Two incidents sent mainstream commentators into a tailspin this past week.
First, an interview of Cardinal Arthur Roche appeared in the British publication The Tablet on July 29. The Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments claimed that “Pope Leo is not going to change Traditionis Custodes, and he’s not going back to Summorum Pontificum.”
While conservative commentators and journalists were frantically engaging in a remarkable exercise of narrative shaping to combat Roche’s claim, a Spanish website dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
Catholic journalist Niwa Limbu reported that “Spanish publication La Razón claims Pope Leo XIV is against the Traditional Latin Mass and that Cardinal Roche’s January document was written at the Pope’s request.”
In the same post, Limbu quoted the outlet as saying, “This newspaper has been able to confirm that the cardinal distributed the text at the request of Leo XIV and, therefore, with his approval of its content. Apparently, the document was written by Roche and the team of his Dicastery at the request of the Pontiff, who subsequently reviewed it. ‘Not a single comma was changed,’ Vatican sources affirm, adding that ‘the delivery of the document to the cardinals was intended to make the new Pope’s position on this issue visible, not a provocation by Roche, as some interpreted it, distancing him from his superior.’”
One would expect that the mounting evidence pointing to the imminent eradication of the Traditional Latin Mass would make said commentators reassess their earlier expectations, but this was not the case.
Once again, just as we saw in the wake of the episcopal consecration of Transalpine Redemptorist founder Bishop Michael Mary Sim, Trad Inc. and their conservative allies seemed to be receiving their talking points from a central source.
Amplifying the same arguments
Diane Montagna wrote on her Substack, “What makes Cardinal Roche’s gaslighting even more astounding is the fact that it persists, even though we now know that the results of the survey of the world’s bishops used to justify Traditionis Custodes were falsified.”
Michael Matt also hitched his ride on ye olde “gaslighting” wagon by publishing an edit from his interview with former Freemason Joe McClain, which he titled, “Is Cardinal Roche gaslighting us or what?”
Former presidential candidate Dr. Taylor Marshall also dedicated a podcast to why Roche should not be taken seriously.
The Dispatch
The overall strategy seems to be that Roche is to be discredited entirely in order to prevent Leo from being rebuked in the public eye so that the battle over the Latin Mass can continue to be hashed out in the court of public opinion.
More obfuscation
It is undoubtedly true that Roche is a slippery character and that, as Montagna has said, the report on the Latin Mass conducted under Francis was “falsified” in order to justify a crackdown on the old liturgy. At the same time, this does not take away the facts on the ground.
Once news broke about the La Razón article, Montagna was once again quick to try to neutralize the bad news by accusing the outlet of marshaling “dubious claims” that display “a woeful lack of accuracy.”
But this forgets the simple fact that Prevost’s entire pontificate thus far points to Roche’s claims as being entirely true.
Even InfoVaticana, which usually has reasonably sober reporting, succumbed to becoming spin doctors for Leo’s imaginary TLM-loving sentiments.
In an article by its editorial staff titled “Roche in campaign to drag Leo XIV into his traditional anti-Mass thesis,” it made the following defense.
“That a Pope asks the prefect of Divine Worship for a report on liturgy — a matter of his dicastery and his function — and respects the text without amending it does not mean adherence to its content,” it argued. “It simply means that Leo XIV allowed each prefect to expose his vision within his sphere of competence, as he did with the other three speakers. A ruler who respects the independence of his collaborators does not subscribe to every word they write.”
According to this argument, Leo actually disagrees completely with Roche but simply did not want to correct him. The question then arises: what is the point of a pope if he is not going to correct his brother bishops when they make statements that are, allegedly, completely out of line with what he is really planning and desiring?
Read more: Trads need to wake up: The Latin Mass’ days are numbered in the Synodal Church
Since the 2025 conclave, Catholic influencers have desperately wanted it to be true that Leo XIV would quietly dismantle Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass. Some of them thought by keeping quiet about his promotion of blatant errors they could help ensure this. They angled for an outright appeal of Traditionis Custodes and hoped for a return to the legal framework established by Summorum Pontificum. These predictions became almost axiomatic within the synodal-trad and conservative media ecosystem.
What they got instead was an excommunication of the SSPX, TLM persecutions in Charlotte, Detroit, and elsewhere, and suggestions by Prevost that they should just say the Novus Ordo “in Latin.”
What is now evident is the fascinating sociology of their latest responses. Faced with an ever-growing mountain of evidence, they are incapable of revising their assumptions. While their desire to fight Roche is admirable in certain respects, their “strategy” is nearing its end and Leo is all who is left. The writing is on the wall, and it is futile for them to keep coming up with elaborate explanations and providing false hope designed to preserve what they want reality to be, instead of what it is.
