Cardinal Blase Cupich has described the Traditional Latin Mass as “more of a spectacle rather than the active participation of all the baptised,” arguing that post-Vatican II liturgical reforms stripped away courtly accretions to restore the Eucharist’s focus on solidarity with the poor.
In a reflection on —the Second Vatican Council’s 1963 Consti-tution on the Sacred Liturgy—Cupich cited scholarly findings that imperial and royal influences had gradually transformed worship into a display of worldly power. The reforms, he wrote, purified these elements “to enable the liturgy to sustain the Church’s renewed sense of herself.”
The cardinal framed authenticity in Eucharistic celebration not by ritual form but by concern for the marginalized. “The criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations is judged,” he stated, is service to those in need; the Mass must be “the locus of solidarity with the poor in a fractured world.”
- H.E. Blase Cardinal Cupich
Archbishop of Chicago
