasn’t His Eminence of Chicago exceeded his shelf life.
Surely there is a rest home along the shores of Lake Michigan to accommodate him.
Here I have to respectfully disagree with @Dan, because this was worth printing from Cupich:
“He also warns that just-war doctrine, originally intended to restrain conflict, can be misused as “a licence to act.””
Hey “Blaze”, let’s play a little thought experiment with that. Is control of priests in your diocese originally intended for one thing but abused by malefactors, or maybe even just people promoted out of their depth?
How about this? Seminary formation, originally intended to generate ORTHODOX priests, can be misused to create an army of slack-jawed yes-men.
Or this – Diocesan staffing, originally intended to provide proper pastoral care to the flock, can be misused to hide diabolical child-predators.
Or maybe – pastors, originally intended to foster a healthy and growing community or “parish”, can be misused to drive them into the ground and financial destruction.
We can play this all day, Blaise.
Why is it that when we refer to “Catholics” it only means ROMAN Catholics. What about those Catholics who worship in the Byzantine Rite Churches? Why doesn’t the Pope’s”unity” apply to tem as well. There’s diversity in THEIR liturgies.
If I may, the distinction is not TLM or NO, but this: Did Vatican II break with the traditional Roman rite, and the Roman Canon? Or…is the Novus Ordo a continuation of the Roman Rite, these past few hundreds and hundreds of years?
(Said about Jorge B., can someone who publicly dismantles the faith, actually be the visible head of the Roman Catholic church.
(Thethesis(dot)US
Recently I was talking with two young Traditional Priests. They made a great comment. They said in 20 years the Church will need to consecrate more Bishops. There will be more Traditional Priests than Novus Ordo.
I told them that gives me hope.
I left out, I could be dead in twenty years.. I hope not . Hahaha
From Not:
They said in 20 years the Church will need to consecrate more Bishops. There will be more Traditional Priests than Novus Ordo.
I told them that gives me hope.
I don’t find this hopeful: It may be that currently more of the people in formation in the seminaries are conservative than the liberal priests in their 60s 70s. The problem is that “more of” isn’t “exclusively”, just a preponderance. There is nothing that prevents the current powers that be from selecting ONLY those young priests who are just like them for advancement and eventual bishoprics.
And while it is true that by and large most of the young men going into the seminaries are relatively conservative, there’s 2 problems: (1) that’s a relative scale. They are more conservative than the liberal oldsters, yes. but they are also more liberal than the average priest of the 1950’s or 1960’s. The entire yardstick has shifted leftward. (2) Just like in colleges, in seminaries these young men receive their final formation. The liberal courses, liberal teachers, and liberal institutional powers that press on them form new liberals out of former conservatives. There might not be data directly from the seminaries, but from universities, there is data that shows the student body as a whole absorbs / becomes more left-leaning with every year in the university (continues into graduate schools, but with the kicker that they tend to select for graduates who think like them). There is no good reason to think this DOESN’T happen in the seminaries too.
I do think that, by natural forces, the pendulum will swing back a little bit, (has already done so in some respects), but the powers tend to understand their problem, and they have many, many resources & powers to address it.
Tony O
I understand. I have talked with a lot of young seminarians. They seem to know the score.
A very good Lawyer friend now departed went through it in Law school. He gave the liberal Professors what they wanted. Towards the end he would give what they wanted and added the truth.
These young men have grown up and embraced tradition. They have strong traditional families.