For the second time in less than three months, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Arthur Roche, has managed to rain on conciliar trads and their parade of denial.
At the end of July, Roche used an interview with The Tablet to tell the same group in no uncertain terms that Leo XIV would not be walking back Traditionis Custodes or reviving Summorum Pontificum. Now, he has delivered the same message in an interview with Ad Vaticanum.
Importantly, Roche is by no means some fringe voice within the synodal establishment. It is therefore safe to say that, whether one likes his message or not, his words carry significant weight and represent the position of Leo himself.
No return to Summorum Pontificum
Asked once again whether Leo might reverse course, Roche practically repeated his July answer verbatim.
“No, I do not. He is not going to change Traditionis Custodes. He is not going to go back to Summorum Pontificum,” he affirmed.
To reinforce his answer, Roche recalled Leo’s recent remarks in France. Paraphrasing, Roche said Leo told priests and consecrated religious to “stop preferring your own particular view about this matter, and return to what the Church is asking you to do.”
Much to the likely discomfort of house traditionalists seated in the back pews of the conciliar church, Roche drove his point home further by reminding the interviewer that Leo made similar comments during his Wednesday catechesis series on Sacrosanctum Concilium. Integrity released a podcast on his remarks to highlight the “trad derangement syndrome” some influencers are still suffering from when it comes to accepting this reality.
The Traditional Mass will always be an obstacle to the new liturgy
It has been suggested by some Catholic influencers that concessions made regarding the Traditional Liturgy in the past were never intended to be permanent. Rather, they were meant to serve as an intermediary arrangement that gradually draws everyone into the modernist Synodal matrix.
Roche appeared to confirm this when he explained that Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum decree failed because it was intended, at least in part, to facilitate reconciliation with the Society of Saint Pius X. Since that reconciliation never materialized, Roche maintained that is then became “a vehicle instead to promote a former liturgy rather than the renewed liturgy in some areas of the world, which was completely against the spirit of Summorum Pontificum.”
This certainly bursts the bubble of those who regarded Summorum Pontificum as a step towards restoration. Moreover, Roche’s comment that “you should not be going to that [Latin] Mass exclusively” is another indicator of how the Vatican under Leo sees the ancient liturgy and those who attend it, as a nuisance that needs to go away rather than something that should be given pride of place.
The Dispatch
Vatican II and the boundaries of Catholicism
Roche also dealt a fatal blow to the belief that Vatican II was merely “pastoral,” along with any other interpretation of the Council that seeks to give it a take-it-or-leave-it status among the diocesan recognize-and-resist crowd.
“The Council is the highest form of legislation within the Catholic Church which you ignore at peril to your own soul, otherwise you are moving yourself away from the Church,” he argued. “If you reject that, if you resist it, you are edging yourself away from the center of Catholicism. That is a very serious position to be in.”
No doubt this view is shared by the rest of the conciliar usurpers. Indeed, they truly believe that we are obliged to submit to teachings that contradict nearly 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine. If you reject the Council, however, you risk finding yourself excommunicated, maligned, calumniated and branded a pariah. SSPX layman Cullum Smith noted the absurdity of the remarks in an X post where he highlighted some of Roche’s most egregious, though illuminating, remarks.
Ironically, Roche also appealed to the importance of remaining faithful to what the Church has handed down, despite being one of the most prominent figures in an institution run by apostates.
“We assemble as a Church who believe in what the Church has given to us, what it handed down to us from the Lord, and we remain faithful to that deposit of faith,” said the man who has served : Bergoglio and Prevost, two of the most downright heretical post-conciliar “popes.”
More attacks on Traditionalists
As if there were any lingering doubts that the litmus test for membership in the synodal church is the rejection of Tradition and the embrace of Vatican II, Roche delivered the final blow.
He cleverly reduced the Traditionalists’ struggle fallaciously to a “deep love for the Latin language,” and chastised them over what is really at stake: doctrine.
“But you see in the traditionalist blogs that they are wanting more than that. They are wanting to turn back to a Church that does not have the teaching of the Second Vatican Council; that does not have this new form of working together in order to evangelize the world,” he rightly explained. “So I would say, for any Catholic with any tendency, you should always examine your conscience against what is the teaching of the Church, and not just what you prefer to do yourself.
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Roch’s remarks make clear that not only does he have his finger on the pulse of what is being said within the Traditionalist sphere, but he is also perfectly aware of what is really at stake.
Although it remains a matter of speculation, Roche’s repeated interventions over the past three months give the impression that Leo has dispatched him on one final mission before his departure from the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: to make it unmistakably clear to the Traditionalist riff-raff that there is no turning back.
