Former Vatican doctrine chief urges respect for faithful attached to ancient latin rite, warning against prioritizing ritual uniformity over doctrinal unity and souls’ salvation.
Newsroom (20/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sharply criticized bishops who severely restrict celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, calling such measures “problematic” and “not pastoral” during a public dialogue at the Call to Holiness Conference 2025 in Michigan.
Speaking alongside renowned exorcist Father Chad Ripperger, the German cardinal insisted that prelates must show greater respect for Catholics deeply attached to the 1962 Roman Missal, especially given what he described as the incomplete success of the post-Vatican II liturgical renewal.
“The liturgical reform has not been completely successful,” Cardinal Müller said. “That is why Pope Benedict XVI said we must respect all those good Catholics who wish to continue with the previous form of the Latin rite.”
Invoking the late Pope Emeritus, Müller stressed that the Church’s priority must remain doctrinal unity rather than external liturgical conformity. “It is more important that the faithful believe all the dogmas of the Church than that they participate in exactly the same form of the Roman rite,” he quoted Benedict XVI as saying.
Over two millennia, the cardinal noted, the Church has organically developed diverse rites while preserving their essential structure. Vatican II, he emphasized, called for renewal—not rupture—and explicitly affirmed Latin as the liturgy’s unifying language while allowing limited vernacular use.
Yet some bishops, Müller warned, appear more concerned with imposing a single post-conciliar form than with the spiritual welfare of traditional-minded faithful. “A pastor cannot say, ‘We only offer the new form, and the rest can go away.’ That is not pastoral,” he declared. “A good pastor thinks first about the salvation of souls.”
The cardinal’s remarks come amid ongoing tensions four years after Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes sharply curtailed use of the 1962 Missal, delegating restrictive authority to local bishops. Several U.S. dioceses have since banned or heavily limited the Traditional Latin Mass, prompting protests from affected Catholics.
Müller framed the controversy in pastoral rather than merely administrative terms: “Jesus said, ‘Do this in memory of me,’” he reminded the audience, adding that some prelates seem “more interested in the unification of external rites than in the salvation of the people.”
His intervention returns the debate to a fundamental principle, observers say: the sacred liturgy is not a bureaucratic instrument but the primary path to eternal salvation.
The Call to Holiness Conference, an annual gathering focused on Catholic spirituality and orthodoxy, drew hundreds to the Detroit area this November for presentations on holiness, exorcism, and the Church’s liturgical heritage.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Infovaticana
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