ROME — German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office (CDF), has criticized Pope Francis for his “imprudence” in clamping down on the Traditional Latin Mass.
By revoking broad faculties to celebrate the older rite with his letter Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis “has committed an imprudence, because he has not taken into account some sensitivities within the Church, those of the faithful attached to the ancient liturgy,” Cardinal Müller said in an interview with Italian media this weekend.
Francis’ predecessors Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had introduced more inclusive measures accommodating those who wished to use the extraordinary form of the Catholic liturgy, measures repealed by Francis with his 2021 letter.
After all, Cardinal Müller continued, “we have more than 20 rites of the same Mass: I would have been more tolerant, so as not to cause problems, which in my opinion are superfluous at the moment.”
In the interview, Müller accuses the pontiff of “intransigence” and a lack of open-mindedness, something Francis himself has often railed against.
“It was not prudent to insist with intransigence on disciplining the so-called traditionalists,” Müller said. “It would have been enough to keep Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio, which was more prudent because it made room for the whole ecclesial panorama.”
Francis needs “to be more attentive to every sensibility, even those furthest from his own, in order to try to keep everyone united,” the cardinal insisted.
It is important for him to “listen to everyone, including those who don’t think like him,” he continued. “Also because sometimes some of those labeled as enemies of the Pope in reality are not.”
File/Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carambula celebrates the Latin Tridentine mass in St.Giuseppe a Capo le Case church in central Rome 01 July 2007. (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty)
Müller places himself in this latter group, insisting that his criticisms of the pope are offered with fraternal affection, not animosity.
“I am not an enemy of the pope,” the cardinal declared. “Making suggestions does not mean being hostile.”
“For me the pope is the pope, the highest authority,” he added. “No one can say that I am an enemy of the pope.”
Cardinal Müller is one of the many prelates that Francis favored for a time and then cast aside, serving as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith until 2017, when the pope declines to renew his mandate as prefect.
According to Müller, a much greater danger than difference of liturgical preferences is “doctrinal confusion.”
“The pope, every pope, must be at the service of the unity of the Church and of the revealed faith,” he asserted, and the first mission of the pontiff is “to preach the Gospel.”
Moreover, the doctrine of the Church “is not the program of a political party,” he stated, because “politicians often change ideas according to the tastes of the voters, whereas the doctrine of the Church is the expression of the Word of God, and we human beings cannot complete, correct, or modernize the Word of God.”
It can only be explained “more clearly in the light of the challenges of the contemporary world,” he added.
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