Cantarella, by holding that everything concerning the government of the liturgy is wholly a matter of mere Church discipline and by holding that the pope has the authority to create new rites for use in the solemn administration of the sacraments, you yourself are making the many "solemn rites and ceremonies" that Trent is referring to superfluous. If you think that the traditional rites can be omitted by pastors without sin and replaced by new ones then you obviously do not think that they are of great value. Drew, by expressing his belief that the received (traditional) and approved rites are necessary attributes of the Catholic faith without which the faith cannot be known or communicated to others, is showing that he understands the solemn rites to be the exact opposite of superfluous. By claiming that the pope has the authority to create a new rite of Mass you are essentially saying that if Pius XII (or whoever you consider the last true pope to have been) had created the Novus Ordo, then you would have been bound in consistency with your belief to accept the new rite as containing nothing that is not holy. You have left yourself no standard by which to judge otherwise. It is no surprise that many sedevacantists end up becoming practitioners of the Novus Ordo religion. You share the same error as the "conservatives."
To say that Trent's canons on the holiness of the ceremonies of the Mass apply to new rites is like saying that Trent's decree on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture applies to the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition of the Bible. Trent's decree on the inerrancy of Scripture applies no more to Bibles which are not the Latin Vulgate than does Trent's canons on the holiness of the ceremonies of the Mass apply to rites which have not been "received and approved" by the Church.
Vatican I infallibly teaches:
God has revealed that the "received and approved" rites are what should be used in the worship that should be shown him. You can try and attempt to make the word "received" meaningless but just know that doing so would be as grave a sin as making the word "outside" meaningless when explaining the sacred dogma of faith "Outside the Church there is no salvation." John Salza puts it well in his excellent article "The Novus Ordo Mass and Divine Law":
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/newmass/divinelaw.htm
To hold that the received and approved rites can be replaced by other new ones is ultimately to deny that Catholicism is an incarnational religion. Fr. Michael Muller, CSSR wrote in The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:
https://archive.org/stream/holymasssacrific00ml#page/510/mode/2up/search/received+and+approved
You have always been one of my favorite posters on this forum, Cantarella, and I hope that you do not attribute a tone to my post which I do not intend to convey. I have prayed for you before I read that you became a sedevacantist and I will continue to pray for you now. Please keep me in your prayers.
Maryland Trad,
I am grateful for your post. Very well written. And the quote provided by Fr. Michael Muller, CSSR from his book,
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is worth remembering.
It is worth remembering because the virtue of Religion, which is to "render to God the things that are God's," is directly proximate to the virtue of Obedience. Any act of obedience that is not governed by the virtue of Religion is not a virtue at all. The interesting thing about the virtue of Religion is that its acts are typically external quantifiable actions that are objects of our perceptions. Supernatural faith, where we believe internally what God has revealed on the authority of God the Revealer, must necessarily be also external in its profession for as Jesus said, "Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven." And St. Paul, "For, with the heart, we believe unto justice; but, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation." Without the external acts of the virtue of Religion there is no salvation because without the acts of Religion the faith cannot be externally expressed, and therefore, be know or communicated to others. This necessarily means that these external acts cannot be simple matters of discipline but are essential attributes of the faith. We are saved body and soul, and the body is that through which we enter into salvation just as the Body of Christ is the instrumental cause of our salvation. At the last judgment, Jesus says, "For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me......" Because these acts are regarded by Jesus as having been done to Himself, that is directed to God, they all are part of the virtue of Religion but the most important act will be to have worshiped God through the "received and approved" rites of the Church where in union with Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, appropriate worship is offered to God.
When conservative Catholics and S&S Catholics make every act of Religion a matter of simple discipline that can be cast aside, they destroy Obedience as a virtue because it is no longer directed to God but to man as man. In the end, it overturns all Catholic morality. Even proper acts of obedience are vitiated because they are done for the wrong reasons.
Drew
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