Why the Traditional Latin Mass and not the Novus Ordo Mass

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first mandatory celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae, which took place on the first Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1969.

I believe it is true to say that most of us do not know the whole background of the Novus Ordo mass (NOM) and the serious problems inherent within it.
Therefore, some of us may feel that it is perfectly fine for us to carry on with the NOM, with perhaps some changes made, to make it more reverent than it is now.

The "Tridentine" or Roman Rite Mass, while it has developed organically over the 2,000 year history of the Church, is essentially the Mass that was given to the Apostles and the Church by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Although various rites emerged, they all maintained the same spirit imparted to the liturgy by Our Lord and were only adapted to various cultures without any deviation in doctrine. The Roman Rite, up to Vatican II, underwent only minor changes, such that the famous English liturgist Fr. Adrian Fortescue was able to state that "no one has ventured to touch it except in unimportant details.”

In the Ottaviani Intervention (A Brief Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Mass, 25 September 1969), Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci wrote to Pope Paul VI:
...the Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXIII of the Council of Trent.

(I have presented it in a somewhat abbreviated form here, and tried to highlight what I think are the most important points. Do read the whole Study if you can.)

Brief Summary
I: History of the Change.

The new form of Mass was substantially rejected by the Episcopal Synod, was never submitted to the collegial judgment of the Episcopal Conferences and was never asked for by the people. It has every possibility of satisfying the most modernist of Protestants.

II: Definition of the Mass.
By a series of equivocations the emphasis is obsessively placed upon the 'supper' and the 'memorial' instead of on the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary.

III: Presentation of the Ends.

The three ends of the Mass are altered-: no distinction is allowed to remain between Divine and human sacrifice; bread and wine are only "spiritually" (not substantially) changed.

IV:—and of the essence.

The Real Presence of Christ is never alluded to and belief in it is implicitly repudiated.

V:—and of the four elements of the sacrifice

The position of both priest and people is falsified and the Celebrant appears as nothing more than a Protestant minister, while the true nature of the Church is intolerably misrepresented.

VI: The destruction of unity.

The abandonment of Latin sweeps away for good and all unity of worship. This may have its effect on unity of belief and the New Order has no intention of standing for the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent to which the Catholic conscience is bound.

VII: The alienation of the Orthodox.

While pleasing various dissenting groups, the New Order will alienate the East.

VIII: The abandonment of defenses.

The New Order teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the purity of the Catholic religion and dismantles all defenses of the deposit of Faith.



I - The History of the Change:

In October 1967, the Episcopal Synod called in Rome was requested to pass a judgment on the experimental celebration of a so-called “normative Mass,” devised by the Consilium for implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. This Mass aroused the most serious misgivings. The voting showed considerable opposition (43 non placet), very many substantial reservations (62 juxta modum), and 4 abstentions out of 187 voters. The international press spoke of a “refusal” on the proposed “normative Mass” on the part of the Synod. Progressively-inclined papers made no mention of this.

In the Novus Ordo Missae lately promulgated by the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, we once again find this “normative Mass,” identical in substance, nor does it appear that in the intervening period, the Episcopal Conferences, at least as such, were ever asked to give their views about it.

[…..]

An attentive examination of the Novus Ordo reveals changes of such magnitude as to justify in themselves the judgment already made with regard to the “normative Mass.” Both have in many points every possibility of satisfying the most modernistic of Protestants.

II -Definition Of The Mass

Let us begin with the definition of the Mass given in n. 7 of the Institutio Generalis at the beginning of the second chapter of the Novus Ordo: De structura Missae:
The Lord’s Supper or Mass is a sacred meeting or assembly of the People of God, met together under the presidency of the priest, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord.
Thus the promise of Christ, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them", is eminently true of the local community in the Church (Mt.XvIII,20)”.

The definition of the Mass is thus limited to that of a “supper,” and this term is found constantly repeated (nos. 8, 48, 55d, 56). This “supper” is further characterized as an assembly presided over by the priest and held as a memorial of the Lord, recalling what He did on the first Maundy Thursday.

None of this in the very least implies either:
- the Real Presence, or
- the reality of the sacrifice, or
- the Sacramental function of the consecrating priest, or
- the intrinsic value of the Eucharistic Sacrifice independently
of the people’s presence.[5]

It does not, in a word, imply any of the essential dogmatic values of the Mass which together provide its true definition. Here the deliberate omission of these dogmatic values amounts to their having been superseded and therefore, at least in practice, to their denial.[6]

[……]


III—Presentation Of The Ends

We come now to the ends of the Mass.

1. Ultimate end.

[……..]

(continues below)

 

2. Ordinary End.


This is the propitiatory Sacrifice. It too has been deviated from; for instead of putting the stress on the remission of sins of the living and the dead, it lays emphasis on the nourishment and sanctification of those present (No. 54). Christ certainly instituted the Sacrament of the Last Supper putting Himself in the state of Victim in order that we might be united to Him in this state but his self-immolation precedes the eating of the Victim, and has an antecedent and full redemptive value (the application of the bloody immolation). This is borne out by the fact that the faithful present are not bound to communicate, sacramentally.


3. Immanent End.


Whatever the nature of the Sacrifice, it is absolutely necessary that it be pleasing and acceptable to God. After the Fall no sacrifice can claim to be acceptable in its own right other than the Sacrifice of Christ. The Novus Ordo changes the nature of the offering turning it into a sort of exchange of gifts between man and God: man brings the bread, and God turns it into the "bread of life"; man brings the wine, and God turns it into a "spiritual drink’".


"Thou art blessed Lord God of the Universe, because from thy generosity we have received the bread (or wine) which we offer thee, the fruit of the earth (or vine) and of man's labor. May it become for us the bread of life (or spiritual drink)".

There is no need to comment on the utter indeterminateness of the formulae "bread of life" and "spiritual drink", which might mean anything. The same capital equivocation is repeated here, as in the definition of the Mass: there, Christ is present only spiritually among His own: here, bread and wine are only "spiritually" (not substantially) changed.


Suppression Of Great Prayers


[………]

By suppressing the continual reference of the Eucharistic prayers to God, there is no longer any clear distinction between divine and human sacrifice.

Having removed the keystone, the reformers have had to put up scaffolding; suppressing real ends, they had to substitute fictitious ends of their own; leading to gestures intended to stress the union of priest and faithful, and of the faithful among themselves; offerings for the poor and for the church superimposed upon the Offering of the Host to be immolated. There is a danger that the uniqueness of this offer will become blurred, so that participation in the immolation of the Victim comes to resemble a philanthropical meeting, or a charity banquet.


IV—The Essence


We now pass on to the essence of the Sacrifice.

The mystery of the Cross is no longer explicitly expressed. It is only there obscurely, veiled, imperceptible for the people. And for these reasons:


1. The sense given in the Novus Ordo to the so-called "prex Eucharistica" is: "that the whole congregation of the faithful may be united to Christ in proclaiming the great wonders of God and in offering sacrifice" (No.54. the end).

Which sacrifice is referred to? Who is the offerer? No answer is given to either of these questions.

[………..]

The explicit mention of the object of the offering, which was found in the "Suscipe", has not been replaced by anything. The change in formulation reveals the change in doctrine.


2. The reason for this non-explicitness concerning the Sacrifice is quite simply that the Real Presence has been removed from the central position which it occupied so resplendently in the former Eucharistic liturgy. There is but a single reference to the Real Presence, (a quotation—a foot note—from the Council of Trent) and again the context is that of "nourishment" (no.241, note 63).


The Real and permanent Presence of Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the transubstantiated Species is never alluded to. The very word transubstantiation is totally ignored.

The suppression of the invocation to the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity ("Veni Sanctificator") that He may descend upon the oblations, as once before into the womb of the Most Blessed Virgin to accomplish the miracle of the divine Presence, is yet one more instance of the systematic and tacit negation of the Real Presence.



Note, too, the suppressions:

of the genuflections (no more than three remain to the priest, and one, with certain exceptions, to the people, at the Consecration;

of the purification of the priest's fingers in the chalice;

of the preservation from all profane contact of the priest's fingers after the Consecration;

of the purification of the vessels, which need not be immediate, nor made on the corporal;

of the pall protecting the chalice;

of the internal gilding of sacred vessels;

of the consecration of movable altars;

of the sacred stone and relics in the movable altar or upon the "table"—"when celebration does not occur in sacred precincts" (this distinction leads straight to "Eucharistic suppers" in private houses);

of the three altar-cloths, reduced to one only;

of thanksgiving kneeling (replaced by a thanksgiving, seated, on the part of the priest and people, a logical enough complement to Communion standing);

of all the former prescriptions in the case of the consecrated Host falling, which are now reduced to a single, casual direction: "reventur accipiatur" (no. 239).

All these things only serve to emphasize how outrageously faith in the dogma of the Real Presence is implicitly repudiated.

(continues below)

 

3. The function assigned to the altar (no. 262). The altar is almost always called 'table', "The altar or table of the Lord, which is the center of the whole Eucharistic liturgy" (no. 49, Cf. 262). It is laid down that the altar must be detached from the walls so that it is possible to walk round it and celebration may be facing the people (no. 262); also that the altar must be the center of the assembly of the faithful so that their attention is drawn spontaneously towards it (ibid). But a comparison of no. 262 and 276 would seem to suggest that the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament on this altar is excluded. This will mark an irreparable dichotomy between the presence, in the celebrant, of the eternal High Priest and that same presence brought about sacramentally. Before, they were 'one and the same presence'.




Separation Of Altar & Tabernacle


Now it is recommended that the Blessed Sacrament be kept in a place apart for the private devotion of the people (almost as though it were a question of devotion to a relic of some kind) so that, on going into a church, attention will no longer be focused upon the Tabernacle but upon a stripped, bare table.


[….]


"To separate the Tabernacle from the Altar is tantamount to separating two things which, of their very nature, must remain together". (Pius XII, Allocution to the International Liturgy Congress, Assisi-Rome, Sept. 18-23, 1956). Cf. also Mediator Dei, 1.5. note 28.


The formula of Consecration.


The ancient formula of consecration was properly a sacramental not a narrative one.

[……]


The concluding idea of 'commemoration' will certainly once again take the place of the idea of sacramental action.


[…….]


Furthermore the acclamation assigned to the people immediately after the Consecration: ("We announce thy death, O Lord, until Thou comes"") introduces yet again, under cover of eschatology, the same ambiguity concerning the Real Presence. Without interval or distinction, the expectation of Christ's Second Coming at the end of time is proclaimed just at the moment when He is substantially present on the altar, almost as though the former, and not the latter, were the true Coming.

This is brought out even more strongly in the formula of optional acclamation n. 2 (Appendix): "As often as we eat of this bread and drink of this chalice we announce thy death, O Lord, until thou comes"", where the juxtaposition of the different realities of immolation and eating, of the Real Presence and of Christ's Second Coming, reaches the height of ambiguity.


V-The Elements Of Sacrifice.


We now consider the question of who performs the Sacrifice. In the old rite, these were, in order:

Christ, the priest, the Church and the faithful.


1. The Role of the Faithful in the New Rite. In the New Mass, the role attributed to the faithful is autonomous, absolute--and hence completely false. This is obvious not only from the new definition of the Mass ("...the sacred assembly or congregation of the people gathering together..."), but also from the General Instruction's observation that the priest's opening Greeting is meant to convey to the assembled community the presence of the Lord:

Then through his greeting the priest declares to the assembled community that the Lord is present. This greeting and response express the mystery of the gathered Church. (*31)

Is this the true presence of Christ? Yes, but only a spiritual presence. A mystery of the Church? Certainly--but only insofar as the assembly manifests and asks for Christ's presence.


This new notion is stressed over and over again by:

- Obsessive references to the communal character of the Mass. (*32)

- The unheard of distinction between "Mass with a Congregation" and "Mass without a Congregation." (*33)

- The description of the Prayer of the Faithful as a part of the Mass where "the people exercising their priestly office, intercede for all humanity." (*34)

The faithful's "priestly office is presented equivocally, as if it were autonomous, by omitting to mention that it is subordinated to the priest, who, as consecrated mediator, presents the people's petitions to God during the Canon of the Mass.


The Novus Ordo's Eucharistic Prayer III addresses the following prayers to the Lord:

From age to age you gather a people to yourself, *so that* from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.


The "so that" in the passage makes it appear that the people, rather than the priest, are the indispensable element in the celebration.

Since it is never made clear, even here, who offers the sacrifice, the people themselves appear as possessing autonomous priestly powers. (*35) From this step, it would not be surprising if, before long, the people were permitted to join with the priest if pronouncing the words of Consecration. Indeed, in some places this has already happened.


2. The Role of the Priest in the New Rite. The role of the priest is minimized, changed, and falsified:

- In relation to the people, he is now a mere president or brother, rather than the consecrated minister who celebrates Mass "in the person of Christ."

- In relation to the Church, the priest is now merely one member among others, someone taken from the people. In its treatment of the invocation to the Holy Ghost in the Eucharistic Prayer (the epiclesis), the General Instruction attributes the petitions anonymously to the Church. (*36) The priest's part has vanished.

(continues below)

 

- In the new Penitential Rite which begins the mass, the Confiteor has now become collective; hence the priest is no longer judge, witness and intercessor before God. It is logical therefore that he no longer recites the prayer of absolution which followed it and has now been suppressed. The priest is now "integrated" with his brothers; even the altar boy who serves at a "Mass without a Congregation" calls the priest "brother."

- Formerly, the priest's Communion was ritually distinct from the people's Communion. The Novus Ordo suppresses this important distinction. This was the moment when Christ the Eternal High Priest and the priest who acts in the person of Christ came together in closest union and completed the Sacrifice.

- Not a word is said, moreover, about the priest's power as "sacrificer," his consecratory action or how as intermediary he brings about the Eucharistic presence. he now appears to be nothing more than a Protestant minister.

- By abolishing or rendering optional many of the priestly vestments--in some cases only an alb and stole are now required (*37) --the new rite obliterates the priest's conformity to Christ even more.

[……]

3. The Role of the Church in the New Rite. Finally, there is the Church's position in relation to Christ. In only one instance--in its treatment of the form of the Mass without a Congregation--does the General Instruction admit that the Mass is "the action of Christ and the Church." (*40)

In the case of Mass with a Congregation, however, the only object the Instruction hints as it "remembering Christ" and sanctifying those present. "The priest celebrant," it says, "...joins the people to himself in offering the sacrifice through Christ in the Spirit to the Father" (*41) --instead of saying that the people join themselves to Christ who offers Himself through the Holy Ghost to the Father.


In this context, the following points should likewise be noted:

- The many grave omissions of the phrase "through Christ Our Lord," a formula which guarantees that God will hear the Church's prayers in every age. (*42)

- An all-pervading "paschalism" --an obsessive emphasis on Easter and the Resurrection--almost as if there were no other aspects of the communication of grace, which, while quite different, are nevertheless equally important.

- The strange and dubious "eschatologism" --a stress upon Christ's Second Coming and the end of time--whereby the permanent and eternal reality of the communication of grace is reduced to something within the bonds of time. We hear of a people of God on the march, a pilgrim Church--a Church no longer *Militant* against the powers of darkness, but one which, having lost its link with eternity, marches to a future envisioned in purely temporal terms.


In Eucharistic Prayer IV the Church--as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic--is abased by eliminating the Roman Canon's petition for all orthodox believers who keep the Catholic and Apostolic faith. These are now merely all who seek you with a sincere heart.

The Memento of the Dead in the Canon, moreover, is offered not as before for those who are gone before us with the sign of faith, but merely for those who have died in the peace of Christ. To this group--with further detriment to the notion of the Church's unity and visibility--Eucharistic Prayer IV adds the great crowd of "all the dead whose faith is known to You alone."

None of the three new Eucharistic Prayers, moreover, alludes to a suffering state for those who have died; none allows the priest to make special Mementos for the dead. All this necessarily undermines faith in the propitiatory and redemptive nature of the sacrifice. (*43)

Everywhere desacralizing omissions debase the mystery of the Church. Above all, the Church's nature as a sacred hierarchy is disregarded. The second part of the new collective Confiteor reduces the Angels and the Saints to anonymity in the first part, in the person of St. Michael the Archangel, they have disappeared as witnesses and judges. (*44)

In the Preface for Eucharistic Prayer II--and this is unprecedented--the various angelic hierarchies have disappeared. Also suppressed, in the third prayer of the old Canon, is the memory of the holy Pontiffs and Martyrs on whom the Church in Rome was founded; without a doubt, these were the saints who handed down the apostolic tradition finally completed under Pope St. Gregory as the Roman Mass. The prayer after the Our Father, the "Libera Nos," now suppresses the mention of the Blessed Virgin, the holy apostles and all the Saints; their intercession is thus no longer sought, even it times of danger.

Everywhere except in the Roman Canon, the Novus Ordo eliminates not only the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul, founders of the Church in Rome, but also the names of the other Apostles, the foundation and mark of the one and universal Church. This intolerable omission, extending even to the three new Eucharistic Prayers, compromises the unity of the Church.

The New Order of Mass further attacks the dogma of the Communion of Saints by suppressing the blessing and the salutation "The Lord Be with You" when the priest says Mass without a server. It also eliminates the "Ite Missa Est," even in Masses celebrated with a server. (*45)

The double Confiteor at the beginning of the Mass showed how the priest, vested as Christ's minister and bowing profoundly, acknowledged himself unworthy of both his sublime mission and the "tremendous mystery" he was to enact. Then, in the prayer "Take Away Our Sins," he acknowledged his unworthiness to enter the Holy of Holies, recommending himself with the prayer "We Beseech Thee, O Lord" to the merits and intercession of the martyrs whose relics were enclosed in the altar. Both prayers have been suppressed. What was said previously about elimination of the two-fold Confiteor and Communion rite is equally relevant here.

The outward setting of the Sacrifice, a sign of its sacred character, has been profaned.

[…..]

(continues below)

 

The process of desacralization is made complete, thanks to the new and grotesque procedure for the Offertory Procession, the reference to ordinary (rather than unleavened) bread, and allowing servers (and even lay people, when receiving Communion under both Species) to handle sacred vessels. (*47) then there is the distracting atmosphere created in the church: the ceaseless comings and goings of priest, deacon, subdeacon, cantor, commentator--the priest himself becomes a commentator, constantly encouraged to "explain" what he is about to do-- of lectors (men and women), of servers or laymen welcoming people at the door and escorting them to their places, while others carry and sort offerings. And in an era of frenzy for a "return to Scripture," we now find, in contradiction of both the Old Testament and St. Paul, the presence of a "suitable woman" who for the first time in the Church's history is authorized to proclaim the Scripture readings and "perform other ministries outside the sanctuary." (*48) Finally, there is the mania for concelebration, which will ultimately destroy the priest's Eucharistic piety by overshadowing the central figure of Christ, sole priest and Victim, and by dissolving Him into the collective presence of concelebrants. (*49)




VI—The Destruction Of Unity


We have limited ourselves above to a short study of the Novus Ordo where it deviates most seriously from the theology of the Catholic Mass. Our observations touch upon deviations which are typical. To prepare a complete study of all the pitfalls, dangers, and psychologically and spiritually destructive elements the new rite contains, whether in texts, rubrics, or instructions, would be a vast undertaking.


We have taken no more than a passing glance at the three new Eucharistic Prayers, since they have already come in for repeated and authoritative criticism. The second gave immediate scandal to the faithful due to its brevity. (*50) Of Eucharistic Prayer II it has well been said that a priest who no longer believed in either Transubstantiation or the sacrificial character of the Mass could recite it with perfect tranquillity of conscience, and that a Protestant minister, moreover, could use it in his own celebrations just as well.

The new Missal was introduced in Rome as an "abundant resource for pastoral work," as "a text more pastoral than juridical," which national bishops' conferences could adapt, according to circumstances, to the "spirit" of different peoples. Section One of the new Congregation for Divine Worship, moreover, will now be responsible "for the publication and *constant revision* of liturgical books."

This idea was echoed recently in the official newsletter of the Liturgical Institutes of Germany, Switzerland and Austria:

- The Latin texts must now be translated into the languages of different nations.

- The "Roman style" must be adapted to the individuality of each local Church.

- That which was conceived in a timeless state must now be transposed into the changing context of concrete situations, and into the constant flux of the universal Church and its myriad congregations. (*51)

The Apostolic Constitution itself, in promulgating the Novus Ordo Missae, deals a deathblow to the Church's universal language when--contrary to the express wish of the Second Vatican Council--it unequivocally states that "in great diversity of languages, one [?] and the same prayer will ascend, more fragrant than incense."

The demise of Latin may therefore be taken for granted, Gregorian chant--which Vatican II recognized as a distinctive characteristic of the Roman liturgy, decreeing that it "be given pride of place in liturgical services" (*52)--will logically follow, given, among other things, the freedom of choice permitted in choosing texts for the Introit and the Gradual.

From the outset, therefore, the new rite was pluralistic and experimental, bound to time and place. Since unity of worship has been shattered once and for all, what basis will exist for the unity of the faith which accompanied it and which, we were told, was always to be defended without compromise?

It is obvious that the New Order of Mass has no intention of presenting the Faith taught by the Council of Trent. But it is to this Faith that the Catholic conscience is bound forever. Thus, with the promulgation of the New Order of Mass, the true Catholic is faced with a tragic need to choose.

(continues below)

 

VIII—The Abandonment Of Defences

St. Pius V had the Roman Missal drawn up (as the present Apostolic Constitution itself recalls) so that it might be an instrument of unity among Catholics. In conformity with the injunctions of the Council of Trent it was to exclude all danger, in liturgical worship, of errors against the Faith, then threatened by the Protestant Reformation. The gravity of the situation fully justified, and even rendered prophetic, the saintly Pontiff's solemn warning given at the end of the Bull promulgating his Missal "should anyone presume to tamper with this, let him know that he shall incur the wrath of God Almighty and his Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul". (Quo Primum, July 13, 1570)

When the Novus Ordo was presented at the Vatican Press Office, it was asserted with great audacity that the reasons which prompted the Tridentine decrees are no longer valid. Not only do they still apply, but there also exist, as we do not hesitate to affirm, very much more serious ones today.

It was precisely in order to ward off the dangers which in every century threaten the purity of the deposit of faith (depositum custodi, devitans profanes vocum novitates"(Tim. VI, 20) the Church has had to erect under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost the defenses of her dogmatic definitions and doctrinal pronouncements.

These were immediately reflected in her worship, which became the most complete monument of her faith. To try to bring the Church's worship back at all cost to ancient practices by refashioning, artificially and with that "unhealthy archeologism" so roundly condemned by Pius XII, what in earlier times had the grace of original spontaneity means as we see today only too clearly—to dismantle all the theological ramparts erected for the protection of the Rite and to take away all the beauty by which it was enriched over the centuries.

And all this at one of the most critical moments—if not the most critical moment—of the Church's history!

Today, division and schism are officially acknowledged to exist not only outside of but within the Church. Her unity is not only threatened but already tragically compromised. Errors against the Faith are not so much insinuated but rather an inevitable consequence of liturgical abuses and aberrations which have been given equal recognition.

To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries was both the sign and the pledge of unity of worship (and to replace it with another which cannot but be a sign of division by virtue of the countless liberties implicitly authorized, and which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic religion) is, we feel in conscience bound to proclaim, an incalculable error.

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/li...ss-pope-paul-vi-rome-september-25th-1969-2473

http://traditionalcatholic.net/Tradition/Information/Ottaviani_Intervention/index.html

+

 

In the following article, Michael Davies tells us what happened when Protestantism, and in particular, the Protestantized Mass, was imposed on England.

THE MASS MATTERS
http://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/themass.htm

It is the Mass that Matters

MICHAEL DAVIES

(WEB MASTER'S NOTE: I selected this article because it is truly a poignant summary of the purpose of Michael Davies' life and the poignancy wells up even more from my tears when I think that what the simple, humble English folk in Devon did to preserve their rightful patrimony and heritage, and what we Americans, in sharp contrast, simply threw away when the precise things in re the Holy Mass happened here some 400 years later, in the very land that is wont to celebrate its victory over the English crown. Hauntingly ironic, the English crown retook its colony, in essence, when we capitulated so cravenly on the Mass. The English were ready to die for the Mass, and we were prepared only to see the Mass die, rather than act as Catholics and when there was no possibility of having to be actual Martyrs. [I speak in a general sense, and not to indict any actual individual Catholic-----whose circumstances may have been far different than mine-----as such, save for myself.] America has sunk into paganism and barbarism unmatched in modern history as a direct result, because where the Roman Mass is suppressed, grace is suppressed and society as a whole suffers, for whether recognized and acknowledged as such, all grace to society and to men comes through the Holy Catholic Church, most especially by means of the Roman Mass. As the Mass was suppressed, contraception became legal and a right, leading to the abomination of abortion rights as the law of the land. This was no coincidence! In a very real sense it can be said in all truth that our act of cowardice was also an act of treason, not only against Catholic Tradition, but against our own country.)


FATHER Frederick Faber (1814-1863), Superior of the London oratory, had dedicated himself to the conversion of England, but he realised, sadly, that this was not going to happen. He had no doubt as to why this was the case, and he had no hesitation in making his opinion clear to his fellow Catholics: "And you wonder why we have not converted England! Verily we do not look like a people who have come to kindle a fire upon the earth, nor to be pining because it is not kindled?"

In this article I shall deal with two reactions to the imposition of Protestantism in England, particularly the imposition of a Protestantized Mass.
On June 9, 1549, the Feast of Pentecost, the immemorial Latin Mass, brought to England by St. Augustine of Canterbury nearly one thousand years before (597), was replaced by a new English Mass or Communion Service, composed by Thomas Cranmer, the apostate Archbishop of Canterbury. The Prayer
Book containing the new service had been imposed with the authority of Edward VI, the sickly young son of Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour. Edward had ascended to the throne in 1547 and was no more than the puppet of a Protestant-dominated Council established to rule the country until he came of age-----which, of course, he never did.


Although Henry VIII had, to all intents and purposes, made himself pope as well as King of England and Wales, little else had changed in the religious life of the country. The traditional heresy laws were enforced far more severely in England than in any Catholic country, and the Latin Missal remained unchanged but for the removal of the feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the prayer for the Pope in the Canon of the Mass. Thomas Cranmer, like all the Protestant Reformers, hated the Mass as if it had been a living enemy, but while Henry reigned he bottled up his hatred rather than risk losing his head. The repudiation of the Pope had given him no satisfaction while what he termed "popery" remained, and by popery he and his fellow Protestants meant the Mass. It was the Mass that mattered, not simply to Catholics but also to Protestants.


As soon as Edward had been crowned Cranmer began working on his celebrated Prayer Book, which contained a new Mass or Communion Service. It was to be celebrated entirely in English, with Communion under both kinds, and without a single specific reference to the hated doctrine of sacrifice. In the secluded Devonshire village of Sampford Courtenay the parishioners of St. Andrew's Church were present on this first occasion that any Eucharistic rite but the immemorial Latin Mass had ever been celebrated within its hallowed precincts. They heard the new service read, discussed it, and decided that they did not like it. They told their parish priest, Father Harper, that they were resolved to retain the faith of their forefathers, and that he must use the ancient missal and say the Mass to which they had been accustomed all their lives. He agreed. The fight for the Mass had begun, and it was an entirely lay initiative, what would be known today as a grassroots reaction to the new Prayer Book.


The Protestant historian Sir Maurice Powicke has explained with admirable clarity why Cranmer's new Mass was considered an outrage by tens of thousands of humble Catholics throughout England. "The real cause of the opposition of country clergy and Devonshire peasants," Powicke writes, "was the proof which the Prayer Book seemed to give that all the agitations and change of the last few years really were going to end in a permanent cleavage between the past and the present, and the familiar was to give way to something strange, foreign, imposed." 1

(continues...)

 

The news of the restoration of the Latin Mass in Samford Courtney spread throughout Devon, and, to quote a contemporary account, ''as a cloud carried with a violent wind and as a thunderclap sounding through the whole country: and the common people so well allowed and liked thereof that they clapped their hands for joy and agreed in one mind to have the same in every of their several parishes." They did indeed "have the same," and the traditional Mass was restored in parishes throughout Devon.


The Duke of Somerset, President of the Council, realized that he would either have to abandon the Reformation and give the people back their Mass, or suppress them by using the foreign mercenaries that he had assembled for an invasion of Scotland.


The Devonshire peasants united with Cornishmen who had risen independently, and who had an additional reason for not liking Cranmer's Prayer Book-----namely, that most of them could not speak English, their native Cornish being a separate Celtic language similar to Welsh. A number of Devonshire gentlemen joined the peasants, and with gentlemen to lead them, the rebels were formed into an organized force. They soon obtained effective control of the West Country. The religious nature of the rebellion is made clear by the fifteen demands of the rebels of which the following examples are typical:


We wyll haue the masse in Latten, as was before.


We wyll haue the Sacrament hang Oller the hyeghe aulter, and there to be worshypped as it was wount to be, and they whiche will not thereto consent, we wyll haue them dye lyke heretykes against the Holy Catholyque fayth.


We wyll haue . . . images to be set vp again in euery church, and all other auncient olde Ceremonyes vsed heretofore, by our mother the holy Church.


We wyll not receyue the newe seruyce because it is but lyke a Christmas game, but we wyll haue oure old seruice of Mattens, masse, Euensong and procession in Latten as it was before.


By insisting that it was the Mass that mattered, and that it mattered more than anything else, the humble peasants of Devon and Cornwall displayed a profoundly Catholic instinct, a true sensus Catholicus. Their conviction that if

the Mass could be destroyed the faith itself would be destroyed was one that they shared with the arch-heretic Martin Luther, who once said: "Once the Mass has been overthrown, I say we'll have overthrown the whole of Popedom." 2 The Protestant heresy was directed not primarily against the papacy but against the Mass.


The Catholics of the west had demanded that those who would not accept their demands should "dye lyke heretykes against the holy Catholyque fayth." In the event, it was the rebels who died when the rebellion was eventually crushed, principally due to the presence of foreign mercenaries. The Catholic army fought in battle after battle with a courage that even their opponents acknowledged, but only one outcome was possible. The final battle took place at Kings Weston in Somerset on August 29. Exhausted by forced marches, the rebels were in no condition to withstand the royal army. After "great slaughter and execution" they were overwhelmed, leaving 104 men prisoners. Singly or in pairs they were hanged in Bath, Frome, Wells, Glastonbury, Ilminster, Dunster, Milverton, Wiveliscombe and other Somerset towns. At least 4,000 West country men died for the traditional Mass at the hands of the royal army, an enormous number at that time. The new Mass in English had received its baptism of blood. In their deaths as in their lives the peasants of the west had shown that for them it was truly the Mass that mattered. Some words from the Book of Wisdom seem to have been written specifically for these Martyrs for the Mass:


In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was taken for misery. And their going away from us for utter destruction: but they are in peace. And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God has tried them, and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them (3:2-6).


After the imposition of the "new uniform order" of worship in the summer of 1549, and the suppression of the popular risings, the pace of the Protestant movement quickened. An Act of Parliament, reinforced by a royal proclamation, ordered the calling in for destruction of all the old "superstitious" Mass books, which the recalcitrant continued to use; the reforming bishops diligently searched out survivals of "popish superstition" in the liturgy; churches were denuded of their vestments, and texts aimed against the Real Presence and the Mass were painted on the walls. This phase of the Edwardian Reformation is described as "purely destructive" by the Protestant Professor Bindoff, a conclusion endorsed and expressed very forcefully by Dr. Eamon Duffy in what is already an historical classic-----The Stripping of the Altars:


At the heart of the Edwardine reform was the necessity of destroying, of cutting, hammering, scraping, or melting into a deserved oblivion the monuments of popery, so that the doctrines they embodied might be forgotten. Iconoclasm was the central sacrament of the reform, and, as the program of the leaders became more radical in the years between 1547 and 1553, they sought with greater urgency the celebration of that sacrament of forgetfulness in every parish in the land. The churchwardens' accounts of the period witness a wholesale removal of the images, vestments, and vessels which had been the wonder of foreign visitors to the country, and in which the collective memory of the parishes were, quite literally, enshrined. 3

(continues...)

 

Cranmer's liturgical revolution was so bitterly resented by the ordinary faithful that many could be induced to attend the new services only by the threat of legal sanctions. Msgr. Philip Hughes writes:


The new Act of 1552 began by lamenting that, notwithstanding "the very godly order set forth by the authority of Parliament for common prayer in the mother tongue," something "very comfortable to all good people" desiring to live a Christian life, "a great number of people in divers parts of this realm . . . refuse to come to their parish churches and other places where common prayer . . . is used." So failure to attend the services on Sundays and holy days, "there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the common prayer" was now made an offense. . . . Moreover, a new offense is created: anyone who is present at services of prayer, "administration of sacraments, making of ministers in the churches" or any rite at all otherwise done than is set forth in the Prayer Book, shall upon conviction go to prison for six months on the first offense, for a year on the second, and for life on the third. [Emphasis in red added by the Web master.] Such are the first penalties to be enacted in England for the new crime of hearing Mass, or of receiving the Sacraments as they had been received ever since St. Augustine came to convert the English, nearly a thousand years before. 4



Edward VI died in 1553, and Mary, the devoutly Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, came to the throne determined to restore the Catholic faith cost what it may. Professor Bindoff notes that soon after her accession to the throne "the Mass was being celebrated in London churches 'not by commandment but of the people's devotion,' and news was coming in of its unopposed revival throughout the country." 5


The restoration of the Catholic faith under Mary Tudor, in union with the Pope once more, and the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass, were welcomed with enthusiasm by all but a handful of fanatical Protestants. Queen Mary died on November 17, 1558, while Mass was being celebrated in her bed-chamber, and Cardinal Reginald Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, died on the same day.


Mary's half sister Elizabeth was crowned as a Catholic and promised to reign as a Catholic, but broke her word almost immediately and reverted to Protestantism, as this gave her religious as well as political control over her subjects -----99% of whom were still Catholic-minded. "Under Elizabeth, the aim was the extirpation of Catholicism during her lifetime." 6 This was to be done by promulgating laws that would force the Catholic people to choose between their faith and financial ruin, imprisonment, and, in some cases, death. She reimposed Cranmer's 1552 Book of Common Prayer with a few slight modifications. Clerics who refused to use the new Prayer Book, or who used "any other, rite, ceremony, order, form, or manner of celebration of the Lord's Supper, openly or privily . . . or who speak in derogation of the book, forfeit a whole year's income and go to prison for six months. If they offend a second time they go to prison for a year and, ipso facto, lose all their benefices. For a third offense the punishment is imprisonment for life."


Next there come penalties to discourage lay critics of liturgical change. All who speak or write in derogation of anything the book contains, or do anything to cause any clergyman to use any other form of service than what it contains, or who interrupt or hinder the performance of those services, are liable, for a first offense, to the very severe fine of 44 marks. For a second offense there is a fine four times as great; and for a third offense the penalty is loss of all goods and chattels and life imprisonment. Furthermore, it was made an offense for anyone to absent himself from the Sunday service in his parish church. All Englishmen were now obliged by law to attend the parish church every Sunday and holy day, under penalty of a fine of twelve pence each time they were absent. Heavy penalties were also imposed for anyone found guilty of assisting at the forbidden Latin Mass: six months for the first offense, twelve months for the second, and life imprisonment for the third. 7


The first missionary priest did not arrive in the kingdom until 1574. His name was Lewis Barlow, a Welshman from Pembrokeshire. 8 But by that time the vast majority of Catholics had already drifted into what proved to be an irreversible habit of compromise. The attitude of the typical Catholic during the first decade of the reign of Elizabeth was very different from that of his forbears in 1549. It is well summarized in Msgr. Philip Hughes' masterpiece, The Reformation in England: "The vast bulk of the nation were untouched by any marked desire to revolt from the old faith, but it is equally true to affirm that they were not moved by any great desire to defend it." 9 They most certainly lacked the will to kindle a fire upon the earth. Most English Catholics eventually surrendered to the constant and tenacious pressure of the Government, lost contact with the Mass, and attended the English services. This almost universal apostasy, the true turning point in the religious history of England, was not a sudden and spectacular surrender. It was gradual, but it was cumulative, and in its effects it was permanent.

(continues....)

 

The Catholics who went to the Anglican services were a sufficiently large body to be given a special name. They were called, aptly enough, "Church Papists": Churchgoers for legal purposes, but Papists in sympathy. It was the new liturgy which eventually destroyed the old faith. Only a handful of the most fervent Catholics refused to attend the Prayer Book services, and the law lex orandi, lex credendi imposed itself as it inevitably will. As you pray, so shall you believe. Msgr. Hughes writes:


Once these new sacramental rites, for example, had become the habit of the English people the substance of the doctrinal reformation, victorious now in northern Europe, would have transformed England also. All but insensibly, as the years went by, the beliefs enshrined in the old, and now disused, rites, and kept alive by these rites in men's minds and affections, would disappear-----without the need of any systematic missionary effort to preach them down. 10


In other words, what had taken place was the destruction of Catholicism through the compromise of the vast majority of English Catholics with the Elizabethan liturgical reform. In the 45-year reign of "Good Queen Bess" two generations of Englishmen had reached adulthood without ever experiencing a Latin Mass, or having their hearts and minds raised to God, to repeat the words of Eamon Duffy, "by the images, vestments, and vessels which had been the wonder of foreign visitors to the country, and in which the collective memory of the parishes were, quite literally, enshrined."


Protestantism seemed to have triumphed totally, but there were still some who refused to compromise. The Protestant Professor Owen Chadwick explains, "A small number were not reconciled to change and preferred to maintain their traditional worship in other lands. These men were not attracted by the whitewash and the destruction or by seeing vestments, pyxes, images, copes, altars and censers being sold on the open market." 11


Above all, it was the young men who went to seminaries in Europe who preserved the Faith in Britain. They returned to give the Mass to the people and only too often to give their lives for the Mass, the traditional Latin Mass which is found in the Missal of St. Pius V: The despised Catholic remnant thus had a treasure denied to those who treated them with such contempt, the Mass of St. Pius V-----"the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven," as Father Faber expressed it. This was the pearl of great price for which they were prepared to pay all that they had-----and pay it they did, priest and layman, butcher's wife and schoolmaster. The victors had the churches and cathedrals built for the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass, the vanquished had the Mass, and it was the Mass that mattered.


It is indeed the Mass that matters, and I am sure that all who read this will agree that the manner in which the holy sacrifice is offered also matters. Because the Mass is the making present of the Sacrifice of Calvary, it should be enshrined in a rite of the greatest possible reverence and dignity, a rite in which the awe-inspiring nature of the sacrifice we offer is made manifest in every prayer and every ritual gesture. For 1500 years the rite of Mass developed in a natural and almost imperceptible manner, with the addition of new prayers and ceremonies that gave ever clearer liturgical expression to its sacrificial nature, but always in conformity to the fundamental principle of fidelity to tradition. The sixteenth-century Protestants rejected the principle of fidelity to tradition in favor of the principle of the destruction of tradition.


Their concern was not to reform the existing order but to introduce a new one that conformed to their heretical beliefs. "The Protestant Reformers," writes Father Adrian Fortescue, "naturally played havoc with the old liturgy. It was throughout the expression of the very ideas the Real Presence, Eucharistic Sacrifice and so on they rejected. So they substituted for it new Communion services that expressed their principle but, of course, broke away utterly from all historic liturgical evolution." 12


It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance . . . of Father Fortescue's insistence that in composing new services the Protestant Reformers "broke away utterly from all historic liturgical evolution." History thus makes clear to us the distinction between true and false liturgical reform. The essence of a true liturgical reform is that it contains no drastic revision of the liturgical traditions that have been handed down. Its most evident characteristic is fidelity to these traditions. This means that the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council should, like that of the Protestant Reformation, be termed a revolution. It "broke away utterly from all historic liturgical evolution." It is not necessary for the Catholic position to be expressly contradicted for a rite to become suspect; the suppression of prayers that had given liturgical expression to the doctrine behind the rite is more than sufficient to give cause for concern.


The suppression in the Novus Ordo Missae, the new Mass, of so many prayers from the traditional Mass is a cause not simply for concern but for scandal. In almost every case they are the same prayers suppressed by Luther and by Thomas Cranmer.


The Mass of Pope Paul VI [he meant as issued in Latin and not necessarily subsequent faulty translations-----the Web Master] is valid and contains no heresy, but the suppression of prayers which had given liturgical expression to the doctrine behind the rite is more than sufficient to give cause for concern to all those faithful who, like the Martyrs of Devon and Cornwall, possess a true sensus Catholicus.

(continues...)

 

The fact that the Mass of Pope Paul VI as it is celebrated in so many parishes today constitutes a breach with authentic liturgical development has been confirmed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith:

J. A. Jungmann, one of the truly great liturgists of our time, defined the liturgy of his day, such as it could be understood in the light of historical research, as a "liturgy which is the fruit of development". What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. 13


As was the case during the reign of Elizabeth I, the contemporary Church papists who take part each Sunday in what can only too often be termed liturgical travesties, grow accustomed to them. Their children accept as normal tables in place of altars, female acolytes, sanctuaries infested by hordes of extraordinary Eucharistic monsters, standing for Communion, Communion in the hand, mindless ditties in place of Gregorian chant. Like the children of the Elizabethan Church papists, two generations of post-Vatican II Catholics have reached adulthood without ever experiencing the traditional Latin Mass and the feelings of awe, reverence, and the majestic presence of God which it evokes.


"Keep the Faith" was the watchword of the faithful remnant during the reign of Elizabeth I, and one cannot keep the Faith by compromising. What I have been trying to make clear is that the effect of decades of attendance at a typical celebration of the new Mass can be identical to the effect of decades of assistance by the Church papists at Anglican services during the reign of Elizabeth I. To paraphrase Msgr. Hughes, as the years pass by, the beliefs enshrined in the old, and now disused, rites, and kept alive by these rites in men's minds and affections, disappear. Msgr. Klaus Gamber sums up the effect of the post-conciliar reform in one devastating sentence: "At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old, has been destroyed." 14 The post Vatican II has brought no good fruits whatsoever-----only, as Msgr. Gamber puts it, "a liturgical destruction of startling proportions-----a debacle worsening with each passing year." 15


I have mentioned the Western Rising not for its historical interest, great though this is, but because we, like the Martyrs of 1549, are engaged in a conflict, and what is at stake is the Mass, the precious gift of the Holy Eucharist, which is seen today as no more than symbol by 70% of young American Catholics. 16 We are engaged in a war with the same objectives as the Martyrs of the West, and when we bear in mind the sacrifices that they made because the Mass truly mattered to them, we should be prepared to make the sacrifices needed to restore the Mass of St. Pius V; sacrifices involving time, money, travel, and bearing the disapproval or even ridicule of fellow Catholics, clerical and lay. Let us not be like those Catholics in Elizabethan England who were untouched by any marked desire to revolt from the old faith, but were not moved by any great desire to defend it. Like the western Martyrs let us say, "We wyll haue the masse in Latten, as was before. We wyll haue the Sacrament hang ouer the hyeghe aulter, and there to be worshypped as it was wount to be. . . . We wyll not receyue the newe seruyce because it is but lyke a Christmas game." If this makes us rebels, then I for one am happy to be one. Those of us who fight for our Latin liturgical heritage may be termed reactionary, ignorant, or even schismatic, but in reality we are in the direct tradition of the Maccabees of the Old Testament. The commentary upon the Mass for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost in the St. Andrew Daily Missal states:


One of the most outstanding lessons which may be drawn from the books of Maccabees . . . is the reverence due to the things of God. What is generally called the rebellion of the Maccabees was in reality a magnificent example of fidelity to God, to His law, and to the covenants and promises that He had made to His people. These were threatened with oblivion and it was to uphold them that the Maccabees rebelled.


The Mass of St. Pius V epitomizes the faith of our fathers; it is the liturgy celebrated in secret by the Martyr priests of England and Wales, it is the liturgy that was celebrated at the Mass rocks of Ireland, it is the liturgy celebrated by the North American Martyrs who died deaths that are too horrific to describe, it is the Mass described by the great English Oratorian Father Frederick Faber, as "the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven." We will have the Mass-----the Mass of St. Pius V; and if we take our faith seriously we must resolve to kindle a fire upon the earth, a purifying fire that will make this insistence a reality.

+

 

Paul VI’s Contempt for Catholics Who Did Not Welcome the Liturgical Reform
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2019
PETER KWASNIEWSKI
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.or...tempt-for-catholics-who-did.html#.XeEnuS2B1n4


As we approach the melancholy 50th anniversary of the going-into-effect of Pope Paul VI’s Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum with the first mandatory celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae on the first Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1969, it is worthwhile to recall how frequently this vexed and vexing pope felt the need to address the “naysayers” of his day who were complaining about the stream of ever-increasing changes to the Roman liturgy implemented throughout the 1960s. Some readers will already be familiar with the astonishing general audiences of March 1965 and November 1969 (on which I have offered a detailed commentary: “A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass”), but few, perhaps, will be aware of other public addresses in which he continued his tirade against the reform’s non-enthusiasts.


Pope Paul had a curious way of speaking, as if a rapturous majority of laity and clergy were rushing to embrace the new form of the Mass with zeal for active participation, like happy citizens of a Communist Workers’ Paradise. Evidence both published and anecdotal, together with an ever-more precipitous decline in church attendance throughout the 1960s and 1970s, suggest that no more than a tiny minority felt the “good vibrations” of the Bugnini Boys. [1] Paul VI’s contempt, therefore, was directed not only at the majority of his coreligionists (which would have been unsaintly enough); it was, in reality, directed against centuries of traditional Catholic practice that, in spite of whatever faults it may have had, kept large numbers attached to the Church and to their Faith, with a piety and seriousness that could rarely be found, and never surpassed, outside of Catholicism. The advice of Louis Bouyer in 1956 had gone unheeded: “We must not try to provide an artificial congregation to take part in an antiquarian liturgy, but rather to prepare the actual congregations of the Church today to take part in the truly traditional liturgy rightly understood.” [2]


In this article, I would like to offer some quotations from Paul VI, courtesy of that enormous doorstopper called Documents on the Liturgy 1963–1979 — a book that would enjoy a more accurate acronym if its title were Documents Undermining Liturgical Life 1963–1979 — that reveal the full amplitude, or better, narrowness, of the pontiff’s mind as to the meaning of participatio actuosa and the flagitious behavior of those who stubbornly resisted the march of progress.



Address to Italian Bishops, 14 April 1964 (DOL 21)

“The liturgical reform opens up to us a way to reeducate our people in their religion, to purify and revitalize their forms of worship and devotion, to restore dignity, beauty, simplicity, and good taste to our religious ceremonies. Without such inward and outward renewal there can be little hope for any widespread survival of religious living in today’s changed conditions. … [P]romote sacred song, the religious, congregational singing of the people. Remember, if the faithful sing they do not leave the Church; if they do not leave the Church, they keep the faith and live as Christians.”


General Audience, 13 January 1965 (DOL 24)

“Through your [sc., laity’s] own endeavor to put the Constitution on the Liturgy into exact and vital effect you show yourselves to have that understanding of the times which Christ recommended to his first disciples (see Mt 16:4) and which the Church today is in the process of awakening and recognizing in adult Catholics. . . . You show that you understand the new way of religion which the current liturgical reform intends to restore . . . The Church’s solicitude now broadens; today it is changing certain aspects of ritual discipline that are now inadequate and is seekingly boldly but thoughtful to plumb their ecclesial meaning, the demands of community, and the supernatural value of ecclesial worship. To understand this religious program and to enjoy its hoped-for results we must all change our settled way of thinking regarding sacred ceremonies and religious practices as calling for no more than a passive, distracted assistance. We must be fully cognizant of the fact that with the Council a new spiritual pedagogy has been born. That is what is new about the Council and we must not hang back from making ourselves first the pupils and then the masters in this school of prayer now at its inception. It may well happen that the reforms will affect practices both dear to us and still worthy of respect; that the reforms will demand efforts that, at the outset, are a strain. But we must be devout and trusting: the religious and spiritual vista that the Constitution opens up before us is stupendous in its doctrinal profundity and authenticity, in the cogency of its Christian logic, in the purity and richness of its cultural and aesthetic elements, in its response to the character and needs of modern man.”


Address to Pastors and Lenten Preachers, 1 March 1965 (DOL 25)

“Here are some of the issues: to change so many attitudes that in a number of respects are themselves worthy of honor and dearly held; to upset devout and good people by presenting new ways of prayer that they are not going to understand right away; to win over to a personal involvement in communal prayer the many people used to praying — or not praying — in church as they please; to intensify training in prayer and worship in every congregation, that is, to introduce the faithful to new viewpoints, gestures, practices, formularies, and attitudes, amounting to an active part in religion than many are unused to. In a word, the issue is engaging the people of God in the priestly liturgical life. Again, we say that it is a difficult and delicate matter, but adding that it is necessary, obligatory, providential, and renewing. We hope that it will also be satisfying.”

(continues...)

 

General Audience, 17 March 1965 (DOL 27)

“What do people think about the reform of the liturgy? . . . First, there are those that give evidence of a degree of confusion and therefore of uneasiness. Until now people were comfortable; they could pray the way they wished; all were quite familiar with the way the Mass proceeded. Now on all sides there are new things, changes, surprises: it has even gone so far as to do away with ringing the Sanctus bell. Then there are all those prayers that no one can any longer find; standing to receive Communion; the end of the Mass cut off abruptly after the blessing. Everyone makes the responses; there is much moving about; the prayers and the readings are spoken out loud. In short, there is no more peace, things are understood less than before, and so on. We shall not criticize these views because then we would have to show how they reveal a poor understanding of the meaning of religious ceremonial and allow us to glimpse not a true devotion and a true appreciation of the meaning and worth of the Mass, but rather a certain spiritual laziness which is not prepared to make some personal effort of understanding and participation directed to a better understanding and fulfillment of this, the most sacred of religious acts, in which we are invited, or rather obliged, to participate.”


(You couldn’t make this stuff up!)


Homily at Parish in Rome, 27 March 1966 (DOL 33)

“The Council has taken the fundamental position that the faithful have to understand what the priest is saying [3] and to share in the liturgy; to be not just passive spectators at Mass but souls alive . . . Look at the altar, placed now for dialogue with the assembly; consider the remarkable sacrifice of Latin, the priceless repository of the Church’s treasure. The repository has been opened up, as the people’s own spoken language now becomes part of their prayer. Lips that have often been still, sealed as it were, now at last begin to move, as the whole assembly can speak its part in the colloquy . . . No longer do we have the sad phenomenon of people being conversant and vocal about every human subject yet silent and apathetic in the house of God. How sublime it is to hear during Mass the communal recitation of the Our Father! In this way the Sunday Mass is not just an obligation but a pleasure, not just fulfilled as a duty, but claimed as a right.”



Quite possibly the most fantastical and least realistic Pope in history

Paul VI was prophetic about contraception, but he was no prophet when it came to liturgy:


General Audience at Castelgandolfo, 13 August 1969 (DOL 45)

“Through an intense and prolonged religious movement, the liturgy, crowned, and, as it were, canonized by Vatican II, has gained a new importance, dignity, accessibility, and participation in the consciousness and the spiritual life of the people of God and, we predict, this will continue even more in the future.”


Note how, three years after his complaints in 1966, Paul VI is still harping on the theme of resistance to reform, and the vices it indicates:


General Audience at Castelgandolfo, 20 August 1969 (DOL 46)

“A second category, whose ranks have swelled with troubled people after the conciliar reform of the liturgy, includes the suspicious, the criticizers, the malcontents. Disturbed in their devotional practices, these spirits grudgingly resign themselves to the new ways, but make no attempt to understand the reasons for them. They find the new expressions of divine worship unpleasing. They take refuge in their moaning, which takes away their ancient flavor from texts of the past and blocks any taste for what the Church, in this second spring of the liturgy, offers to spirits that are open to the meaning and language of the new rites sanctioned by the wisdom and authority of the postconciliar reform. A not very difficult effort at acceptance and understanding would bring the experience of dignity, simplicity, and newfound antiquity in the new liturgies and would also bring to the sanctuary of each person’s self the consolation and life-giving force of community celebrations. The interior life would yield a greater fullness.”


General Audience, November 26, 1969 (DOL 211)

“A new rite of the Mass: a change in a venerable tradition that has gone on for centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled. It seemed to bring the prayer of our forefathers and our saints to our lips and to give us the comfort of feeling faithful to our spiritual past, which we kept alive to pass it on to the generations ahead.

“It is at such a moment as this that we get a better understanding of the value of historical tradition and the communion of the saints. This change will affect the ceremonies of the Mass. We shall become aware, perhaps with some feeling of annoyance, that the ceremonies at the altar are no longer being carried out with the same words and gestures to which we were accustomed — perhaps so much accustomed that we no longer took any notice of them. This change also touches the faithful. It is intended to interest each one of those present, to draw them out of their customary personal devotions or their usual torpor.

(continues...)

 

“We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect. So what is to be done on this special and historical occasion? First of all, we must prepare ourselves. This novelty is no small thing. We should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, of its exterior forms. …

“It is Christ’s will, it is the breath of the Holy Spirit which calls the Church to make this change. A prophetic moment is occurring in the mystical body of Christ, which is the Church. This moment is shaking the Church, arousing it, obliging it to renew the mysterious art of its prayer.

“It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why? What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church’s values?

“The answer will seem banal, prosaic. Yet it is a good answer, because it is human, because it is apostolic. Understanding of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more — particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech.”


General Audience, 3 November 1971 (DOL 53)

“The Church praying (Ecclesia orans) has received at the Council its most splendid idealization. We must not forget that regarding the stirring reality of liturgical reform. Great weight, even regarding the spiritual conditions of today’s world, is due to that reform because of its originating, pastoral intent to reawaken prayer among the people of God. This is to be a pure and shared prayer, that is, interior and personal, yet at the same time public and communal. Its meaning is not simply a matter of ritual, pertaining to the sacristy or an arcane and merely liturgical erudition. Prayer is to be a religious affirmation, full of faith and life: an apostolic school for all seekers of the life-giving truth; a spiritual challenge thrown down before an atheistic, pagan, and secularized world.”


* * *

From our vantage fifty years later, as we watch the liturgical reform either imploding on itself or being slowly undone by an ever-stronger traditionalist movement, we can benefit from the hindsight of knowing what not to do to one’s precious inheritance, and energetically commit ourselves to doing the opposite. For the great irony is that it is not, and was never, the “new” liturgy that serves as “an apostolic school for all seekers of the life-giving truth; a spiritual challenge thrown down before an atheistic, pagan, and secularized world.” Instead, more and more, we see how aptly this description suits the classical Roman rite, risen as a phoenix from its ashes.



The choice before us: a Roman Missal from 1948, or . . .

NOTES


[1] The Beach Boys’ hit “Good Vibrations” appeared in 1966, the year in between the provisional 1965 missal and the Missa Normativa of 1967.


[2] Life and Liturgy (1956), pp. 14-15, cited by Alcuin Reid in the Introduction to Beauduin’s Liturgy, the Life of the Church.


[3] This claim is, of course, a bald lie on Paul VI’s part, since the Council took no such position, and in fact took a different one. It was a lie he repeated on dozens of occasions.

+

 

Vatican Council II was and still remains a valid church council guided by the Holy Spirit. If anyone speaks to the contrary they are in opposition to God and spread heresy!

 

Is that all you can say after all the facts that I have presented in the past week?

+

 

from "In Sinu Jesu", Monday, Feb. 6, 2012,
"As for you, love Me, count yourself for nothing, and believe always that you are held safely in My paternal love for you. There are things over which you will have no control. Humble yourself before Me, adhere to all my designs, and trust in My perfect love for you."

 

One could say much much more, but my point above is the most important fact all Catholics must understand. One could easily conclude had the mass in the vernacular not come about in the Catholic church, the church would have shrank in numbers so far down their would only have been a remnant left in the faith 50 years ago. The world was changing fast and the LM, as much as the far minority of Catholics would have preferred in the mid 60's, it would not have sufficed for the majority of the faithful. If anyone thinks the Church would not have the problems today that it does, if the LM was the only option, they are dreamers! It would be such a small minority within the Christian world it would have lost its voice globally. Freemasonry infiltrated the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, exclusively in the Latin Mass years, well prior to Vatican II.

I can't say it any better then what I did on another thread about those who think VatII was an invalid council, not guided by the Holy Spirit:

I will repeat again, it was NOT Vatican II that made the changes and you cannot point to one document that came out of there that leads to what you have declared. Yes, changes came abundantly afterwards, but it was the smoke of Satan, as Pope Paul declared, that led those in sin to advance their sinful modifications and sinful bishops and priests to allow them. They did not come from the council, but bad clergy, just as we are seeing today in our hierarchy and not from the council itself. Vatican II was a valid church council and guided by the Holy Spirit. To suggest otherwise is a slap on the Holy Spirit to think he was not present at a valid Church council in and through its documents on Mary and on the Church. As one credible prophetic message states: www.godspeakswillyoulisten.org 9/4/07 A council, called by the Holy Father and attended by the Bishops of the World, is not satanic. It was called by my Holy Spirit. Do my people think they know better than my Spirit? My vicar is the head of my church and is led by my Holy Spirit...... You cannot blame the Second Vatican Council for the increase in the sins of the flesh: homosexuality, abortion, murder, and all the sins of your age. You cannot blame the Second Vatican Council for the decrease in vocations, lack of reverence and attendance at the Holy Mass. The blame is my people compromising with the world, rebelling against the Holy Father, and believing the lies, deception, and the words of Satan. The problems of today had their beginnings many years prior to the 1960’s. This decade brought the problems into the open. Masonry, in all its diabolical forms, infiltrated my church many years prior to the Second Vatican Council. During those turbulent years, masons were elevated to positions of authority in my church. Those Masonic forces were unleashed from the pit of hell and caused the problems in your world today. Read my word. All of these events were prophesied and are being fulfilled before your eyes. My word must be fulfilled. Satan is clever. He is much more intelligent than you. He is using Vatican II as a deceptive lie to hide the real cause for the division in my church. The real cause for the division is the pride of mankind, the rejection of God, and many in my church making compromises with Satan. He knows if the real truth was revealed, the church would be unified, and he would be defeated. This present and continuing purification is exposing the lies and deception of Satan. My church will be as I want it: humble, persecuted, and a light to the world. It will once again follow in my footsteps to Calvary, and to a glorious resurrection. To repeat, the Second Vatican Council is not the cause of the problems in my church. The cause is the pride of my people who compromise with the demon. Those who cause division and schism in my church do not listen or follow them. For heresy can occur from many different directions. Those who deny my church’s teachings, whether labeled liberals or traditionalists, are promoting heresy. Pray for these souls.

 

https://padreperegrino.org/2019/11/smaller/

 

We have been told via many current trustworthy prophecies that the Church will soon become very small, but very holy. During the purification of the world and the church, does anyone really think the only valid masses said in homes/refuges will be in Latin? While some could argue it would be, it doesn't seem to be a reality with perhaps only a few percentage of Catholics/Priests today who could pray in Latin. It is clear that Latin, only, does not bring about the true presence of Jesus in Eucharist, as I know of personally, one Eucharistic miracle in my own Church where a man, a friend, was healed by "golden rays" coming out of the Eucharist, healing bone morrow cancer he was due to have surgery on just weeks later and when they opened up his shoulder, no cancer was found. This happened in a very small perpetual adoration chapel from a host consecrated within a Novus Ordo mass.