The Remaining Question About the Mass

NOTE: The following is a posted version of our latest newsletter article.  If you would like to receive these newsletter articles each week, please be sure to sign up to receive our newsletter emails at the link here.

Your Catholic Week in Review (Asking the Question Edition!)

Over the past week, the Catholic world has been shocked by two different kinds of scandals. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Michael Martin issued new directives effectively closing down the practice of the Traditional Latin Mass, claiming that this is simply in accord with Pope Francis’ agenda in Traditionis Custodes. More on that in a minute. Meanwhile, in Germany (is anyone really surprised?) a trio of “entertainers” performed a bizarre routine in the sanctuary area of Paderborn Cathedral, featuring raw chickens dressed in diapers as the trio sang “Fleisch ist Fleisch” (“Meat is Meat”), a parody of a 1980’s pop song titled, “Life is Life.”

So, what we have here is an attack on tradition on the one hand, and an act of blasphemy and sacrilege on the other. In the middle is a squeeze being placed upon the faithful, and what many are left with is the question: “Why do things like this keep happening?”

The Church exists for one reason, and one reason only – the salvation of souls. The parable of the Good Samaritan, often misused by those in the social justice crowd to preach on social action and community involvement, is actually a parable about Christ, the Church, and the mission of the Church. The Fathers of the Church agree that the man who was robbed is Adam, that the robbers are the demons, and that the Good Samaritan is Christ. While instructing those who would follow Christ to tend to the physical needs of those placed upon our immediate path, Our Lord is also impressing upon us the necessity to bring the wounded to Holy Mother Church – the inn in the parable – which is supplied with His abundant graces to provide for the wounded man; those graces are symbolized by the gold handed to the Inn keeper.

In short – the Church is where sinners (the spiritually wounded) go to have their wounds bound and tended until the Good Samaritan returns. But what we see in both Charlotte and in Germany (and SO many other places) is a massive distraction from the Church’s mission. What business does ANY entertainer have to perform a song and dance routine in the sanctuary of ANY Church? The answer is “none.” What about the actions of the bishop of Charlotte? He is waging a literal war on the very Traditions of the Church and directly wounding the faithful in the process. How does this aid, in any way, in the salvation of souls? More to the point, what damage does it do to the faithful?

Following Bp. Martin’s unnecessary ban of the TLM in the Diocese of Charlotte, a letter he prepared with additional norms pertaining to the celebration of the Mass was leaked to the press. In his over 20-page letter, Bp. Martin had intended to mandate the following:

• Candles were to be removed from the altar and arrayed around it
• Priests were not to say vesting prayers either before or after Mass
• Women assisting with Mass in any capacity (such as in the choir or as a lector) were not to wear veils
• Parishes would be forbidden from using bells to signify the beginning of Mass
• “Latin responses and Mass parts are not to be utilized in parish churches during regular celebrations”
• Forbidding the use of altar rails or the installation of altar rails in any new parishes
• “The celebration of so called “quiet Masses” that are celebrated without music or musical accompaniment is strongly discouraged even if desired by some of the faithful.”
• “Ministers and catechists are never allowed to teach that it is “better” to receive Holy Communion one legitimate way or another or from an ordained minister rather than a lay Extraordinary Minister.”
• “It is forbidden to make the sign of the cross with the host before the communicant since there is no option to do so in the rubrics.”

There are a number of other horrifying assaults on reverent and pious liturgical practices, but this suffices to illustrate the situation. Since the letter was leaked, Bp. Martin has faced immense backlash for his draconian changes. Initially, the diocese issues a statement claiming that this letter was merely a “draft” and that it was simply an expanded set of ideas being considered for later imposition. The problem with this claim is that the structure and reasoning written into the letter itself does not present as a mere draft representing a multitude of ideas. There was a very clear target in ALL of the proposed changes: anything that resembled the liturgy as it was prior to the 1960s.

And now, because of the media storm surrounding Bp. Martin’s war on traditional liturgical practices, the diocese has issued another statement indicating that it is “shelving” the changes indicated in the leaked letter.

But the one thing no one is asking is this: who is spiritually helped and nourished by these proposed changes?  Why are “quiet Masses” being discouraged “even if desired by some of the faithful?”  What this sort of directive suggests is that the faithful are to be painfully press-fitted into a radical new way of worshipping at the altar, bringing the Church right back to the crisis of 1970 after the New Mass was first imposed.  And at the end of the day, the 55-year-old question comes roaring back to the fore – Why was a New Mass imposed on the faithful and why was the Old Mass suppressed?

This is the one question the Modernist innovators do not want to address.  Sacrosanctum Conciluam, in its very first paragraph, provides four ambiguous and unsubstantiated “reasons” for making changes to the Mass:

1. to impart an ever-increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful;
2. to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change;
3. to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ;
4. to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church.

The first “reason” suggests that there was something lacking in the Old Mass which did not impart an “ever increasing vigor of the Christian life of the faithful.”  Don’t we often hear that tired old canard from those advocating the Novus Ordo Missae that “Christ is present, and that’s what matters”?  If this is the case now, then why would it not be the case then?  What could be more invigorating than the reverent and worthy reception of God made flesh in Holy Communion?  If the answer is “nothing,” then how can this possibly stand as a valid reason for changing the Mass?

In the second reason, it is strongly suggested that there is something irrelevant or obsolete about the Mass which needed to be “updated” to the needs of our own times.  This very notion is directly referenced in the definition of Modernism as indicated by Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis.  He pointed out that even though the Modernists had not reached the point of the Protestants, who “reject all external worship,” they nonetheless “ask the Church … to be good enough to follow spontaneously where they lead her and adapt herself to the civil forms in vogue.”

More to the point, Pope St. Pius X defines as the foundational nature of Modernism a theory of “necessities and needs” as an impetus for change or evolution.  In this call to “adapt” the Mass to be more suitable “to the needs of our own times” is a perfect reflection of what the pope defined as Modernism.  He wrote:

“The chief stimulus of evolution in the domain of worship consists in the need of adapting itself to the uses and customs of peoples, as well as the need of availing itself of the value which certain acts have acquired by long usage. Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of accommodating itself to historical conditions and of harmonising itself with existing forms of society. Such is religious evolution in detail. And here, before proceeding further, we would have you note well this whole theory of necessities and needs, for it is at the root of the entire system of the Modernists, and it is upon it that they will erect that famous method of theirs called the historical.”

This “reason” isn’t really a reason for changing the Mass so much as a vague and ambiguous catalyst for the more direct and concerning reasons that follow.

Reasons three and four are related and more accurately reflect the kinds of changes that were made – to draw in the protestants and unbelievers.  Of course, the unspoken logic here is the heavy implication that the Traditional Mass was in and of itself a stumbling block to those outside the Church.  And what is directly concluded from this is that the Mass must be remade to more closely resemble a Protestant worship service than the treasury which had been handed down to the faithful from antiquity.

But here’s one more thing to ponder: If the desire of the reformers of the Mass was simply to draw in protestants and non-Christians, then why not simply write the Novus Ordo for them, while permitting the Traditional Latin Mass to remain in place for the faithful who wished to maintain it?  Why has there been such a long, painful, and sustained war on the Traditional Latin Mass?  If the salvation of souls is the mission of the Church, and the proposed reforms to the Mass were predicated on a desire to make more converts, then wouldn’t it make sense to provide both?

But this is not, nor has it ever been, the reasoning provided to the faithful.  All we are ever told is that “This is what the Council demanded and you either get with it or you are a heretic who rejects Vatican II.  We will only ever progress from here, we can never go back.”

Except, this adaptation to “meet the needs of our own time” is stuck in the 1970s – an abomination of a decade if there ever was one – and the expressed desire of young Catholics and young seminarians is to restore the traditional practices of old.  If the liturgical reformers are to be logically consistent, then the cry for the Traditional Latin Mass must be heard by them and provided to meet their needs!

What I propose is that the reformers of the Mass have an inherent need to stamp out the Traditional Latin Mass because they know that their reforms could not survive competition with it.  What they fear more than anything else is that this Mass will die with them.  But if these reformers are to prove themselves in accord with the mission of the Church – which is the salvation of souls – and if they are to be truly committed to their rhetorical charge to “go out into the peripheries to accompany the lost and the forgotten on their faith journeys as pastoral shepherds,” then they must do likewise for those yearning for the Traditional Latin Mass.

These bishops should take a lesson from Our Blessed Lord’s parable of the tarres and the wheat.  After an enemy had sewn cockle in a wheatfield, the servants asked the master if they should pluck up the cockle.  But the master said to let them grow together, lest the good wheat be plucked up with the bad.  Given this, the bishops should consider how much of the good wheat they have destroyed by plucking the Traditional Latin Mass from parishes.

In the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter and the Apostles preached Christ crucified to the Jews in the Temple, and when the Jews were about to stone them the Pharisee Gamaliel commanded the men not to kill them.  He said:

“And now, therefore, I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this council or this work be of men, it will come to nought;  But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God.”

Bp. Jugis had successfully integrated the Traditional Latin Mass in many parishes in the Diocese of Charlotte, ministering to both communities of the Faithful unlike Bp. Martin’s ham-fisted approach.  What Bp. Jugis accomplished should be a model for bishops throughout the world.  If the salvation of souls is the goal, then the Mass of the Ages must remain available to the faithful.