Missal of 1969

BATTLEFIELD, the MASS

BATTLEFIELD, the MASS on January 4, 2025

Between the New Mass and the Old is war,

Ending not with sweet talk, but blood and gore!

“Take away the Mass, destroy the Church” is a famous quote attributed to Martin Luther (1483–1546). Perhaps he never said it, although it seems highly likely that he did, but in any case the quote is true, as Catholics could see in the aftermath of Vatican II. The very first of that Council’s 16 documents concerned the liturgy, by name “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” but the words of the text are thoroughly ambiguous. They can seem conservative but in fact they are designed to open the door to that liturgical revolution which in the aftermath of the Council virtually destroyed the Mass. Very soon after the – apparently – official imposition of Pope Paul’s New Mass in 1969, Archbishop Lefebvre said that if he had to introduce it in his newly founded Seminary of Econe, he might as well close the Seminary down within three weeks. Such is the anti-Catholic power of the “renewed” liturgy, for it is by attending Mass that most Catholics live their religion.

In fact, from 1969 until today, Pope Paul’s “renewed” liturgy turned the rite of Mass into the central battlefield of the great war of the Faith between the unchanging Catholicism of Tradition and the constantly evolving Revolution of Protestant-Liberal-Modernism. And it is still the central battlefield, as shown by the perseverance of Pope Francis in his insane efforts to obliterate the Latin Mass altogether. An excellent article by a French layman, Yves de Lassus, is summarised below. For access to the original article, much fuller, in English translation, see:

https://respicestellam.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Letter-to-Friends-of-AFS-Jan-22.pdf

On December 18 2021, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CCD) published a note entitled Responsa ad dubia  responding to questions about the application of the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes . Many of the faithful were distraught by the harshness of this response. But from the outset, the intention of the Motu Proprio was clear; the response of the Congregation only makes explicit a firmness already expressed in Traditionis Custodes . For the CCD, the Mass is the “sharing of the one broken bread” and the “memorial of the Passover”. To attend Mass means “to participate in the Eucharistic table”.  It is never recalled that the Mass is a sacrifice,  the unbloody renewal of the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

This wiping out of the sacrificial character is accentuated by the purpose that the CCD attributes to the Mass. For the CCD, the purpose of the Mass is unity. The first objective of Traditionis Custodes  and consequently of the Mass itself is to ” continue the constant search for ecclesial communion.”  Not one of the four traditional purposes of the Mass is recalled. For the CCD, the Mass is above all a manifestation of unity among men instead of an act entirely turned towards God. Thus it is clear that the general intention of the CCD response is to put an end once and for all to the use of the traditional Missal. The old rite, says the CCD, “is not part of the ordinary life of the Church.” Moreover, the CCD insists that “the liturgical reform is irreversible”. Any return to the old rite is therefore meant to be impossible.

We must not hide from the truth. The Holy See has gone to war against the Traditional Rite with the desire to completely eradicate it from the life of the Church. It is a real war between two different conceptions of the Mass and two radically opposed conceptions of the Church and the Christian life. We are even legitimately entitled to wonder if they are the same religion. Thus it is an illusion to hope that the Holy See will soften its position if only we hold a conciliatory discourse. No! Rome wants the end of the Traditional Mass, whereas we want to maintain the Tridentine Rite, because it is willed by God Himself. In the face of this war between the two rites, it is no longer possible to put off a decision. We must choose one side or the other.

Which side? We must condemn error, even if it comes from the Holy See. The Mass is first and foremost a sacrifice offered to God for a purpose that is at once adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation and expiation. No pope can ever abrogate the bull of St. Pius V authorizing the use of the Traditional Missal in perpetuity.

The Mass is in a situation which, in many ways, resembles that experienced by Our Lord during his Passion: the supreme Authority condemns it to death. But during the Passion, Our Lady did not revolt: She remained unfailingly close to Her Son, silent and recollected. No doubt She prayed for the executioners. With regard to the Latin Mass, let us adopt the same attitude: let us remain unfailingly attached to it, even if it has just been condemned to death.

Kyrie eleison

Distinguish, Discriminate

Distinguish, Discriminate on December 17, 2016

If the evidence, apparently serious, for Eucharistic miracles taking place within the Novus Ordo Mass (NOM) is to be believed – and such miracles may even be happening frequently, one of the latest seeming to come from Legnica, also in Poland (see here) on Christmas Day of 2013 – then indeed some of us may need to do some rethinking. Here is how one reader put it: “God cannot contradict himself, so his miracles cannot contradict his Church’s teaching. But the NOM does depart from essential Catholic doctrine on the Mass. Therefore either the miracles are false or the NOM is from God, in which case what is the justification for Traditionalists clinging to Tradition? For if the NOM at the heart of the Newchurch is confirmed by miracles, then the Newchurch is also confirmed by God, and the Newpopes, and I have to obey them. I cannot pick and choose, can I?” Yes, you can, and not only you can, but you must, in order to fulfil your absolute duty to keep the Faith.

That is because another name for what you call “picking and choosing” is “distinguishing.” All of us need to distinguish all day long. That is common sense, and that is what St Thomas Aquinas does from beginning to end of his miraculous Summa Theologiae. Let us take a closer look at our friend’s argument.

The basic bone of contention is the NOM. The NOM is a rite of Mass, a book of hundreds if not a thousand pages, containing many things. From a Catholic standpoint the rite as a whole is unquestionably bad, because it radically changes the concept of the Mass from being a propitiatory sacrifice centred on God to being a community meal centred on man. As such, since most Catholics live their religion by attending Mass, then when its concept changes, their religion in effect changes. That is why the NOM is the principal destroyer of the true Church, and the main engine of the Newchurch. That is why the NOM as a whole is not only bad, but very bad indeed.

But that does not mean that all its parts, as parts, are bad. As parts, some are still Catholic because they had to be, in order to deceive the mass of priests when the NOM was introduced in 1969, that it was not essentially different from the Tridentine rite of Mass, especially in the Consecration. Otherwise they would have refused it, and it could not have done its work of destroying the Church. So the NOM is, as to its parts, part good and part bad, while as a whole, it is ambiguous, treacherous, a crooked piece of work.

However, as for men, “to the pure all things are pure” ( Titus I, 15), and so to innocent souls not yet aware of its intrinsic danger for the Faith, it can by its Consecration and good parts, still give grace and spiritual nourishment, especially when these are less strangled by a priest making the ambiguities as Catholic as possible. And as for God, he “writes straight with crooked lines,” says the proverb, and so the bad parts of the NOM need not stop him from working miracles with the Catholic parts to nourish the innocent and to warn the guilty.

Therefore on the one hand the NOM as a whole is very bad, and Traditionalists are absolutely necessary to the Church to witness to its badness, and to make available a true Mass for when souls wake up to the NOM’s badness, as they do at different times and different speeds, so that such souls can keep the Faith and last out the crisis. On the other hand the NOM is in parts still good enough to nourish innocent souls and to enable God to work miracles, also for souls’ nourishment or for their warning. God is not thereby confirming either the NOM as a whole, or the Newchurch as a whole, or the Newpopes as a whole, but he is relying on me to use my brain and the Faith which he gave me to discern good from bad. He wants no mindless robots in his glorious Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

Against N.O.M.

Against N.O.M. on August 27, 2016

The principle is clear in theory: to follow Our Lord we need, in the immortal words of St Augustine, to “slay the errors but love the erring.” That means that we should never so slay the errors as to slay also the erring (i.e. those who are in error, unless they are dangerous and incorrigible), and we should never so love the erring as to love also their errors. In practice it can be all too easy to slide from slaying the error into slaying the erring, or to slide from loving the erring into loving their error. In different words: “The Church is uncompromising in principle because she believes, she is tolerant in practice because she loves.The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe, and uncompromising in practice because they do not love.” That is well said.

In case anybody still thinks that the author of these “Comments” slides from compassion for the misled sheep within the Novus Ordo into love of the errors of the New Mass of Paul VI, here are extracts from the letter of an older reader whose own bitter experience has led him to the conclusion that Novus Ordo Catholics do not deserve to be given too much benefit of the doubt. He has obviously run into some of the worst of the Newchurch. By its fruits . . .

I was a typical grade school child in a parish of 2500 families in a neighbourhood that was nearly 60% Catholic.All of us were formed in the old religion, and when the Conciliar Revolution began destroying the Church in the 1970’s we all of us had to sense that something was wrong. All Catholics have a duty to be faithful to Tradition and to find out where it lies, for instance in the reading materials available to everybody. For 50 years I myself have pleaded, begged and prayed for my Catholic friends and family to read the things that I have read, but they simply do not want to.The great majority enjoy the Conciliar religion: divorce and easy annulments, accommodating preachers, feminism, democracy, adultery, homosexuality and LUV hold them fast to the Novus Ordo, just the opposite of a love of truth.

I would say I know the Novus Ordo mentality because for over two years I came into close contact with Novus Ordo judges and priests and laity. I can assure you that it is not love of truth that motivates them. These Church authorities can be trusted to do exactly what nearly all, if not all, Novus Ordo catholics want them to do, which is to ignore their sinful lives. It seems as though the only ‘sinners’ they dare to admonish, instruct or counsel are smokers, polluters, insensitive Tradcats and overpopulators. Remember, more than 90% of married Catholics use birth control and teach their children to do the same.The Novus Ordo has become a global organisation of conscience placation and novelty on a grand scale. Novus Ordo Catholics really do believe that everybody goes to Heaven. To ‘work out their salvation in fear and trembling’ (Phil.II, 12) is not a thought they entertain.

Birth control was in modern times a turning point from the will of God to the will of man. Not to use birth control for those living in a big city can seem almost impossible, but who got it wrong? God, or the modern city? God gave to his Church in 1968 a great chance to stay on track when he inspired a reluctant Paul VI to remain faithful to the Church’ s unchangeable doctrine, but a mass of churchmen were promptly unfaithful to the Pope. And the result was that “organisation of conscience placation” denounced above. And who can deny that the replacement of the true sacrifice of the Mass played from 1969 a huge part in Catholics giving up sacrificial lives to get to Heaven, in order to enjoy the easy life and go to Hell? What a responsibility of the priests!