Cardinal Roche's Threatening Language: Do Not Attend the TLM! But Why? The Church Need Not Forbid Its Past to Secure Its Future.
The Catholic Church prides itself on its universality, cherishes an impressive diversity of liturgical traditions, and regards that diversity as an expression of its riches. A Catholic may attend the divine liturgy according to the Byzantine tradition, the Maronite tradition, the Armenian tradition, or the Chaldean tradition. No one finds this in itself a threat to ecclesial unity. But the moment a Catholic wishes to attend Mass as it was celebrated for centuries in Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, and virtually the entire Latin Church, certain ecclesial authorities in Rome begin to grow uneasy.
Suddenly, liturgical diversity becomes a problem. Suddenly, attachment to tradition becomes suspect. And suddenly, the unity of the Church must be protected against people who wish to pray as their ancestors did. This raises a question that is by no means unreasonable: why is virtually every ancient Catholic liturgical tradition a treasure — except the ancient Roman liturgy?
Cardinal Roche stated recently, in an interview with AdVaticanum published on October 13, 2026, that traditionalist groups sometimes use the earlier liturgy to resist the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council. According to the Cardinal, such an attitude can harm ecclesial unity. He warned that those who reject the Council distance themselves from the center of Catholicism. He also stated that Catholics ought not, in his view, to attend exclusively the old Mass. An important distinction is necessary here.
One who on principle denies the validity of the new Mass, rejects the papal authority, or maintains that the Catholic Church after Vatican II is no longer the Catholic Church does indeed adopt a problematic position. But one who loves the traditional Mass, deepens his faith through it, accepts Catholic doctrine, and remains loyal to the Pope cannot simply be accused of the same. Attachment to a liturgical tradition is not identical to a rejection of the Magisterium. It is precisely this distinction that threatens to be lost in the current discussion.
The Catholic Church encompasses twenty-four Churches sui iuris: the Latin Church and twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches. They possess different liturgical traditions — Byzantine, Alexandrian, Antiochene, Armenian, and East Syriac, among others. Within the Western Catholic world as well there exist particular liturgical usages, including the Ambrosian Rite in Milan. And no one fears for the unity of the Church when a Byzantine Catholic priest stands before the iconostasis, the incense rises abundantly, and the faithful experience a liturgy that differs from the ordinary Roman Mass on numerous points. For Catholic unity has never been identical with liturgical uniformity. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council states explicitly in Sacrosanctum Concilium that all legitimately recognized rites are of equal dignity and that the Church wishes to preserve and promote them. That is a remarkable statement in light of Cardinal Roche's pronouncements. If liturgical diversity does not necessarily harm the unity of the Church, why would the centuries-old Roman liturgy do so? The Catholic faith is not, after all, a collection of customs whose expiration date is determined by an ecclesial commission.
Post-war liturgical practice has revealed a shift from the transcendence of God toward the community as the focal point. When the Eucharist comes to resemble increasingly a common meal, a celebration of human togetherness, or an occasion for pastoral creativity, the sacrificial dimension risks fading into the background. It is precisely against this tendency that the traditional liturgy, with its consistent orientation toward God, constitutes a visible counterweight. And perhaps there lies part of the discomfort: the TLM continues to proclaim something ancient that is easily forgotten today. Pope Benedict understood something essential: the Church cannot credibly claim that what it considered holy yesterday ought today to be regarded as a danger.
Is the Second Vatican Council being used as a point of rupture? Here the discussion touches upon a deeper problem. A council stands within Tradition. It does not inaugurate a new Church. Vatican II provided for a reform of the liturgy, but at the same time determined that Latin was to be preserved in the Latin Rites and that Gregorian chant holds a position of primacy. Much of what is today considered typically traditionalist was therefore entirely self-evident to the conciliar Fathers. It is therefore remarkable when attachment to the older liturgy is presented as resistance to the Council itself.
Criticism of certain aspects of the post-conciliar liturgical reform is, after all, not automatically equivalent to a rejection of the Second Vatican Council. The liturgical reform was largely elaborated and introduced after the Council. That does not mean all criticism is correct. It means only that such a discussion can legitimately be conducted.
When a council is in practice treated as an absolute watershed between an old and a new Church, precisely the rupture arises that one claims to wish to avoid. The Catholic Church is not an institution refounded in 1965. She is the same Church that received the Apostles, produced the Church Fathers, built the medieval cathedrals, convened the Council of Trent, and called together the Second Vatican Council. One who truly believes in the continuity of the Church need not fear her past.
Cardinal Roche appeals constantly to the unity of the Church. That is in itself entirely correct. Unity is not an incidental property of the Church but belongs to her very essence. The question is only what we understand by unity. Unity in the Catholic faith, in the sacraments, and in communion with the Successor of Peter is something different from uniformity in ritual expression. The official line of reasoning is that the TLM, unlike the Eastern liturgies, has for certain groups become a symbol of resistance to the reform and the authority of the Church. That argument deserves serious attention. But the problem with that reasoning is that it easily moves from a judgment about particular abuses to a general judgment about an entire liturgical community. Why should families, young people, priests, and religious who desire nothing other than to celebrate the traditional liturgy in full ecclesial communion bear the consequences?
A father who brings his children to the old Mass because he experiences there the holiness of the Eucharist with particular intensity is not engaged in Church politics. He is simply going to Mass.
The history of the Church is characterized not only by renewal but also by preservation. Traditio means transmission: receiving what one has not oneself invented and passing it on to the next generation. It is therefore remarkable that in an era in which one speaks constantly of listening to the faithful, the desires of traditionally oriented Catholics so often meet with so little understanding. A Church that wishes to listen to the world ought also to listen to its own children — unless synodality means something else. Certainly when those children are asking not for less Catholic doctrine but for its undiminished proclamation. Or is that precisely the problem?
A prudent approach would make room for the older liturgy wherever it is sincerely desired, while at the same time asking for fidelity to ecclesial communion and correcting abuses in all liturgical forms. For that last point also deserves attention. One who strictly regulates the old Mass out of concern for the holiness and unity of the liturgy must act with the same seriousness against abuses in the new Mass.
Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon is that the Traditional Latin Mass exerts an attraction not only upon those who grew up before the Council. Young Catholics too feel drawn to it. When young people consciously choose silence, Gregorian chant, ritual precision, and a liturgy that makes virtually no concession to the contemporary preference for spontaneity and immediate comprehensibility, that says something. It suggests that modernization is not always the best path to evangelization. Perhaps modern man sometimes longs precisely for what is not modern. Perhaps he is not seeking a liturgy that resembles as closely as possible the world in which he lives daily and has nothing new to offer him, but a liturgy that helps him to rise above that world. This is not an argument against the new Mass. It is an argument against the assumption that liturgical renewal necessarily coincides with adaptation to the spirit of the age.
It would be a pity if the Traditional Latin Mass were ultimately to become the victim of an ecclesial struggle in which the debate is no longer genuinely about worship but about the interpretation of the past sixty years. For in that case, a liturgy that has formed saints across centuries and sanctified countless faithful would be treated as a problem to be solved. Less suspicion, more historical honesty, more theological depth, and above all more pastoral magnanimity would be desirable here.
The Catholic et-et — the celebrated Catholic principle of both-and — could be a fruitful starting point here as well. Tradition and legitimate development. Unity and diversity. Fidelity to the Council and reverence for the centuries that preceded it. The new Mass and room for the transmitted Roman liturgy, within the communion of the Church.
Your Eminence, the Church need not forbid its past to secure its future. A Church that truly trusts in the living Tradition can afford to love its own history. A Church that receives with joy a Byzantine, Maronite, and Armenian liturgy in its midst need not feel too threatened by a Roman Mass that was so dear to it for so many centuries. The Traditional Latin Mass is, after all, no foreign intruder in the Catholic Church; it comes from her own house. And a mother Church ought not to treat her own children as strangers because they prefer to pray in the language of their grandparents.
† Rob Mutsaerts
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