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Cardinal Zen: ‘I Agree with Archbishop Gänswein on Traditionis Custodes’

VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun has said Pope Francis’ 2021 decree Traditions Custodes that severely restricted the traditional liturgy contains “tendentious generalizations” that have “hurt the hearts of many people.”

In an interview with the Milan daily newspaper ll Giornale published Tuesday, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong was asked about “revived disagreements between traditionalists and progressives” in a new book called Nothing But the Truth by Benedict XVI’s former personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein.

Cardinal Zen said he had not yet read the book but added, “I agree with Msgr. Gänswein on the issue of the Latin Mass. The tendentious generalizations in Francis’ Traditionis Custodes have hurt the hearts of many people.”

“Reading the motu proprio and the Pope’s letter to the bishops, one notices a ‘facileness’ and ‘tendentiousness’ in linking the desire to use the extraordinary form of the Mass with a negative judgment on the ordinary form of the Mass, or a tendency to link the refusal to accept the liturgical reform with a total and profound rejection of the Second Vatican Council.

“Can’t the Vatican’s anti-Ratzingers wait patiently for the Tridentine Mass to die along with the death of Benedict XVI, instead of humiliating him in this way?” he said.

In his letter to bishops that accompanied Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition), the Pope said that “instrumental use” of the pre-reformed 1962 Roman Missal “is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

The decree itself imposed sweeping restrictions on the celebration of the old form of the Mass celebrated before the liturgical reforms of Pope St. Paul VI in 1970, reversing previous papal decrees such as Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that had liberalized use of the 1962 Roman Missal. Among its restrictions was a ban on celebration of the traditional Mass in parish churches.

Cardinal Zen, who was recently given permission by Hong Kong authorities to visit Rome for Benedict XVI’s funeral, made similar comments about Traditionis Custodes in 2021 after the motu proprio was published. He also said at that time that he believed parts of the decree seemed to “clearly hope for the death” of groups devoted to the pre-conciliar liturgy.

Read more at National Catholic Register 

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