Interview With Cardinal Roche: The Pope Is Not Going Back on Traditionis Custodes, Summorum Pontificum Will Not Return

I gave Leo the benefit of the doubt for several months, but his appointments and actions have convinced me that he's Francis 2.0.

From Rorate Cæli

Cardinal Roche, the English head of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, granted an extensive interview to website Ad Vaticanum as he nears the end of his term.

We provide below the excerpts that concern Traditional Catholics, the entire interview deals with several other matters.

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This year will mark five years since the implementation of Traditionis Custodes, the motu proprio from Pope Francis’s pontificate, which adjusted a previous motu proprio from Pope Benedict’s pontificate. Do you think, in view of these changes from pontificate to pontificate, we are likely to see Pope Leo give his own guidance – particularly as much of the Catholic revival amongst young people seems at least to have a focus on the 1962 Mass? Or do you see something coming from Pope Leo?

AR: No, I do not. He is not going to change Traditionis Custodes. He is not going to go back to Summorum Pontificum.

 

His words to the priests and people of consecrated life in Notre-Dame on Saturday evening are very, very clear: stop preferring your own particular view about this matter, and return to what the Church is asking you to do. He said that very clearly, not only there, but also two or three weeks back in his concluding talk for his Wednesday catechesis on Sacrosanctum Concilium. He made it very clear that the direction of the Church is in this particular direction, and that personal choices should not come into this matter.

Why? Because the Church assembles as a family, as a group, not simply as individuals. Of course we are individuals, but 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.

Would you say to those people who attend the Vetus Ordo that it would be better for them to go to a Novus Ordo, or would you say they really should not be going to a Vetus Ordo Mass?

AR: You should not be going to that Mass exclusively, I think. That is what I would say. But the thing that impresses itself upon me constantly, dealing with groups of traditionally minded people, is that when they come to see me and talk about this, and they say the Pope has not been kind to us, I say to them: the Holy Father has given you the possibility of celebrating the Mass according to the Antecedent Rite. What is your problem? What else is it that you are wanting?

Generally speaking, they cannot answer the question. 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 evangelise the world. 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.

There has always got to be that balance, because you might have a very deep love for the Latin language, and that is fine. We are the Latin Rite. Latin is still part of our liturgical tradition. Let us move away from the personal to the corporate identity of the Church, which I think is very important.

I think often, when people balk at this, they forget what Pius XII said in Mystici Corporis Christi on the nature of the Church, and also in his encyclical Mediator Dei on the liturgy. Those were fundamental pillars of Sacrosanctum Concilium. There is nothing in there that has been changed in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Those pillars were telling us how we identify with the Body of Christ through the liturgy, but as a community and not simply as individuals whose chose what they want. Of course we have our inspirations, we have our own ways of thinking and devising things, but at the end of the day it is when we come together in the moment of the Eucharist that the unity of the Church is expressed in its fullest possible way.

It almost seems guaranteed, when you go to a traditional Latin Mass, that people have the correct understanding of the Eucharist and are regularly attending confession. Is there not a sense that maybe this is something the Church, in 2026, with all our difficulties in a secularised West, should take advantage of, and say: we need this – we need this youthful energy?

AR: Yes, but would you say that is not true of people who go to Sunday Mass with the new rite also?

I would say it is true. Just not, perhaps, at a level where you could definitely see that exact same energy in the new rite. There is a sense of it being almost guaranteed at a traditional Mass.

AR: But is that other level a sort of same-mindedness? I think it is not unimportant to say that, because cultures and societies are diverse, and the makeup of society, certainly within English culture, is very diverse. The mix is different. But is the level of commitment different? Is the level of faith different? I did not see that. As a pastor, I have never seen that. Of course you get difficulties; you get people saying outrageous things. Sometimes they simply say outrageous things out of anger or out of a controversial spirit. But ultimately, at the end of the day, they know where their home is, and they know their home is where they are taught and where they receive life. That, to my mind, is really quite important – with the diversity of people, the flock that you have, keeping them together.

You came out of a generation after the Second Vatican Council who saw good things in the Council and saw it as the future of the Roman Catholic Church, and saw these changes as absolutely necessary for its survival. Perhaps it could be said that this is the same for a generation of Catholics now who see a return to the Vetus Ordo as necessary. Do you think that is a fair characterisation?

AR: Yes, I do. I served that Mass until I was 21 years of age, within three years of my ordination. I knew the Mass backwards. When I was a boy at school, we generally served the same priest for daily Mass. The priest I served, Father Quinton, said to me: “Remember, 15 minutes, amice to amice.” It gave me a sense of how the old Mass was generally celebrated very rapidly. The availability of a sung Mass was rare for most Catholic parishes in England, or even a High Mass with a deacon and subdeacon.

But I have a love for the Mass. I have a love for the Church, which guides me, and I either accept that as guidance or reject it – to say, well, this is the right way, it is the only way, and what has been produced is defective – which is not true. It is not true to say that. The structure is the same. But also the elements, the sources which were not available in the 1570s, became available through the liturgical movement and the discovery in Venice and other places of rich sources of liturgical books, and so on.

We have got to be very careful in this area. I go back to what St Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians. Right at the beginning of the Church there were liturgical abuses in Corinth: the double standard of the agape, and also possibly the priest becoming a particular focus, a unique focus within the celebration of the Mass, by the way that he dressed. Not that vestments are not important, but that perhaps there was more going on there. Some scholars think that the priest might very well have been dressing in a way that was more worldly than should have been the case.

But St Paul goes back and he says: what I received from the Lord and gave to you by apostolic authority was this. That is what the Church has to do with the liturgy. And only the Church, at its highest level, has that possibility of giving you that. So I think, for unity within the Church – and unity is part of the Eucharist, the Eucharistic gift – you have to take that very seriously. It is not just something that you can pick and choose at.

Somebody asked me, I think it was in The Tablet: do you have to go to Mass every Sunday to be a Catholic? And I said yes. Because Catholicism is not notional – “Oh yes, well I think that way, and therefore I am Catholic,” rather as if I were an Aristotelian or an Aquinas sort of theologian. No. Catholicism is a commitment. Christianity is a commitment. And if you cannot show it on Sunday, I would suggest that you will find it difficult to show it in other ways. If that is not present in your life, and if Catholicism is notional, or simply something that suits you in various areas but not in all, then that is not Catholicism. That is Protestantism. It is me taking it on my own terms.

Do you think there is a way back for the Society of Saint Pius X?

AR: There is always a way back. There is always a way back. Conversion is something that does not end with being baptised or being received into the fullness of the Catholic Church. It is a daily reality, and the older I get, the more aware I am of the need for conversion. Is there ever a day in my life, as I pray early in the morning, that there is not something that impresses itself on me that I have to attend to? Because we are not perfect. But God wants us to become perfect. And that does not end until the end of life, until we die – and then beyond that, hopefully through purgatory, that we get to where we are hoping to go.

So you have got to take that seriously: the call. And the call, the voice of Christ, is within the Church. He did not found anything else to substitute it. Not even individual mystical experiences. They are always interpreted within the framework, within the context of the Church, never as separate entities. And if they are defective within that context, then they are generally claimed not to be authentic.

One of the most consequential things that happened with the Society’s excommunication was their faculty to validly hear confessions and marriages being removed. With the developments, would you now say that the Society’s confessions and marriages would be invalid?

AR: Yes. Because they do not have jurisdiction, they do not have the authority. It is a very serious matter. And how generous Pope Francis was in the Year of Mercy, saying it applies to you too: we will validate all of those things that have been invalid for all these years. And they accepted that. But now they are saying he did not even have the authority to do that and that it made no sense, because they were valid. Well, you either believe in the Church or you do not. You either believe it was founded by Christ, or it rests on your shoulders entirely.

Of course you can be forgiven if you are contrite and make an act of contrition in unusual circumstances. But in order to come back to the Church – that is why we publicly go to confession. That is why I queue up week after week, or every two weeks normally, in St Peter’s to go to confession: to show people that I, like every human being, am a sinner, and I am coming publicly to confess my sins. And it is within the Church. It is to a priest who has the power to absolve – not going to my auntie, who is very understanding and loving, and confessing to her. No: to the priest who represents Christ. And there we have it.

 

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Rorate Note: So, there it is. We will see who will be named to replace Roche, and from there onwards we will know what Leo XIV truly thinks of these matters. [Source and full interview here.]