(LifeSiteNews) — Theology professor Andrea Grillo, reported to be the mastermind behind Pope Francis’ Latin Mass restrictions, said that Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) are unfaithful to the Church and referred to Chartres pilgrims as a “sect.”
Grillo gave an interview to the pro-TLM Italian blog Messa in Latino in which he launched an attack against the TLM and its adherents. During the interview, he claimed that Tradition’s main characteristic is providing “service to change” and that “Tradition is not the past, but the future.”
When Grillo was asked by Messa in Latino why “traditionalists who are faithful to Rome” are seemingly not given a “free space” by Rome, he replied that “those you call ‘traditionalists faithful to Rome’ are actually people who, for various reasons, are at odds with Rome, and not in a relationship of fidelity.”
“The point of contention does not simply concern a ‘ritual form’ but a way of understanding relations inside and outside the Church,” he argued.
“The idea of ‘fidelity to Rome’ must be challenged: to be faithful to Rome, one must acquire a ‘ritual language’ according to what Rome has communally established.”
“One is not faithful if one has one foot in two shoes” he continued. “Having demonstrated this contradiction, the merit of Traditionis Custodes is that it re-establishes the one ‘lex orandi’ in force for the entire Catholic Church.”
“If someone tells me he is faithful at the same time to the Novus Ordo and Vetus Ordo, I reply that he has not understood the meaning of tradition, within which there (is) a legitimate and insuperable progress that is irreversible,” Grillo claimed.
Asked about the 18,000 people who took part in the traditional Paris-Chartres pilgrimage in 2024, including Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith, Grillo said that they are “(l)ittle more than a sect that experiences infidelity as salvation and is often linked to moral and political positions, and very concerning customs.”
Asked about the growth of the TLM, especially in France and the Anglosphere, Grillo said it “is not an ecclesial or spiritual phenomenon; it is a phenomenon of customs and forms of life that has little to do with the authentic tradition of the Catholic Church.”
Grillo argued that celebrating a different form of the Mass than the Pope means to live “in opposition to tradition.”
Attacking the theology of Pope Benedict XVI directly, Grillo said the former pontiff’s reasoning behind issuing the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that allowed the widespread use of the TLM was merely based on “nostalgic emotion for the past.”
“What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too,” the theology professor said, quoting Benedict XVI. “Where does this principle come from? Not from theology, but from nostalgic emotion for the past.”
“Such a principle tends to ‘fixate the Church’ on its past,” he continued. “Not on the ‘depositum fidei,’ but on the vesture it wore in a season, as if it were definitive.”
“The arguments of traditionalists are weak because they deny what best describes tradition: namely its service to change,” Grillo asserted.
The theology professor referred to Latin, which has been the language of the Catholic Church since its early days, as a “strange language.”
“Being a disciple of Christ isn’t a matter of belonging to a high society club or an association aimed at speaking a strange language or identifying with the past, cultivating reactionary ideals,” he stated.
“Tradition is not the past but the future,” Grillo claimed. “Since the Church and faith are a serious matter, they cannot be reduced to the association of those who cultivate nostalgia for the past.”
Grillo, who was born in 1961, is a professor of Philosophy of Religion and Sacramental Theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome and a professor of Liturgy in Padua at the Abbey of Santa Giustina. As Catholic author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski stated in an article for OnePeterFive, Grillo is said to be “an author or at least inspirer” of Traditionis Custodes, the motu proprio restricting the use of the TLM, published in July 2021 by Pope Francis.
Kwasniewski also pointed out Grillo’s heterodoxy in regard to infallible Church teaching. Grillo has spoken out in favor of “pastoral blessings” of homosexual unions (before the publication of Fiducia Supplicans) in his book titled Can a Mother Not Bless Her Own Children? Homo-Affective Unions and the Catholic Faith.
He is in favor of female ordinations and the use of contraceptives for “prophylactic purposes,” contradicting Church doctrine. According to Kwasniewski, Grillo “explicitly rejects the idea that there is an authority such as the Church with the ability to pronounce definitively on matters regarding human sexuality.” Grillo has even called into question the reality of transubstantiation, i.e., bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ at the Mass.
READ: Reports: Vatican planning to enforce a ‘final’ ban of Traditional Latin Mass, likely on July 16