By Rev. Father Daniel Themann
“There is nothing in the renewed Mass that can really bother the
evangelical Protestant." -
So said Protestant Minister Max Thurian, who was a member of the Consilium
that drafted the New Mass, which is now in virtually every parish and
religious house worldwide.
The New Mass –
Novus Ordo Missae
– is ecumenical in its construction and Protestant in its orientation. It is
the most tangible expression of the Vatican II revolution, affecting every
Catholic directly and deleteriously.
“A Striking Departure …”
The New Mass cannot be based on any personal preference, but rather on the
deficiencies and anomalies inherent in the New Mass, both doctrinally and
liturgically.
The doctrinal shortcomings are clearly laid out by Cardinals Ottaviani and
Bacci in their 1969 letter to Paul VI that accompanied the Critical study of
the New Mass written by a group of Roman theologians, working under the
direction of Archbishop Lefebvre (otherwise known as “The Ottaviani
Intervention”).
Here Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci warned, “The
Novus Ordo Missae 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 22 of the Council of Trent.”
The Society of St. Pius X, says Father Themann, “whole-heartedly subscribes”
to this realistic assessment of the New Mass.
Four Points
1) How the New Mass came about;
2) The New Rite itself (its words, liturgical gestures, or lack thereof,
etc.)
3) The General Instruction of 1969 that forms the Preface of the New Missal,
which gives the “theological basis” of the New Mass;
4) The motives and explanations of those responsible for the New Rite.
When lookiVI’s Apostolic Constitution
Missalle Romanum
of April 3 1969, and then a “corrected” General Instruction issued on
November 18 the same year.
The original “General Instruction” contains the true principles and ideas
that constitute the new Mass. Thus by examining this General Instruction, we
learn the real nature of the Novus Ordo.
The General Instruction
A reasonable place to begin, is the very definition of the Mass which is
contained in the original version of the General Instruction. This
definition drew more controversy and criticism than any other statement and
was, therefore, very soon modified. Nevertheless, the insight it provides
into the new rite is of permanent value:
“The Lord's Supper or Mass is the sacred assembly or congregation of the
people of God gathering together, with a priest presiding, to celebrate the
memorial of the Lord. For this reason Christ's promise applies supremely to
such a local gathering together of the Church: 'Where two or three come
together in My name, there I am in their midst.' (Mt 18:20)”
“Three things may be noted immediately:
“First,
the Mass is defined as a gathering not as a sacrifice – and, furthermore, a
gathering which is a supper and a memorial. This part of the definition
corresponds to a first pattern, which is clearly discernible throughout the
new rite and the General Instruction (e.g. nn. 8, 48, 55d, 56) although it
is foreign to a Catholic understanding of the Mass. There is an unmistakably
marked shift in expression from the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice to the
Mass as a memorial meal.
“But the Council of Trent clearly teaches that the Mass is a sacrifice while
it never mentions that the Mass is a meal. Furthermore, Pius XII, in his
encyclical
Mediator Dei,
explicitly condemns the theory that the Mass is essentially both a sacrifice
and a meal. On a practical level, it is obvious that the Mass is not
essentially a meal because, while Catholics are obliged to assist at Mass
every Sunday, they have never been obliged to receive Communion every
Sunday. If the Mass were essentially a supper, the faithful would have to
communicate since to attend a meal without eating is to not take part in the
meal.
“Second:
Note in the definition the glaring absence of any reference to the Real
Presence. This cannot be a mere oversight, however unpardonable, because an
alternative manner of presence is explicitly mentioned; namely, the purely
spiritual presence of Christ common to any gathering of the faithful 'Where
two or three come together in My name, there I am in their midst.' (Mt
18:20). Here we find the second pattern which will be everywhere in the new
rite – a denial of the Real Presence which is, in the words of the Ottaviani
Intervention, ‘both tacit (not explicit) and systematic.’
Third,
The role assigned to the priest is that of presider. The unique role of the
priest as instrument of Christ the High Priest, acting in the person of
Christ, and vested with powers which flow from the priestly character alone
is completely ignored. Here is the third pattern – a deliberate obscuring of
the difference between the ordained priesthood (which is independent of the
congregation and implies active sacramental power) and the priesthood of the
faithful (which is only a power in the passive sense of being able to
receive benefits from the sacramental actions of the ordained priest).
“Do not be overwhelmed by having to remember all three of these patterns in
order to understand the New Mass because, unfortunately for the Church, but
fortunately for your memory, these three patterns are absolutely linked and
interdependent. Here is the key point:
“If the New Mass shifts the emphasis of expression from propitiatory
sacrifice to memorial meal, then it will necessarily de-emphasize the Real
Presence of the Victim and the role of the priest.
A sacrifice requires a victim and a priest. A meal requires neither.”
“The Dead End of post-Tridentine Theories of Sacrifice”
A couple of quick examples:
The Offertory Prayers of the Novus Ordo are written in the spirit of Martin
Luther who detested the notion of the Mass as Sacrifice. Luther especially
despised the traditional Offertory as “an
abomination”
since from the Offertory onward “everything
stinks of oblation.”
Thus the Offertory prayers of the New Mass emphasize the aspect of a meal
while the propitiatory nature of the sacrifice is deliberately hidden. He
quotes Father Emil Joseph Longeline, an original member of the Consilium,
who boasted:
“In the [original] 1969
General Instruction on the Missal,
an ecumenically-oriented sacramental theology for the celebration of Mass
emerged... Despite the new 1970 edition forced by reactionary attacks [from
conservatives] – but which avoided the worst, thanks to the cleverness of
the revisers – it leads us … out of the dead end of the post Tridentine
theories of sacrifice ...”
Thus the Offertory prayers of the Tridentine Mass were not simply changed,
they were abolished. This too was admitted by Father J. M. Patino, another
member of the Consilium, who rejoiced:
“We have gone from an offertory in the strict sense of the word to a simple
presentation of gifts which will become 'the
bread of life and the cup of salvation'”
“Mysterium Fidei”
Another example of the Protestant spirit integral in the New Mass are the
four “Eucharistic Prayers”. The first, which is called the Roman Canon, most
closely resembles the Tridentine Mass, but it is actually quite different.
We have a structure that obscures doctrine.
In the Tridentine Mass, the words of Consecration are clearly set apart from
the rest of the text to emphasize that they belong to an
action
taking place in the present and are not merely to a
story
about the Last Supper. In the
Novus Ordo Missae,
these words of Consecration are seamlessly blended into the ‘Institution
Narrative’ (this term is actually found in the
General Instruction).
The emphasis has shifted from a sacramental and sacrificial action performed
now, in real time,
to a remembrance or memorial of a past event.
Also, the words “the Mystery of Faith” are stricken from the Consecration in
the New Mass, is moved to after the Consecration and applied to various
mysteries of Christ’s life that have nothing to do with Transubstantiation.
Instead, the congregation recites “Christ
has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again,”
of three other “mysteries of Faith” that are acceptable to Protestants;
including the odd acclamation that “Christ
will come again,”
even though Christ became present on the altar.
Alfons Cardinal Stickler noted the ”elimination of the
mysterium fidei
from the Consecration formula can be considered as the symbol of the
demystification and thus the humanization of the nucleus of the Mass.”
Eucharistic Prayer #1, including the various ways in which Christ’s real
presence is deemphasized on the altar, such as the reduction in the number
of genuflections (14 down to 3), and the drastic reduction of the sign of
the Cross over the Victim down to 1; the Tridentine Mass had 33.
Special attention was drawn to Eucharistic Prayer #2, which is called the
“Canon of St. Hippolytus”, though the New Mass’ version is substantially
shorter than that of the 3rd Century saint.
Further, St. Hippolytus, who eventually was reconciled to the Church and
died a martyr, spent most of his life as an anti-pope. It was during this
delinquent period that he composed his canon, “precisely against the Roman
Rite as it was practiced by his rival – the true Pope”.
Though Father Themann did not mention it, I believe it was Michael Davies
who pointed out that Eucharistic Prayer #2 is the one most loved by
Protestants. And because it is the shortest, it is the one said most
frequently in parishes.
Communion
Along with other disturbing observations, Father Themann notes the change in
rubrics that undermine belief in the Real Presence (and introduces
sacrilege):
• Elimination of the purification of the priest's fingers over the chalice.
• Priest may now touch things with his fingers before they are purified.
• No purification of any kind is required if a host is dropped.
• Communion is no longer received kneeling and the General Instruction
recommends that the faithful sit for their thanksgiving.
Father Themann continues, “From what has been said, it should be clear that
the New Mass was designed with a doctrinal agenda – an agenda that a
Catholic in good conscience cannot espouse. The goal of the Consilium was
precisely to produce a liturgical rite that did not clearly express Catholic
teaching on doctrines pertaining to the Mass. That it succeeded, with the
help of six Protestant ministers who acted as consultants, requires no more
proof than the word of Protestants themselves who have declared that the New
Mass expresses nothing contrary to their own creeds and would be suited to
their own worship: ‘There
is nothing in this renewed Mass that can really bother evangelical
Protestants’.”
– (Max Thurian, Protestant Minister and Member of the Consilium).
The Fruit of Modernism
Father Themann then quoted Msgr. Klaus Gamber, the liturgical scholar and
author of the book
The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.
Noting that Msgr. Gamber was not exactly a “traditionalist” Catholic, Father
Themann recited a litany of devastating quotes from Gamber about the New
Mass, the four most prominent being:
•
“The publication of the
Ordo Missae
of 1969, however, created a new liturgical rite. In other words, the
traditional liturgical rite had not simply been revised …”
•
“Instead of a fruitful renewal of the liturgy, what we see is a destruction
of the forms of the Mass which had developed organically during the course
of many centuries. Added to this state of affairs is the shocking
assimilation of Protestant ideas brought into the Church under the guise of
the misunderstood term 'ecumenism'”
• “Most significant however is the shifting emphasis in the New Mass to that
of being a communal meal in the Protestant sense, the deliberate
de-emphasizing of the purpose and function of the Mass as a sacrifice.”
•
“Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that
differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form … Liturgy and
faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in
many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional
liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because
it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith … The real
destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite with a
history of more than 1,000 years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith
on which it was based …”
Father Themann noted the absurdity of calling the true Latin Mass the
“Extraordinary Form” while calling the Protestantized
Novus Ordo
the “Ordinary Form”. He also observed, again quoting Gamber, that the spirit
at work in the New Mass was not only Protestantism, but also Modernism.
Gamber writes:
“Much more radical than any liturgical changes introduced by Luther, at
least as far as the rite was concerned, was the reorganization of our own
liturgy … One thing is certain: the new (liberal) theology was a major force
behind the liturgical reforms.”
And again from Gamber,
“Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a
rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology.
Lack of the Due Good
What, then, are we to think of the New Mass?
The New Mass, is not simply “less
good”
than the Tridentine Mass, it is “not
good”.
It is radically deficient, as it lacks the good that should be there. As
such, speaking in philosophical terms, the New Mass is
evil,
as there is the lack of the due good.
An apple which is rotten would be called ‘no good’ or ‘bad’ because it lacks
the integrity which an apple is supposed to have – and, for that matter,
which an apple needs to have it in order to be fit for human consumption.
This is precisely what the Society [of St. Pius X] claims about the New
Mass. It is ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ because its words and gestures, taken as a whole
and even in some of their details, intentionally render obscure the very
doctrines concerning the Mass which the Council of Trent formulated so
clearly and which the Mass of the Roman Rite must therefore naturally
express.