Sermon of Fr. Denis Puga (SSPX)
Given on 7/18/21
at St. Nicollet du Chardonet
"There are great theologians, old ones, who cannot be accused of being dissidents, who have examined the possibility of a schismatic pope and they say that it would be a pope who would cut himself off from the Tradition of the Church. Are we not there?"
Father Denis Puga delivered this sermon on Sunday, July 18, 2021 in the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.
My dear brothers,Something happened on Friday, as you know, you have heard about it, this motu proprio that came out, Traditionis Custodes, which marks, one could say, the end of a ceasefire on the liturgical front. Pope Francis has decided, with authority, not to say authoritarianism, to remove all the concessions - which were only concessions - made by Pope Benedict XVI, through his motu proprio Summorum Pontificuм.This is an event of great importance for the history of the Church and I would like, especially for the younger among you, to recall how we arrived at this point in this terrible crisis of the Church. For the older among you, or the old ones like me, the mass that you are attending here was the mass that was celebrated in all the churches of the world, we didn't have to worry about where we went to mass. You went to a village on a Sunday, you went to the village parish, and you had this mass, it was universally received everywhere. And then in 1969, following the Second Vatican Council, and as a result of the Second Vatican Council, a new liturgy was invented from scratch by intellectual Roman liturgists who spent more time in libraries and offices than in the field of ministry and pastoral work. Moreover, Protestant pastors were associated with those who prepared this new Ordo Missae, and when we know the fundamental difference between the Protestant conception of the liturgy and the Mass and Catholicism, we can see that there was already something, a bad leaven in this new liturgy. This new liturgy, my dear brothers, the oldest among you are witnesses of it, was imposed by force, yes by force, everywhere there was a resistance of the faithful and even of the priests. Many priests, religious, religious congregations, did not want this new mass, and it was imposed by force.This new liturgy was silent on essential aspects of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, especially on its propitiatory aspect, which is why from 1970 there was an immediate reaction. As soon as the new Mass was promulgated, there was resistance from people who said, "No, we'll keep the traditional Mass. It was a way of protecting themselves against this new doctrine of a Church that wanted to focus on a Eucharist that was "sharing", "bread broken for a living world", as they say, and no longer the renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross. Of course, among them was Archbishop Lefebvre who, in order to maintain this traditional conception of the priest and the Mass, founded the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. A few years later, in 1984, as the number of faithful who were resisting began to grow, and the media began to talk about it more and more, Pope John Paul II made a decision: that of once again allowing, in certain cases, with very drastic conditions, the possibility of celebrating the traditional Mass, known as the "Mass of St. Pius V". It was simply to declare that we had no part with Archbishop Lefebvre's positions on the Council. You know that the crisis in the Church has only increased. In 1988, following what had happened two years earlier, the drama of Assisi, that unheard of, unimaginable meeting of all religions on the tomb of St. Francis, the great saint who bore the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that ecuмenical meeting where all religions prayed, where the Buddha was installed on the tabernacle from which the real presence had been removed, you know that Archbishop Lefebvre on this occasion had consecrated bishops, which caused a great commotion but which was necessary for the continuation of this fight. Rome instituted a commission, the Ecclesia Dei commission, intended to welcome all those who did not want to follow - dixit - "Archbishop Lefebvre in his schism", although there was no schism. The Mass was, in a certain way, allowed again, but always nullam partem, it was not necessary to have any link with those who criticized Vatican II.Then came 2007, after the ɛƖɛctıon of Pope Benedict XVI. No doubt Pope Benedict XVI had a guilty conscience because he had been Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during the discussions with Archbishop Lefebvre. When he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he had presided over a commission that examined the case of whether the traditional Mass had been banned in 1969. That commission, by more than a 90% majority, answered that canonically the traditional Mass had never been abolished. But this decision of the commission was kept silent, it was kept in the archives, it was not mentioned. It is quite possible that Pope Benedict XVI, precisely because of this bad conscience, has re-established the right of the city for the traditional Mass. He has allowed the cohabitation of the Mass of St. Pius V alongside the new Mass, with the freedom for any priest to celebrate this Mass and for any faithful to attend. It was under this regime that many could attend this age-old rite.There was something aberrant, not that there were two rites in the Latin Church, but to have two rites side by side, one of which was ancient, traditional, legitimate, and the other which was not, because the new Mass was not legitimate, not because it had not been promulgated by the authority of the Holy See, but because it departed from the traditional doctrine on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. To take an example, it is a bit like a father who one day abandons his legitimate wife and marries an illegitimate one, and asks his children: "Recognize now this illegitimate woman as your mother", and the children refuse. At that point the father would say, "I'm going to cohabit with the legitimate and illegitimate, there will be two in the house so everyone will be happy." You can imagine that this would not clarify the situation. We were living in this somewhat shaky situation until the day before yesterday, when Pope Francis issued this motu proprio. A motu proprio is a decision of the Pope himself that he imposes. It reduces to a minimum, in a harsh, severe, extremely rigid tone, one could even say dictatorial, to an infinitesimal possibility of attending or celebrating the Mass of St. Pius V, it is like a kind of excommunication since the Pope himself says that there is only one rite left in the Latin Church, that is the new Ordo Missae.Well dear brothers, this goes against what Pope St. Pius V said in his bull in 1570, the 14th of July, that's why I celebrate the 14th of July, not for other reasons. Pope St. Pius V had made this bull in which he declared for those who used the traditional missal: "We grant and we concede" that this missal - and this he did in the name of his apostolic authority - "this missal will be able to be followed in any church whatsoever, without any scruples of conscience and without resorting to any punishment, condemnation, that freely and licitly", said Pope St. Pius V, and "in perpetuity, for ever." Why? Because this Mass had reached its ultimate development, expressed in a perfect way all the faith of the Church in the holy sacrament of the altar, in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Yes, St. Pius V did not invent a rite, and Pope Benedict XVI rightly said that instead of "St. Pius V's Mass" we should say "Gregorian Mass", because it goes back in all its substance to Pope St. Gregory, from the sixth century. I remember, not long ago, having had the opportunity to consult a codex of the Irish monks of the IXth century, that is to say more than 1100 years ago, a handwritten codex because there was no printing press at the time, it was used to say the mass, and I found in it, while reading it, all the prayers that I celebrate, that I say every day at the mass. Thus a link exists between these monks who celebrated mass more than 1000 years ago and ourselves. You see that today we speak a lot about "Church communion", it must not be a Church communion only from the point of view of distance from the world, it must also be a communion in time, the one who wants to be Catholic cannot disassociate himself from those who preceded him in the faith, from those who transmitted the faith to him, it would be to abandon the Catholic Church to cut himself off from its Tradition. Now Pope Francis in his motu proprio reminds us that we must bring everyone back to the Council and that the concessions he gives, the small concessions he still gives for the traditional Mass, which remain, the remnants, are with the aim of preparing these people for the return to the new Mass, a goal that is clearly stated.So why all of a sudden, even if we knew that this was coming, why all of a sudden this thunderclap? There are different reasons, my dear brothers. First of all, I'm not making this up because it was Pope Francis himself who said it in an interview, he was asking the question, and I'm speaking especially to the youngest among you, "why are you attracted to this traditional Mass?" He said, "I don't understand it. He said, "I don't understand it." That the elderly are nostalgic and miss the old rite that they knew, he said, "I understand that," but that young people are attracted to the traditional Mass, he didn't understand that and he said, "I think it's a snobbery. This is the conception that he has, a total ignorance of reality. The first thing is that it attracts young people and that is dangerous. The second reason is where we see that the good God can use many things, the confinement, this health crisis that we are living and from which we are far from being out, the confinement has made that the churches closing, the faithful could not attend the mass anymore in the whole world and they connected, because many churches like ours proposed the retransmission of the masses, they connected on internet and many discovered on this occasion the existence of the traditional mass. Many did not even know that it existed, this has caused a great movement of adhesion to this mass and, again it is not an idea that I have, the Pope himself said in a speech recently in Italy, he said: "some have taken advantage of the health crisis to use social media to spread this liturgy, to spread their misconceptions about the liturgy. And also, because "among the young vocations, a certain number are attracted by the traditional Mass", there is the fear of seeing priests who, on discovering this traditional Mass, begin to celebrate it and propose it to their faithful.Finally, the fundamental reason, here we find the spirit of Vatican II, is that this mass, the traditional mass, is anti-ecuмenical. The Mass of Paul VI, the new Ordo Missae, is ecuмenical, and the Protestants say that it would be no problem for them to celebrate the Mass according to the new Ordo, but not the traditional Mass, because they could not, they say, in conscience. The traditional Mass is not ecuмenical, it is missionary. Vatican II opened the doors to this ecuмenism towards non-Christian religions, towards separated Christians, because the Mass of St. Pius V is the proclamation of the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ who reigns through his Cross. This is something that deeply affects Pope Francis, he does not want this kingship of Christ. We have seen under his pontificate, something unheard of, the reintroduction of pagan idols in the Vatican, the Pachamama that they tried to pass off as an image of the Virgin Mary, it is a pagan idol, an idol even luciferian in South America, all those who come from those countries know it, and that has not bothered him at all. There are also his statements about "all religions that are willed by the Holy Spirit", he says in an official docuмent. There are great theologians, old ones, who cannot be accused of being dissidents, who have examined the possibility of a schismatic pope and they say that it would be a pope who would cut himself off from the Tradition of the Church. Are we not there?So, my dear brothers, the war is going to start again or at least continue, we are strengthened in our positions by this decision, I was going to say dictatorial, which cannot be explained, when we see the way in which the Ecclesia Dei communities, which did not criticize the Council, were relatively "soft" in their criticisms of the wanderings of the new liturgy, are terribly struck: the Ecclesia Dei commission is purely and simply abolished, dissolved by the pope. Let us ask Our Lady of Victories to have confidence in this fight, Our Lord will win. It is necessary to recall the right of every Catholic and to repeat it, to follow a rite which expresses clearly, holily, and with respect the worship due to God, the Catholic faith in this perpetual renewal until the end of time, in this sacrifice of Our Lord renewed on the altars and which saves us.
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