San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has long had an interest in reviving the Latin Mass in his diocese and in America.
In 2014, a year after Pope Francis was elected, the Archbishop told Latin Mass Magazine that when he chose to celebrate Mass in Latin, he was promoting the vision of the recently resigned Pope Benedict: “to make this form of the Mass more easily available” and “to promote it” as a “useful tool of evangelization.”
At his installation as Archbishop of San Francisco in 2012, the principle co-consecrator was Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who has mentored him for many years and is also one of the leading enthusiasts for the pre-Vatican II liturgy.
Cordileone was considered to be a rising star in the Church under Pope Benedict. However, his star has seemingly fallen since the controversy he created in 2014.
In a nasty and public squabble, he tried to re-classify Catholic school teachers as ministers who would have to abide by church teaching on marriage and same sex relationships, even if those teachers were not Catholic. Those actions resulted in the embarrassment of a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, asking Pope Francis to remove Archbishop Cordileone.
Instead of removing him, Pope Francis, in a move interpreted as a sign of Papal disfavor, elevated Cordileone’s Auxiliary Bishop, Robert McElroy, to Bishop of San Diego, Cordileone’s former diocese.
McElroy is a progressive, “social justice” bishop who said in a talk last year that being judgmental is a “cardinal sin for religion.” He has frequently put poverty, not abortion or same sex relationships, at the forefront of the issues he thinks Catholics should be most concerned about.
In his efforts place greater emphasis on the Latin liturgy in Priestly formation, Archbishop Cordileone has made the Archdiocesan seminary a special object of his attention.
St. Patrick’s seminary has been run by the Religious Order of the Sulpicians since 1898. Like most dioceses, San Francisco has seen a precipitous drop in the number of seminarians in formation. There are currently 93 seminarians studying and living in a complex of buildings which once housed over 400.
The Sulpicians were informed by the Archbishop that they “are no longer invited to provide Sulpician administrative leadership to St Patrick’s,” and the Rector, Fr. James McKearney, was called upon to resign for no specified reason.
Cordileone then appointed new seminary staff from San Francisco and San Jose, including Jesuit Fr. John Piderit as the seminary’s Vice President for Administration. Piderit is the former president of Loyola University in Chicago. He stepped down from that position after budget crises at Loyola brought the university nearly to the breaking point and calls for his removal were heard from faculty, staff and students.
Cordileone also announced that the seminary would be the home to the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music, where lay people could be formed for ministering in the church, with a special emphasis on the Extraordinary Rite and Gregorian chant.
Articles about the turmoil at the seminary have multiplied and repeatedly mention that Cordileone intends for a greater focus on the Tridentine Mass in Priestly formation.
However, since only two parishes in San Francisco offer Latin Mass, one wonders, if the Archbishop intends to train more priests in the Extraordinary Rite, where and whom will they serve?
As continued calls for more availability of Latin Mass come from Burke, Cordileone and other Prelates, Pope Francis is responding.
In July of last year, after Cardinal Robert Sarah called for Priests to return to the celebration of Mass “ad orientum,” facing away from the people, Pope Francis remarked that Pope Benedict’s call for recognizing a return to old forms of worship was “right and magnanimous.”
However, the Holy Father, went on to say: “I always try to understand what is behind persons who are too young to have experienced the pre-Conciliar liturgy but who nevertheless want it. At times, I find myself in front of persons who are very rigid, an attitude of rigidity. And I ask myself: How come such rigidity? This rigidity always hides something: insecurity, or at times something else…. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not.”
Meanwhile, it appears that Americans’ fascination with the Latin Mass” may have peaked. Attendance rose for a bit when it was first offered in some parishes, but later those numbers rapidly declined.
And so, it seems as though the Latin liturgy will remain the precious keepsake of a small group of Catholics lost in a mythology of nostalgia about the Church’s “golden age” prior to Vatican Council II, Catholics who are disenchanted with the reform Pope Francis has initiated in his brief tenure as Roman Pontiff.
Still, Archbishop Cordileone and other Bishops apparently have chosen to make the Latin Mass a chess piece in the war for Catholic identity. Sadly, however, such efforts can only be seen as a callback to a mythological past of Catholicism which never existed in reality.
There’s beauty in mythology, to be sure. But there is danger as well.
There is danger in believing mythologies can save institutions. However, they are merely bandages covering bleeding wounds which the Church, as Pope Francis rightly has reminded us, “must be the field hospital” where such wounds are treated and healed.
The tensions and stresses between conservative Bishops and more progressive members of the College have intensified during the present Pontificate. How those tensions will be resolved remains to be seen. What the landscape of the Church will look like in the future is, at this point, anyone’s guess.
As always, let us seek the intervention of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to guide the Church and provide her with leaders who will shepherd the People of God with the mind and heart of Christ Jesus Himself.
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