Posted on 03/28/2026 10:15:30 AM PDT by ebb tide
Arthur Roche has spent years doing the sort of damage that only a curial functionary can do well: dressing coercion in the language of pastoral concern, dressing rupture in the language of continuity, and then acting scandalized when Catholics notice the costume slipping. In his new OSV interview, he says liturgical debates should be viewed through the lens of unity, not personal preference; he repeats that the older rite was being used against the reform of Vatican II; he calls the traditional Mass a concession still available only “by papal authority”; and then, with a mix of hauteur and paranoia, asks why there is “all this noise” and says “something else is clearly afoot.” He even admits that silence, music, and reverence are part of the old rite’s attraction, and that this exposes a challenge to the Novus Ordo.
That last admission is key. Instead of battling some imaginary cult of nostalgia, Roche is staring straight at the obvious. People are drawn to a liturgy that feels sacred, sounds sacred, and behaves as though God is present. He knows it. He says it. Then he turns around and treats the people who want such worship as a political problem to be managed. The insult comes wrapped in a smirk. They come because the church is quiet, the music is serious, and the rite is reverent. But his answer is not repentance for the desert that replaced it, but another lecture on unity.
The truly revealing thing about Roche is not merely that he wants restrictions. Plenty of prelates want them. The revealing thing is that he already gave away the game in 2023, when his BBC remarks were widely reported as saying that “the theology of the Church has changed.” He explained the difference in terms that effectively conceded what defenders of the post-conciliar settlement had denied for decades: the old Mass and the new order of worship do not simply differ in language, calendar, or emphasis, but in the theological understanding conveyed by the rite itself.
That is why Roche deserves special contempt. For years, traditional Catholics were told that their objections were hysterical, that the new rite was merely the old faith in updated ceremonial dress, that continuity was obvious to any honest observer. Then Roche, perhaps too dull to understand the implications of his own candor, blurted out the truth. Yes, there was a change, the reform embodied it, and the inherited Roman rite sits there like stubborn evidence against the official fairy tale. And once he admitted that, the whole anti-traditional campaign took on a different light. It ceased to look like housecleaning and started looking exactly like what it is: an attempt to suppress a liturgical witness that remembers too much.
Continue reading at Hiraeth In Exile
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