Love—or Veiled Hatred?

Now, in regard to liturgy, the Traditional Mass preserves a reverent environment well suited to nurturing love. The language, the music, and the liturgical actions of the priest(s), server(s) and the congregation all combine to focus human action into an act of love.

The Novus Ordo has this potential as well. For example, I know of a chapel where the Novus Ordo is celebrated mainly in English (once a week in Latin), while still using the original altar; the priest faces the tabernacle rather than the people; the Kyrie, when sung, is sung in Greek; the Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, when sung, are chanted in Latin; Extraordinary Ministers of Communion are not used; and many in the congregation receive Communion on the tongue while kneeling at the altar rail.

Cheating Yourself of Love....

So where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you at Mass, doesn’t it? It leaves you in a place where you get angry at others because they don’t do what you think they should do. It leaves you hating others because, in shirking their responsibilities, they demonstrate that they don’t love God—but your hatred for them leaves you hating God too. Your dilemma is that you are surrounded by people who don’t know how to love God and that you’re one of them, too.

The problem isn’t with the Novus Ordo.

The problem is that, because of the way your parents treated you, you fear love—and, because you fear love, you have been suppressing your anger just enough to keep it out of sight but not enough to prevent it from leaking out when you are most vulnerable. In your case, you are most vulnerable when others’ lack of respect for your sense of duty causes you to catch a momentary glimpse of the truth that duty is not love. Your anger is just a puff of smoke—a magician’s trick—that allows you to quickly remove from sight your lack of love for God and replace it with your indignation that others lack love for God.

Conclusion: Self-deceived

In the end, no matter what prayer and liturgical practices you follow, if they are not leading you to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength; if they are not leading you to forsake the world and its enticements; if they are not leading you to live a chaste and modest lifestyle; and if they are not leading you to treat others with forgiveness and compassion, then, to borrow an expression from Saint James, you are self-deceived.

If you check the so-called "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (it's online at the Vatican web site) and read what the "new and improved" Catholic Church's position is on the Mass, you'll find page upon page of syrupy goop but not a word about a sacrifice or any propitiatory intent or the expiation of sins.

1322 The holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord's own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.

1323 "At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet 'in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.'"135

II. WHAT IS THIS SACRAMENT CALLED?

The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church's offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, "sacrifice of praise," spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used,150 since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.

In the institution narrative, the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ's body and blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all.

1358 We must therefore consider the Eucharist as:

- thanksgiving and praise to the Father;
- the sacrificial memorial of Christ and his Body;
- the presence of Christ by the power of his word and of his Spirit.

1364 In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.185 "As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out."186

1365 Because it is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: "This is my body which is given for you" and "This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood."187 In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."188

1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:

[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.189

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different." "And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner. . . this sacrifice is truly propitiatory."190

Even a "reverent" Novus Ordo Missæ in Latin (and a Greek Kyrie) with all the bells and smells is the same Mass that appalled Cardinal Ottaviani and Abp. Lefebvre and Padre Pio, to name a few – if it's even really a Mass.

By October 1967, the Consilium had produced a complete draft revision of the liturgy, and this revision was presented to the Synod of Bishops that met in Rome in that month. The bishops attended the first public celebration of the revised rite in the Sistine Chapel. When asked to vote on the new liturgy, 71 bishops voted placet (approved), 43 voted non placet (not approved) and 62 voted placet iuxta modum (approved with reservations). In response to the bishops' concerns, some changes were made to the text.

On 25 September 1969, two retired cardinals, 79-year-old Alfredo Ottaviani and 84-year-old Antonio Bacci, wrote a letter with which they sent Pope Paul VI the text of the "Short Critical Study on the New Order of Mass", which had been prepared in the previous June by a group of twelve theologians under the direction of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.[8] The cardinals warned the New Order of the Mass “represented, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent."[9][10] The study that they transmitted said that on many points the New Mass had much to gladden the heart of even the most modernist Protestant.[11][12] Paul VI asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department of the Roman Curia that Ottaviani had earlier headed, to examine the Short Critical Study. It responded on 12 November 1969 that the docuмent contained many affirmations that were "superficial, exaggerated, inexact, emotional and false".[13] However, some of its observations were taken into account in preparing the definitive version of the new Order of the Mass.

However, some of its observations were taken into account in preparing the definitive version of the new Order of the Mass.

"The problem isn’t with the Novus Ordo.

The problem is that, because of the way your parents treated you...