(LifeSiteNews) — The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) will implement a worldwide ban on the sacraments according to pre-Vatican II rites, according to a report by popular traditional Catholic blog Rorate Caeli on Tuesday evening.
A short message on Rorate’s website said that the CDW, now headed by the staunch anti-traditionalist Archbishop Arthur Roche, will release an instruction on the implementation of Pope Francis’ July 16 motu proprio Traditionis custodes within the next week.
According to Rorate’s sources, the instruction will seek to implement a restriction on the use of liturgical books and norms for the sacraments in lockstep with those restrictions placed on priests on October 7 in the Diocese of Rome by the Cardinal Vicar of the diocese, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.
At the time, De Donatis wrote to priests of the Diocese of Rome that, in an “exercise a lively pastoral charity,” he was banning “the Roman Ritual and the other liturgical books of the ‘ancient rite’ for the celebration of sacraments and sacramentals (e.g., the Ritual for the reconciliation of penitents according to the ancient form).”
“The use of the other Ordines, therefore, is currently expressly forbidden and only the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962 remains permitted,” he added, granting permission for the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) with the exception of the Easter Triduum liturgy.
Archbishop Roche, appointed by Pope Francis to replace conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah as prefect of the CDW in May, has a track record of animosity towards the celebration of the sacraments according to the Church’s ancient patrimony.
In 2020, he penned a letter to the bishops of the world attacking the TLM and praising the Second Vatican Council’s paradigm shift in its view of the Church, hailing the fact that the Council had removed the notion of the Church as a “perfect society and a world power to be contended with,” and instead was viewed as “constantly open to reform and conversion.”
He also stated that the new missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI represents “a witness to unchanging faith and uninterrupted tradition” and described the Novus Ordo Missae as a movement away from a “solely clerical version of the liturgy.”
As part of comments on Traditionis custodes made in an interview last month, the archbishop echoed Francis’ contentious declaration that the missals of Paul VI and John Paul II represent the “unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite,” saying “[the] normal form of the celebration of the Roman Rite is found in those documents that have been published since the Second Vatican Council.”
Rorate asked that the faithful “pray for the prompt end to this dark and sombre period in Church history. Resist. Support all clergymen who dare to resist.”