Cardinal Robert Sarah wrote that “the credibility of the Church is at stake” in recent disputes over liturgical tradition. In an article that first appeared in the French paper Le Figaro, the former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship said:

If she affirms the continuity between what is commonly called the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, then the Church must be able to organize their peaceful cohabitation and their mutual enrichment. If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, if one were to declare them irreconcilable, one would implicitly recognize a rupture and a change of orientation.