The Vibe Shift Comes for Cardinal Roche

While Pope Francis remains in the hospital, it is clear that the conclave has already begun. Many times, we look at what are known as the papabile, or likely candidates to become the next successor of Peter. This is a fun exercise, but its mostly pointless. While the maxim that he who enters the conclave a pope exits a cardinal is false, its hard to tell who exactly is entering the conclave as a pope. What I like to pay attention to is the environment surrounding the coming conclave. What ideas are dominant? What trends are developing. While some might shake their head, what is the vibe?

The vibe is unmistakable: Cardinals feel a change is coming in the Catholic Church. Key allies have said that he should not resign because the work of reform and the synod need to continue. This gives a hint that allies of the pope are worried that without him, the “reform” will not continue. There have been perennial stories about thoughts of Francis tinkering, and then not tinkering with papal succession. Their truth or falsehood is beside the point, this is what people talk about (many cases even in liberal circles), and they all seem to center around the idea that the next pope will not be in the mold of Francis. The only disagreement is what he will be instead.

This shift should not be that hard to understand. Western culture is undergoing a gradual but consistent shift towards the “right”, why should Catholicism be any different? One of the main goals of Vatican II was to make the Church more attuned to the cultural flow of the world (while maintaining its unique Christian identity), so it only stands to reason that as the culture and politics of these nations shift, the Church will be influenced. I’m not entirely optimistic of this change, despite generally being in the right of center world in both politics and the Church, but this change is undeniable. Pope Francis doesn’t necessarily represent “the left” so much as he represents a status quo that either no longer works, or in many cases doesn’t exist anymore. In many ways, a shift away from Francis would be the natural outcome of the next conclave.

Further evidence of this shift came in an interview Cardinal Arthur Roche gave to the Catholic Herald in the UK. Cardinal Roche is the current head of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, and widely understood to be one of the principal figures behind Traditionis custodes, the 2021 decree that laid out the eventual suppression of the Latin Mass, revoking the faculties of priests to say it that Benedict granted, instead leaving it to bishops to provisionally grant such faculties, subject to Cardinal Roche’s personal approval. We do not need to recount the history of TC to state the obvious: it didn’t work. It didn’t work because most Bishops did not perceive this to be a problem, but also because of the general vibe shift discussed earlier. In a world growing more conservative, people had less problems with the TLM than they did in the 1990s and 2000s.

There’s a lot of hilarious points in this interview (including a schizophrenia that the TLM was both too ornate and too brief), yet I want to focus on a few points. First is that Cardinal Roche once again shifts the rationale for why Traditionis custodes was implemented. The decree itself is clear. The letter he wrote to the worlds Bishops explaining the rationale behind TC is even clearer, which will be shown. Traditionis custodes was implemented because Pope Francis felt that those attached to the TLM were a danger to the unity of the Church:

“…I am nonetheless saddened that the instrumental use of Missale Romanum of 1962 is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the “true Church”. The path of the Church must be seen within the dynamic of Tradition “which originates from the Apostles and progresses in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit”

He also wanted to make clear that only in the Reformed Liturgy could one celebrate the liturgy with the fullness of the Catholic ethos as the Second Vatican Council willed:

Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite, in particular the Roman Canon which constitutes one of its more distinctive elements.

He finally believed that only by (eventually) abolishing the TLM could he fulfill the mandate of Vatican II:

St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity. This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

Vatican Council II, when it described the catholicity of the People of God, recalled that “within the ecclesial communion” there exist the particular Churches which enjoy their proper traditions, without prejudice to the primacy of the Chair of Peter who presides over the universal communion of charity, guarantees the legitimate diversity and together ensures that the particular not only does not injure the universal but above all serves it”. While, in the exercise of my ministry in service of unity, I take the decision to suspend the faculty granted by my Predecessors, I ask you to share with me this burden as a form of participation in the solicitude for the whole Church proper to the Bishops. In the Motu proprio I have desired to affirm that it is up to the Bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the liturgical life of the Church of which he is the principle of unity, to regulate the liturgical celebrations. It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.

Because of these points, he ordered the bishops to stop the growth of the TLM immediately:

Indications about how to proceed in your dioceses are chiefly dictated by two principles: on the one hand, to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II, and, on the other hand, to discontinue the erection of new personal parishes tied more to the desire and wishes of individual priests than to the real need of the “holy People of God.”

I went through this in detail for a reason: Arthur Roche is about to throw all of this out the window. What was the reason for Pope Francis promulgating TC, according to Arthur Roche? First, his Eminence wanted to make clear that there was nothing problematic about the TLM, nor those who celebrated it:

Of course, it is good that people want to be part of the Church, and there is no reason why they cannot. There is nothing wrong with attending the Mass celebrated with the 1962 missal. That has been accepted since the time of Pope St John Paul II, Pope Benedict and now Pope Francis.

What Pope Francis said in Traditionis Custodes is that it is not the norm.

As we can see from earlier, Pope Francis wasn’t trying to tell people that the Novus Ordo was the ordinary form of worship, such as an “Ordinary Form”, and the TLM and “Extraordinary Form”, terminology used by Pope Benedict. Instead, it was that the TLM, when he was done with it, would no longer be used period. To put it bluntly: Cardinal Roche is lying and isn’t even trying to hide it.

A second point which I found telling was the following:

One of the things that has been very interesting to me is observing this situation worldwide. The numbers devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass are, in reality, quite small, but some of the groups are quite clamorous. They are more noticeable because they make their voices heard…

What interests me is why people get hot under the collar about others celebrating the Tridentine Mass. I think this has been a mistake. Bishop Wheeler, of the Diocese of Leeds, insisted that a Holy Mass be celebrated in Latin according to the Novus Ordo at least once every Sunday in every deanery. That showed considerable wisdom.

From my perspective, the celebration of the Eucharist, in whichever missal you are using, should be very noble and marked by noble simplicity.

I often hear people say, “Cardinal Roche is against the Latin Mass.” Well, if they only knew that most days I celebrate Mass in Latin because it is the common language for all of us here. It is the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin. I was trained as an altar boy until the age of 20, serving the Tridentine Form.

Where does one even begin? It is curious that he mentions that you only hear from devotees of the Latin Mass because we “make our voices heard.” What is left out is more interesting: there are no voices defending the Vatican’s approach. As for wondering why everyone is getting all hot and bothered over the decree? In implementing TC, Cardinal Roche decreed that all coffee socials and bible/catechism studies after TLMs must be removed from parishes, and those attending such masses should be regularly reminded that they are not in fact part of the parish community. (Even allies of the Pope ignored this directive from Roche.) Francis said the continued existence of the TLM betrayed the Coucil and threatened the unity of the Church. Now? Eh I don’t know why everyone was so worried about it. Not only was it a mistake, but you’ve also got it all wrong if you think I hate you guys. How could I hate the Mass I grew up serving? I still celebrate the Novus Ordo in Latin every day. I’m one of you!

No, His Eminence is most emphatically not one of us. Yet he feels the need to extend an olive branch. Why? His Eminence senses the coming winds. He is trying to preserve some form of TC. If I were to guess, he is trying to preserve a form of the Indult, where Bishops are generous, but trads are forcefully reminded that their situation is not normative. I think this approach will fail. It isn’t 1988 anymore. What I think we are likeliest to see is a future pope turning a blind eye towards celebration of the TLM while the effects of TC are “studied”, and then a decade or so later it is quietly shelved. Along with many other papal allies, Cardinal Roche seems to think a more radical change is coming. It is worth pondering if he’s right.