Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, has joined the growing ranks of those criticizing far-left globalist Pope Francis for his harsh crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass.
Last week the pope issued an apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes (“Guardians of Tradition”) banning the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass in Catholic parishes and eliminating existing accommodations to priests who wanted to use the extraordinary form of the Catholic liturgy.
The pope’s letter contains “many tendentious generalizations,” claimed Cardinal Zen, which “hurt more than expected the hearts of many good people.” The papal text “considers the very existence of a parallel rite to be an evil,” he added, and clearly wishes “for the death of the groups.”
The real problem is not “which rite do people prefer?” Zen states, but rather “why don’t they go to Mass anymore?” He added that the Church’s problems today come not from so-called “traditionalists” but from progressives who undermine the core of Catholic belief.