NIWA LIMBU
OCT. 8, 2026Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has said the Church experienced greater unity under Summorum Pontificum than under Traditionis Custodes, warning that restrictions on the traditional liturgy risk reopening old wounds
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has said the Church experienced greater unity under Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum than it does under Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes.
In an interview with French Catholic newspaper Tribune Chrétienne on October 8, the Archbishop of San Francisco said the restrictions placed on the traditional liturgy risk repeating wounds caused by the rapid liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council.
“It’s very clear to me that there was more unity in the Church when we were living under Summorum Pontificum than we are now under Traditionis Custodes,” Archbishop Cordileone said.
He recalled the “liturgical wars” that followed the Council, when Catholics were judged and stereotyped according to their liturgical preferences. He said tensions continued into the 1990s before the situation began to “mellow” following the indult permitted under St John Paul II and then the publication of Summorum Pontificum.
Under Pope Benedict’s approach, Archbishop Cordileone said, Catholics attached to traditional worship and those preferring more contemporary forms could coexist peacefully without harsh judgement.
The Archbishop said Pope Benedict recognised that the Church had suffered a “profound wound” through the rupture experienced after the Council, including cases in which rapid and radical liturgical changes had damaged, and sometimes destroyed, Catholics’ faith.
Archbishop Cordileone also explained that Pope Benedict XVI’s proposal to recognise the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite was intended to facilitate what the former Pope called an “internal reconciliation” within the Church’s worship. His Grace said Benedict understood that genuine reconciliation could not be engineered by a committee of scholars drafting a new liturgy, but would have to develop organically through generations of Catholics worshipping according to both forms.
“It has to happen organically,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “Pope Benedict understood that this would take a long time, generations, maybe even centuries, with people worshiping with both forms of the Mass to come to a unified worship in the Church.”
His Grace said Benedict understood that the rapid changes which followed the Second Vatican Council had created a rupture that could not simply be resolved by imposing another reform from above.
“He understood the rupture that had taken place,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “He lived through it. He saw how the faith of Catholics was very seriously challenged, damaged. I’ve heard of cases even destroyed because of very quick, radical changes in the way the liturgy was carried out.”
Archbishop Cordileone warned that Catholics attached to the traditional form of worship had been “stigmatized and marginalized” within the Church, arguing that such treatment risked reopening the wounds Benedict had sought to heal.
“I think that foments division,” His Grace said. “Some people felt alienated from the Church. I fear that that might begin to happen again.”







PITTSBURGH (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Mutsaerts said that Catholics who attend parishes with irreverent Novus Ordo Masses should find a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or another reverent liturgy instead of attempting to transform their home parish.
During a brief October 3 interview with LifeSite after his talk at the 2026 Catholic Identity Conference (CIC), Mutsaerts responded to a question about whether the faithful should try to improve their home parish with a bad liturgy or attend the TLM.
Mutsaerts, a conservative Dutch bishop who only knows how to celebrate the Novus Ordo, stressed that trying to improve bad parishes is futile. Instead, laypeople should go somewhere where their faith and that of their families is actually nourished.
Attending a parish that nourishes your faith
“If there’s a bad Novus Ordo Mass, you can’t improve those priests, I’m afraid. So just go anywhere else,” Mutsaerts told LifeSite. “I used to think, ‘Support your own parish.’ I’m not saying that anymore … because you might lose your faith there. Go somewhere where you think, ‘This is right, this is authentic, this is true.'”
“Go there, and if you have children or youngsters, go where they’ll meet other young people. That’s what stimulates,” he added. “And young people, they meet one another in the Vetus Ordo, the Novus Ordo, but (at) places where they find the sacred, where the liturgy is in order … You need some encouragement (from your parish community), you don’t get it if you’re 18 and all the rest (of the parishioners) are 80.”
In recent months, several Catholic thinkers have debated whether the faithful should try to fix their geographical parish, as Catholic writer Patrick Neve argued in a January Substack post titled “The parish you hate might need you.” Still, others have agreed with Mutsaerts in saying it is more important to attend Mass where you are spiritually fulfilled, even if that requires driving a long distance.
Keeping the faith in a period of ‘synodality’
On keeping the faith as the Church hierarchy promotes synodality, one of the themes of his conference talk, Mutsaerts encouraged the faithful to cling to the Church’s traditional practices while slamming the “fruits of synodality.”
“Well, do the regular (Catholic) things. Go to a Mass where there’s proper liturgy, pray the rosary, give a good example (to others),” he said. “And if synodality doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t go there; it’s a waste of time. We’ve been going on eight years, and can you see the fruits? I can’t. Nothing but a waste of time.”
“In the meantime, just stick to the regular Catholic things, as I just mentioned a few of them. Like the Catholic Church always has, try and find the truth; the truth will set you free,” he added.
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