Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Cardinal Roche’s Liturgy Report Is “Manipulative” and Distorts History

An exclusive interview on Cardinal Arthur Roche’s most recent defense of Traditionis Custodes.

(Photo credit: Simon Caldwell)

ROME, 20 January 2026 — Bishop Athanasius Schneider has issued a forceful critique of a recent liturgy report prepared by Cardinal Arthur Roche, saying it relies on “manipulative reasoning” and “distorts historical evidence.”

The Cardinal’s two-page text—framed as a “careful theological, historical, and pastoral reflection”—was distributed to members of the Sacred College at a Jan. 7–8 consistory convened by Pope Leo XIV. Although it was not formally presented or discussed at the meeting due to time constraints, the report received significant pushback from clergy and faithful after its contents circulated in the media.

In a point-by-point analysis, Bishop Schneider challenges both the historical assumptions and theological premises underlying the text. Drawing on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, papal teaching, and the testimony of scholars and witnesses directly involved in the postconciliar liturgical reform, he argues that the report reflects not an impartial and careful analysis, but rather an ideological approach marked by what he calls “rigid clericalism.”

At the center of the bishop’s critique is the claim that the liturgical reform implemented in 1970 represents a rupture with the organic development of the Roman Rite. Bishop Schneider maintains that the Mass most faithful to the Council was the Ordo Missae of 1965, and that the form later promulgated by Pope Paul VI — the Novus Ordo Missae — was substantially rejected by the first Synod of Bishops after the Council in 1967.

He also contests Cardinal Roche’s interpretation of Pius V’s Quo primum, challenges his assertion that the restoration of the traditional Roman liturgy was merely a “concession,” and disputes the suggestion that liturgical pluralism “freezes division” within the Church.

For Bishop Schneider, Cardinal Roche’s report is “reminiscent of a desperate struggle of a gerontocracy confronted with serious and increasingly vocal criticism — arising primarily from a younger generation, whose voice this gerontocracy attempts to stifle through manipulative arguments and, ultimately, by weaponizing power and authority.”

In the interview that follows, His Excellency also looks ahead to the extraordinary consistory scheduled for late June, outlining alternatives he says could help restore liturgical peace in the Church.

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Diane Montagna (DM): Your Excellency, what is your overall view of the document on liturgy prepared by Cardinal Roche for consideration by the members of the Sacred College at the extraordinary consistory?

+Athanasius Schneider (+AS): For any honest and objective observer, Cardinal Roche’s document conveys the impression of a clear prejudice against the traditional Roman Rite and its present use. It appears driven by an agenda aimed at denigrating this liturgical form and ultimately eliminating it from ecclesial life. The cardinal seems determined to deny the traditional rite any legitimate place in the Church today. A commitment to objectivity and impartiality—marked by freedom from bias and a genuine concern for truth—is conspicuously absent. Instead, the document employs manipulative reasoning and even distorts historical evidence. It fails to embody the classical principle, sine ira et studio—that is, an approach “without anger or partisan zeal.”

(DM): Let’s turn to several specific passages of the report. In no. 1, Cardinal Roche states: “The history of the Liturgy, we might say, is the history of its continuous ‘reforming’ in a process of organic development.” This raises a fundamental question: are reform and development the same? Reform seems to suggest deliberate, positivist intervention, while development seems to imply organic growth tested over time. Historically, is it accurate to say that the liturgy has required continual reform, or is it better understood as developing organically, with only occasional corrective interventions?

(+AS): In this regard, the statement of Pope Benedict XVI remains both pertinent and incontrovertible: “In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture” (Letter to the Bishops at the publication of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007). It is a historical fact—attested by authoritative liturgical scholars—that from the time of Pope Gregory VII in the eleventh century, that is, for nearly a millennium, the Rite of the Roman Church underwent no significant reforms. The Novus Ordo of 1970, by contrast, presents itself to any honest and objective observer as a rupture with the millennial tradition of the Roman Rite.

This assessment is reinforced by the judgment of the liturgical scholar Archimandrite Boniface Luykx, a peritus at the Second Vatican Council and a member of the Vatican liturgical commission (the so-called Consilium) led by Fr. Annibale Bugnini. Luykx identified erroneous theological foundations underlying the work of this commission, writing:

“Behind these revolutionary exaggerations were hidden three typically Western but false principles: (1) the concept (à la Bugnini) of the superiority and normative value of modern Western man and his culture for all other cultures; (2) the inevitable and tyrannical law of constant change that some theologians applied to the liturgy, Church teaching, exegesis, and theology; and (3) the primacy of the horizontal” (A Wider View of Vatican II, Angelico Press, 2025, p. 131).

(DM): Is Cardinal Roche’s depiction of Pope Pius V’s bull Quo primum in n. 2 an accurate one? Didn’t Pope St. Pius V allow any rite to continue that had been in use for two hundred years? And weren’t other rites, such as the Ambrosian or Dominican rite, also allowed to endure and flourish.

(+AS): Cardinal Roche makes a selective reference to Quo primum, thereby distorting its meaning and using the document of Pope St. Pius V in support of an anti-traditional interpretation. In fact, Quo primumexplicitly permits all variants of the Roman Rite that had been in continuous use for at least two hundred years to continue lawfully. Unity does not mean uniformity, as the history of the Church attests.

Dom Alcuin Reid, a liturgical scholar and leading expert on the organic development of the liturgy, describes the situation of this period as follows:

“We ought not to fall into the revisionist error of imagining a complete centralist ‘Roman whitewash’ of the Western Liturgy: diversity continued within the embrace of this unity. The Dominicans carried with them their own Liturgy. Other orders also maintained distinctive rites. Local churches (Milan, Lyons, Braga, Toledo etc., as well as the major English medieval centres: Salisbury, Hereford, York, Bangor and Lincoln), cherished their own liturgies. Yet each belonged to the Roman liturgical family” (The Organic Development of the Liturgy, Farnborough 2004, pp. 20–21).

This historical reality confirms that Pope St. Pius V did indeed allow rites with a continuous history of at least two centuries to endure, including well-established usages such as the Ambrosian and Dominican rites, which were not only preserved but continued to flourish within the unity of the Roman Church.

In n. 4 of the paper, Cardinal Roche writes: “We can certainly affirm that the reform of the Liturgy wanted by the Second Vatican Council is … in full syntony with the true meaning of Tradition.” What is your view of this statement, especially in light of the experience most Catholics have of the New Mass at their parish church?

This statement is only partially true. The intention of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council was indeed a reform in continuity with the tradition of the Church, as is evident from this important formulation in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: “There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 23).

Cardinal Roche commits the typical error of an ideologue, using a circular argument, which can be summarized as follows: (1) the Mass reform of 1970 is in full syntony with the true meaning of Tradition; (2) the intention of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council was in full syntony with the true meaning of Tradition; (3) therefore, the Mass of 1970 is in full syntony with the true meaning of Tradition.

However, we possess assessments from prominent witnesses who were directly involved in the liturgical debates of the Council, and who maintain that the 1970 Order of Mass represents the product of a kind of liturgical revolution, contrary to the true intention of the Council Fathers.

Among the most important of these witnesses is Joseph Ratzinger. In a 1976 letter to Professor Wolfgang Waldstein, he wrote with striking clarity:

“The problem of the new Missal lies in the fact that it breaks away from this continuous history—one that progressed uninterrupted both before and after Pius V—and creates an entirely new book, whose appearance is accompanied by a type of prohibition of what previously existed that is wholly foreign to the history of Church law and liturgy. From my knowledge of the conciliar debates and from a renewed reading of the speeches delivered at that time by the Council Fathers, I can state with certainty that this was not intended.”

Another prominent witness is the already mentioned Archimandrite Boniface Luykx. In his recently published A Wider View of Vatican II. Memories and Analysis of a Council Consultor, he stated candidly:

“There was a perfect continuity between the preconciliar period and the Council itself, but after the Council this crucial continuity was broken by the postconciliar commissions. … The Novus Ordo is not faithful to CSL [Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] but goes substantially beyond the parameters which CSL set for the reform of the Mass rite. … The steamroller of man-centered horizontalism (as opposed to God-centered verticalism) has flattened all liturgical forms after Vatican II, but its main victim is the Novus Ordo. … The main loser in this process is the mystery, which should be, on the contrary, the main object and content of the celebration” (pp. 80, 98, 104).

What do you make of Cardinal Roche’s assertion in n. 9, that “the primary good of the unity of the Church is not achieved by freezing division but by finding ourselves in the sharing of what cannot but be shared”?

For Cardinal Roche, the very existence of the principle and reality of liturgical pluralism in the life of the Church apparently amounts to “freezing division.” Such a claim is manipulative and dishonest, since it contradicts not only the Church’s two-thousand-year practice, which has always regarded the diversity of recognized rites—or of legitimate variants within a rite—not as a source of division, but as an enrichment of ecclesial life.

Only narrow-minded clerics, shaped by a clericalist mentality, have shown—and continue even in our own day to show—intolerance toward the peaceful coexistence of different rites and liturgical practices. Among many deplorable examples is the coercion of the Thomas Christians in India during the sixteenth century, who were forced to abandon their own rites and adopt the liturgy of the Latin Church, based on the argument that to one lex credendi must correspond only one lex orandi, that is, a single liturgical form.

Another tragic example is the liturgical reform of the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century, which prohibited the older form of its rite and imposed the exclusive use of a newly revised one. Had ecclesial authorities permitted the coexistence of the old and the new rite, they would certainly not have “frozen division,” but rather would have avoided a painful schism—the schism of the so-called “Old Rites” or “Old Believers”—which has endured to this day. After a considerable period of time, the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church acknowledged the pastoral error of enforced liturgical uniformity and restored the free use of the older form of the rite. Unfortunately, only a minority of the “Old Believers” reconciled with the hierarchy, while the majority remained in schism, as the traumas were too deep and the atmosphere of mutual distrust and alienation had lasted too long. In this case, intolerance on the part of the hierarchy toward the legitimate use of the older rite quite literally froze division—the Old Ritualists were exiled by the Tsar to frozen Siberia.

Attachment to the most ancient form of the Roman Rite does not “freeze division.” On the contrary, it represents, in the words of St. John Paul II, “a just aspiration to which the Church guarantees respect” (Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, 2 July 1988, n. 5 c). The peaceful coexistence of both uses of the Roman Rite, equal in right and dignity, would demonstrate that the Church has preserved both tolerance and continuity in her liturgical life, thus implementing the counsel of the “master of the house,” praised by the Lord, “who brings out of his treasure things new and old (nova et vetera)” (Mt. 13:52). By contrast, in this document Cardinal Roche emerges as a representative of an intolerant and rigid clericalism in the liturgical sphere, one that rejects the possibility of genuine reciprocal sharing in the presence of differing liturgical traditions.

In n. 10 of the paper—which perhaps aroused the greatest consternation—Cardinal Roche states: “The use of liturgical books that the Council sought to reform was, from St. John Paul II to Francis, a concession that in no way envisaged their promotion.” How would you reply to the Cardinal on this point, particularly in view of Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum and his accompanying letter to this motu proprio.

I would respond with the following wise observation of Archimandrite Boniface Luykx: “I submit that pluriformity — that is, the coexistence of different forms of liturgical celebration while maintaining the essential core — could be a great aid to the Western Church. … Pope John Paul II in fact adopted the principle of pluriformity when he restored the Tridentine Mass in 1988” (A Wider View of Vatican II. p. 113).

This insight directly contradicts the claim that the continued use of the earlier liturgical books was merely a tolerated concession without any intention of encouragement or promotion. An important teaching of St. John Paul II further illuminates this point. He states:

“In the Roman Missal of Saint Pius V, as in several Eastern liturgies, there are very beautiful prayers through which the priest expresses the most profound sense of humility and reverence before the Sacred Mysteries: they reveal the very substance of the Liturgy” (Message to the Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, September 21, 2001).

Together, these authoritative testimonies demonstrate that the recognition and restoration of the older liturgical books were not understood merely as reluctant concessions, but as expressions of a legitimate pluriformity within the Church’s liturgical life—one capable of enriching the Western Church while preserving the essential core of the Roman Rite.

It’s quite possible that, had this paper been taken up for discussion at the Jan. 7-8 consistory, the Cardinals as a group would not have been able to discern it properly, given the widespread lack of liturgical formation in the Church today, including among the clergy and hierarchy. How many among them, for instance, could have rebutted the Cardinal’s assertion regarding Pius V’s Quo primum? In a future consistory, it is perfectly within the power of a Pope to bring in a peritus to deliver a more scholarly and well-grounded paper to the members of the Sacred College on the topic he wishes them to consider. Could this be a way forward at the extraordinary consistory set for the end of June 2026?

I believe that today there is a widespread ignorance among bishops and cardinals regarding the history of the liturgy, the nature of the liturgical debates during the Council, and even the text itself of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

Two very important facts are often forgotten. The first is that the true reform of the Mass according to the Council had already been promulgated in 1965, namely the Ordo Missae of 1965, which the Holy See at the time explicitly described as the implementation of the provisions of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. This Ordo Missae represented a very cautious reform and retained all the essential details of the traditional Mass, with only limited changes. These included the omission of Psalm 42 at the beginning of Mass—a modification that was not unprecedented, since this psalm had always been omitted in the Requiem Mass and during Passiontide—as well as the omission of the Gospel of St. John at the end of Mass.

The true innovation consisted in the use of the vernacular throughout the Mass, with the exception of the Canon, which was still to be prayed silently in Latin. The Council Fathers themselves celebrated this reformed Mass during the final session of 1965 and expressed general satisfaction with it. Even Archbishop Lefebvre celebrated this form of the Mass and ordered it to be used at his seminary in Écône until 1975.

The second fact is the following. At the first Synod of Bishops after the Council, held in 1967, Fr. Annibale Bugnini presented the Synod Fathers with the text and celebration of a radically reformed Ordo Missae. This was essentially the same Ordo Missae that was later promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and that is today the ordinary form of the liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church.

However, the majority of the Synod Fathers of 1967—almost all of whom were also Fathers of the Second Vatican Council—rejected this Ordo Missae, i.e. our current Novus Ordo. Consequently, what we celebrate today is not the Mass of the Second Vatican Council, which is in fact the Ordo Missae of 1965, but rather the form of the Mass that was rejected by the Synod Fathers in 1967 as being too revolutionary.

What alternatives to Cardinal Roche’s paper would you put to the cardinals, if you could offer them just a few points?

I would present the cardinals with several fundamental points. First, I would recall the undeniable historical facts concerning the true Mass of the Second Vatican Council, namely the Ordo Missae of 1965, as well as the basic rejection by the Synod Fathers in 1967 of the Novus Ordo presented to them by Fr. Bugnini.

Second, I would draw attention to the ever-valid principles governing divine worship formulated by the Second Vatican Council itself: the theocentric, vertical, sacred, heavenly, and contemplative character of authentic liturgy. As the Council teaches:

“In her the human is directed and subordinated to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek. … In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, nn. 2; 8).

Third, I would emphasize the principle that liturgical diversity does not harm the unity of faith. As the Council Fathers stressed:

“In faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way” (n. 4).

Finally, I would appeal to the conscience of the Cardinals by stating that the Pope today has a unique opportunity to restore justice and liturgical peace in the life of the Church by granting the most ancient form of the Roman Rite the same dignity and rights as the ordinary liturgical form, known as the Novus Ordo.

Such a step could be achieved through a generous pastoral ordinance ex integro. It would bring an end to disputes arising from casuistic interpretations concerning the use of the ancient liturgical form. It would also put an end to the injustice of treating so many exemplary sons and daughters of the Church—especially so many young people and young families—as second-class Catholics.

Such a pastoral measure would build bridges and demonstrate empathy with past generations and with a group which, though a minority, remains neglected and discriminated against in the Church today—at a time when so much is said about inclusion, tolerance for diversity, and synodal listening to the experiences of the faithful.

Your Excellency, is there anything you wish to add?

I could make no better statement on the present liturgical crisis than by quoting the following luminous words of Archimandrite Boniface Luykx—a serious liturgical scholar, a zealous missionary in Africa, and a man of God who celebrated both the Latin and Byzantine liturgies, thus breathing, so to speak, with the two lungs of the Church:

“Cardinal Ratzinger has also given his support, declaring that the old Mass is a living and, indeed, ‘integral’ part of Catholic worship and tradition, and predicting that it will make ‘its own characteristic contribution to the liturgical renewal called for by the Second Vatican Council’” (p. 115).

“When reverence is gone, all worship becomes only horizontal entertainment, a social party. Here again the poor, the little ones, are victims, since the obvious reality of life as flowing out of God in worship is taken away from them by ‘experts’ and dissenters” (p. 120).

“No hierarch, from a simple bishop to the pope, may invent anything. Every hierarch is a successor of the apostles, which means that he is first of all a keeper and servant of Holy Tradition – a guarantor of continuity in teaching, worship, sacraments, and prayer” (p. 188).

Cardinal Roche’s document is reminiscent of a desperate struggle of a gerontocracy confronted with serious and increasingly vocal criticism — arising primarily from a younger generation, whose voice this gerontocracy attempts to stifle through manipulative arguments and, ultimately, by weaponizing power and authority.

Yet the timeless freshness and beauty of the liturgy, together with the faith of the saints and of our own ancestors, will nevertheless prevail. The sensus fidei instinctively perceives this reality, especially among the “little ones” in the Church: innocent children, heroic youth, and young families.

For this reason, I would strongly advise Cardinal Roche and many other older and somewhat rigid members of the clergy to recognize the signs of the times—or, to put it figuratively, to jump on the bandwagon so as not to be left behind. For they are called to recognize the signs of the times that God himself gives through the “little ones” of the Church, who hunger for the pure bread of Catholic doctrine and for the enduring beauty of the traditional liturgy.