When Continuity Becomes Contradiction

Cardinal Cupich and the Unraveling of Cardinal George’s Legacy

Cardinal Francis George, the late Archbishop of Chicago, understood that reform in the Church means re-rooting, not uprooting. He was a scholar-bishop with a clear sense of Catholic identity, a defender of continuity in doctrine and liturgy, and a pastor who left his archdiocese with stable vocations and a coherent vision. His were, as we say in England, very big boots to fill.

His successor, Cardinal Blase Cupich, now 76 years old and about to be replaced, has proved to be more of a political operator than a shepherd. He has gained influence under Pope Francis, and enjoys sway in the Roman Curia, most recently demonstrated through the high-profile meeting between Jesuit James Martin and Pope Leo XIV, but the hard facts of his governance in Chicago tell another story. By every measurable indicator; vocations, Mass attendance, parish life, sacramental participation, he has presided over decline. He styles himself as the herald of “development,” yet his programme has meant dismantling the legacy of Cardinal George in the name of progress, leaving behind a diminished Church.

And now, in his latest polemic against Tradition, he reveals not only a failure of pastoral leadership but a profound theological incompetence.

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Decline in Numbers: From George to Cupich

In the early 2010s, ordination classes under George averaged in the low teens, twelve to fourteen young men each year. In 2025, under Cupich, the archdiocese ordained only two priests. Today, just 24 seminarians are studying for Chicago at Mundelein, compared with the 127 seminarians on campus from other dioceses.

The parish footprint has contracted dramatically. In 2020, the Archdiocese of Chicago counted 293 parishes. Under Cupich’s “Renew My Church” program, that number has dropped to 216 in 2025. Baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals have all declined in proportion.

Yes, national secularisation plays its part, but the speed and severity of Chicago’s contraction cannot be divorced from Cupich’s governing style: consolidation, adaptation, and a willingness to cut, often at the expense of continuity.

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Cupich on Tradition: Misusing the Sources

In his recent article, “Tradition vs. Traditionalism” (Sept 3, 2025), Cardinal Cupich attempts to cloak his arguments in the authority of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. The contrast with his predecessors could not be more striking. He cites St Vincent of Lérins and repeats the familiar metaphor of doctrine growing like the human body. But he tilts the meaning. Vincent’s whole point is that genuine development must remain in eodem sensu eademque sententia—in the same sense and the same judgment. Growth that inverts meaning is not development but deformation. Cupich quotes Vincent’s poetry but ignores his guardrails, invoking him not as a defender of stability but as a permission slip for reversal.

The same sleight of hand appears in his treatment of Newman. To Cupich, “development of doctrine” is a slogan, a blank cheque to justify whatever novelty he wishes to commend. But Newman’s notion of development is not rhetorical dressing; it is a rigorous test, with seven notes to distinguish growth from corruption: preservation of type, continuity of principle, conservative action on the past. Cupich cites Newman’s name while stripping him of his method, inverting his legacy into something Newman himself would have abhorred.

Aquinas fares no better in his hands. Prudence, for Thomas, is the right application of principles in changing circumstances, never a license to reverse meaning or alter substance. Aquinas was clear: the sacraments’ substance is immutable, grounded in divine law. Yet Cupich enlists him as if prudence were a warrant for novelty. To deploy Aquinas in this way is to turn the Angelic Doctor against himself.

And then comes the epigram of Jaroslav Pelikan, that oft-repeated line: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” It is a clever turn of phrase, but Pelikan was a Lutheran-turned-Orthodox historian, not a Catholic theologian of doctrinal development. His quip is wielded here not as serious theology but as a polemical weapon, a way of caricaturing fidelity as stagnation. Quoting him at the head of such an essay tells us more about Cupich’s bias than it does about the nature of tradition.

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The Liturgy: Spectacle or Spirit?

Cupich claims that during the Carolingian and Baroque eras, courtly elements “transformed the liturgy’s aesthetics and meaning” into “spectacle,” displacing the active participation of the baptised.

But the history tells a different story. As scholars of the liturgical tradition point out, the Church deliberately drew on biblical and royal imagery, temple courts, royal processions, solemn acclamations, as a catechetical and mystical pedagogy. To see this as “spectacle” is to misunderstand how the Holy Spirit has worked through centuries of development. As the New Liturgical Movement has shown, these elements are not distractions from active participation but a profound means of fostering it.

Participation is not measured by how “busy” the laity are during Mass, but by how deeply they are drawn into the mystery. Courtly ceremonial, far from being a medieval detour, was one of the Spirit’s ways of revealing the kingship of Christ.

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Continuity or Contradiction?

Francis George once said, “The Catholic faith is not mine to modify or to change; I am a witness, not an owner.” Cupich has taken a different path, treating change as proof of vitality, even when it undermines continuity of type and sense.

The result is plain: fewer priests, fewer parishes, fewer baptisms, fewer confirmations. The intellectual and spiritual patrimony George guarded has been trimmed back, rebranded as “spectacle,” and held up as “dead faith.”

Newman, Vincent, and Aquinas are not licenses for contradiction. They are safeguards against it. Their names cannot serve as a sanatio in radice for proposals that are, in truth, repugnant to the Word of God.

Chicago deserved continuity. Instead, it has received contradiction.