A PRIEST who offers the traditional Latin Mass soon becomes very familiar with the Propers for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The feast itself falls on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, but the Missal prescribes the same texts for the Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart which is offered on First Fridays.
In the Postcommunion, the following phrase appears:
… having tasted the sweetness of Thy most dear Heart, may we learn to despise earthly things and love those of heaven.
The phrase in bold, “to despise earthly things” (terrena despicere), is one that recurs frequently in the orations that the old Missal prescribes for various feasts and observances throughout the liturgical year.
The expression reflects the teaching that there will always be a conflict between the Christian and the world. It is founded in Scripture (“Whosoever, therefore, will be the friend of the world,” says St. James, “becometh an enemy of God”) and echoed in the writings of countless theologians, ascetics and saints throughout the ages. The traditional liturgy, therefore, points to this disdain for earthly things as something singularly virtuous.
Not so the new liturgy. The Missal of Paul VI excised this idea not only from the Mass of the Sacred Heart, but also from the many other prayers in the Missal where it formerly appeared, for example, from orations for the Second Sunday of Advent, and for the feasts of St. Peter Damian, St. Cajetan, St. Angela Merici, St. Casimir, St. Paulinus of Nola, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Hedwig, and St. Henry. (See Work of Human Hands, 231–4.)
The creators of the New Mass said that this change in the “doctrinal reality” that the prayers expressed reflected “the new view of human values” proposed by Vatican II (WHH, 223), and was “dictated by the new theology.” (WHH, 300)
Those of us who endured the post-Vatican II liturgical revolution recall the assurances that the liturgical changes in fact represented a “return to the sources” (ressourcement) or a restoration of the spirit of the early Church. So, did the reformers then “restore” prayers from older liturgical sources that were more “positive” about the world?
Alas, no. A Secret from the old Leonine Sacramentary, for instance, contained the petition that we “be purified from the [moral] infections of the world.” But the man of today, said one of the revisers, believes that earthly reality is fundamentally sacred; the phrase would appear “severe” and would “collide with modern sensibilities.” Hence the petition in the “restored prayer” that appears in the Missal of Paul VI now merely asks that we “be freed from the allurements of the world.” (WHH, 300–1)
Even some scripture texts were considered too much. The new Lectionary makes optional St. Paul’s condemnation of the “enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame,” and of those “who mind earthly things.” (Formerly, it was read on Pentecost XXIII.)
And the Lectionary permits a substitute reading for the passage containing Our Lord’s words: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.” (See WHH, 269)
And so it goes countless times in the New Mass. The differences between the old and the new rites run far deeper than atmosphere, “tradition” and “a sacrality which attracts.”
The Novus Ordo does indeed, as its creators stated, reflect a new “doctrinal reality.” And it is for that reason that the faithful Catholic must reject it.
Lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of praying is the law of believing.
TALKS: I will be giving talks and signing copies of Work of Human Hands in Brooksville FL (June 16), Northeast Detroit (June 18) and Southwest Detroit (June 19).
An Important Article on the 1951–1956 Holy Week Reform Appears
THE Rorate Caeli blog recently posted a translation of The Reform of Holy Week in the Years 1951-1956, an excellent and detailed study of the Pius XII Holy Week rites, written by Fr. Stefano Carusi.
As we noted in Chapter 3 of Work of Human Hands, these rites constituted the third stage in a process of liturgical change that eventually culminated in the New Mass.
Fr. Carusi makes extensive use of a commentary by Fr. Carlo Braga, who assisted Fr. Annibale Bugnini in formulating both the new 1951–1956 Holy Week reform and the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae. The following is from Fr. Carusi’s concluding comments:
The whole article is worth careful reading and study. It brought to light a number of details in the new rite that had been missed even by long-time critics of the rites like me.
Everyone owes a debt of gratitude to Fr. Carusi and Mr. Palad of Rorate for making this work available.
It is worth noting that Fr. Carusi is a member of the IBP (Institute of the Good Shepherd), a Vatican-approved society for priests (mostly former SSPX-ers) who offer the traditional Latin Mass under the banner of Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio — which, in theory at least, prescribes the use of the John XXIII Missal that contains the very rites Fr. Carusi criticizes.
It is significant that even in these circles many are now examining the pre-Vatican II liturgical changes with a critical eye, an undertaking previously regarded as exclusively “sedevacantist” territory.
Inevitably another issue came up during the discussion of Fr. Carusi’s article. Various members of the anti-sedevacantist camp maintain that it is inconsistent to reject the Holy Week rites promulgated by Pius XII, whom sedevacantists regard as a true pope, while maintaining that the New Mass promulgated by Paul VI is part of the proof that he was a false pope.
It will be useful here for me to restate my position on this matter.
Taken individually, none of the changes introduced in 1951–1956 Holy Week rites (I offer a summary in Work of Human Hands, 68–69) was evil in itself.
But fifty years later, we recognize that these precedents and the principles behind them were the foot in the door to the eventual destruction of the Mass. Bugnini, after all, told us that the changes were just one stage in the process of a wholesale liturgical reform — a “bridge,” he said, to “a new city.” (See WHH, 61)
In the very document promulgating the Novus Ordo, moreover, Paul VI himself points to the Pius XII legislation as the starting point for the creation of the New Mass. (See WHH, 49)
If the rites were not evil in themselves, on what basis could one now criticize them or refuse to follow them?
The answer is to be found in the general principles of canon law. Canonists and moral theologians (e.g., Cocchi, Michels, Noldin, Wernz-Vidal, Vermeersch, Regatillo, Zalba) commonly teach that a human ecclesiastical law can become harmful (nociva, noxia) due to changed circumstances after the passage of time. In such a case it automatically ceases to bind.
This, I contend, is exactly the case with the 1951–1956 Holy Week rites.
One cannot therefore maintain that the application of this principle (cessation of law) to the Holy Week changes contradicts the teaching of dogmatic theology that the Church is infallible when she promulgates universal disciplinary laws.
On this point, therefore, there is no inconsistency whatsoever in the sedevacantist position.