A
Visit to a local Parish
The
New English Liturgy
A Cleaner Translation of a Protestantized
Rite
By John Vennari
The First Sunday at Advent saw the
mandatory introduction of the new English translation of the Novus Ordo into
the nation’s parishes.
G.K. Chesterton once noted that the
closer a man gets to sanity, the closer he gets to orthodoxy, that is, to the
Catholic Church.
If
the new translation is closer to accuracy of the original Latin, then it is
closer to sanity, and thus at least closer, in this aspect, to a Catholic
approach. The post-conciliar upheaval is of such colossal dimension that a fix
in any of its broken structures can be viewed as a step in the right direction.
That
being said, there is still a long way to go to restore sanity to parishes
nationwide.
I
visited a local parish church this morning for the purpose of observation. I
wanted to see and hear the new translation, and take note of parishioners’
reactions.
The old pastor opened by announcing
the imposition of the new translation, saying he has seen three responses to
it.
The
first: those who anticipate it with much enthusiasm. The second: those who view
it with grudging acceptance. The third: those who simply ask “will it make the
Mass longer?”
It is the first Novus Ordo Mass I’ve
seen in a while, as I attend only the Latin Tridentine liturgy, so I came to
the parish as an outsider.
One
thing was immediately evident: the new translation may have somewhat improved
the language, it has done nothing to improve the Novus Ordo atmosphere.
It
is still the same New Mass with its banality, slovenliness and limp
vestments. It is still a liturgy that appears to be drained of nobility and
genuine reverence. It is still a liturgy that transforms the sanctuary into a
high-traffic area of concelebrants, Eucharistic ministers, lay-lectors and
music ministry.
Some of the most prominent changes in
the English are as follows: The response to “The Lord be with you” is no
longer, “And also with you”, but “And
with your spirit.”
“Through
my fault through my fault, through my most grievous fault” is returned to
the Confiteor.
The Creed now speaks in the first
person “I believe” instead of the
communal “We believe”. Our Lord Jesus Christ is now proclaimed in the Creed as
“consubstantial with the Father.”
Of course, the most notable change
is the accurate words of the Consecration of the wine from what was “for you
and for all” to “for you and for many.”
At Communion, the translation now
says, “but say the word and my soul
shall be healed.”
Outside of the various new
translations, it is very much the same Novus Ordo we have seen for the past 40
years. There is no real sense that much has changed. This was especially
evident when I saw the three Eucharistic ministers (one male, two female) receive
Communion in the hand from the old pastor before they branched out to offer
Communion under both kinds to the congregation. Many parishioners received in
the hand. Two men walked up the center aisle to Communion side-by-side chatting
with each other.
The music was a combination of
traditional Advent hymns (O Come, O Come
Emmanuel), and new numbers, such as a sappy, dead melody in 6/8 time I had
never heard before. From what others tell me, the church I attended is typical
of the parishes in Buffalo.
The old pastor closed the Mass by
announcing from the podium two pieces of advice for us:
1) “Don’t criticize a man until
you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. That way, he won’t hear your criticism from
a mile away, and you’ll at least have his shoes.”
2) “The principle ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try again,’
does not apply to sky diving.”
Thanks, Father.
“A Striking Departure…”
As for parishioners’ reaction to the
new translation, there wasn’t anything worth a mention. It was a sparsely
populated morning Mass. I saw only a handful of people using the “Seasonal
Missalette Worship Resource” supplied in the pews.
As
for the new translation, it is simply a cleaner translation of a Protestantized
rite – of the New Mass that was written with the help of six Protestant
ministers.
Vatican
Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, in their famous Letter to Pope Paul VI on June
5, 1969, (that accompanied the Critical
Study) rightly warned that the New Mass “represents both in its whole and
in its details a striking departure from the theology of the Mass as it was
formulated by Session XXII 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.”[1]
The
Critical Study of the Roman Theologians
on the New Mass, otherwise known as the “Ottaviani Intervention”,
spotlighted the many deficiencies inherent in the New Mass: Here are some of
the defects they noted:
•
A new definition of the Mass, as an ‘assembly’ rather than as a sacrifice
offered to God;
•
Omissions of elements emphasizing the Catholic teaching that the Mass makes
satisfaction for sins, a teaching utter rejected by Protestants;
• The reduction of the priest’s role to a
position approximating that of a Protestant Minister;
•
Implicit denials of Christ’s Real Presence and the doctrine of
Transubstantiation;
•
The change of the Consecration from a sacramental action into a mere narrative
retelling the story of the Last Supper;
•
The fragmentation of the Church’s unity of belief through the introduction of
countless options;
•
Ambiguous language and equivocation through the rite which compromises the
Church’s doctrine.[2]
Further:
•
The Study said “It is obvious that
the Novus Ordo obsessively emphasizes ‘supper’ and ‘memorial,’ instead of the
unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross.[3]
•
The Study points out that in the New
Mass, “the central role of the Real Presence has been suppressed”.[4]
•
The Study accurately noted that the New Mass “has much to gladden the
heart of the most modernist Protestant”.[5]
Mind
you, as I have stressed many times throughout the years, this is a critique of
the New Mass in the original Latin –
in it’s “purest form” – as it was
originally released by Paul VI in 1969. The other abuses and bad translations
came later. The Critical Study didn’t
even talk about these, though the Study could foresee these aberrations. Thus
the new “more accurate” English translation of this New Mass, over which there
is now much rejoicing, will serve little to repair the flawed Rite itself.
The
New Mass – at its best – is not
really a Catholic liturgy. It was not made for the worship of God that is His
due, but was constructed for the sake of a modernist ecumenism that is contrary
to reason, and that has always been condemned by the Catholic Church.[6] As early
as 1933, St. Maximillion Kolbe rightly declared, “Ecumenism is the enemy of the
Immaculata”[7]
– the enemy of Our Lady herself!
The
reason I never attend the New Mass has never been the question of validity: is
the consecration valid or not? To me, that’s not the issue. The reason I only
attend the Tridentine Mass and never the New is because the New Mass is not really a Catholic form of worship. It is at its
best – in its purest form – a
modernist and Protestantized liturgy constructed to serve the false gods of
liberalism and ecumenism.
And
it is the architects of the Mass who have told us this.
Archbishop
Annibale Bugnini admitted, “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from
the Catholic liturgy everything which can be a shadow of a stumbling block for
our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.”[8]
Likewise,
Journalist Jean Guitton, a close friend and confident of Pope Paul VI,
confirmed that its was the direct aim of the Pope to protestantize the liturgy.
In a radio interview in the 1990s, Guitton said:
“The intention of Paul
VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic
liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant
liturgy – but was is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as close as
possible to the Protestant Lord’s supper… there was with Paul VI an ecumenical
intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too catholic, in the traditional sense,
and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.”[9]
Thus we better understand why
Cardinal Ottaviani and the Roman Theologians say in the Critical Study:
“It is obvious that the
New Order of Mass has no intention of presenting the Faith taught by the
Council of Trent. But it is to this Faith that the Catholic conscience is bound
forever. Thus, the promulgation of the New Order of Mass, the true Catholic is
faced with a tragic need to choose.”[10]
Many of us choose to have nothing to do with this New Mass because it is not truly a Catholic form of worship.
After observing the Novus Ordo Mass
this morning, I shook off the dead weight of its proceedings and drove directly
to attend the Latin Tridentine Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary in South
Buffalo. Here was the sanity, orthodoxy
and Catholicity of true worship. Here the true Mass was celebrated, a gift from
God for which this day I was especially grateful.
Notes:
[1] The Ottaviani Intervention: Short Critical Study of the New Order of
Mass, [Rockford: TAN, 1992], p. 27.
[2] Summery from The Ottaviani Intervention, p. 4.
[3] Ibid.,
p. 35.
[4] Ibid., p.
40.
[5] Ibid., p. 33.
[6] For a summary of the
Catholic Church’s perennial teaching against modern ecumenism, see the
magnificent encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Mortalium
Animos, “On Fostering True Christian Unity”, January 6, 1928.
[7] The mission St. Maximilian entrusted to his Knights of
the Immaculata was that of converting the whole world to the Catholic Church.
He said, “Only until all schismatics and Protestants profess the Catholic Creed
with conviction, when all Jews voluntarily ask for Holy Baptism – only then
will the Immaculata have reached its goals.” “… In other
words” Saint Maximilian insisted, “there is no greater enemy of the Immaculata
and her Knighthood than today’s ecumenism, which every Knight must not only
fight against, but also neutralize through diametrically opposed action and
ultimately destroy. We must realize the goal of the Militia
Immaculata as quickly as possible: that is, to conquer the whole world, and
every individual soul which exists today or will exist until the end of the
world, for the Immaculata, and through her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.”
From Rycerz Niopokalenz, 4 (1922), p. 78. And Entry of Diary dated April 23,
1933. Cited from The Immaculata Our Ideal, Father Karl Stehlin [Warsaw:
Te Deum, 2005], p.3
[8] L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.
[9] Quoted from Michael McGrade,
“Redemptionis Sacramentum, DOA, RIP”,
Christian Order, August, September,
2004 (emphasis added).
[10] The Ottaviani Intervention, p. 53.
Posted November 27, 2011
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