Rome, Nov. 26, 2007 (FIDES/CWNews.com) - Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, has renewed his defense of Summorum Pontificum-- and his sharp criticism of Church leaders who have resisted the Pope's motu proprio-- in a lengthy interview with the Fides news service.

The Pope's call for broader use of the traditional Latin Mass was not merely an effort to achieve reconciliation with the Society of St. Pius X, "but also a sign for the whole Church with regard to the safeguarding of certain theological-disciplinary principles," the Sri Lankan archbishop told Fides.

"It appears to me," Archbishop Ranjith said, "that the Pope is anxious to correct the tendency, visible in certain circles, to see the Council [Vatican II] as a break with the past and a new beginning." He pointed out that the teachings of Vatican II themselves offer no justification for that attitude.

Vatican II called for reform of the liturgy, the archbishop said, but that reform "must also be faithful to all that went before from the beginning down to our day, nothing excluded."

Explaining that attitude toward Church tradition, Archbishop Ranjith said:

We are neither the inventors nor the masters of truth, we are merely those who have received it and have the duty to safeguard it and hand it on to others… It follows that respect for Tradition is not our freely taken choice in the quest for the truth, Tradition is its basis and must be accepted. Therefore fidelity to tradition is an essential attitude for the Church.

Archbishop Ranjith also repeated his complaint-- expressed in a series of blunt public statements in recent weeks-- that some diocesan bishops have responded to Summorum Pontificum with "regulations which attempt to practically annul or completely change the Pope's intentions." These reactions, he said, are "contrary to the dignity and nobility of the vocation of a bishop of the Church."

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