Counter-Reformation Association

NEWS AND VIEWS

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Autumn AD 1997                                                                                                        Michaelmas
Beata Mater, et intacta Virgo, gloriosa
Regina mundi, intercede pro nobis ad Dominum

THE ANTI-TRIDENTINE NEW MASS
PART I – AN APOLOGIST FOR THE NEW MASS

At the heart of the Catholic resistance against the anti-Catholic Conciliar Reform is the witness against the anti-Tridentine New Mass. The deservedly well-known writer, Michael Davies, has, over the past year, found himself ever more widely recognised as the leading High Church Conciliarist apologist for the New Mass. Mr Davies finds himself cast in this somewhat paradoxical role - given his own extensive critique of the New Mass, and his personal wish to see it abrogated - because of his concern to remain part of the Conciliar Church.
He is absolutely right to maintain that one cannot reject a papally approved rite of Mass. Given that the New Mass was promulgated by Paul VI and has been repeatedly endorsed by John Paul II, a Catholic cannot consistently reject the New Mass and go on recognising those two putative Popes as valid Roman pontiffs. He is also correct in maintaining that there is no hope of a reconciliation between the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X and Conciliar Rome, so long as the Fraternity refuses to recognise the New Mass as a Catholic rite of Mass.
The doctrinal basis of those facts, of course, is the indefectibility in the Faith, through the acts of its pontiffs, of the Holy Roman Church. If the New Mass has come to us from the Holy Roman Church, then it is necessarily a Catholic rite of Mass, not only intrinsically valid but also possessing doctrinal rectitude.
Those who call into question the doctrinal rectitude of the New Mass are expressly excluded from benefiting from the 1984 Conciliar Indult for the use of the 1962 Missal. The same applies to those priests who would obtain an "Ecclesia Dei" Commission Celebret.
The condition of having nothing to do with (nullam partem habere) those who deny the doctrinal rectitude of the New Mass, is essential to the functioning of the International. Una Voce Federation. of which. Mr Davies is currently president; and of its affiliated societies. Those bodies want Conciliar approval for their John XXIII Masses, so have to pay the price. Mr Davies takes his "having nothing to do with" those who deny doctrinal rectitude to the New Mass to the point of treating them as Orwellian unpersons  whose very existence is not to be acknowledged  if their theological expertise is sufficient to expose his own errors.
Mr Davies is the author of a remarkable sophistry to justify this “1984” practice (cf. his article "The New Mass and Indefectibility", first published in the October 1996 "Catholic", and then republished in the 15 April 1997 issue of The Remnant). The argument runs:- The only people who could logically call into question the doctrinal rectitude of the New Mass are the sedevacantists, who deny that Paul VI and John Paul II are true popes. But sedevacantists are schismatics, so their opinions on theological issues, such as the New Mass's lack of doctrinal rectitude, are of no relevance to members of the indefectible Church founded by Our Lord.  the corollary of which is that their theological analyses of the New Mass do not have to be taken into account by Mr Davies (or his editors)! The speciousness of the reasoning is worthy of Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
Mr Davies is repeatedly guilty of the fallacy which textbooks of logic refer to as "petitio principii"  begging the question. That is, he repeatedly assumes the truth of what he has to prove. He is content to assert dogmatically (in the pejorative sense of providing no evidence or supporting argument) that it is a "fact that Paul VI was a true pope". What concerns us here, however, is the convenient corollary of Mr Davies's fallacies: that he can ignore our theological refutations, while having a merry time showing up the theological incompetence of his habemuspapamist critics.
The issue of substance remains the status of the New Mass. That it is devotionally and doctrinally inferior to the traditional Roman rite is accepted by High Church Conciliarists. What they must deny is that the New Mass lacks doctrinal rectitude, or indeed has any characteristics or inevitable effects which would oblige one to conclude that it is not a legitimate Catholic rite of Mass.
Here, in fact, is the essential dilemma for any High Church Conciliarist whose position is based on anything other than personal preference. He has to adopt a dual stance. As a High Churchman, he has to find doctrinal fault with the New Mass; as a Conciliarist, he has to defend it against the charge that it is not a legitimate Catholic rite of Mass.
Could anyone make a more damning judgment on the reality of the New Mass than that made, for example, by the late Mgr Klaus Gamber: "The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith which was the source of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and his Church, the inspiration of countless Catholics over many centuries" (cf. The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, page 102)?
The reconciliation of that kind of judgment with the Catholic status of the New Mass is the problem which Mr Davies struggles to resolve. It is made no easier for him when, as he has so frequently observed himself over many years, the New Mass is presented by Paul VI and John Paul II as an essential part of the allegedly divinely-inspired renewal of the Church which has resulted from Vatican II.
The only apparent way of reconciling the destruction of the faith and life of the Church, which has resulted in large part from the New Mass, with its purported Catholic status, is to make a sharp distinction between the various species of New Masses which constitute the generic New Mass. Only the Latin New Mass as it appears in the 1970 typical edition of the New Missal is, according to Mr Davies, covered by the indefectibility of the Church.
The curious reader might be excused for wondering why it has to be the 1970 typical edition? Was not the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae (with its Institutio Generalis) the one actually promulgated by Paul V1 in his putative Apoltolic Constitution "Missale Romanum" (3 April 1969)?  Surely Mr Davies is not suggesting that indefectibility failed to operate in 1969, but then put in a thankful reappearance the following year, when the Institutio Generalis was revised, though leaving the Novus Ordo substantially unchanged? But then, of course, it was against the Latin text of that edition that Cardinals Bacci and Ottaviani made their historic witness: "...the Novus Ordo Missae... represents, as a whole and in detail, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent..."
Even the less curious reader might well wonder how it is that indefectibility covers a version of the New Mass very rarely used anywhere in the world, but fails to cover even the most official vernacular forms used daily over entire continents; more especially when Paul VI (in "Missale Romanum") expressly envisaged such vernacular celebrations, and they have been accepted for a quarter of a century by - and even used by - Paul VI and his "successors".
Mr Davies is fond of quoting, as an authority on the question of indefectibility, the "Dictionaire de Theologie Catholique". This says: "The indefectibiity of the Church extends only to what is mandated or authorised by the Roman Pontiff as a universal law or practice." Mr Davies rightly says that such laws and practices as apply to the whole Roman Rite are regarded as "universal" in this context. What he has repeatedly failed to notice, or to acknowledge, is that this favourite quotation precisely does not say that the indefectibility of the Church is limited to such universal laws and practices as are mandated by the Roman Pontiff, but rather is limited to such universal laws and practices as are "mandated or authorised by the Roman Pontiff".   (Emphasis added)
Certainly, there are practices de facto associated with the New Mass which have not been mandated by the alleged Roman Pontiff. These include reception of Communion in the hand, or given by extraordinary ministers. However, it is not apparent how such practices can be said not to be universally authorised by those Mr Davies recognises as Popes. Which poses the awkward dilemma for him as to whether he is heretically denying them the authority to do what they have done, or whether he is simply schismatically refusing to accept their rulings?
While all this is relevant to Mr Davies's attempts to reconcile his own criticisms of the New Mass with its supposed Catholic status, it does not, of course, deal directly with his own liturgical fig leaf: the claim that the Latin New Mass enjoys doctrinal rectitude.
What is quite clear is that Mr Davies, over many years, has simply failed to understand what a new Mass-rite's possession or failure to possess doctrinal rectitude involves.
To possess doctrinal rectitude, it is necessary that the chief elements in a new rite of Mass should have the same meanings which they have in other developed rites of Mass, even though, of course;  their precise formulas may be different. If, on the contrary, any of the chief elements in a purported new rite of Mass has a new meaning, excluding that found in other developed rites, then such a Novus Ordo lacks doctrinal rectitude. In particular, a new rite of Mass which is presented as the replacement of an existing rite - as is the case with the New Mass and the Tridentine Mass - cannot be held to possess doctrinal rectitude if it repudiates the doctrinal significance of one or more principal element in the rite it replaces.
Once that point is understood, the New Mass's lack of doctrinal rectitude is so obvious that it hardly needs detailed demonstration. No one would deny that the offertory is a principal element in any eucharistic rite. Yet anyone who has ever read the offertory prayers of the Tridentine Mass will know - contrary to the erroneous statements so carelessly made in "traditional" catechetical texts - that they concern the offering of the Body and Blood of Christ, separated in sacrificial death, and are not prayers offering bread and wine. That, however, is precisely what they become in the New Mass.
Likewise, in the Roman Canon of the Tridentine Mass, the words of consecration -in accordance with developed sacramental teaching - are carefully distinguished from Our Saviour's other words of institution of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In the New Mass, not only are the traditional Roman words of consecration discarded, but the specific sacramental form is confounded with Our Lord's words of institution in general.
These are two precise doctrinal charges directed against the Latin New Mass. Their truth is manifest, and the entailment is indubitable: the Latin New Mass lacks doctrinal rectitude and consequently is not a legitimate Catholic rite of Mass.
W. J. Morgan  29 IX 97

LORD JESUS CHRIST, GRANT US A TRUE POPE.
OUR LADY OF VICTORIES, PRAY FOR US.