Response to Cardinal Roche's text on the liturgy

Cardinal Roche’s Rearguard Action

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During the recent consistory, the meeting of cardinals in Rome, Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, handed out a two-sided piece of paper containing some reflections on the liturgy to those present: this has been make available by Diane Montagna here. The liturgy had been among the four topics originally proposed for discussion at the meeting, but the cardinals decided to focus on just two, leaving the liturgy out. Cardinal Roche’s document was accordingly handed out without being formally discussed.

Versions were available in Italian and in English. The latter was clearly translated from the former, and not flawlessly: the Italian word sintonia, which means ‘harmony’, was rendered ‘syntony’ (para 4). It is surprising that an English Cardinal should have missed this howler, and it suggests that he didn’t write the document personally.

The argument of the text is not difficult to summarise. First, it makes historical argument that the liturgy has often developed: ‘The history of the liturgy … is the history of its continuous “reforming” in a process of organic development.’

This is linked, secondly, to the authority of the Second Vatican Council, at whose request the liturgy was reformed.

Thirdly, it repeats, with illustrations from the time of Pope Pius V, the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict, and Pope Francis, the claim that liturgical unity is necessary for the unity of the Church.

As a contribution to the debate sparked by Pope Francis’ Apostolic Letter restricting the Traditional Mass, Traditionis custodes, this represents a doubling-down rather than an attempt to engage with critics.