CathInfo.com

....... to correct in the new Mass some of the more widespread abuses, to eliminate or correct some of the inherent ambiguities, to reintroduce some of the many prayers in the text of the Mass that were suppressed, to restore at least some use of Latin in the liturgy, altar rails, and communion on the tongue - the so-called "reform of the reform" of Pope Benedict XVI, who himself was somewhat scathing in criticizing some of the terrible liturgical abuses that in many places de facto became the norm after the Council, always keeping in mind though what the indefectibility of the Church, at a minimum, requires.

But the new mass *is* the abuse of the True Mass - the willful denial of this truth is where you err. Accept the fact that after 50 years, they have the "mass" that they always wanted - we know this because it was perpetrated to do exactly what it has done and has proven itself to be a better destroyer than expected I'm sure.

Those places where the "New Liturgy" has been truly understood and fully implemented carries on willy nilly with things that would be abuses for the true Mass, but not the new mass.

Your mistake is that you are thinking of those places where the priests and people have as yet failed to fully implement the NO because they still cling to the thought of what the mass was, not what it is and has been, ever since V2.


At this point, I would certainly like an answer from anyone who denies the above fact as to why so many of those who claim the name "traditional Catholic" do not believe this.

It's one thing to say "I go to the NO because I have no TLM within a reasonable distance and my conscience tortures me if I don't go to church." It's another to talk about how "very well done" your NO mass is.

That the simple, sound and practically realizable proposal of Bishop Fellay should have so many detractors is not altogether unsurprising perhaps. At any rate, it is not primarily about aesthetic or linguistic changes, but substantive doctrinal and theological revisions and additions in the actual Mass texts that he asked for, and which could be easily done by Rome, and accepted worldwide, without her losing face or authority. It is the inherent ambiguity of some prayers, the equivocations and the glaring omissions that make the new rite rather impoverished in comparison with the doctrinal splendor and theological precision of those of the old. I doubt Bishop Fellay doesn't find himself in complete agreement with the letter and spirit of the Ottaviani intervention.

If the new Mass was always offered in Latin versus Deum many people may never have noticed the differences in the Mass text, but those are in fact the most troubling. These can be corrected to a large extent without too much difficulty and a gradual return to orthopraxis will assuredly follow. Again, some of the Roman authorities have been favorable to some of His Excellency's proposals and have readily admitted that reasonable corrections could and should be made.

Some people have an all or nothing mentality, wanting absurdly to scale as it were a 100 storey building in a single bound, reluctant to proceed a step at a time toward the same end, no matter how impractical and utterly unrealizable that former is. Meanwhile, souls perish for want of instruction.

Yes, Stubborn, I've read Fr. Wathen too and while I agree with some of his criticisms, that isn't really the point here.

The fact is of the estimated 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, there are about an estimated 1 million or so who identify as traditional Catholics. The vast majority of Catholics currently live and die without access to the traditional Mass. If then the Society has a reasonable opportunity to secure some improvements in the condition of the mainstream Church, without changing anything on its part, does it not have the obligation to try? All of this aside and beside working for a wider restoration and Roman approval of the traditional Mass in its own right to every parish and diocese.

If you want to claim Catholics who believe every dogma of the faith, including the Real Presence, transubstantiation, the Mass as propitiatory sacrifice etc are not really Catholics but are Protestants, then we will have to differ on that, Protestants do not believe those doctrines nor recognize the authority of the Church in any way.

The reality in many places, often where the abuses are the worst, are that there has been a concomitant loss of faith in the reality of Our Lord's presence, the fact of transubstantiation, the Mass as Sacrifice and the like. These are serious defects that need to be duly corrected, and poorly catechized Catholics need to receive better instruction in faith, above all by the public worship of the Mass, the Church's law of prayer, and by its orientation toward God and His glory.

Still in other places, the situation is better, the claim that the new Mass always and everywhere inevitably and without regard to other external factors and to how it is implemented definitely and invariably leads to a loss of faith, an emptying of churches, a collapse of vocations is contradicted by the facts. In places in Africa, for example, the complete opposite is true, in the last 30 odd years, vocations have increased, belief in the basics of the faith is solid, the Church has grown in leaps and bounds, and vocations have skyrocketed.

If these things are dismissed as irrelevant, and they probably will be, then those who do so should at least should just come out and admit that they don't really care about it, they don't really care about the condition and faith of Catholics in the mainstream Church, and it's just a pretext they use to go after Bishop Fellay.

All that is to say nothing of the bare minimum the indefectibility of the Church requires, and what Pope Benedict XVI established, which is not even taken into account in any way by many who treat this opinion about its allegedly assuredly catastrophic results as dogmatic fact and universal truth.

Archbishop Lefebvre always had a pastoral solicitude for faithful Catholics in the mainstream Church and was concerned that they by habitual exposure to abuses may lose their faith and reverence for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. In my opinion, sure to be met with another torrent of downthumbs, in this at least Bishop Fellay has demonstrated only exemplary fidelity to Archbishop Lefebvre.

Bugnini was the key man in the liturgical reform. I went to see Cardinal Cicognani ... He replied: "Excellency, it is like that. Bugnini can enter as he likes into the Pope's office to make him sign what he wants." This is what happened to the Secretariat of State. This is how all these changes happened. They agreed on it beforehand, and then obtained signatures for some changes, and then others, and then others.

I said to Cardinal Gut:

Your Eminence, you are responsible for Divine Worship, and you accord permission for the Blessed Sacrament to be received in the hand! They will know that this was published with the agreement of the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship!

He replied:

Excellency, I do not even know if I will be asked for it to be done. You know, it is not I who command. The boss is Bugnini. If the pope asks me what I think of Communion in the hand, I will cast myself on my knees before him to ask him not to do it.

You see, then, how things happened at Rome: a simple signature on the bottom of a decree and the Church is ruined by numerous sacrileges... The real presence of Our Lord is ruined, for it is no longer respected ... the Blessed Sacrament was passed around from hand to hand between thousands of persons. Nobody genuflects anymore before the Blessed Sacrament. How can they still believe that God is present there?