THE MASS OF PAUL VI. BY MICHAEL DAVIES.

 

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Archbishop Lefebvre held that the liturgical anarchy and doctrinal confusion that followed the Council were not caused simply by disobedience to official reforms but are a direct result of the reform itself. His opinion fully agrees with the concerns expressed by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci in the 1969 letter to Pope Paul VI with the Critical Study of the Novus Ordo of the Mass:

“The Novus Ordo Missae –if the new elements susceptible to very diverse appreciations, which appear in it understood or implicit, are considered– is an impressive departure, both as a whole and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as it was. formulated by the XXII Session of the Council of Trent”.

Almost all of the research carried out in this book was done during the pontificate of Paul VI, and the only possible conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence I have gathered is that Archbishop Lefebvre has held a safe position alongside the opinion of the Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci. The teaching of the Eucharist of the Council of Trent is truly compromised in the Novus Ordo Missae, and not simply because of the abuses that have accompanied its celebrations in most countries.

I do not consider that by taking this position I am disrespecting the Holy Father, much less becoming disobedient for that. Regardless of the fact that Archbishop Aníbal Bugnini recently said that I am a slanderer, and that I work with people who are slanderers by profession (4), as far as I know, everything in this book is true: there cannot be any conflict between truth and true respect and true obedience. And a truly loyal subordinate will not tell his superior what he thinks he will like to hear but what he thinks is true, and what benefits the organization to which they belong.

In the tale of the naked emperor this is better served by the child who tells him that he was not dressed, then by those sycophants who expressed their admiration for a clothing that he supposed to be wearing.

I have always referred to the fact that the abuses that frequently accompany the celebration of the New Mass.

in most western countries they are rarely found in Poland, and this explains why the Pope believed that the reform could have borne fruit if official norms had been observed.

In the West, the New Mass, with its terrible destruction of prayers that make special mention of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice, was accompanied by a plethora of Protestant-oriented theological speculations.

Which were not limited to specialized publications, but affected the very catechesis given to young people and children.

 CHAPTER I

The Development of the Roman Rite (Traditional Mass)

“It is completely false to equate the rite of St. Pius V with the rite of Pope Paul VI”.

 Douglas woodruff

The word "Liturgy" is of Greek origin and its meaning was public duty, a service for the State performed by the citizen. In the Bible of the 72, which is a Greek version of the Old Testament, it is used for the public service of the Temple and therefore is invested with a religious sense, like the role of priests in the ritual of Jewish worship.

Our Lord refers to the "liturgy" in Hebrews 8: 1-6 as Liturgies of holy things. The liturgy is His public religious work for His people, His ministry, His practice of redemption. It is above all His Sacrifice by which He redeemed His people. The liturgy is thus not something that we can do, but that Christ does. It is our great privilege as members of His Mystical Body to be able to unite with our Liturgists by offering His sacrifice and offering ourselves with Him.

 There can be no truly more glorious calling in life than God's call to the priesthood. The Catholic priest has been entrusted with powers that are denied to the greatest archangels; it has the power to make the Son of God present on the altar of sacrifice and offer him as a pure oblation to the Holy Trinity; he has the power to forgive or retain the sins of his fellow men. The Catholic priest is another Christ, alter Christus, an instrument used by the Son of God to impart to men the grace that He won for them on the cross. A layman can only marvel that some human being can dare to accept such fearful responsibility and thank God for those who do. Thinking of life without our priests, without the Mass, would be unbearable.

A prayer in the Divine Liturgy of Santiago exhorts the faithful as follows:

"Let all human flesh be silent, and get up with fear and trembling and do not meditate on anything in itself earthly because the King of kings and Lord of lords, Christ our God, comes to be sacrificed, and to be given as food for the faithful ; and the groups of angels go before Him with each power and domination, the custody of the many cherubim, and the six winged seraphim, covering with their faces and crying out loud the hymn, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah ”.

How can a human being dare to sacrifice to Christ our God? The Catholic priest pronounces the terrible words of consecration, it is not his personal capacity, but he does it as an instrument of Christ, in persona Christi. It is not then to wonder, that in order to manifest his complete submission to Christ, the Summus Sacerdos, the High Priest, the Principal Offerer of each Mass, he stripped himself of his own personality and gave himself entirely in the service of his Savior. This is how a priest explains the traditional attitude in the celebration of Mass:

“I remember how, when I was a young priest, I was preparing to say my first Mass, I was exercised very strictly and they told me to exercise very seriously in every word and gesture that I did at the altar of sacrifice, because they had to be performed exactly. Everything - the tone of voice, blessings, bows, genuflections, turns towards the people, the elevation and extension of the arms - should be as it was read in the rubrics, exactly like that. Why? Because at the altar one did the noblest action open to the human race; the sacrifice of the Son of God for God. It followed, both logically and theologically, that one should achieve the utmost reverence that the human being is capable of. And since the human being is made of body and soul, it follows even more that each word spoken, bodily gesture undertaken, should be adjusted to the greatest reverence to this supreme act of worship, the highest to which a human being could aspire. Human nature being what it is, individual idiosyncrasies could overcome reverence if the priests were oriented according to each one in terms of words and gestures at Mass. It follows that idiosyncrasies should have been reduced to a minimum. Therefore, the rubrics, which are binding on all priests at Mass; They depersonalize them, that is, in matters of reverence men instituted them when they offered a sacrifice to God. How else could they adequately recognize in their hearts their total dependence on Him, who made them out of nothing, but in the manifestation of certain bodily gestures that became those of the Mass? If the mouth speaks from the heart, the conversion is also true; the heart is provided with reverence if the celebrant priest's mouth is trained to speak with a reverential tone and the body is capable of expressing it, thus in all the series of its dignified gestures. I don't think I should dwell on the subject. Man is not a cold calculating machine. He is a human being made of body and soul. He loves with everything he has. Precisely for this reason the celebrating priest was never left to his fate at the Old Mass. This was done to conform to a code of celebration; depersonalized in the interests of the dignity that should surround the supreme sacrifice. In this way men have offered sacrifices, honoring where honor was demanded. After all, no one is going to see the Queen in an old pair of worn jeans and espadrilles. The issue is raised ”8.

It is entirely true and appropriate that every word, every gesture of the priest offering the Son of God in sacrifice is meticulously regulated, but surprisingly, there was no papal or conciliar legislation regulating the celebration of Mass in the entire Roman Rite until the Bull Quo Primum Tempore in 1570. The most significant fact of the Missal promulgated by this Bull is that it did not legislate on the way in which the Mass should be celebrated, but that it gave legal sanction to the way in which the Mass was being celebrated.

The first characteristic of the liturgical development until Vatican II was this legislation that came to codify a development, and not that this development was initiated by legislation.

 Until the fourth century liturgical books were not used during Mass except for the Bible from which the lessons were read. The Mass comprised two distinct parts. The first was the Christianized service of synagogue prayers, readings, and a sermon. At the end of this “liturgy of the Word” the catechumens, those who were not baptized, had to retire, hence the name “Mass of the Catechumens”. Then followed the second part, the Christian Mystery, the Eucharist. This was an improvised celebration by the bishop, but since apostolic times it already had acquired and fixed forms.

A characteristic of the Christian faith has been its conservative, conservationist mindset. So, a new bishop was expected to say the same prayers as his predecessor because that was the way things were done. The concept of oral tradition has been virtually lost in contemporary society, it exists only among children. Allow a parent to change the title from “Robin Hood,” or “The Three Bears,” and you will hear the protests that will ensue. The phenomenon of oral tradition is common to all cultures. The Norse poets could sing a traditional saga for hours and culminate without deviating from the original version learned from the poets in their youth.

The most obvious characteristic of the Apostolic Church was its missionary zeal. Our Lord sent His apostles to preach the gospel to all nations, and what a disgrace would be the denial of this mission entrusted by Him! When a missionary starts a new church, he will naturally use the rites that were familiar to him. The constant movement of Christians between the different churches9 guarantees a beautiful uniform and general pattern. This model forms the basis of all the ancient rites still in use today as evidenced by a description of the liturgy in the famous Apology (explanation or justification) of Saint Justin Martyr (died approx. 164). All the elements of the traditional Roman Mass can easily be distinguished in its text10. The aim of that work was to gain tolerance towards the Christians, proving that they were not guilty of immortality nor that they took part in inexplicable religious rites.

Once the practice of writing the liturgy began to consolidate in the fourth century, most of the models used to date had crystallized into four sources of rites from which all derive. The word "rite" can be used in two different ways. It can refer to the order of service for certain liturgical functions: so, we refer to the rite of baptism, the rite of Mass, the rite of the blessing of the hands. It can also refer to the totality and complexity of the liturgical services of a particular religion: we speak of Jewish rites, Christian rites, Hindu rites. The Roman Rite in this sense refers to all liturgical services used by the Churches within the Roman Patriarchate. The term "liturgy" is also applied to the service complex and hence the terms "Roman Rite" and "Roman Liturgy" are interchangeable.

Notes.

8 Christian Order, April 1974, ps.240-241.

9. Our Lord founded only one Church, but it is correct to refer to Catholics in a particular country as Church, thus for example the Church in France, the Church in Spain. It is also correct to refer to each individual diocese as Church (see Revelation).

10. The text refers to the celebrant of the Mass as “the one who presides” (the president). This would have brought confusion around the Christian concept of the priesthood. The first Apology for Justin Martyr is now cited to justify the description of the Catholic priest as "president" on the grounds that this was the term used in the second century. But, on the contrary, the triple division of bishop, priest and deacon was already firmly established. The term "presbyter" was used for the priest in preference to "priestdos" which had pagan connotations in Rome. In English it is even clearer, the word "priest" derived from "presbyter". (In Spanish we may speak of "lend").