‘Feed My Sheep’:- The Latin Mass & the Attempt to Propagandise the Cardinals.
Cardinal Roche, Vatican II, and the Struggle for the Soul of the Church
Cardinal Roche’s Memo and the Question of Truth
With her usual professional skill and aplomb, Diana Montagna has provided the public with a copy of Cardinal Roche’s private memo about the liturgy and the Latin Mass, sent to the Cardinals at the consistory.
By this time, all of us know that there was no proper discussion of the Latin Mass at the consistory, although there will have been plenty of informal conversation. It is clear that Cardinal Roche was trying to influence and direct the mind of the consistory in a particular direction by means of this private letter, ahead of its next meeting in June.
It is a great help that we have the text in front of us. It allows us, as part of the People of God, to join in the conversation even from afar. It may be that the experience and opinions of some, offered for the wider Church, will prove to be of interest to the Cardinals who have committed themselves to taking this process of consultation with the seriousness that Pope Leo intended when he invited them.
I think there are three particular passages I want to draw attention to. But before doing so, I want to say two things.
A General Observation
The first is a general comment on the paper itself. It is not an impressive piece of writing. It contains too many bland affirmations and non sequiturs. It is consequently a poorly written document, which bears the marks not of serious theological analysis, but rather of propaganda.
My impressions, as I began to read it and to assess the quality of the argument and the factual assertions, developed into an anxious suspicion that we are not dealing here with a piece that set out to tell the truth. It was trying to present a version of the truth. The difficulty was that I already knew enough of the other side of the argument to recognise this as a piece of partisanship. As such, it did not deserve to be offered as a briefing paper for such an august group as the Cardinals of the Catholic Church in consistory.
Let me therefore draw attention to three particular parts of the document, because there is not time at the moment to take it to pieces word by word or paragraph by paragraph.
Paragraph 7: A Revisionist History
In paragraph 7, Cardinal Roche says:
“The liturgical reform was elaborated on the basis of accurate theological and historical investigation. Its scope was to render more full the participation in the celebration of the Paschal Mystery for a renewal of the Church, the People of God, the Mystical Body of Christ.”
The difficulty with this statement is that it presents an inadequate account of the factors that lay behind the liturgical renewal. It completely ignores the fact that the Mass of the Council Fathers was the Latin Mass itself, and that they had no inkling that they were signing the death warrant of their own liturgy—the liturgy that had characterised the Catholic Church for almost the whole of its existence.
These lines by Cardinal Roche are therefore a piece of retrospective revisionism that simply does not tell the truth. The truth, as we know, is that there were a number of contested elements behind the liturgical revision that followed, which involved, at the very least, unwelcome deception concerning what the Pope of the day was told, and what the committee—on which the main architect of the liturgical revisions, Fr Bugnini, served—was actually doing.
This was not a transparent operation, based on a transparent process, nor was it a theologically profound development whose primary aim was renewal. Some of the motivating considerations, including the ecumenical dimension, have become seriously problematic in the light of the decades that have passed.
Paragraph 9: “Freezing Division”
In paragraph 9, Cardinal Roche chillingly observes:
“The primary good of the unity of the Church is not achieved by ‘freezing division’, but by finding ourselves in the sharing of what cannot be shared, as Pope Francis said in Desiderio Desideravi, 61.”
The justification for this document—or rather its primary analysis—is that anyone inclined to allow greater latitude and hospitality to the Latin Mass is guilty of what has come to be called “freezing division”.
This is, in fact, an act of blackmail. It reduces a prudential judgement to a moral failure, and it is not true. The freezing of division is precisely what was accomplished by Pope Francis (and Cardinal Roche) when Traditiones Custodes was produced.
One of the tasks of this consistory of Cardinals, when the moment comes in June to consider the liturgical questions together, should be the healing of division, not the freezing of it. To tell them in advance that, if they make a decision Cardinal Roche disapproves of, they are thereby “freezing division” is as manipulatively outrageous as it is untrue.
Paragraph 11: Ecclesiology as Exclusion
Paragraph 11 is longer, but it must be seen as the culmination of the argument. Cardinal Roche writes:
“If the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed and at the same time the font from which all her power flows (Sacrosanctum Concilium), then we can understand what is at stake in the liturgical question. It would be trivial to read the tensions, unfortunately present around the celebration, as a simple divergence between different tastes concerning particular ritual forms. The problematic is primarily ecclesiological. I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognises the validity of the Council—though it amazes me that a Catholic might presume not to do so—and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document that expresses a reality of the liturgy intimately joined to the vision of the Church as described in Lumen Gentium.”
Essentially, the argument here is that if you maintain a devotion to the Latin Mass, you are a schismatic who repudiates the authority of the Second Vatican Council.
This might seem an extraordinary overreach were it not for the fact that I later discovered that this view is held more widely in the Church than I had realised.
A French Dinner Table
I was a guest at a dinner in France hosted by an eminent bishop and one of his senior clergy. It was an act of kindness to invite me, and the three of us had long and thoughtful conversations about matters of mutual interest. But there came a point when I realised I had misread the room in a way that took me aback—and which speaks directly to the culture Cardinal Roche is drawing upon.
We were discussing signs of hope in the Church in France, and I immediately suggested the moving sight of a pilgrimage of 20,000 young Catholics—the future of the Church—enduring hardship, walking and praying and singing, and receiving the Mass of the Ages at the hands of priests offering the traditional liturgy. I described it as one of the most moving signs of hope for the future of the Church.
The atmosphere darkened. I quickly realised I had lost the sympathy of the room. I asked why what I had described appeared so unwelcome. The answer was direct and unequivocal:
“These 20,000 young people you’ve described are schismatics. They repudiate the authority of the Council.”
I realised then that I had misjudged the theological background radiation. I asked, very gently, in what way receiving the Mass of the Ages on a sixty-mile pilgrimage at the age of twenty constituted a schismatic repudiation of Vatican II. The response was not an argument, but a declaration of fact. That is simply what attending the Mass of the Ages means.
