(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller said it is “progressivism,” not tradition, that is dividing the Catholic Church in light of a statement by Pope Leo XIV that the tension between “tradition and novelty” can be a “harmful polarization.”
“Progressivism is the ideology that’s splitting the Church,” Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on a Thursday episode of The World Over. Arroyo had quoted a recent statement by Leo that he said seemed to emphasize the Vatican’s “discomfort with tradition.”
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The “progressives” within the Church, who are in reality unorthodox, are “making moral compromises” and “relativizing the sacrament of marriage, a revealed truth, with the blessing of homosexual couples,” said Müller, referring to the Vatican’s permission for such blessings under Pope Francis via Fiducia Supplicans.
“That is the splitting of the church. And not the traditions.” The cardinal pointed out that tradition is an “essential” pillar of the Church along with Holy Scripture and the Magisterium. Catholic tradition itself is also solidly founded, Müller noted, since its content is “the revealed doctrine of the apostles.”
Asked by Arroyo why he thinks there is “such antagonism” against the Traditional Latin Mass, Müller said, “I cannot understand these people.”
He said he has concluded that there is no deeper theology behind the restriction of the Latin Mass. “The only argument they have is, ‘We have the authority,’ he said, with no reason involved.
“They must explain what is wrong with the older form of the liturgy,” but have not done so, he noted.
He defied Cardinal Blase Cupich’s claim that the old Mass is a “spectacle,” stressing that “we cannot say” that the centuries of bishops and popes who offered the old Mass “were interested in a spectacle.”
Müller suggested that Cupich’s statement is not a theologically based position but was made “for headlines.”
With that claim, “You cannot pass an examination with me in dogmatics,” he added.
Arroyo went on to highlight Pope Leo’s point, made to Crux in September, that “You can say the Mass in Latin right now. If it’s the Vatican II rite, there’s no problem.”
“What about the idea that we can just go to the Novus Ordo in Latin?” Arroyo asked Müller.
“The council never said we must invent a new liturgy because the old form was wrong,” the cardinal replied. The main idea, he said, was to make the Mass easier to follow, “because they didn’t speak Latin.”
“But the (traditional rite) is “the same we’ve had since the 6th or the 4th century,” said Müller, as if to suggest that one cannot simply toss away such an old, time-honored liturgy.
Müller referred to the attack on the Traditional Latin Mass as a “superfluous struggle” and called for the Church to “avoid” such an attack. “We can struggle with those who are denying the divinity of Jesus Christ but not” those who prefer traditional liturgies.
He believes that the Latin Mass crackdown is about a “demonstration of authority” and not about “the salvation of souls.” It is a problem, moreover, that the pope is usurping the authority of the bishops by ordering the suppression of traditional Masses, Müller said.
Arroyo also asked the cardinal his thoughts on the Vatican’s recent celebration of Nostra Aetate and the “odd” footage of Eastern and Middle-Eastern music and dance performed in the Paul VI Hall.
“We have to avoid this impression that … all religions are the same,” Müller said. They are not “all an expression of a basic religion of mankind,” he stressed. Nostra Aetate itself is marked by this false ecumenical attitude, since it does not encourage conversion to the true faith, but instead suggests that men can reach God through pagan religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, in stark contradiction to the longstanding teaching of the Church.
“We cannot mix it all. We are not all Fratelli Tutti,” he concluded, referring to Pope Francis’ encyclical “on fraternity and social friendship.” Fratelli Tutti is widely argued to promote religious indifferentism and was condemned by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the U.S., as promoting a “blasphemous” form of brotherhood without God as well as “religious indifferentism.”
Asked by Arroyo about the installation of a prayer carpet for Muslims in the Vatican Apostolic Library, Müller said such a move was driven by “relativism,” and that it is “a self-relativization of the Catholic Church and of Catholic belief.”
“They don’t know the doctrine of the Church,” the cardinal said. He believes Muslims will “triumph” over having stepped foot inside the Catholic Church, and will “interpret it as a sign that we have accepted their superiority.”
