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In fact, Pope Francis' stranglehold on this holy Mass, with the motu proprio Traditionis custodes of July 16, 2021, is justified by invoking “the decrees of the Council”: “The liturgical books promulgated by the holy popes Paul VI and John Paul II, in accordance with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, are the sole expression of the lex orandi of the Roman rite” (TC art. 1).
As he explained in an interview published on February 24, 2022 in the English Catholic weekly The Tablet (taken up by Jeanne Smits on her blog on February 26, 2022, Le blog de Jeanne Smits : Mgr Arthur Roche sur “Traditionis custodes” : a new interview confirming the change in the “lex credendi”), Cardinal Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery of Divine Worship, said that the motu proprio Traditionis custodes was intended to implement the conciliar constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the liturgy.
The Pope's intention was thus to “bring unity” to the Church, putting an end to the idea that there were not two different Churches with two different liturgies. There were not two different forms (“ordinary” and “extraordinary”) of the same rite, according to the thesis elaborated by Benedict XVI, but two different rites emanating from two different Churches, i.e. two rites expressing two different leges credendi.
This intention made their coexistence impossible. But we must ask ourselves how we could have arrived at such a situation? A situation which implies the prohibition of the ancient Roman rite of Mass, which was celebrated for many centuries by the Popes as a rite whose canon, according to an opinion piously upheld by them, dated back to apostolic times, even to Blessed Peter himself? The Catholic mass par excellence, the perfect expression of the lex credendi, was now banned precisely because of the reforms promoted by an Ecumenical Council of the Holy Church?
It's a paradoxical situation, to say the least, and, on closer inspection, an untenable one, which in itself already explains why Catholicism has been struggling in a frightening crisis since the Council: the basis of the whole liturgical reform operation was precisely the Council itself, which, Cardinal Roche expressly stated, had created a new conception of the Church and therefore a new lex credendi.
The necessary conclusions had to be drawn with regard to the lex orandi. But what was the Council's new conception of the Church? How could a purely pastoral ecumenical council, as Vatican II had defined itself, create a new conception of the Church, one that was not in line with Tradition, because it had been expressly “updated” according to the way of thinking of the times?
What then, according to Cardinal Roche, was the new way of conceiving the Church developed by the Council? He explains that the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium on the Church (which neither defines dogma nor condemns error, and is called “dogmatic” for some reason), moved away from the model of the Church as a “perfect society” (a concept based on Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics) towards the scriptural notion of the Church as a “people of God” in movement. In the first model, says Mgr. Roche, it was the priest who “represented the intentions of the people” and transmitted them to God in the liturgy. Vatican II changed that:
Thanks to the understanding of the priesthood of all the baptized, it is no longer just the priest alone who celebrates the Eucharist, but all the baptized who celebrate with him.
Jeanne Smit comments:
It is therefore the conception of priesthood and Eucharistic sacrifice that is under discussion from the perspective of Traditionis custodes, and the primary intention is not to highlight the ‘continuity’ of Vatican II in relation to the tradition of the Church, but what Vatican II has ‘changed’.
The question is therefore doctrinal. The rejection of the “perfect society” model for the Church - a model defined in the past by eminent canonists such as, for example, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Prefect of the Holy Office up to and including the Council - implies the renunciation of the idea of the Church as hierarchically and organically structured, according to juridical norms and on the basis of well-defined values of supernatural origin. Instead, the Church has become a fluid, indefinable entity (a “communion”, a “synodality”, a “people [of God]”), in a state of continuous change, and therefore open to all kinds of transformations and hybridizations. This is abundantly demonstrated by the failed post-conciliar experiment, which has now lasted for over sixty years, with a “visible” Church now on the verge of social extinction in many countries, due not only to the drying up of vocations but also to the faithful's loss of interest in it and its new liturgy.
This is why an open debate and an objective assessment of the Second Vatican Council are urgently needed, so that everyone can see things more clearly and put an end to all this smoke and mirrors.
As baptized persons, the members of the “People of God” (i.e. the faithful as members of the Mystical Body of Christ) are also priests, but in an entirely spiritual sense, as Pius XII made clear in his encyclical Mediator Dei of November 20, 1947, dedicated to the liturgy. On the other hand, the Council exalts them as a “people of God” endowed with effective priestly powers, modifying the meaning of St. Peter's famous praise of Christians as “people of God” and “royal priesthood”, in place of the Jews who deny the Messiah and are therefore unworthy of their titles of honor (1 Pet 2:5; 9-10). From this symbolic glorification, Cardinal Roche drew the undue consequence that the baptized, as “priests”, participated in the Eucharistic celebration simpliciter, “concelebrating” with the officiant, and no longer in a subordinate position, “in desire”, in voto, only and diversa ratione, under a different quality, as Pius XII had specified in Mediator Dei.
Cardinal Roche's words are unmistakable: the baptized celebrate in the same way as priests. And this innovation, of enormous and subversive doctrinal significance, was introduced by Vatican II, the highest ecclesiastical authorities assure us, providing us with the authentic interpretation of the Council on this vital and delicate subject.
But where does the Council say that “all the baptized celebrate with him”, with the officiant? It says so in articles 10 and 11 of Lumen gentium and even more clearly in art. 48 of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the constitution on the liturgy, quoting with significant modification the passage from Mediator Dei. SC 48 thus states: ”...offering the spotless victim, not only into the hands of the priest, but that with him they may learn to offer themselves, etc. [sed etiam una cum ipso offerentes]”. Mediator Dei actually said: “...they offer the sacrifice not only by the hands of the priest but, in a certain way, also with him [sed etiam una cum quodammodo Sacrificium offerunt] etc.”
The passage seems identical, but by deleting the adverb “in a certain way”, it changes meaning. Indeed, according to the usual doctrine, the Eucharistic offering of the faithful can take place una cum, “together” with that of the priest, but only “in a certain way” together, since they, not being priests and therefore not having the power to consecrate the holy species, only offer “in desire”, in voto, spiritually and symbolically - they offer their vows of expiation, impetration, thanksgiving, praise. The adverb “in a certain way” (quodammodo) was further explained in Mediator Dei, which illustrates precisely in what sense the offering of the faithful is to be understood only as “in the form of a vow [desire]”. Instead, in addition to the adverb, the Council abandoned all of Pius XII's very clear explanations of the purely spiritual, non-sacramental character of the faithful's Eucharistic offering.
Doctrinal variation had already penetrated the Church's official magisterium before the end of the Council. A few months before it closed, Paul VI, faced with growing general liturgical disorder and the heretical interpretations of the meaning of transubstantiation that were beginning to circulate (the famous Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeecks, a follower of phenomenology, was full of praise for “transsignification”, reducing change to a change of meaning), he had to promulgate the encyclical Mysterium fidei, dated September 3, 1965, dedicated to the doctrine and worship of the Holy Eucharist.
In its preface, he writes:
Indeed, the Fathers of the Council [Vatican II], concerned with the restoration of the Sacred Liturgy [de instauranda Sacra Liturgia agentes], in their concern for the universal Church, had nothing more at heart than to urge the faithful to participate actively, with total faith and supreme piety, in the celebration of this Sacrosanct Mystery, offering it with the priest [una cum sacerdote offerrent] as a sacrifice to God for their own salvation and that of the whole world, and nourishing themselves with it as spiritual nourishment. (Paul VI, Mysterium fidei, Vatican.va, p. 1/23).
Thanks to the Council, what was for Pius XII's Mediator Dei a “specious error”, had incredibly become an official doctrine of the Church: a false doctrine reiterated today by Cardinal Roche, who claims to think and act in unison with Pope Francis.
Paolo Pasqualucci is a philosopher of law and political ideas. He is a former Professor of Law at the University of Perugia. He has also taught at the universities of Rome, Naples and Teramo, on the history of political doctrines. Translated from Paix Liturgique.
