Cardinal Robert Sarah is calling for renewed unity within the Catholic Church, warning that ongoing conflicts over the liturgy harm the Church’s communion and urging a return to an approach that allows both forms of the Roman Rite to coexist.
According to LifeSiteNews, the former prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments made the remarks during an interview with Matteo Matzuzzi, editor-in-chief of the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.
Reflecting on the current state of the Church in the West, Cardinal Sarah said Catholics are living through “a time of great difficulty, even of confusion,” describing challenges affecting doctrine, discipline, and moral teaching.
“Certainly the Church, at least in the West, is in a time of great difficulty, even of confusion, both at the doctrinal level and at the moral and disciplinary level,” he said.
Cardinal Sarah also argued that the cultural foundations that once helped transmit the Catholic faith have weakened significantly. Rather than relying on society to pass on Christian belief, he said the faith must now be handed on through authentic witness centered on prayer, reverent worship, and fidelity to the Gospel.
“I think it is beyond doubt that one can no longer entrust the transmission of the faith to culture; rather, it can be handed on to the new generations only through significant experiences and testimonies that place at the center prayer, silence, the well-celebrated liturgy, a fundamental fidelity to the Gospel and therefore a renewed humanity, a more human way of living relationships,” Cardinal Sarah said.
A significant portion of the interview focused on tensions surrounding the Traditional Latin Mass and the Mass celebrated according to the post-Vatican II Roman Missal, commonly called the Novus Ordo. According to LifeSiteNews, Cardinal Sarah said these disputes undermine the Church’s unity.
“It is a drama, indeed a true and proper sin, that on an essential theme such as the liturgy there should be a kind of war,” he said. “The liturgy is the source of the Church’s communion, and it is unthinkable that on liturgical themes—indeed I would say ritual ones—there should be such opposition and such fierce confrontations.”
Cardinal Sarah further emphasized that the Church’s liturgical rites belong to Sacred Tradition and should not be arbitrarily abolished.
“No one has authority over the rites, which are born from the centuries-old history of the Church,” he said. “The rites cannot be arbitrarily abolished, and no one can say that a rite no longer exists, from one day to the next.”
According to LifeSiteNews, the cardinal expressed support for the approach taken by Pope Benedict XVI, who permitted broader celebration of both forms of the Roman Rite. He said the Church should revisit that model.
“I think the subject must be taken into serious consideration, recovering the balanced, pastoral and theologically well-founded position of Benedict XVI, who allowed both forms of the Latin rite to live, to enrich each other, and to be known by the holy people of God,” Cardinal Sarah said. “Over the decades, they will be able to choose which form best corresponds to their need for faith, silence and spirituality.”
While acknowledging that some supporters of the Traditional Latin Mass have gone too far in their reactions, Cardinal Sarah suggested those responses have been influenced by widespread liturgical abuses.
“Some excesses on the part of those attached to the extraordinary form are, in part, justified by the dramatic and widespread abuses of the liturgy of the ordinary form which, to this day, is often not celebrated as the Council would have wished and as the liturgical reform itself suggests,” he said.
The cardinal also cautioned against adapting the Gospel to satisfy contemporary cultural expectations.
“There can be the temptation of having to please the audience at all costs, of being acceptable to the listeners, and therefore of yielding to those topics that pay off because they are more fashionable,” he said.
He warned that such an approach results in “a banal preaching, completely irrelevant, that does not meet the deep desires of man,” adding that “It is never legitimate to reduce the Gospel to social and horizontal themes, however relevant they may be.”
Asked how the Church should respond to today’s challenges, Cardinal Sarah emphasized the importance of deeper formation.
“The key is liturgical formation, formation, and again formation. Of bishops, of priests, and of the laity,” he said.
Despite the present difficulties, Cardinal Sarah concluded by expressing confidence in the Church’s future because of Christ’s enduring presence.
“The Church over the centuries has gone through many storms, but we must never forget that she is divine, and therefore will never fail. Yes, the Church will always be a beacon, because she is the Mystical Body of Christ, and Christ is the Light.”
