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 on 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.
Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/no-cardinal-roche-the-churchs-theology-has-not-changed/
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