VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
National Catholic Register - EWTN [Irondale AL]
June 17, 2025
By Edward Pentin
Recalling the warnings of popes and saints, Cardinal Burke said neglect of liturgical law and tradition has paved the way for widespread confusion about faith and morals.
London – Cardinal Raymond Burke has appealed to Pope Leo XIV to lift the restrictions on the pre-1970 liturgy, stressing that respect for liturgical tradition is critical for the Catholic Church’s mission and that doctrinal and moral corruption shows itself in “divisions and factions” that lead to liturgical abuse.
Speaking via video link to a London conference celebrating 60 years of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Cardinal Burke recalled that the most serious difficulty St. Paul faced in the early Church in Corinth was the “abuse that had entered into the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist” and that it was “directly related to doctrinal and moral divisions among members of the community.”
Church history, he said, shows that “doctrinal and moral corruption in the Church is manifested in the falsification of divine worship,” adding that “where the truth of doctrine and the goodness of morals are not respected, neither is the beauty of worship.”
The solution, he said, is a renewed respect for Tradition and the laws governing the sacred liturgy.
The American cardinal also told the conference that he had already asked Pope Leo XIV to remove restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass “as soon as it is reasonably possible” in the hope that the situation would be restored to how it was during Benedict XVI’s pontificate.
Early in his talk, Cardinal Burke quoted the fifth-century Church Father Prosper of Aquitaine, who said, “The law of praying postulates the law of believing.” The cardinal added that the sacred liturgy is the “highest expression of our life in Christ, and, therefore, true worship cannot but reflect true faith.”
The sacred liturgy is the Church’s “greatest treasure” and irreplaceable, he continued, adding that “disorder and corruption” within the faith and its practice will not be able to stand in the face of the “truth, beauty and goodness contained in the worship of God ‘in spirit and truth.’”
Respect for Tradition
Furthermore, he stressed that divine worship has been established not by man but by Our Lord himself, and so fidelity to Tradition — how it has been handed down since the time of the apostles — is paramount.
“Respect for Tradition is nothing less than respect for the ius divinum” (of divine right), he said, and essential for “the right and just relationship between God and his creation,” especially man created in the image and likeness of God.
But he noted an “exaggerated focus on the human aspect of the sacred liturgy” in the post-conciliar period of the past 60 years, which he said leads to a diminished emphasis on encountering God through sacramental signs and to a neglect of “man’s right relationship with God.”
The cardinal blamed antinomianism — the belief that there is no obligation to observe the moral law — which has spread since the 1960s and given rise to “liturgical antinomianism” which he called its “most hideous” manifestation.
He reminded the audience that the “first focus” of the Ten Commandments is on divine worship, and that the fundamental principle of ius divinum is “God’s right to receive man’s worship in the way he commands.” If worship offered to God “in spirit and truth,” which he called “God’s gift to man,” is not honored, then God’s law is “corrupted for human purposes,” he said. “Only by observing and honoring God’s right to be known, worshiped, and served as he commands does man find his happiness.”
He lamented that today, attention to liturgical law “seems totally alien or, at least, esoteric,” but that “without a proper appreciation of the legal structure of the sacred liturgy, the Church’s greatest and most beautiful treasure is subject to misunderstanding and even abuse.”
Highlighting how, in 1963, Pope St. Paul VI warned against such abuse and emphasized the importance of discipline governing the liturgy so it remains faithful to tradition, Cardinal Burke said that “one marvels” how, since even as far back as the 1970s, Paul VI’s warning has been mostly unheard or unheeded. He also recalled Pope St. John Paul II’s concerns over “certain ‘creative’ freedom” in the liturgy in his two 1980 documents on the liturgy, Dominicae Cenae and Inaestimabile Donum.
“The source of the difficulties is a loss of knowledge of sacred tradition as the irreplaceable vehicle of transmission of the sacred liturgy,” Cardinal Burke said, referring to Benedict XVI’s 2005 address to the Roman Curia.
He added that the teaching of both Benedict and John Paul II “clearly indicate that proper attention to liturgical norms does not constitute a kind of legalism or rubricism but an act of deep respect and love for the Lord who has given us the gift of divine worship,an act of deep love that has as its irreplaceable foundation the knowledge and cultivation of Tradition.”
He also recalled Benedict XVI’s now-famous words in the letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum which liberalized the celebration of the pre-1970 liturgy:
“What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us, too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”
Traditionis Custodes
But Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis’ 2021 apostolic letter that placed severe restrictions on the traditional liturgy, “seriously disturbed” the “liturgical peace which was the fruit of the application of Summorum Pontificum,” Cardinal Burke said, adding that he hoped the legal questions regarding Traditionis Custodes “will be addressed at the earliest possible time.”
In an answer to a question from the audience on that topic, Cardinal Burke said the implementation of Traditionis Custodes amounted to a “persecution from within the Church” and that he “already had occasion to express that” to Pope Leo.
“Certainly it is my hope that he will, as soon as it is reasonably possible, take up the study of this question and try to restore the situation as it was after Summorum Pontificum, and even to continue to develop what Pope Benedict XVI had so wisely and lovingly legislated for the Church,” he said.
The cardinal concluded by expressing his prayerful hope that a “renewed appreciation of Tradition as the proper principle of the sacred liturgy [would] result in the realization of the hope of the Council Fathers in communion with the Roman Pontiff.”
Edward Pentin Edward Pentin is the Register’s Senior Contributor and EWTN News Vatican Analyst. He began reporting on the Pope and the Vatican with Vatican Radio before moving on to become the Rome correspondent for EWTN’s National Catholic Register. He has also reported on the Holy See and the Catholic Church for a number of other publications including Newsweek, Newsmax, Zenit, The Catholic Herald, and The Holy Land Review, a Franciscan publication specializing in the Church and the Middle East. Edward is the author of The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates (Sophia Institute Press, 2020) and The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (Ignatius Press, 2015). Follow him on Twitter at @edwardpentin.