By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Cardinal Roche’s “holy war” against tradition, and the Traditional Mass, is perpetrated on the falsehood that Catholic theology — and the truth of Revelation which it imparts — can “change.”
Roche was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for programming which aired March 19, in which he continues his jihad by means of restrictions on the Traditional Mass. He is the source of a cascade of documents implemented under Pope Francis since July 2021 to limit and ultimately ban, the holiest tradition and divine revelation of the Holy Mass handed down from apostolic times. Traditionis custodes, the first shot fired in the modernist war on the Mass, was ignored by many bishops. These may have been the ones who responded positively to a Vatican survey which was used as the excuse for the restrictions. We were informed the survey revealed an overall negative reaction.
Roche here sounds in the interview much like an intellectual adolescent recycling clichés:
“The theology of the Church has changed. Whereas before the priest represented, at a distance, all the people — they were channeled through this person who alone was celebrating the Mass.”
The theology of the priesthood is based on the truth that the Mass is the self-offering of Christ, a true sacrifice that takes away sins. The priest stands in persona Christi and does indeed thus as another Christ truly offer the sacrifice. The baptized present participate according to the graces of their Baptism, but the sacrifice does not depend upon them in the same way as in the role of the priest. The difference is a matter of kind and not simply degree. The Mass can be offered with or without the presence of the people.
When Roche says that “it is not only the priest who celebrates the liturgy but also those who are baptized with him, and that is an enormous statement to make,” he cannot state such in a way to imply that the Mass cannot be offered by the priest alone. The theology of the priesthood is based on the truth of the sacrificial death of the Lord on the Cross. This cannot change no matter how Cardinal Roche may twist himself into a pretzel theologically.
Comments by Austen Ivereigh were also aired on the program. He argues devotees of the Traditional Mass should be labeled as “a movement undermining the Second Vatican Council.” Ivereigh therefore supports restrictions on the TLM “to put a limit, to put borders, not to suppress it, but to put it back into the hands of the bishops.”
The several documents churned out by Roche have taken more and more control over the liturgy away from local bishops. As quoted by LifeSiteNews, liturgical scholar Matthew Hazell highlighted Roche’s comments, noting that contrary to the cardinal’s claim, the teaching of the Church had not changed. He pointed to the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei, in which the Pontiff outlined the Catholic teaching on the congregation uniting themselves to the priest in the sacrifice of the Mass.
“Now it is clear that the faithful offer the sacrifice by the hands of the priest from the fact that the minister at the altar, in offering a sacrifice in the name of all His members, represents Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body. Hence the whole Church can rightly be said to offer up the victim through Christ.”
The concept of “priestly people” violated a fundamental about that which priests and only priests can do: offer the Holy Mass. Pius XII again:
“The fact, however, that the faithful participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice does not mean that they also are endowed with priestly power. It is very necessary that you make this quite clear to your flocks.
“Now the faithful participate in the oblation, understood in this limited sense, after their own fashion and in a twofold manner, namely, because they not only offer the sacrifice by the hands of the priest, but also, to a certain extent, in union with him. It is by reason of this participation that the offering made by the people is also included in liturgical worship. . . .
“But the conclusion that the people offer the sacrifice with the priest himself is not based on the fact that, being members of the Church no less than the priest himself, they perform a visible liturgical rite; for this is the privilege only of the minister who has been divinely appointed to this office: rather it is based on the fact that the people unite their hearts in praise, impetration, expiation, and thanksgiving with prayers or intention of the priest, even of the High Priest himself, so that in the one and same offering of the victim and according to a visible sacerdotal rite, they may be presented to God the Father.
“It is obviously necessary that the external sacrificial rite should, of its very nature, signify the internal worship of the heart.”
Hazell points out that “Pius XII also drew from Pope Innocent III to denote the teaching of the Church in the joint offering of the sacrifice:
“ ‘Not only,’ says Innocent III of immortal memory, ‘do the priests offer the sacrifice, but also all the faithful: for what the priest does personally by virtue of his ministry, the faithful do collectively by virtue of their intention.’
“Hence, Roche’s claim that the theology has changed does not seem to be supported by Church teaching — both that of recent times and that made by Popes from ancient eras. His argument that the people now join the priest in offering the sacrifice has always been taught, with the careful differentiation between the priest and people’s various roles,” according to Michael Haynes of LifeSiteNews.
Cardinal Roche attempts to suppress the TLM by channeling the fathers of Vatican II:
“All that is taking place is the regulation of the former liturgy of 1962 Missal by stopping the promotion of that, because it was clear that the Council, the Bishops of the Council, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were putting forward a new liturgy for the vital life of the Church, for its vitality.” His campaign against the TLM he says is “really very important…to resist that is, is something that is really quite serious, too.”
Roche has gone so far as to say that Catholics determined to preserve the TLM are “more Protestant” than Catholic. This while TLM Catholics support the same liturgical principles actually mentioned in the Vatican document on the liturgy: preservation of the Latin language, Gregorian Chant, and use of the organ to support liturgical music.
Roche is way off base when he claims that the Second Vatican Council has “the highest legislation that exists in the Church,” and adding “if you disregard that, you are putting yourself sideways, to the edges of the Church. You are becoming more Protestant than you are Catholic.”
It is truly a tragic day for the Church when no less than a cardinal puts his credibility into question when he forgets, doesn’t know, or intentionally misleads others about the highest law of the Church which is, in fact, to save souls.
Roche’s belief that Vatican II promulgated a “new liturgy” is disproved by comments of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988 with regard to tradition: “This particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of super-dogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.”
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.
@TruthCatholicPadre
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