Those who visit the Dicastery for Divine Worship say that Cardinal Roche has been looking downcast lately; they find him sad and worried. And no wonder. His career as a bishop, now drawing to a close in the shadows of old age, has been a series of failures. His tenure in Leeds was disastrous in many respects, including financially. That is why—and this is no secret—the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales asked Pope Benedict in 2012 to find him another position where he could do no harm to souls or banks. And good old Ratzinger had no better idea than to place him as Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, making him the natural successor to Cardinal Robert Sarah. (Moral: to be a good ruler, it is not enough to be wise and pious).
Roche’s failures in his position as prefect were resounding. And the first was precisely Traditionis custodes. He was responsible for convincing Pope Francis to publish that ill-fated document on a subject that did not interest the Argentine pontiff and that embarked him on one of the most significant avoidable and self-inflicted crises of his pontificate.
Not only did it achieve nothing, but it plunged the Church into a permanent state of division, conflict, and sadness. The liturgical peace that had been achieved with Summorum Pontificum was inexplicably shattered by an unnecessary and mendacious document, as Nicola Bux and Saverio Gaeta have demonstrated with documents in hand in their book La liturgia non è uno spettacolo: Il questionario ai vescovi sul rito antico: arma di distruzione di Messa? (The liturgy is not a spectacle: The questionnaire to bishops on the ancient rite: a weapon of Mass destruction?), the statistical reasons with which they sought to justify TC were grossly manipulated.
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