Continuing to Spout Misinformation

by Thomas A. Droleskey

It is not my normal practice to respond to critics. What I write is fair game for review and criticism. Those who read my work can judge it for themselves, whether favorably or unfavorably.

The presentation of misinformation in the name of defending the Novus Ordo Missae, however, needs a bit of a response now and again. This is the case with James Likoudis's review of G.I.R.M. Warfare in Catholic United for the Faith's Lay Witness magazine. Mr. Likoudis relies upon Pope Paul VI's positivistic assertion in November of 1969 that the Novus Ordo Missae was perfectly orthodox and without problems. This assumes that every assertion made a pope is covered by the mantle of infallibility, which it is not. Numerous scholarly works have done, especially some in recent years, that proves the entire foundation of the call for any liturgical change at all in Sacrosanctum Concilium were based on the false antiquarian presuppositions of the Augustinian Pius Parsch and others in the Liturgical Movement. Moreover, the Consilium headed by then Monsignor Annibale Bugnini had one but one goal, which he stated very clearly in 1965:

We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.

This desire to strip away is reflected in the the significant changes made to the texts of the Collects in the Novus Ordo Missae as opposed to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Consider Paragraph 15 in the General Instruction to the Roman Missal and my comment analysis of same in G.I.R.M. Warfare:

Paragraph 15 of GIRM reads:

"Thus the Church remains faithful in its responsibility as a teacher of truth to guard 'things old,' that is, the deposit of tradition; at the same time it fulfills another duty, that of examining and prudently bringing forth 'things new.'

"Accordingly, a part of the new Roman Missal directs the prayer of the Church expressly to the needs of our times. This is above all true of the ritual Masses and the Masses for various needs and occasions, which happily combine the traditional and the contemporary. Thus many expressions, drawn from the Church's most ancient tradition and familiar through the many editions of the Roman Missal, have remained unchanged. Other expressions, however, have been adapted to today's needs and circumstances and still others-for example, the prayers for the Church, the laity, the sanctification of human work, the community of all peoples, certain needs proper to our era-are completely new compositions, drawing on the thoughts and even the very language of the recent conciliar documents.

"The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church.

"In short, the liturgical norms of the Council of Trent have been completed and improved in many respects by those of the Second Vatican Council. The Council has brought to realization the efforts of the last four hundred years to move the faithful closer to the sacred liturgy, especially the efforts of recent times and above all the zeal for the liturgy promoted by Saint Pius X and his successors."

Comment and Analysis:

Holy Mass is supposed to be suited to the needs of all times, not just our times. Herein, therefore, lies the real nub of the problem with the General Instruction to the Roman Missal and thus the Novus Ordo itself: a reliance upon the spirit of one particular time in history results in the glorification of the human spirit and not that of the Blessed Trinity. It is really that simple. God exists outside of time and space. The worship of God must convey, as noted earlier, the timelessness of God and the immortality of our own souls, which will live forever either in Heaven or in Hell once the Last Judgment has taken place. Again, as noted earlier, the Mass is supposed to be a refuge from the world, not a glorification of it.

"It seemed that this cherished treasure [ancient tradition] would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline."

Well, our ancient tradition is not the only casualty wrought by the changing of phrases of the Mass texts (Introits, Collects, Secrets, Prayer after Communion, the very Offertory Prayers themselves, the addition of first three and then five more new "Eucharistic prayers"). The very faith life of many Catholics has been harmed.

One of the reasons that the Sacrament of Penance fell into disuse is that the faithful are no longer reminded of their sinfulness in the prayers of the Mass. The faithful thus believe there is no need to reconcile themselves to the Father through the Son in Spirit in and in Truth in the hospital of Divine Mercy which is the confessional. No, one cannot sin as long as one's "fundamental option" is for God.

Indeed, as is noted in the rest of this book, a priest has many legitimate options by which to invite the people to express themselves in what is now called the Penitential Rite. A growing number of priests believe that "modern theology" requires them not to stress the sinfulness of the period and their need for God's forgiveness but to celebrate human goodness and to give thanks to God for all that He has given us. However, man's need to recognize himself as a sinner and to do penance for his sins is unchanging. The harm done to souls by the changing of the "style of language" in the new Mass is incalculable.

The concluding part of Paragraph 15 is a little bit akin to the old phrase, "The lady doth protest too much." All of the repeated attempts to state that the new Mass is a continuation of our liturgical tradition (which GIRM itself contradicts in the body of Paragraph 15, as noted in my discussion about the changes in the texts of the prayers of the Mass) are efforts to try to convince readers that the new Mass really, really, really, really, really is what GIRM says it is.

The trouble with gratuitous statements is that they are made without foundation, sinking into the quicksand upon which they are made. They are efforts to justify a revolution which has undermined the faith and profaned the honor and glory due God in the Sacrifice of the Mass. GIRM is revisionist history writ large.

There is no need to belabor points that were made throughout the text of G.I.R.M. Warfare, which was vetted by a number of priests, some of whom were offering the Novus Ordo Missae at the time, when it was written for publication sequentially in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos between March of 2001 and June of 2003. The text of the book indicates over and over again how the various ordinary and proper parts of the Mass were changed to suit the "language of modern theology."

Well, it is not only "radical traditionalists" who have recognized this from a simple review of the text of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal and a review of the Modernist-oriented prayers in the Novus Ordo Missae. Father Richard John Neuhaus, not a friend of the restoration of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and certainly not a friend of the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King, nevertheless saw to it in January of 2004 to comment on an article written by Dr. Lauren Pristas, of Caldwell College in New Jersey, in The Thomist in 2003 on the texts of the Novus Ordo Missae. Here is what Father Neuhaus wrote:

"It is not simply that the English translations in the Mass tend toward banality. The problem goes back to the hurried putting together of the Paul VI Missal in Latin following the Second Vatican Council. That is the argument of “Theological Principles that Guided the Redaction of the Roman Missal” by Lauren Pristas (The Thomist, 67, 2003). Researching the statements of those in charge of the redaction, Pristas finds that they were quite explicit about their intention to adapt ancient texts to “the modern mind.” Sin and damnation are downplayed, and the distinctions between heaven and earth, the profane and the sacred, God’s grace and our efforts tend to be fudged.

“The traditional [Latin] orations are highly sophisticated and stunningly concise literary compositions that overflow with surplus of meaning—connotation far outstripping denotation,” Pristas writes. The redactors, however, believed that prayers should be “submissive to the principles required for a good homily: to have something to say, to know how to say it, and to stop after it has been said.” It is doubtful that most of the new prayers rise even to the level of a good homily. Far from overflowing with a surplus of meaning, upon careful examination they display a deficit of meaning. A good many of the prayers in the Mass can be adequately summarized by the petition, “Help us to be the really nice people we are.”

By so revising the prayers from all ages, Pristas writes, “it may be the case that nearly all the texts of our missal reflect the strengths and weaknesses, the insights and biases, the achievements and limitations of but one age, our own. . . . If this is indeed so, then Catholics of today, in spite of the access made possible by vernacular celebrations, have far less liturgical exposure to the wisdom of our past and the wondrous diversity of Catholic experience and tradition than did the Catholics of earlier generations.”

Obviously, Father Neuhaus believes that the problems can be resolved with better translations. He is wrong. The problem is the whole enterprise of reforming the closest thing to Heaven: the Mass of Tradition. I point out his quotation of Dr. Pristas to indicate that it a recognition of the problems with the whole foundation of the Novus Ordo Missae is pretty widespread. To pretend that such criticism does not exist or that it is confined to "radical traditionalists" is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

I gave a number of examples of the problems with the Collects in the Novus Ordo Missae throughout G.I.R.M. Warfare (and its appendices) and in a number of articles on this site. Here is the Collect from the Feast of Saint Robert Bellarmine as found the Mass of Tradition:

O God, you fortified your blessed bishop and doctor Robert with remarkable learning and courage to expose the dangers of error and defend the rights of the Holy See. May we grow in love of truth, and may they who have been led astray by falsehood come back to the unity of your Church through the intercession of your saint.

There is no equivalent prayer to be found in the Novus Ordo Missae? Error? Falsehood? A few other examples of the fullness of the Collects found in the Mass Tradition were given recently on this site in Richness Beyond Compare.

The matter of the synthetic nature of the Novus Ordo Missae, constructed by a committee headed by a man suspected of Freemasonry and advised by six liberal Protestant theologians (who, as the below-mentioned Father Romano Tomassi has proved from a review of the letters written by some of the "obsevers," made their comments during coffee breaks, after which time formal members of the Consilium read those comments into the record as their own) is always something that its defenders cannot seem to admit was novel. They must insist, relying upon encylopedias written before good scholarly research had been undertaken, that what happened after the Second Vatican Council is exactly what happened after the Council of Trent: a "new" Mass was written. This is not so. This is a lie.

Dr. Adrian Fortescue, who wrote in the early part of the Twentieth Century (and therefore can not be tarred with the nasty "traditionalist" label), noted the following about the Missale Romanum promulgated by Pope Saint Pius V:

Essentially, the Missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is formed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine collection. We find prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis and allusions to it in the [Fourth] Cenutry. So the Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest Liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that Liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world, and thought he could stamp out the Faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of some unresolved problems, in spite of later changes there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.

The late Monsingor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditoinalist, said pretty much the same thing in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

The reform introduced by St. Pius V did not create anything new. It was simple a comprehensive review of the Missal, editing out some additions and changes that, over time, had found their way into the text. Even so, older unique rights, if they dated back at least two hundred years were left untouched--demonstrating a spirit of amazing tolerance at that time in history.

Pope Saint Pius V had permitted usages older than two hundred years to be retained in order to place such usage before Catholic efforts in various places to adapt the Roman Rite to the "insights" of John Hus and, eventually, Martin Luther, et al. The Missal promulgated by Pope Saint Pius V was such a fitting expression of the authentic Tradition of the Roman Rite that only two dioceses, Milan (which used the Ambrosian Rite) and Toledo (which used the Mozarabic Rite) opted out of the Pian Missal. The Order of Preachers, the Dominicans retained, their own rite. Thus, to claim that what happened after the Second Vatican Council was the same thing that happened after the Council of Trent is false. Scholarship has proved this to be the case.

Indeed, Father Romano Tomassi's ground-breaking scholarship in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture in the past few years has also demonstrated irrefutably the various misrepresentations that were made by then Monsignor Bugnini and the other members of the Consilium as the new Mass was being constructed synthetically. I told Father Tomassi, who offers the Novus Ordo Missae and the Mass of Tradition, in 2004 that he should sent his work to Mr. Likoudis to help him see the truth of the development of the Novus Ordo Missae. I do not know whether he did so. Here is an excerpt from an article Father Tomassi published in The Latin Mass in the Summer of 2002:

In my previous article, I attempted to expose a number of seeming contradictions in the decision-making process of the Consilium (the group of scholars commissioned by Paul VI to reform the liturgy). In this present article I will investigate other specific areas of the so-called “reform.” Recall that the Consilium purported to restore ancient practices which had, “by an accident of history” or other unknown reasons, fallen into disuse.1 Using the Consilium’s own fundamental principles of “substantial uniformity” and “legitimate progress,”2 a two-fold obstacle needed to be overcome by the Consilium’s reformers. In their evaluation of a legitimate restoration of formerly defunct rites, any restoration should have avoided fictitious liturgiology and made certain that neither meaning nor context was lost.

The first rite to be restored by the Council (via the Consilium) was the so-called “Prayer of the Faithful.” Number 53 of Sacrosanctum Concilium relates that the Prayer of the Faithful is to be ‘restored,’ that is, brought back from the dead. According to the liturgical opinion at the time, this prayer was originally part of the ancient Roman Rite and had been lost. The first official publication on the Prayer of the Faithful De Oratione Communi seu Fidelium3 nicely sums up its “history” as it was widely accepted by liturgical scholars at the time of the Council. This document represents the first serious official attempt to demonstrate the Prayer of the Faithful’s existence in the Roman rite and begins with a reference to St. Justin Martyr.

Justin is well known to have described the ancient Greek usage of largely non-Roman Christians living in Rome in the second century, which has very little to do with the Roman rite directly. However, the real problem is as follows: the modern Roman Rite is said to have been restored to the “Tradition of the Fathers”4 by the New Roman Missal, which period is none other than the time dating from the fourth to the seventh centuries.5 What does a second century practice have to do with the Roman Rite, since it did not begin to exist until around circa 380 A.D., beginning with the translation of the Mass into Latin and the sole use of the Roman Canon? The document does not concern itself with this point.

The Consilium next appeals to the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome. St. Hippolitus was formerly believed to have been the author of an ancient text of worship for the Church in Rome in the third century (The Apostolic Tradition). Fanatical devotion of liturgists during the Vatican II period to Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition could be considered as equivalent to the deference shown to pseudo-Denys the Areopagite by the medieval Church. Yet what is the most recent consensus on the value of this text in understanding the Roman rite? “[T]he Apostolic Tradition is not the typical and official liturgy of the Roman Church; rather, it is one example – in Greek – of the way some Roman Christians worshipped, even though it claims for itself normative and even ‘apostolic’ authority.”6

One could easily go on criticizing reliance on Hippolytus’ so-called Apostolic Tradition. He is almost certainly not the real author of the document attributed to his name, and even if he were, it is very likely that it reflects opinions during his period as a schismatic anti-pope, who was only reconciled in prison before suffering death as a martyr. The bias of the Vatican II era liturgical reformers toward Hippolytus would prevent them from considering that this could reflect a schismatic liturgy. Although the tide of scholarly opinion has turned against Hippolytus, the New Mass’ Eucharistic Prayer II7 (the historical and ecclesiological origins of which are now questioned) remains.

The Consilium’s same official text attempts to appeal to the Fathers of the Church as unassailable evidence that the Prayer of the Faithful was located before the Offertory. At first glance, there would seem to be strong evidence in favor of the reformers when the document quotes Western Fathers like Augustine, Arnobius, and Ambrose (the Father of the Ambrosian Rite), in support of the Prayer. However, new research has demonstrated rather conclusively that these texts are ambiguous and that they could very well refer to intercessions within the Canon of the Mass. The most recent liturgical research (especially at St. Anselmo in Rome) reveals that, during the “Golden Age of the Fathers” in Rome, what the Consilum refers to as the Prayer of the Faithful was actually the intercessions made for the Pope, bishops, clergy, laity, the living and the dead at the Te igitur (the beginning of the Roman Canon). These intercessions remain in the Roman Canon to this day.

Outside of Rome many are familiar that the local king was often mentioned in the Canon, and even other petitions. The latest developments rely on the clear words of Pope St. Innocent I where he writes that the nomina, or list of names, is to be said only after the gifts have already been offered so that the petitions are made “within the sacred mysteries.”8 This text, along with a host of other texts, is able to be reconciled with the accounts of Augustine, Ambrose, and others.

The old interpretation of Jungmann (perhaps the most influential liturgist at the time of Vatican II) which argued for a separate Prayer of the Faithful is seemingly unable to be reconciled with that of St. Innocent and other accounts. Thus the most recent scholarship most convincingly leads to an unsavory position for the reformers: the re-introduction of the Prayer of the Faithful is based on a fictitious liturgical foundation.9 It is an historical aberration!

According to the Consilium, however, Jungmann had more or less demonstrated the existence of this Prayer of the Faithful in the Roman Rite.10 Jungmann held the following: the sixth century Pope Gelasius introduced the Kyrie Eleison at the beginning of Mass. This was a series of petitions to which the faithful would answer, “Lord have Mercy.” Gelasius did not wish to retain the repetitive Prayer of the Faithful (located before the Offertory) and decided to eliminate it. Eventually the “Lord Have Mercies” were fixed to six invocations, and three “Christ Have Mercies” were spliced in the middle. Over time the Kyrie petitions dropped out of the litany and thus we have the Kyrie as found in the Missal of Pius V.11 This offers evidence for what I have previously labeled as “fictitious liturgiology,” yet the secretary of the Consilium called the Prayer of the Faithful “a precious stone that had been lost and then recovered in all its splendor.”12

Worth mentioning is the oddity of the appeals made by the Consilium to Eastern Fathers, as well as to the Visigothic and Gallican liturgies, in order to justify the present Prayer of the Faithful. Such references are puzzling because the former have nothing to do with the Roman Rite, and the Consilium generally viewed the latter as corrupting influences upon the original purity of the Roman Rite.

This is simple scholarship, some of which is referenced in G.I.R.M. Warfare. The Consilium misrepresented the truth about the origins of their "reformed' liturgy, producing devastating results in the life of the Church. Mr. Likoudis seems utterly uninterested in even addressing this scholarship, no less adjusting his own claims in light of it.

Moreover, the aforementioned Monsignor Klaus Gamber pointed out many problems with the Novus Ordo Missae in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, a work nowhere cited by Mr. Likoudis in his review:

Was all this really done because of a pastoral concern about the souls of the faithful, or did it not rather represent a radical breach with the traditional rite, to prevent the further use of traditional liturgical texts and thus to make the celebration of the "Tridentime Mass" impossible--because it no loner reflected the new spirit moving through the Church?

Indeed, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the prohibition of the traditional rite was announced at the same time as the introduction of the new liturgical texts; and that a dispensation to continue celebrating the Mass according to the traditional rite was granted only to older priests.

Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form; and in no way a liturgy that represented what the Council Fathers had envisioned, i.e., a liturgy that would meet the pastoral needs of the faithful.

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 and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example, references to a God who judges and punishes.

At the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy created after the Second Vatican Council is identical in essence with the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point, and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting rid of elements of no particular interest.

Most priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform of the Divine Office and of the liturgical chant introduced by Pope St. Pius X.

Following this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while, in many cases, they themselves refused to obey.

The pastoral benefits that so many idealists had hoped the new liturgy would bring about did not materialize. Our churches emptied in spite of the new liturgy (or because of it?), and the faithful continue to fall away from the Church in droves.

Although our young people have been literally seduced in to supporting the new forms of liturgical worship, they have, in fact, become more and more alienated from the faith. They are drawn to religious sects--Christian and non-Christian ones--because fewer and fewer priests teach them the riches of our Catholic faith and the tenets of Christian morality. As for older people, the radical changes made ot the traditional liturgy have taken from them the sense of security in their religious home.

Monsignor Gamber was not a traditionalist. He was, though, a honest liturgist, in favor of the "reform of the reform," it should be noted as a matter of intellectual honesty, who saw how the Novus Ordo Missae had destroyed the sensus fidei and thus drove Catholics out of the Church.

Father Paul Kramer, who is a traditionalist, handled the objections raised by the likes of Mr. Likoudis with razor-sharp precision in an article in Catholic Family News in February of 2005:

One of the main points of Traditional Catholics is to underline the importance of the Roman Rite of the Mass as opposed to the Rite of Paul VI, because of the deficiencies in the Rite of Pope Paul VI. As soon as you mention deficiencies in the Rite of Pope Paul VI, the so-called conservatives become very alarmed. They will say “But the Rite of Paul VI was promulgated for the whole Church and has the protection of infallibility. How can you dare to say that there is some defect in the new Rite of Mass when the Holy Ghost gives protection to the Pope in promulgating the rites for the whole Church?”

What these people fail to understand is that they have not read the documentation very astutely for the so-called promulgation of the Missal of Pope Paul VI, which is called the Roman Missal fraudulently because the Rite of Mass contained therein is not the Roman Rite of Mass. It is not the Roman liturgy. It is what the great architect of the new Rite of Mass, Monsignor Annibale Bugnini, called a new creation. His right-hand man, Joseph Gelineau, S.J., said of the new rite, “We have to speak frankly. The Roman Rite no longer exists. It has been destroyed.” He should know. He was one of the principal destroyers.

Father Kramer went on to discuss the belief of some, including Mr. Likoudis, that Pope Paul VI superceded Pope Saint Pius V's Quo Primum when promulgating the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969:

Now this leads us to that day in 1969, November 19. Pope Paul VI, in his Wednesday audience, makes the announcement that there is going to be a change in the liturgy in the Latin Church. Mass is going to be celebrated differently than it has been celebrated before. And he notes how strange this is because of the Mass being considered as the traditional and untouchable expression of our religious cult and our faith.

Evidently Pope Paul VI did not consider that point very deeply. In what manner?, he should have asked. In what manner is the Mass considered to be the traditional and untouchable expression of our religious cult? The answer to that question is that it is the infallible teaching of the Catholic faith that we must embrace and adhere to the traditional Rites of our respective ritual Churches.

One time I spoke with a priest about this question and before I could even get the argument out of my mouth, he said “this can’t be a matter of faith because the Tridentine Mass, the Roman Rite, didn’t even exist at the time of the death of the last apostle. So how can the Tridentine Mass be a matter of divine law?” And that’s when I said, “I’ll answer your question. The law of God is expressed in the infallible professions of faith. The Tridentine Profession of Faith binds all Catholics to adhere to the traditional liturgy, the received and approved Rites. Why are they called received and approved? Because they are approved in-so-far as they have been hallowed by tradition, the authoritative handing down of the Rites. They are the very patrimony that we have received down through the ages from apostolic tradition, from the Fathers. We have received our sacred liturgy through the vehicle of tradition. It is not an authentic liturgy if it has not been received through the vehicle of tradition. And that is because the law of God, as it is defined by the Church and explained by St. Paul, is that the liturgy is to be handed over by the vehicle of tradition.

Pope Paul VI, not understanding that this is a matter of divine and Catholic Faith solemnly professed in the Tridentine Profession of Faith, announced that this liturgy was going to be changed. There would be great changes in the liturgy. And how can this be, since the Mass, as Montini himself admitted, is considered to be the untouchable, traditional expression of our religious cult and our faith?

When we speak of the loss of faith we are told about by Our Lady of Fatima in the Third Secret, we can see this point had already been obscured. Since the Protestant Reformation there has been such an emphasis on doctrinal clarity in the refutations of the false doctrines of the Protestants that the Church’s teaching regarding liturgy has been neglected. And being neglected, it was forgotten. And so when the changes were made, they were put into practice by those who, in positions of high authority, had neglected the Church’s teaching in making these changes. And this is why the Third Secret deals with the negligence of the pastors in the upper hierarchy of the Church.

The “Promulgation” of the New Mass?

Before I get to Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, I must point out that if we read very astutely the decree Missale Romanum of Pope Paul VI, we’ll see that Pope Paul VI never decreed, he never promulgated, the new Rite of Mass to replace the old Rite. In fact, he never properly promulgated the Mass at all.

In one of my conversations with the late Bishop Salvador Lazo I pointed out, “Your Excellency, you must be very astute when you read these documents because they are very tricky. They seem to insinuate and imply one thing, without actually stating it. They have the appearance of decreeing something into law, but if you look very carefully, nothing at all is decreed.” Bishop Lazo answered me, “but Rome, the Vatican, the heads of the Roman Curia, the dicasteries, they’re our Spiritual Fathers. Our relationship to them is that of filial piety to our Spiritual Fathers. So we did not expect that we needed to read their documents so astutely.” And he became very angry because he said “they took advantage of our filial piety and they tricked us.”

At the end of the sessions of Vatican II, some of the bishops asked the Council Secretary Carinal Pericle Felici for what theologians call the "theological note" of the Council. Cardinal Felici replied, "We have to distinguish according to the schemas and the chapters those which have already been the subject of dogmatic definitions of the past; as for the declarations which have a novel character, we have to make reservations."

In the Vatican II, so- called, Roman Missal, which does not have the Roman Rite in it but the Rite of Pope Paul VI, you will see at the end of the document that Pope Paul VI very solemnly says “what we have decreed will go into force on the following November 30 of next year.” Now people read that, as they did more than thirty years ago, “What we have decreed is going to have the force of law next November. That means this missal is going to be the law of the Church. This is the missal that we have to use starting next November.” That was the impression they wanted to create. But they would not take the responsibility of actually legislating that.

Then you re-read the entire document. Read the whole thing again. What was decreed? What actually did that document decree? What did he so solemnly declare was going to have the force of law in the following November? There are precisely two decrees in that apostolic constitution, Missale Romanum, of Pope Paul VI. He decrees that three new Eucharistic prayers are to be printed in this book. He decrees what are to be the words of consecration that are to appear in all four Eucharistic prayers. That is the only thing that he decrees in that entire document, the so-called Roman Missal. Read it carefully. You will see that there is nothing else decreed in the entire document. A new Rite of Mass is not promulgated in that decree.

Look at Pope Pius V’s Quo Primum Tempore; now that is promulgation. Henceforth, in perpetuity, this missal is to be used by all priests in all churches of the Roman Rite, in all religious houses, and except for those Rites that are more than 200 years old, all other missals are henceforth to be utterly discarded. Now this is what we call legislation. Missale Romanum of Pope Paul VI merely presents a book and makes decrees on some new prayers to be printed in the book; there is nothing of a disciplinary nature in it. The new missal is not prescribed to be used, or even permitted to be used, by anyone. There is no authorization whatsoever for the use of that new missal by Pope Paul VI.

Who are subject to the use of this new missal? Not a single word. Who may use this missal? Where may it be used? Not a single word. That’s why we have the very curious arrangement. In the title of the document it says ‘promulgation’. We read the text of the document and we see that nothing has been promulgated. Just imagine if the solemn definition of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven were missing the one key passage where Pope Pius XII says we define, we state, we declare that it is a dogma, a revealed dogma of the Catholic faith that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the end of Her life was assumed, body and soul, into Heaven. What would be the dogmatic value, the dogmatic force of that document? It would be absolutely worthless. It would not be a definition if it did not have that line. No matter what the title of the document, no matter how many pages of solemn language is in that document, if that one sentence where the actual definition is made does not appear in that document, then the document is null and void. As a definition, it’s nothing. It’s worthless.

Now it pertains to the very nature of a law that a law must be prescriptive in its words. In other words, the law must command, it must impose an obligation on those who are subject to the law. It must be clear who are subject to the law. It must be clear exactly what is being commanded. If these things are not found in a precept, or in a law, then it is simply not a law, because that which constitutes the very essence, the very substance of law, is missing. A law that does not command the subject to do or not to do something is like a definition that does not define. “Lex dubia lex nulla.” A doubtful law is no law. “Lex dubia non obligat,” the dubious law does not bind, because a law must clearly give a precept — impose a legal obligation on those who are specified as the subjects.

Missale Romanum plainly fails to do this. It is not a law regarding the discipline of the Church. It does not command or authorize anyone to use the missal of Pope Paul VI. And this is why we find a second promulgation. Missale Romanum calls itself a promulgation. Turn the page after you reach the end of the document and you find a promulgation by the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship signed by Cardinal Gut, promulgating the new missal after it was just purportedly promulgated by Pope Paul VI in Missale Romanum. Very strange indeed.

It is impossible for a Cardinal Prefect of a Roman congregation, even with authorization from the Pope, to overrule and abrogate the solemn decrees of a Roman Pontiff in an apostolic constitution. That’s clear even from the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It is the embodiment of an ancient legal principle that has been in the Church’s canonical tradition for centuries and centuries: “inferior non potest tollere legem superioris”.

But the promulgation of Cardinal Gut did not even attempt to suppress the missal of Pope Pius V. It went so far only as to permit the use of the new missal, stating that the bishops are the ones who will be given the authority to say when the new missal may be used. That’s as far as the promulgation of the new missal ever went. It is only a permision. It is to be implemented by the bishops. It is an error, therefore, for anyone to say that the missal of Pope Paul VI was promulgated for the universal Church of the Latin Rite. It simply was not. It was only given that appearance. But the key phrases that would constitute a law, a true promulgation as a law for the universal discipline of the Church, is nowhere to be found in the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum.

Therefore, priests trained by Opus Dei present a baseless argument when they say “Well, Father, how can there be defects? How can there be anything wrong with the new Mass since it was promulgated for the Universal Church?” That’s an error of fact. It was never promulgated for the whole Church. It is only permitted by way of exception.

Is the new Mass defective? Indeed it is. The Second Vatican Council decreed how the revision of the liturgy must be carried out. I quote the exact words of Sacrosanctum Concilium. “It must be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition.” The basic principle of tradition in the development of liturgy is a gradual organic growth, like the child who grows up to be an adult. If we cut off the head and transplant the head of someone else on a human being, that would not be a natural organic development. Yet there were wholesale amputations done on the venerable customary liturgy of the Roman Church.

The Council decreed that “due care must be taken to preserve the substance of the liturgical Rites”. — Sacrosanctum Concilium, 23. Then the reform was carried out and implemented and the head of the concilium (which was the body constituted by Pope Paul VI to revise the liturgy), Monsignor Bugnini, declares that it is truly a new creation; and his right-hand man, Father Gelineau, says the Roman Rite has been destroyed. It no longer exists.

I’d like to know what happened to the due care to preserve the substance of the Rites!

An Ecumenical Liturgy

Another of that gang of liturgical vandals was Father Carlo Braga. The Council decreed that the liturgy must be restored according to the pristine norms of the Holy Fathers. According to the liturgical reformers who created the new Rite, they made their changes with what Father Braga called “an ecumenical dimension and” now ponder these words, “a new foundation of Eucharistic theology”. No longer the theology of the Council of Trent, the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. But a new foundation of Eucharistic theology.

And as we go through them one by one, we see that the changes made in the liturgy reflect exactly those changes undertaken by the Protestant Reformers in the 16th Century. Does it not seem to be more than coincidence that all the changes made in the liturgy were precisely those made by the Protestant Reformers? And whatever was found to be offensive to the Protestants, whatever was most dear to traditional Catholic Eucharistic doctrine and the doctrine of the Holy Mass, was either toned down or removed altogether from the liturgy, so that one of the Protestant observers at Vatican II, who helped and gave advice in making the new liturgy, said that “Evangelical Protestants with all tranquility may use this new Rite of Mass.” The “new foundation” of Eucharistic theology is clearly Protestant.

But when we speak of restoration of the liturgy according to the pristine norms of the Holy Fathers, what this means is expressed in the words of Pope Leo XIII, where he explains in Orientalum Dignitas, that the Church allows and makes provision for some innovations in exterior forms, mostly when they are in conformity with the ancient past, which is to say, mostly when those changes are in the nature of a restoration. This is exactly what Pope St. Pius V did. He restored the liturgy according to the norms of the ancient Fathers. This was the expressed will of the Council of Trent according to the custom and the norm of the ancient Fathers. Sacrosanctum Concilium used that almost identical expression — according to the pristine norms of the Holy Fathers.

This makes it very clear that it is unlawful to make radical changes in the liturgy that reflect a Protestantized doctrine of the Mass and the sacraments in general, and the Holy Eucharist in particular.

The need to preserve the substance of the liturgical Rites is a matter of faith. As I pointed out, it is in the Tridentine Profession of Faith that Catholics are enjoined to hold onto, to embrace, to receive and admit those Rites which are the received and approved Rites of the Sacred Liturgy used in the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of the sacraments.

Sometimes those who would defend the new liturgy will point to some theologian like Tanqueray, or others, who said that the Rites may be changed by no one except the Pope. I must ask the question: Could the Popes have been wrong in their solemn profession for 600 years? The very first act made by a Pope starting with Pope St. Agatho was to make a solemn profession and oath upon his coronation as Roman Pontiff in which he solemnly swore and solemnly professed that he did not have the power and he would not change the discipline and the Rite of the Church. He invokes the wrath of God upon himself if he should dare to change it or allow it to be changed.

Now this does not mean that absolutely nothing can ever be changed in the liturgy? As I pointed out, according to the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, changes that are mainly of a nature of a restoration, can be made. Minor accretions are permitted. And it pertains to the authority of the Pope to restore the liturgy, to preserve the liturgy, as was taught by Pope Pius XI. It is the duty of the Popes to preserve the liturgy and to protect it from adulteration.

For 600 years, that solemn Oath of Profession was made by one Pope after another from the days of St. Agatho until Pope Boniface VIII. It has been explained by various Popes that the Pope has the power to modify the discipline of the Church, to modify it according to the present needs of the Church. But to make modifications is one thing. To make drastic alterations, to abolish it altogether and replace it with something else, is something that the Popes have solemnly professed for 600 years that they do not possess the power to do.

Father Kramer is not the only who who contradicts the tired old canards of the defenders of the Novus Ordo Missae. None other than Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos took the legs out from anyone, including Mr. Likoudis, who claimed in his review that my book might lead people into "disobedience and schism," that the Society of Saint Pius X is not out of the Church and that its priests and lay members are not in schism. This was pointed out on this site in Loyal to the Faith, Not in Schism and Give the Faithful Their Due. Once again, though, a few quotes from His Eminence, who has repeated this theme on no less than four different occasions in four different venues in recent months, are in order:

"They [the Society of Saint Pius X] are within the confines of the Church. The problem is just that there is a lack of full, a more perfect--and as it was said during the meeting with Msgr. Fellay--a more full communion, because communion exists."

Once again, Mr. Likoudis takes no notice of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos's remarks, which have not been contradicted by Pope Benedict XVI.

It is a painful thing to have to admit that one is wrong. I know. I was wrong about my sanguine beliefs concerning the compatibility of the American founding with the Faith. I was wrong in my belief that the "abuses" in the Novus Ordo Missae could be fixed, which was the subject of heated discussions I had with several people twenty years ago this very year. They were right. I was wrong. I was wrong because I had not known or seen the truth clearly. The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, among many others, saw this. So did many of the early champions of Tradition, some of whose stories are told in Priest, Where Is Thy Mass? Mass Where Is Thy Priest? We must pray that men such as Mr. Likoudis, who really do have the good of Holy Mother Church at heart, will come to realize what even many scholars who do not assist at the Mass of Tradition have come to recognize: a liturgical revolution was fomented upon Catholics by revolutionaries intent on imposing a Protestantized liturgy in what is considered to be the "normative" Mass for most Roman Rite Catholics. Continuing to present misinformation does nothing but make it more difficult for one to face our situation honestly and to embrace the fullness of Tradition without compromise and without delay.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.