Cardinal Robert Sarah’s request to priests to celebrate mass ad orientem, and the response from the Vatican, have provoked much commentary. “It is highly unusual for the Vatican to publicly slap down a Prince of the Church,” wrote Christopher Lamb, seeing the Vatican statement (which followed a private audience between pope and cardinal) as a rebuke to Cardinal Sarah. That was the standard interpretation – though Jeff Ostrowski asked where, exactly, the rebuke was supposed to be. For a start, Ostrowski pointed out, the Vatican merely clarified that there would be no new rules – a possibility which Cardinal Sarah had not actually raised. But the terms of the Vatican statement were soon questioned by some observers. In particular, these words were challenged: