Cordileone: "There was more unity in the Church with Summorum Pontificum"

The Archbishop of San Francisco, Monsignor Salvatore Cordileone, has put into words what many bishops think and very few dare to say in public. In an exclusive interview granted to Tribune Chrétienne, broadcast on October 8, the prelate compared the two regimes that have governed the traditional liturgy over the past twenty years and delivered a clear verdict, without diplomatic nuances:

«It is very clear to me that there was more unity in the Church when we lived under Summorum Pontificum than we have now under Traditionis custodes».

The statement carries more weight than usual because of the robe of the one who pronounces it. Since last July 25, Cordileone has been a judge of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura by appointment of Leo XIV, the same tribunal that examines appeals against decrees of the Roman Curia.

The wound that Benedict wanted to close

Cordileone recalled in the interview the liturgical wars of the post-conciliar period, those years when Catholics were judged and labeled according to the Mass they attended. The tensions, he explained, continued until the nineties and only began to ease with the indult granted by Saint John Paul II and, above all, with Benedict XVI’s motu proprio in 2007. Under that regime, those who loved the ancient rite and those who preferred more recent forms coexisted in peace, without mutual anathemas.

The archbishop attributed to Ratzinger a deep understanding of the rupture experienced after the Council, because he knew it firsthand and saw how rapid and radical changes in the celebration gravely damaged the faith of many Catholics, and in some cases destroyed it. The distinction between the ordinary and extraordinary form of the Roman rite sought an internal reconciliation of worship that no commission of experts could manufacture in an office. It had to grow organically, with generations of faithful praying with both missals, perhaps for centuries.

That process was cut short in 2021. According to Cordileone, the faithful attached to tradition have been stigmatized and marginalized within the Church, and the treatment received threatens to reopen the wounds that Benedict wanted to heal. «I think that fosters division», he stated, before confessing his fear that the alienation of those who already felt expelled once might happen again.

A Council that sounds to young people like another century

The most lucid part of the conversation is his generational reading. For those who lived through Vatican II, the reform still seems recent; for a young person today, sixty long years are equivalent to what the first decade of the twentieth century meant for a university student in the post-war period. What their elders considered an indispensable novelty, young people perceive as a closed era, and they seek something of eternal value instead of fashions that age with the generation that invented them.

Cordileone also asked those young people to respect their elders who went through the revolutionary storm without losing their faith, and proposed a dialogue between generations capable of recovering authentic tradition without turning it into a museum piece. He linked this renewal to the famous 1969 prophecy of then-professor Joseph Ratzinger about a smaller Church, without social influence or large structures, but more fervent and self-aware, and assured that this Church is already clearly visible in the United States. The way forward, in his view, is to reread the Council in continuity with what came before: the Latin and Gregorian chant that Sacrosanctum Concilium called for, and the orientation toward the east as a sign of Christ who is coming.

A coherent voice, and increasingly less solitary

The archbishop’s words do not come out of nowhere. After the episcopal consecrations of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X last July 1, he called for a sincere dialogue between Rome and Écône and easier access to the Traditional Mass, so that no one feels pushed to seek spiritual nourishment outside of communion with Rome. Weeks later, when Cardinal Arthur Roche assured that Leo XIV would not touch Traditionis custodes, Cordileone responded on television that those restrictions do not constitute a sustainable policy and that young people’s love for tradition is unstoppable.

There is an underlying irony worth emphasizing. In August 2021, just after the document by Francis was published, the same Cordileone defended that the Pope had acted out of concern for unity and censured disrespectful attacks against the Pontiff. Five years later, with the serenity of one who has observed the fruits, the archbishop concludes that that unity was greater before the restriction. The argument used to justify Traditionis custodes turns against the norm itself.

The interview also addresses Leo XIV’s visit to France, the rebirth of faith in the United States, synodality, and a glowing tribute to Cardinal Robert Sarah, whom Cordileone called «a great light for the Church of our time». Rome can continue without changing a comma of the motu proprio. What it can no longer do is pretend that criticism comes only from the periphery.