The Consistory Document No One Is Allowed to Read

A private intervention, a silenced debate, and why the liturgy question refuses to go away

This has caught my eye in the discussions continuing over the consistory. Several reports included an intriguing detail that has since taken on a life of its own: a written note by Cardinal Arthur Roche, distributed privately to cardinals at the close of the gathering, and described by several attendees as negative about the Traditional Latin Mass. What has sharpened interest in the episode is not only the reported tone of the note, but the fact that no text has been made public.

It is important to set this within the wider context of the consistory itself. Liturgy was on the formal agenda, but cardinals ran out of time before it could be discussed substantively. Instead, the conversation focused on evangelisation, which many present regarded as the more urgent priority facing the Church. Cardinal Gerhard Müller later remarked that the cardinals judged evangelisation to be the pressing issue, and so the liturgical question was effectively deferred (I reported on Cardinal Müller’s comments here).

It was at this point, according to multiple reports, that cardinals received a written intervention attributed to Cardinal Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship. Those who spoke to journalists characterised the document as critical of the Traditional Latin Mass and of communities attached to it. Beyond that characterisation, nothing concrete is known. The note has not been published, quoted, or officially summarised by the Vatican.