“Mass of ALL Ages”? Shiny New Lecture Series Rehashes 1970s

by Kevin Tierney

for Rorate Cæli

Whenever a person writes, he always has to ask himself one question: Who is my audience? No matter his disposition or ideas, a writer writes to a certain group with their ideas (written and unwritten) and culture, which can often be very complex.

“Close the Workshop: Why the Old Mass Isn’t Broken and the New Mass Can’t Be Fixed” — New Book by Peter Kwasniewski

hardcover on the left, paperback on the right

I'm delighted to announce to Rorate readers that my new book from Angelico Press, Close the Workshop: Why the Old Mass Isn’t Broken and the New Mass Can’t Be Fixed, has just been released!

Defending the Traditional Mass with Just Arguments -- Theological and Legal - by Father Claude Barthe

Those who devote themselves to the defense of traditional things (liturgy, catechism, resistance to deleterious doctrines) often hesitate to say that we are currently faced with an atypical ecclesial situation. Especially when it comes to the liturgy. Even if they assert that it is not for reasons of sensitivity but of faith that they attend the old liturgy, they feel they can effectively defend their position against the proponents of the new liturgy as a legitimate free choice. It is true that arguments of this kind can work quite well with Catholic opinion in general, for whom liberalism has become an unsurpassable horizon; but the fact that it is permissible to take tactical advantage of this state of mind does not mean it is justifiable.

Paradoxically, they even sometimes twist traditional doctrine to defend it. One example is the extreme reduction of the doctrine of obedience to ecclesiastical authorities and their teachings. Since, in many respects, submission to the authorities is untenable in conscience today, they practically come to affirm that free examination was the common doctrine of the Church, with each person deciding what is Catholic in the name of the “tradition” of which each is ultimately the custodian. Or they proceed to disembowel the doctrine of Roman infallibility by asserting that the First See has frequently issued heterodox doctrines. In other words, the abnormality of what is happening now is transferred to the Church of old.[1] And the anti-modernists become modernists.

We will deal here only with arguments in defense of the traditional Mass. In particular, we would like to consider two that are often used to justify the free option in favor of the traditional missal:

(1) The invocation of the bull Quo primum of 1570, insofar as it states that the missal it promulgates may be used “in perpetuity”. And 

(2) the fact that the Church has always recognized the legitimacy of a diversity of rites.

Reposting: A most important historical document: the 1969 Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (the original GIRM) - "The Lord's Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord..."

Eleven years ago, in 2011, we in RORATE were proud to be the first to make available online, for the first time, a document that had then become extremely rare: the very first GIRM (General Instruction of the Roman Missal), published together with the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae.

From our post:

***

7. Cena dominica sive Missa est sacra synaxis seu congregatio populi Dei in unum convenientis, sacerdote praeside, ad memoriale Domini celebrandum. Quare de sanctae Ecclesiae locali congregatione eminenter valet promissio Christi: "Ubi sunt duo vel tres congregati in nomine meo, ibi sum in medio eorum" (Mt. 18, 20).

"7. The Lord's Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, Christ's promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: 'Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst' (Mt. 18:20)."

This is the original complete definition of the Mass according to the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae: they were arguably the most influential liturgical words written in the 20th century and signaled a watershed moment - in a sense, closing the book written since late antiquity and the chapter begun in Sessions XIII and XXII of the Council of Trent. 

Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi: An Admission of Failure

Contemporary results of liturgical formation in the Novus Ordo, February 2022 (Holy Family, Inverness, Archdiocese of Chicago, USA) 

 

I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes the validity of the Council — though it amazes me that a Catholic might presume not to do so — and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium... (Desiderio desideravi, 31)

So writes Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi, released today, on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, which acts as yet another indicator - if any more were needed! - that the generous, forward-looking vision of Benedict XVI has been replaced with a miserly and insular ignorance masquerading as "listening, dialogue and participation." Remarkably, on the same day he reaffirms Traditionis custodes, the Pope had this to say in his morning homily: 

Ember Days in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms: An Accidental Elimination?

This week in the traditional Roman Rite, we have one of its most ancient celebrations, the Ember Days. The Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of the first week of Lent are one of the four times during the liturgical year (hence the Latin title Quattuor Temporum) specially set apart by the Church for fasting and abstinence, as well as prayer for farming and harvests. The Ember Days also have a traditional association with the conferral of Holy Orders. Their antiquity is attested by Pope St Leo the Great in, among other places, one of his Pentecost sermons:

To the present solemnity, dearly beloved, we must also add that devotion, so that we might celebrate with holy observance the fast which conforms to the apostolic tradition. This ought to be numbered among the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, that, against the desires of the flesh and the snares of the devil, the protection of the fasts has been set up for us. By these we may overcome all temptations with the help of God. Let us fast on Wednesday and Friday. On Saturday, however, let us celebrate the vigil with the blessed apostle Peter as advocate for our prayers, that we might deserve to obtain the mercy of God in all things through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. (Sermon 76)

The Mass of Paul VI “Well Celebrated”—a Myth! (Guest Article by Cyril Farret d’Astiès)

Rorate Caeli is pleased to offer a translation of Paix Liturgique newsletter 833 of November 15, 2021, with permission of the editor Christian Marquant. Cyril Farret d’Astiès’s article is preceded and succeeded by remarks from Paix Liturgique.

INTRODUCTION

A few weeks ago, a group of priests, religious and lay people, led by our friend Denis Crouan of the association “Pro Liturgia,” seized the opportunity of the publication by Francis of his motu proprio Traditionis custodes to launch a plea to our pastors to “finally” implement the Novus Ordo according to its liturgical rules and to abandon all the initiatives which, according to them, distort it and constitute one of the motives for which the faithful attached to the traditional liturgy distance themselves from the Novus Ordo.

The Prayers for Saint Luke in the Traditional and Reformed Roman Missals

As today is the feast of St Luke the Evangelist in both the traditional and reformed Roman calendars, it seemed worthwhile to compare the prayers assigned to St Luke in the traditional Missal with those of the post-Vatican II Missal. One might have thought, given the very long-standing veneration given to the Evangelists, that their prayers would not have been changed in the course of the liturgical reform, but unfortunately this is very far from the case.

Firstly, it should be noted that the collect, secret and postcommunion assigned for St Luke in the traditional Roman Rite have a long history of being used together: the Corpus orationum (CO) [1] tells us that thirty-five extant liturgical manuscripts, ranging from the 8th to 16th centuries, keep these orations together as a set. Of course, the reformed Roman Rite not only splits up this Mass formulary, but discards one prayer entirely and only keeps the other two in an edited fashion (one minor, one major).

Miniature of Saint Luke from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany
(1503–1508) by Jean Bourdichon

“The right to celebrate the perennial Mass of the Roman Church is based on immemorial tradition and not on legal positivism” — Homily by Traditional Catholic Priest

A recently-ordained priest's first Mass

Rorate Caeli has been given a copy of a homily preached this past Sunday, the Seventh after Pentecost, by a traditional priest serving in a major metropolitan parish, with whose permission we publish it for the benefit of our readers as we prepare to return to the bunkers and trenches of the 1970s.

Everyone knows that the centrepiece of the Catholic religion is the holy Mass. The Mass is a proper sacrifice in which the true Body and Blood of the Lord are offered to God under the outward appearances of bread and wine through the ministry of an ordained priest. The holy Mass renews—you could say it prolongs and perpetuates—the sacrifice Our Lord offered once and for all on the cross. In fact, it is the self-same sacrifice; only the outward manner of the offering differs.

 

This holy sacrifice, moreover, does not exist in a void but it is encased in a sublime sequence of prayers and ceremonies called the rite or the liturgy of the Mass. The ancient axiom of the Church Fathers lex orandi, lex credendi—“the law of praying is the law of believing”—reminds us that our liturgical prayers must be an accurate expression of our faith and must inculcate true reverence for God. That is why, especially at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the faith of the people was changed precisely by disrupting the ancient forms of Catholic worship. For example, John Calvin, a radical reformer who denied the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, once wrote, “God has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which to offer sacrifice” (Institutes; IV, xviii, 12, col. 1059), and so by removing the old high altars and replacing them with a common table, the faith of the people in the sacrifice of the Mass was undermined and soon destroyed.

 

I mention these things because today [July 11] falls right between two important anniversaries related to the sacred liturgy: the papal letter Summorum pontificum from Pope Benedict XVI on July 7, 2007 and the papal bull Quo primum from Pope Saint Pius V on July 14, 1570. The Council of Trent had met from 1545 to 1563 to address the challenges of the Protestant Reformation, above all by clearly defining the Catholic dogmas denied by the heretics [1] and by promoting sound reforms in the life of the Church to root out the abuses which had first sparked the Reformation—things like the poor training and immorality of some of the clergy and the shoddy manner of celebrating Mass in many places.

 

Francis' motu proprio "Antiquum Ministerium", instituting the "ministry of Catechist"

APOSTOLIC LETTER

ISSUED "MOTU PROPRIO"
BY THE SUPREME PONTIFF

FRANCIS

"ANTIQUUM MINISTERIUM"

INSTITUTING
THE MINISTRY OF CATECHIST

 

1. The ministry of Catechist in the Church is an ancient one. Theologians commonly hold that the first examples are already present in the writings of the New Testament. The service of catechesis may be traced back to those “teachers” mentioned by the Apostle in writing to the community of Corinth: “Some people God has designated in the Church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, mighty deeds; then, gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:28-31).

The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity (Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture)

Below is the full text of a lecture given at Queen of Peace Parish in Patton, Pennsylvania, on September 21, 2020 (video at YouTube). If we want to overcome the impoverished state of liturgical discourse, which results from focusing on only two categories (validity and licitness) and arrive at a fuller, more accurate picture, we must also consider fittingness and authenticity/legitimacy, which are two other irreducibly distinct perfections of liturgy. At the end, I offer a chart that categorizes liturgies — Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant, old and new, etc. — in terms of the four qualities. The text was first published at New Liturgical Movement; the chart, however, has been updated.

Los cuatro postes (Ávila)

The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity

Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski

Queen of Peace Parish, Patton, PA

September 21, 2020

The celebration of the traditional Roman Rite Mass is becoming more and more common; it seems that its popularity has been an unintended consequence of both the chaos of the current pontificate and the disappointment of many Catholics with their pastors and parishes during the COVID pandemic. “Enough is enough!” is a frequently heard reaction. People are looking for worship that is reverent, prayerful, God-oriented, and deeply refreshing, and for priests who are truly committed to the care of souls. This, of course, is the work of the Holy Spirit, tugging at the heartstrings of baptized and confirmed Catholics, in whom there was planted the seed of Trinitarian life, which urges us to enter into the divine mystery.

However, there are certain difficulties in our situation, too. A vast amount of information, good, bad, indifferent, and inaccurate, circulates on the internet. Lay Catholics are seldom equipped to be able to understand what they’re reading about, especially when we get “into the weeds” of liturgical history and reform. How are blogs going to equip us with the ability to navigate thorny questions about the pope’s authority, the Church’s fidelity to tradition, the duty of obedience (and the limits thereof), and so on? There is a great need for careful, thoughtful, well-informed presentations on liturgical matters, so that we can deepen our understanding of the complex issues involved, without losing the simplicity of our faith, or the spontaneity of our interior life as we strive to be the saints Our Lord is calling us to be.

After many years, I have come to the realization that a lot of the time, people are talking past one another in liturgical discussions, and that is because they are talking about different aspects or properties of the liturgy, while failing to make the necessary distinctions. There are, in fact, four properties that are always supposed to belong to any liturgy: validity; licitness; fittingness; and authenticity. All of them are important, none of them is dispensable. They are meant to work together, in harmony, to bring us the fullness of divine worship intended by Christ for His Church. The problems we have experienced in recent decades have a lot to do with an exaggerated emphasis on one or another of these qualities, at the expense of the rest. I will begin by defining each one, and then talk about how they are related.

“The Roman Canon: Pillar and Ground of the Roman Rite” — Full text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s lecture

Today, in honor of the feast of Pope St. Pius V, I am pleased to present to readers of Rorate Caeli the full text of my lecture on the Roman Canon, which in recent years has been delivered in a number of places in varying forms. The lecture had previously been translated into and published in Italian (“Pilastro e Fondamento del Rito Romano: il Canone Romano come Norma Dottrinale e Morale”) and German (“Im Herzen des katholischen Gottesdienstes: Zwölf Glaubenswahrheiten im römischen Kanon”).

The Roman Canon: Pillar and Ground of the Roman Rite

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

Of all the prayers with which the Roman Catholic Church offers the sacrifice of praise to Almighty God, the one that stands out the most as a touchstone of divine faith, a foundation of immovable rock, a treasure of ages, is the Roman Canon—the unique anaphora or Eucharistic prayer that the Catholic Church prayed in all Western rites and uses, from the misty centuries before the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) until the fateful end of the 1960s. Fr. Guy Nicholls writes of this remarkable Canon:

Announcing And Rightly So—Selected Letters and Articles of Neil McCaffrey

The name of Neil McCaffrey (1925–1994) will be familiar to those who have followed the fortunes and trials of the conservative movement in the United States, as well as to long-time readers of Rorate Caeli, which has featured a number of his outstanding occasional writings: his ever-relevant “Memorandum on Papal Cheerleaders” from February 1976; his incisive essay “Archbishop Lefebvre, Pope Paul VI, and Catholic Tradition” from 1977; a couple of his personal letters (1, 2) on the meaning of true charity and how it coexists with right judgment; and a letter exchange with Msgr. Eugene Clark on the superiority and insuppressibility of the old Mass.

Born in Rye, NY and a lifetime resident of Pelham, Neil McCaffrey was the founder of Conservative Book Club and Arlington House Publishers, which he ran for decades, and a respected behind-the-scenes political organizer who knew everyone, collaborating especially with William F. Buckley, Jr., and others at National Review. Neil was also a knowledgeable enthusiast of old films and the music of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, an enthusiasm reflected in his founding of the Nostalgia Book Club in 1968 and his leading of the Movie Entertainment Book Club from 1978. Above all, Neil was a faithful and well-educated Catholic who saw what was happening to the Church because of the Vatican II revolution, and who spoke with unusual eloquence in defense of the orthodox Faith.

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Novus Ordo: Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture “Beyond ‘Smells and Bells’: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior”

In his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969), Pope Paul VI specified that the Novus Ordo Missae would go into effect on the First Sunday of Advent that year — November 30, exactly fifty years ago. In my recent Minneapolis lecture, written with an eye to this important anniversary, I argue that the Novus Ordo Missae constitutes a rupture with fundamental elements of all liturgies of apostolic derivation, and that, as a consequence, it violates the Church’s solemn obligation to receive, cherish, guard, and pass on the fruits of liturgical development. Since this development is, in fact, a major way in which the Holy Spirit leads the Church “into the fullness of truth” over the ages, as Christ promised, so great a “sin against the Holy Spirit” cannot fail to have enormous negative consequences, as indeed the past five decades have verified. Nor is it possible to bridge the abyss between old and new by applying cosmetics or the drapery of elegant clothing, because the problem is on the order of a genetic mutation, or damage to internal organs. The profound and permanent solution is to maintain continuity with the living liturgical tradition found in the usus antiquior.

The full text of the lecture, with notes, is given below; the recording of the talk may be found either on YouTube or at SoundCloud.

Beyond “Smells and Bells”:  Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior

Peter A. Kwasniewski

Minneapolis, Minnesota

November 13, 2019

Why Is the Liturgical Establishment Not Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Novus Ordo?

An article published at NLM last Thursday (“Lessons from the Sixties: Selective Synodality and Princely Protests”) begins thus: “It is actually astonishing how little of Paul VI’s liturgical reform, especially his Novus Ordo Missae, which he promulgated fifty years ago, is being commemorated this year.” That has been on my mind, too, for the whole of 2019.

It should strike us as exceedingly odd, at least prima facie, that liturgy committees, Vatican dicasteries, theology departments, chanceries, religious orders, and every other sort of postconciliar bureaucratic apparatus is not engaged in a huge song and dance about the golden anniversary of the new Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI on April 3, 1969, and effective in most countries on the first Sunday of Advent of that year, November 30. (In the same way, Summorum Pontificum was promulgated on 7/7/07 but did not take effect until the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14).

Certainly, one might think, if there is anything postconciliar that deserves to be toasted, fêted, and proudly clapped on the back, it would be this monumental modern makeover. Yet the number of events, nay, the number of mentions on the part of the Pauline rite’s friends and supporters could be counted on one hand. The total number of events celebrating Summorum Pontificum’s rather modest anniversaries (5 years, 10 years…), in contrast, already go up into double digits. Perhaps the most high-profile piece — and it wasn’t particular high-profile — was an article in L’Osservatore Romano on April 6, 2019, by Fr. Corrado Maggioni, S.M.M., Under-Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, published in English at PrayTell on April 17. [1]

Can we understand this perplexing silence? I think the answer can be summed up in an alternative title that I considered using for this article: “Memory Hole: On the Destruction of the Knowledge of Tradition.”

What got me thinking along these lines was an interesting exchange at Facebook, of which I will now reproduce the most valuable segments. It began this way:

I have met plenty of people who call themselves Catholic who have never had the slightest idea there ever were any changes, and have no idea what the term “Novus Ordo” even means, the rewriting of history has been so complete.

Another fellow chimed in:

When I was first at University I was vaguely aware that before Vatican II Mass was in Latin, but I thought it meant the liturgy exactly as we had it in the Steubenville chapel, but in Latin. Then I went to a TLM just out of curiosity and discovered just how wrong that idea was.

The first person replied:

I assumed precisely the same thing. The idea that they would simply brazenly concoct something new by committee was something that I had to be forcibly convinced of. It wasn’t until I had put the two texts side by side that I began to realise how we had been utterly swindled all our lives. Then I started reading Michael Davies and it was all over.

A third person chimed in:

I converted from Anglicanism, having read my way to Catholicism. The Novus Ordo (though I didn’t know it was called that at the time or for many years) was a bit of a shock, but I just thought that’s how it was, and I had to get on with it. I never even knew the Latin Mass still existed. I lapsed, came back, and I will always believe it was no coincidence that the weekday Mass I happened to stay for after my confession was a TLM. Usual stuff after that — read Michael Davies, etc., went through the whole anger, “I’ve been cheated” thing — and out the other side. Praise God.

A question was raised: “Why among Catholics is there so much ignorance not just of history in general, but even of our recent history? Fifty years ago isn’t that much time… You’d think that a Church 2,000 years old would want its members to know how great it was that the bad old dusty-musty liturgy was replaced by a shiny new model.” And to it, there came this reply:

The answer to the puzzle is that there is no longer supposed to be any knowledge that the “Novus Ordo,” as such, exists at all. It is supposed only to be “the Mass,” full stop. The fact that there were ever any changes made to the liturgy is supposed to be sliding down the Memory Hole with each passing year. The people who remember the old Mass well, who would have known just how radically different the new is from the old, and who remember how violently the changes were made — these people are dying off. That is, the ones who didn’t simply give up and leave long ago. Catholics who still practice the Faith are not supposed to know there ever was an “old rite” or that there is a “new rite” at all. The entire project of the Revolution at this stage is to deny there ever was such a thing as the Old Faith.
          Anyway, all this is why they are as furious as a bag of feral cats that there are still Traditionalists, and that the traddie movement is gaining ground. That lot was supposed to have died out or been driven out, and the fact that there are new ones, people like me who never knew the old rite in the wild, and the families now having twelve kids and going to the Missa Cantata, and all the homeschooling and whatnot... Combine that with the internet’s ability to let everyone know what’s really happening, and plenty of beautiful pictures besides, and it must be making them absolutely apoplectic.

Apoplectic, perhaps; but also strangely silent. How many websites are there that pursue a strongly reformist line? Not that many. Maybe just one: PrayTell. How many websites pursue a strongly traditionalist line? Quite a few. It seems, in short, that the progressives have run out of steam, or run out of confidence, or run out of on-board personnel, or think that talking about it too much risks introducing still further Catholics to the forbidden subjects — and thence, to possible defections.

A reader of OnePeterFive wrote to the editor:

I was already looking for God when I went to school, but the fullness, reality, and beauty of the Church and her Tradition was unknown to me until I discovered 1P5 … I say my encounter with Tradition was a second conversion because my experience immediately following my baptism and confirmation within Francis’ church was segregated from any knowledge that the Church before the 1960’s had been different than it is today.

Exactly. The success of the “transformation of all forms” ultimately depends on as many people in the Church not knowing what came before 1969, or thinking that our worship and our life could, or should, be any different from that which the Vatican, the USCCB, the chancery, or [fill in the blank] would have us think it must be.

At the moment, I am copyediting a manuscript of a translation of a very fine book by Michael Fiedrowicz, Die überlieferte Messe: Geschichte, Gestalt und Theologie des klassischen römischen Ritus, which will be published by Angelico under the title The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite. The following paragraph eloquently summarizes the points I have been making:

The celebration of the liturgy in its traditional form thus constitutes an effective counter-weight for all levelings, reductions, dilutions, and banalizations of the Faith. Many who are unfamiliar with the classical liturgy and are acquainted only with the re-created form believe that what they see and hear there is the entirety of the Faith. Scarcely anyone senses that central passages have perhaps been removed from biblical pericopes. Scarcely anyone notices if the Church’s orations no longer expressly attack error, no longer pray for the return of those who have strayed, no longer give the heavenly clear priority over the earthly, make the Saints into mere examples of morality, conceal the gravity of sin, and identify the Eucharist as only a meal. Scarcely anyone even knows what prayers the Church said over the course of centuries in place of the current “preparation of the gifts,” and how these prayers demonstrated the Church’s understanding of the Mass as a sacrifice, offered through the hands of the priest for the living and the dead.

As I discovered the traditional Latin Mass in my late teens and early twenties, I distinctly remember stumbling on important truths of the Faith — truths taught by the Bible, the Church Fathers, the Councils, and, of course, the Tridentine missal — that had become muted, invisible, or even extinct in the Novus Ordo. And subsequent study has only confirmed the extent of that systematic bias. This is why I like to say (admitting it’s a bit of an exaggeration): “my daily missal made me a traditionalist.”

Catholics who do not give themselves trustingly to the 2,000-year tradition of the Church will not be in contact with the whole doctrine and morality of Catholicism. This is hard to hear, but so is much of the teaching of Our Lord: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16, 24). The same is true, in a way, of tradition: we have to deny our modern prejudices, take up the blessed burden of our tradition, and follow it, in order to be integrally Catholic.

Joseph Ratzinger famously and repeatedly said that forgetfulness of God is the major problem of the West. In his Foreword to Dom Alcuin Reid’s The Organic Development of the Liturgy, he wrote:

If the liturgy appears first of all as the workshop for our activity, then what is essential is being forgotten: God. For the liturgy is not about us, but about God. Forgetting about God is the most imminent danger of our age. As against this, the liturgy should be setting up a sign of God’s presence. Yet what is happening, if the habit of forgetting about God makes itself at home in the liturgy itself, and if in the liturgy we are only thinking of ourselves?

The same theologian, as Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his letter concerning the remission of the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops:

In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) — in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

It is still difficult for many in the Church today to realize — either because they are totally ignorant of the past (as the revolutionaries intended), or because, being aware of it, they are afraid to do their homework and connect the dots — that the changes in the liturgy have actually contributed, profoundly and lastingly, to the crisis of our forgetfulness of God, and that the primary cure for this amnesia will be the restoration of the classical Roman rite.

From the ordination of a priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter in 2017

(cross-posted from New Liturgical Movement)

“Hyperpapalism and Liturgical Mutation: The Case Against the Novus Ordo” — Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lepanto Lecture

Rorate is pleased to present the full text of the lecture given by Dr. Kwasniewski at the Lepanto Conference held in New York City on February 16, 2019. A video of this lecture may be found at this link. The text has been edited for publication.

Hyperpapalism and Liturgical Mutation: The Case Against the Novus Ordo

The Ottaviani Intervention Turns 50: A Perceptive and Still Relevant Critique

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, better known as the “Ottaviani Intervention” after one of the two cardinals who signed it (Alfredo Ottaviani and Antonio Bacci). The study bears the date of Thursday, June 5, 1969, which was the feast of Corpus Christi that year.

The study was, however, not delivered to Pope Paul VI until almost four months later, with a cover letter dated September 25, 1969. In this letter the Cardinals aver:

The accompanying Critical Study is the work of a select group of bishops, theologians, liturgists, and pastors of souls. Despite its brevity, the study shows quite clearly that the Novus Ordo Missae -- considering the new elements widely susceptible to widely different interpretations which are implied or taken for granted -- represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of the Council of Trent. The "canons" of the rite definitively fixed at that time erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the Mystery.

“A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass”

This lecture was given in Wagga Wagga on March 28, in Melbourne on March 30, and in Hobart on April 3, during Dr Kwasniewski's visit sponsored by the Latin Mass Society of Australia. The full text is presented below, in a Rorate exclusive. UPDATE: The video of the lecture as given in Melbourne may be found here.

A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass

Peter A. Kwasniewski

April 3 of this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae by Pope Paul VI’s 1969 Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, the provisions of which were to go into effect on November 30, the first Sunday of Advent.

Not Just More Scripture, But Different Scripture — Comparing the Old and New Lectionaries

The following study was completed in March 2016 and subsequently published as the Foreword to Matthew Hazell's remarkable reference work "Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite." The passage of time under the reign of Pope Francis has meanwhile witnessed the welcome development of a large number of Catholics of good will beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the rupture effected by the liturgical reform. Because not everyone has this volume or expects to have it, I've been encouraged to share the Foreword with a wider audience. Nevertheless, I encourage serious students of liturgy to purchase the Index Lectionum itself, because it is a formidable research tool.

Not Just More Scripture, But Different Scripture

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

As Matthew Hazell notes in his “Introduction and User’s Guide” below, this Index Lectionum may be used by any student of the Roman Rite, whether in its classical form or its modern form, who wishes to see exactly how the books, chapters, and verses of Sacred Scripture end up being utilized (or not utilized) in the readings given at Mass. For that function alone, this volume is a tool of obvious and immense value. But this Index also facilitates, in fact for the first time, fruitful scholarly comparisons between the old and new lectionaries. In this foreword, I will outline the kind of results that such comparisons yield, in the hopes that others, too, will be inspired to take up this important research.

Francis: "We can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible"

Pope Francis gave an address on the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI today, speaking to participants of the 68th Italian National Liturgical Week. In it, Francis declares: "After this magisterium, after this long journey, we can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible."

Francis' remarks ironically read like a Quo Primum for the Novus Ordo. Pope St. Pius V's Quo Primum (1570), which has never been revoked or abolished by any pope, decreed that the Traditional Latin Mass, which the saintly pontiff promulgated in accord with the directives of the Council of Trent, would be "valid henceforth, now, and forever" and "cannot be revoked or modified, but remain always valid and retain its full force." Furthermore, St. Pius V warned that if anyone, including any future pope (by implication), would alter his missal, they would "incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul". 

The Reforms of Vatican II are IRREVERSIBLE!
Unlike Jesus' words on marriage and adultery, completely reversible. 

Pope Benedict XVI, in Summorum Pontificum, reiterated that the Traditional Latin Mass "was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted." Benedict continued: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."

For Francis, however, not the Traditional Latin Mass, but the reforms that deformed it are what are truly "irreversible."

Below are relevant translated excerpts of Pope Francis' address: