Cardinal Roche’s Unity Means Submission

As Roche rebrands suppression as harmony, Randazzo is marketed as restoration despite his synodal record, and Leo extends warmth to Canterbury while tradition stays suspect.

The man who said the quiet part out loud

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.

Roche: “The theology of the Church has changed”

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.

“Unity” in curial dialect means one side disappears

Roche now quotes St. Paul about receiving what was handed on and warns against controlling the liturgy according to personal preference. The comedy writes itself. The traditional Roman rite was not the product of a hobbyist committee, a postwar workshop, or a pastoral management culture intoxicated by options, experts, and explanatory prefaces. Yet the man defending the post-conciliar liturgical reconstruction presents himself as the guardian against private manipulation.

And his line about “give and take on both sides” deserves to be laughed out of the room. What exactly has the traditional side been allowed to “take”? They lose parishes, lose ordinary access, lose legal security, lose succession, lose confidence that their children will inherit what they themselves received. The other side gets the old Mass reduced to an exception, fenced off, tolerated as an anomaly, and then has the nerve to call that compromise. This is how the modern Roman machine talks when it has already decided the verdict. It confiscates first, moralizes second, and calls the whole thing communion.

The “Leo is restoring order” fantasy is already collapsing

That is why the triumphal reading from Catholic Sat and similar outlets looks so foolish. The X post hailed Leo as “slowly filling the Roman Curia with competent people again.” Competent for what, exactly? Competent men can demolish as efficiently as incompetent ones. A canon lawyer with better table manners does not become a restorer merely because he wears his revolution with less theatricality.

The same official Vatican bulletin that named Anthony Randazzo prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts also elevated Renzo Pegoraro, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, to the personal title of archbishop. Pegoraro had already drawn criticism for suggesting in a 2022 Wall Street Journal interview that contraception might be morally permissible in some cases. If this is the great conservative reform, it is a very strange reform indeed.

Randazzo is not a restoration pick

The attempt to market Randazzo as some anti-modernist enforcer collapses as soon as one reads his public record instead of his résumé. In October 2023, during the synod, he praised Francis for speaking out in support of blessings for same-sex couples, saying it was “a good thing” that the Holy Father “took the lead.” In October 2024, he said he had no problem with the issue of women’s ordination being “discussed and studied,” even while criticizing the fixation on such “niche issues” in wealthy Western churches. Leo officially appointed him to Legislative Texts on March 25, 2026.

That is managerial synodality, not restoration. A real restorer would begin from settled doctrine and treat obvious contradictions as contradictions. The Roman authorities themselves stated in 2021 that the Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions. John Paul II declared in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and the 1995 responsum confirmed that this judgment is to be held definitively. Randazzo’s public posture toward both flashpoints has not been the posture of a man shutting down confusion, but of a man soothing it, proceduralizing it, and keeping every forbidden door rhetorically ajar.

That, in fact, is exactly the sort of bishop this regime prefers. Instead of the shrieking progressive or the rainbow demagogue, it prefers the smoother figure who says the old answers are still in place while treating every condemned proposition as a topic for listening, accompaniment, study, process, and maturation. The bureaucracy loves this species. He never looks revolutionary while helping the revolution become permanent.

Canterbury gets tenderness while tradition gets suspicion

Then there is the other half of the picture. Leo’s March 20 message to Sarah Mullally explicitly addressed her as “Archbishop of Canterbury,” acknowledged the “weighty” office to which she had been chosen across the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, prayed that the Holy Spirit would guide her in serving “your communities,” called her “Dear sister,” and asked that she be made “fruitful in the Lord’s service.” Vatican News then announced that she will be received by Leo in Rome from April 25 to 28.

Set that beside the language used for Catholics attached to the inherited Roman rite. They are a concession. They are noisy. Something is afoot with them. Their liturgy is a unity problem. Their growth is viewed with suspicion. Their reverence is acknowledged only to be neutralized. Meanwhile the new female head of a communion whose orders Leo XIII declared “absolutely null and utterly void” receives warmth, encouragement, public ecclesial courtesy, and soon a Roman audience.

That contrast says more than a dozen press releases. The old Mass gets interrogated because it still signifies Catholic continuity too plainly. Anglican novelty gets embraced because it flatters the post-conciliar instinct for dialogue, ambiguity, and sentimental fraternity untroubled by hard claims.

The revolution in canonical dress

So no, Roche is not defending unity. He is defending settlement terms. He wants one liturgical regime, one official memory, one permitted interpretation of the council, and one direction of travel. He wants Catholics who still know what the Roman rite looked like before the experts arrived to stop reminding everyone that the revolution had a before. That is why his condescension is so infuriating. He presents himself as the sober guardian of ecclesial order, when in reality he is one of the men most responsible for proving that the fight was never over taste. It was always about doctrine embodied in worship.

And the broader Leo narrative already looks threadbare. The same week Trad Inc. apologists were cheering “competent people” and “orthodox canon lawyers,” the official record showed continuity with synodal ambiguity, continuity with morally compromised appointments, and continuity with ecumenical theater that lavishes public honor on visible religious falsehood while treating Catholic inheritance as a suspect faction. The names may be better pressed. The accent may be calmer. The program remains depressingly familiar.

Roche, then, is not some embarrassing outlier. He is the perfect spokesman for the whole arrangement: blunt enough to admit the rupture, arrogant enough to punish those who noticed it, and dense enough to think the word “unity” still covers the smell.

---

If you value independent Catholic analysis and want to help keep this work going, you can make a contribution or subscribe below. Every donation and subscription directly supports the writing, research, and production of Hiraeth in Exile.

Thank you for helping preserve independent Catholic journalism rooted in truth and tradition.