Novus Ordo Missae – I
“Facts are stubborn things,” is a famous quote of the United States’ second President, John Adams (1735–1826), “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Concerning the New Order of Mass imposed upon the entire Latin Rite Church by Paul VI in 1969, there are some stubborn facts, apt to perturb the “wishes and inclinations” of Catholics cleaving to Catholic Tradition. Let successive issues of these “Comments” first of all present some of these facts; secondly let us see how they may be explained in view of the disastrous role played over the last 46 years by the NOM in helping Catholics to lose the Faith, and thirdly let us deliberate as to what conclusions a wise Catholic needs to draw. First of all, some facts:—
On august 18, 1996, in St Mary’s parish church in the centre of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fr Alejandro Pezet was finishing distributing communion (of a new Mass, for sure) when a woman told him of a discarded host at the back of the church. A parishioner having received communion in the hand must have dropped it on their way out of church and abandoned it as being too dirty to be consumed off the floor. Fr Pezet picked it up, put it correctly in a vase of water and placed it in the tabernacle where in a few days it would normally dissolve and could be properly disposed of. However, when on August 26 he opened the tabernacle, what was his surprise to find that the host had turned into a bloody substance. Photographs taken on Bishop Bergoglio’s orders 11 days later showed that it had significantly increased in size. For three years it was kept under strict secret in the tabernacle, but in 1999 then Archbishop Bergoglio decided to carry out a scientific analysis. On October 15, 1999, in the presence of witnesses he allowed Dr Ricardo Castañon, a neuro-psycho physiologist approved of by Rome, to take a sample for testing.
Dr Castañon took the sample firstly to a forensic laboratory in San Francisco which recognized human ADN. A Dr Robert Lawrence located white globules. A Dr. Ardonidoli in Italy thought it was probably heart tissue. An Australian Professor, John Walker, recognized muscular tissue with white globules intact.
To remove all doubt Dr Castañon resorted to a renowned cardiologist and forensic pathologist from Columbia University, New York, Dr Federico Zugibe,without telling him where the specimen came from.
Looking down his microscope Dr Zugibe is quoted as having said, “I can tell you exactly what it is. It is part of the muscle found in the wall of the heart’s left ventricle which makes the heart beat and gives the body its life. Intermingled in the tissue are white blood-cells, which tells me firstly that the heart was alive at the moment when the sample was taken because white blood-cells die outside of a living organism, and secondly that white cells go to the aid of an injury, so this heart has suffered. This is the sort of thing I see in patients who have been beaten about the chest.” When asked how long these cells would have remained alive had they come from a sample kept in water, DrZugibe replied that they would have ceased to exist in a matter of minutes.
When in June of 1976 Archbishop lefebvre was on the brink of ordaining the first large batch of SSPX priests despite Rome’s disapproval, a Roman official came to promise him the end of all problems with Rome if only he would celebrate one NOM. On principle, for doctrinal reasons, he refused. Then how can Almighty God have worked eucharistic miracles with and for this new Mass? Read here next week a suggested answer.
Kyrie eleison.