PRAISE FOR CLOSE THE WORKSHOP

“The essence of the Church is tradition, which manifests itself in keeping

diligently the faith of all ages and at the same time the liturgy of all ages. The
unprecedented liturgical revolution after the Second Vatican Council therefore
contradicts the essence of the Church. We are grateful to Dr. Peter
Kwasniewski for showing to the readers of our day, in a competent and
understandable manner, the inestimable treasure of the Catholic liturgical
tradition, which, in its prayers and rites, most perfectly re ects the integrity
and the ine able mystery of the Faith, and at the same time for exposing
patiently and no less thoroughly the severe aws of its attempted replacement.
Close the Workshop is an invaluable help for all who want to know, love, and
celebrate the liturgy for the glory of God and for the true bene t of the
people.”
—MOST REV. ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER, Auxiliary Bishop of Astana,
author of The Catholic Mass
“In Close the Workshop, Peter Kwasniewski brings to a close his hard-
hitting trilogy on the Roman rite (after The Once and Future Roman Rite and
Bound by Truth). Most of Kwasniewski’s conclusions in this volume are
diametrically opposed to those of the Vatican, which is all the more reason
they should be read—not as a proud act of dissent but in order to gain a
di erent perspective, one that raises serious questions about a matter vital to
the Church. Close the Workshop contains a defense of the preexisting
soundness of the old rite and an argument for insoluble aws in the new rite
that both friend and foe will value for their clarity.”
—MICHAEL P. FOLEY, author of Lost in Translation: Meditating on the
Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite
“Dr. Kwasniewski’s latest book will present challenges both to those who
agree with him and to those who disagree with him. For those who agree with
him, his evidence and arguments ask, ‘Can you see your way to embrace all of
the implications of this book?’ For those who disagree, his evidence and
arguments ask, ‘State for the record your superior evidence and the arguments
that justify your disagreement.’ Dr. Kwasniewski has produced a volume that
demands a verdict. Agree or disagree with this work as you see t—but it
cannot with integrity be dismissed or ignored.”
—FR. ROBERT MCTEIGUE, S.J., host of The Catholic Current via the Station
of the Cross Catholic Media Network; author of Real Philosophy for Real
People and Christendom Lost and Found
“David slaying Goliath is the only apt metaphor for Dr. Kwasniewski. At
the Goliath of systematic lies perpetuated about the traditional Mass,
Kwasniewski has aimed the ve shiny stones of his prodigious scholarship. He
has mortally wounded the giant of liturgical mendacity; it is hard to see how
any thinking Catholic could ever grant it credibility again. He has earned a
secure place alongside Joseph Ratzinger and Klaus Gamber, Dietrich von
Hildebrand and Martin Mosebach. In his latest volume, Close the Workshop
(which book is this? we have lost count!), he seals his scholarly triumph. With
the knife of his compelling theological scholarship and comprehensive
historical reach, he cuts through the sundry disingenuous assumptions
regarding liturgy that have brought us to this pass. A return to liturgical sanity
will take some time, but we have reason for consolation: the men who are our
future bishops are carefully reading Kwasniewski’s oeuvre with relish, waiting
for their turn to chant requiescat in pace over one of the Church’s most tragic
missteps.”
—FR. JOHN A. PERRICONE, Iona University, New Rochelle, New York
“Close the Workshop is an impassioned, uncompromising defense of the
traditional Latin Mass. It’s a summons to Catholics to stand fast in the face of
persecution and adversity. But going beyond that, Close the Workshop is an
encyclopedic review of the current issues in the Catholic traditionalist
movement—both clarifying fundamental theological principles and o ering
practical advice on celebrating the TLM today. Throughout, Dr. Kwasniewski
draws on his own vast experience as a scholar, musician, and participant in the
traditionalist cause.”
—STUART CHESSMAN, author of Faith of Our Fathers: A Brief History of
Catholic Traditionalism in the United States
“The image of a workshop is pertinent within the context of recent
liturgical history. In one sense, it represents the idea of a ‘reform of the
reform’ which, like a mechanic, aims to repair the liturgical engine, bringing it
back into line with what it understands to be the manufacturer’s
speci cations. The second sense pertains to the reformers themselves who, like
inventors in their workshops, seem to have had an insatiable desire to tinker
with and modify the liturgy, to ‘improve it’ and make it more ‘relevant.’ The
contention of Dr. Kwasniewski’s work is that either approach falls short in
both theory and practice, and that what is truly needed is a great liturgical
reset. Certainly the reformers’ innovations have not brought about the
promised ‘new springtime’ for the Church, while the reform of the reform,
however well-intentioned, cannot overcome the signi cant deformation to the
Roman liturgy and Catholic liturgical life that resulted from too much
pruning and too many modi cations. Indeed, the argument can be made that
the liturgical books in use in most parishes today are not only not what the
Council Fathers envisioned or authorized, but are no longer even the Roman
rite at all. That a claim like this is even tenable should be a source of great
consternation for anyone with a genuine love of the Church and her venerable
patrimony. Whether or not you concur with each particular conclusion
pro ered by Dr. Kwasniewski, he makes an important contribution to a
question that has become only more urgent over time: Did we certainly and
genuinely need a substantial recon guration of liturgical rites that exchanged
a venerable patrimony for a manufactured product that was (or was at least
intended to be) adapted to ourselves and to the zeitgeist—or do we actually
need to reform ourselves and our culture, adopting as our own a tradition
passed down from time immemorial?”
—SHAWN TRIBE, Editor, Liturgical Arts Journal
CLOSE THE WORKSHOP
 RELATED WORKS
FROM THE SAME AUTHOR
Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis

Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness

Tradition and Sanity

John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence, and Ritual

And Rightly So: Selected Letters & Articles of Neil McCa rey

Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright

The Holy Bread of Eternal Life

Ministers of Christ

True Obedience in the Church

From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War

The Once and Future Roman Rite

Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence

Illusions of Reform

Bound by Truth

Ultramontanism and Tradition

Unresolved Tensions in Papal-Episcopal Relations

Turned Around
 First published in the USA
by Angelico Press 2025
© Angelico Press 2025
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in any form or by any means, without permission

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Book and cover design by Michael Schrauzer

 Dedicated to all priests whose love for truth and tradition
has led to their marginalization, cancellation, or penalization,
yet who continue to minister the word of truth and the rites of
tradition
to the faithful members of the Mystical Body of Christ,
con dent that one day there will be vindication and restoration
If you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get
you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing
an about-turn and walking back to the right road.... Going back is
the quickest way on.

C. S. Lewis
 CONTENTS
Abbreviations
Foreword
Preface
Part I: Detours to a Dead End
1 Sacrosanctum Concilium: The Ultimate Trojan Horse
2 The Irreparable Failure of the Liturgical Reform
3 Escaping the Infernal Workshop
4 Indeterminacy and Optionitis
5 The Outrageous Propaganda of Cardinal Roche & Co.
6 The Hunt for the Elusive Unicorn
7 Why the Reform of the Reform Is Doomed
8 The “Latin Novus Ordo” Is Not the Solution
9 Sacri ce and Desacri cialization
10 Time for the Soul to Absorb the Mysteries
11 Discovering Tradition: The Priest’s Crisis of Conscience
Part II: Did—Does—the Old Mass Need to Be “Reformed”?
12 The Liturgical Rollercoaster and the Temptation of Tinkeritis
13 Just Say No to ’65—and ’62
14 Too Many Saints—Too Many Intercessors?
15 Allegory as a Key to Understanding Traditional Liturgy
16 The Importance of Understanding and Abiding by the Rubrics
17 In Defense of Readings in Latin
18 The Truthfulness of the Pre-1955 Good Friday Prayer for the Jews
19 The Grace of Stability: How Liturgy Forms the Christian Soul
20 The Minor Options of the Old Rite and How They Avoid Optionitis
21 Progressive Solemnity: Traditional Interpretations and Methods
22 Modest Proposals for Improving Low Mass
23 Should the Postures of the Laity Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised?
24 The Liturgy as a Temple
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Are We Justi ed in Calling Paul VI’s Rite the “Novus Ordo”?
Appendix 2: Discovering the Latin Mass Brings Lots of Questions
Works Cited
ABBREVIATIONS
CDF Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
EF Extraordinary Form
EMHC Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion
FSSP Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter
ICKSP Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest
LAJ Liturgical Arts Journal
LCD lowest common denominator
NLM New Liturgical Movement
NO Novus Ordo
NOM Novus Ordo Missæ
OF Ordinary Form
ROTR reform of the reform
SC Sacrosanctum Concilium
SSPX Society of St. Pius X
TC Traditionis Custodes
TLM traditional Latin Mass
Since the terminology of “OF” and “EF” was always problematic and has,
in any case, been rejected by Pope Francis, it is used in this book only in
quotations from other sources.

A Note
In these pages frequent reference is made to the Consilium, which was divided
into many study groups, called cœtūs (singular, cœtus). The exact number of
cœtūs is a matter of interpretation. Annibale Bugnini lists 45 in his Reform of
the Liturgy (63–65). In Notitiæ vol. 18 (1982), Bugnini’s collaborator Piero
Marini lists 46 (adding XXVIbis). It is an open question as to whether Cœtus
XXVIII–XXXVIII—twelve of them, including XXXIIbis—ought to be counted
as “groups” at all, since Marini says they consisted of a single relator. Cœtus
XIX, moreover, seems to have produced no schemata. To complicate matters
further, there were also numerous “cœtūs peculiares” established for speci c
questions, even early on in the Consilium’s work. Were one to count these,
who knows how many groups there ended up being! With those caveats, we
will adopt Marini’s number of 46.
 FOREWORD
When I learned that this book was in the works, my rst thought was: Yet
another apologia for “the Mass of the Ages” by the proli c (and, I would think,
insomniac) Dr. Kwasniewski? But Close the Workshop is more than that,
precisely because of how it ful lls that function so well. These pages expose
the inadequacy, indeed the futility, of attempting a “reform of the liturgical
reform” carried out after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Kwasniewski
explains all the reasons why e orts to get back to “what the Council actually
intended” are doomed from the start, thus showing the only viable way
forward if Latin-rite Catholics are to recover their rich liturgical, spiritual, and
theological heritage in full: a universal restoration of the authentic Roman rite
and the divinely revealed Faith it expresses—undiluted and unabridged.
Not very long ago, I could not have imagined writing the preceding
sentence. While by no means opposed to the traditional Latin Mass (in fact, I
was saying the old Mass in private even before Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu
Proprio Summorum Ponti cum of 2007 freed up its public celebration), I
believed that the best plan of action for the Church was a faithful
implementation of what the Vatican II Fathers really called for when they
approved the 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum
Concilium. While that document contains no dogmatic de nitions, it does
articulate fundamental principles drawn from liturgical theology
authoritatively taught—principles emerging from the Liturgical Movement
that sprang up in the nineteenth century and was given further impetus in the
twentieth century under Pope Pius X and his successors. One of those
principles holds that the liturgy, by its very nature, demands the “fully
conscious and active participation” by all of Christ’s faithful in the Church’s
liturgical worship of Almighty God (no. 14). This principle necessitated
liturgical adaptation and change (or so I believed), even if it did not necessitate
speci cally the New Order of Mass (Novus Ordo Missæ) promulgated by Pope
Paul VI in 1969 and published in the Roman Missal of 1970. To return to the
“Tridentine” Missal of 1962 (or earlier) and stop there would mean rejecting
the reforming mandate of an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church—
something unthinkable, no?
In 2003, Ignatius Press published a book of mine that may be familiar to
Dr. Kwasniewski’s readers: The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate:
Reform or Return. Part of that work presents a dialogue between two
imaginary critics of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform. One is a
“traditionalist” who argues for a return to the liturgy preceding the Council.
The other is a “reformist” who wants the postconciliar liturgy brought into
line with the moderate reform of the Roman rite outlined by Sacrosanctum
Concilium, thus leaving the new Mass looking and sounding very much like
the old. The book earned me some renown among Catholics who are
interested in “the question of the liturgy.” In the ensuing years, I thought and
wrote a great deal about the “reform of the reform,” thus establishing a
reputation in some quarters as the doyen of that movement (if it can be called
a movement). Then, a decade ago, I announced that I was “throwing in the
towel,” as they say in the boxing world.[1] That is the reason I was invited to
contribute this foreword. People like a good conversion story, although mine
involves no obvious Damascus moment.
So, what happened? I had come to realize that the “reform of the reform”
is basically a dead end, whether that agenda is understood in terms of doing
what is already possible (by making use of existing legitimate options), or in
terms of an authoritative “correction” of the reformed liturgy as it was
implemented. Let me start with what is presently doable. I knew in theory and
from experience that the Mass of Paul VI can be celebrated reverently and
beautifully, and with as much deference to the previous tradition as that rite
makes possible. It is permissible to celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass wholly or
partly in Latin, facing the liturgical east, using the (truncated) Con teor and
Kyrie, the Roman Canon and chants from the Proper, with incense, male-only
service of the sanctuary, and Holy Communion received kneeling and on the
tongue. But that is most often not how the new Mass is celebrated in the great
majority of places. Both by design and by its own o cial development since
the early 1970s,[2] the Novus Ordo is a cornucopia of options and variations.
The very fact that it renders all too many traditional practices optional at the
mere preference of the celebrant means that there are relatively few places
where reform-of-the-reform-style liturgy can be had on a consistent basis
over a long period of time, and this, obviously, has grave implications especially
for families. Clearly, much more is required for a robust liturgical life than the
freedom to choose between sets of licit options.
 But I have only scratched the surface. It further dawned on me that I was
focusing too narrowly on external forms, failing to take adequate account of
the liturgy’s contents (the readings, chants, prayers).[3] Even when the Novus
Ordo is celebrated as “traditionally” as its rules permit, when all is said and
done it is not the Roman rite of Mass except in the juridical sense.[4] It is an
arti cial concoction, antiquarian and rationalist in conception.[5]
This is not the place to rehash the considerable di erences between the
missals of 1962 and 1970; nor will I elaborate on the theological and ideological
motivations behind the creation of the new rite. That patient and painstaking
labor has already been done by our author in The Once and Future Roman
Rite (TAN Books, 2022) and by others before him whose works are cited in
Close the Workshop, including Michael Davies, Msgr. Klaus Gamber, Fr.
Anthony Cekada, Dr. Lauren Pristas, and Matthew Hazell. May it su ce to
reiterate here what I have said elsewhere: the Novus Ordo constitutes a
rupture with liturgical tradition which cannot be mended by rescuing
Gregorian chant from oblivion, expanding the use of Latin and improving
vernacular translations of normative Latin texts, praying the Roman Canon
exclusively, reorienting the altar, and rescinding certain permissions. None of
these measures can, in the words of Fr. Aidan Nichols, “restore an adequate
continuity with the textuality of the Roman rite in its earlier incarnation or
with its ritual integrity as a unity of word and action.”[6] Any attempt at
reforming the reform from within the framework of the Novus Ordo would
be like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Once I had realized
this, it became clear that the only logical starting-point for revived “organic”
development is the liturgy as it was celebrated in 1963 when Sacrosanctum
Concilium was promulgated, or possibly around 1965 when the Constitution’s
prescriptions had begun to be adopted but before the wrecking ball struck. But
now we are no longer speaking of a “reform of the reform,” are we? Indeed, the
plot thickens: deeper research into twentieth-century developments and a
more extensive (post-Summorum) pastoral experience of older forms such as
the pre-1955 Holy Week ceremonies have led many tradition-loving Catholics
to call into question the initial wave of changes made to the Roman rite in the
1950s under Pius XII, so that the “reset” moment might better be argued to be
the “typical edition” of the Roman Missal promulgated by Benedict XV in
1920. Without getting into the weeds on this subject, I will simply declare my
mixed feelings about the Pian liturgical reforms in general and cite Dom
Alcuin Reid’s opinion that “these ancient rites have much to o er the Church
of the twenty- rst century, not as an archaeological curiosity, nor as a rallying
point for divisive ecclesiastical luddites, but as profound and worthy
celebrations of the mysteries of our redemption.”[7]
Although I had been disabused of the fantasy of bringing the Novus Ordo
back to the point of wrong turning, I was not quite in the traditionalist camp.
After all, Sacrosanctum Concilium prescribed speci c modi cations to the
existing (1962) Roman rite: a fuller cycle of scriptural readings, some ritual
simpli cations, a wider allowance of the vernacular, priestly concelebration in
some cases, and so on. Now, one can surely object that some of the liturgical
reforms enacted in the name of the Council went beyond the provisions of the
Council itself. Yet the fact remains that the Council Fathers cum et sub Petro
decreed a reform of the Roman rite in a manner that would preserve its
substantial unity. That fact, together with a healthy dose of realism, ruled out
in my mind a permanent restoration of the “unreformed” liturgy. It was clear
to me that the solution to Western Catholicism’s great liturgical crisis would
be a proper implementation (at last) of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Case closed, then? Again: so I thought. While Catholic sensibility compels
such deference to the Church’s Magisterium (and the Liturgy Constitution is
an act of the Magisterium), I have come to appreciate that the argument from
authority cannot stand alone. The dilemmas created by the reform are in large
part due to the fact that Sacrosanctum Concilium, like the other Vatican II
documents, can with justi cation (nay, by authorial design) be understood in
contrary ways, conservatively or liberally; hence, while “there must be no
innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires
them” (no. 23), “the hour of Prime is to be suppressed” (no. 89d)!
Benedict XVI, like John Paul II before him, applied to the teachings of
Vatican II a “hermeneutic of reform” in continuity with Tradition, in contrast
to a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” Summorum Ponti cum was a
practical consequence of the application of the hermeneutic of continuity to
the liturgy. However, as the ecclesial experience of the past decade has made
painfully evident (think synods, among other things), that once-prevalent,
authoritative method of reading and implementing the Council is no longer
secure, if ever it was. Like America’s “living constitutionalists,” there will
always be those who claim that Sacrosanctum Concilium, like the other
conciliar documents, bears meaning which its drafters did not envisage—or
may simply be pressed by the powerful into service of still further
modernizing or inculturating agendas.
Besides, it is now six decades since the close of Vatican II, and
circumstances in the Church and in the world have radically changed. If
“obedience to the Council” means that we are forever bound to Sacrosanctum
Concilium, then let us ask, with Dom Alcuin Reid, whether all of the
Constitution’s subsidiary principles and contingent policies, as distinct from
the greater realities preceding them (i.e., the fundamental theological
principles), are as vital and helpful to the Church today as they were thought
to be in 1963.[8] The important distinctions made by Dom Alcuin’s question
drove me to reconsider whether a return to the old Roman rite intrinsically
involves a rejection of Vatican II, at least with regard to its vision of the
liturgy. In contemporary celebrations of the traditional Mass, one nds people
fully involved in both interior and exterior participation, thus discrediting the
claim that the renewal so fervently desired by the Council required a
restructuring of the liturgy and could not otherwise be achieved. In fact, it is
no secret, though it may be an embarrassment for some, that many of the
desiderata spelled out in the Council are achieved better, with greater
consistency, in communities that exclusively use the traditional Roman rite
today.
With this brief foreword, I have traced my intellectual journey from the
initially appealing but illusory “reform of the reform” to a quali ed
restorationism—quali ed, because I do not wish to replace one chimera with
another. It is unrealistic to exclude the possibility of further change to the
classical Roman rite, if by “change” is meant not permutatio (a change away
from its original identity) but profectus (growth by augmentation), to
appropriate St. Vincent of Lérins’s distinction in respect of doctrinal
development.[9] Nor do I think that anyone can reasonably expect a total
displacement, certainly not an immediate one, of the reformed liturgy, which
for the vast majority of still-practicing Catholics is, at this time, the source
and summit of their Christian life. But by all means, let us pray and work for
the restoration of that glorious patrimony of which three generations of
Catholics have been unjustly deprived, not once but twice now. The detailed
arguments in Dr. Kwasniewski’s Close the Workshop furnish invaluable tools
for this ongoing project, helping us to be conscious of, and thus to avoid,
certain pitfalls of the past—and of the present.

Fr. Thomas M. Kocik

November 21, 2024
Presentation of the B.V.M.
 PREFACE
It could be said, without exaggeration, that the book you are holding in your
hands has been under development for decades—basically, for the whole adult
lifetime of its author.
Born in 1971, growing up I had only ever experienced the modern rite of
Paul VI and, like most Roman Catholics at the time, did not even know of the
existence of any other form of worship, whether traditional Latin or Eastern
Christian. Such things were never mentioned at all in the local parish or the
Catholic schools I attended. Looking back, it seems to me that the
ecclesiastical hierarchy desired to project a message that the Church was the
same as it had ever been—a message that probably could not persuade most
older people, but was ideally suited for impressionable children. Those who
despised the preconciliar past and those who loved and missed it would
naturally have contrary reasons for passing over it silently, yet pass over it they
did: no need to call that chaotic and traumatic time to mind. A veil of secrecy
descended; no one was supposed to know.
In my early twenties, I rst encountered the Roman rite, that is, the rite
used by the Roman Catholic Church prior to the imposition of Paul VI’s
modern rite. I was fascinated, puzzled, provoked, disturbed, elated. My heart
was startled and my mind was bursting with questions. What was this? Why
had it gone away—why had it been discarded? What had possessed the Church
to move away from an intensely contemplative theocentric act of divine
worship to the busy, talkative, anthropocentric, secular- avored community
event I grew up with, which, as I re ected on it further, never seemed to have
much to do with divine worship? Thus began for me a journey on which
countless other souls have embarked, a journey that could justly be described
by the phrase “further up and further in.” For indeed it seemed, as I got to
know the traditional rites of the Church, both Western and Eastern, that there
was a heavenly country to explore, high up in the mountains of tradition, far
back into the depths of the ages, and that the way to this country had been
blocked, barred, almost blacked out, by a strange, suicidal humanism of the
twentieth century, when modernism morphed into revolutionary change.
Then the trouble started: the trouble of living in a broken Church, divided
from itself, violently cut o from its past yet still home to believers ardently
seeking continuity; a Church that seemed more like oating clusters of
autonomous initiatives than a uni ed body of faith, worship, and life. As a
lifelong church musician who only ever worked at “conservative” institutions, I
was continually called upon to provide the best sacred music possible for the
Novus Ordo,[10]while I never stopped participating in the traditional Mass and
the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. It was like having three personalities! At the
Novus Ordo, I would struggle mightily to shoehorn the tradition back into it,
taking advantage of every option-point and loophole and permission, pleading
or arguing with priests and even bishops to “do the Novus Ordo well,” that is,
with reverence, dignity, and beauty. At the Byzantine liturgy, I would, with
congregational gusto, sing in English, Slavonic, Ukrainian, Romanian, or
whatever other language happened to have the upper hand that day in the
chapel,[11] letting myself be carried away by an utterly di erent but magni cent
way of worshiping the Lord. At the traditional Latin Mass, I would yield
myself, with a sigh of relief, to the orderly motions, sober prayers, melli uous
chants, and silent oases that it o ered for the nourishment of my soul.
This triple liturgical life continued, in varying proportions, for twenty
years. More often than not, I was serving as cantor or choir director. This
experience was like learning languages by immersion: I came to understand
deeply, experientially, how these liturgies are structured, how they operate,
how their texts and music and ritual actions compare and contrast.[12] It was
during this time that my traditionalist views matured. I’m not a hot-headed
person who quickly jumps to conclusions or makes rash decisions; when I
reach a conclusion, it is because the evidence has buried me alive and I can’t
escape it, and when I make a decision, it is the fruit of a long meditation
(sometimes overlong). Thus, it took me a while, longer than it has taken many
others, to reach a double conclusion: there was no need for the massive
liturgical reform in the rst place, and the new rite cannot be reformed or
“done well”; rather, it must simply be retired and the traditional rite must be
restored to its rightful place of honor. Similarly, it took me a while, longer
than it has taken many others, to make the rm decision to attend the
traditional rite[13] exclusively and, as a matter of principle, to avoid the modern
rite altogether. This book is about that double conclusion and that double
decision.
The following passage in Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s Confessions of a
Convert perfectly captures the feelings of those who, having devoted many
years of their lives, perhaps decades, to the laborious and often stressful
business of trying to make the Novus Ordo traditional and reverent, then nd
blessed peace in full and exclusive adherence to a truly traditional liturgy, one
to which they can trustingly surrender themselves and from which they can
joyfully live. One might think of the transition from “reform of the reform” to
Tridentine Restoration in reading these moving words:

Cardinal Newman compares, somewhere, the sensations of a convert

from Anglicanism to those of a man in a fairy story, who, after
wandering all night in a city of enchantment, turns after sunrise to
look back upon it, and nds to his astonishment that the buildings
are no longer there; they have gone up like wraiths and mists under
the light of the risen day. So the present writer has found. He no
longer, as in the rst months of his conversion, is capable of
comparing the two systems of belief together, since that which he
has left appears to him no longer a coherent item at all.

There are, of course, associations, memories, and emotions still left

in his mind—some of them very sacred and dear to his heart; he still
is happy in numbering among his friends many persons who still
nd amongst those associations and memories a system which they
believe to be the religion instituted by Jesus Christ; yet he himself
can no longer see in them anything more than hints and fragments
and aspirations detached from their centre and reconstructed into a
purely human edi ce without foundation or solidity.

Yet he is conscious of no bitterness at all—at the worst experiences

sometimes a touch of impatience merely at the thought of having
been delayed so long by shadows from the possession of divine
substance. He cannot, however, with justice, compare the two
systems at all; one cannot, adequately, compare a dream with a
reality.[14]

I set myself the task of writing this book over six years ago, as the ftieth
anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s apostolic constitution Missale Romanum
approached in April of 2019. Soon enough it became apparent that the project
was on a vaster scale than I had initially supposed. Like triplets in the womb,
three books were conceived and born. The Once and Future Roman Rite:
Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile (TAN
Books, 2022) makes the argument that the modern rite is not and cannot be
called the Roman rite, nor indeed can it be grouped with any historic apostolic
rite. Bound by Truth: Authority, Obedience, Tradition, and the Common
Good (Angelico Press, 2023) lays the theological and canonical foundations for
the primacy of tradition, the duties and limits of ecclesiastical governance, and
the right to o er resistance to papal acts that threaten fundamental ecclesial
and spiritual goods. The present volume, nally, looks at the two issues
mentioned above: why the new Mass is so awed that it cannot be repaired
and should be abandoned; and why the old Mass did not (and does not) need
to be “reformed.” The latter consideration is anything but speculative:
proposals are always afoot for “updating” the troglodytic TLM on the false
assumption that, more than sixty years after publication, Sacrosanctum
Concilium must still be carried out, no matter what. (Thus, in chapter 12, I
talk about what such proposals look like, and then cite recent Vatican
interventions that amount to: “If we can’t get rid of the traditionalists
altogether, the next best thing is to insist they start reforming their old-
fashioned ways. Better late than never when it comes to implementing the
Council.”)
As the subtitle of this book indicates, we are concerned here with two
major issues: the soundness of the inherited Roman rite of the Mass, and the
unsoundness of the new rite of Paul VI. Going, in a sense, from the more
known (the asco of the new rite) to what is less known (the perfection of the
old), the rst part of this book will address the new Mass and the second part,
the traditional Mass. Part I will explain why a “reform of the reform” is not
possible without altogether deconstructing the modern rite and, in a sense,
trying to re-engineer the goods of the old rite out of materials poorly suited to
or incapable of such a transformation; that smells and bells can only cover up,
not correct, the enormous problems embedded in the new rite, since these
problems are genetic and not cosmetic in nature; and that even the quest for a
“reverent celebration”—assuming it is not obstructed by hostile forces—
involves serious spiritual dangers for both clergy and faithful. As for Part II, it
is not this book’s purpose to demonstrate in detail all the glories and
perfections of the traditional rite and to respond to the arguments people
never cease to hurl against it; this I have done in several other works, notably
Turned Around: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional
Latin Mass (TAN Books, 2024). Here, I will concentrate on how proposals to
reform the old rite as well as pastoral experiments undertaken in our times to
“improve” it or to “make it more relevant to the people” are contrary to the
genius of the rite and disruptive to the communities that celebrate it, and,
moreover, that the old rite has su cient built-in “ exibility” to make itself at
home in a great diversity of situations. The key aspect over which there is
control is the ars celebrandi, that is, the manner in which the old rite is
o ered; and in that regard, I will indeed argue that we must take pains to
celebrate it well, correcting certain bad habits that have a way of cropping up
from time to time.
In short, I maintain, on the one hand, that there is no good way to use the
new rite and it must eventually cease to be used, and, on the other hand, that
there is nothing wrong with the old rite and it must be restored, or at least
reclaimed by individual clerics and communities as we wait for better
leadership in Rome and across the hierarchy.
In the course of this work, I shall frequently point out the vast
implications of what has happened in the domain of liturgy and of what is still
happening there, for good and for ill. These implications extend far beyond
particulars of religious ceremonial. Though subject to ecclesiastical
supervision, the Church’s liturgy has always been revered by believers as a
sacrosanct reality, a touchstone of orthodoxy, an embodiment of living
tradition that must not be violated. It is not our possession to manhandle as
we please; it is a gift entrusted to us to love, honor, and transmit to future
generations. When the old liturgy of centuries, indeed millennia, was suddenly
dismantled and recon gured in modern guise as a sleek vehicle for the
emerging Space Age, the de ning “taboo” of the Catholic Church was
shattered. Predictably, millions of the faithful deserted the Church.[15] If this,
they wondered, is how the holiest of our religious rituals is treated, the
quintessential symbol and radiant center of Catholicism, can there be any
abiding truth in what the Church says about anything else? If the Holy Mass
itself is subject to human manipulation, why not the rest of her beliefs and
practices, which are obviously less sacred? Why not admit that our morality,
and our doctrine too, are antiquated and need updating in light of modern
thought and the experience of the men and women of today?[16] Perhaps, come
to think of it, the whole religion is a fraud. To that despairing conclusion
many were driven by the ceaseless barrage of changes unleashed by the
Council; and to it some Catholics may yet be driven in our own day by the
slouching towards Gomorrah of one progressive synod after another and by
the assault on communities that celebrate the old Roman rite. The arguments
of the enemies of tradition are the same as they were right after the Council,
and they have not improved with age; the faithful’s su erings are the same,
too, and they remain meritorious for those who persevere. “He that shall
persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Mt 24:13).
The expulsion of tradition from our churches after Vatican II made laymen
strangers in their own ecclesial home, alienated from their ancestors and
deprived of their inheritance. In a manner that left them permanently scarred,
clergy and religious who had loved Catholic tradition were forced to abandon
it as if it were so much useless baggage, or to repudiate it as harmful to the
Church’s contemporary mission.[17] The hemorrhaging of priests and religious
continued throughout the 1970s and beyond, and even today we face a
demographic sinkhole as retirements and deaths claim their own. Many
abandoned integral Catholic social teaching in favor of humanistic and
socialistic protestations of solidarity.[18] Philosophy and theology collapsed into
war zones of competing ideologies. One author describes the fallout thus:

The Sacred Heart beating at the center of the Church has not
abandoned Her and never will. But how often that Sacred Heart is
obscured! Many a modern Mass is replete with banal—or even
bizarrely inappropriate—liturgy, yet His Sacred Heart remains
beating there. It is as though this Heart is wrapped in banks of fog.
Such irreverent celebrations of the Holy Mass are not su cient to
destroy Christ’s presence; they only blind people to it. The results
are as manifold as they are grievous. But perhaps few are as
saddening as this: Catholics, even when they continue to practice,
are lost. They are no longer really sure of their Faith or why it
matters. The Church is torn apart by warfare between liberals and
conservatives. And a house divided against itself cannot stand.[19]
 The liturgy is the glue that holds all of Catholicism together, the keystone
that keeps all the stones of the arch in place. When it fell, everything else
tottered or collapsed. Where it returns, the fullness of Catholicism is not far
behind: the renewal of family life, the reawakening of religious life, the
intensi cation of the intellectual life, the splendor of cultural life, the
rudiments of Catholic political life. I have seen this dynamic play out many
times in my lifetime, and in both directions: from disorder to order, and from
order to disorder. This is why I am hopeful about the future, wherever the
movement for restoring tradition has taken root and prospered; and I am
equally despairing of any future for the mainstream Church, which, deformed
by the spirit of Vatican II, is like the seed in the parable that falls on the path
and is gobbled up by the birds, or the seed strewn on rocky ground that
sprouts up, is scorched, and withers away. Tradition is a seed planted deep in
the rich soil of souls that still long for absolute truth, for heroic goodness, for
noble beauty. In such souls the growth and the harvest will be great—
thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold.
Catholics who practice their faith seriously and take pains to educate
themselves can see right through the propaganda of the liturgical revolution
and its rather tired-sounding propagandists of today. They can see right
through the “Eucharistic Revival” and the “reverent Novus Ordo,” concepts
that ourish on the internet but, in the su ocating mediocrity of real life, die
a quick death, crushed between bland chanceries and bad customs. To put it
positively, such Catholics see that everything we need, everything we are trying
to accomplish, is already contained in our patrimony, waiting to be
rediscovered, recovered, lived anew. That is by no means an easy task at this
strange juncture in history, but the tools for doing it are present in abundance.
There have always been clergy and religious who live according to the
traditional rites, so personal apprenticeship has always been and will continue
to be available. Libraries of books and videos exist from which any ceremony
can be learned. Priests are quietly receiving instruction in the tradition and are
putting what they know into practice or biding their time for a better season.
The revolution has no gas left in its tank, only fumes; and fumes can last only
so long. In the Church today, the sole argument backing up the reform is the
papal diktat, “Because I said so!” Such desperate blustering is only a few steps
away from total collapse, as any standard history of dictatorship shows.
Without enthusiastic buy-in, nothing can endure.
 When will the institutional Church stop seeing the traditional Roman rite
as a threat to its entire existence, and come to see it rather as a heaven-sent
remedy for decades of anomy, anemia, and amnesia? The spokesmen of
synodality, who talk endlessly about “listening to the Holy Spirit,” seem to be
the ones most in need of a supernatural hearing-aid.
As can be seen on many levels, from the experiential to the academic, the
modern rite of Paul VI is not a legitimate development of the Roman rite or
really any expression of the Roman rite—let alone its “ordinary” or “unique”
expression.[20] The proposal of a “reform of the reform” is and has always been,
practically speaking, a non-starter; philosophically, it is a seductive chimera
that must be given up for the sake of mental and spiritual health. Unlike a sick
body that can heal itself, the modern rite cannot be rescued from within. If
the Catholic Church is ever to recover her internal soundness and external
in uence, her shepherds and her ocks must let the ill-advised Council of the
1960s and the Bauhaus liturgy fabricated in its name lapse into a well-deserved
obsolescence, so that the perennially fresh theology of the Council of Trent
and the immortally beautiful liturgy of the Roman Church may once again
ourish unfettered.[21] A council’s prudential or disciplinary recommendations
—and that is primarily what Sacrosanctum Concilium concerned itself with—
are not set in stone; they are not guaranteed to be prudent or helpful or long-
lasting; they are not assured to be fruitful when implemented; indeed, they can
be revisited, modi ed, or overturned as time goes on, if the common good of
the Church calls for something else. In our times, that something else is a
return to the tradition so foolishly discarded in a whirl of intoxicated
optimism and myopic deference to “Modern Man.” As H.L. Mencken once
quipped: “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple,
and wrong.” It was Paul VI’s misfortune (and thus it became everyone else’s
misfortune) to have given this witticism its supreme illustration. Thanks to
waves of change in the last century, each more destructive than the one before,
the problem of the Church’s liturgy has become more complex than ever—so
complex that further tinkering will only exacerbate it. Tradition o ers an
answer that is theologically clear, nobly simple, and eminently right.
A few particulars. When citing an online article, I have preferred not to
burden the footnote with a long and ungainly hyperlink but have simply
provided author, article title, website name, and date—more than enough for
locating it in a fraction of a second. (I made exceptions for online sources that
might be hard to nd without a link.) Many chapters herein saw their original
publication at a number of sites to which I have regularly contributed over the
years: New Liturgical Movement, OnePeterFive, Rorate Caeli, Crisis Magazine,
LifeSiteNews, The Remnant, Catholic Family News, and Views from the Choir
Loft. Certain chapters rst appeared in The Latin Mass magazine as well as on
my Substack Tradition and Sanity. All of the content has been revised,
sometimes extensively, for its new home. I decided to let stand some
conceptual repetitions now and again to make this or that chapter’s argument
more complete on its own terms—especially for those who, instead of reading
the book from cover to cover, prefer to skip around to topics that interest
them the most.
Enormous debts of gratitude have been amassed in the course of nishing
this project. Anthony Jones acted as a superb copy-editor and a friendly critic;
his work has signi cantly improved the clarity and rigor of my arguments. Fr.
Thomas Kocik, whom I thank for his lucid and stylish Foreword, o ered
corrections on this or that point in the manuscript. Another traditional priest,
supremely versed in rubrics and history, likewise invested considerable time to
comment on my manuscript; his name cannot be mentioned due to Church
politics, but God knows who he is and will reward his outstanding work. John
Pepino, Matthew Hazell, Gregory DiPippo, and Dom Alcuin Reid generously
responded to my calls for help. During our frequent conversations, Jeremy
Holmes articulated some of the best insights to nd their way into these
pages, and with characteristic generosity always told me just to take his idea
and run with it—which I’ve gladly done. For over ten years, John Riess and I
have collaborated fruitfully on many publishing projects; it delights me to give
Angelico Press another manuscript, just about a decade after the rst book I
published with John, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis. He is very patient with
my unrelenting perfectionism. So is my wife, after twenty-six years of
marriage with a high-strung writer. Her power to encourage, moderate, and
empathize is legendary to those fortunate to know her (myself most fortunate
of all!). Finally, a vast number of readers have contacted me over the years with
questions, objections, or insights; it was often their words that supplied
missing pieces of the puzzle, pushed me to re ne or replace my arguments,
challenged me to dig deeper into the sources, tempered my excesses or,
conversely, called out compromises. I cannot express my sense of awe and joy
when I think of how much collaboration, with so many individuals, a book like
this has actually involved, and I ask the gracious Lord to send His graces down
on everyone who has had a part, large or small, in the genesis or completion of
any of its pages.
The version of the Bible cited most often herein is the Douay-Rheims,
although I will also cite the King James Version or one of its many progeny,
such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition.

Peter A. Kwasniewski
December 21, 2024
Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle
 PART 1

Detours to a Dead End

WHY THE NEW MASS CAN'T BE SALVAGED
 I

Sacrosanctum Concilium:
The Ultimate Trojan Horse
How did I move from being a proponent of the Ratzingerian reform of the
reform (ROTR), the hermeneutic of continuity, and mutual enrichment, to
being a traditional Latin Mass (TLM) exclusivist who thinks the attempt at
nding or making harmony between the modern rite and the Roman rite is
fed by illusions and fraught with dangers? I can begin with a story.
Many years ago, I submitted a beefy manuscript to Ignatius Press, sending
it directly to Fr. Fessio. It was entitled “Resplendent for Its Dignity and
Harmony”: A Primer on the Reform of the Reform. Its title conveyed my
ambition: this was to be the comprehensive cookbook, as it were, by which the
enterprising clerical chef could turn out the perfect sacred banquet for his
Catholic clientele, in a setting digni ed by candles, tasteful décor, and
appropriate music. It would be the ne plus ultra of Ratzingerian reformism.[22]
Thanks be to God, Fr. Fessio rejected my manuscript as not aligning with
the Press’s vision. I think this was a polite way of saying it was both too
traditional in what it recommended for improving the Novus Ordo and too
critical of the Novus Ordo itself. Looking at the manuscript today, I wince
with embarrassment—not because it was poorly argued or topically
incomplete, but because it was a grandiose structure built entirely upon sand.
At the time, I had not yet probed as deeply into the gory details of the Second
Vatican Council and the liturgical reform as I was subsequently to do, and this
meant I was still operating on the basis of conventional truths that had to be
exploded before it would be possible to locate a foundation of rock upon which
to build a permanent structure of argument and advice. That foundation was
nothing other than the Roman tradition in its high medieval ourishing,
comprising the “received and approved” rites that St. Pius V canonized as the
Church of Rome’s liturgical regula dei, inherited from the fathers and
destined to accompany Latin Christians in divine worship until the end of
time.[23]
 Further study convinced me that the Council was guilty of vanity and
naïveté in its announced intention, of looseness in its methodology, and of
prolixity and studied ambiguity in its documents. The Council played out
under the predominant in uence of the progressive faction and gave birth to
an activistic, antinomian, anti-traditional, anti-liturgical “spirit” that may have
been o cially frowned upon but was uno cially tolerated or even nudged
along at all levels.[24] I used to think that the Council, orthodox in itself, had
su ered the sad fate of journalistic distortion and ecclesial misapplication, but
today it seems to me to be impossible to sustain this viewpoint if one wishes
to be strictly bound to the full scope of evidence.[25]
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC),
which once appeared to me as a predominantly conservative document,
discloses a “subtext” or, horribile dictu, “spirit,” that is revolutionary in nature.
Even if most of what the text says might be reconciled with traditional
Catholic thought and practice, there is a subtle bias in favor of change—the
mastery of liturgy by expertise that parallels the Baconian/Cartesian mastery
of nature by technology, and the construction of meaning by executive at that
parallels the subjectivist epistemologies of Descartes, Kant, and other modern
philosophers. For anyone with a sensus catholicus, it is sickening to read lines
like the following: “In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up
[oportet ordinari] so that they express more clearly the holy things which they
signify” (SC 21); “a new rite for concelebration is to be drawn up [con ciatur]
and inserted into the Ponti cal and into the Roman Missal” (SC 58); “a new
rite is to be drawn up for converts who have already been validly baptized” (SC
69); “a rite of religious profession and renewal of vows shall be drawn up in
order to achieve greater unity, sobriety, and dignity” (SC 80); and on and on, as
the document conjures up visions of academics grinding away at their desks,
arrogantly drawing up new rites to suit the new age of mankind of which they
believe themselves to be the anointed interpreters.
As one who has sung the traditional Latin o ce of Compline, the night
prayer of the Church, for many years of my life—indeed, often with my wife
and children singing along—and who has found great beauty, consolation, and
nourishment in its chants and prayers, I cannot but cringe to read this
statement: “Compline is to be drawn up [instruatur] so that it will be a suitable
prayer for the end of the day.”[26] As if the age-old form of Compline were not
already the most suitable prayer imaginable for the end of the day! As if such
luminous liturgical forms, the fruit of an entire civilization of piety, can simply
be “drawn up” at will![27] While we’re at it, why not “draw up” another Chartres
Cathedral and Scrovegni Chapel, another corpus of plainchant, another
Summa theologiæ and Divina Commedia, if the production of masterpieces is
as easy as signing a conciliar document and handing the keys to a team of
experts? The prophet Jeremiah might as well have been speaking of the results
of this absurd pretentiousness: “The great ones sent their inferiors to the
water: they came to draw, they found no water, they carried back their vessels
empty: they were confounded and a icted” (Jer 14:3).
On the whole, Sacrosanctum Concilium is marred by two errors: the
rationalist assumption that things must always be easily understood by us, and
the neo-Pelagian implication that we—or rather, the pope and his favored
commission—are the primary architects of our worship, the ones who can
build a better liturgy by our own e orts, even as post-World War II statesmen
attered themselves into thinking they could build a better world under the
benevolent guidance of the United Nations. Although particular passages of
Sacrosanctum Concilium could have been implemented in a way respectful of
tradition, the entire trend and tone of the document is decisively modern,
disrespectful towards the inherited liturgical wealth of the ages. The absolute
nadir is reached in the following statement: “The hour of Prime is to be
suppressed (supprimatur)” (SC 89d). As if stating a self-evident truth, St. John
Henry Newman observes that the Catholic Church does not abolish liturgical
rites honored by long use.[28] His observation rang true until the hubris of the
1960s, an era in which churchmen let go of piety in favor of slogans.[29] Such an
all-embracing reform could have been conceived and executed only by men
in ated with the pride of modernity, men who, having lost con dence in the
sacred heritage of the Church, had already set out on the road to the apostasy
we now see across the Western world. The result was as might have been
predicted: Facti sunt hostes eius in capite...et egressus est a lia Sion omnis
decor eius. “Her adversaries are become her lords...and from the daughter of
Sion, all her beauty is departed” (Lam 1:5–6). Posuerunt terram desiderabilem
in desertum. “They changed the delightful land into a wilderness” (Zech 7:14).
In this way, the Constitution is not in continuity with the original
Liturgical Movement, which cherished a deep love for the liturgy as given, as
an object of devotion—not the liturgy as project, as a subject of change.[30] That
movement was characterized, at its best, by a lial attachment to the
objectivity of tradition; the radical wing that took charge in the fties and
sixties was characterized by a critical detachment from anything inherited
unless it could pass through the double lter of archaeology and
aggiornamento. No wonder few things survived: this lter was designed to
catch everything but the pride of its users. The lament of Dom Prosper
Guéranger and others like him was that the beauty and spiritual riches of the
ancient liturgy were not su ciently known and needed to be made known
through hand missals and devotional commentaries, retreats and conferences.
The lament of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini and his generation was that the
liturgy as handed down to us was defective and needed to be thrown into the
scrap heap so that a better liturgy, one truly contemporary, could be
constructed from pieces of imagined “authenticity.”[31] The classical Liturgical
Movement saw the liturgy as the fruit of slow, organic growth under the
guidance of Divine Providence; as a result, this liturgy constituted a timeless
expression of the Catholic faith that was guaranteed to be permanently
relevant to each generation—provided only that it be known and loved. The
radicalized Liturgical Movement saw the liturgy as a work of human hands
that had su ered waves of deformation and deviation ever since antiquity,
particularly in the medieval and Baroque periods; it was, therefore, a thing that
had become inherently irrelevant—a thing corrupted and alienating that no
longer gave expression to the Catholic faith as now understood by (or
understandable to) modern Europeans. The commission to which Paul VI
entrusted the reform of the liturgy—the Consilium ad exsequendam
Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, or Consilium for short—echoed the
rationalist ambitions of the Synod of Pistoia (1786), an Enlightenment
excrescence condemned by Pope Pius VI; it produced modernism’s most
enduring monument, made in Pistoia’s image and likeness.[32] Jesuit liturgist
John F. Baldovin admits with refreshing frankness:

These historical studies [by Martène, Mabillon, Muratori, et al.], as

well as the philosophical concerns of the Enlightenment, led to the
decrees of the Synod of Pistoia (Tuscany) in 1786 under Bishop
Scipione de’ Ricci. In liturgical terms, this synod decreed a major
 streamlining and modernization of the liturgy, for example, by
decreeing that there be only one altar in a church as well as limiting
statues and processions. Although its decrees were swiftly
suppressed by Pope Pius VI (1794), much of Pistoia’s agenda survived
in the liturgy constitution [viz., Sacrosanctum Concilium]. As a
matter of fact, some of the post-Vatican II criticism of the
constitution, and of the liturgical reform in general, focused on the
fact that some of what was condemned by Pope Pius VI was now
approved.[33]

Elsewhere, I’ve discussed how Pius VI’s Auctorem Fidei—the document

that condemns in detail the proposals of the Synod of Pistoia—serves as a sort
of anticipatory condemnation of the Consilium’s large-scale liturgical
reconstructions under Bugnini’s direction.[34]
We see here a fundamental di erence in attitude and mentality. The
Catholics of old respected and venerated what they received from their
ancestors—to such an extent that they readily attributed later writings to
famous saints, as when they attributed chant to St. Gregory the Great, or the
Divine Liturgy to St. John Chrysostom, even though it is clear enough that
these things existed prior to those saints and continued to develop after them.
The conciliar/postconciliar mentality, in contrast, is to distrust tradition, to
set oneself up in judgment over it, to pick and choose from it as it suits one’s
fancy, to emphasize our scholarship, our theories, our publications, our
progress, improvements, insights, and, in general, superior status vis-à-vis our
predecessors. Thus we debunk and deconstruct everything and remake it in
our image, instead of humbly allowing ourselves to be reshaped in the image
passed on to us, as the veil of Veronica received the impression of Our Lord’s
Face. This attitude of presumed superiority poisons our relationship to
tradition and, ultimately, to divine revelation and the Christian Faith as such.
Consider that the Church’s traditional worship has been likened to a great
sprawling ancient estate. We inherit not a bunch of boxes of junk to sort
through but a huge piece of land—a kind of holy land—with a grand mansion
built on it: the liturgy. This mansion has been lived in and added to by
countless saints. It was built by them under the hand of Divine Providence.
The entire structure has become an indistinguishable conglomeration of rst-,
second-, and third-class relics. This doesn’t mean we have to live in every room
of it or that we can’t paint some of the walls a di erent color or add new
rooms or furnishings (as long as they are in good taste, matching with what is
already there). What it does mean is that we have no business tearing down the
structure and starting over from the ground up, or getting rid of the land we
inherited to buy a convenient eld in Babylon. Writing in 1976, the in uential
Jesuit liturgist and Consilium member Joseph Gélineau—whom Bugnini
numbered among the “great masters of the international liturgical world”[35] —
candidly stated what he believed the Consilium had achieved:

Let those who like myself have known and sung a Latin-Gregorian
High Mass remember it if they can. Let them compare it with the
Mass that we now have. Not only the words, the melodies, and some
of the gestures are di erent. To tell the truth, it is a di erent liturgy
of the Mass [c’est une autre liturgie de la messe]. This needs to be
said without ambiguity: the Roman rite as we knew it no longer
exists [le rite romain tel que nous l’avons connu n’existe plus]. It has
been destroyed. [Il est détruit.] Some walls of the former edi ce have
fallen while others have changed their appearance, to the extent that
it appears today either as a ruin or the partial substructure of a
di erent building.[36]

If one were to counter by saying the liturgical reform didn’t tear

everything down, the truth is that they seriously considered tearing everything
down and believed they had the right and the authority to decide on the fate
of every part except for the so-called “sacramental forms.”[37] In other words,
they were like doctors who “allow” the unborn to live, but who believe they
would be perfectly within their rights to “terminate a pregnancy.” So far from
being praised for saving lives, such doctors deserve to have their licenses
revoked and their practices shut down. What remained of tradition in the
Novus Ordo remained because Bugnini’s Consilium willed that it remain; it
had successfully passed through their ideological ltration system. Their
individual will—not reverence for the tradition—was the ultimate principle of
everything. And this is profoundly uncatholic, I would even say anti-Catholic;
it vitiates their entire project.[38]
It seems irrelevant, therefore, to object that some of the most obvious and
violent changes—Mass versus populum, the de facto exclusion of Latin and
Gregorian chant, women serving in ministerial roles in the sanctuary,
Communion in the hand while standing—were not mandated by the Second
Vatican Council and are not required by the Novus Ordo, which to some
extent permits an ars celebrandi in continuity with tradition. The simple fact
is that, from 1964 onwards, the highest levels of authority introduced a self-
consciously modern way of celebrating the liturgy and, for all intents and
purposes, imposed it on the body of the faithful. In his general audience of
November 26, 1969, which is easily in the running for most repellent papal
speech ever given,[39] Pope Paul VI stated that the Church must now sacri ce
the “divine” Latin and the “incomparable” Gregorian chant for the sake of
reaching Modern Man in a this-worldly vernacular, with the consequence that
“pious persons are [going to be] disturbed most.” This address is vintage
Montini: pretending to be an upholder of the deeper values of Catholicism—a
sort of neo-Platonic distillate without historical embodiment—he
systematically dismantled its actual traditions and thereby paved the highway
of identity-free Catholicism on which the modernizing Church, led by
uncassocked priests and unhabited nuns, had already gleefully embarked after
the Council. To such an incumbent of the papal throne might well be applied
the words of Holy Writ: Cogitasti confusionem domui tuæ, concidisti populos
multos, et peccavit anima tua. “Thou hast devised confusion to thy house, thou
hast cut o many people, and thy soul hath sinned” (Hab 2:10). Telling are the
words of John Henry Newman: “The contempt of mystery, of reverence, of
devoutness, of sanctity, are notes of the heretical spirit.”[40]
Bugnini, on the other hand, o ered no sympathetic farewell to the
liturgical patrimony of the Roman rite as he discarded it. During the same
year that Paul VI gave the aforementioned address, Bugnini dispatched a urry
of demeaning rhetoric toward the Roman rite, which, if taken seriously,
suggests that the Church had been unable to engage in true worship for over a
millennium. In an article published in L’Osservatore Romano in 1969, replying
to historian Hubert Jedin’s regret at the loss of Latin, he wrote:

As a good historian who knows how to weigh both sides and reach a
balanced judgment, why did you not mention the millions and
hundreds of millions of the faithful who have at last achieved
worship in spirit and in truth? Who can at last pray to God in their
own languages and not in meaningless sounds, and are happy that
 henceforth they know what they are saying? Are they not “the
Church”? As for the “bond of unity”: Do you believe the Church has
no other ways of securing unity? Do you believe there is a deep and
heartfelt unity amid lack of understanding, ignorance, and the “dark
night” of a worship that lacks a face and light, at least for those out
in the nave?[41]

As a result of these direct and indirect attacks upon reverence and

tradition, between 1970 and circa 2005 one could count on both hands the
number of places that made serious attempts to practice what Pope Benedict
XVI dubbed “the hermeneutic of continuity,”[42] that is, a Novus Ordo Mass
o ered ad orientem, in Latin, with Gregorian chant, having only properly
vested male ministers in the sanctuary, Communion given on the tongue to
faithful kneeling along the altar rail, and so forth. It is understandable that
defenders of the modern Roman rite wish to compare the Novus Ordo “as it
might be” with the traditional Latin Mass “as it actually is,” but such a
comparison is unreal, even fantastical. As thoroughly as the old rite is designed
to be in exibly regulated, the new rite is designed to be open-ended, malleable
and mutable, “inculturated,” so that it bears the seeds of its own destruction
within itself; the Novus Ordo doesn’t bind or direct priests in a way that is
totally determinative. That is why “Father Over-here’s Mass” can be so
di erent from “Father Over-there’s Mass,” even when both are within bounds
of the rubrics (such as they are). What happens when, so to speak, Fr.
Longenecker retires and Fr. Shortnecker takes over? With Cardinal Ratzinger,

today we might ask: Is there a Latin Rite at all any more? Certainly
there is no awareness of it.... There was a loss of the awareness of
“rite,” that is, that there is a prescribed liturgical form and that
liturgy can only be liturgy to the extent that it is beyond the
manipulation of those who celebrate it.[43]

Yet, in another sense, the Novus Ordo on the ground is characterized by a

relative lack of diversity, due to the adamantine grip of a one-sided body of
customs built up over decades of impoverished and abusive celebration.[44] And
even assuming the best-case scenario, the di erences between the missals are
so profound, to the disadvantage of the new, that no ars celebrandi can ever
adequately surmount the rupture. The problem is not so much cosmetic as
genetic.
As Joseph Ratzinger famously observed, the general crisis of the post-
council is linked to the speci c crisis of the liturgy.[45] In the words of French
novelist and lay activist Cyril Farret d’Astiès:

Certainly it was not the promulgation of the new missal that gave
birth to modernism, the “collector of all heresies” that so worried
St. Pius X. However, it is undeniable that all the modern thought of
the twentieth century paved the way for liturgical reform; the
reformers were in love with new ideas and had experimented, more
or less clandestinely, with their pastoral whims, which found
concrete and de nitive application in the new missal—suppression
of the O ertory, horizontal participation, abandonment of eastward
orientation, systematic use of the vernacular, methodical
simpli cation of all the rites...

Once these radical transformations of the entire liturgical edi ce

had been imposed, the faithful and the clergy who had to make use
of them ended up integrating their suspect theological
underpinnings, and in 2020 we have come to see bishops receiving
Communion from the hands of a young girl, worship of the goddess
Pachamama in the heart of the Vatican, bishops knowingly giving
the Eucharist to both Protestants and civilly remarried divorced
persons...

Even if worship is not a catechism, its expression is necessarily a

re ection of belief. Liturgy expresses faith. And faith is expressed
and spread through worship. As Fr. de Blignières so aptly put it
during the pilgrimage for the tenth anniversary of Summorum
Ponti cum, ritual is what makes the truth tangible. The liturgical
crisis is therefore naturally linked to the crisis of faith.[46]

The liturgical reform was the “Trojan Horse” by which modernism,

liberalism, relativism, feminism, and a host of other evils invaded the Church
and took possession of the city. Although in certain countries the practice of
the Faith was already weakening in the 1950s and early 1960s, in most places
and in most respects the Church was holding its own, and, allowing for crests
and troughs that may be expected in a world of fallen human beings, such
resilience could have continued for decades to come—if the Second Vatican
Council had not been taken as a proclamation that all-encompassing change
was overdue and that the Church must change to accommodate and assimilate
the modern world from which it had so long been estranged.[47] The liturgical
reform is exactly where these notions found their most complete acceptance,
their most stunning realization, their most devastating consequences.
Those who think that Sacrosanctum Concilium is “just ne” if taken at
face value, that the problem was people ignoring it or implementing it in a
one-sided or distorted manner, and that a “reform of the reform” could take
its bearings from a strict application of that document, may nd themselves
jarred awake from pleasant daydreams by the following two considerations.
First, one should consider how cleverly the reformatory impresario
Annibale Bugnini steered the drafting committee of Sacrosanctum Concilium
prior to the Council. Employing “the Bugnini Method” (as the acclaimed
French historian Yves Chiron, who has written the best biography of Bugnini,
calls it),[48] the Monsignor ensured that the text would never ask for too much,
too fast, but would leave things vague enough to allow the extensive work of
demolition and reconstruction he and his well-connected network of allies
already had in mind. As he said to members of that committee on November
11, 1961 (thus, prior to the opening of the Council in October 1962):

It would be most inconvenient for the articles of our Constitution

to be rejected by the Central Commission or by the Council itself.
That is why we must tread carefully and discreetly. Carefully, so that
proposals be made in an acceptable manner (modo acceptabile), or,
in my opinion, formulated in such a way that much is said without
seeming to say anything: let many things be said in embryo (in nuce)
and in this way let the door remain open to legitimate and possible
postconciliar deductions and applications: let nothing be said that
suggests excessive novelty and might invalidate all the rest, even
what is straightforward and harmless (ingenua et innocentia). We
must proceed discreetly. Not everything is to be asked or demanded
 from the Council—but the essentials, the fundamental principles
[are].[49]

At the opening of the rst session of the Council, when a cabal of prelates
and periti[50] orchestrated a dramatic overturning of three years’ worth of
preparatory work and draft documents, Sacrosanctum Concilium was the only
document allowed to stand. The October revolutionaries, so to speak, saw that
the draft already met their expectations and future plans; it could be allowed
to remain on the table while all the other drafts were shredded. This, and not
a pious wish to treat the liturgy rst, is the reason why Sacrosanctum
Concilium was the rst document to be discussed, then approved and
promulgated.
Second, one must re-read Sacrosanctum Concilium more closely with the
Bugnini Method in mind. A key tool for doing so is Christopher Ferrara’s
“Sacrosanctum Concilium: A Lawyer Examines the Loopholes.”[51] I’d read this
years ago, but only after reading Chiron was it able to hit me with full force.
Ferrara’s analysis shows, in detail, how a postconciliar liturgical reform that
seems to depart so egregiously from certain stipulations of Sacrosanctum
Concilium was, nevertheless, a consistent application of it, taking advantage of
its loose language and the many openings it created for postconciliar
extrapolations and adaptations.
The conclusion: Sacrosanctum Concilium is not only not a safe document,
it was the greatest Trojan Horse ever introduced into the Church. It may be
painful for many good Catholics to admit that a document so lauded by the
establishment is, in truth, so awed and so corrosive, but we must judge the
tree by its fruits. In a debate broadcast by Radio-Courtoisie on December 19,
1993, Jean Guitton (1901–1999), philosopher and theologian, and a close
personal friend of Paul VI, said the following:

The intention of Paul VI with regard to the liturgy, 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... What is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as
close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s Supper... But I repeat that
Paul VI did everything in his power to get the Catholic Mass,
 beyond the Council of Trent, closer to the Protestant Lord’s
Supper...

I do not think I am wrong to say that the intention of Paul VI, and
of the new liturgy that bears his name, was to require of the faithful
a greater participation at Mass, to make more room for Scripture,
and less room for all that some would call “magic,” [and] others
[would call] substantial, transubstantial consecration, and for what is
of Catholic Faith; in other words, 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, in the Mass,
and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass.
[52]

Just how close a friend Paul VI considered Guitton, and how openly he shared
his mind with him, may be inferred from several facts: the former asked the
latter to suggest ideas for his inaugural encyclical; a couple of years later, the
same pope asked him, along with Jacques Maritain, to draft the various
“messages” that he would deliver at the end of the Second Vatican Council;
and, most tellingly, Paul VI hosted him annually at the Vatican on September
8, the date they rst met in 1950—a remarkable favor for anyone as busy as a
pope to grant to anyone.[53] A photo exists of Guitton and Paul VI at the
Vatican, working on a book together.[54] Guitton is a man who knows what he’s
talking about. For his part, Bugnini would surely have agreed with the aims
attributed to Paul VI, for—concerning severe edits made to the traditional
Good Friday orations in 1955—Bugnini wrote in the March 19, 1965, edition of
L’Osservatore Romano: “It is the love of souls and the desire to help in any way
the road to union of the separated brethren [i.e., Protestants], by removing
every stone that could even remotely constitute an obstacle or di culty, that
has driven the Church to make even these painful sacri ces [in the liturgy].”
Conservative Catholics, although a quickly-vanishing breed in the face of
burgeoning traditionalism, continue to repeat the bromides they have been
taught, probably because they could not face what they think are the
catastrophic consequences of renouncing them. Conor Dugan, in an irenic
essay-review, says the following about Robert Royal’s A Deeper Vision: The
Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century:
 In Royal’s reading, “there is nothing whatever in any document
approved by the Council Fathers that countenance[d] [the] radical
departures” that followed the Council. Royal backs up his claims by
a survey of the key documents. And, like Fr. Nichols’ recent study,
Conciliar Octet...he concludes that the Council was not the
Copernican Revolution of the Church, but reform in continuity.[55]

I wish I could believe this (indeed, I once did believe it). But having come
to see that the rst document approved by the Council—the only one where
the preconciliar draft was retained because it was considered the least
controversial!—is already chock-full of problematic statements and loopholes
big enough to drive a eet of Mack trucks through, it is impossible to live in
the fantasy world of Catholic conservativism any longer. D.Q. McInerny well
describes this problem:

A characteristic of Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the other Council

documents as well, is their adoption of a peculiar “yes...but,”
“certainly...maybe” mode of literary expression. A speci c mandate is
laid down, or a particular directive stated, and then almost
immediately thereafter, in more cases than not, there follows a
number of qualifying adjustments, relating to what has just been
said, which have the e ect of rendering a mandate not really
mandatory after all, and making a directive sound as if it were little
more than a suggestion, representing one possibility among others.
This is what happens in Sacrosanctum Concilium. The e ect of
such an approach is to create an aura of ambiguity regarding a
particular issue which allows for, or even invites, a variety of
divergent interpretations, some so divergent that they are mutually
contradictory. This is something which has been amply
demonstrated over the last several decades.

No sooner is it speci ed, in Sacrosanctum Concilium, that Latin is

to be preserved in the Latin rite than permission is granted for the
vernacular to be used in the Mass and in the administration of the
sacraments, and, tellingly, “the limits of its employment may be
extended.”... Given the vacillating manner in which the subject of
 Latin is handled in Sacrosanctum Concilium, I think it a fair
judgment to say that the anti-Latin party can legitimately nd
greater backing in the document for their position than can those
who wish to uphold tradition. What happened to Latin was the
result of careful calculation.[56]

The reason we got the Novus Ordo in all of its reformation glory is that its
future architects rigged the conciliar document to open the way to it, and
admitted that they did so, as we have seen. If Sacrosanctum Concilium is the
green wood of the Council, what about the dry?
Bugnini knew that he could succeed only by patient incremental e orts, so
he ensured the drafting of a base text that was legalistic and “moderate” in
tone, reasonable and serene in its provisions. Yet examined closely, the
document nally approved contains more than a few hints of revolution to
come, with scant regard for the sensus delium and sensus catholicus. As
mentioned before, a line such as “Compline is to be drawn up so that it will be
a suitable prayer for the end of the day”—as if Compline’s traditional form
were not already a highly suitable prayer for the day’s end, and as if a worthy
substitute for tradition can be summoned into existence at the snap of one’s
ngers—indicates the radical modernism at work in SC. Its spirit is
rationalistic through and through, and could only have been the work of
someone scornful of Catholic tradition and desirous of overthrowing it. The
whole document is chipping, chipping, chipping away at traditional piety, so
that the subliminal message is: “The faith of your fathers was ill-informed,
superstitious, excessive, misguided, while your faith will be modern, up to date,
correct, truthful.” It starts an avalanche of questioning, doubting, changing,
changing some more, experimenting, rejecting, perverting, departing.
The foundational assumption of the liturgical reform was that the old rite
was in dire need of repristination. To this end, the Council Fathers agreed to
an instauratio (restoration), but by no means to a wholesale reconstruction[57]
—at least, the vast majority of them would have said that this is not what they
had agreed to. The clique of liturgical revolutionaries who worked closely to
secure what they sought (as we shall see) were far more clever than the
bumbling bishops whose goodwill had been abused. Ignoring their vote, Paul
VI empowered the Consilium to “divide and conquer” the entire terrain of the
liturgy.[58] Under Bugnini’s indefatigable leadership, its members allowed
themselves the widest latitude when creating new rituals out of bits and pieces
of tradition fused with modern inventions.
It is worth noting that some of the most quali ed participants became,
over time, the ones most disturbed by the manner in which the business was
conducted. Future cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli wrote in his diary in 1964
that the Consilium

is merely an assembly of people, many of them incompetent, and

others of them well advanced on the road to novelty. The
discussions are extremely hurried. Discussions are based on
impressions and the voting is chaotic. What is most displeasing is
that the expositive Promemorias and the relative questions are
drawn up in advanced terms and often in a very suggestive form.
The direction is weak.[59]

The same participant observed in 1968:

That which is sad...however, is a fundamental datum, a mutual

attitude, a pre-established position, namely, many of those who have
in uenced the reform...and others, have no love, and no veneration
of that which has been handed down to us. They begin by despising
everything that is actually there. This negative mentality is unjust
and pernicious, and unfortunately, Paul VI tends a little to this side.
They have all the best intentions, but with this mentality they have
only been able to demolish and not to restore.[60]

One of the most eminent participants, Fr. Louis Bouyer, had little praise to
o er for the Consilium’s fruits: “There was no hope of producing anything of
greater value than what would actually come out of it, what with this claim of
recasting from top to bottom and in a few months an entire liturgy it had
taken twenty centuries to develop.”[61] Recalling Lauren Pristas’s research-
based conclusion that “the post-Vatican II revisers did not adopt an antecedent
tradition of usage. They produced something unique,”[62] Matthew Hazell
accurately summarizes their mentality:
 For the [particular] Sunday we have looked at, the Consilium took
orations from some of the well-attested Easter, Time after
Pentecost, and Advent prayers, and created a new, unique Mass
formulary. This process of reform could almost be seen as a kind of
liturgical “greatest hits” album, with the reformers having taken
what they considered to be the best orations from across the entire
liturgical tradition, and collected them into one corpus of prayers.
Of course, this is not a completely accurate metaphor, as, at best, the
reformed Missal could only be partly considered a “greatest hits”
album. Within it, there are also a sizeable number of “re-recordings”
(edited orations) and “remixes” (centonisations), as well as
completely new compositions—not things that people tend to buy
“greatest hits” albums for!

This rather cavalier approach to liturgical reform is not without its

serious problems. Ultimately, it treats the liturgical tradition as a
vast body of texts that can be freely deconstructed and
reconstructed, like a giant piece of plasticine able to be remade in a
completely di erent shape at the whim of the one moulding it,
without any necessary reference to what it was before. No previous
liturgical reform had been carried out like this; the 1570 Missale
Romanum largely took up a corpus of prayers that, at the time, had
been in use for some 800 years, making only very minor changes to
it.[63]

What Hazell discovers by drilling into a particular “Sunday of Ordinary Time”

has its parallel on every single page of the new liturgical books. They are not a
restoration of anything; they are the brainchild of liturgical “experts” whom
Archbishop Robert J. Dwyer, present at all four sessions of the Council,
memorably called “either unscrupulous or incompetent,” members of a “so-
called Liturgical Establishment, a Sacred Cow which acts more like a white
elephant as it tramples the shards of a shattered liturgy with ponderous
abandon.”[64] The idea of a liturgical rite as a given that deserves our deepest
respect, so much stressed by Ratzinger,[65] was appallingly absent.
Let’s take another example. The Ember Days are among the most ancient
liturgical observances we possess. Already spoken of by Pope St. Leo the Great
in the fth century as a rm and xed tradition, they predate even the
Sundays of Advent (!), as beloved as those are. Michael Foley notes:

The Ember days, which fall on a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of

the same week, occur in conjunction with the four natural seasons
of the year. Autumn brings the September Embertide, also called the
Michaelmas Embertide because of their proximity to the Feast of St.
Michael on September 29. Winter, on the other hand, brings the
December Embertide during the third week of Advent, and spring
brings the Lenten Embertide after the rst Sunday of Lent. Finally,
summer heralds the Whitsun Embertide, which takes place within
the Octave of Pentecost. In the 1962 Missal the Ember days are
ranked as ferias of the second class, weekdays of special importance
that even supersede certain saints’ feasts. Each day has its own
proper Mass, all of which are quite old. One proof of their antiquity
is that they are one of the few days in the Gregorian rite...which has
as many as ve lessons from the Old Testament in addition to the
Epistle reading, an ancient arrangement indeed. Fasting and partial
abstinence during the Ember days were also enjoined on the faithful
from time immemorial until the 1960s.[66]

Early on, the Ember Saturdays were chosen as days of ordinations. As Peter
Day-Milne recounts, “in the year 494, Pope Gelasius prescribed that the orders
of priest and deacon be conferred on those days...around evening-time.”[67] As a
result, notes Fr. Arnaud Devillers, “the prayer and fasting of Ember week
acquired added importance, for apostolic tradition demanded that ordinations
be preceded by fast and prayer (Acts 13:3).”[68] The traditional Epistle for the
Fourth Sunday of Advent (1 Cor 4:1–5), which always follows the Advent
Ember Days, re ects this ancient connection with ordinations when it speaks
of how the “dispensers of the mysteries of God” should be found faithful.
This ancient tradition, like so many others, was abandoned in the 1960s as
part of the “extreme makeover” of the Church’s worship by committees that
invented what they thought the world now needed, and suppressed what they
thought it had outgrown. That is completely contrary to the way the liturgy
has always been treated: as an inheritance to be proudly maintained and
jealously protected.[69] How could such a thing have happened?
 A purge and fabrication of this magnitude arose from the belief that
Modern Man is essentially di erent from his predecessors, to such an extent
that what past generations possessed and made use of can no longer be
assumed pro table to modern people.[70] This belief, as false as the day is long,
dovetailed with the mania for system and method characteristic of modern
times: with enough taxpayer dollars and enough government committees, we
can build a better world—or, in this case, with enough “experts” backed by
conciliar and papal muscle, we can build a better worship.
There are multiple reasons for the mania, but they converge on one thing:
the triumph of rational method and its (attempted) application to every
domain of human life. By “rational method” I mean the sort of thing one nds
in rationalist thinkers such as Descartes, Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, or Comte: the
attempt to dominate reality by a self-contained logical system of axioms,
theorems, and corollaries. In civil society, this becomes the attempt to create a
rational “science of politics” and a system of human rights so that man’s
happiness can be procured on Earth and the evils to which the esh is heir can
be banished. Romanticism was a failed response to the rationalist mania, and
its failure was all the heavier because it bought into the premise of the mania—
namely, that system and method are the only ways to be rational. In reacting
against rational method, romanticism thought it had to react against
rationality itself.[71]
Bronwen McShea’s groundbreaking essay “Bishops Unbound”[72] traces out
how this mania invaded the Church long ago. To respond to the rise of
rationally organized states, the Church adopted the same type of rational
organization herself, overriding centuries of local, organic traditions. To be
fair, Protestantism had played those traditions to its advantage: get all the local
canons to be heretics, and they’ll elect a heretical bishop. Some response, then,
was needed. But in adopting the tactics of modernity, the Church began to
drink in the view that system and method are the answer to every problem. We
see that mentality seeping into governing structures, seminaries, advice for
confession, spiritual manuals, mass-produced artworks, you name it. The
Church imitated the secular state in its absolutism, its legal codes, its
proceduralism, and its regimentation. John Lamont’s analysis of the corruption
of the concept of obedience ts into this picture as well.[73]
 So when the Church faced a crisis of humanity in the twentieth century—
and there can be no doubt that some such crisis had been brewing ever since
the First World War and was only intensi ed by the Second—the natural
solution seemed to be this: call a huge meeting of all the executives, draw up a
new set of documents and plans, and set things to rights from the top down.
What is usually billed as the moment of the Spirit, the moment of throwing
o the shackles of neoscholasticism, was in its very conception one huge
exercise in the mania for system and method. The ensuing liturgical
construction, rationalization, and standardization at the hands of a
memorandum-driven super-committee for top-down “reform” was of a piece
with that.[74]
Catholics who are steeped in the modern conception of rationality can
imagine no other alternative but a nostalgic romanticism. Some people think
their way along, while others feel their way along. We can see this false
alternative at work whenever traditionalists are accused of “nostalgia,” which is
regarded as a sort of weakness of the brain: since system and method are the
only version of rationality—there’s simply no other way of being rational—it
follows that being attached to place, to local tradition, to the heritage of the
past, is to be irrational.
Two giants of early modern philosophy, Bacon and Descartes, reject the
formal cause, the principle that accounts for what something is, and the nal
cause, the principle that accounts for why it does what it does. Scienti cally-
minded people are to look instead to the material cause, that is, the stu
something is made out of, and the e cient cause, what put it together or
pushes it. In a similar way, the formal cause of liturgy (tradition) and the nal
cause (worship of the thrice-holy God) were neglected, and the “stu ” of the
liturgy was subjected to manipulation by scholarly architects and engineers,
for whom it was seen as raw material ready to be endowed with a new purpose:
the betterment of the human condition. In other words, the same mechanistic
and humanistic worldview was operative in the liturgical reform as in the
Baconian and Cartesian scienti c revolution.
In my experience, relatively few Catholics today are aware of just how the
liturgy was “reformed.”[75] The entire landscape of the liturgy—the Mass, all
the sacramental rites, the Divine O ce, blessings, papal ceremonies—was
partitioned into 46 segments entrusted to as many subcommittees (each called
a Cœtus, “group” in Latin), all under the expert management of Annibale
Bugnini, who reported directly to Paul VI and served as the information
conduit between the subcommittees that “drew up” rites and reports and the
pope who had to approve their work. Within this bureaucratic juggernaut
there were, for instance, nine groups for the Divine O ce and eight for the
Ordo Missæ.
The various groups disassembled the existing rites into their atomic parts
and then produced new building plans out of traditional, archaic, imaginary,
and novel ingredients. These were reassembled at plenary meetings, as a car
factory has an assembly area for the parts fashioned in separate departments.
This was Bugnini’s plan from the rst moment: “divide and conquer.” All he
had to do was to make sure that the “right” people were assigned to each
subcommittee, and then sit back and orchestrate the agendas and
communications. The tunnel vision of so many simultaneous tracks would
ensure that the most avant-garde ideas could be pursued and given a favorable
hearing, while no one but Bugnini and a few others had in mind the overall
goal they were seeking. He knew that the monumental changes he and the
other radical reformers had in mind would never be approved all at once in a
full-frontal view; rather, Henry Ford’s car-factory process would ensure
success.
It should be clearer now why I have said that approaching liturgy in this
mechanistic, industrialized, compartmentalized way betrays a Baconian-
Cartesian conception of reality. Bacon’s Novum Organum was the
methodological template of the Novus Ordo. The Consilium’s workshop was
like the laboratory of a chemist or a physicist, rather than the outdoor world
of real organic beings studied by the botanist or zoologist. The liturgy was
regarded and treated not as a mystery that grows with its own inner life-
principle, like a child in the womb of Holy Mother Church, but rather as a
series of lifeless parts that have to be rigged up a certain way to get them to
“function properly.” The holistic metaphysical vision of Plato and Aristotle, of
Augustine and Aquinas, is absent from this atomistic reductionism and
technological utilitarianism. The liturgy was treated like a deluxe set of LEGO
bricks or a DIY project instead of a wondrous seed imparted by the Lord,
planted by the apostles, tended by the Church Fathers, and maintained by
centuries of gardeners. Although the liturgy was a ected by the soil, water, and
climate in which it lived, those who received it and cared for it had always
respected its givenness, its “otherness” from us and from any age through
which it passed. Such must still be our attitude today toward the great
tradition. By a kind of miracle, this tradition survived alongside its attempted
modern replacement, and as the years go on, we can see it thriving anew,
refuting the claim that old rituals cannot speak to modern believers.
Once one understands what actually transpired at the Council by reading
such works as Roberto de Mattei’s The Second Vatican Council—An
Unwritten Story and Henry Sire’s Phoenix from the Ashes, it is no longer
possible to credit the optimistic “Royal reading” of Vatican II; nor can the
blossoming of Catholic intellectual life before Vatican II cancel out the
machinations of the progressives and soft modernists who steered the internal
discussions and drafts more or less as they wished. They saw their chance, and
they took it boldly. Indeed, Bugnini himself, in his account of the years 1948–
1975, self-congratulatorily invokes the saying “Fortune favors the brave” to
explain how he and the other reformists shaped and guided the entire
reformatory process from start to nish.[76]
Why, then, did nearly every prelate at the Council, including Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre, vote in favor of Sacrosanctum Concilium—a whopping 2,147
against 4? Fr. Hunwicke suggests that they were naïve about the ultimate goals
of the radical Liturgical Movement and thought they were opting for a gentle
modernization of the traditional worship;[77] that they were lied to about what
the plan would actually be, since the debates at the Council suggested
moderate reform;[78] and, not least, that they acted by a herd instinct, which, in
the midst of such an ine cient and laborious meeting as the Council was (we
have many private records complaining of dreadful tedium), allowed the key
players to fuel documentary nalization with the gasoline of impatience.
And why, then, did they obediently implement all the changes afterward?
Ah, therein lies a di erent tale. Even the bishops who had serious doubts
about the reforms (and there were more than a few) felt they had no choice
but to obey whatever the pope decreed. A pope’s word is God’s word, isn’t it?
Cardinal John Heenan of Westminster, who felt bewildered and betrayed by
the constant liturgical changes of the latter half of the 1960s, wrote to a
correspondent in 1963, “When the voice of the whole Church speaks, we have
to sti e our personal preferences and accept the fact that the Holy Ghost is
guiding the Church....Reserve judgement for a few years and you will see why
God has led the Church to a new liturgy.” To another, he wrote in 1965: “If the
Pope and the bishops of the whole world have agreed on these changes the
Holy Spirit must be guiding His Church.” In 1967: “When the Holy See gives
directions we have to obey them” (no quali cations!). In 1969: “If the Holy
Father has decided to reform the liturgy, we must accept.”[79] A long-ingrained
sheepish hyperpapalism masquerading as piety prevented even the shepherds
from protecting their ocks against revolutionary harm.[80] Sixty years of
deformed parochial worship, a global network of clerical immorality, and a
pope who treats the Church’s faith as malleable clay are the three strikes by
which hyperpapalism has at last exited the batter’s box—although some are
still catching up on the news.
Does the foregoing critique of Sacrosanctum Concilium or of the
Consilium set up by Paul VI to implement it count as “dissent from the
Magisterium”? No. The Constitution itself has two ingredients: a speculative
account of liturgy, which is patient of an orthodox interpretation, and a long
list of practical decisions about how the liturgy should be “restored,” a task
undertaken by the super-committee. The traditionalist critique aims at the
latter ingredient, which, of its nature, concerns prudential judgments made
about particulars. Such judgments about what is best to do here and now are
not infallible in themselves and remain subject to reevaluation, modi cation,
and even rejection. The same process happened with disciplinary measures of
earlier ecumenical councils, some of which were never implemented or fairly
quickly became moot.[81] Put simply: the plan of action to which the Council
Fathers agreed, together with the way it was interpreted and applied, can and
must be judged by its fruits and against the backdrop of changing
circumstances; it is not an object of religious assent. Even according to the
most robust valuation of an ecumenical council’s status, it is well within its
powers to enact a mistaken plan of action, and, a fortiori, well within the
powers of its implementary bodies such as working groups and episcopal
conferences.
The disaster of the liturgical reform ensued because a coterie of arrogant
academics had convinced themselves that everything needed to be changed to
catch up with, or speak e ectively to, Modern Man. It did not; they were
wrong. Worst of all, Modern Man did not come rushing into the doors of the
Novus Ordo; rather, millions of faithful left, never to return. Contrary to the
itching hands of reformers from the era of Protestantism through the Synod
of Pistoia down to the cancer-phrase of the Liturgical Movement, the Roman
rite of Mass, de nitively codi ed in 1570 by St. Pius V, did not need to be
reformed. To those humble enough to take its yoke upon them and acquire its
wisdom, this rite made and still makes perfect sense in the form in which it
has been handed down for so many centuries. It was not—is not—defective.
Objections against it fall away when scrutinized.[82]
As St. Thomas Aquinas argues, following St. Augustine and other Church
Fathers, God would not permit an evil unless He wills to bring forth from it a
greater good. While none of us can see in full the good He will bring from the
evils attendant on the Council and its subsequent liturgical reform, I think it
is past dispute that we have learned hard lessons that have helped us over the
decades and will continue to help us in the future. We can have—and an ever-
growing number do have—a better understanding of why the traditional (pre-
1955) Roman rite is just the way it is, why it functions well as it stands, and
why it should not be changed in any signi cant way. Its perfection in texts,
chants, and ceremonies has never been as evident as now, standing out against
a backdrop of liturgical manglement, mediocrity, and malaise. Those who care
about the liturgy care more about it; those who love tradition, as all Catholics
should, love it all the more. These are the necessary preconditions for a
ourishing of divine worship in the Church: the font and apex of the
Christian life and the heart and soul of Christian culture.
More than sixty years after Sacrosanctum Concilium, the spirit of reform
has largely lost its hold on anyone except the ever-dwindling generation that
was young at the time of Vatican II, supported by a small number of ideologues
who still parrot the views of Bugnini and associates. The youthful momentum
and intellectual weight are on the side of tradition. We must be patient and
never lose heart, for major changes—this time, good ones—are in the o ng.
 2

The Irreparable Failure of the Liturgical Reform

Those who have been in the traditionalist movement for decades can
remember times when critiques of the postconciliar liturgical reform appeared
in obscure corners of the Catholic world at intervals of months (for papers
and magazines) or years (for books). In our day, things are far di erent: every
week brings with it the tidings of worthwhile articles and books defending
tradition and critiquing novelty, sometimes even in popular venues. In this
regard, the di erence between, say, 1974 and 2024 is astonishing: surely a sign
of the vitality of the movement of restoration. Thanks in no small part to Pope
Benedict XVI’s profound liturgical theology and no-nonsense criticisms of the
hack-job of the 1960s, a growing awareness that something went seriously
amiss has pervaded those who are still practicing the Faith in the younger
generations. Best of all, the number of clergy who are familiar with the glories
of the unreformed Roman rite and celebrate it regularly is growing apace,
guaranteeing its vitality long past the time when the products of the
Consilium will have been relegated to a museum of twentieth-century
curiosities.

THE NOVUS ORDO’S DEFECTIVE CALENDAR

Consider, to begin with, a number of authors thoughtfully tackling the
question of the botched reform of the Roman calendar, which is agreed to be
one of the worst casualties of the postconciliar era, and which Fr. Louis Bouyer
called the work of “a trio of maniacs.”[83] The “unfreezing” of the traditional
calendar to such an extent that it seems to have melted into a puddle
encouraged episcopal conferences to play fast and loose with holy days of
obligation. Joseph Shaw, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and
Wales, observes:

The dates of the Church’s major feast days are in no way random.
They have deep historical and cultural roots, and immense
 theological signi cance. The Church uses the calendar to teach us
things, and the means she employs include the intervals between
feast days. Thus, most obviously, the Ascension is forty days after
Easter. Forty is the time of waiting we nd in the Old and New
Testament. Moving the feast of the Ascension not only obscures
this, but mucks up the interval between the Ascension and
Pentecost: nine days, a novena of preparation for the Holy Spirit to
descend. Corpus Christi is on a Thursday after Easter because it
recalls the mystery of Maundy Thursday. The symbolism is
destroyed if it is moved to Sunday. Epiphany is the Twelfth Day of
Christmas: it can’t be moved without damage to all the cultural
associations this has. It is the primary feast of Christmas for many
Oriental Churches. It was celebrated on 6th of January by the
Emperor Julian in the year 360. This is pretty well as far as detailed
records go back for many aspects of the liturgy. To move it is surely
an act of barbarism.[84]

Fr. Richard Cipolla focuses on the deformation of the entire structure of

sacred time:

One of the saddest and most deleterious e ects of the changes in

the structure and content of the liturgical calendar in the post-
conciliar reform is the lack of understanding of the sancti cation of
time by the feasts and fasts of the Church. The introduction, at least
in English, of the term “ordinary time” contradicts the fact that
after the Incarnation there is no “ordinary” time. There is only the
extraordinary time that has been brought into being by the
insertion of the dagger of the Incarnation into ordinary time. Now
we know that the term “ordinary time” is a poor translation of the
Latin term for “in the course of the year” [per annum]. But even this
does not take away from the fact of the impoverishment of the
liturgical calendar that has been e ected by taking away the Sundays
after the Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost. The traditional
way of naming these Sundays understood that these two feasts,
Epiphany and Pentecost, are the climaxes of the Christmas and
Easter seasons, the seasons that celebrate the event and meaning of,
 respectively, the Birth, and the Death and Resurrection of Christ,
and therefore these feasts become the touchstone, the source of
reality of the Sundays of the Church Year....

Surely we can now see the foolishness of the possibility of

celebrating the Epiphany as early as on January 2, four full days
before the actual feast that is celebrated in parts of the Western
Church still on January 6 and celebrated on that day by our
Orthodox brethren throughout the world with the solemnity it
deserves. It is foolish as well to celebrate this feast after January 6, as
if it is irrelevant to the sancti cation of time when any feast is
celebrated, for the guiding principle in this reform is the
convenience of the people: it is more convenient for the people to
celebrate the Epiphany on Sunday rather than the interruption of
having to go to Mass on a weekday. But it is precisely the
interruption that is the point. The ir-ruption of the Incarnation
demands such an inter-ruption, demands such an “inconvenience,”
for it is a reminder of the sancti cation of time itself to those of us
who forget that time and space and the world and our lives and our
future have been radically changed by the Incarnation of God in
Jesus Christ.[85]

Kate Edwards, an expert on the Benedictine Monastic O ce, also draws

attention to the abolition of Epiphanytide:

The removal of most of the octaves from the liturgical calendar was
perhaps an understandable decision. But it was, I think, one of those
reforms that went more than a few steps too far, most obviously in
the abolition of the octave of Pentecost in the Ordinary Form
calendar. Another case in point, in my opinion, is the abolition of
the octave of the Epiphany, which is, I think, one of those decisions
which it would be nice to reverse as a means of giving some genuine
impetus to the “New Evangelization.” The calendar reforms of the
twentieth century saw a progressive reduction in the importance of
Epiphany, starting with the abolition of the octave of the feast, and
culminating in the outright abolition, in the Novus Ordo calendar,
 of the traditional season of time after Epiphany. Yet Epiphany is,
above all, the great feast of the revelation of God to the gentiles,
represented by the three wise men. So how could reducing the
importance of this feast possibly be thought consistent with the
objective of making the Church more missionary oriented?[86]

In a talk given at the Brompton Oratory, Fr. Cassian Folsom summarizes the
problem in a memorable image:

The Ordo Missæ of the 1970 Missal was radically changed: in fact,
we call it the Novus Ordo. Concerning the calendar, and especially
the superabundant growth of the sanctoral cycle, there has always
been need of periodic pruning. But in the 1970 Missal, the pruning
was so radical that the original plant is sometimes unrecognizable.
The protective fence of the rubrics, carefully developed over
centuries in order to guard the Holy of Holies, was taken down,
leading to unauthorized “creativity” and liturgical abuse.[87]

To the instances of calendrical iconoclasm already cited, one could add the
suppression of the ancient season of Septuagesima, which, following on the
heels of the joyous season of Epiphany, allots three weeks of time before Lent
for the faithful to prepare themselves gradually for the rigors of fasting,
abstinence, and almsgiving.[88] Such a season, while invested with symbolic
meanings by commentators on the liturgy, is obviously also premised on a
sound grasp of human psychology and the need for transition, so as to avoid
the feeling of having been, in the words of one author, “parachuted into
Lent.”[89]
Over the years, many commentators have pointed out how ridiculous it is
to celebrate “Ascension Sunday” or “Epiphany Sunday,” and yet these things
remain xed in place, like prehistoric ies trapped in amber. There can be no
change for the better, that is, no restoration of Catholic tradition, until there
is a massive change of mentality, a dying o of the old guard and a genuine
renewal from the grassroots. For this transition to take place—for it to have
even a chance of taking place—discussion and promotion of the TLM must
continue, must rise and grow into a mighty wave of unanimous and irresistible
testimony: “Give us back our tradition, give us back the fullness of the Catholic
faith!” This will be a second great instance in history when the sensus delium
will have carried the truth of the Gospel in a time when even hierarchs
compromised, denied, or disappeared.[90]
The issues we have touched on with the drastically altered calendar are
only part of a vast eld of problems. The rupture between the liturgical
tradition as it stood on the eve of the Second Vatican Council and the modern
rite is so comprehensive and easily demonstrated that one could choose any
point of entry and mount a substantial critique of the reform on its basis: the
Ordo Missæ, the Propers, the sanctoral cycle, the lectionary, the modi cations
in text and rubric that amounted to an abandonment of our musical
patrimony, and so on.

THE DEATH OF THE REFORM OF THE REFORM

It seems, then, that we have entered a phase of great honesty and frankness
not only in assessing the false principles behind the Pauline liturgical reform
and the worldwide damage it has wrought (an assessment that has certainly
not been lacking at any point over the past sixty years[91] ) but also in
evaluating the implausibility of an institutional correction that would remove
rampant abuses and re-integrate foolishly discarded elements.
This new and more realistic phase is epitomized in an article that attracted
an enormous amount of attention when it rst appeared just over a decade
ago, in February 2014: Fr. Thomas Kocik’s “Reforming the Irreformable?”[92] It
would be no exaggeration to call this article a turning point in the English-
speaking world. Here we had one of the greatest experts on the subject[93]
concluding that the “reform of the reform” was, in fact, not possible. The
modern rite is so radical a deconstruction and reconstruction of the liturgy
that it does not exist in the same line of organic development as the Roman
rite. Pope Paul’s liturgy is a new departure, a new thing, not a revision of the
old thing that had been handed down over the centuries. As an arti cial entity
constructed out of bowdlerized and decontextualized pieces of the Roman
heritage combined with modern inventions, any future reform of it would be
no more than a mere variation on the novel theme. The only way forward is
not to tinker any more with this “fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product,”[94]
but to return steadfastly and stalwartly to the Catholic and Roman liturgical
tradition embodied in the preconciliar (and indeed pre-Pacellian) liturgical
books.
Fr. Kocik’s bracing honesty was the long-awaited and necessary
announcement that “the Emperor has no clothes.” Even if others had said
similar things over the years, people perk up when an educated priest who
specialized in the study of the Roman liturgy and who for a long time
defended and promoted the reform of the reform nally cashes in the chips
and says: “The only viable solution is to restore the usus antiquior everywhere,
with full, actual, and conscious participation.” Honesty has a way of clearing
the air, letting us breathe freely.
Taking their cue from Fr. Kocik, several authors expressed similar
judgments at the time. Dom Mark Kirby bore eloquent witness to the
experiences and feelings of many:

I was, at one time, as deeply committed to the reform of the reform

as was Father Kocik, having contributed to the Beyond the Prosaic
conference at Oxford in 1996 and to the book that followed it. Like
Father Kocik, although several years earlier, I came to see the futility
of trying to repair something that, at bottom, is structurally
unsound. Nowhere is the old adage, “Haste makes waste,” truer than
when applied to the precipitous reform of liturgical rites and the
books that contain them. In most places the liturgical landscape has
become a dreary wasteland. The liturgical rites and books prepared
so feverishly in the wake of the Second Vatican Council have been
tried and found wanting.

There are, it is true, liturgical oases here and there, where the
reformed rites are carried out intelligently, with dignity, reverence,
and devotion—I am thinking of certain communities, monasteries,
and parishes, the Communauté Saint-Martin, for example—but
these subjective qualities cannot make up for the objective aws and
structural weaknesses inherent in the same rites....

The passing of the years has demonstrated the intrinsic

inadequacies of the reformed liturgical books of the post-conciliar
era. The cracks in the post–conciliar liturgical edi ce became
 evident almost as soon as the new rites began to be “lived in.” Today,
the same edi ce appears like so many shabby buildings put up
hastily during an economic boom, now revealing their structural
aws, and threatening imminent collapse.[95]

Another Benedictine, Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman, penned a soul-

searching article in the course of which he laments:

If liturgy was a live issue before the Council of 1962–65, it has

become in the wake of that Council an explosive issue. Liturgy
seems never to be at rest. For some, the Council gave a licence to
change comprehensively the performance of the Church’s liturgy,
and the change has been unrelenting. For others the changes were
unjusti able, unconscionable even, and they reject them outright.
For others still, liturgy has been something to be coped with, an
unavoidable battle eld on which they try to nd shelter in some
compromise that acknowledges the reality of change and seeks
somehow to keep it organically connected to the Tradition of the
Church. Few have been satis ed.

We might ask ourselves: where is my foxhole, my bunker, my

bastion, on this battle eld? So much of my reading the past year or
more has shown my foxhole [i.e., the reform of the reform] to be
lling with mud, slowly but ever more surely. It is not a tenable
position in the long-term....

It is hard not to conclude that the structure and the rubrics of the
new Mass lend themselves to such a [cavalier, creative] practice and
attitude. If you remove so many of the sacralizing elements of a
ritual, of course it is going to end up secularized. Rather arbitrarily
included after the Council among the “useless repetitions” the same
Council had deprecated, nearly all the signs of the cross and
genu ections and kissings of the altar were removed from the Mass.
To one not formed under the old Mass, these gestures can appear to
be fussy and pedantic and almost obsessive. They seem to cry out for
some rationalization. But is such a principle appropriate to the
 symbolic and sacred ritual of the Mass? Are time-and-motion
principles suited to something that should take us out of time and
out of ourselves?...

In other words, there is a disjunction between what we are taught

happens at Mass and what seems so often to be happening. There is
an incongruence between the words and the actions. It is possible to
do the new Mass properly; but the new Mass seems to have the
inherent aw that it is so easy to do improperly.[96]

In addition, we may note the problem that it is ultimately impossible to

know what “doing the Novus Ordo properly” actually means, given that there
is no rubrically-determined authoritative model, and given that successive
papacies have continuously liberalized liturgical customs while simultaneously
asking for a never-enforced removal of abuses.[97] There is anarchy in the place
where there should be maximum order. This led Monika Rheinschmitt to
formulate a sardonic judgment:

If there is anything we can learn from considering (a) the diversity

already allowed by the Novus Ordo’s own rubrics, (b) the diversity
added on top of this by o cial or uno cial attempts at
“inculturation,” and (c) the further diversity created by rampant
abuse and bad custom, about which the Vatican pretends to care but
never takes concrete action, we are justi ed in reaching the
following conclusion: The unity of the Novus Ordo consists
exclusively in not being the traditional liturgy.[98]

Fr. Richard Cipolla compared Fr. Kocik’s article to the famous Tract 90, the
nal installation of the Oxford Movement’s Tracts for the Times (1833–1841)
and a symbol of the crisis and parting of the ways within the Anglo-Catholic
e ort to re-inject Catholicism into the English Church.

This is indeed “Tract 90” for the “reform of the reform” and sounds
the death knell of any serious attempt to hold onto the ction of
continuity between the 1970 Missal and the Traditional Roman rite.
Just as Tract 90 marked the end of Newman’s attempt to nd a
 Catholic continuity and a Via Media in Anglicanism, so does Fr.
Kocik’s public articulation of the abandonment of his attempt to
nd a liturgical and theological continuity between the Novus Ordo
and the Traditional Roman rite mark the end of the Reform of the
Reform movement. What must be done now—and this will require
much laborandum et orandum—is to make the Extraordinary
ordinary [i.e., to make the classical Roman rite normative].[99]

The missal of Paul VI, the modern (and not the Roman) rite, is irreparably
broken. Due to the false principles, exploded assumptions, and rationalistic
method behind its composition, it was wrong from the rst day, and it
remains wrong, no matter how “well” it is celebrated. Its prayers and rubrics
embody a hermeneutic of discontinuity that could not be cured without a
complete overhaul. In the language of the philosophers, it would require not
an accidental but a substantial change.[100] As far as incremental reform goes
(for example, if we look to how some Oratorians celebrate the new rite), nearly
every successful step has involved adding or substituting something from the
old rite—for example, arti cially crafting roles for a “subdeacon” and deacon at
Solemn Mass, re-introducing the O ertory prayers sotto voce, observing
silence during the Canon, and giving Communion on the tongue to faithful
kneeling along an altar rail—or removing something painfully problematic,
such as the singing of ditties unworthy of a third-rate Broadway musical, or
the sauntering up of unvested laity into the sanctuary to read readings or
distribute Communion. Using the (by now) old-fashioned terminology of
Benedict XVI, one might say the Ordinary Form becomes better by becoming
the Extraordinary Form. As such, the Novus Ordo needs to be retired, not
reformed, so that the fully developed Roman rite may once again occupy its
proper place in the life of the Catholic Church as it had done for centuries
before.[101] Granted, such a retirement will not happen overnight (nor should
it), but the end goal is clear.
We have come a long way since the optimism of the 1990s, when it seemed
as if one might somehow restart the process of organic development from
within the Novus Ordo. As most have come to see, this is a fool’s errand. Even
if we may agree that the Holy Sacri ce of the Mass should always be
celebrated as beautifully, reverently, and solemnly as possible—in whatever rite
one is using—it is no longer necessary to pretend that, with a certain yet-to-
be-found alchemy, lead can be transmuted into gold. The gold remains golden,
and the lead, leaden.
Careful study and long experience of the liturgy has led many Catholics
who deeply love the Church to the conclusion that the reform carried out by
the Consilium and promulgated by Paul VI is not just the unfortunate victim
of a wave of abuses but a thing deeply and inherently awed in structure and
content.[102] For instance, consider the sobering and relatable re ections of
Phillip Campbell as he re ects on his conversion and the nasty surprise that
awaited him:

When I was able to compare the prayers of the TLM to the Novus
Ordo, the di erence was night and day. “Why wouldn’t anyone want
to pray like this?,” I thought to myself in astonishment at the
obvious superiority of the old prayers.... I had the following
realizations: (1) The Church I had fallen in love with through study
[before converting] was the traditional Church, which for all intents
and purposes no longer existed. (2) Whatever it was that had
replaced the traditional Church was not only di erent, but
also inferior to it in every way. Those things I liked about the
contemporary Church were precisely those facets of traditional
Catholicism that had survived despite the rupture of the Conciliar
era. (3) Finally, this displacement of tradition was not some accident
of history, but was a very deliberate act of erasure—of intentional
cultural warfare waged against the Church by one of her own
factions. The Church I had read my way into simply did not
exist. It’s hard to explain the degree of frustration I felt. Not just
frustration, but a sense of having been robbed. Yes, robbed; for to
intentionally cut o the great stream of tradition is to commit the
sin of theft against future generations, who are thereby deprived
unjustly of a heritage they ought to have inherited. Destroying
tradition is to commit theft against future Catholics.[103]

In sum, Campbell, like so many others, came to realize that the Novus Ordo is
not in continuity with the Roman liturgical tradition as it unfolded over the
centuries of faith. As a result, it cannot serve as a suitable platform for the
long-term future of the Roman rite.
The “irreparable failure” mentioned in this chapter’s title comprises four
aspects of the liturgical rites of Paul VI:
1. their failure to uphold the inherent auctoritas, the morally binding
authority, of the liturgical tradition as such;[104]
2. their failure to re ect the duties and limits of papal authority vis-à-vis
the liturgical tradition;[105]
3. their failure to adhere to principles and desiderata of Sacrosanctum
Concilium,[106] not to mention a host of earlier documents, especially Pius XII’s
Mediator Dei;[107]
4. their failure to respect basic laws of psychology and sociology
concerning healthy behavior toward a cultural patrimony and the
requirements of ritual stability for group identity and harmony.[108]
The scope of any “reform of the reform” project and its likely success are
therefore intrinsically and inescapably limited. Even if we indulged the fantasy
of a day when every Novus Ordo celebration across the globe would be
reverent, solemn, and beautiful, in full accord with (a conservative reading of)
Vatican II and the postconciliar Magisterium, there would still be profound
discontinuity between what came before the Council and what came after, in
the very bones and marrow of the rites themselves—in their texts, gestures,
rubrics, rationale, spirituality, and theology.
What is more, Joseph Shaw argues that a Novus Ordo Mass “dressed up”
in Latin and chant often ends up awkwardly “falling between two stools”
because it respects neither the genius of the Vetus Ordo nor the speci c
populist motivations behind the Novus Ordo.[109] Many who are involved in
liturgical ministries have experienced the uphill battles Shaw describes, which
make the task of any kind of reform of the reform extremely tiring, a constant
struggle with the rite’s plethora of options,[110] the rationalistic assumptions
undergirding it, and the longstanding habits of minimalism, antinomianism,
and horizontalism with which it is surrounded like a stag at bay. Shaw
concludes that it is easier and better simply to begin celebrating the age-old
liturgy of the Church. It starts at a healthy place; it is a coherent whole,
serenely and admirably just what it is; and there is no nonsense about it.
Whether it might need minor doctoring or not is vastly secondary to the
consoling truth that it is not a bloody mess on the operating table of wartime
medics.
If the analysis by Fr. Thomas Kocik, Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman, Fr.
Richard Cipolla, Joseph Shaw, and others is correct—and, by this time, one
could compile many volumes of such analysis, from authors writing in many
languages—there are systemic, “hard-wired” problems that no reform of the
reform can overcome. We should not ignore or dance gingerly around them
but admit them truthfully and courageously, before directing our e orts most
of all towards a restoration that will bear those fruits of renewal denied to the
Consilium’s brainchild. Lost continuity cannot be recovered by stubbornly
insisting upon it; the only way it will happen is to resume the Vetus Ordo,
which embodies the received Roman liturgical tradition. The Novus Ordo
cannot be an evolutionary step toward a future Roman rite; it is a detour, an
evolutionary dead-end, a dodo bird. It is like those modernist churches that do
not su er gently the passage of time, trapped in their own era and mentality,
unable to rise above it, and worthy of nothing so much as nonexistence. The
way forward in this case is not to maintain the modernist mistake but to
abandon it and re-embrace our noble artistic tradition, which retains
inexhaustible power to speak to us of realities that are timeless and
transcendent. Sometimes what an ugly building or sculpture needs is not an
interior decorator or a powerwash but a wrecking ball and a dump truck.
In a poignant re ection entitled “Home from the Liturgical Thirty Years’
War,” Dom Mark admits that, after spending decades of labor on the revised
rites, working to elevate them as much as he could, he came to realize how
much richer and more fruitful the traditional liturgy is—and that his time all
along would have been better spent within this welcoming and lovely house.
[111] Moving from the cramped urban apartment bloc into the spacious old

country home (“the family seat,” one might call it) may not yet be an option
for some Catholics, but we must pray, hope, and work for the day when every
member of the Latin Church will nd his way back to that venerable house of
prayer.

DIVERGENT POLITICAL MODELS

If the Novus Ordo is as defective as traditionalists say it is, how can we
explain the fact that there are ourishing religious congregations exclusively
reliant on it? The Missionaries of Charity and the Nashville Dominicans, for
example, are full of fervent disciples of the Lord who take their nourishment
from the liturgy of Paul VI, so it cannot be the case that this liturgy is “all
bad.”
Apart from the fact that I have never argued and never would argue that
the Novus Ordo is “all bad” (something that would be metaphysically
impossible), I welcome the opportunity to analyze this phenomenon. In my
opinion, such religious communities are bringing to the liturgy a spiritual
disposition that enables them to bene t from the Real Presence of Our Lord
in the Eucharist—a disposition they are not necessarily developing from the
liturgy as such. The Novus Ordo can be fruitful for those who already have a
fervent and well-ordered interior life, built up by other means; but for those
who do not, it will o er few pegs on which to climb up. In this respect it is
unlike the traditional liturgy, which has within itself enormous resources for
enkindling and expanding the interior life.
One might make a political comparison to elucidate this point. The basic
philosophical problem with the American regime is not that a good use cannot
be made of its political institutions, but that they presuppose a virtuous
citizenry in order to work at all. Time and time again, the American Founding
Fathers say things like: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and
religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[112]
But the aims of this government do not include producing a virtuous
citizenry; this is seen as above and beyond the government’s limited scope.
Government is supposed to act like a police o cer who regulates the ow of
tra c; it is assumed that people know how to drive and basically drive well.
The traditional view, which we nd (for instance) in Pope Leo XIII’s social
encyclicals, is that government has a God-given responsibility for the moral
and spiritual welfare of the people. It must lead them to the observance of the
natural law and dispose them as well as possible to the observance of the
divine law. In this model, the government is more like a parent, teacher, and
counselor who knows what the human good is and actively fosters its
attainment by as many citizens as possible. This is why, for Leo XIII, a good
government will necessarily involve the Catholic Church in educating the
citizens of the regime, so that they may have the best possibility of developing
virtue, both natural and supernatural. Virtue does not develop spontaneously
or accidentally.
 The liturgical parallel is not hard to see. The Novus Ordo is like the
American government. It is a structure or framework within which free
activity can take place, but it does not rigorously specify or dictate how that
activity ought to be pursued, nor does it provide ample means for
accomplishing the task. It is like the benign and neutral policeman—a certain
precondition for peace, but not the representative and spokesman of peace.
The minimal rubrics function like boundaries on a sports eld. The people
who attend are assumed to know how to pray, how to “participate actively” (as
if this is at all evident!), and how to be holy. They come to display and
demonstrate what is already within them.
The traditional liturgy, in contrast, forthrightly adopts the attitude of
parent, teacher, and counselor. It assumes that you are in a dependent position
and must be shaped in your spirituality, molded in your thoughts, educated in
your piety. Its rubrics are numerous and detailed. The liturgy knows exactly
what you need in terms of silence, chant, prayers, antiphons, and it delivers
them authoritatively, in a way that emphasizes the liturgy’s own perfection and
your receptivity. The traditional liturgy establishes a standard of virtue and
expects the worshiper to conform to it. It does not presuppose that you are
virtuous.
This helps to explain the intentionally Protean adaptability of the modern
liturgical rites, in their optionitis and spectrum of artes celebrandi. Moderns
don’t really think there can be a xed and virtuous liturgy that should form
them into its image. As heirs of the Enlightenment, which enthroned human
reason as king and assumed a supposedly rational control over all aspects of
society, moderns feel they need to be in some way in charge of the liturgy. It
has to have options to accommodate our pluralism.[113]
In this way the Novus Ordo betrays its provenance in a democratic and
relativistic age, in stark contrast with the traditional liturgy that was born and
developed entirely in monarchical and aristocratic eras (and this, of course, by
Divine Providence, since God knew best what human beings needed, and
ensured that the rites would embody it). Even if one wished to say, for the sake
of argument, that secular society is better o democratized—a claim that
would seem counterintuitive, to say the least, especially if one could canvas the
opinions of the countless millions of victims of abortion murdered under the
democratic regimes of the Western world—one must nevertheless maintain as
a matter of principle that the divine liturgy, being from and for the King of
kings and Lord of lords, cannot be democratized without ceasing to exist. It
must remain monarchical and aristocratic in order to remain divine liturgy, as
opposed to a self-derived human patriotism.[114]
If you are that fortunate person who has a robustly developed life of faith,
whether from a Protestant upbringing prior to your conversion, or frequent
attendance at adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, or a constant and childlike
Marian devotion, you bring all of this fullness with you when you attend the
Novus Ordo, and you ll the relative emptiness of the liturgical form with
that fullness. In this case, your fullness (so to speak) meets Christ’s fullness in
the Eucharist, and there is a meeting of minds and a marriage of souls. This, it
seems to me, is what is happening with those aforementioned religious
communities that are ourishing in spite of the Novus Ordo’s defects as a lex
orandi, in its anthropological assumptions, theological content, and aesthetic
form.
With the traditional Mass, it is di erent. It awakens an awareness of the
interior life that is the rst step to a more profound interior conversion. It
contains ample Eucharistic adoration within it, and so, it feeds this hunger of
the soul and intensi es it to the point that it over ows beyond the con nes of
the liturgy. Its spirituality is Marian through and through, so it tends to lead
souls to Our Lady, who is waiting for them there.[115] In every way, this Mass is
actively calling into being a mind for worship and a heart for prayer; it carves
out a space in the soul to ll it full of Christ.[116] It does not presuppose that
you are at that point, but pulls and draws you there, due to its con dent
possession of the truth about God and man. It is not leaning on you to supply
it with force or relevance; it is not waiting for you to be the active party. It is
inherently full and ready to act upon you, to supply you with your meaning.
And paradoxically, it does all this through not being focused on you, your
problems, your potentialities. It works because it is so resolutely focused on
the Lord.
There is an irony here, inasmuch as, at rst glance, the didacticism of the
Novus Ordo seems to be aimed at explaining and eliciting certain acts of
religion, while the usus antiquior seems to take for granted that one knows
what to do. But in reality, the new rite’s didacticism interferes with the free
exercise of these acts of religion, and the usus antiquior’s “indi erence” to the
attendees more subtly challenges them to build new interior habits
proportioned to the earnestness and intensity of the liturgical action. By
attempting to provide for the worshiper everything he “needs,” the modern
rite fails to provide the one thing needful: an unmistakable sense of encounter
with the ine able mystery of God, whom no words of ours can encompass,
whom no actions of ours can domesticate. The usus antiquior knows better,
and therefore strives to do both less and more—less, by not leading children by
the apron strings of a school teacher; more, in terms of calling into being new
ascetical-mystical capacities that depend radically on a xed and dense
“regimen” of prayer, chant, and bodily gestures.[117] “I have run the way of thy
commandments, when thou didst enlarge my heart” (Ps 118:32). In this
domain, the old rite shows us that space is greater than time. Having a
capacious and symbolically dense space within which to “play” is of greater
bene t, in the long run, than spending an hour doing verbal exercises in the
con nes of a modern classroom.
This is the di erence between the worship inherited from the ages and the
set of exercises devised by twentieth-century liturgists. The one is humble
enough to go without the name of an author or a committee and con dent
enough to insist that it knows best what we need. The other contends that
scholars always know best and the people must eat out of their hand, even if
this dependency will always be in tension with the perpetual drive toward
localization, popularization, and inculturation.[118]

THANKSGIVING FOR LITURGICAL PROVIDENCE

Progressive liturgists—that is to say, the entire establishment during and
after Vatican II, with a few exceptions—make an elementary mistake in their
thinking, akin to the mistakes made by historical-critical biblical scholars.
When liturgists dig into the history of rites, they discover lots of change,
development, variety, and seemingly chance events (“after all, don’t you know,
it was because of Charlemagne that the Roman liturgy replaced the Gallican
while assimilating many of its elements”). So far, so good. But then they make
an unwarranted inference: beyond the postulate of a “golden age” of apostolic
worship, we owe no reverence to liturgical rites at any later stage of their
development. For example, since medieval and Baroque features of the Roman
liturgy resulted from “historical accidents,” they are viewed as ripe for purging
at the hands of the cognoscenti—de ned as those who, by their own admission
(and surely they would know), know better what our current historical milieu
requires.
Such reasoning betrays the lack of a metaphysical and theological
framework for seeing how Divine Providence works by governing all things in
general and in detail. To us here below, with our faint and nite grasp of
causality, there appears to be chance; in the eyes of God there is no such thing
as chance. He sees all, He causes all. Without an adequate conception of and
trust in Providence, we will (or will be tempted to) commit sins of judging and
rejecting the fruits of organic liturgical development, as if we moderns are
superior to our forefathers. Nor can it be said that the twentieth-century
reformers were themselves merely acting as instruments of Providence for
bringing about the latest phase of rightful historical development, for their
work was premised on a rejection of vast swaths of tradition, deemed the
result of chance or corruption, to be replaced with a highly selective return to
antiquity ltered through the assumptions of modern philosophy—an
inorganic methodology incompatible with faith in the continuous rulership of
God. The Christian’s default assumption is that our forefathers, historically
and collectively, have more wisdom than we do, for we are, as it were,
latecomers on the scene. Our job is to receive and assimilate their wisdom,
striving to live up to it if we possibly can.[119] As Newman puts it:

It is a fault of these times (for we have nothing to do with the faults

of other times) to despise the past in comparison of the present. We
can scarce open any of the lighter or popular publications of the day
without falling upon some panegyric on ourselves, on the
illumination and humanity of the age, or upon some disparaging
remarks on the wisdom and virtues of former times. Now it is a
most salutary thing under this temptation to self-conceit to be
reminded, that in all the highest quali cations of human excellence,
we have been far outdone by men who lived centuries ago; that a
standard of truth and holiness was then set up which we are not
likely to reach, and that, as for thinking to become wiser and better,
or more acceptable to God than they were, it is a mere dream.[120]

Thus, the liturgists’ inference fails to appreciate the spiritual attitude that
we are supposed to have towards our inheritance—towards that which “falls to
our lot.” The Psalmist captures this attitude perfectly: Funes ceciderunt mihi
in præclaris; etenim hæreditas mea præclara est mihi (Ps 15:6), which the
Douay-Rheims renders: “The lines are fallen unto me in goodly places: for my
inheritance is goodly to me.” The sense of the verse is that the boundaries God
has measured out for His people in the course of His fatherly guidance of
them are the right ones: they shine with His wisdom. The lot we have received
is goodly and not to be scorned or second-guessed—“as if to say,” in the words
of St. Thomas, “my inheritance is not only goodly in itself, but it is goodly to
me, so that I would not change it at all.”[121]
Note the word used twice in the Vulgate verse just cited: præclarus. This
word has many meanings: splendid, bright, excellent, famous, illustrious,
noble, distinguished. This dictionary de nition reads like a listing of all the
qualities that traditional liturgical rites of Eastern and Western Christianity
possess—and exactly the qualities that are wanting in the fabricated rites of the
1960s and 1970s. For however much we might dress them up, they are still like
the social parvenu, the nouveau riche. The psalmist, however, exclaims that his
received inheritance is præclarus. He says it twice, in Hebrew poetic fashion,
to give it appropriate emphasis.
Where else do we see this Latin word præclarus? We see it twice in the
principal de ning feature of the Roman Mass, namely, the Roman Canon, the
optionalizing and marginalization of which e ectively prove the discontinuity
between the old and new rites. First, we hear it in the consecration of the
chalice: “taking also into His holy and venerable hands this excellent chalice,
hunc præclarum calicem.” Then we hear it immediately after the
consecrations: “Wherefore, O Lord, we Thy servants as also Thy holy
people...o er to Thy supreme majesty [præclaræ majestati tuæ] a pure Victim, a
holy Victim, an unblemished Victim, the holy bread of eternal life, and the
chalice of everlasting salvation.”
It is not by chance that the same psalm we cited above, Psalm 15, uses the
cup or chalice as a symbol of God’s generous provision to His people: Dominus
pars hæreditatis meæ, et calicis mei: tu es qui restitues hæreditatem meam
mihi, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is thou that
wilt restore my inheritance to me” (Ps 15:5). By surrounding the word calix
with a double use of præclarus, the Roman Canon not only echoes but enacts
Psalm 15, a favorite prayer of early Christians as we see in the Acts of the
Apostles, and so reminds us of the nature of our liturgical inheritance. It is not
a dead or static set of books, the fallout of meandering chance and merely
human intentions, but a living tradition that begins in the Logos of God and
culminates in the Logos made esh, our eternal High Priest who guides His
Church into the fullness of truth by the gift of His Spirit. Our goodly
inheritance is the rich content of a cup poured out in ever greater measure on
Adam, Abel, Abraham, Melchisedek, David, the temple worship, the early
Christian dies Domini, and the Catholic centuries of faith, when the liturgy
grew from a mustard seed into a great tree in whose branches the birds of the
air, that is, the holy angels, lodge (cf. Lk 13:19).
As Benedict XVI said, “we are not some casual and meaningless product of
evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed,
each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”[122] We are not the accidental
products of chance but the deliberate o spring of a divine intention; the
universe is shot through with the Logos reigning above matter and chaos.
Something analogous is true of the liturgy as well. It, too, is not the accidental
product of chance but the deliberate o spring of a divine intention that
directs the contributions of secondary causes; its path, which emerges from
Israel and crisscrosses the Greco-Roman and later barbarian world, is from the
Logos, reigning above the tumult of human a airs. This, ultimately, is the
reason traditionalists reject the liturgical reform, or rather, revolution: it is a
rejection of the Catholic understanding of how liturgy grows within the home
of Holy Mother Church, to be transmitted and received by all members of the
family. The overthrow of the traditional liturgy is, fundamentally, a rejection
of the Logos.[123]
Similarly, St. John says the Antichrist is he who denies that Jesus Christ
has come in the esh (cf. 1 Jn 4:3). After the Ascension, the “ esh” of Christ,
His body, is the Church (cf. Eph 5); and of this Church, the liturgy is the
primary expressive sign, as the body is of the soul.[124] Thus, those who despise
the inherited liturgy despise the esh of Christ; their action has the aspect of
gnostic apostasy, a negation of incarnation. The liturgical reform was in this
sense antichristic, for it rejected, as corrupt or defective, elements and
practices that had been in place for centuries, often for well over a
millennium. “Because they do not regard the works of the Lord, nor the
operation of His hands, He will break them down and not build them up” (Ps
28:5, KJV). Let us not join the number of those who care not for the Lord’s
works and operation; let us rather extend, here on earth, the joy of His saints
in heaven.
 3

Escaping the Infernal Workshop

THE ARCHITECT OF THE REFORM
In G.K. Chesterton’s story “The Queer Feet,” Father Brown says:

A crime is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes
are by no means the only works of art that come from an infernal
workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one
indispensable mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however
much the ful lment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us
say, the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the owers of the mad
girl, the fantastic nery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the
grin of the skull are all oddities in a sort of tangled wreath round
one plain tragic gure of a man in black.[125]

These words well describe what I was thinking as I made my way through Yves
Chiron’s biography of Annibale Bugnini (1912–1982). The liturgical revolution
that took place in the Catholic Church predominantly between the years 1950
and 1975 was indeed, like Hamlet, a complicated business, involving hundreds
of bishops and experts, several popes, an ecumenical council, and countless
publications, but at the center of it stood “one plain tragic gure of a man in
black”—or perhaps we might say black with red piping: Msgr. (later
Archbishop) Annibale Bugnini, a Vincentian priest who was one of the few
men who had a hand in this quarter-century drama from its beginning nearly
to its end.
Those who have heard of Bugnini tend to think of him, depending on
their positive or negative views of his legacy, either as an evil genius bent on
the destruction of the Catholic faith or as a talented project manager who
smoothly guided a gargantuan liturgical reform to its happy conclusion.
Chiron’s book, well-researched yet mercifully compact for a modern
biography, portrays a busy bureaucrat. That he was totally convinced of and
consistently acted upon various rationalist and pastoral theories about how
liturgy “ought to be” is indisputable, and this book provides copious
documentation of it; but not all of his ideas were welcomed by those in
authority, and he did eventually run afoul of the pope to whose itching ear and
promulgating pen he had enjoyed such uninhibited access.
Through Chiron’s book we become acquainted with the life of a man who
was singularly in uential in marshaling the forces necessary for an
unprecedented revision of Roman Catholic worship. One sees how it came
about, step by step, pope by pope, committee by committee, book by book. It is
truly one of the most astonishing stories in the history of Catholicism, and
one about which Henry Sire rightly quips: “The story of how the liturgical
revolution was put through is one that hampers the historian by its very
enormity; he would wish, for his own sake, to have a less unbelievable tale to
tell.”[126] With Chiron patiently taking the reader through the phases of
Bugnini’s life and activity, the tale becomes a little less unbelievable, albeit no
less an enormity, as each daring maneuver leads to a new opening, a new
opportunity, and new changes.[127]
Was Bugnini a mastermind, one of those rare Faustian individuals who
singlehandedly changes the course of history, or was he a small-minded
ideologue and opportunist? The evidence presented in this biography tends to
support the latter view. Additional evidence not discussed by Chiron lends
support to the same interpretation. In a memorable address in Montreal in
1982, Archbishop Lefebvre shared the story of a meeting he attended with
other superiors general in Rome in the mid-1960s:

I had the occasion to see for myself what in uence Fr. Bugnini had.
One wonders how such a thing as this could have happened at
Rome. At that time immediately after the Council, I was Superior
General of the Congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost and
we had a meeting of the Superiors General at Rome. We had asked
Fr. Bugnini to explain to us what his New Mass was, for this was
not at all a small event. Immediately after the Council talk was
heard of the “Normative Mass,” the “New Mass,” the “Novus Ordo.”
What did all this mean?...
Fr. Bugnini, with much con dence, explained what the Normative
Mass would be; this will be changed, that will be changed and we
will put in place another O ertory. We will be able to reduce the
Communion prayers. We will be able to have several di erent
formats for the beginning of Mass. We will be able to say the Mass
in the vernacular tongue....

Personally I was myself so stunned that I remained mute, although I

generally speak freely when it is a question of opposing those with
whom I am not in agreement. I could not utter a word. How could it
be possible for this man before me to be entrusted with the entire
reform of the Catholic Liturgy, the entire reform of the Holy
Sacri ce of the Mass, of the sacraments, of the Breviary, and of all
our prayers? Where are we going? Where is the Church going?

Two Superiors General had the courage to speak out. One of them
asked Fr. Bugnini: “Is this an active participation, that is a bodily
participation, that is to say with vocal prayers, or is it a spiritual
participation? In any case you have spoken so much of the
participation of the faithful that it seems you can no longer justify
Mass celebrated without the faithful. Your entire Mass has been
fabricated around the participation of the faithful. We Benedictines
celebrate our Masses without the assistance of the faithful. Does
this mean that we must discontinue our private Masses, since we do
not have faithful to participate in them?”

I repeat to you exactly that which Fr. Bugnini said. I have it still in
my ears, so much did it strike me: “To speak truthfully, we didn’t
think of that,” he said!

Afterwards another arose and said: “Reverend Father, you have said
that we will suppress this and we will suppress that, that we will
replace this thing by that and always by shorter prayers. I have the
impression that your new Mass could be said in ten or twelve
minutes or at the most a quarter of an hour. This is not reasonable.
This is not respectful towards such an act of the Church.” Well, this
 is what he replied: “We can always add something.” Is this for real? I
heard it myself. If somebody had told me the story I would perhaps
have doubted it, but I heard it myself.[128]

When we read an account like this, we are tempted to think it an

exaggeration. Chiron’s careful, almost surgical examination of original
documents proves that it is nothing of the kind. While studiously avoiding
polemics, Chiron paints a portrait of his protagonist that harmonizes with
such accounts as Lefebvre’s, or Bouyer’s in his Memoirs. Bugnini was indeed
an adroit manager, manipulator, massager, and messenger. He knew how to
gather an “all-star” team that would work in the direction he thought best. He
knew how to win the pope over to his ideas. He knew when to speak up and
when to keep silent. As we saw in chapter 1, he urged the preparatory
commission on liturgy for the Second Vatican Council not to spell out too
many radical ideas lest their entire project of reform be shot down; it was
enough, Bugnini said, to o er general innocuous-sounding indications and to
ll out the details later in committee work. In other words, he knew what he
wanted prior to the Council, and that’s what he ended up getting, thanks to
Paul VI’s papal support.
The term “Machiavellian” might have to be excluded only because there is
no smoking-gun evidence of malice. Rather, Bugnini is that oddest of odd
gures: the seemingly well-intentioned double-crosser who sti es his
opponents because they are obviously wrong and he is obviously right. “The
end justi es the means,” an error as old as the Roman hills and practiced every
day by millions, requires no colossal wickedness.
In his swift-moving biography, rich with details but never bogged down in
minutiae, Chiron shows us what made Bugnini “tick”: a one-track obsession
with “active participation,” understood as the rational comprehension and
production of verbal data, and, as a corollary, the need for a radical
simpli cation of liturgical forms to meet the straightforward, e cient modern
Western man. To this goal, everything else was to be subordinated: all
ecclesiastical traditions were so much otsam and jetsam compared to the
pastoral urgency of immediate conveyance of Vatican II- avored content. This
explains why Latin had to give way to the vernacular, why intricate language
had to be broken down into bite-sized chunks, why elaborate prayers and
ceremonies had to be abbreviated or abolished, why the priest should interact
familiarly with the people rather than ful lling a distinct hieratic role, why
Gregorian chant had to be sidelined in favor of popular songs, and so forth.
On January 4, 1967, Bugnini read the following statement at a press
conference:

A reform of Catholic worship cannot be accomplished in a day or a

month, nor even in a year. The issue is not simply one of touching
up, so to speak, a priceless work of art; in some areas, entire rites
have to be restructured ex novo. Certainly this involves restoring,
but ultimately I would almost call it a remaking and at certain
points a creating anew. Why a work that is so radical? Because the
vision of the liturgy the Council has given us is completely di erent
from what we had before.... We are not working on a museum piece,
but aiming at a living liturgy for the living people of our own times.
[129]

Modernization “makes sense” to one who regards patrimonial goods as so

much debris swept along by the tide of history, just as Cartesianism “makes
sense” to one who rejects the possibility of knowing any reality other than the
mind, Freudianism “makes sense” to one who is already disposed to reduce
interpersonal relations to sexual interests, and deconstructionism “makes
sense” to one who dismisses the possibility of meaning.
How very di erent, indeed contrary, to the postconciliar project of
building the rst liturgy of moderns, by moderns, and for moderns is the
attitude we meet in the memoirs of Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking of his
youthful discovery of the riches of the liturgy:

It was a riveting adventure to move by degrees into the mysterious

world of the liturgy, which was being enacted before us and for us
there on the altar. It was becoming more and more clear to me that
here I was encountering a reality that no one had simply thought
up, a reality that no o cial authority or great individual had created.
This mysterious fabric of texts and actions had grown from the
faith of the Church over the centuries. It bore the whole weight of
history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more
than the product of human history. Every century had left its mark
 upon it....Not everything was logical. Things sometimes got
complicated, and it was not always easy to nd one’s way. But
precisely this is what made the whole edi ce wonderful, like one’s
own home.[130]

UNSAVORY ASSOCIATIONS
That he was a Freemason who utilized the liturgical reform to undermine
the Church from within is the conspiracy theory that will forever cling to
Bugnini’s name. With a professional historian’s sobriety, Chiron looks at
documentary evidence and concludes that it is impossible to say with certainty
that he did or did not belong to the Lodge.
Since the appearance of Chiron’s biography, however, new testimonies have
been published by Fr. Brian Harrison and by Fr. Charles Murr.[131] Thanks to
Fr. Harrison we have good reason to believe that the high-ranking o cial who
saw the evidence and reported it to Paul VI was Cardinal Dino Sta a, whose
intervention triggered Bugnini’s precipitous fall from grace and exile to
Tehran; and thanks to Fr. Murr’s time in Rome in the 1970s as secretary to
Cardinal Gagnon during the latter’s investigation of Freemasonry in the
Roman curia, we have access to behind-the-scenes conversations and decisions.
Bugnini’s indignant protestations that he had never had, nor dreamt of having,
anything to do with a secret society sound much less convincing after the Fr.
Harrison and Fr. Murr revelations, which replace vague and unsubstantiated
rumors with names and dates. Nevertheless, we are still working with second-
hand reports that do not permit a historian to reach a de nitive conclusion.
Chiron notes that some of Bugnini’s private journals and personal papers are
still jealously guarded by his literary executors. One wonders if such texts will
ever come to light.
There are, in any case, two things to be said about this matter.
First, in the intriguing foreword to the biography, we learn of a 1996
interview in which Dom Alcuin Reid asked Cardinal Stickler if he believed
that Bugnini was a Freemason and if this was the reason Paul VI dismissed
him. “No,” the cardinal replied, “it was something far worse.” But His
Eminence declined to reveal what the “far worse” was—and, frankly, the
concept of something “far worse” than a Freemason opens frightening vistas
of imagination.
 Second, let us assume for the sake of argument that Bugnini was just who
he believed himself to be: a “lover and cultivator of the liturgy,” as the epitaph
on his tombstone reads. In some ways, this is the most depressing of all
scenarios. One might almost have more respect for Bugnini if he had operated
by some grand plan to demolish the liturgy of the ages and replace it with a
mechanism brilliantly contrived to undermine Catholicism, if he had been an
apostate in ltrator whose only goal was wreaking havoc on the central nervous
system of the Church. We tend to look for a Professor Moriarty who
orchestrates the underworld. But if it turns out that he was an earnest,
hardworking, small-minded man, won over by the rhetoric of the Liturgical
Movement avant-garde, incapable of self-doubt in the wee hours of the night,
utterly blind to the world-shifting implications of what he was doing, a
diligent functionary with half-baked ideas and the stubbornness to push them
along at every opportunity, then we enter into the soulless gray world of
Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil.”[132] We are looking at the analogue of the
SS o cer who killed Jews in concentration camps because it seemed like the
conscientious ful llment of his duty to the State, under lawful commands
from above.
Perhaps, in the end, the irrepressible urge to make Bugnini a Freemason
(“surely he must have been...”) is a defense mechanism against having to face
up to the possibility that he was, in his own mind, sincerely service-oriented as
he went about dismantling twenty centuries of organically developed liturgy.
That is not to say he always used worthy means; he was adroit and clever at
getting his way and more than a little willing to bend the truth. But he always
felt he was in the right, that such a great and di cult end justi ed whatever
means it took to reach it, and that someday everyone would come around to
his point of view.
Few managers in the history of bureaucracies have ever been so mistaken.
Baptized Catholics today fall into many groups, but the majority are fallen
away and attend no liturgy, or lightly skip a Mass to attend sonny’s soccer
game; meanwhile, practicing Catholics, aware of no alternative, or under the
sway of the establishment narrative, dutifully attend the Bugnini Mass, taking
the scraps that fall from the table of plenty; nally, a sizeable minority, despite
di erences among themselves, adhere energetically to the traditional Roman
Catholic liturgy. This is not the future Bugnini dreamt of—if, in the midst of
journals, conferences, meetings, audiences, and correspondence, he permitted
himself the luxury of dreaming.
A clever poet has written:

In Rome they should have known him by his name:

the enemy descending with his brutes.
But to our guardians’ eternal shame,
the harried faithful know him by his fruits.[133]

When I nished Chiron’s Bugnini, I leaned back in my chair and thought

wistfully about the momentous period its pages brought before my eyes—how
outdated, how stale, how empty it all seems today, when it lives on in a legacy
that stimulates about the same level of enthusiasm as Victorian sentimental
kitsch. Bugnini’s life had been spent in a sleepless e ort to bring the Church
“up to date,” to make her an equal partner with modernity, in a bid to conquer
the culture—and now look at the smoking remains, the boarded-up churches,
the indi erent and ignorant laity, the infant-slaying Cuomos, Pelosis, and
Bidens, the pope a icted with heretical logorrhea, and, above all, the liturgy
that bores to tears. It is not the Church that engaged modernity, but
modernity that colonized the Church, reducing her to a state of vassalage.
Without explicitly intending to do so, Chiron helps us to see why traditional
Catholicism is the only way out of this pit of despair.
What the modern liturgists and churchmen who fawn on Bugnini’s
handiwork don’t get—and really need to have spelled out for them like
children slow to learn—is this: we do not welcome the postconciliar liturgical
reforms, and we will never sing their praises. You cannot force us to like them;
you cannot even force us to celebrate them. We think they were the product of
an insane arrogance acting on faulty principles and yielding shameful results.
We distrust the people who ran the Consilium, especially Bugnini, and no
matter how many purple-faced prelates stand up and haughtily proclaim: “It
was the will of the Holy Spirit” or “It was the dictate of the Second Vatican
Council” or “It was promulgated by Paul VI,” we will always hold to the great
liturgical tradition that developed organically from St. Peter, St. Damasus, and
St. Gregory the Great to the twentieth century, and our numbers will continue
to grow, even as dioceses consolidate parishes, sell o churches, and bleed out
legal damages.[134] By the repressive policies of Traditionis Custodes, you are
attempting to cajole and coerce us—clergy and laity across the world—into
abandoning a tradition we have rediscovered with joy and zeal, as if you wish
to repeat the tragedy of the ’60s and ’70s. We are told we must embrace the
“sole expression of the lex orandi of the Roman rite”—a gigantic untruth if
ever there was one, since it is neither the Roman rite[135] nor obligatory,[136] and
the Catholic Church can never outlaw her own tradition or justly deprive her
ministers and people of it.[137] We know where we stand, and you will never
succeed in eliminating us, however much harm you cause as you try to
exterminate the tradition we love—a harm for which you will be answerable
before the fearsome judgment seat of Christ.
Allow us to paraphrase the words of David: Let the Lord be judge, and
judge between us and you, and deliver us out of your hand (cf. 1 Sam 24:16). We
will bide our time. The enthusiastic liturgists of the ’60s and ’70s are the aging
nostalgics of today, as the Church increasingly splits into those who, as
Catholics, take established dogma, tradition, and liturgy seriously and those
who, as moderns rst and foremost, would modernize or relativize them to the
point of dissipation.

ON SECOND THOUGHT...
But let us not walk away so nonchalantly from the question raised in the
preceding pages. How much would it actually matter if Bugnini was a you-
know-what?
In the twilight of Francis’s ponti cate, we have seen an ever-shrinking
brigade of “conservative Catholics” who sound jittery, short-tempered,
dismissive, and intolerant towards their tradition-loving coreligionists who
refuse to embrace the papally-bestowed role of scapegoat for the abrogation of
Summorum Ponti cum. One such person—no need for a name, since my point
is not about a name but a phenomenon—heatedly made fun of anyone who
mentioned that Bugnini probably or certainly was a Freemason, mockingly
referring to “Viganò’s ying monkeys” and other such sarcastic turns of
phrase. In fact, he betrayed nothing but insouciance about Freemasonry, as if it
is a topic unworthy of a moment’s serious consideration, to be put on the shelf
next to self-published apocalyptic ravings or unauthorized private revelations.
A few summers ago in Mexico, I visited the sites of one martyr after
another who was killed by real, live, card-carrying Freemasons. The Catholic
parts of Europe and South America bear plentiful scars from the persecution
and secularization driven by this sect.[138] And when Paul VI, sensing
something desperately wrong at the Vatican, hand-picked Cardinal Gagnon to
investigate the curia for its possible entanglements, Gagnon discovered a
buzzing hive of subversive activity. As we have seen, when Chiron published
his biography in 2016 (the English in 2018), he had concluded that there was
no de nitive evidence of Bugnini’s membership in this philosophical sect.
Since then, new information has shed further light on Bugnini’s probable
connection with Freemasonry.[139]
It is astonishing to me that some of my fellow Catholics seem not to care
that the main person in charge of an all-encompassing reinvention of the
Church’s liturgy was likely a member of one of the world’s most destructive
anti-Catholic organizations. I mean, if that’s not a problem, then it wouldn’t
be a problem for the USCCB’s pro-life point person to be a board member of
Planned Parenthood. On the other hand, I suppose this would be business as
usual for an organization whose general secretary, a key gure in responding
to sex-abuse scandals, turned out to have been an active homosexual regularly
using a gay dating app.[140]
The annals of European history are full of incidents in which Freemasons
were involved, often enough boasting of their accomplishments: one need only
think of the many political revolutions in Catholic countries that led to anti-
Catholic, anti-clerical, anti-monastic, and anti-patrimonial legislation. They
boasted of destroying the Church; arguably their most triumphant moment
was the Law of Separation in France, which Pope St. Pius X condemned in his
1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos. If much can be soberly written about the
acknowledged role of this well-organized network of lodges, how much greater
must their actual role be, given their obvious penchant for working behind the
scenes? As Roberto de Mattei notes, the existence and operation of
conspiracies are a plain fact of history, seen again and again from ancient times
to the present.[141] To be sure, amateur historians will make mistakes in
recognizing and analyzing conspiracies, but only fools will deny their reality.
Unlike some modern-day conservative commentators, the popes of old
were no fools. As I describe in my overview of the subject,[142] Freemasonry was
condemned and made subject to latæ sententiæ excommunication by no fewer
than eight popes after the founding of the rst lodge in London in 1717:
Clement XII (1738), Benedict XIV (1751), Pius VII (1821), Leo XII (1825), Pius
VIII (1829), Gregory XVI (1832), Pius IX (many documents from 1846 to 1873),
and Leo XIII (1882, 1884, 1890, 1894, and 1902). Either all of these popes were
reactionary “ ying monkey” nutcases, as our “I’m-too-cool-for-conspiracy”
conservatives would have us believe, or they actually knew a thing or two about
modern revolutions and the sects that spawned them. Cardinal Ratzinger, who
as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reiterated that
membership in Freemasonry is prohibited and excommunicable, did not
hesitate to say that they remain a malign in uence.[143]
Moreover, it just might give one pause to learn that the Freemasons
themselves celebrate the Second Vatican Council as an historic “thaw” in the
Church’s stance toward Modernity—which, however else we de ne it, is at
least partially a product of revolutions against the Church and State—and that
they have bestowed glowing accolades on Pope Francis for various acts of his
that they recognize as characteristic of their own philosophy.[144]
Surely there are many other forces at work in the drama of
dechristianization, and no organized body need be posited to explain every evil
or every rejection of the Faith. The century-long in uence of modernism as
well as the proponents of radical change within the Liturgical Movement
would be enough to account for many of the mistakes made in the reforms
sparked by the Second Vatican Council. But to ignore or glibly dismiss the
masonic in uence on modern European history and speci cally on the
Catholic Church is not only a blameworthy naiveté, it is a form of intellectual
dishonesty—a sort of plugging of the ears and whistling so that one doesn’t
have to hear something one doesn’t like.
Returning now to Annibale Bugnini, even if we say for the sake of
argument that he was nothing other than an ecclesiastical functionary
tirelessly dedicated to the conciliar project of reform, it nonetheless remains
true that, according to rigorous historical research, Bugnini was a two-faced
manipulator who lied to the Consilium and to Paul VI in order to drive
through the radical reforms he had envisioned even prior to the Council.[145]
He hand-picked the moderates and progressives he needed for the various
subcommittees. He orchestrated the whole complex process from start to
nish. He was the impresario. If one can read the life of Bugnini without a
feeling of profound revulsion and a desire to distance oneself from anything
he put his hands on, I’m not sure what kind of conscience one has left.
 Conservative apologists will rise up in protest: “But it doesn’t really matter
what Bugnini thought or did or said, or how compromised were the human
mechanisms, or how problematic their guiding principles—all that matters is
that a pope approved the work in the end. After all, God writes straight with
crooked lines!” This is where we see most dramatically the uncatholic
irrationality to which the hyperpapalist position reduces itself,[146] making the
pope a magician who can transform something bad into something good
simply by adding his signature. About fteen years ago, I wrote down the
following observation, which acquires new pertinence in light of recent events:

What happens if you take a lot of garbage, give it to the Pope, and he
signs o on it? Does it cease to be garbage—or does it just become
papally approved and enforced garbage? This is the key question
about the liturgical reform. Past all doubt, it was the work of a cabal
of poor theologians, ill-equipped for their work, in the grip of
humanist, rationalist, and modernist assumptions and now-
exploded theories, acting irresponsibly and illegally. Some of them
are known to have been Freemasons, others are suspected of it.
Their work was an atrocious dismantling of the most venerable
possession of the Catholic Church. And when they were done with
their “work,” they handed the mess over to Paul VI, who approved it
(under at least partially false pretenses). When all is said and done,
did his papal signature make their poverty of theology, their
inadequacy to the task, their erroneous presuppositions and goals,
and their irregularities vanish into thin air, like a magic wand
transforming a frog into a prince?

There is no escaping it: if he signed on the dotted line, Paul VI bears full
responsibility for whatever is wrong with the Novus Ordo—even when he
didn’t bother to read the documents submitted to him for examination,[147] and
even when he was surprised and dismayed at the liturgical books he himself
had approved.[148]
We return to the question of a liations. If Bugnini truly was a Freemason,
it would help explain—or, in any case, it would be fully consistent with—the
anthropocentric, rationalistic, desacralizing tendencies of the liturgical reform,
tendencies Paul VI sympathized with due to his own alliance with humanistic
modern thought and pan-Christian ecumenism, the prelude to Assisi, Abu
Dhabi, and Singapore. If, on the other hand, Bugnini was not a Freemason—as
we have seen, Cardinal Stickler once said: “No, it was something far worse”[149]
—it would be di cult to imagine how an actual Freemason could have
accomplished something much worse. Cardinal Stickler’s comment gives one
pause. What, after all, would be worse than a secret society that denies divine
revelation, the Holy Trinity, the redemptive Incarnation, original sin, the need
for supernatural grace and the sacramental life, and seeks to replace it with a
man-created, man-centered panreligious philosophy? The only thing that
comes to mind is Satanism.
Whether or not this is what Cardinal Stickler had in mind, one would nd
it di cult to dispute the conclusion reached by Dietrich von Hildebrand in
his book The Devastated Vineyard: “Truly if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’s
Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not
have done it better.”[150]

LITURGICAL ECSTASY AND MECHANICAL HYPERACTIVITY

How might we contrast the products of the infernal academic workshop
with heavenly worship’s earthly form, transmitted by living tradition?
Ritual action is inherently non-spontaneous, non-original, and non-
extemporaneous. The more perfectly one is enacting ritual, the less of one’s
creative self is present in it, and the more one is absorbed into a vastly larger
mystery. Even the pagans understood this in their mystery rites, through
which the individual was meant to be drawn into the realm of the gods and to
participate in their actions. The worshiper took on the identity of another, and
for a moment lost sight of himself. This is the “ecstasy” about which we read
in ancient authors: a “standing outside oneself ” (ek-stasis), a going out of one’s
everyday world and mind, to be drawn into something primordial, archetypal,
divine.
I have noticed the following about the modern rite of Paul VI, when
studying the ponderous tomes of its architects and admirers: it may sometimes
look good on paper, it may have a rationale about which one can wax eloquent,
but somehow it never works in practice. There, it tends to look clumsy, casual,
limited in expressive range and impressive power; due to its linear modular
construction, it suggests a series of tasks on an agenda, and most attendees
may be forgiven their desire to see the agenda completed as expeditiously as
possible.
The traditional Roman liturgy, in contrast, often looks obscure, elaborate,
or strangely ordered on paper, but it always works in practice. It ows,
sweeping all along before it. The motions of the individuals in the sanctuary
are scripted and coordinated; there is an organic wholeness to it, and a
smoothness like that of rocks caressed by water for a thousand years. Those
involved are so intent on “the Father’s business” that it is easy for our
attention to be absorbed in whatever they are doing, even when we don’t
understand it. So strongly does the rite convey a sense of something extremely
important and weighty happening that it has the power to make us want to
understand it better.
I am reminded here of the di erence between stage drama and “closet
drama.” The one is a story meant to be acted out before an audience, the other
is a musing to be read in the solitary comfort of one’s study. A play by
Shakespeare, while far more complex than Goethe’s Faust in number of
characters and subplots, works brilliantly on stage, while Goethe’s, with a
relatively straightforward plot, is not nearly as dramatically e ective. The one
is artistically perfect, the other an intellectual construct. It is like comparing a
folk dance with a mathematical theorem.
Even though it is “easier” or “more accessible”—indeed, precisely because it
is so—one grows weary of the new Mass over time; it has few secrets and yields
them readily. It is the opposite with the old: the longer one attends, the more
one discovers in it to appreciate, and one never reaches the bottom of its
secrets. The many commentaries on the cherished rites of the Roman Church
(Guéranger, Schuster, Parsch, Gihr, Zundel, Vandeur...) contain an
inexhaustible wealth of insights, illuminating details one hadn’t noticed before,
pointing out reasons for some text or ritual or chant that one had not
previously grasped.
I like to think of the Queen of Sheba as a metaphor:

When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon, and the
house which he had built, and the meat of his table, and the
apartments of his servants, and the order of his ministers, and their
apparel, and the cupbearers, and the holocausts, which he o ered in
the house of the Lord: she had no longer any spirit in her, and she
 said to the king: The report is true, which I heard in my own
country, concerning thy words, and concerning thy wisdom. And I
did not believe them that told me, till I came myself, and saw with
my own eyes, and have found that the half hath not been told me:
thy wisdom and thy works exceed the fame which I heard. Blessed
are thy men, and blessed are thy servants, who stand before thee
always, and hear thy wisdom. (1 Kg 10:1–8)

What happened to the queen in the king’s court, when she cries out “The half
of it wasn’t told to me!,” is the opposite of the experience of a person who
hears or reads what Catholics believe the Mass and the Holy Eucharist to be—
the supreme sacri ce that redeems mankind, our earthly participation in the
heavenly liturgy, and so forth—and then goes to check out what it’s like at the
local parish: “Behold, this isn’t even half as good as what I read about or
imagined.” But if that same person happened upon a Solemn High Mass in the
classical Roman rite, how exactly like the Queen of Sheba’s reaction would his
be: “Just based on what I’d heard or read about, I couldn’t have imagined such
solemn splendor as this!”
The reason for these opposite reactions is simply this: the old rite is so
much more than the words of which it is composed—it is thick with
ceremonies, gestures, postures, vestments, incense, music—while the new
liturgy is centered on and preoccupied with words and communal action, even
when it has some of these “traditional elements” added on to it. Hence it
cannot ll us with wonder or amazement because in modern times we are
already saturated with words (“talk is cheap”), and the mode of their delivery at
the new Mass—almost always spoken, and almost always towards us—is the
most ordinary, humdrum, secular mode of communication.[151] In such
circumstances, there will be no ecstasy like that of the Queen of Sheba.
When everything is visible, nothing is seen. When everything is audible,
nothing is heard.
The old rite always exceeds its paper description. No individual pope, not
even St. Pius V, can be identi ed as its author. Here, the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts; the impact exceeds the force of its components; the
experience transcends reason and imagination. There is always something that
“escapes” our notice, our understanding, our human capacity.[152] We do not
measure the rite, because our age did not produce it (indeed, no single age
produced it, and no single milieu); we are measured by it, and we always fall
short. The new rite, on the other hand, always falls short of its paper
description. It bears the names of its authors and the date of its manufacture.
For the rite of Paul VI, the trailer is better than the lm, the advertisement
better than the product.
Like all modernist projects, the reformed liturgy always sounds better
when described by its proponents than it ever comes out when executed by its
laborers. One sees this with modern architecture: the plans can look spi y, but
the built results always disappoint. It’s the opposite with Gothic architecture:
the plans of medieval architects look like quaint doodles compared with their
magni cent structures of carved stone and stained glass. The same critique can
be leveled at modernist poetry, which is never as satisfying as the thick
philosophical commentaries written on it—a curious fact that shows the
failure of art, if not the failure of thought. In the words of Henry Sire,

The literalism that saw the Mass as merely a text to be revised

found its expression [in] a one-dimensional, human liturgy. The
pedantry of the liturgists in their new science showed an arrogance
towards the past characteristic of twentieth-century culture. We
nd a parallel among the architectural purists who came to
prominence after the Second World War. Le Corbusier and his
disciples were so revolted by the untidiness of traditional town
planning that they wanted to tear out the centres of historic cities
and rebuild them in their shiny new style. In the same spirit,
Bugnini and his technicians tore out the old Mass and replaced it
with their own creation. Yet the defect of both conceptions is a
sterility of spirit, a remoteness from human feeling, that un ts
them for their proposed task. The last thing that the ordinary
person wants to do with Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter is live in
it, and the last thing that Paul VI’s machine for praying is good for
is praying. What we nd in the modern liturgy is a counterpart of
the tower blocks that in the 1960s were hailed as the beacons of the
new age: soulless, jerry-built, and inspired by a totalitarianism all
the more odious for its democratic pretensions. It is only a matter
of time before the liturgy goes the same way as the tower blocks,
 which now come down amid large clouds of dust and even larger
public satisfaction.[153]

The Novus Ordo was built by a “dream team” of highly credentialed

specialists, loquacious about their ideals, but the nished product is what one
would expect from a period known for neither theological sublimity nor
aesthetic brilliance. Poking fun at academics for their excessive self-regard,
Pope Benedict XVI warned priests against following “experts” instead of the
witness of the saints:

I have been following theology since 1946. I began to study theology

in January ’46 and, therefore, I have seen about three generations of
theologians, and I can say that the hypotheses that in that time, and
then in the 1960s and 1980s, were the newest, absolutely scienti c,
absolutely almost dogmatic, have since aged and are no longer valid!
Many of them seem almost ridiculous. So, have the courage to resist
the apparently scienti c approach, do not submit to all the
hypotheses of the moment, but really start thinking from the great
faith of the Church, which is present in all times and opens for us
access to the truth.... We must have the humility not to submit to all
the hypotheses of the moment and [the humility] to live by the great
faith of the Church of all times. There is no majority against the
majority of the Saints. Saints are the true majority in the Church
and we must orient ourselves by the Saints![154]

As pope emeritus, Ratzinger returned to this point in a letter addressed to

Cardinal Müller:

In the confused times in which we are living, the whole scienti c

theological competence and wisdom of him who must make the
nal decisions seem to me of vital importance. For example, I think
that things might have gone di erently in the Liturgical Reform if
the words of the experts had not been the last ones, but if, apart
from them, a wisdom capable of recognizing the limits of a “simple”
scholar’s approach had passed judgment.[155]
Indeed, it shows a singular lack of self-awareness, to say nothing of wisdom,
when modern Westerners believe they can surpass or even equal the patrimony
of the ages. “We live in a world without poetry,” said Dietrich von Hildebrand,
“and this means that one should approach the treasures handed on from more
fortunate times with twice as much reverence, and not with the illusion that
we can do it better ourselves.”[156]
Returning to David’s royal son, King Solomon left a noteworthy example
both of what to do and of what not to do. At the start of his reign, he
approached the treasure of the Law with twice as much reverence as any other
king had manifested; by its close, he had succumbed to the syncretistic illusion
that more gods must be better than just one God, even as today some believe
that God wills “the pluralism and diversity of religions” and that “all religions
are a path to arrive at God.”[157] Keith Lemna observes: “The wise man in Israel,
such as King Solomon at the beginning of his reign—though not its end!—was
characterized by humility, pious prayer, and contrition, characteristics
necessary to heed the call of the divine Word.”[158] The humble man is the one
who knows when to lower his eyes and open his hands to receive a gift rather
than keeping his hands tightly shut and his arms crossed in the pose of a “self-
made man.” Piety demands respect for those on whom we depend, most of all
God and our predecessors. Contrition comes readily to the one who realizes
how much he has failed to live up to the many graces he has been given. The
traditional Latin Mass is like the youthful Solomon, a wise man seeking the
Lord alone in the true religion. The Novus Ordo is rather like the old
Solomon, burdened with concubines and a blend of religions.
Echoing the original Liturgical Movement, one nds Pius X, Pius XI, and
Pius XII exhorting the faithful to take rightful possession of the liturgy as
members of the Mystical Body of Christ: following the prayers with
understanding, chanting the responses and the Ordinary of the Mass, joining
in public Vespers, and so forth. This entire program was, however, premised
on a fundamental truth: the liturgy is a gift to us from God through the
generations that have preceded us, one that we must gratefully receive and
enter into more and more fully. Participation thus meant entering into
something already present in our midst, prior to our cogitation and volition: a
transmitted body of symbols, cross-textured with words, melodies, gestures,
actions, endowed with supernatural vitality and inexhaustible richness. It
could not mean that we fashion something ourselves which, being in some way
the image of our own mentality and our own age, we then “participate in,” as
we create athletic games or board games into which we then throw ourselves.
The crass manner in which “hyperactive participation” (as William F. Buckley
Jr. lampooned it[159] ) was enforced in the mid-1960s undermined any
recognizably Catholic realization of participatio actuosa and rendered it a “a
thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule” (Dt 28:37) for those in
search of the sacred.
As Martin Mosebach says, we do not know the names of most of the holy
men who “wrote” the old liturgy.[160] But we know exactly who put together
the new one—list after list of experts, carefully recorded by Bugnini in his
giant book The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975(see pp. 937–55). This contrast
makes all the di erence. The old rite is a monumental anonymous gift that we
receive from as many centuries as the Church has o ered up her corporate
worship to God; the new rite is the ephemeral work of a jetsetting super-
committee, imposed on us from above by the stroke of a pen. The one is a
collective masterpiece, the other a period piece trapped in the assumptions of a
frenzied and dated movement.
Man was created for ecstasy—not sexual, athletic, aesthetic, or drug-
induced, but the ecstasy of faith, of love, of beatitude in union with God for
ever. Truly the traditional liturgy of the Church, celebrated with all the
resources Divine Providence has bestowed on us, feeds that faith, in ames that
charity, and grants us a foretaste of that heavenly consummation.

WHY I COULDN’T GO BACK...TO THE NOVUS ORDO

On March 8, 2012, the Jesuit magazine America published an article by Fr.
Peter Schineller entitled “The Tridentine Mass: Why I Couldn’t Go Back.” For
years, I’ve noticed that America actually pays to promote this article in online
searches so that it will in uence public opinion (they are evidently worried
about the direction the youth are going in). That planted in me the seed of a
contrasting re ection, which is intended as the other’s antithesis.
For the rst eighteen years of my life, I exclusively attended the new Mass.
I grew up in a typical suburban parish on the East coast that celebrated the
Boomer Rite. The sanctuary was covered in carpet and Extraordinary
Ministers. I remember the priests; they were all more or less nice guys and
more or less heretical. One of them started an Ash Wednesday homily by
wiping o the ashes from his head and saying that Christ came to do away
with “this kind of stu .” Another one left the priesthood to get married and
work as a professional psychiatrist. Wanting to be more involved, I became, in
succession, an altar boy, a lector, and an extraordinary minister.[161] My faith
was active but confused—just how confused will have to be left to my memoirs
(if I ever write them), but it was bad.
Later in high school, I joined a charismatic prayer group that introduced
me to committed, conservative lay Catholics who had the courage to uphold
Humanæ Vitæ. Music played a big role in this reversion. I wrote my one and
only guitar song. But quite by chance, as it seemed, I also discovered Gregorian
chant, which began to exercise a fascination on me. I began to learn about St.
Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Padre Pio. A friend laden with medals
introduced me to St. Louis de Montfort and The Secret of the Rosary. After a
rocky year at Georgetown University, I started over again at Thomas Aquinas
College, where for all four years students could enjoy (and still do enjoy) the
company of the legendary unicorn: the reverent Novus Ordo in Latin, with
chant and polyphony.
It was at TAC that I discovered the TLM—somewhat in secret, like
Elizabethan recusants. In the early nineties, this Mass was “permitted” by
Cardinal Mahony only one Sunday a month. We had a chaplain who privately
o ered the old Mass whenever he could get away with it. Trustworthy
students con ded assignations in whispers. First I attended the Low Mass; not
long after, a High Mass. My friends and I were haunted with questions: “Why
was this abolished?” “Who took it away from us?” In grad school came my rst
experience of a Solemn Mass; years later, my rst Ponti cal Mass. Each was a
more splendid revelation of the glory of Roman Catholic worship. The
ascetical-mystical elements of the Faith suddenly made sense, reunited with
their origins, nding their harbor.
In my rst job out of graduate school, as an assistant professor in Austria,
we had the old Mass daily for a while, at the simultaneously cruel and
contemplative hour of 6:00 a.m. When this happy spell ended, my family and I
made a point of driving a good distance on Sundays, either to Vienna or Linz,
to get to a Latin Mass. When we moved out to Wyoming, availability was as
spotty as the cell phone reception, and this time, we were ve minutes away
from the college chaplaincy Mass but four hours’ drive from the nearest parish
with a TLM. When school was in session, we enjoyed the blessing of three
traditional Masses a week, but when school was out and the chaplain gone,
we’d have few to none.
Throughout all the periods narrated, for a good 25+ years I “stuck it out”
with the Novus Ordo as a cantor and choir director (although always in
situations with access to the TLM as well—I could not do without it). With the
intimate knowledge a music director acquires, I gradually came to see how
profound a rupture is the reformed liturgy at every level save that of bare
sacramental e cacy. The evil of that rupture grated on my mind more and
more. The new rite is an arti cial liturgy, as Esperanto is an arti cial language
or aspartame an arti cial sweetener.
One of the reasons I decided to leave Wyoming in 2018, as much as I loved
it there for all kinds of other reasons, was an urgent longing for a fully
traditional parish with a daily Tridentine Mass. The time had come to make a
decisive break. Now that I’ve been living for over six years in that haven, I
could honestly never go back to anything else.
During these years I have attended a Novus Ordo Mass only once, as a
favor for someone. Having been away from it for so long, the experience was
far more jarring than I could have imagined possible. It felt as if my eyes were
fully opened to the magnitude of the contradiction, not just di erence,
between the two rites.[162] Mind you, I am not talking about “abuses.” Legally
speaking, there had been no abuses in this particular instantiation of Paul VI’s
polymorphous prayer service. It “did the red and said the black,” sans altar
girls, extraordinary ministers, or strumming guitars. The faithful knelt for
Communion and the priest even wore a ddleback chasuble. No, it was about
the spirit of the thing, its Gestalt or total form. I was put o not by any
particular thing, but simply by the thing itself. What was wrong was the
Novus Ordo.
Static and arid because of the constant ow of words—from the priest, the
lector, the congregation—the liturgy skipped along the surface of the sacred
like a at stone thrown skillfully across a lake. The sense of mystery utterly
evaporated, or rather, never condensed to begin with. Only the occasional
chant gave it a touch of sacrality, but this was more like “atmosphere” provided
by mood music than an integral part of the action. The chant seemed like a
foreign import to the rite rather than an organic part of a single owing
motion. Above all, the Mass was lacking in unity: it did not unfold, but rather
plodded from one discrete task to the next, like a sequence of setting-up
exercises. The modular sequence of generically pious texts starved my prayer of
oxygen, as if the liturgy were grudging me both ordinary and extraordinary
means of life support. There was no time to breathe, to re ect, to savor, to be
carried beyond this earthly realm to the edge of the heavenly fatherland.
Afterwards, I thought to myself: no wonder the Church is sickening and
dying. It is just as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:30, about those who assist at
the Holy Sacri ce without discerning what they are doing, whom they are
receiving into their midst: “Therefore are there many in rm and weak among
you, and many sleep.” Somehow this one Mass, out of thousands I’ve attended,
crystallized it for me—clari ed all the reasons I have shaken the dust from my
feet.
I would never be able to give up the blessed silence of the contemplative
Low Mass or the stirring integral chants of the owing High Mass, in
exchange for the bumpy vernacular verbosity of the new Mass. The
communion of prayer, the fellowship with the Church on Earth, the Church in
Heaven, the Church in Purgatory—I don’t want it to be shattered by the next
barrage of verbiage.
I don’t care to have the priest always trying to “connect” with the people in
the pews; he is there for one reason, to connect us with God, and to connect
himself with God. When he stands there facing us, at that moment prayer dies
and God departs. I don’t want his eye contact, his practiced smiles, his best
rendition of a pastoral Mister Rogers, or (in worst-case scenarios) the
congratulations meted out to various and sundry, with the eruption of
applause.
I don’t want to see Father give in to temptations of spontaneity and
creativity, like a well-intentioned alcoholic defeated by a well-stocked liquor
cabinet—or even to be put in a position where he has no choice but to choose
how the liturgy is going to be done.[163]
I don’t want the nearly fatal shock of discovering that this weekend the
young priest who “does a reverent Novus Ordo” is sick or out of town or on
vacation, and Mass will be said by a visiting priest from an ashram in India, a
Jesuit rainbow retreat center, or a home for retired iconoclasts.
 I’m forever done with seeing unvested lay readers walking up from their
pews into the sanctuary, as if reading the Word of God were nothing more
special than reading a story from the newspaper, as if—contrary to the
unanimous testimony of ancient Israel and its continuation and ful llment in
the Catholic Church—no special o ce or consecration, no special holy
garment, were required on the part of the one who dares to touch the book
and take its awful divine words upon his lips.
I’m through with seeing the army of old ladies march up to take charge of
the distribution of Communion, for all the world as if they owned the place
and had a right to handle the Body and Blood of God. It always made me sick
to see this pseudo-priestly caste, in its clueless way, take up like bingo cards
that which would have induced fear and trembling in any Christian during the
centuries when men had faith in the All-Holy.
I want to have nothing to do with the Hobbesian Peace of All against All.
(That was one silver lining of Covidtide: the handshake of bonhomie
vanished.)
I would not give up the freedom to pray, to meditate, to let myself be
drawn into Christ my Lord, for a jamboree of communal self-celebration, with
its straightjacketed way of “actively participating.” I never knew what
participation could be until I discovered the traditional Mass. This taught me,
at a level deeper than catechesis, what the Mass really is and how I can enter
into it through adoration, contrition, supplication, and giving thanks.
Now that I have enjoyed a foretaste of heaven and caught a glimpse of
angels’ worship, now that I have reconnected with centuries of my
predecessors, on their knees gazing up to the high altar, wrapped in a mantle
of a thousand years of ritual, I could never, ever go back to the 1970s. May the
Lord in His mercy send us someday a Holy Father who will lead the Church at
once truly forward and much further back, to the timeless treasury of
immemorial tradition.
Having escaped Bugnini’s infernal workshop, I will never go back—nor
should any Catholic who has seen the glory as of the Only-begotten, full of
grace and truth.
 4

Indeterminacy and Optionitis

In critiques of the rite of Paul VI, one nds a special intensity of complaint
about its indeterminacy or, to give this problem a more precise name,
optionitis. The rite is pluriform by design, di erent in di erent places; to
paraphrase Heraclitus, you cannot step into the same Mass twice. My
experience of the Novus Ordo may be radically di erent from your experience,
and both yours and mine from that of another person. As linguistically
convenient as it is to speak of “the Novus Ordo,” it is by no means guaranteed
that we will have in mind the same thing in practice. How did this situation
come about?
There are at least three levels at which the modern rite can be evaluated,
each one bringing with it a new level of instability and indeterminacy.
1. The modern rite can be viewed against the backdrop of what the Fathers
of the Second Vatican Council called for in the Constitution Sacrosanctum
Concilium when supporting the restoration of the liturgy—namely, generally
modest changes to the inherited Latin liturgical tradition, which was
presented there as an obvious good to be preserved. It is easy to trace the many
ways in which the Consilium’s subsequent work trespassed the plan agreed to
by the Council Fathers (including Archbishop Lefebvre).[164] Even so, as
Michael Davies, Christopher Ferrara, and others have pointed out, the
Constitution has enough loopholes to drive several moderately-sized Italian
lorries through.[165] We know that Bugnini urged the preparatory commission
to write a vague and open-ended text, without committing all their plans to
paper, so that the document’s passage would be ensured and the signatories
would not know what they were agreeing to.[166]
2. Then there is what the o cial text of the Novus Ordo Missæ calls for,
in tandem with the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (one might call
this “the letter” of the Novus Ordo). Here we are already in di culties, since
even if the celebrant stays within the rubrics, there is plenty of room for him
to make himself the master of each liturgical celebration, such that no two
Masses need be alike. If one takes into account the options for each step of the
liturgy and all of their possible combinations, one would arrive at trillions of
permutations.[167] In contrast, in the traditional Mass the priest is plainly the
servant of the stipulated text and its prescribed ritual.
3. Lastly, there is the reality at the parish level. This, as we know too well,
often goes far beyond (or falls far beneath) what is permitted or required
either by the missal or by anything that could be described as Catholicism, as
when a priest suggested putting a six-pack of beer on an altar during a pre-
Lenten pitch to urge the faithful to put their beer money towards alms
instead. Here we are dealing with what might be called “the spirit” of the
Novus Ordo, which for over half a century has sheltered experimentation,
anarchy, idiosyncrasy, laxity, minimalism, and sentimentalism.
In ages past, there was an instinctive, if waning, tendency to adhere to the
larger tradition—“the way things had always been done”—and to follow the law
because it was the law. This mindset was already endangered well before
Vatican II was convened. Modern liberalism, which exalts freedom and
individual expression at the expense of community tradition and law-
abidingness, infected the mentality of many clergy. The Council itself o ered
the Catholic world a pretext for throwing everything overboard in a huge
adolescent t of raw emotional energy. By the time the young Turks
announced the triumph of the Liturgical Movement, the good spirit that
animated its origins was dead and gone. Not only was there no Liturgical
Movement anymore; there was all movement and no liturgy.
What the Council taught means nothing today for most Catholics,
whether laity or clergy. It was a sad spectacle to watch John Paul II or Benedict
XVI attempting to refute erring progressives, year in and year out, by quoting
at them Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and other conciliar documents, when
these individuals couldn’t care less about such documents. They never saw
Vatican II as a body of authoritative teachings to be carried out; for them, it
was (as they often explicitly say) an “event” with a “spirit,” a certain program or
inspiration or ideology that was meant to be creatively evolved until a new
Church came into being. Pope Francis has endeavored to institutionalize this
progressive approach.
In the area of liturgy, too, the new missal was, from the beginning, not so
much a concrete path to be diligently followed as a new attitude, a sounding
board, a suggested point of departure for personal and communal self-
expression. Hence there must be a Zaire use, a Mayan use, an Amazonian use,
and so forth, to join the multiplicity of urban and suburban uses already in
play. It is hard to talk about “the Novus Ordo” with any de niteness because it
allows so much creativity and spontaneity. Ratzinger argues that three qualities
characterize the modern conception of liturgy as group self-expression:
arbitrariness, unrepeatability, and arti ciality.[168]
Optionitis is a disease of which the world needs to be rid to make it safe
for liturgy. Even when men are well disposed and properly taught, it is
expecting too much of human nature to think that they will freely choose the
best or the better when given a number of options along the spectrum. Many
will succumb to the shortest or easiest path out of laziness or a false notion of
e ciency. Those who are holy and learned can elaborate strange practices that
disturb the rhythm and shape of the liturgy. As we know, priests often avoid
the Roman Canon because it is “too long,” yet always seem to nd time for
rambling homilies and general intercessions.[169]
The problem we are considering goes well beyond de ciencies in the
content of any given option; the chief problem is a liturgy that allows so many
options to be chosen. Advocates of the “reverent Novus Ordo” simply do not
wish to acknowledge the fact that a rite capable of being celebrated in almost
total discontinuity with the received Roman rite is itself, as such, a
discontinuity—indeed the primordial and singular rupture. This is what must
be rejected, not merely abuses or bad taste or poor judgment. Andrew Shivone
astutely observes that there is a ruthless logic built into the new rite that
militates against traditional forms:

The Ordinary Form...perpetually communicates the disunity of

spiritual intent and external gesture. The plethora of options for
both laity and priests in the liturgy contributes to the sense that
physical gestures and symbols are merely sentimental adornments to
real internal worship. While one could celebrate it quite reverently
with the Proper chants, reciting the Roman Canon, and in Latin,
the very fact that all these forms are optional suggests that they are
unnecessary aesthetic accoutrements for elitist retrogrades rather
than integral parts of a whole.[170]
The Novus Ordo cannot be done “just as well” as the Tridentine rite, because
it was not built to be traditional, that is, to privilege adoration, beauty, and
contemplative prayer; it was built to be e cient, congregation-oriented, and
ever-adaptable. These it surely is, but to the detriment of the liturgy’s deepest
essence.
The long-term solution to our present malaise, then, will necessarily
involve the abolition of options and the re-establishment of clear and detailed
rubrics that foster a most profound reverence for the Blessed Sacrament and a
leisurely embrace of all the ritual involved in enacting the sacraments and
honoring the Word of God. In other words, the solution is the restoration of
the classical Roman rite. The great founders of religious orders wrote detailed
rules instead of just saying, “Form holy brothers and sisters, and they will
instinctively know what to do.” Everyone has his own opinions and private
preferences about things. No matter how well one trains a priest, and no
matter how holy he might be, if the missal allows him to translate his personal
opinions and preferences into the arena of public worship, he will inevitably
come to see himself as the master of the liturgy instead of its servant.

THE DANGER OF ARBITRARINESS

Because the Novus Ordo features so many options, allows so many ways of
doing things, consists of so many modules that can be tted together this way
or that, it is exceedingly di cult to achieve coherence—especially in what may
be called “compromise Masses,” where di erent “sensibilities” must all be
included in the liturgical planning and are therefore discernible in the
resulting concoction.
But why take one traditional feature and reject another? Why take one
modern feature and reject another? Have we lost our instinct for consistency?
Do we even know what consistency looks like when we see it? Who says that
we are quali ed to judge? “Asses prefer straw to gold,” to quote Heraclitus
again. The traditional practices form a coherent whole; they developed
organically together, like a plant or animal maturing over time, its parts in
proportion, becoming more and more wholly itself. The reform, whether you
consider it well-motivated or ill-motivated, was, in any case, inorganic; in the
same way modern science views nature as a machine or mechanism, modern
liturgists viewed public worship as a human construct with interchangeable
pieces. It is not a whole that is greater than its parts but a mere sum of parts.
And once you begin to change this or that part, you might as well change all of
them. If the whole does not command a fundamental reverence, why would
one stop messing with it here or there? While still an Anglican, John Henry
Newman argued passionately against satisfying the itch for “making
improvements” to liturgical rites, in words that have a melancholy ring for
Catholics as we look back over the past sixty years and more:

Attempts are making to get the Liturgy altered. My dear Brethren, I

beseech you, consider with me, whether you ought not to resist the
alteration of even one jot or tittle of it. Though you would in your
own private judgments wish to have this or that phrase or
arrangement amended, is this a time to concede one tittle?

Why do I say this? because, though most of you would wish some
immaterial points altered, yet not many of you agree in those points,
and not many of you agree what is and what is not immaterial. If all
your respective emendations are taken, the alterations in the
Services will be extensive; and though each will gain something he
wishes, he will lose more from those alterations which he did not
wish. Tell me, are the present imperfections (as they seem to each)
of such a nature, and so many, that their removal will compensate
for the recasting of much which each thinks to be no imperfection,
or rather an excellence?

There are persons who wish the Marriage Service emended; there
are others who would be indignant at the changes proposed.... There
are some who wish the imprecatory Psalms omitted; there are others
who would lament this omission as savouring of the shallow and
detestable liberalism of the day. There are some who wish the
Services shortened; there are others who think we should have far
more Services, and more frequent attendance at public worship than
we have. How few would be pleased by any given alterations; and
how many pained!

But once begin altering, and there will be no reason or justice in

stopping, till the criticisms of all parties are satis ed. Thus, will not
 the Liturgy be in the evil case described in the well-known story, of
the picture subjected by the artist to the observations of passers-by?
And, even to speak at present of comparatively immaterial
alterations, I mean such as do not infringe upon the doctrines of the
Prayer Book, will not it even with these be a changed book, and will
not that new book be for certain an inconsistent one, the alterations
being made, not on principle, but upon chance objections urged
from various quarters?

But this is not all. A taste for criticism grows upon the mind. When
we begin to examine and take to pieces, our judgment becomes
perplexed, and our feelings unsettled.... Now I think this unsettling
of the mind a frightful thing; both to ourselves, and more so to our
ocks.... [W]ill not the unstable learn from us a habit of criticising
what they should never think of but as a divine voice supplied by the
Church for their need? But as regards ourselves, the Clergy, what
will be the e ect of this temper of innovation in us? We have the
power to bring about changes in the Liturgy; shall we not exert it?
have we any security, if we once begin, that we shall ever end? Shall
not we pass from non-essentials to essentials? And then, on looking
back after the mischief is done, what excuse shall we be able to make
for ourselves for having encouraged such proceedings at rst?[171]

The tendency of the postconciliar liturgy has been towards jettisoning one
traditional feature or element after another. Brass candlesticks are locked away,
to be replaced by stumps on square pillars; grand high altars or altars with
antependia are replaced by tables; beautiful vestments are thrown away or
locked away, and polyester drapery takes their place; noble music from the ages
of faith is forgotten in the strumming of guitars or the plinking of pianos. If it
can change, it will change.
A Church limping along in a state of discontinuity and rupture must make
heroic e orts to nd her way back to a vital connection with her history and
heritage. Pope Benedict XVI knew that the sacred liturgy is the heart of the
Church’s life, the most exact and expressive symbol of her faith, and the
vehicle through which the faithful are always being catechized by word and
sign. Hence this pope began, modestly it is true, to demonstrate what
continuity looks like by the way he himself celebrated the liturgy, and by
continually pointing us to the Church’s past inheritance as well as her present
rules and norms. He restored the traditional arrangement of candles and
cruci x across the altar; he brought back the beautiful vestments long locked
away; he restored grand processions with cope and cross; he ensured that the
music was reverent and sacred, suggestive of divine majesty and the loftiness
of the immortal soul. In such ways he transmitted the message that the
Church’s ecclesiastical traditions, and above all, her solemn rituals and artistic
accomplishments, are not something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about;
on the contrary, they are witnesses to glory, “the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus” (2 Cor 4:6). Pope Benedict was a voice
crying out in the wilderness, proclaiming that we need to restore and
rediscover these epiphanies of beauty, since our identity, our mission in this
world, even our survival, depend on it. The faithful have a right to the truth—
what is more, they have a right to tradition.
The modern liturgy might make a bid for non-arbitrariness only were it
celebrated with both total delity to its rubrics, such as they are, and in the
maximum possible continuity with the Roman liturgical heritage that
preceded it for two millennia. To do anything less would be personally to
endorse the ideology of rupture that has lacerated the Church for over half a
century. Yet such an endorsement already seems to be inherent in every
celebration of the Novus Ordo, even the most reverent, since the spirit of
maximal continuity is impossible to achieve within its bounds, not least
because of the inadequacy of the rubrics and the jarring absence of the
traditional lex orandi, overshadowed by the fundamental option that must be
made to side with traditional as opposed to novel praxis (the new rite itself
being deliberately open to either—indeed, to an indeterminate number of
“adaptations” to local cultures and ill-de ned “pastoral needs”). As soon as we
see that certain changes were unnecessary and unmandated—that they
occurred because of academic theories fused with lust for novelty—the only
consistent and principled thing to do is to reject these changes tout court and
return to the tradition of the Fathers, with the humble repentance of prodigal
sons. Speaking from his long experience as a priest, a liturgist, and a
mystagogue, Dom Mark gently signi es his departure from the e ort to
reform the irreformable:
 I laud and support the brilliant achievements of individual parish
priests and of groups that use the so-called Ordinary Form or
Novus Ordo Missæ with dignity, beauty, and reverence. I am
thinking, in particular, of the stellar Communauté de Saint-Martin,
and of various abbeys and Oratories. For myself, I can no longer
spend my energies in that particular exercise.... I seem to hear Our
Lord chiding me, saying: “How many cares and troubles thou hast!
But only one thing is necessary; and Mary hath chosen for herself
the best part of all, that which shall never be taken away from her”
(Lk 10:41–41).

I maintain that the real di culty with the current reformed Missal
is that its awed infrastructure cannot bear the weight of continual
wear and tear. It is a modular liturgy which, because of the
multiplicity of options inherent in it, makes unrealistic demands on
both priest and people. One nds oneself occupied and preoccupied
with assembling and disassembling the various modular elements
that make it up. The liturgy [as it was and should be] is not
something that men fashion for various occasions and venues; it is
the mystery, ancient and ever new, wherein the Church is fashioned
and re-fashioned by the gentle and mighty action of the Holy Spirit.
[172]

Eripies me de contradictionibus populi: “Thou wilt deliver me from the

contradictions of the people” (Ps 17:44). The psalmist expresses to perfection
the feeling of one who has been liberated from the world of optionitis. For
many years, I struggled to square the circle of the Novus Ordo. I urged, with
all the knowledge and eloquence at my command, the use of Latin, chant, and
polyphony. I led choirs and scholas. I patiently counseled priests on their ars
celebrandi. I read Sacrosanctum Concilium with continuity-colored glasses. In
the end, there was no victory; there could be no victory. The reason is simple:
however much you improve one iteration of the Mass, or one month’s or year’s
worth, the success of your campaign (for it always has something of the feel of
a political campaign) is tentative and tenuous, dependent on good will, the
right circumstances, and a lack of murmurers. There are no long-term gains; it
is like writing in the sand at the beach. The waves roll in—a new pastor, a new
bishop, a new pope—and wash everything away. The gentle encouragement of
good ideas and initiatives that characterized the ponti cate of the scholarly
Benedict XVI has given way to the nightmare of the Bergoglian police state, in
which thriving communities of priests and religious are crushed at whim,
while abusers of sex and liturgy roam free or gain promotion.[173]
The Novus Ordo is not one thing but many; it is not a liturgy but a
framework for liturgy, a schema for “making liturgy happen.” Thus, devoting
e ort to its improvement can feel like pouring money into repairing a poorly-
built house held up by rotting timbers and perched on the edge of a cli .
Either the house will totter or the cli will collapse, but in either case, one’s
investment would have been more wisely spent restoring a beautiful old
building many miles away from the edge.

OPTIONED OUT OF EXISTENCE

I was once talking with a priest about the strange phenomenon of options
in the new rite of Mass and the other sacraments. He made the observation
that whenever there are multiple options, one of which is traditional and the
others more recent inventions, there seems to be a subtle pressure to choose
the more recent inventions, with the consequence that, as he put it, the
traditional practice is “optioned out of existence.”[174]
We know this happens a great deal when it comes to anything that’s longer
or more complex, or requires a special e ort. For example, if the lectionary
provides optional readings for a particular saint or category of saint, chances
are they’ll be skipped, just because it’s so much easier to march through the
daily cycle page by page rather than being bothered to look up the optional
reading. An example of length would be the Con teor: it takes a little longer
to pray the Con teor and the Kyrie than it does to use the pseudo-troped
Kyrie. And so the Con teor often falls by the wayside.
A dangerous tendency is at work here. Although many options are
theoretically put at the celebrant’s disposal, in reality there is a certain pressure
against choosing the traditional option precisely because it is traditional and a
certain pressure in favor of choosing the modern option because it’s modern,
because it can be done, perhaps because it’s more politically correct or more
feminist-friendly. One is reminded here of the hubristic vanity of modern
applied science, which seems to function by the technobarbaric principle “if
we can do it, we should do it.” No matter the larger questions of right or
wrong, the nuclear bombs must be built, the organs must be harvested, the test
tube babies produced, the embryos frozen, the animals cloned, or whatever it
might be.
An excellent example is how the new missal gives the priest the option to
say “Pray, brethren.” Nobody ever says “Pray, brethren”; they always say “Pray,
brothers and sisters” (or sometimes “Pray, sisters and brothers,” although
that’s not an option given in the missal).
The same problem pops up everywhere. Take, for example, the ceremony
of the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday. For decades, clergy throughout
the world were simply violating the rubrics that said if feet were to be washed,
they had to be those of viri or men. Although a number was not speci ed,
often twelve men were chosen to represent the twelve Apostles. This
simultaneously symbolized two things: the universal commandment of charity,
and—more speci cally tied to Holy Thursday and the commemoration of the
Last Supper—the institution of the priesthood in the rst Apostles and the
institution of the Most Holy Eucharist, which only priests can confect. So if
you have twelve men, you successfully capture both sides of the symbolism.
The twelve Apostles, as the foundation stones of the Church, represent all of
us, so the universal commandment of charity is there as well. On the other
hand, if you have a mixed group of men and women, it cancels out the
symbolism of the institution of the priesthood and of the Eucharist, and
emphasizes only the commandment of charity. Therefore, these two di erent
approaches are not equivalent to each other. One of them is more
comprehensive while the other is more narrow, and (arguably) politically
motivated.
Even after Pope Francis’s 2016 change to the rubrics so that women are
permitted, it is of course still allowable to wash the feet of twelve men, or
some number of men. The exclusive use of viri has not been forbidden. But
there’s an attitude among many clergy that this option is a theoretical option
only. We have to include women, now that Pope Francis does it, now that so
many places do it: “If we can have women, we should have women.” If we don’t
include women, we must be prejudiced against them, discriminatory,
chauvinistic. In this way, an option that really remains—having only men’s feet
washed—is optioned out of existence.
The foot-washing debacle illustrates a more general principle of action I’ve
encountered in certain priests, namely, that traditional options are nowhere to
be chosen: they are never appropriately chosen anywhere. This, after all, is the
modern Church; we’re in the contemporary world and we need to do what’s
relevant, up to date, in fashion. Consequently, the traditional options, though
they exist on paper, have to stay on paper.
To take another example, we know that it’s possible to sing the entire Mass
in Gregorian chant, and this even appears to be favored by the Second Vatican
Council; but a chanted Mass was one of the rst casualties of allowing many
options for music.[175] Most places don’t use the Entrance, O ertory, or
Communion antiphons. The music ministers simply substitute other, more or
less appropriate (usually less appropriate) hymns for those Propers, which are
actually part of the structure of the Mass in a way that hymns never have been
and never will be. Miscellaneous vernacular hymns are not printed in the
o cial liturgical books; they’re not printed in the missal; they’re not part of
the liturgy; they’re just optional add-ons. But the optional add-ons have
become the norm, almost as if they’re required, and the traditional options,
which are a part of the structure of the liturgy and its history, are practically
optioned out of existence.
Similarly, we all know that ad orientem is a legitimate option for the
celebration of the Novus Ordo.[176] But once again, the huge pressure of versus
populum celebration—the psychological insecurity of clergy who have to be
validated by their relationship with the congregation, and also the
egocentricity of the congregation expecting to be coddled and catered to—
these forces make a return to ad orientem extremely di cult, even though we
know that it’s a perfectly legitimate option on paper.
Such examples could be multiplied. What we see in the world of the
reformed liturgy, in short, is a continual drift towards a more and more
meaningless, vestigial, paper-thin permission for traditional practices. These
practices are like a rare species of delicate ower that’s being driven out of its
ecosystem by an aggressive, invasive species of noxious weeds.
As a name for this phenomenon, I suggest “the imperialism of novelty,” a
kind of undiscerning, indiscriminate favoritism toward or advancement of all
that is new and recent and shiny, the latest model rolling o the production
line. Tradition has no voice with which to defend itself; it has no armies, no
force. It compels solely by its inner rationale, its beauty, its value as something
passed down to us. But because modern people don’t care about what has been
passed down to us, tradition’s voice is muted; the moral force that it should
have is tempered, if not suppressed altogether. Modernity is fundamentally
anti-traditional: recall Thomas Je erson talking about how the enlightened
governments of his day will at last throw o medieval priestcraft, monkery,
and superstition as they embark on a new Age of Reason, Novus Ordo
Seclorum. The only positions that have any clout are those that are espoused
by people today—not surprisingly, because the people today who espouse them
are alive, with muscles and vocal chords, and they will do what they want to do
because they’re in charge right now.
This having been the case and still being the case in so many places, I am
struck by how often I encounter in younger generations a re-thinking of all
this. Not weighted down by the baggage of the Second Vatican Council, these
generations can look at the imperialism of novelty and see it for the empty do-
it-yourself religion that it is. They can see that it’s a form of chronological
snobbery, an egocentricity of the age. They can see that modern Christian
people and leaders are, in essence, slapping each other on the back and saying:
“Isn’t it great to be modern, isn’t it great to be up-to-date, isn’t it great to be
politically correct and democratic and sensitive?,” and so on. It all rings hollow;
to paraphrase Ratzinger, when the community celebrates itself, the liturgy
becomes an exercise in boredom and futility.
Young people, if they still have faith and still wish to use their reason, are
becoming more and more aware of the inherent value, one might say the silent
but immensely powerful value, of tradition. They are becoming its spokesmen;
they are taking up the cause, giving it voice and muscle. They are asking, in
some cases demanding, that traditional options be exercised—that traditional
practices be rescued from oblivion and be allowed a genuine foothold in the
Catholic world, in the Catholic consciousness. The very least we can ask is that
the traditional options not be optioned out of existence. May all Catholics
come to see, sooner or later, that the very best option is to return to a liturgy
not at the mercy of options, a liturgy not of modular components associable in
countless permutations but a single sacred tunic woven from top to bottom by
our Holy Mother, ready to give us warmth and beauty if we will but take it up
again and wear it.

RESISTING THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

 A priest shared with me some insights from a meeting he attended of
diocesan priests with their bishop. In what follows, I will be drawing upon
what he told me.
In the meeting, the bishop said that the clergy should work against the
temptation to settle for the “LCD,” the lowest common denominator. For, if
we allow every member of the clergy to “roam free,” as it were, and aspire to no
diocesan-wide standards of excellence, the principle of entropy—or we could
just say man’s fallen nature—tells us that things will tend to roll downhill and
decay over time, and eventually, at some point not too far down the road, every
parish will face immense pressure to conform to this LCD: whatever options
are least confrontational, most politically correct, and most socially acceptable
will eventually win the day. It takes real vision to see this inevitable outcome
and to combat it from the start. Free choice can be attractive, but ultimately
results in division and degradation.
The priest then re ected: this is exactly what I and many brother priests
have seen happening with the liturgy. Because of the equivocal nature of the
missal of Paul VI, which leaves so much at the disposal of the celebrant, we
have quickly slid to the LCD in every area where there is legitimate free
choice. In other words, there is no free choice within the system.
Let’s look at some examples.
A priest (as I mentioned above) is free to celebrate ad orientem or versus
populum—in fact, the missal presumes celebrating ad orientem, which would
put us in harmony with the rest of Tradition. But because of the LCD factor,
only versus populum is acceptable. Any priest who chooses to celebrate ad
orientem is seen as divisive and is eventually pressured into conforming,
unless he wants to be ostracized not only from the faithful but even from his
bishop and brother priests. But is it the priest who is the source of division?
Or is it the freedom to choose either option that creates the division? It is the
inevitable result of the LCD factor. Priests are accused of ghting what are
called “the liturgy wars,” but are they to be blamed, or does the blame not rest
squarely on the shoulders of Paul VI and his ambivalent missal?
A priest is free to incorporate as much Latin as he would like. But because
of the LCD, de facto only the vernacular is possible—despite the anathema
from the Council of Trent: “If anyone says...that the Mass ought to be
celebrated in the vernacular tongue only...let him be anathema.”[177]
 A priest is—or was, prior to Traditionis Custodes—free to incorporate the
traditional Mass into his parish or his ministry, but again because of the LCD
factor, this is seen as extreme and rigid, and is frowned upon to the point
where it is de facto nearly impossible.
A priest is under no obligation to concelebrate and is perfectly free to
choose to assist in choir so as to be able to celebrate his own Mass at a separate
time in the day, a custom hallowed by many centuries of tradition in the
Roman rite and clearly upheld by the 1983 Code of Canon Law.[178] But de
facto, there is immense pressure upon him to concelebrate because of the LCD
factor; to resist conformity will result in his receiving the label of being “not
community-minded.” At some large gatherings for retreats, conventions, or
meetings, there is literally no possibility of a private Mass unless you bring
your own portable altar or use a dresser in your room, since such a thing is no
longer even contemplated by the organizers, let alone provided for.
A priest is supposed to use a Communion paten and not to use
extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (EMHCs) except in
circumstances outside the ordinary, as the very name indicates;[179] but because
of systemic habitual abuse in the American Church and the LCD factor, doing
either of these things would be seen as suspiciously extreme. The pragmatic
norm, on the contrary, is to not have a Communion paten but to employ a
roster’s worth of EMHCs.
The faithful are encouraged to receive Holy Communion on the tongue,
which is the traditional custom and still the universal norm as per the Vatican;
meanwhile, they are permitted to receive in the hand as long as certain serious
conditions are met. But because of the LCD factor, probably 95% of the
faithful receive in the hand. And children preparing for First Communion are
seldom even taught the traditional practice, in spite of its still being “on the
books.”
The same can be said of sacred music, church architecture, sacred vessels,
vestments, preaching, etc., etc., etc. We are all now forced by social pressure to
conform to the LCD. And what happens when a priest doesn’t want to
conform to the LCD but wants to raise the bar? Well, typically the choice is
either: conform to the LCD, or hit the highway. The dynamic subtly eats away
at the bishop’s own integrity, because when he is confronted with complaints
about a “di cult” or “demanding” priest—as identi ed promptly by Susan
from the Parish Council—he must either stick his neck out and risk his
reputation to defend the priest, or take the quieter path of pressuring the
priest to conform to the LCD (or face exile to the boondocks, removal from
ministry, or some other form of cancellation).
It is as if everyone is laboring under the spell of the LCD. Such is the
division that has been sown into the heart of the Church, and especially into
the heart of the priesthood and religious life, by the missal of Paul VI.
The laity need to understand this phenomenon if they wish to grasp why
so many good priests who want to celebrate in harmony with tradition and
want the faithful to experience the fullness of this rich treasure that we have
as Catholics are afraid to do so, or perhaps su er a crisis when the tension
between their ideals and the LCD reality becomes too intense. Some think
there is a huge conspiracy that carefully planned the situation I’ve described,
and certainly this may be true, since no doubt the cunning of the devil is
involved. But it can also be explained as the result of societal entropy.[180]
Because of original sin, everything tends towards decay, as we see in the
movies, music, and media of our culture. The Church is immune from this
decay only in her divine element; she is by no means immune to it in her
human element, unless her members ght consciously and vigorously against
it. The traditional liturgy had long been a barrier against this natural process,
but the new Mass has opened the oodgates to it.
This “Trojan horse in the City of God”[181] —the new Mass in the
sanctuary—did not spring up out of nowhere. Its principles had been brewing
among modernist theologians and their heirs, the theologians of the nouvelle
théologie, expressed in the false distinction made by Fr. Yves Congar between
the “unalterable structures” of the Church and the “accessory, changeable
superstructures,” allowing the latter to be discarded and reinvented ad libitum.
But this mentality is nothing less than a betrayal of a mystical person, as one
lover of tradition poetically expressed it:

I do not love a skeleton nor vital organs, I love her face, her
sparkling clothes and even her sandals, her entire being. With the
spiritual canticle I will sing of the hair on her neck that charmed us
as well, her children, as it ravished the heart of her Spouse. Oh, may
those who love the Church understand! In her features and her
slightest gestures, something indescribably exquisite enraptures us
 to the summit of her essential Mystery. The liturgical movements,
the hymns, the ornamentation of churches, the words of the
catechism and the sermon, this esh, this manner of walking, the
sound of the voice, the color of the eyes, revealed the very soul,
immediately, and we were struck, intoxicated by it, for her ancient
and universal soul, her intimate life that came to comfort us, was the
Holy Spirit in Person![182]

This is the reverence that a Catholic should have towards the received rites
that come down to us from tradition, and all of their ornamentation. But the
new Mass incarnates the false principle of Fr. Congar by deliberately tossing
all this out the window in a massive overhaul, giving the impression to faithful
Catholics and to the world that the Catholic faith can change its entire
appearance. Ever since the so-called “accessory, changeable superstructures”
were overthrown, we have become painfully aware that they were instead a
constitutive part of the solid rock that formed our sure foundation, or, to use
the above imagery, the beautiful wedding garments of Holy Mother Church,
visibly radiant in her sacred rites. And now we nd ourselves upon a
foundation of sand, always shifting, and—if we are willing to be honest with
ourselves—a foundation always eroding down to the LCD, again and again.
Like a bird with a broken wing that can only manage to throw itself a few
inches, or an airplane with faulty engines that rises up from the runway only
to crash just beyond it, so is our lot, so it has been and so it will remain, until
the Church is no longer deprived of the liturgy that belongs to her.
The priest with whom I was corresponding concluded with this cri de
cœur:

If other priests want to accept the status quo, the tyranny of the
LCD, that is their decision, between them and God. Perhaps not
everyone needs to ght on the front lines and resist usque ad
sanguinem. But for us whose hearts belong to the Church of all
times, and to her traditional rites, we seek nothing more than to
access them in freedom, nothing else than to live and die with them,
nothing other than to nourish the faithful with this potent food
and drink.
May God raise up more and more priests with such a heart.
 5

The Outrageous Propaganda of Cardinal Roche &Co.

At one point in his autobiography Unwanted Priest (p. 158), Fr. Bryan
Houghton talks about anti-religious posters he came by on a trip to Russia:

I had picked up the rst group [of posters] in 1931 from an upper
school in Moscow. They are forcefully designed but the content is
rather naive. They are anti-clerical rather than anti-religious. A
typical example is one for use in a history class... It represents the
square in front of Notre-Dame de Paris with the cathedral in the
background. To the right is a leering capitalist, identi able by his
top hat, in front of whom are Cardinal Verdier (Archbishop of Paris
in 1931) and Marshal Foch, who are encouraging some troops on the
left side of the poster to massacre a crowd of defenceless workers.
Underneath is a quotation from Karl Marx referring to the Paris
Commune of 1870/71.

Now it is obvious that the religion might still be true even if

cardinals were in the habit of mowing down the populace. As anti-
religious propaganda it is naive. What is wicked and typically
communist about the poster is its falsi cation of history. It so
happens that in May 1871 it was the then Archbishop of Paris,
Georges Darboy, who while in prison was murdered in cold blood by
the communists.... You do not just tell a lie but the exact opposite of
the truth; it leaves your opponent speechless. It is the technique
used so successfully by progressives when they accuse traditionalists
of being divisive.

I had this passage in mind as I read an interview with then-Archbishop

Roche, in which he does not merely tell lies, but says the exact opposite of the
truth.[183]
 However, unlike the audience of communist propaganda, Roche’s
opponents will not be found speechless; no, they will have plenty to say, for
they have been assiduously following these matters for a much longer time,
and far more carefully, than the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship
has done. We take pains with Roche not because he will sit forever in the o ce
he occupies but because he epitomizes an ideology and an attitude that we have
had to su er under for a long time and may still have to endure for many years
to come. One can hardly read a paragraph without cringing at the
interviewee’s befuddlement.

“I think one of the problems that we are facing today is that we are
living in a very individualistic world, a very relativistic world, and
where the individual preference promotes itself above the common
good and the common expression,” he said. “I think that that is a
very dangerous thing, and it is something that as Christians, we
really need to take very careful note of.”

So: how exactly does a liturgy notorious for its “optionitis,” which makes
of it the personal project of whoever is celebrating it, escape from “individual
preference”? The priest gets to make choices about the penitential rite;
whether or not to improvise mini-commentaries on the readings; whether or
not to have an Alleluia; whether or not to say the O ertory out loud;
sometimes which Preface to say; which Eucharistic Prayer to say (!); whether to
use some Latin or not; ad orientem or versus populum; and so on and so forth.
Add to this the completely open-ended possibilities for the music, what kinds
of music, which texts, when to sing and when not to sing, possibilities of
readings, optional memorials, periods of silence, etc.... As any amateur
mathematician may see, there are trillions of possible con gurations of the
Novus Ordo,[184] all of them summoned into being by “individual preference,”
which, of course, rules out altogether a liturgical “common expression” of the
Faith! That’s a “very dangerous thing” that “we really need to take very careful
note of ”!

“This is not the pope’s Mass, it’s not my Mass, it’s not your Mass.
This is the Mass of the church,” the archbishop said. “This is what
the church has decided how we express ourselves as a community in
 worship, and how we imbibe from the books of the liturgy the
doctrine of the church.”

Apart from His Excellency’s tipsy grammar, we may note the profound
irony of saying, about a Mass created for and issued by Paul VI in an absolutely
unprecedented exing of papal creativity, that “this is not the pope’s Mass.”
But of course it is: it is Paul VI’s Mass, in a way that the Tridentine rite was
never “the Mass of ” St. Pius V or Benedict XV or John XXIII, for it was the
Roman rite handed down from century to century by all who used this missal.
[185] Only of the TLM and of other traditional Eucharistic liturgies could it be

truthfully said: “This is not the pope’s Mass; it’s not my Mass; it’s not your
Mass. This is the Mass of the Church.”
Here is where Roche makes a fatal move:

The di erences between the pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II

Masses, he said, are not simply the use of Latin, chant, silence and
the direction the priest faces. The promotion of the pre-Vatican II
liturgy as somehow more holy or prayerful than the current liturgy
“is not basically a liturgical problem, it is an ecclesial problem,” the
archbishop said.

By admitting that the di erences between the missals are not just “skin-
deep” (they go beyond the “smells and bells”) and by stating that the
promotion of the preconciliar rite is “not basically a liturgical problem, it is an
ecclesial problem” (that is, one that concerns fundamental theology, the lex
credendi expressed by the lex orandi), the Archbishop once again asserts the
rupture thesis[186] that condemns Traditionis Custodes to the dustbin: if the
new rite is antithetical to the old rite, yet the old rite expressed the faith of the
Church for well over a millennium, which of the two is the loser? Surely the
new rite, unless we want to say the Church had a faulty and damaging notion
of itself and of its faith for most of its history—which sounds oddly like the
view many Protestants hold.
Now we come to the most monumental of the errors:

The current Mass, with a richer selection of prayers and Scripture

readings, re ects and reinforces the church’s understanding of itself
 as the people of God.

Roche tells us every chance he gets that the “current Mass” boasts a “richer
selection of prayers and Scripture readings.” True, the missal of Paul VI draws
its euchology or prayer texts from a wider variety of sources in ancient
manuscripts. However, what people like Roche do not want to tell you is that
Bugnini’s Consilium heavily redacted most of the texts it borrowed, altering
their message, removing material deemed “di cult” or “irrelevant” for Modern
Man. What you end up with in the missal is not a plethora of ancient sources
but a carefully ltered and rewritten 1960s “take” on them.[187] This
chronological snobbery is perfectly conveyed in a memorandum from the
Consilium in charge of the liturgical reform, dated September 9, 1968:

It is often impossible to preserve either orations that are found in

the [1962] Roman Missal or to borrow suitable orations from the
treasury of ancient euchology. Indeed, prayer ought to express the
mind of our current age, especially with regard to temporal
necessities like the unity of Christians, peace, and famine... In
addition, it seems to us that it is not always possible for the Church
on every occasion to make use of ancient orations, which do not
correspond with the doctrinal progress visible in recent encyclicals
such as Pacem in terris and Populorum progressio, and in conciliar
documents such as Gaudium et spes.[188]

In keeping with this policy, only 13% of the orations of the old missal, once
the backbone of Roman Catholic worship, found their way into the new missal
unchanged.[189] The scholars with their scissors and paste were busy rejecting
or rewriting most of what they came upon. The editing process was ruthless,
removing most of the references to

detachment from the temporal and desire for the eternal; the
Kingship of Christ over the world and society; the battle against
heresy and schism, the conversion of non-believers, the necessity of
the return to the Catholic Church and genuine truth; merits,
miracles, and apparitions of the saints; God’s wrath for sin and the
possibility of eternal damnation.[190]
Gone are most references to the struggle against our sinful fallen nature,
o enses against the Divine Majesty, wounds of the soul, worthy repentance,
remorse, and reparation; the need for grace to do any good acts; the mystery of
predestination; the relics of saints; the subordination of the secular sphere to
the sacred; the snares of the enemy; victory over hostile forces, including the
pagans; orations speci cally addressed to Jesus Christ as God.[191]
How, exactly, can a missal missing all these old riches be said to represent
“a richer selection of prayers”? On the contrary, the selection—precisely
because it is a selection by 1960s “experts”—is theologically narrower, culturally
thinner, and spiritually poorer.[192] The old missal’s prayers express much more
of the full height and depth of the divine mysteries and the variegated human
response to them. For those who are not persuaded, I recommend, in addition
to Fiedrowicz, the unanswerable research of Lauren Pristas in her Collects of
the Roman Missals:A Comparative Study of the Sundays in Proper Seasons
before and after the Second Vatican Council. (Don’t these Sant’Anselmians
ever study any books? They seem to have read nothing after circa 1975.)
The same thing can be said of the “richer selection of Scripture readings.”
Yes, there are more readings, numerically speaking. However, some of the
highly appropriate and crucial readings found in the old missal were excluded
from the new lectionary, and the new one, for its part, skips verses deemed
(you guessed it) “di cult” for Modern Man.[193] The old readings, like the old
orations, express a wider range of certain themes than the new lectionary, in
spite of its vastly greater size. As a matter of fact, the old lectionary boasts
numerous advantages over the new one, as traditionalists have long
maintained.[194]
Returning now to Roche:

“That which was given to us by the council, which classi ed,

concretized the teaching of the church about itself and its
understanding of the role of the baptized and the importance of the
Eucharist and the sacramental life of the church, is not without
signi cance for the future of the church,” he said.

Please repeat three times: “The Novus Ordo was not given to us by the
council.” As we saw in chapter 1, the premises of Sacrosanctum Concilium
could have been ful lled in many di erent ways. Their actual application in
the form of the new liturgical books of Paul VI has led to unceasing
controversy and complaints at all levels and from all sides, because it will never
be traditional enough for those who love immemorial tradition and never
progressive enough for those who favor constant “inculturation” or
“adaptation.” Nevertheless, it would be impossible to nd a single statement in
Vatican II that would necessarily yield the Novus Ordo as it now exists. Nor
can it ever be said that the preconciliar period lacked a profound awareness of
“the role of the baptized and the importance of the Eucharist and the
sacramental life of the church”; on the contrary, this awareness was far
stronger, as the vastly greater participation of Catholics before the Council in
Sunday Mass, their frequent use of Confession, their choice of matrimony in
the Church and the consequent baptism of more numerous o spring, and the
higher numbers of priestly and religious vocations, would evidently suggest to
anyone but an ideologue.

And the bishops gathered for the Second Vatican Council, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said, “this is the direction in which
we are going,” Archbishop Roche said.

No reputable theologian has ever claimed that bishops at an ecumenical

council act “under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” simply speaking; nor was
“this direction” pointing as clearly to the Novus Ordo as Roche must assume
in order to support his dogmatism.[195]

Through regular contacts with bishops and bishops’ conferences, he

said, he knows most bishops have “greeted the pope’s call back to the
council and also to the unity of the church with open arms and are
very much behind what the Holy Father is saying.”

This sounds like the mandatory optimism of the Communist Party,

according to which everything is always getting better, and everyone is
marching side-by-side, arm-in-arm, into a glorious future! If Roche is correct,
why is it that so many bishops either have done nothing about Traditiones
Custodes and the Responsa of the (then) Congregation for Divine Worship, or
have sought ways to work around their onerous and episcopally insulting
provisions? The available statistics and statements suggest—as Diane
Montagna already reported[196] —that most bishops had either positive or
neutral things to say about Summorum Ponti cum, or indeed, had nothing to
say at all, since only 30% responded to the pope’s survey. This doesn’t sound
like “most bishops...are very much behind what the Holy Father is saying.”
But His Excellency saves the most delicious absurdity for last:

Obviously, people have preferences, the archbishop said. But

Catholics need to look more deeply at what they are saying when
they express those preferences. “When people say, ‘Well, I’m going to
Father So-and-So’s Mass,’ well Father So-and-So is only the agent.
It is Christ who is active in the Mass, it is the priest who acts in
‘persona Christi’—the person of Christ, the head of the church,” he
said.

Are traditionalists really individualists who exalt their personal

preferences above the Church’s shared liturgy? Or is it rather the Novus Ordo
that has privileged clerical choices and community preferences for ve and a
half decades, as we saw in chapter 4? The old liturgy consistently bears witness
to a common faith and worship across the ages and around the world; it
possesses a durable diachronic unity and a sensible synchronic unity. The
phenomenon of “Fr. So-and-so’s Mass” generally happens only in the realm of
the Novus Ordo due to all the options and interpretations and loose rubrics,
which can make two Masses radically di erent from each other even at the
same parish on the same morning. No wonder Catholics choose between “Fr.
Pius Fiddleback” and “Fr. Lookatme Adlibber”: they are compelled to make a
choice between those who make choices. The loser here is the persona Christi,
the One who should shine through and dominate.

“When we go to Mass, even when the music perhaps isn’t something

that we would personally choose—and again, this is individualism
coming in—then we’ve got to realize that we are standing at the side
of Christ on his cross, who gives everything back to the Father
through this Eucharist,” Archbishop Roche said.

Here Roche implies that those who attend the old rite do so out of a
personal desire for a certain variety of sacred music, as if chasing after their
own Spotify playlist. Once again, the opposite is the truth: at the traditional
Latin Mass, the music you will hear is (most often) either age-old chant
dictated by the liturgy itself or polyphony based o of that chant—in short,
the music long praised by the Magisterium and well suited for universal use,
not “what we would personally choose” (although we may prefer it for
aesthetic reasons, too, since it is in fact superior).[197] This is—surprise!—what
Vatican II called for: “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially
suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, ceteris paribus [all things being equal],
it should be given chief place in liturgical services” (SC 116). Dear Prefect, be
careful how you wave about that Constitution on the Liturgy! Whereas in the
Novus Ordo, contrary to this conciliar directive, somebody else—the pastor,
the guitarist, the parish council, GIA, etc.—gets to impose his or its personal
choice of music on the hapless people in the pews, dismissing the unitive
power of the Church’s tradition. As with liberal political propaganda, so too
with ecclesiastical: in nearly every case, the vices of which one is accused are
the vices of the accuser. Fr. Houghton’s Soviet posters would be right at home
on the walls of Roche’s o ce.
A breathtaking example of self-indictment came in an interview
conducted by Christopher Lamb, where Cardinal Roche manages to utter what
may well be the most ironic statement since Vatican II:

That reform [of Catholic worship since the Council] is taking place,
but it’s a slow process because there are those who are dragging
their feet with regard to this and not only dragging their feet but
stubbornly opposing what the Church has actually decreed. That’s a
very serious matter. In the end, people have to ask themselves: am I
really a Catholic, or am I more of a Protestant?[198]

Let’s think about this for a moment. As Michael Davies demonstrated in

his masterpiece Cranmer’s Godly Order: The Destruction of Catholicism
through Liturgical Change, the liturgical reform after Vatican II emulated, in
dozens of ways, the liturgical “reforms” fashioned by Cranmer and imposed on
England by its rulers. The Book of Common Prayer was a revolution in the lex
orandi, made to re ect and promote a Protestant lex credendi. The website
Whispers of Restoration has prepared a handy chart that shows these parallels.
[199]
 For example, the Novus Ordo, like Cranmer’s missal, repudiates an oblative
O ertory, replacing it with a supper-oriented “presentation of gifts” based on
the Jewish berakah, which does not unambiguously signify that the Mass is a
true and proper sacri ce in propitiation for sins and for the good estate of the
living and of the dead, o ered to the Most Holy Trinity by the Son of God
according to His human nature. As F. A. Gasquet and E. Bishop write:

The ancient ritual oblation, with the whole of which the idea of
sacri ce was so intimately associated, was swept away. This was
certainly in accord with Cranmer’s known opinions.... To
understand the full import of the novelty it must be borne in mind
that this ritual oblation had a place in all liturgies [of Christendom].
[200]

It is worthy of note that Luther, when designing his own Order of Mass
for his followers, omitted the Roman O ertory, which he called “that
complete abomination into the service of which all that precedes in the Mass
has been forced, whence it is called O ertorium, and on account of which
nearly everything sounds and reeks of oblation.”[201]
Not only Cranmer’s actions, then, but Luther’s theology also in uenced
the architects of the Novus Ordo. As Joseph Ratzinger observed in his lecture
“Theology of the Liturgy” given at Fontgombault in July 2001:

Who still talks today about “the divine Sacri ce of the Eucharist”?...
Stefan Orth, in the vast panorama of a bibliography of recent works
devoted to the theme of sacri ce, believed he could make the
following statement as a summary of his research: “In fact, many
Catholics themselves today ratify the verdict and the conclusions of
Martin Luther, who says that to speak of sacri ce is ‘the greatest
and most appalling horror’ and a ‘damnable idolatry’; this is why we
want to refrain from all that smacks of sacri ce, including the whole
Canon, and retain only that which is pure and holy.” Then Orth
adds: “This maxim was also followed in the Catholic Church after
Vatican II, or at least tended to be, and led people to think of divine
worship chie y in terms of the feast of the Passover related in the
accounts of the Last Supper.”...
 A sizable party of Catholic liturgists seems to have practically
arrived at the conclusion that Luther, rather than Trent, was
substantially right in the sixteenth-century debate; one can detect
much the same position in the postconciliar discussions on the
Priesthood. The great historian of the Council of Trent, Hubert
Jedin, pointed this out in 1975, in the preface to the last volume of
his history of the Council of Trent: “The attentive reader...in reading
this will not be less dismayed than the author, when he realizes that
many of the things—in fact, almost everything—that disturbed the
men of the past is being put forward anew today.” Only against this
background of the e ective denial of the authority of Trent can one
understand the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the
celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal after the liturgical
reform. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the strongest
and thus (for them) the most intolerable contradiction of the
opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist
formulated by Trent has lost its validity.... Meßner, who says a great
deal that is worth pondering, nonetheless arrives at the conclusion
that Luther understood the early Church better than the Council of
Trent did.[202]

The view that the early Christian Mass was more “authentic,” more in
keeping with what Jesus intended—free from all the medieval clutter,
repetition, bowing and scraping, pious mumbo-jumbo, devotionalism, and
even superstition that grew up around it later—is precisely the view that unites
the original Protestants with their latter-day descendants in the radical wing
of the Liturgical Movement that produced the Novus Ordo. I discuss this
point at length elsewhere.[203] Let it su ce, for the nonce, to provide a picture-
perfect example of such antiquarian reformism:

The liturgy we experience today is quite di erent from that of fty

or sixty years ago. Over the ages, what began as a gathering of
friends and followers of Jesus sharing a meal and remembering his
teachings became an increasingly elaborate ceremony of sacri ce.
The celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, held in secret in people’s
homes during the times of persecution, gave way to highly ritualized
 ceremonies held in beautiful churches. By the Middle Ages, the
priest was saying Mass while the people watched in silence. The
focus was primarily on Jesus’ sacri ce, which diminished the symbol
of a shared meal. Those attending were not participants as much as
watchers. In the 1960s the bishops from around the world gathered
at the Second Vatican Council. They called for important reforms to
renew the liturgy. The language of the liturgy changed from Latin to
the vernacular, so that for the rst time in hundreds of years, the
people could hear and understand the prayers being said. People
were also encouraged to receive Communion, in the hand, and from
the cup. The idea of a shared meal around a table was reclaimed
from the early years of Christianity.

This passage is taken from a middle-school Religious Ed textbook:

Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, published by Saint Mary’s Press in 2008.
It even has the nihil obstat and imprimatur (the devaluation of Catholic
currency on full display). It is precisely this “quite di erent experience” of
liturgy that not only prompted a mass exodus of Catholics after the
Council[204] but also, and more damningly still, led to the well-documented
erosion of faith in the Real Presence, of awareness of moral conditions for
receiving the Eucharist (including recourse to Confession), of delity to the
Sunday obligation, and so forth. The past sixty years have o ered an
unanswerable demonstration—if anyone needed convincing—of the ironclad
axiom lex orandi, lex credendi.
Nor should we be surprised by these Protestant/Novus Ordo parallels. An
explicit motivation of the modern Catholic liturgical reform was an
ecumenism designed to bring Catholics and Protestants together. As Annibale
Bugnini famously wrote in the March 19, 1965 edition of L’Osservatore
Romano concerning the softening of the prayer for the conversion of heretics
and schismatics on Good Friday:

Let’s say that often the work [of the Consilium’s ongoing editing of
prayers] proceeded “with fear and trembling” by sacri cing terms
and concepts so dear, and now part of the long family tradition.
How not to regret that “Mother Church—Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic—deigned to revoke” the seventh prayer? And yet the love
 of souls and the desire to help in any way the road to union for the
separated brethren, by removing every stone that could even
remotely constitute an obstacle or source of di culty, have driven
the Church to make even these painful sacri ces.[205]

This interpretation is con rmed not only by the oft-mentioned

participation of six Protestants in the Consilium that worked on the new
liturgy[206] (their role was mainly con ned to the new lectionary) but even
more by the testimony of Paul VI’s close personal friend, the philosopher Jean
Guitton. I quoted this paragraph earlier, but it deserves to be repeated:

First of all, Paul VI’s Mass is presented as a banquet, and emphasizes

much more the participatory aspect of a banquet and much less the
notion of sacri ce, of a ritual sacri ce before God with the priest
showing only his back. So, I don’t think I’m mistaken in saying that
the intention of Paul VI and the new liturgy that bears his name is
to ask of the faithful a greater participation at Mass; it is to make
more room for Scripture, and less room for all that is, some would
say magical, others, transubstantial consecration, which is the
Catholic faith. In other words, there was with Paul VI an ecumenical
intention to remove, or at least to correct or to relax what was too
Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and, I repeat, to bring
the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.[207]

Bishop Athanasius Schneider points out another way in which Calvinism

in uenced the liturgical reform:

Today the faithful take and touch the Host directly with their
ngers and then put the Host in the mouth: this gesture has never
been known in the entire history of the Catholic Church but was
invented by Calvin—not even by Martin Luther. The Lutherans have
typically received the Eucharist kneeling and on the tongue,
although of course they do not have the Real Presence because they
do not have a valid priesthood. The Calvinists and other Protestant
free churches, who do not believe at all in the Real Presence of
Christ in the Eucharist, invented a rite which is void of almost all
 gestures of sacredness and of exterior adoration, i.e., receiving
“Communion” standing upright, and touching the bread “host” with
their ngers and putting it in their mouth in the way people treat
ordinary bread....

For them, this was just a symbol, so their exterior behavior towards
Communion was similar to behavior towards a symbol. During the
Second Vatican Council, Catholic Modernists—especially in the
Netherlands—took this Calvinist Communion rite and wrongly
attributed it to the Early Church, in order to spread it more easily
throughout the Church. We have to dismantle this myth and these
insidious tactics, which started in the Catholic Church more than
fty years ago, and which like an avalanche have now rolled through,
crushing almost all Catholic churches in the entire world, with the
exception of some Catholic countries in Eastern Europe and a few
places in Asia and Africa.[208]

Cranmer...Luther...Calvin... “That’s a very serious matter. In the end, people

have to ask themselves: am I really a Catholic, or am I more of a Protestant?”
I have a piece of advice for Cardinal Roche’s friends and associates. They
should tell him to stop speaking and especially to stop giving interviews. Every
time he opens his mouth, he inadvertently advances the cause of Tradition. In
this respect, he imitates to perfection the one who created him cardinal.

RELEASING ENERGIES
The term “inculturation” is certainly one of the favorite buzzwords of
progressives. We have heard it ung about for decades. It was the original
rationale for updating or modernizing the liturgy: the old liturgical rites (so it
was said) are excessively beholden to and redolent of a past age of European
Christendom, and modern Christians need a recognizably modern set of rites,
sleek, direct, patent, simple, comprehensible, action-oriented. The fact that
Catholics did not ask for such rites is only a sign of their habitual modesty and
passivity; nevertheless, scholars were capable of divining hidden intentions
that a grateful laity subsequently recognized and welcomed as if these had
proceeded forth from their own breasts. It was also claimed, although the
impression of hocus-pocus was a little too strong to ignore, that these modern
qualities were, remarkably, the very same as those prized by early Christians in
their rites, about which we have almost no extant records but of which
German scholarly reconstructions could achieve the highest verisimilitude.
For a time, such futuristic fantasies took a back seat as the Church under
Benedict XVI hunkered down to restore a modicum of dignity to the new rites
and began to restore the old ones. At rst, one saw the e ects of the
Ratzingerian approach only in this or that city, but over time they could be
detected in many dioceses around the world. The pulsing drumbeat of
inculturation died down for a time; one might have thought it had gone
extinct. Yet like a rare species of poisonous frog sighted in the remotest part of
a rainforest, it has returned in the form of Cardinal Arthur Roche, a most
unlikely proponent of exibility and exoticism. In an interview with the
Spanish Catholic magazine Omnes, he said the following:

On this subject, I have often said to the bishops that we have spent
the last fty years preparing the translation of the liturgical texts;
and now we must move on to the second phase, which is already
foreseen by Sacrosanctum Concilium, and that is the inculturation
or adaptation of the Liturgy to the other di erent cultures, while
maintaining unity. I think that we should start this work now. But I
would like to point out that today there is only one [other Novus
Ordo] liturgical “use,” not a “rite,” and that is in Zaire, in Africa.

It is important to understand what it means that Jesus has shared

our nature, and in a historical moment. We have to consider the
importance of the Incarnation and, if we can say so, of the action of
grace being incarnated in other cultures, with various expressions
that are completely di erent from what we have seen and
appreciated in Europe for so many years.[209]

The self-appointed spokesman of liturgical reformism, Andrea Grillo,

espouses the same program. In a re ection he posted for the one-year
anniversary of Traditionis Custodes, Grillo writes:

It is about releasing the true energies of ritual language (verbal and

non-verbal) as the culmen et fons [summit and source] of all the
 action of the Church. Today this happens no longer primarily in
Latin and in a rite of priests and not of the assembly, but in many
languages whose cultures have entered, for sixty years, into the
common patrimony of the great ecclesial tradition. A Church that
wants to “guard the tradition” must not be afraid of the di erent
cultures with which we can experience faith and express our creed
today. This “communal table” will be able to make it possible to
assess the limits of what has been done so far and boldly take the
way forward on the level of verbal and non-verbal languages. A great
construction site can open up: for the tradition of guarding by
walking forward, not backward.[210]

When I read such things, my mind wanders back to an intriguing

conversation I once held with an older priest who had done his liturgical
studies in the 1970s at the Ponti cal Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo, an
international Benedictine university in Rome that has been known, for quite
some time, as a breeding-ground of progressive liturgists (even if, to give the
angels their due, there have also been good students and faculty as well).[211]
This priest had had the rare good luck to nd himself going out to lunch one
day with Annibale Bugnini, shortly before the latter’s fall from grace. In their
tabletalk, Bugnini, a regular raconteur, nally came around to the topic of the
liturgical reform. The mastermind of the Consilium said to him essentially
this:

What you need to see is that the new liturgy involves three stages.
First, we had to eliminate the old way of doing things. This was
mainly the work of the 1960s, and in thirty years’ time, everyone will
have forgotten what came before. Second, we had to create
something new for the time being: this is what people are calling
the “Novus Ordo.” But even this must disappear, giving way to
complete inculturation: every liturgy should be made by the
community, for its own immediate needs. No liturgical books, just
like it was in the ancient church! Even my Mass will disappear, by
the year 2000.
 Lest it be thought that we are putting words into Bugnini’s mouth, words
he never would have said, consider the following paragraph from a press
conference in 1967, in which he goes into considerable detail about the novelty
of the Consilium’s project:

The liturgy is in the midst of a period of transition.... It is not only a

question of touching up a work of art of great value, but sometimes
it is necessary to give new structures to entire rites. It is indeed a
question of a fundamental restoration, I would almost say of a
recasting and, for certain points, of an actual new creation. Why this
fundamental work? Because the image of the liturgy given by the
Council is completely di erent from what it was before, that is,
above all rubricist, formalist, centralizing. Now the liturgy expresses
itself vigorously in its dogmatic, biblical, and pastoral aspects; it
seeks to make itself intelligible in the word, in symbols, in gestures,
in signs; it strives to adapt itself to the mentality, to the genius, to
the aspirations, and to the demands of each people, in order to
penetrate it intimately and to bring Christ there. From a juridical
point of view, its fate is largely in the hands of the episcopal
conferences, sometimes of the bishops, if not even of the celebrating
priests. If the restored liturgy—which some disparagingly call the
“new” liturgy—did not achieve this goal, the work of restoration
would fail.[212]

Readers familiar with the immediate postconciliar literature will

recognize, in this vision, the viewpoint given eloquent expression by the Jesuit
songster Joseph Gélineau: that the liturgy is a “permanent workshop” (Grillo’s
“great construction site”).[213] It can be easily shown that the mentality is
widespread. Three examples will su ce. First, to resume with master architect
Bugnini himself:

The liturgical reform will continue without limits of time and space,
initiative and person, modality and rite, so that the liturgy may
remain alive for people of all times and every generation.[214]
Echoing him is Dom Anscar J. Chupungco (1939–2013), an in uential teacher
of generations of students at Sant’Anselmo in Rome:

The work of liturgical reform is not nished and, in the spirit of the
Council, must never end. The liturgy, like the Church in its human
aspect, is inevitably subject to continuous reform, so that it may
truly and in every time, and for every culture and historical
moment, be the wellspring of ecclesial life.[215]

In 1966, Fr. Clement McNaspy, SJ, perceptively identi es liturgical change as

the tip of the iceberg for (unspeci ed) change in the Church:

Since we learn by doing, it was plain that by experiencing change in

our everyday life of worship we might all become better prepared to
accept the further changes called for in other conciliar decisions....
Liturgical change was to be only the beginning; but it did establish
the principle.[216]

In laying out his timeline for utopia, Bugnini proved to be no prophet. By

the year 2000, the Novus Ordo was still plodding along in its thousand
vernaculars, subject to widespread abuse and feeble attempts at community
customization that never amounted to much more than a presider’s or a
committee’s vague and often silly ideas about what a celebration “for us”
should look like. One might call it creative mediocrity or mediocre creativity,
but it was a far cry from the lunchtime prognostication.
Not deceived by the siren song of inculturation or perpetual adaptation,
Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman puts his nger on the inevitable result:

The progressive element among the reforming liturgists saw the

1969 missal as but a stage—a signi cant one, mind you—in the new
project of reconstituting the liturgy as something that continually
adapts to the age in which it is celebrated. As we have seen, the
result is that the liturgy generally degenerates into re ecting the age
rather than speaking to it and sanctifying it. Or more to the point,
radical deformations of the liturgy re ect not the face of Christ but
the face of the dominant person or clique that imposes them, and so
 become vehicles not of worship but of narcissism, the cult of self
which is the de facto creed of postmodern western society.... We are
rootless and thus heartless, replacing self-sacri ce with self-service,
with self as the only moral absolute, its inescapable subjectivity and
impermanence denying the absolutism it demands for itself. Its
secondary absolute, novelty, su ers the same inherent aw.[217]

In Roger Buck’s entertaining romp The Gentle Traditionalist Returns,

there is a point in the imaginary conversation where a thoroughly modern
person objects that GT (i.e., the Gentle Traditionalist) is nothing other than a
medievalist, an escapist, a nostalgic. In reply, GT explains why he loves
tradition in its totality—from every stage, every place, every period, every
culture through which the Catholic religion has passed, not limiting himself
to the Middle Ages but not willing to limit himself to modernity either,
particularly because the latter seems to operate under an oddly reactionary
mentality that traps it in a little box marked “Now”:

Well, the medieval era is an important stage in Catholic tradition.

But it’s just one stage. Catholic tradition covers 3,000 years—not just
modern media culture! It begins with the Old Testament, becomes
in nitely enriched by the Gospel, takes in Greek thinking with the
Patristic era, develops through the so-called “Dark Ages.” Then
comes the medieval era. Finally, the tradition signi cantly develops
in modern times, as well. That, my dear fellow, is the whole point to
Tradition—respecting three thousand years of Divine Revelation
and dedicated human e ort to engage that Revelation. Three
thousand years of prayer, thought, study, sacri ce—indeed blood,
sweat and tears. But all that, I know, is just three thousand years of
encrusted patriarchal baggage to you....

You see why the destruction of tradition troubles me. One so easily
gets enslaved to the present moment. All this “Power of Now” stu
is dangerous, if you ask me. It’s also arrogant. Thousands of years of
human insight, human enquiry, human intellectual and spiritual
endeavour—not to mention Divine Revelation—thrown to the
 winds. And why? Because it didn’t jive with the Baby Boomers after
the “Summer of Love”?[218]

The liturgy so prized by Roche & Co. is, contrary to their mindlessly-
repeated claims about breadth of inclusivity and depth of sources, staggeringly
provincial in time and space; it re ects the preoccupations of mid-twentieth-
century liturgists of postwar “enlightened” Europe, through whose ltration
devices every item of ritual and rubric had to pass.
To the cardinal now in charge of liturgy, we express our modest and
humble opinion: we do not want this Bugninian futuristic
indigenous/cosmopolitan self-inculturated workshop. Its rst iteration failed,
and the current geriatric fad for attempting to revive the mimeographed
agenda of the reformers not only fails to enthuse, it positively nauseates most
of us who still frequent the pews, study in seminaries, or go in unto the altar
of God—unto God who giveth joy to our youth.

A LOST CAUSE
Today—and it has already been thus for some years—the intellectual
repower, not to mention the virtue of basic honesty when it comes to Church
history and dogmatic theology, is all on the side of traditional Catholic writers.
If one wishes to laugh or groan, one need only visit the blogs Pray, Tell or
Where Peter Is to see on display the mettle (such as it is) of the opposing side’s
views.
In fact, so desperate are the apologists of the new order that they have
even tried to make selling points out of defects, as if a used car salesman were
to advertise the defects of the lemons in his lot. “This automobile here has
bald tires, an i y alternator, and a transmission on its last legs, but the bright
side is that you get to invest your own e ort in making it better! That’s what
we call full, conscious, active ownership, which is your right and duty as a
member of a market society!” Here’s what one writer found it possible to say
on behalf of Paul VI’s great project for renewal:

The liturgy of Paul VI is rather plain.... In fact, the plainness of the

Vatican II liturgy is an intentional strategy for the renewal of the
Church.... [It can be] compared to a painting class, in which each of
the students, guided by an instructor, paints a depiction of the same
 religious scene.... We need to do the hard work of embracing
voluntary poverty and true community. If we do so, the “emptiness”
of the Vatican II liturgy will prove to be the fertile emptiness of a
tilled eld, expectantly waiting for the growth of a new,
enculturated, liturgical form.[219]

So, the liturgy, to be better, has to become less liturgical; divine worship, to
meet our needs, has to become less divine; what was full of beauty and
symbolism and dogma has to be evacuated to make room for our creativity. It’s
a mighty wonder that none of this was ever on the minds of any Catholics at
any time in the history of the Church. Well, okay, there’s the Synod of Pistoia,
which was condemned by Pope Pius VI.[220] I wonder what Eastern Christians
(both Catholic and Orthodox) would have to say to the suggestion that their
Divine Liturgy needs a major overhaul because it’s far too grandiose.
The same author criticizes the Tridentine Mass for being always the same,
which he compares to “a mass-produced image of a religious scene, likely at
least a little dated-looking, probably showing Christ as looking strangely
European, and laminated in plastic to avoid any tampering.” Its sameness
prevents, he thinks, its reception and inculturation. Strange, isn’t it, that this
was the liturgy with which the entire world was evangelized, leading to
ourishing local churches planted everywhere—churches that were rich in
vocations when the liturgy was still in Latin, but have so often su ered an
inexorable decline after Vatican II and the prioritization of the local and
regional (which reached its absurd climax with the Amazon Synod)?[221]
Strange, too, that we can nd magni cent examples of legitimate inculturation
well before the Second Vatican Council...[222]
Again, one has to wonder if Schluenderfritz would dare to make such a
critique of Eastern liturgical rites, which have (on the whole) changed even less
than the Western ones. Ultimately, only someone absolutely ignorant of ritual
and rituality would be able to say that a rite’s stability, its givenness, its
“unspontaneity” (to use Ratzinger’s favored expression), is a defect, rather than
a pre-eminent virtue.[223] One is reminded of the bracing remark of C.S. Lewis:
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of
humility; rather it proves the o ender’s inability to forget himself in the rite,
and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.”[224]
 A rather di erent Lewis, one Mike Lewis—the most brazen representative
of a breakaway movement that could be called “Peterism”—rushed to the
defense of his fellow disciple by reminding everyone, in case we might have
forgotten, that the Tridentine rite as promulgated by St. Pius V has
“unnecessary elements.”[225] When challenged about this claim online, Lewis
doubled down: “They have plenty of arguments for why even the stupidest
parts are absolutely necessary.”[226] Silly me, I had been predisposed to think
well of the old Mass in its broad lines and tiny details due to the testimony of
the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which says there is “nothing
super uous” in the rite of Holy Mass, and was later convinced of it by the
richly researched arguments in Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional
Mass:History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite. Perhaps one
day Mike Lewis will attempt to explain why the Roman Catechism is mistaken
and will refute Fiedrowicz in scholarship of comparable depth, ideally su used
with intimate experience of his subject matter.
I will not linger any longer over these pathetic articles, which have already
been battered to a bloody pulp by the likes of Matthew Hazell and Joseph
Shaw. If this is the kind of thing that proponents of the Novus Ordo are
reduced to saying, theirs is a lost cause—all the more lost for their painful
obliviousness. Other types of argument one will encounter include:
“The new Mass isn’t really as bad as it seems, because with a lot of e ort
and some luck you can make it almost as beautiful as the old liturgy.” How
often have we seen the noblest e orts of the “reform of the reform” shot down
by prelates, like clay pigeons on a shooting range?[227]
“The decline in the Church would have been even worse if we hadn’t
changed the liturgy.” A patent absurdity on the face of it, given that one of the
most commonly cited causes for people dropping away from the Church after
the Council was the relentless and inexplicable obsession with change, or
rather, that peculiar kind of suicidal change that consists of becoming ever
more like the world, which, naturally, renders the Church nugatory in the
minds of many.[228]
“What was produced [by Pius V] in 1570 was entirely appropriate for the
time. What is produced in this age [by Bugnini, Montini, et al.] is also entirely
appropriate for the time.” This emission of nonsense is taken straight from
the lips of Cardinal Roche,[229] astonishingly the Prefect of the Dicastery for
Divine Worship, who betrays a total lack of understanding of both what the
1570 missal actually is—a codi cation of what the Roman Church was already
doing[230]—and of liturgical history, where we never see the rites changed from
century to century to accommodate what a team of “experts” thinks people
need at that moment.
“The OF and EF [i.e., new rite and old rite] represent two di erent
understandings of the Eucharist, Ecclesiology, the baptismal priesthood, and
the sacrament of Orders (just to mention the most obvious theological
di erences).” This sentence was submitted to the CDF by a Japanese bishop,
one of the nay-sayers quoted in the survey report—you know, the one which
Pope Francis directly misrepresents in the letter accompanying Traditionis
Custodes, as Diane Montagna reported.[231] If the theologies are that di erent
—so di erent that the new rite excludes the old, leaving no place for it in the
Church of today—then it’s not the Mass of Catholic tradition that’s in error
but its new fabricated replacement; otherwise, the Catholic Church was never
the true Church.[232]
“We have to accept this reform because it was demanded by the Second
Vatican Council.” Conveniently glossing over the fact that the Council Fathers
most certainly did not demand the butchery conducted in the abattoir of the
Consilium,[233] and that, in any case, there is no such thing as the Novus Ordo,
since by its own design it can be done in literally a trillion di erent ways.[234]
So what exactly are we talking about anyway?
And so it goes. There is not a single substantive argument in favor of the
Novus Ordo, and about ten thousand against it. The only thing its desperate
votaries can do, in the end, is to shout “obey!” But they forget that the “pay,
pray, and obey” mentality has been relentlessly besieged by successive waves of
clerical scandals—sexual abuse, nancial criminality, doctrinal aberrations, and
yes, liturgical o enses that cry out to heaven for vengeance; they forget that,
by this point in time, committed orthodox Catholics have learned that when
they are told they “must” do or believe something “for their own good” or “for
the good of the Church” without further explanation, they have an intuition
based on irrefutable experience that this is very likely what they must not do
or believe. Contrary to the impotent thundering of Michael Sean Winters (“It
is time, it is past time, for everybody who is interested in remaining Catholic
to receive the conciliar liturgical reforms”[235] ), the truth of the matter is quite
the contrary: it is time, past time, for everybody who is interested in
remaining Catholic to abandon a reform so arrogantly concocted, so grievously
botched, so destructive in consequences.
Over the course of ve and a half decades of arti cial life-support, the
Novus Ordo has been pushed by bureaucratic functionaries and career
liturgists, but has managed to attract few zealous lovers. Its enforcing
martinets have had to resort to increasingly dishonest and brutal methods.
Unable to vindicate their cause by argument or demographics, they ex the
muscle of papal authoritarianism, which is the only thing they have left. This
is why, as many observers have pointed out, Traditionis Custodes is a
monumental and embarrassing admission of defeat. Gregory DiPippo explains
why:

In the wake of this failure [of the promised “new Pentecost”], the
post-Conciliar Catholic Church nds itself a post-revolutionary
society, no less than France was in 1794, or Russia was in 1925. And
when a revolution fails, when “freedom, equality and brotherhood”
lie buried under a pyramid of severed heads, when the worker’s
paradise consists of millions of square miles of rust and cadavers, its
paladins can go forward on one of two paths. The hard path is to
recognize that the revolution has not achieved its goals, and work to
rebuild their society in the light of that recognition. The easy path
is to nd some “reactionaries” and “counter-revolutionaries,” and
blame the revolution’s failure on them.

The surest sign that a revolution has failed, and chosen to take the
easy path, is its fear of the past, its fear of the memory of what life
was really like before the revolution. And this is why, in the midst of
a tidal wave of crises within the Church, a hammer has been
dropped where it has been dropped: not on the German Synodal
Way, or the various Catholic institutions that have to all intents and
purposes walked away from the Faith. The problem so grave that it
must be met with the same furious scribbled-on-the-back-of-a-
napkin haste that we remember from Fr. Bouyer’s memoirs is not
the long-standing persistence of grave liturgical abuses, the de facto
absence of catechetical formation in once-Catholic nations, or
 widespread moral, doctrinal and nancial corruption. The hammer
has been dropped, rather, on the father and mother who were born
at least 20 years after the last time a cleric used the word
“aggiornamento” unironically, and on their children who are too
young to remember the papacy of Benedict XVI.

There can be no clearer sign that the post-Conciliar revolution is

totally uninteresting to the rising generations, and knowing this, [it]
grows deathly afraid, and resorts to doing by force what it cannot do
by persuasion.... A dying revolution is not a dead revolution; it can
still strike out and cause pain, and will likely do so. But in the very
act of doing so, it confesses that it has failed and is dying. Do not be
afraid. The revolution is over.[236]

We who love the Church our Mother and her treasury of tradition o er
our intelligent obedience to the coherent and consistent Magisterium of the
ages, and—if we are Catholics of the Latin rite—o er to God our rational
worship (logike latreia, Rom 12:1) through the traditional Roman liturgy or
one of its close relations, and, above all, through the Mass of the Ages.[237] That
is what the wearisome exile of the past several decades has taught us, with an
ever-increasing clarity as time goes on. The traditionalist movement arises
from and manifests the supernaturally ingrafted “sense of the faith” of faithful
Catholics:

The sensus dei delis confers on the believer the capacity to

discern whether or not a teaching or practice is coherent with the
true faith by which he or she already lives.... The sensus dei delis
also enables individual believers to perceive any disharmony,
incoherence, or contradiction between a teaching or practice and
the authentic Christian faith by which they live. They react as a
music lover does to false notes in the performance of a piece of
music. In such cases, believers interiorly resist the teachings or
practices concerned and do not accept them or participate in
them.... Alerted by their sensus dei, individual believers may deny
assent even to the teaching of legitimate pastors if they do not
recognise in that teaching the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd.
 “The sheep follow [the Good Shepherd] because they know his voice.
They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from him
because they do not know the voice of strangers” (Jn 10:4–5)....
Thanks to the sensus dei delis and sustained by the supernatural
prudence that the Spirit confers, the believer is able to sense, in new
historical and cultural contexts, what might be the most appropriate
ways in which to give an authentic witness to the truth of Jesus
Christ, and moreover to act accordingly.[238]

By this sense of the faith, we hear and recognize the Shepherd’s voice and
distinguish it from the voice of hirelings who serve the sheep malnourishing
or toxiferous fodder.
 6

The Hunt for the Elusive Unicorn

At the same time, I ask you [bishops] to be vigilant in ensuring that
every liturgy be celebrated with decorum and delity to the
liturgical books promulgated after Vatican Council II, without the
eccentricities that can easily degenerate into abuses...

These are the words of Pope Francis, in the letter that accompanies his motu
proprio Traditionis Custodes of July 16, 2021.
Two days later, on July 18, we were given a textbook example of eccentricity
in a Sunday Mass held by pastor Rainer Maria Schießler at the Hofbräuhaus
München, a famous brewery restaurant, where Mass is held once a month in
the midst of mascots and Biersteins. On July 23, we were given an example of
abuse (to say the least) in a Gay Mass in the Archdiocese of Berlin, featuring
rainbow-colored cloths leading up to the altar and hanging from the ambo.
These may be outliers—although one sees evidence of a disturbing number of
such “outliers.”
Yes, it’s true: not every local church has the ambition to simulate Mass at a
beerhall or drape ecclesiastical furnishings in rainbow ags. But why have such
things happened even once? And why do sacrileges keep happening, again and
again? For they do; the evidence is always fresh, and only ostriches of Olympic
head-burying skill deny it. Yet the manner in which the new liturgy is
celebrated all across the world hardly gives one reason for elation. In addition
to universal banality and entrenched abuses, one need only think of the
ubiquitous promotion of girls and women into liturgical roles in the sanctuary
(no wonder some are agitating to become deaconesses—at the least!)[239] and
the crazy Communion time, where everyone lines up as if queuing at a snack
bar, where Our Lord is dishonored repeatedly, where fragments are lost and
trampled under foot, and where, once again, the non-ordainable are deployed
in full force, in spite of nearly twenty centuries of contrary practice in the
Church of God.[240] Examples like this can, needless to say, be multiplied ad
nauseam.[241] And what of the everyday crimes against tradition, sound
theology, piety, decorum, and care for the Body and Blood of Christ[242]—
crimes that are no less o ensive to God and no less harmful to the faith of the
people, yet attract little notice because they are everywhere taken for granted?
Let’s not forget that 99% of Novus Ordo Masses are marred by egregious
abuses that are not legally-positivistically de ned as abuses, but are still abuses
in the sight of God and man, for all the bad e ects they have had and will
always have: versus populum celebration; Communion taken in the hand,
standing in a bus-ticket queue; the tra c of unvested lay “ministers” between
nave and sanctuary, and the feminization of ministerial roles; the relentless
banality of non-sacred music; the total non-presence of the native language of
the Latin rite; et cetera and so forth. No shopwork can repair this defective
vehicle.
What has really happened, if we are being completely honest with
ourselves, is that our bar for what counts as “reverent” is incredibly low at this
point; it means something like “sprinkled with Catholic touches” or perhaps
even “not intolerable.” Let’s face it: if a Catholic from 1950 could be suddenly
transported to a church where a “reverent (according to its participants)
Novus Ordo” is going on, he would quickly exit, thinking he had mistakenly
entered a Protestant church or the temple of a sect. If a pope from the Middle
Ages were parachuted into a “reverent Novus Ordo,” he would probably
summon the Holy Inquisition to prepare some pyres outside, or, at very least,
dictate to his amanuensis a bull of excommunication.
That’s why I don’t buy this business about “only 1% of new Masses are
seriously abusive.” This is to miss the point entirely, for the Novus Ordo itself
is a standing abuse in the Roman Church. It forces upon us the stark
alternative between a form of liturgy handed down and received, whole and
entire, as a rule of faith and law of life, and a form of liturgy willfully
fabricated, violently imposed, and savagely destructive of credal, devotional,
and moral ecosystems. The former is a healing and elevating presence
wherever it exists; the latter remains a monument of rupture however it exists.
Until the rupture is healed by the full restoration of the traditional rite and
the phasing-out of the modern rite, there is no solution to the “liturgy wars”—
only more or less temporary truces.
 It’s time we admit it. The fabled “unicorn” (code language for the reverent,
traditional-looking, Ratzingerian Novus Ordo, which is supposed to satisfy
the yearnings of devout Catholics) is still wandering at large and rarely
sighted. The 1% statistic sometimes peddled in reference to abusive Masses is
more likely to describe the unicorn Novus Ordo. After all, even where
eccentricities and abuses are not abundant, banality, verbosity,
anthropocentrism, and feminism still prevail.
For over fty years, popes have been wringing their hands about various
kinds of abuses and the prevailing lack of reverence and beauty in the Novus
Ordo.[243] Yet nothing much has happened. Neither popes nor bishops have
enforced the existing rules. Neither popes nor bishops have punished the
recalcitrant or promoted outstanding models. Paul VI, who saddled the
Church with this crisis to begin with, complained about ongoing liturgical
abuse; nothing changed. John Paul II complained about liturgical abuse, even
apologizing for it (as he apologized for lots of things). He lifted a nger or
two, but only a little bit changed, and only here or there. Indeed, in Poland,
where the new liturgy had been done about as conservatively as can be
imagined, kneeling for Communion was eventually replaced by standing, and
then, at last, Communion in the hand was introduced during Covid and has
now spread like a cancer. The Novus Ordo cannot long abide tradition; it will
dissolve it in due course. The tough-love Instruction Redemptionis
Sacramentum of 2004 was supposed to be the great moment, in the wake of
John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, when the new Mass would
nally be restored to rubrical rightness and resplendent reverence. What
happened? Fields of crickets from one end of the earth to the other. A friend
of mine called the chancery of her diocese one day and asked if she could
report a violation against Redemptionis Sacramentum (following that
document’s recommended procedure). The person who had taken the call went
around the o ce asking if anyone had heard of the document, and then told
her: “No, we haven’t heard of it. We’re sorry.” End of conversation. Benedict
XVI, too, complained about liturgical abuse; his shy personality and premature
resignation prevented him from carrying through the program of
revitalization outlined in his writings.[244] Pope Francis has added his crocodile
tears to the handwringing of his predecessors:
 I am saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides.
In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that “in many
places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in
celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization
for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost
unbearable distortions.”[245]

Saddening abuses. Deplorable facts. Unbearable distortions. Surely, then, they

must be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly, in the same manner in which the
pope and his courtiers have chosen to deal with the pressing problem of the
traditionalists!
Such rhetorical tropes are as shallow as the feelings of comfort they evoke.
How do we know that Pope Francis won’t take the well-rooted problem of bad
liturgy seriously? Look at footage of a papal Mass: it is the dull and horizontal
ritual of a dying Weltanschauung. This is the pope who violated the rules for
whose feet could be washed on Holy Thursday, and then, having modi ed the
rules, proceeded to violate the new ones; who, indeed, chronically violates the
rules concerning vestments and the manner of concelebration.[246] This is the
pope who does not kneel or genu ect before the Most Holy Sacrament of the
Altar, but who becomes surprisingly exible when it’s time to kneel, literally, at
the feet of politicians.[247] This is the pope on whose watch the Basilica of St.
Peter, the premiere pilgrimage church of Christendom, has outlawed Masses at
side altars, undergrounded the Mass of the Ages, and nearly banished the use
of Latin—at St. Peter’s, for crying out loud, the one shrine in the world where
the Church’s mother tongue has always been at home since the fourth century
and would always be tting.[248] This is the pope under whom the Vatican’s
publishing house decided not to reprint the Liturgy of the Hours in Latin—its
editio typica or standard edition—since it might foster dangerous linguistic
liaisons.[249] Finally, this is the pope who, impatient of centuries of custom,
further simpli ed the already simpli ed rite for a papal funeral, as if to get the
nuisance over with.[250] No, this pope is no “guardian of tradition” (traditionis
custos), nor will he lead the long-awaited crusade to bring forth “the spiritual
richness and the theological depth of this [new] Missal” (to borrow a
hyperbolic phrase from Benedict XVI’s letter to the bishops of July 7, 2007).
Nor can we expect any better from the in uential churchmen of his making,
who are as eager to cancel Tridentine Masses as they are to allow or even
celebrate Masses for any and every subculture, especially if it calls itself by a
string of capital letters.[251]
God Himself, Alpha and Omega, to whom all things bow, graces us with
His presence in the Holy Mass. Because it is His gift to us of what is divine
and most holy, the Mass must be rubrically in exible, thoroughly scripted, as
objective as the everlasting hills and the surging seas, carving out a space free
of private personality in order to let the unchanging God of love act in our
midst, Three Persons acting upon all persons. With the TLM, it makes almost
no di erence who the priest is, as long as he knows what he’s doing. I can go
(and I have been) to Latin Masses all over the world, and I know just what I’m
getting. The priest does a ritual that corresponds to what is printed in my
hand missal. I might barely see his face, and at a Low Mass might never hear
him speak a vernacular language. He is, as St. Thomas says, an “animated
instrument” of the High Priest: it is quite clear Who is in charge, Who is the
primary actor. It is theocentric and Christocentric.
In contrast, the Novus Ordo is clericocentric, depending on the priest for
its “reverent” realization. A lover of sights and sounds might praise Holy
Loftitude Parish because that priest at that place does it that way: with smells
and bells, ad orientem, a pinch of Latin for Roman Catholic e ect, kneeling
for Communion, and so forth. As discussed in chapter 4, all of it is optional: at
the option of the priest and his “team,” at the option of a willing congregation
without speed-dial Susans, at the option of a willing bishop. It quickly
becomes a matter of “this good and holy priest does the Mass right,” instead of
“the good and holy God gave us in His Providence a good and holy liturgy, on
which we can always rely.” Martin Mosebach leans into this contrast:

Many people...will ask, “Isn’t it still possible to celebrate the new

liturgy of Pope Paul VI worthily and reverently?” Naturally it is
possible, but the very fact that it is possible is the weightiest
argument against the new liturgy. It has been said that monarchy’s
death knell sounds once it becomes necessary for a monarch to be
competent: this is because the monarch, in the old sense, is
legitimated by his birth, not his talent. This observation is even
truer in the case of the liturgy: liturgy’s death knell is sounded once
it requires a holy and good priest to perform it. The faithful must
 never regard the liturgy as something the priest does by his own
e orts. It is not something that happens by good fortune or as the
result of a personal charism or merit.[252]

The traditionalists’ issue with the Novus Ordo has never fundamentally
been at the level of good looks, even if we’d readily admit that a new Mass
dressed like the old Mass can be a feast for sore eyes. No. It is about the
traditional liturgy in its total integrity on every level, starting with its ancient
and venerable lex orandi found in the corpus of prayers, the chants,
ceremonies, rubrics, and customs. These are either utterly missing, wildly
mingled, or woefully mangled in the new liturgical books.[253] The new and old
rites (thankfully, Pope Francis has rid us of the clumsy “ordinary” and
“extraordinary” jargon) are, in fact, nearly always di erent[254]—and often
radically so.[255] This is why, quite apart from its rarity, the “high Novus Ordo”
is not and never could be appealing to Latin Mass-goers. They might even say,
in the words of the Psalmist, Salva me ex ore leonis, et a cornibus unicornium
humilitatem meam, “Save me from the lion’s mouth, and my lowness from the
horns of the unicorns” (Ps 21:22).
In the years that have passed since July 16, 2021, we have been treated to a
chorus of well-meaning bishops and priests who repeat some version of the
refrain: “We’re very sorry to have to stop the traditional Latin Mass, but we’re
sure you’ll learn to adjust to the Novus Ordo—if only you bring the right spirit
to it.” Whoever can speak thus hasn’t got a clue about what attracts Catholics
to the old rite, how profoundly the rites are di erent, and how inadequate the
modern rite will always seem in comparison. Nor do they understand why
educated, serious, and devout Catholics have been sparring over this issue for
more than half a century. It’s not the sort of thing about which you can shrug
your shoulders and “move on.” You cannot unsee what you have seen, unknow
what you have come to know.[256] And that is why, in the absence of a
competent pope, the troubles will continue and indeed multiply. Problems of
this magnitude don’t evaporate simply because a powerful person orders them
to vanish. They go away when truth and justice are recognized and accepted.
Physical healing may be more or less automatic, but moral and spiritual
healing doesn’t work that way.
 Yes, God may be asking you to su er, for a time, the loss of your local
TLM. But this loss is still an evil. To begin with, it is objectively evil for a
liturgical rite organically developed over more than 1,600 years to be
repudiated. It is objectively evil for us to be cut o from the gift of tradition.
[257] It is objectively evil to be deprived of a strong daily link with our ancestors

in the Faith and of a rich source of spiritual nourishment on which we had

come to rely. God does not and cannot will these evils as such (pace the Abu
Dhabi declaration), for He does not deny Himself or repent of His gifts. Yes,
He sometimes asks priests to su er imprisonment in a concentration camp
where they cannot say Mass or must say a rushed and whispered Mass with a
scrap of smuggled bread and a thimbleful of wine. Needless to say (or is it?),
this is not the normal, natural, social and cultural situation that is tting for
tradition-constituted rational animals. That is why God has not willed that
most Christians most of the time should be incarcerated and deprived of their
basic rights or rites. In short, the suppression of the Roman Church’s
traditional form of worship is an evil that God could never will, nor could He
drape the mantle of his holy authority over the churchmen who in ict it; this
is why they should be resisted with all our might—resisted especially by the
clergy.
We’ve all heard of “ at currency.” Pope Francis believes in “ at culture.” As
Tracey Rowland shows in Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II,
the Fathers of the Council neither possessed nor were able to formulate a
coherent account of culture and therefore of how Catholicism was supposed to
permeate and animate culture. This is why they ended up with an awkward
view in which two forces—a religious subculture and a modern anti-culture—
were supposed to blend and produce a new synthesis, which, however, must
remain as crippled as either of its elements. Pope Francis’s Traditionis
Custodes shows that he thinks it’s possible, by papal ukase, to tell Catholics
who have embraced and internalized traditional worship—which it is perfectly
dignum et justum for them to engage in—that they must simply “transition”
over to the modern liturgy of Paul VI, sooner or later. As if we just put on or
put o our deepest thoughts and feelings, our surrounding world, like a piece
of clothing. That, however, is modernity’s view: we are what we will ourselves
to be; we are disembodied minds that choose our identity.[258] So false is this
view that it cannot be refuted by argument; it is refuted by the whole of reality
at every moment.
The authors and promoters of Traditionis Custodes are not concerned
only about whether or not Catholics “accept” Vatican II or the new liturgy. Of
course they want us to say we do. But their goal is not verifying our assent to
some propositions and then letting us get on with our lives. Their goal is to
exterminate the possibility of our living a coherently traditional Catholic life
in adherence to the perennial Magisterium. It is, in that sense, precisely an
anti-Catholic campaign, as Sebastian Morello and Massimo Viglione bring out
so well.[259] The partisans of Bergoglianity would rather see a sparsely-attended
Novus Ordo church than a full one with the traditional Mass; a tiny family
that worships contemporarily than a large family that worships timelessly;
fewer priestly and religious vocations, as long as they are liberal and lavender,
than an abundance of vocations cut from old-fashioned cloth, be it black,
brown, or gray. The specious hermeneutic of continuity has been summarily
swapped out for the hermeneutic of hatred—a hatred of the past, of memory
and identity, of history, of reality.
A priest friend wrote to me:

I think that people need to wake up to the fact that this is about so
much more than the TLM—Francis is attempting to eliminate a
whole way of being Catholic, even for people who never go to the
TLM. The English liturgist Cli ord Howell was wont to say that
the use of vernacular in the Liturgy was pointing towards a new
world order that couldn’t be expressed coterminously in Latin. I
realize now that what he meant is that essentially the new liturgy is
a social movement based on the wholesale rejection of the Catholic
worldview. The Old Mass is too o -message now to be allowed to
continue.

To our conservative Catholic friends we say: thanks for the reminders

about how the pope’s motu proprio is a cross, willed by God, that we must
carry. That’s true. At the same time, let’s not turn our religion, centered on the
sacri ce of Calvary, into a version of Buddhism bedecked with a Christian
symbol. We do not wave aside evils as illusions on the path to enlightenment
and nirvana; we recognize them for what they are—ontological parasites—and
we strive to overcome them by the grace of a personal God who reveals
Himself to us. As Leo XIII says in his encyclical Libertas Præstantissimum,
evils in a society may need to be tolerated for a time, but they may never be
approved as regular xtures, much less hailed as advantages. And if the
injustice is deep enough, it must call forth our total e ort at eradicating it.
Meanwhile, program your GPS to nd the nearest Latin Mass. Though it
may be far away, it will likely be easier to nd—and will certainly be more
Catholic—than the fabled unicorn.

THE PROGRESSIVE NARRATIVE CRUMBLES BEFORE

REALITY
Pope Francis’s various documents on the liturgy from the past eleven years
—Traditionis Custodes, Desiderio Desideravi, his speeches at Sant’Anselmo,
and the like—are remarkable displays of the extent to which the aging
nostalgics of Vatican II have simply refused to let go of their utopian dream, in
spite of all argument and evidence opposing it; have refused even to consider
that it might be time to release their death-grip on the Novus Ordo, that
unkempt love-child of liturgical freethinkers. With an obliviousness that
stretches the bounds of credulity, the pope—in this respect no di erent from
most of the curial court that surrounds him, as well as their friends in high
places throughout the hierarchy—eloquently shores up an o cial narrative
totally disconnected from the reality on the ground.[260]
The pope’s narrative—identical to that which any member of the liturgical
establishment would espouse—is that the Council brought about a tremendous
renewal in the Church, with people eagerly worshiping, more actively than
ever, having swept away the accumulated cobwebs of a dusty past to let the
light of renewal stream in. The only dark cloud in an otherwise bright sky
consists of the anti-ecclesial backwardists who, in their discontented nostalgia,
idolize and ideologize a superseded liturgy for their own sinister purposes.
Thus, addressing students and faculty at Sant’Anselmo on May 7, 2022, he said:

I would like to underline the danger, the temptation of liturgical

formalism: going after forms, formalities rather than reality, as we
see today in those movements that try to go backwards and deny
Vatican Council II itself. In this way, the celebration is recitation, it
is something without life, without joy.... I emphasize again that the
 liturgical life, and the study of it, must lead to greater ecclesial unity,
not division. When liturgical life becomes something of a banner of
division, there is the odour of the devil, the deceiver, in there. It is
not possible to worship God and at the same time turn liturgy into a
battle eld for issues that are not essential, or indeed for outdated
questions and to take sides, starting from the liturgy, on ideologies
that divide the Church.

The pope then compared those who lamented Pius XII’s deconstruction of
Holy Week to the Pharisees who rent their garments. Similarly, in the address
he gave at the same Ponti cal Institute on January 20, 2023 as part of a course
for diocesan liturgy o cials, Pope Francis sternly warned against putting
“beautiful ritual” ahead of Christ. (What about those who appreciate beautiful
ritual because it unites them to Christ in knowledge and love, and helps them
to share His transcendent peace with their fellow Christians at worship?)
The pope’s perceptions are so far removed from reality, on so many levels,
that it causes one to wonder which planet he is living on, or whether he
receives any accurate information whatsoever from his handlers. For a man
who travels a lot, stopping in Singapore to tell Southeast Asians that all
religions are paths to God and are rather like the di erent languages people
speak, he seems entirely averse to making time on his schedule to visit
communities of traditional Catholics, even though, in the order of charity,
they deserve his fatherly support and benevolent assistance in nitely more
than polytheists and animists do. The pope has no experience at all of the “life
and energy” of the traditional movement, and seemingly no awareness of how
deathly dull is the Novus Ordo in most parishes—aging, shrinking, few
children, few or no vocations, representing the “active participation” of a few
percent of once-Catholic populations driven away from the “Church of
Vatican II” by its sheer banality, irreverence, irrelevance, and lack of anything
meaningful to say to anyone hungry for encounter with the mystery of
God. That’s what’s “senza vita, senza gioia.”
Now let us depart from fantasy and look at the way things actually are.
For over fty years, the architects, proponents, and enforcers of the
liturgical reform have had every opportunity, resource, and advantage to
promote the glories of their new rites. They have had behind them the most
powerful institutional force in the world (the papacy) and all the episcopal
conferences of the globe; all the university departments, institutes, seminaries,
and chanceries; all the propaganda and publishing rights; and nearly endless
funding. Yet their work has rarely generated notable enthusiasm among the
faithful. At most, it was accepted as “what the authorities require.” Some
accepted it with regrets or misgivings. Some used it as an excuse to indulge in
a game of “make-your-own-liturgy.” A large number simply left the Church
and never came back. True, there were many reasons for that exodus, but there
is no doubt that many could no longer recognize in the liturgy the marks of
the true Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The Church’s loss of
Catholics after the Council, during the period of liturgical volatility, rivals in
magnitude the exodus of Catholics to the Protestant revolt in the sixteenth
century. At least in Western countries, which were the cradle and laboratory of
the “new and improved Mass,” the most striking feature of the period of the
reform—which, let’s recall, was packaged and sold as the great liberator of
active participation and as the key to unleashing the dormant evangelizing
force of the Church in the modern world—has been a relentless downward
trend in every relevant indicator of Catholic life. One need only recall the
pathetic numbers of new priests and new religious in the dioceses.
Meanwhile, across all these desert decades, the traditional liturgy lived on,
in spite of every imaginable disadvantage. The pope was against it. Most of the
bishops were against it. The clergy usually would not bother to listen to the
“malcontents.” The laity often did not know how to organize themselves or
how to accomplish their aims. Its greatest apologist early on was a Welsh
schoolteacher, Michael Davies, whom no professional liturgist would deign
even to mention. He was beneath notice, perhaps even beneath contempt—
someone who, for lack of a university position among the Consilium
cognoscenti, went around speaking to ragtag and bobtail audiences of ordinary
Catholics who just loved the Catholic faith and its noble traditions. Events
were held o -premises in those dark days, because no Catholic institution
would lend a platform to such a seditious gure. (I’ll never forget the one time
I heard Davies speak in person, during my grad school days. In a stu y room
somewhere in Arlington, Virginia, he spoke on the uprising in the Vendée. We
greeted each other afterwards, and in the months thereafter, exchanged a few
letters in the mail. A seed was planted.)
Still, the movement doggedly advanced. Some bishops and cardinals began
to o er the old rite in public. Traditional priestly and religious communities
kept up a steady rate of growth at a time when vocations in dioceses and
conventional religious orders were well beneath replacement rate (apart from
the Legionaries of Christ—a bastion of manipulative mind-control run by a
monstrous abuser). Then, in an ecclesiastical Perestroika, John Paul II
recognized the “rightful aspirations” of lovers of tradition, and nally Benedict
XVI vindicated them by con rming what many traditionalists had maintained
all along: that the traditional Roman rite had never been abrogated and that it
remains a heritage “sacred and great” for all of us. Benedict XVI’s admiration
and acknowledgement of the permanent place of liturgical tradition is,
needless to say, the only attitude consistent with confessional Catholicism. To
this day, the traditional liturgy generates a joyful enthusiasm that can be seen
in packed pews, copious cadres of altar servers, choirs and scholas singing great
music, co ee hours and book clubs, mothers’ groups and intramural kickball.
And barely a touch of nostalgia, because the average age of these communities
is somewhere between 15 and 25.
Consider the facts, then.
The reformed liturgy, in spite of enjoying every possible institutional
advantage, has failed to bring about the dramatic re-energizing of the laity and
re-Christianization of the world that was promised as its sole justi cation. In
many Western nations the number of Mass-goers has dwindled to a mere
fraction of the baptized, and even the rudiments of practice—baptism,
marriage, and church funerals—are increasingly abandoned. Priests in the
United States are, by now, well aware that Novus Ordo congregations have lost
as much as a third of their numbers due to Covidtide shutdowns and the
episcopal “lifting of the requirement to attend Mass,” which severed the last
feeble tie that connected some Catholics to their Church. These people are not
coming back and represent the next greatest exodus since that of the
immediate aftermath of the Council.
Though the traditional movement has su ered under every disadvantage,
it has never stopped growing since its birth in the mid-1960s. Since it is widely
characterized by families generously open to life and by an abundant harvest
(proportionally speaking) of priestly and religious vocations, it shows every
sign of growing exponentially, as indeed the Amish have done as they quietly
become the most vibrant of the USA’s Protestant branches.[261] Maybe the slur
on traditionalists as “Amish Catholics” should be taken as a compliment in
disguise. Faithful men and women disgusted with Covid-related policies (no
Mass, no Communion on the tongue, the sacramental of the mask, the rite of
Purelli cation, etc.) migrated to TLM communities and found a new home in
the only place in town with Eucharistic reverence or even a Mass to attend;
and still another mighty in ux occurred after the pope provided global free
advertising with his motu proprio. As I like to say, if traditionalists had pooled
all their bank accounts across the world, we could never have purchased as
much e ective advertising as Traditionis Custodes bought us, without our
even asking for it.
We have, however, one crucial advantage that outweighs all the
disadvantages: the most ancient, most resilient, most widespread rite of
Christendom, one that never ceases to dazzle and delight God-thirsting souls.
And they, the partisans of an exhausted reform, have one crucial disadvantage
that outweighs all their advantages: a banal, on-the-spot fabrication that felt
dated practically the day it appeared, a committee compromise that lacks the
nobility sought by conservatives as well as the “permanent workshop” sought
by progressives in their fatal love a air with inculturation.[262]
In an era of declining sacramental participation or even of basic Christian
belief, one would think that a pope should rejoice when Catholics love to go to
Mass—even if it’s in Latin, ad orientem, according to the missal once used
everywhere, rather than Paul VI’s replacement of it. But no. The ideologue
cannot stand any disagreements with his ideology. Better an empty, chained-
up church than a church packed with Latin Mass Catholics.
If churchmen’s real concern were “active participation,” they should
welcome whatever most deeply and fully calls forth such participation. At
traditional Masses, the faithful follow the liturgy closely; they kneel, stand, sit,
make signs of the cross; they often sing the responses and Ordinary with more
gusto than that with which their Novus Ordo counterparts sing the dreck
published by GIA or OCP. But no. What is important to Pope Francis and his
courtiers is not prayer, not embracing the “spirit of the liturgy,” not entering
into the divine worship that brought to the heights of sanctity the ten saints
canonized by Francis only a week after his May 7 speech,[263] but rather, the
Novus Ordo itself. This is the one and only end, aim, objective. The sum total
of worship, at least for Latin-rite Catholics, is the Novus Ordo. This is the
logic of the May 7 speech, of Archbishop Roche’s interviews, of the Responsa
ad Dubia, and of Traditionis Custodes itself. And this is the logic of idolatry:
turning a means of sanctity into an ultimate end to which all must bow down.
Who, then, makes an idol out of liturgy? Who is preoccupied with formalism?
Who is the ideologue?
Curiously, the progressives are guilty of a double inversion. In the way in
which the Eucharistic liturgy is truly an end—because it makes really present
to us Christ Himself, the Victim of Calvary, in His supreme redemptive act,
through which we glorify God as the one and only end of all creation—they
downplay it into a means, a vehicle for horizontal fellowship, social justice,
applaudable entertainment, self-realization, cultural exhibitionism, or what
have you. Simultaneously, in the way in which the Eucharistic liturgy is truly a
means—one of many means given by God for the sancti cation and salvation
of our souls, having as its end God Himself and our enjoyment of Him in the
beati c vision—they distort it into an end, something to be stubbornly
pursued for its own sake, compulsively adhered to even when it ceases to be
useful or when something else is more useful to (at least some of) the faithful.
In short: where the traditional Catholic sees the liturgy as an end, the
progressive sees it as a means; where the traditional Catholic sees the liturgy as
a means, the progressive sees it as an end. This ought to be enough to show
why we are utterly at loggerheads.
Trees are to be judged by their fruits, says Our Lord. We do not need an
audience with the pope to be able to interpret the signs of the times; we do
not need a liturgical institute in Rome to tell us where liturgical renewal is
actually happening—and where it is failing.
In a Facebook group devoted to the clash between Summorum Ponti cum
and Traditionis Custodes, Shawn Tribe, editor of the Liturgical Arts Journal,
left this incisive commentary:

Anyone who goes to Rome will see that for all intents and purposes
the local church is dead there. The great basilicas function now only
as museums. When one happens to come across a liturgy taking
place, it almost comes o as a curiosity and eccentricity that is out
of place—not to mention very dull at that, poorly attended and
attended only by an aged population. Seemingly the only thing
maintaining any illusion of Catholic life is the fact so many religious
orders and national churches have houses there.
The fact that the post-conciliar experience has borne so little fruit
now a half century later despite a half century of peddling and
promotion should result in a serious examination of conscience on
the part of our churchmen. The fact that despite all of those
advantages the post-conciliar rite still nds itself threatened and in
a defensive, reactive posture should cause more of the same.

Could it be possible, just possible I say, that the notion and premise
of “pastoral liturgy” so promoted after the Council, even to the
exclusion of more traditional expressions of it, was based upon a
faulty notion—a notion which undergirded the postconciliar
reforms and which was ultimately naive and shortsighted, mistaking
what was arguably merely the transitory, ephemeral spirit of one
particular time for something that was more lasting and
permanent? Did they misread the accidental for the substantial?

Could it be that as children of that period, they themselves were

blinded by this mistake of a “homo novus”? Is this now why the
“modern” liturgy itself seems more an ossi ed liturgical time piece
than any traditional liturgical rite whether Eastern or Western,
stuck in the ethos of a particular time and place; caught in a trend
that is no longer trendy and therefore lacking in any sense of
timelessness or permanence? It seems to me if simply proposing the
question is deemed a threat, and results in lashing out, that in itself
is rather telling. But regardless, the question must be asked.
 7

Why the Reform of the Reform Is Doomed

after more than fty years in which the Novus Ordo has been given ample
opportunity to “prove its worth” and has singularly failed to do so—years in
which a minority of strong-willed priests, attempting to turn the tide against
banality and irreverence, have for their pains been sent to the boondocks, if
not the shrink’s couch—why are there still liturgically-minded people
defending the Novus Ordo or promoting its “redemption” through
Ratzingerian improvements? One can understand a pessimistic pragmatist
who believes there’s no other show on the road; perhaps he thinks, mistakenly,
that he has no other choice in the matter. It is harder to understand the
optimistic idealist who believes that this particular song-and-dance routine
deserves to run another fty years, with occasional tweaks to the casting and
the pit orchestra. Perhaps we are dealing here with the nal fumes of the
conservative mentality, which I would characterize as follows: “Whatever
Church authorities give us must be the best for us—or, at very least, adequate
for us, and what we need at this time in history.”
But this mentality is quite incorrect.
1. What the Church gives us is, and can only ever be, her tradition.
Violence done by churchmen abusing their authority, working overtime to
suppress or blenderize Catholic tradition, is a di erent story. What
churchmen have given us in the liturgical reform is clearly not the best for us
—neither in how it was produced nor in what it contains and presents, nor in
how it was rolled out and implemented. There was massive rupture in all of
these ways. There is almost no one left at this point who would defend the
view, redolent of Woodstock, that, thanks to Paul VI, we have entered or will
enter a liturgical Age of Aquarius.
2. Is the Novus Ordo “adequate” or “good enough”? That is never the way
the Church has thought about divine worship. God deserves all that we can
give, the best, the holiest, the purest, the noblest—but even more than that, He
has a right to receive back from us that which He Himself has inspired among
us over many centuries of liturgical prayer. The liturgy developed in depth and
amplitude over many centuries under His bene cent divine causality, by His
providential care for the Mystical Body. We therefore owe it to Him in justice
to make use of the gifts He has given us. To strip away much of the content of
our liturgy that nourished countless Christians and then o er Him a
sacramentally valid but weird combination of reinterpreted bits of antiquity
combined with rootless novelties is at best a surprising way to beseech His
continued blessings and, at worst, an insult to His generosity and kindness.
3. Are the reformed rites “what we need at this time in history”? Sociology,
psychology, anthropology, theology, stand in formidable array to voice their
negative answer.
Beyond these points, we should consider the ways in which the “reform of
the reform”—to the extent that it has survived the resignation of its principal
patron, Benedict XVI—is harmful to the cause of liturgical renewal at this
juncture in the Church’s history.
First and foremost, it harms the cause by reinforcing one of the basic
errors of the Novus Ordo, which we examined in chapter 4: it requires
repeated, deliberate, and somewhat arbitrary determinations on the part of the
celebrant, instead of the content and manner of worship being predetermined
by a tradition to which all are equally subject. A “beautiful, reverent” Novus
Ordo is as much a product of the choices of its celebrant as is a bongo-drum
clown Mass or a suburban talk show with a lady assistant for Communion.
The only way around this problem would be if the celebrant made a
private vow “always to do the better thing”—that is, to choose always and only
what is either traditional or closer to tradition—e.g., always saying “the Lord
be with you” and “Kyrie eleison,” always using the Roman Canon, always
standing ad orientem, always giving Communion on the tongue, and so forth.
However, this would create a world of di culties for his conscience: what is
the better thing in this or that case? Discernments and decisions would still
have to be made, sometimes on the spur of the moment, that are foreign to the
spirit of the liturgy, which implies receipt of a gift and adherence to a rule.
Attempting to act upon such a vow would, sooner or later, trigger some of the
parishioners, inaugurating a series of unwelcome phone calls or letters from
the local chancery.
A seminarian correspondent put it as succinctly as I’ve ever seen it put:
 While we’re out there actively trying to conform the Novus Ordo to
tradition, these guys [FSSP, ICKSP, etc.] are simply letting the
tradition form them. Seen that way, the NO restorationist, no
matter how closely he adheres to traditional beliefs and practices, is
still engaged in a self-contradictory project: to be truly traditional,
one has to become smaller and smaller; to conform the Novus Ordo
to tradition, one has to become bigger and bigger.[264]

The point is that when such a well-intending priest comes along and
decides to do the Novus Ordo “in the most traditional way,” it is still his own
personal accomplishment, not the result of humbly following strict rubrics
and texts in front of him. If he chooses the Roman Canon, chant, ad orientem,
Communion at the rail, etc., all this is his own conglomerate of choices from
the smorgasbord of the modern multiplex rite, and he is doing it usually with
full knowledge that it’s not favored by Rome, by the chancery, or even by his
fellow presbyters. This is a real spiritual danger. It is “his Mass” in a way that
the TLM is never any priest’s Mass. There is an exact analogy to the missal:
the Roman rite is not “Pius V’s rite,” but the Novus Ordo is certainly “Paul
VI’s rite.” In the Novus Ordo, and by its very principles, the problem of a
permanent lack of an objective, unarguable standard remains; it is
paradoxically the only thing one can be certain of. It’s every man for himself;
every parish, every diocese, every country for itself.
Moreover, the ROTR prolongs the agony of the Church and of the people
of God. Just as one does not give more alcohol to someone already drunk, or
more of a drug to someone whose only hope of survival is quitting the drug, so
one must not continue to use, even with the best of intentions, the very rite
that marked a rupture with Catholic tradition and perpetuates that rupture.
Even if, after many decades, something more like the Tridentine rite could be
reassembled within the context of the Novus Ordo, it would have been
simpler, safer, and better for the faithful and for the priest to have taken up
the gold standard from the start and left aside a rite so defective. Why pursue
the ROTR if each step brings us closer to—without ever nally arriving at—the
authentic liturgy we already had and still have? I am reminded of a painfully
true metaphor I saw online: “There are two pizzas in front of you: A and B.
You could have Pizza A, but you choose Pizza B. Then you put all your e ort
into making Pizza B more like Pizza A. This is the Reform of the Reform.”[265]
 Thus, for example, one hears of priests celebrating the Novus Ordo who
recite Psalm 42 during the procession from the sacristy, recite the Aufer a
nobis on the way to kissing the altar, quietly mutter some of the old O ertory
prayers during a silent preparation of the gifts, choose the Roman Canon and
say it in a somewhat lower voice, hold thumb and fore nger together until the
ablutions, and so forth. I used to be totally sympathetic to this kind of
“enrichment”—until I saw that it reinserts, by an act of private volition,
elements that were deliberately removed by papal absolutism. It ghts one
abuse by another of the same sort, as if they will cancel out algebraically.[266]
Adding “smellz-n-bellz” is good and important, as far as it goes, even as
toppings on a pizza make it more appetizing and more lling. But if there is
something wrong with the dough, or if the sauce is missing or the cheese is
low-quality, something more basic needs to be done; heaping on more
pepperoni is not the solution. As Archbishop Thomas Gullickson candidly
admitted:

I think the discursive and arbitrary nature of the reformed liturgy is

a big part of the problem. Liturgical abuse is rampant, yes, but I
draw this conclusion about the discursive and arbitrary (I am
referring to the rubrics, which read: “in these or similar words,”
“option A, B, or C,” etc.) also from observing young priests from
various parts of the world, whom you would probably label pious or
at least not abusive of worship. These priests can come from most
any country and most any place on the political, philosophical, or
theological spectrum, that is, from the middle of the road to stock
conservative. The reformed liturgy faithfully celebrated is seemingly
not enough for them. They add gestures and words, sometimes
deliberately and sometimes it would seem almost instinctively or
unconsciously, especially during the Eucharistic prayer. They modify
the Mass very simply to make it better, or so I would guess. We have
a problem with the Novus Ordo that a couple of tweaks just may
not solve.[267]

A sign that this is really how things are is that no one, at the end of the
day, is really satis ed with the ROTR Novus Ordo. Those who are already well
acquainted with traditional liturgy cannot help but nd it inadequate
compared to the “real McCoy”: it is just so lacking in its texts and ceremonies.
Yet the same attempt at a ROTR Mass often sorely troubles and irritates
laymen who are accustomed to the reformed liturgy. The unexpected
“traditional elements” cut against strong and universal expectations about the
“goods” that the Novus Ordo is supposed to deliver, especially the direct and
easy comprehension of words and a certain modern sensibility. Joseph Shaw
has called this problem “falling between two stools”: it’s not traditional enough
for some, and way too traditional for others.[268] The liturgy becomes, once
again, a battle eld when it is supposed to be a haven of peace and unity. The
TLM cannot be blamed for being what it must be; you take all of it or none of
it, in exibly, stably, and...peacefully.
A priest I know who normatively celebrates the TLM but on rarest
occasions will do the NO if requested once said to me: “Being accustomed as I
am to the old Roman missal, I nd it unbearable to use the Roman Canon
when I say the new Mass. So much of the liturgy is so di erent that it seems
bizarre, even irreverent, to then recite this great ancient prayer, which perhaps
more than anything else shouts Tridentine Mass. Something like the
Eucharistic Prayer III seems to slide in much better, and makes me feel like I’m
just saying a di erent rite—which is essentially what it is.” I understand
perfectly why the priest feels this way. If he were to celebrate the new Mass
making use of whatever elements of Roman tradition are still left in it, he
would be fostering an illusion of continuity that largely does not exist when
one views it euchologically, ceremonially, or phenomenologically; he would be
arti cially extending the lifespan of an entity that is better o dying. Yet if the
same priest were to celebrate the new Mass “in discontinuity,” letting it “be
itself,” he would thereby contribute to the breakdown of Catholicism’s internal
identity and the custodianship of its inheritance. In short: damned if you do,
damned if you don’t.
Indeed, even the idea that there is a “normative” Novus Ordo is laughable,
and the idea that the Vatican wants us to celebrate with a “hermeneutic of
continuity” is even more ridiculous. I am surprised that people still fall for this
shell game. Have you ever noticed the consummate illogic with which the new
Mass is shielded from any criticism? If someone says: “You know, it’s a big
problem to have sacro-pop music and altar girls and the priest facing the
people and ( ll-in-the-blank),” the response is: “Ah, but that’s not the Novus
Ordo as promulgated by Paul VI and as celebrated by its best celebrants!” But
then if someone says: “You know, why don’t we start having Mass here at our
parish in Latin, with chant, ad orientem, served only by men (etc.),” the
response is: “Ah, but the Novus Ordo was introduced to respond to the needs
of our times, which are not those of the sixteenth century, so I’m afraid the
answer is no.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
One will sometimes hear a person say that the Novus Ordo is “traditional”
because it has been around for over fty years. Someone recently wrote to me:
“You should stop calling it ‘the new Mass’ because it’s not new anymore.” What
this objection fails to grasp is that the rationalism according to which the
liturgical reform was conducted rules out a normative role for tradition as
such; what is all-important is abstract truth, as the rationalist conceives it. To
give an example: the United States of America will soon be 250 years old, yet
its genesis in an eighteenth-century blend of social compact theory, Deism,
Freemasonry, and Protestantism that abstracts from and precludes
incarnational culture and tradition-based rationality means that the USA
might as well be yesterday’s embryo or an embalmed Pharaoh. “Venerable age”
means nothing on rationalist terms. The new Mass was created for a new kind
of man, Modern Man, who exists in the abstract, detached from the long and
complex history of Catholic culture; it was to be a rite that appeals, with
simplicity, to the man who lives by simple ideas and words. The new rite in
this sense can never be traditional, a heritage to receive solely because it is
handed down, for that would make it a foreign, static imposition on the ever-
changing present into which it is supposed to be inculturated (as we saw in
chapter 5).
One might also point out that fty- ve years is a minuscule 3.24% of the
1,700-year history of the Roman rite. While the handiwork of Paul VI may be
old in terms of the life of a single man, it is shiny-new in comparison with the
more-than-millennium-and-a-half arc of the Western liturgy’s continuous
development. Indeed, Catholic tradition is something alive in the practice of
the Faith and in the continuity of paradosis or handing down from generation
to generation; therefore, its inheritable wisdom is directly proportional to its
length of days. In contrast, the Novus Ordo, because it is the result of a sort of
laboratory experiment, has neither a natural birth nor a natural lifespan, just
as a machine has no birthday, infancy, childhood, youth, and maturity. It
simply ages the way a rock or a piece of metal ages, worn away by the winds of
time and apathy.
When, later in life, John Henry Newman looked back on his youth as a
highly principled and nobly minded Anglican, he had only these sobering
words to say:

I looked at her [the Catholic Church];—at her rites, her ceremonial,

and her precepts; and I said, “This is a religion;” and then, when I
looked back upon the poor Anglican Church, for which I had
laboured so hard, and upon all that appertained to it, and thought of
our various attempts to dress it up doctrinally and esthetically, it
seemed to me to be the veriest of nonentities.[269]

How similar is the experience of so many Catholics—especially music

directors, catechism teachers, and others who have a more direct involvement
in typical parishes—when they shift from the NO to the TLM. “I looked at the
classic Roman Mass, its rites, ceremonial, and precepts, and I said: ‘This is
worship’; and then, when I looked back on the poor Novus Ordo, for which I
had labored so hard, and thought of our attempts to dress it up, it seemed to
me to be the veriest of nonentities.” Valid, yes; but lacking in every other
quality that a liturgy is supposed to have.
When Newman was a young preacher at Oxford, the Anglican
establishment had existed for about 300 years (1534–1830s/40s). This is ve and
a half times longer than the Novus Ordo has lasted—and in spite of that
duration, which is far greater than that enjoyed by Paul VI’s experiment,
Newman describes the Anglican Church as “poor,” “the veriest of nonentities.”
So it is, and so it shall remain, no matter how many more centuries it may
endure. The same is true of the Roman Consilium Rite. It is incapable of being
traditional no matter how many centuries (God forbid) it may endure. If the
new Mass survives another ve hundred years, it will be no more traditional at
the end than it is today. Just as Descartes and Kant are inescapably modern
while Aristotle and Plato are timeless, the new rites are inescapably modern
while the traditional rites are timeless.
History never repeats itself—but it rhymes again and again. As I was
reading one of those books about books that a person reads in order to feel a
little less illiterate, I came across a passage on the poet Richard Crashaw (c.
1613–1649) that startlingly reminded me of the well-intentioned but doomed
spirit of the ROTR and the contemporaneous revival of the TLM:

A signi cant minority in the Church of England, including William

Laud, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, had become
disillusioned with mainstream Protestantism and were searching for
a way to restore “the beauty of holiness” to the Church without
having to burn their bridges entirely by returning to Rome. After
becoming a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1635, Crashaw
quickly emerged as an important gure in this High Church
movement, restoring what were widely felt to be Catholic devotional
objects to Little St Mary’s, the church next door to Peterhouse,
when he became curate there.[270]

This might be rewritten by analogy: “A signi cant minority in the Catholic

Church had become disillusioned with the Bugnini liturgy and were searching
for a way to restore ‘the beauty of holiness’ to the Church without having to
burn their bridges entirely by returning to the traditional Roman rite.” (A late
beloved blogger and former Anglican might even come to mind—one who was
bent on “restoring what were widely felt to be Catholic devotional objects.”)[271]
But then the inevitable backlash came:

He didn’t get away with his actions for long. With the start of the
Civil War raising tensions, Laudian Cambridge became a target.
Parliamentary commissioners ransacked Little St Mary’s in 1643,
tearing down cruci xes and other objects of devotion. Crashaw was
forced out of Cambridge and shortly afterwards left the country,
emerging in Paris three years later, by which time he had converted
to Catholicism. Traveling to Italy, he became canon at the Santa
Casa di Loreto, which enshrines the house where Our Lady was said
to have been born and received the Annunciation. He died a few
months later at the age of 36.[272]

The parliamentary commissioners who ransacked Crashaw’s Little St. Mary’s

are reminiscent of the papal commissioners tasked with suppressing
traditional and even conservative religious communities, often the only sign of
vibrant Catholicism in certain dioceses or regions. Soon the Laudian curate
ed to a truly Catholic country, embraced the faith of the ages, and died in
communion with tradition.
It may seem that stepping from the Novus Ordo to the TLM is less
momentous, less radical, than stepping from Anglicanism to Catholicism. In
important ways, that is true. But those who have delved deeply into the liturgy
know from intimate experience that the classic Roman rite and the modern
rite of Paul VI look, sound, and feel very much like expressions of two
di erent religions. It is no exaggeration to say a conversion is necessary—a
conversion from the novelty of rupture to the integrity of tradition. As
Newman called liberalism a halfway house between Catholicism and atheism,
we may say the same of the reform of the reform: it is a halfway house between
full tradition and liturgical relativism.

“MEN MUST BE CHANGED BY SACRED THINGS, AND NOT

SACRED THINGS BY MEN”
These words were uttered by Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo in 1512 during the
inaugural oration of the Fifth Lateran Council: “Homines per sacra immutari
fas est, non sacra per homines.” Against that backdrop, imagine the following
conversation between two seminarians, both studying for their dioceses. They
have discovered and fallen in love with the traditional Latin Mass and want to
embrace its riches, but they disagree over how to go about doing so.
Michael: It’s possible to bring tradition into the Novus Ordo Mass. We
just choose better vestments, better music, a better ceremonial guidebook, we
use incense, and so forth... We learn from the Latin Mass how things ought to
be done.
John: Here’s my hesitation. Isn’t every attempt to make the new Mass
more traditional a kind of innovation—at least compared to what bishops,
other clergy, and most laity are expecting, and especially if one steps much
beyond the available matrix of options? And, even in the best-case scenario,
where a priest can “get away with it,” what happens interiorly to a priest who’s
making his Mass “traditional” week after week, year after year—doesn’t that
habituate him into thinking that he is the architect of his ne liturgies? That
they are his, to traditionalize as he will?
Michael: Well, no, I think he’s trying to choose what is best from the past,
and therefore it’s not something personally his own. He is looking to an
external reference, not just an internal compass.
John: But it’s still a choice he has to make, and it’s a choice he makes
against the known backdrop both of a half-century of mostly contrary choices
and of the generally less traditional choices of his confreres and of most other
dioceses. This is very di erent from how worship was understood and
practiced in Catholicism before the reform.
Michael: What do you mean?
John: While “reverse-in ltrating” diocesan clergy are laboring to crowbar
the Novus Ordo back into Roman tradition, members of traditional priestly
institutes take a backseat and let tradition form them by its own power and
perfection. The reformist, no matter how enthusiastically he adheres to
tradition, is caught up in a self-contradictory project. To be genuinely
traditional, a disciple has to become smaller; to make the Novus Ordo
traditional, he has to become bigger. The former path is an evacuation of the
ego: a layman can say “oh, any priest will do, as long as he says the old Mass.”
The latter path is—an accomplishment! The celebrant becomes known for
miles around as “the one who o ers the reverent Novus Ordo.” As much as the
one priest vanishes in the rite, the other priest, ironically, is magni ed by it.
Michael: From that vantage, wouldn’t it be better—more conducive to
sanctity—to be a layman in a traditional parish than to be a conservative priest
in the Novus Ordo world?
John: It’s hard to escape that conclusion. The layman is free to conform
himself to an objective tradition while the Novus Ordo priest is constantly
conforming the liturgy to his own (probably better) ideas of what it should be
but isn’t and need not be (and, for some bishops, must never be). And let’s not
forget that even the freedom to accomplish his well-intentioned goal can by
no means be guaranteed. More likely than not, he will be forced again and
again to go against his conscience, against his knowledge of what is better.
Michael: It reminds me of a family I know about, where the dad became a
traditional Catholic while the mom didn’t, and it led to all kinds of problems.
It seems as if a tradition-loving diocesan seminarian is entering a sort of
mixed marriage with a typical Novus Ordo diocese, even when everyone in the
picture consents with a good will; and such a marriage can rapidly break down.
John: Right. If he had picked a better partner to begin with, the “marriage”
would have a much higher likelihood of success.
Michael: (After a pause) What should we do, then? What’s the solution?
 John: I don’t know if there’s only one solution. But I know what my
solution is—to leave the diocesan seminary and start over again in a traditional
institute or community.
Michael: What if the Vatican prohibits such groups from accepting new
members, or even shuts down their seminaries, as rumors are saying may
happen soon?
John: If that occurs, the superiors should have the clarity of mind to
recognize that an assault is being made against the common good of the
Church—against her faith, her tradition, her past, her heritage, the consensus
of all earlier popes and councils, the most sacred realities, the good of families
and especially of children, and the divine gift of vocations—and should have
the courage to refuse to recognize any such prohibitions or closures. The
seminaries should remain open and functional, carrying on calmly as before.
They should continue accepting new members, regardless of their canonical
status, and carry on with priestly or religious formation, regardless of
threatened or delivered penalties, all of which would be null and void, as they
emanate from those acting in hatred and contempt of the Faith, contrary to
divine and natural law. The lay faithful would generously support the
personnel, facilities, and activities of all these groups, sustaining them until a
better day dawned when the inherent legitimacy of their position is once again
recognized.
Michael: That’s a bold set of statements you just made!
John: Either we do this, or we let the modernists trample us and the
traditional Faith to death. Which is what they want. Why should we let them
have it? We could never have peace in our consciences if we turned our back on
what the Lord has permitted us to see. We are changed men. And we must live
as changed men. That is what God expects of us. We must not squander His
graces. Besides, you know this as well as I do: a priest who has grown
accustomed to the incomparable nourishment of the ancient Mass cannot, at
the command of a petty dictator, simply cast it aside like an old rag.[273] That
would be a kind of spiritual euthanasia. And I think the same is true for us.
Michael: Yes...you are right. I can’t not see what I now see. Tradition is a
grace. I mean—to see it, to fall in love with it, to let it shape your mind and
heart... What a grace to have received! Domine, non sum dignus...
 This conversation may help crystallize a truth that remains unclear for too
many people. It is indeed a contradiction in terms to say that one has to
become bigger and bigger (in the sense of exercising one’s own judgments and
volitional force) to make the Novus Ordo “traditional” when the greatest
bene t of tradition is that it allows one to become smaller and smaller, so as to
let the wisdom and charity of the Church shine out through one’s iconic
representation of Christ.
Strictly from that point of view, to be a layman living a fully traditional
liturgical life would be superior to being a priest who must celebrate the
Novus Ordo either exclusively or frequently. There is no question here of
attributing blame to anyone; most priests who have discovered tradition did so
after their ordination, when it was too late (so to speak) to orient themselves
exclusively by it. On the other hand, a priest who knew ahead of time that, by
remaining within a diocese, he would be perpetually swimming against the
current in his e orts to make the new rite something it was never intended to
be—something, moreover, that the ecclesiastical hierarchy are hell-bent on
preventing—would have plenty of reasons to lie awake at night, wondering
what he is doing with (or to) himself.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that Novus Ordo clergy who “wake up” later
on to the full magnitude of the liturgical problem experience a huge crisis.[274]
Some of them try to leave the diocese to join a traditional community—itself
no easy step to take, with all the permissions needed on both sides, the
challenge of temporary assignments during a probationary period, and no
certain outcome. Others, like Fr. Bryan Houghton—author of Judith’s
MarriageandMitre & Crook—realize that they must take an early retirement
or nd a di erent “line of work.” As narrated in his autobiography Unwanted
Priest, Fr. Houghton resigned his pastorship at midnight on November 30,
1969 (the day the Novus Ordo went into e ect), settled in southern France,
and ended up a contented chaplain of a small and rather informal group of
laity who assisted at his Latin Masses. Today, laity are entirely willing to pool
resources to support “canceled clergy,” priests who continue to o er the TLM
because they know they must.[275]
There is, of course, a very di erent future that could someday come into
existence. Since prospective candidates for the priesthood are increasingly
drawn to the Latin Mass, a forward-thinking diocese—even in the wake of
Traditionis Custodes—could quietly create a “Latin Mass track” in which
seminarians who wish to o er exclusively the traditional liturgy would be
assigned eventually to shrines, basilicas, oratories, and chapels (not parishes,
mind you...) that would specialize in it, for the growing number of faithful
who request it, and for their growing families. Dioceses that wish to survive
will have to adapt to the changing needs of the faithful and the changing
aspirations of actual or potential seminarians. A few wiser dioceses in pre-
Traditionis Custodes days were already on to this and starting to plan ahead
for the inevitable, as Fr. Zuhlsdorf reported.[276]
But unless and until this happens, men who are among the “young persons
[who] have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a
form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly
suited to them”[277] will nd themselves in the position of Michael and John in
my imaginary dialogue: needing to nd a traditional order or community.
That, too, is in God’s Providence, for He is raising up luminous beacons of
tradition amidst the darkness of ecclesial anarchy. And it is no less in God’s
providential plan that enemy forces at the Vatican are being su ered to
publicly align themselves against the true guardians of tradition. The battle is
on. There is great glory to be won, or the misery of desertion and surrender.
This much we know for sure: a person has an obligation to take himself
out of situations in which he is continually bombarded with requirements or
requests that strain or injure his conscience. Even if he could make a quick
mental reservation to justify (or excuse) some act of complicity, it’s like living
on the edge of a sharp and unforgiving knife. It’s not a healthy way to live, and
the Mass is not meant to be a form of torture.[278] We are supposed to be able
to yield ourselves to the liturgy as to a superior trainer who can be absolutely
trusted with our spiritual good.

CAN ANY CASE BE MADE FOR “THE REVERENT NOVUS

ORDO”?[279]
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
Having read your essay “Why the ‘Reform of the Reform’ Is Doomed,” I
would like, in a spirit of truth-seeking, to present some objections that might
be made to it.
 To start with, I do agree that the Novus Ordo is “ungraftable” onto the
living tradition of the Roman liturgy, considered liturgically (as opposed to
juridically, etc.). One of the great bene ts of the admittedly awkward situation
of “two forms”—a situation that continues to exist after Traditionis Custodes
and shows no signs of going away in general—is that, in principle, a simple
“return” to the usus antiquior is possible and, in some sense, already exists in
many places. In a couple generations there will be, at the current rate, a strong
minority of those who know and love the old Mass and have only the most
remote experience, if any, of the new rite. In addition, many of the younger
generations who are not die-hard devotees of the older rites are nevertheless
free from the ideological bitterness against anything pre-1970 and are open to
“big-picture” traditional practices, e.g., ad orientem, Communion while
kneeling, Gregorian chant, beautiful vestments, and the like.
That being said, one might argue that there’s something impractical, and
something un tting, about the tradition-minded simply abandoning the
Novus Ordo.
Impracticality. The Novus Ordo is not going away any time soon, and
many people, even those otherwise open to tradition, are not willing to
abandon it. Thus, it seems like a more e ective strategy would be to add more
traditional elements to celebrations according to the new books—not just in
the Order of Mass (the Judica me, the O ertory, etc.) but in the temporal
calendar and orations. While we both agree that this is no more than an
interim measure, and one that is generally unpleasing, it is nonetheless a way
to get people used to the idea of traditional liturgical praxis in a manner that is
not jolting.
I nd it hard to believe that someone who comes to love a “traditionalized”
Novus Ordo will not be drawn further into the sources and richness of the
Roman tradition. Many people I know (myself included, and apparently you, as
well) who have come to embrace an “integral” practice of traditional
Catholicism rst went through their “ROTR phase,” perhaps because it is an
easy way to be traditional while also remaining squarely within “the
establishment.” One might even point to Pope Gregory I’s advice to St.
Augustine of Canterbury regarding the Saxon shrines: people will be more at
ease in a familiar environment while their mores are slowly converted, and in
due time, once the dispositions are there, one can build new shrines and “go all
the way.” Here is what St. Gregory wrote to Abbot Mellitus, who was about to
join St. Augustine:

Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of

the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he
has puri ed them with holy water, place altars and relics of the
saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be
converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true
God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the
people will banish error from their hearts and come to places
familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the
true God.[280]

Analogously, it seems that applying one’s talents to the best Novus Ordo
possible, via use of the Graduale Romanum, Msgr. Peter J. Elliott’s rubrics, and
the like would actually serve the traditional Mass in the long run.
Un ttingness: Intrinsically, the Novus Ordo is pleasing to God, due to the
objective confection of the Eucharist, juridical approval, and the presence of
many objectively wholesome elements (and the absence of directly
unwholesome ones). To my mind, the defects of the Novus Ordo lie instead in
what it represents, namely, a rejection of the inherited tradition, and in what
it omits, such as certain “hard teachings” of the Faith. Nothing is objectively
false in, say, the second Eucharistic Prayer; rather, its circumstances of
composition and the fact that it virtually displaced the Roman Canon are what
make it truly objectionable. If the text as we have it were a received text from
antiquity and preserved in some obscure autocephalous rite, I do not believe
that its mere existence would pose a problem to which anyone should object
(again, hypothetically speaking). As a result, it would seem un tting, by means
of a policy of abandoning the Novus Ordo “to its own devices,” to relegate the
vast majority of liturgical worship to virtually inevitable mediocrity.
I understand that traditionalizing the Novus Ordo would likely extend its
lifespan. Still, drawing others into a positive experience of tradition, and the
corresponding increase in rendering glory unto God, would seem to trump any
tactical considerations when it comes to attaining the end goal which you and
I share: the complete restoration of the Roman tradition.
 Best regards,
Fr. Inquiring Incrementalist

Dear Father,
Thank you for your thoughts, which I welcome.
I do think it is not to the bene t of the Church that a faulty lex orandi,
namely, that of the Novus Ordo, should be perpetuated under the guidance of
a good lex orandi, that of the Tridentine rite. Such an approach is a bit
deceptive, as it seems to depart from the clear intentions of Paul VI and of
those who created the Novus Ordo, who made no attempt to hide the fact that
they wanted to replace the Tridentine rite with something quite di erent,
which they believed would be more suitable for Modern Man.™ I talk about
this in detail in my book The Once and Future Roman Rite. And there are
aspects of the new rite that manifestly cannot be done in a spirit of continuity
with the old rite, so a priest attempting to follow the “hermeneutic of
continuity” to its logical end either runs up against a brick wall or takes
matters into his own hands. The traditional O ertory is a perfect case in
point: either the Mass will be lacking it, which is a major defect against the
backdrop of the mighty developments that took place in both Eastern and
Western Christian rites, or the priest will insert the traditional O ertory ad
libitum, which seems like a more extreme example of the vice of optionitis,
since it is not a licit option within the bounds of the new liturgical rubrics.
In addition, we mustn’t forget that we’re not looking at the Mass alone,
but at all the sacramental rites, the Divine O ce, the blessings, etc., all of
which have been deconstructed and dumbed-down past any substantive
resemblance to how the Church used to o er them. “But they’re valid!” or
“they still have some positive content!,” say the by-now tired and slightly
despairing counterarguments. Yes—but should we be serving a delicious meal
and the nest wine (metaphorically, the content of a sacrament) on styrofoam
with plastic cutlery and in paper cups? Should we be trying to perform a
symphony on kazoos, harmonicas, banjos, and washboards? No. The
authenticity and ttingness of our worship hugely matter when it comes to
impressing the Faith on our souls and o ering to God the best He has given us
and the best we can give Him. Priests who say the old Mass but pray the
Liturgy of the Hours, or who say the new Mass but pray the old Roman
Breviary, quickly see the stark disconnect: it’s like two di erent worlds. It’s
even more dramatic if one compares the new rite of baptism to the old rite:
there is no possible evolutionary path from old to new, and no possible
reformatory path from the new back to the great tradition.
However, relatively speaking, and in particular cases, I know that a
“Tridentinizing” approach to the new rite has led many Catholics back to
tradition. It has acted as a bridge. It has consoled clergy who have been bullied
into compliance with TC or who believe (whether rightly or wrongly) that
they must obey the anti-TLM policy of their bishop. It has undoubtedly saved
some vocations. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of traditionalists are
con icted in mind about the ROTR from a practical point of view. Sure, we
want Catholics exposed to good things even in the Novus Ordo...but the
environment in which those good things occur, that is, the new rite itself, has
a dismaying fakeness to it at the end of the day. It remains a construct of
modern liturgists acting on the basis of false or dubious theories, and the
“good use” of it is a conquest of taste, not an inheritance received whole and
entire. By using the new liturgical books, we are not doing what our
forefathers gave us (and gave us for good reason); we are extending the lease of
Paul VI’s abuse of power, and, while we’re at it, validating Francis’s abuse of
power. Are we delaying the longed-for and long-overdue mucking out of the
stables?
The new missal, after all, has its own “spirit”: a spirit of simplicity,
directness, and clarity. That’s what it was designed to optimize. With respect
to this distinct spirit, a priest is probably doing a disservice to people in a
di erent way if he starts reciting a lot of the new rite in Latin and adds stu
in from the TLM that isn’t there in the rubrics. He is building his own semi-
Tridentine personal rite. However, on one point I can be adamant: every priest
should go ad orientem. That is non-negotiable. After all, regardless of Paul
VI’s own preference for versus populum, the rubrics of the Novus Ordo and all
other relevant documentation very obviously allow for ad orientem and indeed
presuppose it.[281]
Is this position of mine—that it would be better to abandon the new rite in
favor of the traditional rite, but at the same time, attempts should not be made
to Tridentinize the new rite and put old things back into it—self-
contradictory? No, because the rites have their own design, their own way of
doing things (and goals that go along with it), and mixing them in either
direction may not result in mutual enrichment but in mutual muddiness or
mutilation. A TLM in the vernacular would be as inappropriate, given what it
is and how it “works,” as a Novus Ordo in whispered Latin, given what it is
and how it works. I blame this mess on Paul VI: he created the unprecedented
conundrum, and we are living in its chaotic aftermath.
I suppose one di erence between us is that I have come to think it would
be objectively wrong for the Church ever to cease to o er to God the orthodox
prayers and rituals of reverence that He led her to embrace over many
centuries of piety. This conviction did not so forcefully impress itself on me
for as long as I thought that the Novus Ordo was free from objectionable
material in itself while characterized by the privation of much good and too
prone to easy abuse on account of de cient rubrics. After further study, it
became clear that its architects, who held views incompatible with the Faith,
designed a product that cannot but mislead the faithful, unless they are
unusually well educated and zealous to make up for its de ciencies.[282] Many
books converge on this conclusion, but I will mention two in particular:
Lauren Pristas’s Collects of the Roman Missals:A Comparative Study of the
Sundays in Proper Seasons before and after the Second Vatican Council and
Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional Mass:History, Form, and Theology of
the Classical Roman Rite.
It’s not possible to read this pair of books (or others like them) and not see
intellectually and feel viscerally the magnitude of the crisis created by the
liturgical reform—a crisis that will never be overcome until the modern rite is
nally repudiated and the traditional rite is restored in its fullness. Each priest
will need to decide, before God, in his own conscience, and well prepared by
study and prayer, what this crisis demands of him personally. There are many
paths that converge on tradition—muddling along as best one can with the
occasional TLM or the souped-up NOM [Novus Ordo Missæ]; petitioning to
join the FSSP or other such community; going into early retirement and
helping discreetly on the TLM underground circuit; imitating heroes of the
Faith like Fr. Yves Normandin, who brought the TLM to countless faithful
across Canada in the dark days;[283] accepting the generosity of traditional laity
in return for provision of the traditional sacraments; and so on. What is clear,
in any case, is that both the reform and the reform of the reform have led to
the same place, namely, a dead end. It’s time to turn around.
 Cordially in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

WHY ART AND REVERENCE ARE NOT THE KEY TO

RESTORING CATHOLIC LITURGY
A friend had expressed his concerns about my strong advocacy of the
traditional Latin Mass and my ongoing critique of the liturgical reform. He
asked me why it was not su cient to enrich the reformed Mass with elements
of Catholic tradition bit by bit, as occasion allows. He also asked about the
basis of my skepticism of Church authority and whether I am not at risk of
rejecting it in a Protestant fashion. Here is how I replied.
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter, and especially for your friendly words and
concerns. I am on record saying that it’s a good thing whenever Catholics are
exposed to tradition—be it chant, beautiful hymnody or polyphony, male altar
servers properly vested, Mass ad orientem, Communion on the tongue
kneeling, etc. Each of these things is part of our patrimony and forms us in
the true Faith.
At the same time, the relatively isolated and dissociated condition of these
elements in postconciliar Catholicism makes them rather like otsam and
jetsam left from the titanic wreck of the 1960s. They are found all together—at
home, in their original and harmonious con guration—in the apostolic
liturgical rites of the Church, Eastern and Western. It is relatively
straightforward to identify inductively the universal attributes of traditional
Eucharistic rites that predate the Novus Ordo.[284] We need to get back to that
traditional order of worship, xed, stable, and dense, rather than perpetuating
a modern mishmash that lacks most of those attributes or makes them “ad
lib.”
Not all can return immediately to the point before the serious deviations
began—shortly after World War II, as the Liturgical Movement turned radical
and lost its bearings—but the younger generations are quite open to the work
of restoration, being free of the baggage carried by older folks who had to
make do with what was given to them (or not given to them). The most
e ective evangelization in our times will be one that accentuates the wonder,
beauty, and “strangeness” of the divine, not its domesticated familiarity and
rational accessibility.
It’s hard for me to see how, within the Novus Ordo world, there could ever
be the clarity of vision, determination, organization, and episcopal support to
bring about what the proponents of the “reverent new Mass” envision.
Outside of rare outposts, that project is more of a sinking ship than a vessel
yet untested. If I had to place bets, they’d all be on the traditional Mass—not
just because I love it, but because I think it has staying power. If it weathered
an attempt at utter suppression by the most powerful institution in the world
claiming to act in the name of God and demanding blind obedience, it can
obviously weather anything else that modernity or postmodernity has thrown
or could throw at it. The warning of Gamaliel applies here: “But if it be of
God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to ght against
God” (Acts 5:39).
You and I are both musicians strongly shaped by the pursuit of the
beautiful; we have both composed music for the new liturgy. I’ve set as many
English texts as I have Latin, and my English pieces will almost never be used
at a TLM. The fact is, during the years when I directed choirs at the Novus
Ordo, the art of music became my “hiding place” where I found refuge from
the pain of the knowledge I had acquired by studying the history and theology
of liturgy. There came a point when I had to admit that ne art, however
captivating, was simply not enough to address the root problem; it was like
wrapping a bandage around a severed limb and expecting it to regenerate. The
bandage may staunch the blood, but it will not restore integrity to the
damaged body, nor functionality where the limb is missing. This by no means
detracts from the inherent value of well-made art, or its power to move, to
edify, to elevate; and to that extent, I admire all that good Catholic composers,
architects, and other artists are doing to improve the “tone” in parishes. But
when I look at the larger picture, I see this kind of endeavor as a rickety bridge
that helps wayfarers pass from a awed reform over to a full inheritance.
Even though I consider the reformed rites to be defective and harmful, I
also acknowledge that they have been and can be occasions of grace for
individuals. The all-powerful Lord can bring good out of evil, as St. Augustine
and St. Thomas teach, faithfully adhering to Scripture. In my view of things, it
is possible both to reject the goodness of the reform and to accept that it has
been a vehicle of grace for some individuals—although it has been an occasion
of sin for many others, beginning with its architects, who sinned gravely
against the virtue of piety for tradition, and its celebrants, who can abuse it or
even use it well with vanity (I refer to the subtle vanity of good taste and
religiosity—a temptation absent in the old rite, entirely determinate in its
in exible rubrics).
You then raise the million-dollar question: What are we to make of Church
authority in all this? Has it been asleep at the wheel? Has it been undermining
the very Church it is supposed to support and serve? Are we ever justi ed in
setting ourselves against what ecclesiastical authorities have determined to be
best for us in the realm of the liturgy—or does that make us renegades driven
by private judgment?
One of the hardest things for me in my life as a Catholic has been coming
to grips with the problem of major failures on the part of Catholic bishops.
Minor failings have we all, and no one can escape them; but we are looking at a
double systemic abuse: abuse of the liturgical inheritance and abuse of the
most innocent and vulnerable of the Lord’s people. These are, regrettably,
related to one another.[285] Take someone like Rembert Weakland, who was
both a major gure in the liturgical reform and, as we later discovered, an
active homosexual; and he is far from alone.
I think it is part of a di cult but necessary renunciation to be able to
admit—without denying that bishops and popes truly possess their o ces, and
without contumaciously or pertinaciously disobeying them in those matters
over which they have legitimate authority—that our prelates have been and
still are guilty of serious errors, abuses, and crimes, including catastrophic
failures in prudential judgment, and that we have a duty to resist these prelates
to the extent that they are responsible for or complicit in such things.[286] The
Lord has raised up many laity to lead this faithful resistance (and the
conservation e ort that always goes with it), and there are good priests and
bishops in the same movement of true reform, which means, as Martin
Mosebach says, a return to form, that is, an intensi cation of sound,
traditional discipline, not its relaxation or abolition:

We must not forget what the term “reform,” well anchored in the
history of the Church, meant until Vatican II: a restoration of
discipline, a tightening of the reins, an end to pro igacy and a
return to the traditional order. The “reforms” of the Second Vatican
 Council are the rst in the entire history of the Church to deviate
from this view; they no longer trusted the tradition to reach the
people of the present and therefore relied on a general softening of
practice and doctrine, although without successfully keeping people
in the Church as a result of this pastoral relativism. It is not a
Church that is ossi ed in its rites and fossilized in its doctrines that
has been losing the faithful in a steadily increasing stream since
Vatican II, but rather, a Church that has softened in doctrine and
become liturgically formless.[287]

In a way one could not have predicted solely on the basis of a neo-
scholastic conception of how church authority works, it seems not only
possible but undeniably true that major deviations have occurred through the
abusive exercise of that authority. It has proved necessary and salutary for
members of Christ’s ock not only to refuse to follow certain directives, but
also actively to oppose the softening of doctrine and the deformation of
liturgy.[288] Even Summorum Ponti cum, the paci c tone of which might make
one think Benedict XVI was merely clearing up some unfortunate
misunderstanding, is the result of decades of struggle in which laity and lower
clergy were pitted against a hierarchy determined to crush them (and that is
no exaggeration, as Leo Darroch’s book shows in horri c detail).[289] Recall, just
to take one example, that the reformed liturgical rites do not in principle
exclude the use of traditional sacred music or the Latin language; yet as we saw
in chapter 1, it was Paul VI himself who, in a speech delivered on November
26, 1969, diverted the Latin-rite Church from her own tradition (and,
incidentally, from Vatican II) when he earnestly told the world that Latin and
chant had to disappear from parochial liturgies. We are, he says, bidding them
goodbye, and we should bid them goodbye. From 1964 onwards (that is, even
before the Novus Ordo), this was the mentality of rupture that churchmen
sought to enforce upon all— and there was rarely any departure from the
policy.
Thus, the surprising fact emerges that it is only to the extent that Paul VI
has been and is resisted by Catholics—either doing the old Mass against his
wishes, or doing the new Mass against his wishes—that there has been, in the
West, any historically continuous, anthropologically sound, culturally
worthwhile cultus to o er to God and to share with the people. Everyone
needs to recognize that if they are doing the right thing, they are disobeying
the whims and wishes of some pope or other. The key is to do the right thing,
even when popes are blathering on or busy contradicting their predecessors
and even themselves.
It was during the Protestant Revolt that reformers rst took it upon
themselves to construct liturgies according to their own interpretation of early
Christian worship before its “corruption” by Catholics, as they spun out their
novel doctrine from threads of St. Paul and made themselves the divinely-
appointed instruments of what their contemporaries “needed.”[290] The
Consilium in the 1960s acted in quite the same manner, producing rites, not
inheriting rites as Catholics had always done before—test-tube babies rather
than children conceived in natural wedlock. In a bitter irony, the ones who
acted like Protestants were the liturgical reformers working for the Vatican,
not the Catholics who held fast to the stable tradition that perfectly expresses
the true teaching of the Bible and the dogmatic decrees of the ecumenical
Councils, especially the Council of Trent. In being asked to accept such
fabricated rites as authoritative and Catholic, I am not convinced that one is
not being asked to act against a well-informed conscience. It seems to me
something like intellectual suicide to accept that what Bugnini & Co. have
given us is in harmony with the foregoing tradition. If one can believe this,
one can believe anything; if one can say this, one can say anything.
We are dealing here with a mysterium iniquitatis that beggars belief but is
nevertheless encompassed within the kenosis and victory of Christ as we move
toward the end times. May the Lord lead us forward along the path of a
tradition received in humility, cultivated in love, and enriched with the fruits
of centuries of delity and Catholic culture.

Cordially yours in Christ,

Dr. Kwasniewski
 8

The "Latin Novus Ordo" Is Not the Solution

In the wake of Traditionis Custodes, some have made the good-faith
suggestion that a “solution” for a future depleted of traditional Latin Masses is
“doing the Novus Ordo in Latin.” This is an absolute non-starter for several
reasons.

THE RITES THEMSELVES ARE PROFOUNDLY DIFFERENT

First, the missals have surprisingly little overlap. All one has to do is
compare them side-by-side to see that both the Order of Mass and
the Propers of the Mass are largely divergent. The classic article
here is Matthew Hazell’s, demonstrating that only 13% of the
orations of the old missal are found intact in the new one (and not
17%, the already-low gure at which Fr. Anthony Cekada had
arrived, but which turns out on closer inspection to be too
generous).[291] As I demonstrate in The Once and Future Roman
Rite, we are dealing here not with two versions of the Roman rite
but with two rites: the Roman rite and whatever one must call the
other: let us say, the “modern rite of Paul VI.” If someone happens
to enjoy the modern rite in Latin, by all means let him have it; but
that’s not an adequate substitute for the TLM, and no one who is
even a little bit familiar with the TLM would be able to perceive it
to be such. An acquaintance of mine explained to her ten-year-old
son, an avid altar server, that the local bishop, when he announced
the end of the TLM, o ered to substitute for it a Novus Ordo in
Latin, ad orientem, with chant. The boy replied: “Ohhhh, so they’re
trying to pretend!” It’s insulting to be o ered something that kinda-
sorta looks like the TLM but isn’t, as if experienced attendees of the
TLM are ignorant of the fact that the TLM and the Novus Ordo are
two separate rites—indeed, as if all we care about is eye-candy. A
 virtuous man looks for a wife who is beautiful on the inside as well
as on the outside, with the former—the internal character—valued
most of all. He’s not interested only in the externals, and neither are
traditional Catholics. Speaking and acting as if we were is a not-so-
subtle disparagement. At the same time, we understand that the
externals ought to match the internal reality—Mosebach says there
is no shame in being “one of those naïve folk who look at the
surface, the external appearance of things, in order to judge their
inner nature, their truth, or their spuriousness”[292]—and we object
to any rite that disconnects them, leaving their relationship to free
choice, as if we we ought to be reliant on the chance intersection of
local politics and subjective good taste. (I will return shortly to the
question of aestheticism.)

THE NEW RITE’S ARCHITECTS WANTED ONLY

VERNACULAR
Second, the new liturgy was never designed by its architects and
implementers to be said in Latin. Pope Paul VI bade adieu to Latin (and
Gregorian chant along with it) in his infamous general audiences of March
1965 and November 1969, as I discuss in the aforementioned book.[293] On
November 19, 1969, he declared:

The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacri ce

for those who know the beauty, the power, and the expressive
sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian
centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary
preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that
stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the
Gregorian chant. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost
for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of
the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why?
What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church’s values?
The answer will seem banal, prosaic. Yet it is a good answer, because
it is human, because it is apostolic. Understanding of prayer is
worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed.
 Participation by the people is worth more—particularly
participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is
easily understood and converted into everyday speech.

This is the same pope who noted only ve years later, in a melancholy
observation that called into question the most obvious characteristic of the
new rite, its vernacular verbosity: “Modern man is sated by talk; he is
obviously tired of listening, and what is worse, impervious to words.”[294]
In the giant doorstopper of a book Documents on the Liturgy 1963–1979,
one can nd hundreds of references to Mass in the vernacular, and scarcely
any reference to Mass in Latin. The Latin editio typica of Paul VI’s Missale
Romanum [sic] was understood by all, except perhaps Opus Dei clergy, as a
launching-point for the multitudinous vernacular versions. One can tell
because the new missal’s very Latinity, as numerous Latinists have explained to
me, is clunky and clumsy throughout; it’s a committee product intended for
practical extrapolations.

THE NEW RITE IS BUILT FOR EASY VERBAL

COMPREHENSION
Third, and moving more deeply into the heart of the matter, the Novus
Ordo is in fact built for a kind of immediate rational comprehension and
active engagement that is foreign to traditional liturgy conducted in an archaic
sacral language, where much that is said and done is not being said and done
for or towards the congregation at all, and where being caught up in the larger
liturgical action is the main point: the “creation of a presence,”[295] or, in
Newman’s words, “not the invocation merely, but...the evocation of the
Eternal.”[296]
No one has analyzed the stark di erences between the rites, as far as
language goes, better than Joseph Shaw. In a masterful ve-part series
published from February 23 to 27, 2014 at his blog LMS Chairman, Shaw
explains why the “reform of the reform” was dead in the water even before it
started (and before it was euthanized for good e ect by Pope Francis).[297] Here
I would like to take up a few of the major points he makes.
In Part 1, “The Death of the Reform of the Reform?,” Shaw introduces his
main argument:
 While I am in favour of Latin, worship ad orientem and pretty well
everything the ROTR promotes, it is clear to me that the di culty
of imposing them on the Novus Ordo is not just a matter of
parochial habits. The problem with the texts and ceremonies, in
terms of bringing them closer to the Traditional Mass, is not just a
matter of how many changes you would need to make. The problem
is that the Novus Ordo has its own ethos, rationale and spirituality.
It encapsulates its own distinct understanding of what liturgical
participation is. It is to promote this kind of participation that its
various texts and ceremonies have been done as they are. If you put
it in Latin, ad orientem, and especially if you start having things not
currently allowed, like the silent Canon, then you undermine the
kind of participation for which the Novus Ordo was designed. This
means that there is a danger, in promoting something which
amounts to a compromise between the two Missals, of falling
between two stools.

In Part 2, “The Liturgical Movement,” Shaw notes that the movers and
shakers of the Liturgical Movement were frustrated that the people before the
Council were not more “into” the liturgy (according to presumably
enlightened notions of what such “into-ness” should look like). The poor folks
did not understand its content as well as the experts themselves did, being
uent in Latin as they were and having lots of time to study and so forth.
Having grown impatient with educational approaches, they tried a blunter
method:

Some liturgists made a nal e ort to get the wonderful texts of the
ancient liturgical tradition across to the Faithful. They
experimented with having Mass facing the people, so everyone could
see what was going on. Then they realised that, if you want people
to understand the texts, you really are a lot better o having the
texts read aloud, and in the vernacular. It stands to reason! But
things were moving on. Even aloud, and in English, the texts were
too long, too complicated. In fact, putting them into the vernacular
simply served to emphasise that these texts were unsuitable for
repetitive use in the congregation’s mother tongue. Furthermore,
 the order in which things happened was confusing and (apparently)
illogical. And then there were other theological fashions which
disliked the emphasis on sin, penance, and the saints. It all had to
go.

What we got instead was a Missal which the Faithful could follow
word by word, without the need (after a while) of hand-missals. The
prayers were simple, the ceremonies short and cut down to the
bone, and (apparently) logical. It was in the vernacular. It faced the
people. The translation used words of one syllable wherever
possible. It all tted together.

When the ROTR folks look at the result of this process, they sense, quite
rightly, that there’s a great lack:

Something is missing from the Mass, the sacrality has gone. So they
want to put some sacrality back. They see the things which seem
most associated with it in the Traditional Mass, and they want to
put them back. So they propose, and actually practice, the use of
Latin, celebration ad orientem, Gregorian Chant and so on. These
are all good things. But when the reformers said that they had to be
sacri ced for the sake of comprehensibility, they weren’t entirely
wrong. Thinking about word-by-word understanding, verbal
communication, it is perfectly true that, unless you are a
superhuman Latinist, it is harder to follow the Canon in Latin than
it is in English. Unless you are lip-reader, it is harder still if it is
silent. Unless you have X-Ray eyes, it is harder still if the priest has
his back to you.

Pope Paul VI famously said, using a phrase of Jungmann’s, that Latin

was a “curtain” which obscured the liturgy, it had to be drawn back.
Yes: if you have a very narrow understanding of participation.[298]
But that is the understanding of participation upon which the
entire reform was based.
 In Part 3, “Falling Between Two Stools,” Shaw makes explicit the
assumptions of the reformers and why they are mistaken:

I described the historical process by which we ended up with a

liturgy from which drama, gesture, mystery, awe, and beauty have
been systematically removed. There is still some left, but less than
before; the point is that their removal was not accidental, but
deliberate and systematic. There was a principle at work: Mass
should be readily comprehensible. Drama, poetry, anything which is
hidden from sight or in a foreign language: these are inevitably
harder to understand. And who can argue with the principle? What
the reformers took for granted was the presupposition that we are
talking about verbal communication. So let’s get this assumption out
in the open: Mass should be readily comprehensible at the level of
verbal communication.

Suddenly it looks less obvious. Might it be possible that what is

more readily comprehensible at the verbal level is actually less
readily comprehensible, or, to use another term favoured by
liturgists, meaningful, taking verbal and non-verbal forms of
communication together? Listen to what Fr. Aidan Nichols OP
observed (Looking at the Liturgy, 59): “To the sociologist, it is by no
means self-evident that brief, clear rites have greater transformative
potential than complex, abundant, lavish, rich, long rites, furnished
with elaborate ceremonial.”

When you put it like that, it is clear enough. It is perfectly possible

that the e ort to make Mass more meaningful at a verbal level has
had such a deleterious e ect on its non-verbal aspect that we’ve
ended up with something which is less meaningful, all things
considered.

He then explains what happens when you try to “mix ‘n’ match”:

The Novus Ordo is geared towards verbal comprehension. It may be

lacking in other things—certainly the Reform of the Reform people
 tell us so—but in terms of understanding the liturgical texts it must
be said it is pretty successful. They are read nice and clearly, usually
ampli ed, in one’s mother tongue (at least for those of us who have
a major language as a mother tongue, and live where it is an o cial
language); the vocabulary (at least until the new translation [of 2011])
is not challenging. Yes, we get the message, at the intellectual, word-
by-word level. To say the Vetus Ordo operates at another level is to
state the obvious. You can’t even hear the most important bits—they
are said silently. If you could hear them, they’d be in Latin. And yet,
somehow, it has its supporters. It communicates something, not in
spite of these barriers to verbal communication, but by means of the
very things which are clearly barriers to verbal communication. The
silence and the Latin are indeed among the most e ective means the
Vetus Ordo employs to communicate what it communicates: the
mysterium tremendum, the amazing reality of God made present in
the liturgy. If you take the Novus Ordo and make it verbally
incomprehensible, or take the Vetus Ordo and take away the Latin
and the silence, you are not creating the ideal liturgy. You are in
grave danger of creating something that is neither sh nor fowl:
that doesn’t work at either level.

In Part 4, “Novus Ordo in Latin?,” Shaw ties together his various points:

A compromise missal, with “the best” of the Ordinary Form and of

the Extraordinary Form, could turn out to be something which
doesn’t allow the Faithful to engage with it e ectively, in either the
typical traditional fashion or the typical Novus Ordo fashion. The
idea that you can make the Traditional Latin Mass easier to
participate in by making various changes—using the vernacular,
having [formerly] silent prayers [said] aloud, having the priest face
the people—is based on the idea that there is only one kind of
meaningful participation, and that is an intellectual, verbal
participation: a comprehension of the liturgy by a grasp of the
liturgical texts word by word, as they are said. But, as I argued, this
is not so....
 I also warned that something similar can happen from the other
direction. If you take the Novus Ordo and put it into Latin, for
example, you instantly take away much of the intellectual, verbal
engagement for which the 1970 Missal was designed. Will you create
a sense of the sacred to compensate? Perhaps. But the whole rite has
been set up wrong, from that point of view, and most Catholics in
the pew will not nd it at all obvious how to allow themselves to
engage with it in the appropriate way, in the context of the mixed
signals they are getting from the ceremonies and texts....

If we are going to talk about the future, of what there is some

chance of really working with the bulk of ordinary Catholics, the
Reform of the Reform is based on a terrible mistake. The mistake is
to assume you can preserve what is attractive about one Form while
combining it with what is attractive about the other. You can’t,
because they are incompatible.... In the EF it is precisely those things
which impede verbal communication which facilitate non-verbal
communication: Latin, silence, worship ad orientem and so on. An
attempt to ramp up verbal communication in the EF will destroy
what makes it attractive. Similarly, an attempt to bring in more
“sense of the sacred” in the OF will radically reduce its big selling
point: the ease of verbal communication.

Shaw has astutely recognized that you can’t have every possible good
simultaneously, and that some goods exclude other goods. It is well to bear this
in mind, for it also applies to defenders of the Eastern rites, who in their
laudable enthusiasm for their own traditions often prove to be blind and deaf
to the distinctive perfections of Western tradition.[299]

THE REPROACH OF AESTHETICISM

Fourth and nally, devotees of the TLM are often reproached for having
too “aesthetic” a view of the liturgy and for thinking too much in terms of
“devotion” and “reverence” (as if these attitudes could ever be a problem to
worry about!).[300] But the truth is, the TLM is inherently aesthetic and
devotional, and the Latin language is an important component in its genetic
makeup. Those, on the other hand, who, knowing that the Novus Ordo was
meant by Paul VI (et al.) to be in the vernacular, now seek for it to be in Latin
—they are indeed guilty of a kind of aestheticism. For, in this scenario, the
Latin becomes a decoration and a mysti cation, like other “smells and bells”
that give the illusion of continuity in our liturgical worship and smudge the
profound di erences in content between old and new.[301]
It’s that dragon of “optionitis” rearing its ugly head once more. The TLM
basically has to be in Latin: the language is bone of its bone, esh of its esh. It
is written on its birth certi cate and its passport.[302] Yes, I know: the Iroquois
ended up getting some of the old liturgy in their own language, and there’s a
Glagolitic Mass, and the high-church Anglicans did up a Cranmerized Roman
Missal, etc. But 99.9% of the time, the old Roman liturgy was o ered in Latin
—and the same thing is true today in thousands of Mass locations across a
hundred countries. In the Novus Ordo, however, even the language used is an
option, like so much else. As a result, somebody has to choose to do the new
Mass in Latin. This choice, like other choices, instantly creates polarization, in
a way that something inevitable, something simply given, does not do.[303]
In fact, there is a still deeper level to consider. The traditional Roman
liturgy is based upon the ponti cal liturgy in its solemn form. Every other
version—Solemn High Mass, High or Sung Mass, and Low Mass—is a
pragmatic reduction for pastoral exigencies. It’s as if, in theory, you’d always
want to have a ponti cal Mass (since the bishop is Christ par excellence, as the
Church Fathers insistently say, and the primordial Mass is the whole Church
gathered around its bishop), but since that’s impossible, you take the next
achievable level.[304] This paradigm was rejected by the liturgical reform, which
took the individual priest’s liturgy as the fundamental form and made
anything else a matter of adding things on to the parish Mass template.[305]
That is a major reversal of organic liturgical development. It explains why,
whenever a priest does the liturgy in keeping with our Roman traditions, he is
thought to be an “aesthete,” since all those additions are, in the Bugnini
perspective, unnecessary additions. The reformers, at least to this extent, were
trapped within the Low Mass culture and the excessive prioritization of
validity, to the neglect of authenticity and ttingness.[306]
In short, the Latin Novus Ordo is not a solution for our woes. It is an
awkward mis t that will confuse some, disappoint others, and inspire no one.
The one and only solution, in both the short term and the long term, is a
principled, in exible adherence to the great Latin liturgical tradition, which
no one on earth has the authority to outlaw, and which it would be spiritual
suicide to surrender.

PRAYING IN THE SAME WORDS AS THE SAINTS

Those who sling around the charge of “aestheticism” seem to forget that,
by God’s design, the rst level in learning how to take Catholic liturgy
seriously, how to enter into it and yield to its in uence, is typically none other
than the “smells and bells” that capture our attention and start training us in
rituality and symbolism. As rational animals who learn through our senses, we
notice and appreciate beautiful vestments, furnishings, bells, incense, and
music; we infer, without much di culty, that if special things are used or
done, something special must be taking place. These elements are important:
not only do they subtly instruct us as to what is going on and how we should
respond to it, they also inoculate us against the errors of minimalism and
spiritualism. We might call this “extrinsic maximalism.” It is sad to think that
many Catholics, perhaps most, have never experienced it.
But, at times, the smells and bells can be largely absent without fatal
results, as in a devout Low Mass. Ascetical in its quiet simplicity, the Low
Mass helps us to apprehend the second level of liturgical soundness: the
integral, substantive, expressively adequate or even superabundant prayers and
ceremonies contained in the traditional missal, which the priest is required to
use, no options about it. We might call this an “intrinsic maximalism” that
should never be absent from the liturgy, no matter the type of celebration—
whether ponti cal, solemn, sung, or recited. This level bespeaks adherence to a
living tradition belonging to a community stretching back 2,000 years (or even
3,000 if we take the Jewish roots into account: a truth of which the
commemoration of the Holy Maccabees on August 1 reminds us), but
extending also to the Church triumphant in heaven.
It is no small matter that we have the privilege of praying in the very same
words as our predecessors. The Liber specialis gratiæ of St. Mechtild of
Hackeborn (c. 1240–1298)[307] contains frequent and detailed visions springing
forth from the Latin texts of the liturgy. The Church’s rites came alive before
her as Christ enacted the meaning of the texts. At one point, describing a
liturgy she beheld (“After this our Lord sang the Mass, dressed in a red
chasuble and bishop’s trappings”),[308] Mechtild hears the Lord telling her:
“You shall understand that when you say any psalm or prayer which any saints
prayed when they were alive on earth, then all of those saints pray to me for
you. Additionally, when you are in your devotions and speak with me, then all
of the saints are joyful and worship and thank me.”[309] Of all the prayers
o ered up by the saints, the Roman Canon is surely the foremost in age and
dignity. As Dom Edouard Guillou says:

This main prayer of the Canon has been meditated by so many

saints, murmured by so many priests, that it cannot be compared to
any other prayer. Keeping its original Latin form is the dazzling
testimony of the necessary unity of the Roman Church in time and
space. Its abandonment in practice would be an act of impiety.[310]

In like manner, the Benedictine monk Fr. Joseph Kreuter wrote in 1933:

Is it not a proli c source of devotion, of spiritual joy and

consolation, to know that you are privileged to call holy Mass your
own Sacri ce, to share in it with Christ and His ordained priest?
Happy those who say those ancient and divinely inspired words
together with the priest, for they thus become intimately united
with the generations of Christians who have preceded them. For
centuries the faithful have prayed those words. What emotions,
what joys, what sentiments of praise, adoration, thanksgiving and
expiation have found their expression in these prayers of the Missal!
What torrents of grace and blessings, temporal and spiritual, have
they drawn down from on High upon the faithful worshipers![311]

Since we all know now that only 13% of the orations of the old missal
made their way intact into the new missal—and therefore 87% of the verbatim
prayer of the Roman Church prior to 1969 has been tampered with or canceled
out[312] —it is worth asking what are the cosmic, heavenly, eschatological, and
ecclesiological implications of such memoricide, or, to use Guillou’s word,
impiety.
The gradual discovery of tradition by Msgr. James Byrnes, a priest
originally of the archdiocese of New York, obliged him to grapple with the
“Novus Ordo question,” which resulted in his ultimately deciding to celebrate
the new rite no longer. He said in a talk he gave in 2014:

It was during the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar that the thought
struck me. This was the Mass o ered by those priest-saints I had
read biographies of when I was young, particularly St. Isaac Jogues. I
could and did imagine him standing before a crude altar in the wilds
of northern New York State, uttering these very same words. It was
this overwhelming sense of continuity that stayed with me, this
sense that I had never experienced during my twenty-one years of
o ering the Novus Ordo, and made me realize what had been stolen
from myself and others of my generation. We had been the victims
of spiritual identity theft and we hadn’t even realized it. That was
the worst part. So much was taken from us and we didn’t know it. I
can say de nitively that that is the reaction of most folks my age (53,
almost 54) and younger who still attend the Novus Ordo but sense
something isn’t quite right. After experiencing the traditional Mass
and beginning to ll in all the gaps of their spiritual life with
tradition, all they can do is proclaim loudly, “We. Were. Robbed.”[313]

We can probe more deeply into the moral dimensions of this problem by
re ecting on the fourth commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother,
that thou mayest have long life in the land that the Lord thy God will show
thee.” The philosopher Robert Spaemann was wont to ask: When we abandon
the Roman Canon and the piety of our forefathers, how are we being obedient
to this commandment in its ecclesial reality? We have not only biological
fathers and mothers, but spiritual ones as well. In the words of the prophet
Isaiah: “Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is
burned up with re: and all our pleasant things are laid waste” (Is 64:11).
By rejecting centuries of Catholic liturgy and devotion, the clergy involved
in the liturgical reform of the 1960s and 1970s were, in essence, trash-talking
their Mother. They were outrageously violating the fourth commandment:
“Honor thy father [God in His Providence] and thy mother [the Church in her
order of worship and her customs].” It was a sin of, and against, the spiritual
paternity of the priest, who is supposed to pass on the family inheritance, the
social and cultural life of the people—a transmission far more important than
that of mere biological life.[314]
What we do to, or with, our family inheritance shows what we think of
our father and of our entire family. Whatever one might say about rococo
churches or ddleback chasubles, no one can deny that such things as the
Latin missal’s content, the Gregorian chant that cantillates it, and the eastward
orientation are central, constitutive, and characteristic treasures of our
patrimony. Therefore the proponents and adherents of the liturgical reform
cannot escape culpability (to varying degrees) for the grave sins of patricide,
matricide, pride, ingratitude, and contempt. These are the very same sins as
those of the Prodigal Son—and they can be expiated, and their bitter fruits
overcome, only in the same way: “Father, I have sinned against heaven
[Providence] and against you [the Latin tradition]; I no longer deserve to be
called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.” Take me on as a
servant who will punctiliously serve the family once again and devote himself
to its well-being.
Sebastian Morello synthesizes the various points I have been making:

Only by recovering a love for its own tradition as a gift

providentially bestowed down the centuries will the Church
respond to the dual crisis of loss of meaning and loss of authority....
The Church is thwarted in bestowing its gift upon mankind
because, in its ongoing repudiation of its own tradition, it is
currently preoccupied in killing its father and mother....

Latin Christians have long emphasised “assent,” and hence the

possession of ideas, over existential transformation through right
worship (an emphasis that has only swelled due to the unexamined
acceptance of the rationalist paradigm). It is unsurprising, then, that
serious Catholicism is more likely to be found online—where ideas
are o ered and bought up—than in the local church. And those
Catholics who have retained the organic conception of the Church
as the institution that gifts to the baptised the virtues of right
relationality with God—a conception of the Christian as a liturgical
creature—have for some time now been actively persecuted by the
incumbents of the Church’s highest o ces. Such Catholics are seen
 as betrayers of the modern project of Enlightened man, whom the
Church’s leaders have enthroned in their demotion of Christ the
King. And in seeing such Catholics in this way, the Church’s
government is entirely correct....

The cycle of revolution and repudiation, from which the West will
never escape under Enlightened man, is rapidly aging the West, and
it will continue to do so until the West obeys the fourth
commandment and reinducts itself into its tradition.[315]

In its spirit, certainly, the commandment to honor our father and mother
carries implications in how we treat the ways of tradition and the teachings of
our parents—not only our parents individually but also our forefathers
collectively, including the Church Fathers and the hundreds of popes[316] who
handed down to their successors the inheritance each had received. The
reward of faithfulness to the commandment is obvious: a clear sense of
identity, a community life that is coherent and creative and reasonable. In
treating respectfully the traditions (and hence the teachings!) of our ancestors,
we take our place in the continuing dialogue that God started with mankind in
the persons of our rst parents. Even if the central portion of it was recorded
in the Sacred Scriptures, the dialogue of love within the family of faith
continues past the nal page of Revelation and into the history of the Church,
the Body of Christ. Faithfulness to the ecclesial fourth commandment is, one
might say, letting God continue to take part in the same discussion, with all of
its former exchanges presupposed; whereas lack of faithfulness interrupts the
discussion or starts it over from scratch—like one who would depart from the
main highway in favor of rough and di cult side paths, and who, as a
consequence, makes slow headway or gets lost or stuck. The evil fruits of
rejecting the commandment are visible in the unraveling of a society, the
waywardness, untetheredness, and confusion of the younger generations.
There is no question that this is a di cult time for Catholics who love
their faith and are eager to assist at a worthy liturgy, a Eucharistic liturgy
faithful to the purpose and signi cance of the Mass. To reap the good fruits of
life in Christ, we must follow the commandments of God in their individual,
social, and ecclesial dimensions. We must abandon the impiety of rupturing
ourselves from the common voice of tradition; we must embrace anew the
status of descendants, heirs, trustees, servants, and pupils. We must renounce
antichristic “reform” and return to form. This we will do, to be sure—if we are
Catholics of the Latin rite—by taking up once again the Latin language, in
which we will study, sing, talk, and pray. Yet we will honor our providential
Father in heaven and our holy Mother the Church most profoundly, most
coherently, most e ectively, when we take up again the Roman rite in its
integrity, bringing joy to the court of heaven with the words they once formed
on their lips and still love in their hearts.
 9

Sacri ce and Desacri cialization

The claim is often made that the traditional Roman rite conveys more clearly
than the Novus Ordo does that the Mass is a true and proper sacri ce, the
unbloody re-presentation of the bloody sacri ce of Christ on the Cross. As
this dogmatic truth is a point of central importance for living the Catholic
faith and passing it on, we ought to look into this contrast between the two
rites. Can we identify the features of the traditional Latin Mass that convey so
clearly its sacri cial nature? If we can, and if it turns out that the new rite
omits these things, we will have gained a valuable insight into the causes of the
precipitous decline in orthodox Eucharistic faith as well as a crucial indicator
of where we must look for Eucharistic revival. With a healthy fear of
omissions, I suggest the following as a start. I do not list these features in any
particular order of importance, as I believe all of them work together to
produce a cumulative and overwhelming e ect.

THE AD ORIENTEM STANCE

In every traditional liturgy, Christians face the East, the rising sun, symbol
of Christ coming in glory, and of the inextinguishable light of God.[317] When
the priest comes to the altar, stands facing east with us, and o ers the holy
gifts, it is obvious that he is doing something for us, as our mediator with God
and as the image of the one Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. He
is about the Father’s business (Lk 2:49), occupied with the work of the altar,
intent on o ering to the Most Holy Trinity the unblemished Lamb of God
who takes away our sins—there can be no illusion that Mass is all about us, in
the sense of the “self-enclosed circle” Joseph Ratzinger speaks of.[318]
Now, we can always point out that versus populum was never mandated by
Vatican II or subsequent documents and that ad orientem is perfectly
“permissible” in the Novus Ordo, but as the years go on and we see, on the one
hand, Cardinal Sarah slammed by the Vatican for endorsing ad orientem and,
on the other, Cardinal Cupich outlawing it ultra vires, we can safely say there
will never be a general return to the eastward posture in the Novus Ordo
context.[319] If it didn’t happen under Pope Benedict XVI who was deeply
favorable to it, it seems unlikely to do so in the future, when a combination of
institutional inertia and a renewed neo-modernist agenda will probably nip
most attempts at liturgical reform in the tender bud.
In truth, the traditional orientation returns whenever and wherever the
traditional liturgy returns. The “psychology” of the new Mass as it was
imposed and inculturated is wrapped up with the horizontalist mentality
Ratzinger critiques, and it will be much harder to budge this error than to re-
introduce the usus antiquior as something new and di erent, already in
possession of a consistent set of harmonizing traits.

PREPARATION AT THE FOOT OF THE ALTAR

Psalm 42, which speaks of going in unto the altar of God, of being led by
His light and His truth to the holy mountain and the tabernacle of the Lord,
of giving praise unto salvation (think of how the Mass is referred to in the
Roman Canon as the “sacri cium laudis”), makes for an ideal entry into the
Mass. This Psalm is shot through with the language of o ering, sacri ce,
su ering, the hope of redemption—all of which highlight the forthcoming
mystical re-presentation of the Passion of our Lord.
The extensive penitential rite emphasizes that we are setting about a
serious work, not something to take lightly. The human psyche cannot help
but wonder: “What’s it all about? What are we preparing to do?” The fairly
substantial delay between the opening sign of the cross and the recitation of
the Introit at the altar a ords a much-needed opportunity to orient oneself
toward the forthcoming sacri ce, to express sorrow for sins, and to beg for
mercy. As Will Haun explains:

The priest makes the Sign of the Cross and says with the servers
(this is the English translation of the Latin), “I will go into the altar
of God, the God who giveth joy to my youth.” Then the priest
begins Psalm 42, where the rst words out of his mouth are, “Judge
me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not
holy; deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.” Judge me, O
God. Could any phrase be, both at the same time, an intense counter
to the self-oriented conception of conscience and also an entirely
 appropriate statement before we ascend to the throne of God
Himself? God knows all that we are, and so before any one of us
presume to go to the altar where he sacri ces Himself for us, we
must acknowledge that frankly we don’t deserve to be there. None
of us do, and [it’s] only by His grace and mercy that we are delivered
from the unjust and deceitful man—which, if we’re honest with
ourselves, is us. It could be ourselves at any moment, and it is the
God who gives joy to our youth that, despite all of our aws, lets us
have the Church that, by [our] submitting to the sacraments and the
power that He gave it, allows us to access Him.[320]

Anyone who has ever served the Latin Mass and made these responses with
understanding knows how piercing they are—even as Will Haun describes
them. The little boys who most often parrot the words do not understand
them, but they have memorized them, and the words have settled into the
innermost recesses of their souls, where they may later blossom—as they have
done in me, decades after I rst heard them. That is how the old rite works:
with immense patience, on a slow time-scale, playing the long game.
Unfortunately, these prayers at the foot of the altar were entirely abolished in
the Novus Ordo. Never was any edit more e cient and more stupid.

SEPARATION OF PRIEST FROM PEOPLE

There are many ways in which the old rite clearly distinguishes between
the priest and the people—they are not lumped together, as in the modern rite,
but are treated in accordance with their ontological distinction.[321] For
example, the priest recites the Con teor rst, for himself, and then the servers
recite the Con teor, which serves as an occasion for the people to confess their
sins in league with them. At High Mass, he and he alone intones the Gloria
and the Creed, and then continues to recite them separately, while the people
or the choir sing.[322] In the O ertory, the Suscipe, Sancte Pater strongly
brings out the priest’s role as mediator, as well as his personal sinfulness:

Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this unspotted

host, which I, Thy unworthy servant, o er unto Thee, my living and
true God, for my innumerable sins, o enses, and negligences, and
for all here present: as also for all faithful Christians, both living
 and dead, that it may avail both me and them for salvation unto life
everlasting. Amen.

The priest receives Holy Communion rst, in order to complete the sacri ce,
and only then o ers it to the people. He says the Domine, non sum dignus
three times, and only afterwards do the servers or the people say it three times.
[323] The Placeat tibi once again brings out the special role of the priest:

May the performance of my homage be pleasing to Thee, O holy

Trinity: and grant that the Sacri ce which I, though unworthy, have
o ered up in the sight of Thy Majesty, may be acceptable to Thee,
and through Thy mercy, be a propitiation for me, and for all those
for whom I have o ered it.

Such is not the prayer of a mere “presider” or “president of the assembly.”[324]

How is such distinction and separation pertinent to our theme? Consider
the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Every high priest taken from
among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he
may o er up gifts and sacri ces for sins” (Heb 5:1; cf. 2:17, 8:3). This is the
de nition of a priest: the one who, as a mediator, o ers gifts and sacri ces for
sins. Anything that detracts from or mutes the clear expression of the priestly
o ce also detracts from the sacri cial quality of his actions. The priest at the
altar truly acts in persona Christi, in a way qualitatively di erent from the
ways in which the laity or subordinate ministers participate, and the old Mass
brings this out with total clarity. Surely its luminous expression of this high-
priestly mediation is part of the reason why the priesthood is viewed and
treated with more esteem and respect in communities centered on the
traditional Mass, and why vocations from them will always be proportionally
more numerous, as it places in relief the attractive and lofty beauty of the
ministerial priesthood’s special conformity to Christ.

THE MANY KISSINGS OF THE ALTAR

When rst introduced to traditional Catholic worship in my twenties, I
remember my delight at noticing how much more often the priest kisses the
altar in the old rite than in the new rite, where he does so only twice—at the
start and at the nish of Mass. What a desperate relinquishment of meaning,
beauty, and a ection can be seen in this reduction! The many kisses in the usus
antiquior draw our attention to the altar again and again throughout Mass,
putting our focus there, at the place of the sacri ce for which the priest has
been ordained, to which he continually ascends, with which he is intimately
united as one of the chosen friends of Our Lord. Since the altar represents
Christ, these kisses are genuine tokens of love, service, and devotion to Him. It
is one more of those small but poignant ways in which the traditional Mass
keeps one’s mind and heart xed on the Lord and on the immensity of His
love for us—expressed above all in His Passion—and how its symbols prompt
in us a desire to return love for love.[325]

THE PRAYERS THEMSELVES

The traditional O ertory prayers, the Roman Canon, and the Placeat tibi
express to absolute perfection the doctrine of the Mass as a true, proper,
expiatory, impetratory sacri ce for the living and for the dead—a doctrine
given its consummate formulation by the Council of Trent and surrounded
with a sturdy hedge of anathemas.
The O ertory rite is one of the Mass’s medieval gems, present in a variety
of forms across all of Europe in every rite and use. It was stripped away and
discarded as a “medieval accretion” by the antiquarianist reformers of both the
sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. The Roman Canon, which some of the
more zealous Modernists of Paul VI’s era wanted to expunge altogether from
their avant-garde Missal, is always used in the traditional Latin Mass—no
surprise, since it is the de ning feature of the Roman rite. Lump the entire
committee-created smorgasbord of alternative Eucharistic Prayers together
and it will still not succeed in expressing the doctrine of the sacri ce of the
Mass as lucidly and reverentially as the Roman Canon does all by itself. At
their best, these other Eucharistic Prayers are novel constructs free of
doctrinal errors; at their worst, they seem to dance around doctrine, for fear of
excluding Lutherans from the table of plenty.

THE SILENCE OF THE CANON

The silence that falls upon the church during the Roman Canon is one of
the most beautiful features of the usus antiquior. You can be at the most
glorious Mass in the world, with organs and choirs to vie with the angels—but
when it comes time for the great miracle, everyone falls silent and adores. The
elevations are like visual thunder in the midst of this inaudible storm of
prayer. Bells erupt into a hushed space, heightening our awareness still further,
so that every sense is strained, and yet the heart is at peace. The cavernous
silence makes it obvious, again, just like the ad orientem posture, that the
priest is focused on the great work of our redemption, something obviously
from God and for God; it isn’t about you—at least, not immediately; it is about
Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, and therefore about you and me
inasmuch as we are His members.[326]

ELEVATIONS WITHIN TWOFOLD GENUFLECTIONS

The fact that the priest is instructed in the Novus Ordo to elevate the host
or the chalice immediately after consecration and only afterwards to genu ect
before the Lord is clearly a change of which nothing good can be said, even by
papal maximalists. The traditional purpose of elevating the host and chalice is
to give the faithful an opportunity to adore the Blessed Sacrament after the
priest has rst adored It; the host and chalice must be raised up because the
priest is facing eastwards and his body is blocking our view of the consecrated
gifts. To the miracle of transubstantiation, there is no more natural, obvious,
correct, and pious reaction than immediately to drop down on one’s knee in
adoration. The twofold genu ection of the usus antiquior—that is, both before
the elevation and after it—conveys the humble awe and tting homage of the
servant before his Master, the creature before his Creator. This unmistakable
emphasis on the reality of the divine Victim, like so many other details, serves
to underline the Mass as a true sacri ce, not merely a symbolic one.[327]
Moreover, with the lifting of the chasuble, the repeated ringing of bells,
and often clouds of incense, the elevation at a traditional Latin Mass is a far
more emphatic moment, feeding multiple senses with a richer symbolism. As
William Mahrt writes:

When the Mass is celebrated facing the altar ([the priest] facing God
and not just turning his back on the people), the sacrament is
consecrated in an aura of mystery and wonder, and when it is
elevated for the people’s adoration, they see it as something to be
worshipped. When the Mass is celebrated at the altar facing the
people, they see every action of the priest, after which the elevation
is not as great a climax.[328]
 The elevation is the visual high point of the Mass, a gesture that reminds
us of the o ering of the Son to the Father, the spotless Lamb to the eternal
Trinity, for us men and for our salvation. No one who is paying the slightest
attention can fail to see that something dramatic is happening at this moment.
In evoking the raising up of Christ on the Cross, it rightly draws our minds to
Good Friday, the redemptive Passion, and the generosity by which Our Lord
makes this gift of Himself in our midst, lavishing upon us the same attentive
charity that He showed on Calvary to His most holy Mother and His beloved
disciple St. John. Because the Mass is a true and proper sacri ce—the very
sacri ce of Calvary, a dogma of the Catholic faith as established at Trent—it
ought to be o ered in a way that does not look like the Passover meal of Holy
Thursday, which was done in anticipation of the redemptive sacri ce yet to
come.
In the Novus Ordo context, we end up with neither a straight-out
sacri cial setting nor a straight-out social meal setting but an incongruous
blend of the two that makes the result neither sh nor fowl. For this reason,
the new liturgy will never satisfy either the progressives or the conservatives,
and that is why its ars celebrandi has been a tug-of-war for over fty years.
The old liturgy is not a tug-of-war in this way, because it, like all apostolic
rites, plainly puts the sacri cial o ering front and center, and ranges
everything else around that.

THE PRIEST’S COMMUNION AND ABLUTIONS

As with the preparation at the foot of the altar, the seriousness with which
the priest receives Communion in the usus antiquior—the greater number and
amplitude of the prayers, the reciting of verses from the psalms, the more
deliberate handling of the chalice (making the sign of the cross with it), etc.—
reinforces the solemnity of the moment, the fact that he is indeed partaking of
the holy, awesome, immortal and life-giving mysteries of Christ. The
ablutions, more ample in their prayers and in their thoroughness, involving
the washing of fore nger, thumb, and chalice with wine and water, underline
the same truth, and prevent the priest from incurring the enormous guilt of
treating the Son of God carelessly; his holding of thumb and fore nger
together from the consecration until ablutions vividly accentuates this care.
The Communion rite and the ablutions together emphasize the reality of the
sacri cial Victim made present in our midst by the consecration, once again
showing that what we do around the consecration, before and after, is by no
means negligible to the overall understanding of what is happening in the
Mass.
In the Novus Ordo most of these prayers and ablutions were abolished,
with horrifying results witnessed by countless sacristans, servers, and
attendees. The simpli cation of these elements of the Mass has not
encouraged orthodox faith in the Holy Eucharist as the true Body and Blood
of Christ or the Mass as His true and proper sacri ce.

THE LAST GOSPEL

The almost-daily recitation of the Prologue of the Gospel of Saint John
after the nal blessing reinforces that the drama at which we have been
present is a kind of continuation of the mystery of the Incarnation itself. It is
the knowledge of this awesome reality that sustains Catholics who, for
whatever reason, may not receive Communion at a given Mass; they are there
because the Mass is, in and of itself, the ultimate act of adoration, praise,
thanksgiving, and supplication—not because it is a glori ed Communion
service.

ASSESSMENT AND PROSPECTS

As regards the “reform of the reform,” one might note the sobering fact
that the Novus Ordo as it now stands, even with its cornucopia of options, can
emulate only a few of the features described above, and only in hothouse
circumstances. Most of these elements are so far from its ethos and rubrics
that the new rite would have to be signi cantly overhauled to accommodate
them. Let’s face it: the architects of the new rite wanted to evict what they
regarded as an imbalanced medieval emphasis on the Eucharistic sacri ce, in
order to reorient the celebration on the “people of God” as the “Body of
Christ.”[329] That is why they went through the old rite deliberately removing
nearly everything listed above. And that is why the reintroduction of the usus
antiquior appalls the progressives, unsettles them like the sound of ngernails
on a chalkboard: they know it is a rejection of the doctrinal modernism and
the moral laxity they stand for, of all that they have attempted to impose and
permanently enshrine in their postconciliar “renewal.”
It is not possible to attend the traditional Latin Mass and not, at some
level, experience it as a ritual of sacri ce, as the o ering of the Son of God in
His human nature to the Most Holy Trinity. The above-mentioned features,
which are part and parcel of the rite and cannot be omitted, plainly teach and
demonstrate this. Conversely, even a catechized Catholic will have more
di culty seeing the truth about the Mass in the new rite. Because the
reformers introduced a new focus on the community and its active
participation, the sacri cial prayers and ceremonies—most of them the
province of the priest and the other ministers in the sanctuary—had to be
reduced or eliminated. This new populist or congregational direction con icts
with a heightened awareness of the immediate and proper meaning of the
mysteries being enacted.
It is true that once we have understood that the Mass is the sacri ce of
Christ, the head of the Mystical Body, it then becomes possible for us to
understand it as our sacri ce, the ultimate act of charity that unites us as
members of the same Body.[330] But the horizontal depends utterly on the
vertical, the human on the divine, the Christian community on Christ’s
priesthood and sacri ce.
Another way of putting this is to say that the primary realities are what
the liturgy is made to embody and communicate, so that the secondary
realities may ow forth in abundance. It is far more important to be brought
into contact with the Body and Blood of the all-pleasing Victim than it is to
be brought into fellowship with one’s neighbor; the latter will be nothing but
shallow pleasantry and empty goodwill until it is deeply and radically united
with Jesus Christ in the mystery of His very Person. The usus antiquior, in all
its dimensions, is focused unambiguously on the primary realities. This is
where it dwells; this is where it leads us, habitually, relentlessly: it is a road to
Calvary with no exits, pull-o s, culverts, or detours.
The Novus Ordo seems to o er two roads: the vertical and the horizontal,
which sometimes run parallel, very occasionally merge, but most of the time
run o in opposite directions, with the celebrant and/or community choosing
one or the other, but not both. At its best, it weakly imitates the transcendent
verticality and pure focus on the sacri ce found in the traditional Latin Mass;
at its worst, it becomes a paraliturgy expressive of a religion other than the
Catholic, with a valid consecration stranded forlornly in its midst, like a
castaway on a desert island. With this “divided mind,” as it were, hesitating and
hovering between primary and secondary—a weakness augmented by its vast
diversity of possible implementations—the Novus Ordo is a true re ection of
the divided mind of its designers, intent as they were on rapprochement with
the world, modernity, and Protestantism, as well as a contributing cause of the
divided mind within the Church today, whereby Catholics seem to want to be
“Catholic” and, at the same time, believe and live in ways that are antithetical
to the Faith.
Once a Catholic profoundly embraces the truth that the principal purpose
of the Mass is to o er up the one and only all-pleasing sacri ce to God for the
life of the world and to receive its spiritual fruits, it will be di cult or
impossible for that Catholic to tolerate the Novus Ordo. He will begin the
search for a Mass that “looks” like what the Mass actually is, where the clergy
and laity act, and receive, as if they know what it is; where every prayer, every
gesture, the music, the expected behavior, all bear witness to what it is. Once
he encounters the traditional Latin Mass, he will recognize deep within that
this is the Catholic Mass, the liturgy that embodies the Faith of the Church. In
time he will switch over to this Mass; it will be necessary to drop all pretenses
and admit that he has nally found his place at the foot of the Cross, with the
Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John—and there’s no going back.

CONSEQUENCES OF DESACRIFICIALIZATION
The trouble does not end with a loss of focus on the mystery of the saving
Passion of the Lord and the ensuing false belief or lack of belief in the
constitutive essence of the Mass. There are ripple e ects, the foremost of
which is the removal of the tabernacle from the high altar, its being shunted
aside in the majority of churches designed since the Council. There are many
reasons one could give for this decentering of our Lord Jesus Christ in the
miracle of His abiding Eucharistic Presence among us, including specious
academic rationales refuted by better scholars. But it may be that a subtler
dynamic was also at work (and, sadly, sometimes still is).
As I discussed above, the classical Roman rite enshrines and expresses in
the most perfect way the reality that the Mass is essentially the Sacri ce of
Calvary made present in our midst, the immolation of the Son of God who
wrought our salvation by His death of love on the Cross and never ceases to
enfold us in it down through the ages.
The expression of this sacri cial dimension is not merely muted in the
Novus Ordo, it is largely absent. In a vernacular Mass said versus populum in
the usual manner, with Eucharistic Prayer II as a default, how much is there in
text or ceremony that strongly and unambiguously conveys the Sacri ce of the
Cross? Granted, the new O ertory retained one unambiguously sacri cial
phrase from the old missal: “Pray, brethren, that my sacri ce and yours may be
acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” In the traditional Roman rite,
however, the O ertory more luminously foreshadows this very sacri ce, clearly
establishing the priest’s right intention; the Roman Canon is permeated with
the language of oblation and sacri ce; the consecrations for which the
O ertory prepares, with their twofold genu ections and glorious elevations in
the midst of an ocean of silence, piercingly evoke the lifting up of the Son of
Man on Golgotha (Jn 3:14; Jn 12:32). In contrast, one might say that the Novus
Ordo emphasizes the presence of Christ in our midst, but not His sacri ce.[331]
An omission of such an O ertory, especially against the backdrop of centuries
of having it, seems to assert that the use of bread and wine is primarily for the
purpose of sharing a meal. This suggestion is dangerous, as it would be
contrary to Catholic doctrine.
The danger manifests itself in a di erence in catechesis that follows upon
the di erence in phenomenology, that is, in how things appear to the viewer.
When teaching children what happens at Mass, one ideally says something like
the following, which comes in di erent packagings for di erent age levels:

Jesus dying on the Cross o ered His life to God, so that sins could
be washed away by His precious Blood. Jesus wanted to make it
possible for us to be right there, so that our sins could be washed
away, too, and we could be one with Him. So, He gave us the Mass.
The priest at the altar takes bread and wine, as Jesus did at the Last
Supper, and, by God’s power, changes these things into the Body and
Blood of Jesus and raises them up on high, as Jesus was raised up
high on the Cross. God rejoices in this perfect gift of His Son and,
in His love for Him and for us who belong to Him, He lets us
receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Communion. This makes us
as completely one with Jesus as we can be in this life; the Father is
pleased with us as He is pleased with His Son; and we are prepared
for heaven, when it is our turn to permanently o er up our own life
to God, with Jesus, at the moment of our death.
 Granted, one might nd a better way of putting it, but something along
those lines will get a conversation going. Yet what really struck me years ago in
working with my own children was how little catechesis, relatively speaking,
was required in order for them to be able to perceive the meaning of the
gestures of the priest at the traditional Mass—and how powerfully those
gestures remind us of truths we have learned and continually reinforce them.
Once you know a little about what Jesus did at the Last Supper and on Good
Friday, the actions and prayers practically hit you over the head with a chain of
mysteries—mediation, redemption, atonement, satisfaction, adoration. It
doesn’t take much training to see in the traditional Mass an awesome sacri ce
joining earth to heaven, the sinner to the Savior, the altar to the cross.
Conversely, I discovered that children did not as easily see the same
connections at the Novus Ordo Masses we attended. The connections were
not nearly so obvious. This Mass seemed rather di erent in its purpose—more
focused on the people, with a lot of talking, winding up with the reception of
Communion. What was most of all hidden to the senses was that this liturgy is
a sacri ce. It looks more like a handling of bread and wine over a table, a meal
in imitation of the Last Supper. What I realized, to my chagrin, is that I had to
assert, without much in the way of supporting evidence, that the Novus Ordo
really was the Holy Sacri ce, even though it didn’t look like it, not having the
old rite’s marvelous array of texts and ceremonies to underline the sacri cial
nature of the action.
That bothered me then, and it still bothers me now. It’s as if the new rite
was designed by someone who wanted it not to be easy to perceive, by the
combined strength of a simple catechism and a complex liturgy, that the Mass
is the unbloody re-presentation of the bloody sacri ce of Our Lord on Calvary.
In the sphere of the Novus Ordo we need a complex catechism to go with a
simple liturgy; otherwise the truth won’t be known. Because the liturgy does
not embody and proclaim the truth with resounding clarity, we have to spend
more time explaining, asserting, and keeping our ngers crossed that the
brittle deism will not yield to the ravages of forgetfulness, boredom, or
heresy.

WHY WERE THE TABERNACLES MOVED?

After the Second Vatican Council, in countless churches across the world,
the tabernacle housing the Blessed Sacrament was moved away from a central
position of honor at the high altar, o to a side chapel or sometimes to a
refurbished broom closet. In the church of the high school I attended, it would
have been impossible to know where the tabernacle was without asking for
directions, as it was hidden in a cave-like room that blended into the rest of
the modernist aesthetic. While many rationalizations have been given for this
exile of the Host, I have a theory about why it took place at the same time as
the liturgical reform.
The overwhelming miracle of Our Lord’s Real Presence in the Blessed
Sacrament, reserved in the tabernacle, sets, if you will, a challenge to the Mass.
To speak in halting human terms, the only way the Mass could be or do
something greater than that miracle—the only way there could be no
confusion of di erent “orders” of symbolism—is if the liturgy had the
wherewithal to show forth the very Sacri ce that allows for the abiding
presence of the divine Victim in the tabernacle. In other words, the Mass must
be seen and felt to outweigh the tabernacle, so that there can be no confusion
between the two orders: Sacri ce and Presence.
That this is the case with the traditional Mass vis-à-vis the Tabernacle I
have no doubt; even in European churches housing enormous gilded
tabernacles bedecked with extravagant decoration, the ancient Mass holds its
own, drawing all eyes and hearts to itself while it is happening and remaining
the total master of the building, the altar, and the furnishings. It is clearly the
reason for everything else, and its earnest spirit of prayer, with invisible arms
spread out and raised aloft, gathers all into a single o ering of praise.
In contrast, a centrally-located tabernacle has the wherewithal to
overwhelm the Novus Ordo, which is, in many respects, thin and fragile,
barely able to hold its own in a magni cent church or at a splendid high altar.
The Sacri ce is phenomenologically overshadowed by the Presence (both as it
resides in the Tabernacle and as it will reside upon the table). Therefore, by a
kind of instinct for compensation, “the Tabernacle has to go!”: it must be
removed, decentralized, hidden, so that a shy liturgy can muster some
communicative force of its own. The liturgy has to be unobstructed, with no
symbolic competition and no larger context, or it will vanish into the
background. It has to claim as much space for itself as it can and push out all
vestiges of a world of greater mass and gravity.
Doesn’t this make more sense out of the postconciliar epidemic of
ecclesiastical wreckovations and artistic monstrosities? Not only must the
tabernacle go, but so must the high altar, and maybe the cruci x or stained-
glass windows or elevated pulpit or Communion rail, etc., etc. Maybe we need
to tear it all down and replace it with an empty gray box that has no
symmetrical curves and no ornamentation. At last, against that sterile stage,
the clean, e cient, succinct lines of the Novus Ordo will ring out with
metallic clarity! And the people who still care for old-fashioned “devotions”
might nd the reserved Sacrament behind or over to the side somewhere, as if
placed in an Ordinary Time-out.[332]

THE NEED TO REPEAT WHAT IS NOT EVIDENT

Why, ever since the liturgical reform, has there been so great a need for
the Church’s pastors to emphasize the truth—never disputed since the Council
of Trent—that the Mass is really and truly a sacri ce? Why such a stream of
papal and curial documents, most of them ignored? Why do the statistics get
worse and worse?
If what is done at the Novus Ordo Mass looked more like a sacri ce, if it
expressed the sacri cial reality in a sensible and intelligible way, there would
be no need for endless reassertions and clari cations. The doctrine that the
Mass is a true and proper sacri ce was taught de de by the Council of Trent
and all denials of it were anathematized. The Mass of St. Pius V embodies that
Tridentine doctrine perfectly. As long as the Mass remains faithful to a
general principle of sacramentality—namely, that something signi es what it
does and does what it signi es—it will be known to do what it really does by a
manifest and unambiguous signi cation. In a passage I cited earlier (p. 93),
Ratzinger pinpointed this connection with Trent in the liturgy wars:

Only against this background of the e ective denial of the authority

of Trent can one understand the bitterness of the struggle against
allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal after
the liturgical reform. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes
the strongest and thus (for them) the most intolerable contradiction
of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist
formulated by Trent has lost its validity.[333]

We have seen the polls that prove the loss of faith among Catholics in the
real, substantial presence of Our Lord in “the Most Blessed Sacrament of the
Altar” (as everyone used to call it). What would be enormously interesting to
see is a poll that, having rst with a few deft questions identi ed Catholics
who attend the Novus Ordo and Catholics who attend the traditional Latin
Mass, proceeded to ask each group: “Do you believe that the Mass is a real
sacri ce—that of Christ on the Cross?” It is not hard to imagine the results:
many in the former group would say no (as a matter of fact, more than a few
might be surprised or shocked at the question itself, because it would be
introducing a concept they might never have heard of), while most if not all of
the latter group would say yes. Their answers would tend to mirror their
experience of the liturgy.
If someone says that the di erence in results can be readily explained by
Latin Mass-goers being a self-selecting and highly specialized portion of the
faithful who tend to be better catechized than the mainstream, that only
pushes the question further back. Why are the more serious Catholics so often
found at the usus antiquior? Why, when they have a choice, is this their choice?
Why are the faithful who attend it more inclined to seek their own ongoing
formation and to o er authentic catechetical formation to their children? One
cannot appeal to more or less adequate catechesis without pointing to a real
empirical connection between the level of catechesis and the type of liturgy
attended. The causality ows in both directions. The classic axiom lex orandi,
lex credendi tells us not only that the way we pray shapes the way we believe,
but also that what we believe is going to shape the way we pray—and the
choices we make about where and how we pray as Catholics. The fact that
more educated and more devout Catholics frequently select the usus antiquior
Mass a rms the very point I am arguing: if those who believe what the
Church teaches and wish to worship according to it seek out the usus
antiquior, often making great sacri ces to get to it, or if they rejoice in it when
they unexpectedly discover it, doesn’t that indicate a massive lack in the
Church’s mainstream worship and a contrasting perfection in the classical
form? Nor can we take seriously the view that the problem is a failure to
implement the “real intentions” of the Council or of Paul VI. For over fty
years, the vast majority of celebrations of the Novus Ordo have been
conducted in a spirit of rupture and discontinuity with the Catholic past, yet
almost nothing has been done to correct the status quo. This indicates a tacit
acceptance of the connection between the new liturgy and the rupture with
ecclesiastical tradition, which has now become an explicit and deliberate policy
under Traditionis Custodes and Cardinal Roche’s Dicastery for Divine
Worship.
Chad Pecknold suggests that we should pay closer attention to the
“counter-catechesis” at work in the new rite:

Many have said that the Pew study [of August 2019] re ects a
catechetical failure. I fear the opposite: it re ects a certain kind of
catechetical success. It is the result of an unwritten catechesis that
American Catholics have been slowly learning. Through a
deracinated, spiritualistic, and emotivistic treatment of the
Eucharist, many Catholics have learned their faith from a
generation of pastors who stripped the altars, razed the bastions of
reverence around the Lord in the sacrament, and generally treated
the Most Holy Eucharist itself as something to be passed out like a
lea et rather than received in awe, as people prostrate before the re
of divinity. Far too many have received this kind of unwritten
catechesis.

It’s past time that our pastors preach what St. Cyril of Alexandria
taught. Namely that the Eucharist is divine re. Mistreat it, and it
will burn you. The whole “razing of the bastions” theme has played
itself out to disastrous e ect in the Church. The bastions turned out
to be things like altar rails, and liturgical actions which conform us
to the reality of the Eucharist. The Pew study proves that it’s time to
put the bastions back.[334]

Although its inherent purpose is the glori cation of God and the
sancti cation of man, the liturgy has always been a powerful catechizer. With
the reformed Mass, there is a dearth of symbolic and textual catechesis at the
heart of Catholic life. Although repetition is always necessary for human
learning, a distinction must be made between repetition that works because it
functions mnemonically and repetition that indicates a failure of something’s
actually “sticking.” Catechists, preachers, and parents locked into the Novus
Ordo need to keep repeating that “the Mass IS a sacri ce” because the modern
rite has so little that even remotely suggests it. Trying to convince people that
they should believe something when what they see or hear con icts with or
even fails to acknowledge what they are supposed to believe is, to say the least,
an uphill battle.[335]

A FIRE THAT WARMS AND ILLUMINATES THE SAINTS

The di erence between the usus antiquior and the Novus Ordo is
experienced on many levels: on the aesthetic level (what we are seeing and
hearing); on the emotional level (what we are feeling); on the intellectual level
(what we are thinking, what we know in faith to be taking place); on the
devotional level (how we are praying, how we enter into the mystery). Without
doubting that the same representation of the sacri ce of Calvary is objectively
present in both the classical and the modern rites of Mass, traditionalists
believe that it is time—indeed, well past time—for leaders in the Church to
assess the damage that has been done and is being done to the spiritual lives of
the faithful by a de cient and ambiguous liturgical form, and to address the
lack of due homage it pays to almighty God in proportion to its lack of clarity
in expressing what it o ers Him and why.
It would be one thing if, living back in the earliest centuries, at a time of
transition from Hebrew rituals and of bitter Roman persecution, we had on
our hands a fairly simple liturgical form that (so to speak) could do no better
and was giving its all—like a healthy, shiny, promising acorn that cannot be
blamed for not being already a mature and majestic oak tree. But that was not
at all the situation of Roman Catholics in the 1960s. We had a venerable,
orthodox, richly-developed rite of Mass beloved to countless clergy, religious,
and laity, a rite that gave glory to God in its richness, fullness, and beauty.
Every text, gesture, and sign that pointed to the sublime sacri ce of charity
was a way for the Church to tell her Lord, her Bridegroom, that she loved
Him, would never be parted from Him, would rather die than leave Him. This
is what was rejected by the reformers and, in the maelstrom of the Council, by
priests and religious in their thousands whose rst love grew cold.
But those who are searching anew for ways to express the extravagance and
inebriation of love know where to look. We will look to that re which
warmed and illuminated the great saints, who are the greatest lovers—the re
that burned as a bright beacon for contemplatives and, like a raging
con agration in their bones, drove restless missionaries to plant the Cross of
Christ in soil and souls across the entire globe. Age after age, it will always
satisfy those who hunger and thirst for a righteousness not of this world. We
rejoice, again and again, to be the unworthy heirs of such a tremendous
liturgical treasure as the traditional Roman rite of the Mass, which beautifully,
reverently, and unambiguously expresses, con rms, and exults in the holy
mysteries of the Catholic faith.
 10

Time for the Soul to Absorb the Mysteries

The Lord has blessed me in my life with three crucial experiences that have
molded my understanding of the sacred liturgy. The rst is the privilege of
having been able to sing chant and polyphony at Sunday High Masses (and
sometimes feastdays) in the usus antiquior for the better part of thirty years.
The second is the privilege of having been able to participate frequently in the
Byzantine Divine Liturgy, particularly in the period when I taught at the
International Theological Institute in Austria, where we sang the liturgy on
di erent days in Ukrainian, Romanian, and English, with bits of Church
Slavonic and Greek. The third is the privilege of having been given many
opportunities to lead music at a high level of beauty and artistic competence
for the Novus Ordo, in (more or less) “reform of the reform” settings. The
many lessons I have learned from this continual “trilingual” exposure inform
every page of this book. In the present chapter, I would like to focus on just
one conclusion that has become more and more clear to me as the years go on.
As the liturgy developed historically and its ritual and aesthetic elements
became more fully developed, it seems that the Christian clergy and people
followed an unerring instinct towards the creation of prayers, chants, and
ceremonies that allow time for the soul to absorb the meaning of what is
happening. This psychological-spiritual opening up of space and time for the
soul’s growth is accomplished in many ways in di erent rites or rituals. It is
done through repetitious prayers, as in the Byzantine litanies, many of them
redundant, though always eloquently worded; it is done through periods of
silence between periods of proclamation; it is done through motions,
processions, non-verbal actions; it is done most of all through meditative
chants that do not seem to be in any hurry to be nished, and which allow the
mind a certain holy leisure or rest. There are repetitions, gaps, spaces, pauses,
and visual signs that do not demand of the mind the constant tackling of new
ideas or concepts, but permit it to dwell or linger somewhere before moving
on. A traditional liturgy is like a winding path up a steep mountain, with open
ledges on which one can rest before continuing. In this way, it emulates the
spiral motion, the combination of the straight and the circular, that Dionysius
the Areopagite envisages as the soul’s path into God. There is a forward
progression, yes, but it takes its time winding around, in order to move up at a
human pace. Attempting to go straight up or straight in would defeat us.
The classical Roman rite of Mass, particularly in the form of the High
Mass or Solemn Mass, admirably displays the spiritual pedagogy of the spiral
motion, the frequent ledges, the moments of prayerful repose, before
continuing on with our climb up Mount Calvary, Mount Tabor, Mount Sion.
In contrast, the Novus Ordo is designed in a manner contrary to this spiritual
pedagogy, and thwarts the soul’s ascent up the holy mountain.

THE PROCESSIONS
Traditional liturgical rites of East and West are fertile in processions. We
are pilgrims and we act out our condition. A town, the grounds of a church,
and the church’s interior o er a symbolic geography to be covered and
converted as we move from point to point. The time it takes for a leisurely
procession is one of the most important “burnt o erings” we can raise up,
since our time is, in a way, our life and energy.
The Holy Sacri ce of the Mass, in particular, should open with a stately,
unrushed procession of splendidly vested ministers towards the sanctuary,
accompanied by grand music (instrumental or choral or both). Those ministers
represent us, and we are walking with them to the Holy of Holies. This is a
solemn and wonderful moment, with its own distinctive meaning and
satisfaction. Why do we completely spoil the e ect by asking people to put
their noses in a hymn book? The choir or schola should be lifting our minds to
God and allowing us to experience this procession as a procession, with all our
senses in act. Where the procession is well done, it becomes an occasion of
journeying to a higher place, free of the baggage of the workaday world’s
nagging necessities.
On Sundays, we are treated to the Asperges, a sprinkling with holy water
that puts us in mind of our baptism and remits our venial sins.[336]

THE PRAYERS AT THE FOOT OF THE ALTAR

Then we come to the marvelous preparatory prayers, in which the
traditional liturgy pauses for a breath at the end of the procession and, rather
than striding right up to the altar, holds back to recite Psalm 42, the Con teor
(twice), and versicles and prayers expressive of the forthcoming sacri ce. We
are suspended between the entrance and the commencement, the intention
and the execution, and our souls can expand, adjust, collaborate, gear up to
move on. It reminds me of the process whereby one’s eyes adjust themselves to
the indoors when one enters a dark room from a bright sunny day outside.
Our spiritual sight is accustomed to the garish day, with its obvious objects
and con dent navigation. In divine worship we are being drawn into the
interior, the innermost, the mystery that is luminously dark, caliginously
blazing, and we do not know our way. We need some time to adjust. What
blessed minutes, which carry us gently yet irresistibly into the sphere of the
divine!
The Novus Ordo’s absence of prayers at the foot of the altar has the e ect
of a race that starts o with a bang! and no time for stretching and preparing.
The lack of appropriate humility in keeping an initial distance, bowing to
confess, ascending with petitions, kissing the altar, and nally arriving at the
Introit as after a pilgrimage, is among the most irritating, not to say impious,
aspects of the new rite. And this is not something that can be xed by well-
intentioned priests, as it is hard-wired into it.

FROM THE INTROIT TO THE LESSON

Whether we are at a Low Mass or a High Mass, one of the greatest
blessings of the TLM is that, on the one hand, we are gently drawn into
prayer, as if by an invisible guide nudging us forward, and, on the other hand,
we are not immediately talked to and expected to talk back. We are surely
participating in the unfolding drama, but we are not targeted and harried; the
activity does not get bogged down in a closed circle, like a boring classroom.
The liturgy seems to be going on over our heads or around us or in front of us,
and we can relate to it all the more deeply because it is outside our grasp,
beyond our ken, with no possible illusions that we are the ones driving it
forward. Of course we have a role to play, and this will sometimes include
verbal responses; but the overall e ect is one of a giant motion that we can
join, if we will, that will take us somewhere our own resources could never get
us. The unfailing Introit, announcing the day’s mystery, throws down a sort of
spiritual gauntlet: “Friend, wherefore art thou come?” (Mt 26:50).[337] The
cascading Kyries, the exultant Gloria, the richly compact Collect, the apt
Lesson, invite us to come deeper and deeper into worship, putting on the
mind of Christ.

THE INTERLECTIONAL CHANTS

If the preparatory prayers seal the door to the world and habituate us to
the new climate of worship, and if the subsequent prayers and Epistle demand
of us the exercise of our spiritual capacities, it is the interlectional chants, sung
in full, that have the special power to plunge us into meditation and even
contemplation. As at other points in the Mass, multiple things can be
happening at once (the peculiar perfection called “parallel liturgy”), as when
the readings and antiphons are quietly doubled;[338] but with the Gradual and
Alleluia—or the Gradual and Tract in Lent, or the pair of Alleluias in
Paschaltide—a restfulness descends together with the chant; time seems to
stand still; the melismatic melodies draw out lovingly, syllable by syllable, the
exquisitely beloved words of God, so that we cannot rush past them, or treat
them in a utilitarian way, or think of them as mechanical responses made to a
dreary rehearsal. The chanted psalms exist in and for themselves, living
monuments of God’s faithfulness and love; we are permitted to sit in their
presence, take them into our ears, store them in our hearts. They are a ladder
let down from above on which we are bidden to climb up. In this way, the
Lesson and all that has come before has a chance to sink in, and the soil is
plowed with deep furrows for the Gospel and all that will come after.

THE OFFERTORY
It hardly needs to be said that the O ertory, with its richness of content
and ample length, is one of the parts of the traditional liturgy most
appreciated by clergy and laity alike. One does not feel, as one does in the rite
of Paul VI, rushed into the Eucharistic Prayer; there is generous time and
space for blessing and setting apart the gifts for sacri ce, making the
signi cance of their o ering known, felt.
In the Novus Ordo, the “presentation” of the bread and wine shifts
attention to the “work of human hands” and barely touches on their
connection with the o ering of sacri ce, dwelling rather on their status as
food and drink—which is true, but misplaced, since, while a sacri ce can also
be a meal, no meal, as such, is a sacri ce.[339] One strains to recognize them as
proto-sacri cial o erings that will subsequently be transformed by divine
power into the sacri ce that wins our redemption and, as a result, into the
banquet that unites us to the Savior of all; emphasis is placed rather on man’s
own work in preparing food and drink, which will become food and drink—a
true sentiment as far as it goes, but not at all the focus of the authentic
O ertories of historic apostolic rites.
The traditional O ertory is a dramatic caesura, a long drawn-out breath in
which we clearly show forth what we are about to do and how it will redound
to our bene t, unworthy though we are to approach the awesome mysteries of
Christ. That O ertory makes it possible for us to participate fruitfully in the
Canon of the Mass. Without it, something vital is missing. Even worse, when
the modern rabbinical-sounding pseudo-O ertory is combined with the
second Eucharistic Prayer, the sacri cial portion of the Mass—its very essence
—can pass by so rapidly that one might be forgiven for thinking that the Mass
is a lengthy liturgy of words followed by a rapid distribution of tokens of our
con dence in words, which is a purely Protestant conception.

THE CANON OF THE MASS

Much can be said on behalf of the ttingness of the silent Canon.[340]
Su ce it to say that many among the clergy and the faithful are sharply aware
of the loss of this contemplative reservoir at the heart of the holy Sacri ce.
Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in The Spirit of the Liturgy:

Anyone who has experienced a church united in the silent praying

of the Canon will know what a really lled silence is. It is at once a
loud and penetrating cry to God and a Spirit- lled act of prayer.
Here everyone does pray the Canon together, albeit in a bond with
the special task of the priestly ministry. Here everyone is united, laid
hold of by Christ, and led by the Holy Spirit into that common
prayer to the Father which is the true sacri ce—the love that
reconciles and unites God and the world.[341]

Having cited this passage in his magni cent book The Power of Silence,
Cardinal Sarah observes:

I am familiar with the regrets expressed by many young priests who

would like the Canon of the Mass to be recited in complete silence.
 The unity of the whole assembly, communing with the words
pronounced in a sacred murmur, was a splendid sign of a
contemplative Church gathered around the sacri ce of her Savior.
[342]

A priest with whom I was corresponding once wrote these words to me, as if
to con rm Cardinal Sarah’s observation:

If I were permitted the quasi-papal power to make just one change

to the present OF [Novus Ordo], it would be to bring back the silent
Canon. As one who regularly celebrates both OF and EF [TLM], that
is the single di erence that I nd makes the most spiritual impact.
And quite a few lay people I know have made similar comments.
That silence, after all, is much more obviously noticeable to the
congregation than, say, the omission of certain medieval O ertory
prayers.

At a Novus Ordo Mass, it is all one can do to focus one’s wandering

attention on the mystery taking place, since there is a constant washing of
words over one’s ears—words that lose their force either from their familiarity
(Eucharistic Prayer II, a.k.a. the “Roman Canonette,” needs to be heard only so
many times before it sounds like an eye-rolling cliché) or from their length
(the historic Roman Canon said out loud in English, facing the people, can feel
interminable—it was never meant to be recited towards a congregation) or
from their grating unfamiliarity (as when a priest, in a sudden Lucretian
swerve, picks out one of the Eucharistic Prayers of Reconciliation). None of
this is conducive in any way to prayer, to the adoration and spiritual longing
we should cultivate in the presence of our Savior as we join our hearts to His
Sacred Heart in the holy o ering at the altar. This is no less true, indeed it is
rather more true, for the poor celebrant who gets hardly a moment of mental
peace, hardly a moment to repose his head against the Lord’s breast in
company with St. John. The new rite keeps the faucet of loquacity nearly
always turned on.
After the new Mass is over, a person might genuinely wonder: “Did I pray
at all during that long harangue from the sanctuary?” And one cannot be sure
that one has done so. On the contrary, sometimes one is aware of a su ocating
lack of time and space to pray. But I cannot remember a single traditional
Mass at which I did not experience, at least for a few eeting moments, a vivid
awareness of the prayer of Christ, a palpable sense of the mystery of God, a
real connection with the divine. In stark contrast with its intended
replacement, the old Mass—whether Low, High, Solemn, or Ponti cal—seems
custom-made to connect one to the divine in this way. Its whole raison d’être
is union with God, and it pursues this with relentless determination, with a
lover’s preoccupation. It reminds me of Kierkegaard’s statement that “purity of
heart is to will a single thing.” This environment of saturated theocentric
prayer carves out the necessary “interior space” for a fruitful Communion on
the part of priest and people, which is what comes next.

THE COMMUNION RITE

Continuing our exploration of how the ancient Roman rite has, built into
it, su cient time or leisure for the appropriation of its sacred content,
consider the segment of the liturgy usually referred to as the Communion rite,
which, in a well-celebrated usus antiquior, is a veritable oasis of tranquility.
“Deep calleth on deep, at the noise of thy ood-gates. All thy heights and thy
billows have passed over me” (Ps 41:8). After the long silence of the Roman
Canon, the uttering or chanting of the Lord’s Prayer emerges like the cry of a
swimmer raising his head above the water. Soon, though, he is submerged
again in the embolism,[343] followed shortly after by the Agnus Dei, a trio of
prayers in preparation for Holy Communion, the threefold Domine, non sum
dignus, and the poignant psalm verses.
I’ll admit that I used to feel a little impatient right around this time. We’ve
had our king’s portion of silent worship during the Canon, and just as the
sung or recited prayers are cranking up again, we nd ourselves confronted
once more with several sizeable pauses: the gap between the Lord’s Prayer and
the per omnia sæcula sæculorum preceding the Pax Domini, and then the gap
between the Agnus Dei and the Con teor/Ecce Agnus Dei. Why are we
standing or kneeling and waiting for stu to happen? Can’t we move on
already?
One could answer this question with a disquisition on the historical
development of this part of the liturgy and the importance of the various
prayers and gestures that the priest is busy with at that moment. But here we
are considering the moral and spiritual bene t that accrues to the people from
the traditional liturgy as we have it. This bene t is summed up in the famous
words of Milton: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Certain virtues or
spiritual dispositions are formed precisely in these gaps or pauses, these
stretches of profound and expectant silence, when, like the prudent virgins in
the parable, we wait and watch. We know what is coming, and yet it still has to
come, in its own way and at its own time. We may not, must not, rush it in our
desire to be “in charge.” It is like having to wait nine months for a child to be
born. How hard it is to go for so many months without seeing the child, or
even, in many cases, without knowing whether it’s a boy or a girl! Waiting for
the priest at the altar, waiting for the liturgy to do its work at its own pace, is a
model of our stance vis-à-vis life and death. Think of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
who had to wait patiently for her Son to su er his agony, die upon the cross,
and be taken down. The Mass re ects this trustful stance of waiting for God
to act and readying oneself to meet Him, to be acted upon—that is, to su er,
and thus, to partake of His victory, when and as He wishes to share it.
Thinking of it this way, I have learned not only to accept but to welcome and
relish these pauses in the post-Canon portion of the Mass.
Most of the rich prayers of the liturgy at this juncture are said silently by
the priest. Laity with daily missals often make these prayers their own, but just
as often they may pray in their own words or thoughts or desires or emptiness
as they await their invitation to the banquet of immortality. As Pius XII
a rms, “The needs and inclinations of all are not the same, nor are they
always constant in the same individual.... They can adopt some other method
which proves easier for certain people; for instance, they can lovingly meditate
on the mysteries of Jesus Christ or perform other exercises of piety or recite
prayers which, though they di er from the sacred rites, are still essentially in
harmony with them.”[344] The priest’s separate Communion brings two
immense goods: rst, it strongly accentuates the de de teaching that the
priesthood of the priest and the priesthood of the faithful are essentially
di erent and that, as a result, only the priest’s Communion is required for the
completion of the holy sacri ce; secondly, it allows the faithful an ample
moment of proximate preparation, in which we can take a big spiritual breath
(so to speak) before we approach the altar ourselves. I was recently reminded of
the importance of this moment when reading about St. Mechtild of
Hackeborn’s pious custom of reciting ve Hail Marys before receiving Holy
Communion:

At the rst Hail Mary, she reminded our Lady of the solemn hour
when she conceived a Son in her virginal womb, at the word of the
Angel, and drew Him to her from heaven by her profound humility.
She asked her to obtain for her a pure conscience and profound
humility.

At the second Hail Mary, she reminded her of the happy moment
when she took Jesus for the rst time into her arms and rst saw
Him in His Sacred Humanity. She prayed Mary to obtain for her a
true knowledge of herself.

At the third Hail Mary, she begged our Lady to remember that she
had always been prepared to receive grace and had never placed any
obstacle to its operation. She begged Mary to obtain for her a heart
always ready to receive divine grace.

At the fourth Hail Mary, she reminded our Lady with what
devotion and gratitude she received on earth the body of her well-
beloved Son, knowing better than anyone the salvation to be found
there by mankind. Mechtilde begged her to obtain that her heart
might be lled with worthy feelings of gratitude. If men knew the
blessings which ow for them from the body of Jesus Christ, they
would faint with joy.

At the fth Hail Mary, she reminded our Lady of the reception
given to her by her divine Son when He invited her to take her place
near Him in heaven in the midst of transports of joy.[345]

Everyone who attends the usus antiquior can understand why St. Mechtild was
able to do this as her own “pious custom.” Quite simply: she had the time, the
space, the silence, to recite ve Hail Marys before going to Communion. Alas,
such a thing is well-nigh unimaginable in the Novus Ordo, where one is
scarcely allowed an opportunity to collect one’s thoughts, let alone enjoy the
presence of mind to pray ve Hail Marys for these noble intentions! A mystic
like St. Mechtild would have fared rather badly any time after about 1964,
since the liturgy would no longer have been able to nourish her interior life to
the extent that it had before.
A di erent Mechtild, Mother Mectilde de Bar (1614–1698), foundress of
the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration, describes what happens when a
person receives Communion. Her description helps us to appreciate why St.
Thomas Aquinas says that two things are required for a fruitful Communion:
being in a state of grace, and being in a state of actual devotion.[346] A certain
devout recollection is required in the communicant in order to follow Our
Lord whither He goes, for He hides Himself in the depths of the soul:

Jesus Christ, being thus in the soul, whither does He withdraw? As I

said, to the sancta sanctorum of the soul, its most intimate depth,
which serves as a sanctuary for this High Priest and as a temple
where He celebrates His divine and terrible sacri ce of all that He is
to His Father. This sacri ce He wants to renew in the depth of each
soul as in a holy temple, which He consecrated on the day of its
baptism. O inconceivable marvel! Jesus Christ descends into our
heart to be immolated and to celebrate there His Solemn Mass,
although in profound silence. All is quiet in that temple, the angels
and saints admire and adore the way the Lord abases Himself there,
and the Eternal Father is well pleased.[347]

If the saints of the past warned us against lapsing into a routine of

thoughtless, unprepared Communions—and gave such warning even at a time
when the liturgy itself, with earnest prayer and pools of silence, furnished
every opportunity to rise above this fault!—what would they say about our
situation today, when the casual, routine, indiscriminate, and undiscerning
reception of the Holy Eucharist is the norm throughout the Catholic Church,
rather than the exception? The rushed, abbreviated, breathless pace of the
Novus Ordo and its lack of natural periods of silence for recollection and
preparation may be more of a contributor to this plague of sacrilege than has
yet been acknowledged.
I might add in passing that the new rite’s theoretically optional but, in
practice, long-mandatory “sign of peace”—that “simultaneous eruption of
bonhomie”[348] —only contributes to the super ciality and spirit of distraction.
[349] (One of the few silver linings of Covidtide was the disappearance, in some

cases permanently, of this interruption.) The Novus Ordo seemingly does not
want you ever to move away from the surface of things: since it is supposed to
build up the community as the People of God, you must be forcibly reminded
of that at every turn. This, I think, might explain why so many pastors seem
content to allow the faithful to chit-chat before and after Mass rather than
catechizing them about the sacred silence that be ts the temple of God. This
chit-chat is, in a way, the conversation one would expect at the family dinner
table, which is how progressives conceive of the Mass. Guests at a meal don’t
close their eyes and keep silent or speak only in whispers! But we are not at a
mere meal; we are at a sacri cial banquet, whose host is the cruci ed and risen
Lord. Our behavior should be utterly di erent from that of diners. It should
never remain on the surface but respond to the still, small voice that calls us to
the heights and depths of Our Lord’s infernal sorrow and celestial joy: “Deep
calleth on deep...”
The Communion rite in the traditional Mass a ord a spacious home for
corporate and personal prayer, so that the virtue of actual devotion, which is
required for fruitful communication, may thrive in clergy and in laity alike.
One may say, in fact, that the traditional Mass continually supports and
strongly encourages the positing of all the acts of the virtue of religion
discussed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, such as devotion, prayer,
adoration, sacri ce, and praise.[350] In this way, the Mass is not only an “oasis”
of peace in which prayer may be kindled and fed, but also a training or proving
ground for the heavenly Jerusalem, whose citizens heroically exercise just these
virtues.

THE ABLUTIONS
Now I turn to the portion of the Mass from the ablutions to the Last
Gospel, where we nd, once again, that the usus antiquior as it has developed
under the care of Divine Providence displays a subtle grasp of human
psychology and divine largesse in the pacing of its conclusion.
After Communion, there is a long pause for the people while the priest
cleanses his ngers and the sacred vessels, and the other ministers put things
aside or back to their places for the end of Mass. Here again we see the genius
of the Roman rite as it developed organically: there is no unseemly haste in
this matter of ablutions, and, as a providential side e ect, there need be no
haste in the people’s time of thanksgiving. How welcome, how utterly
necessary is this time of grace, when the Lord is most intimately present to us
and within us! Many great saints have spoken about the privileged prayer that
is possible only at this time, in the minutes following sacramental
Communion with the Word made esh; many have even composed tender
prayers that can be used to enrich it. What a shame if the very form of the
liturgy—or, it must be added, the particular customs of a given community,
even in the sphere of the usus antiquior[351] —should thwart this communion
of minds and hearts!

THE PLACEAT TIBI

Instead of racing to the nish line as does the Novus Ordo in its eagerness
to “send us out on mission,” the old Mass takes a moment to beseech the Lord
in a prayer of burning intensity, said by the priest bowing before the altar, in
between the Ite missa est and the nal blessing: “May the performance of my
homage be pleasing to Thee, O holy Trinity, and grant that the Sacri ce which
I, though unworthy, have o ered up in the sight of Thy Majesty, may be
acceptable to Thee, and through Thy mercy, may be a propitiation for me and
for all those for whom I have o ered it.” Behold: a magni cent summary of
the very essence of the Mass, and a summons to embrace its ascetical-mystical
reality! The usus antiquior never forgets and never allows us to forget God’s
majesty and our unworthiness, God’s mercy and our dire need of it. Centered
from start to nish on the primal mystery of the Holy Trinity, serious about
the Father’s business, the Mass is here simply styled “the Sacri ce.” That is
what it is—and that is how it should look, sound, feel, and exist for us.

THE LAST GOSPEL

Over the years, one of the things about the Novus Ordo that grated on me
the most was the rapid- re conclusion. The celebrant may well take his time
with the homily (sometimes the homily seems to be viewed, by the preacher
and by attendees, as the “main attraction” of the Mass), but when it comes to
everything afterwards, it’s typically “life in the fast lane”—particularly when
Communion is over. The vessels are hastily put away and “Let us pray” booms
out like an ultimatum over the heads of people who could not have had the
slightest chance to pray. Within seconds, the oodgates are opened and the
crowds, impatient to get home to leisure pursuits that seem vastly more
signi cant than anything that happened on Calvary, pour into the parking lot
to simulate bumper cars. It is thoroughly unedifying for the few devout
Catholics who, due to some unanticipated freethinking, wish to stay in the
pews to make their thanksgiving after Mass.
At a traditional Mass, this travesty is unheard of.[352] Time for thanksgiving
is providentially built into the ancient liturgy, from the ablutions through the
Placeat tibi; nally comes the sweet balm of the Last Gospel, which, no matter
how slowly or quickly it is read, whether aloud or sotto voce, always seems like
a well-placed comma or ellipsis in the grammar of worship. The end is
rejoined with the beginning, like the circulation of divine lifeblood: “In the
beginning was the Word... In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it....
And the Word was made esh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory....
Deo gratias.” The words of André Gushurst-Moore seem to t this Prologue
especially well:

The Gospel reveals a radiance at the heart of things, a glorious

shining, the uncreated light of the logos which is the opposite of the
postmodern abyss: there is no emptiness. This is the true light that
the Enlightenment threatened to banish, and in fact, for many, did
cast into shadow.[353]

It is well to recall the beauty of the Last Gospel, the grand prologue to the
loftiest of biblical books. For it is St. John the Evangelist who teaches us,
perhaps better than anyone else, the neglected virtue of restfulness in God that
the present chapter has argued is one of the chief characteristics of the ancient
rite. The Beloved Disciple took his time at the Last Supper when leaning on
the breast of Jesus; he did not think there were more urgent things to do, be it
selling ointments to get money for the poor, strategizing against the enemies
of his Lord, or even preaching the good news that he was later inspired to
write down. No, at the solemn moment when the Holy Sacri ce of the Mass
was instituted, John knew where he had to be: at the side of his Master, in the
adoring silence of a friendship so intimate that it would later spill out in the
most sublime revelations vouchsafed to man. John heard his Gospel beating in
the heart of Jesus, High Priest and Victim; there he learned the meaning of
adoration, reparation, supplication, and thanksgiving—Eucharistia. St. John is
therefore the patron not only of theologians but of all who “worship God in
spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24). He leads us back, again and again, to the
authentic liturgies of the Catholic Church, whose seeds the Lord sowed into
the soil of His apostles’ souls in the Upper Room.

LITURGICAL SLOWNESS AS INDUCEMENT TO INTERIOR

WORSHIP
Looking back over our survey of the classical rite—the processions, the
prayers at the foot of the altar, the ad orientem stance, the interlectional
chants (Gradual/Tract, Alleluia), the O ertory rite, the silent Canon, the
leisurely way the Communion rite proceeds, the thorough ablutions, the
Placeat tibi, the Last Gospel—we see that all the elements we have considered
produce the e ect of a certain timelessness, of a oating in between matters of
mere practicality or business. One is not checking items o a list, but rather,
ceasing to think just about getting things done; one is “setting aside all earthly
cares” and letting oneself be carried along by an action vast and deep, a reality
that shows its face only in response to our patience, attentiveness, and
surrender. The more we talk, do stu , make noise, and carry on, the less we see
of that reality, the less we enter that cosmic and eternal action. When the
liturgy is allowed to be itself and to do what is proper to it—slowly,
repetitiously, carefully, and beautifully—we are pulled out of ourselves, our
nite world and ticking time, and made partakers of the divine nature. This is
when liturgy is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet and gives us the strength to
persevere in the long pilgrimage towards it.
In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Novus Ordo, in its very
design and especially in its typical instantiation, stands in tension with
interiority, recollection, self-awareness, and sensitivity to the divine—that keen
sensus mysteriorum that is practically convertible with the traditional Roman
rite in any of its levels (Low, High, Solemn, Ponti cal). The old rite, in
contrast, forces us to develop habits of prayer—self-motivated prayer, since you
are thrown, to a large extent, on your own resources. As an online author put
it:
 One can still hold the new rite to be integrally Catholic, and yet
consider that the culture of the extraordinary form [TLM], where
the people are supposedly passive, tends to teach people to pray
independently, while the culture of the ordinary form [NOM] often
tends to create a dynamic in which people just chat to each other in
church unless they are being actively animated by a minister.[354]

In other words, because the liturgy has been aimed at the people, they are
apt to think that nothing important is going on until the noise starts up and
they are expected to do something. Traditionally, however, action begins
within. As Pius XII reminds us, “the external sacri cial rite should, of its very
nature, signify the internal worship of the heart.”[355] The thought that the
liturgy is, in a way, already going on, before, during, and after Mass—the
glorious liturgy of the heavenly Jerusalem; the liturgy of one’s interior life,
consisting of our acts of adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and supplication;
the liturgy of the Church universal, from the rising of the sun to the setting of
the same—would rarely occur to someone in a Novus Ordo context. The
liturgy has become so closely identi ed with doing, saying, and hearing stu
that when these stimuli are absent, the personal prayer that is supposed to be
at once the wellspring and over ow of public worship can easily be absent, too.
Fr. Chad Ripperger expands on this point:

St. Augustine said that no person can save his soul if he does not
pray. Now it is a fact that mental prayer and prayer in general have
collapsed among the laity (and the clergy, for that matter) in the
past thirty years [he is writing in 2001—PK]. It is my own impression
that this development actually has to do with the ritual of the Mass.
Now in the new rite, everything centers around vocal prayer, and
the communal aspects of the prayer are heavily emphasized. This
has led people to believe that only those forms of prayer that are
vocal and communal have any real value....

The ancient ritual, on the other hand, actually fosters a prayer life.
The silence during the Mass actually teaches people that they must
pray. Either one will get lost in distraction during the ancient ritual
or one will pray. The silence and encouragement to pray during the
 Mass teach people to pray on their own. While, strictly speaking,
they are not praying on their own insofar as they should be joining
their prayers and sacri ces to the Sacri ce and prayer of the priest,
these actions are done interiorly and mentally and so naturally
dispose them toward that form of prayer. This is one of the reasons
that, after the Mass is said according to the ancient ritual, people
are naturally quieter and tend to pray afterwards. If everything is
done vocally and out loud, then once the vocal [prayer] stops, people
think it is over. It is very di cult to get people who attend the new
rite of Mass to make a proper thanksgiving by praying afterward
because their appetites and faculties have habituated them toward
talking out loud.[356]

Fr. Ray Blake wonders if the emphasis on the spoken word has led us so far
away from the interior spirit of worship that we might not be engaging in the
supreme act of adoration or latria at all, but only lling the air with well-
meaning verbiage, as if the church were a holy lecture hall.

True worship leads us to contemplate the God who is always beyond

us, the God before whom Old Testament patriarchs and prophets
fall on their faces in worship. Practically at every Mass I have
celebrated over the thirty years I have been ordained I have felt the
need “to break the bread of the word,” to preach—except at the
Traditional Mass, where all I want to do is adore the Father through
the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. I am beginning to believe
that if the Word of God does not lead us to the act of worship, there
is something wrong in its presentation, and if the Mass does not
lead us to fall on our knees to be fed by God, there is something
wrong here, too. Contemplating the Mystery of the Trinity should
lead us to be lost in the immensity and beauty of God, realising His
greatness and our nothingness, desiring only to abandon ourselves
to Him, crying out with Christ: “Father, into your hands I commend
my Spirit.” If this realisation is not the result of worship, perhaps
we are not worshipping at all![357]
 Joseph Shaw contrasts the scripted, regimented style of lay participation in
the new Mass[358] with the freer “open worship” characteristic of the old
liturgy, which generates a peculiar sense of togetherness by the intensity of
each individual worshiping the same mystery, each in his own way:

What is quite out of the question, in this kind of liturgy [viz., the
Novus Ordo], is that you should engage with it at your own pace, on
your own level, in prayer. Prayerful contemplation is simply not
allowed: it will be interrupted within a few minutes, and you’ll get
funny looks. The opposite is the case with the Traditional Mass. You
are, essentially, left alone, but left alone united with the community
in the act of worship. You may have things given to you to help you
follow the Mass, there may even be responses (especially at a sung
Mass), but no one will think you odd if you just look at what is
happening on the altar in prayerful silence. And for the Canon, that
is what everyone is doing. You are drawn in: it may be to something
unfamiliar, if contemplative prayer is unfamiliar, but it is something
which you can do your own way. It is not a Procrustean bed; you can
make of it what you will.[359]

We are thus confronted with a supreme irony: the Latin-rite liturgy of the
Catholic Church was turned upside-down and inside-out to promote “active
participation,” but the faithful who attend the old Mass today evince a
superior personal engagement in what they are doing.[360] Why is this the case?
Dom Alcuin Reid suggests two reasons: rst, people who are drawn to
traditional worship must make signi cant sacri ces to nd it and have often
invested seriously in forming their own understanding. But there is a second
reason having to do with the rites themselves:

Perhaps also it is due to the very demands they place on the

worshipper—one has to nd ways of connecting with these rites, or
indeed of allowing them to connect with us, because of their ritual
complexity. Their multivalent nature has a particular value: it
provides varying means of connection with Christ acting in the
liturgy that perhaps better correspond to our di ering
temperaments and psyches.[361]
 In my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, I talk at one point
about the e ort involved in carrying out a traditional Tenebrae service at
Wyoming Catholic College, and how many hours of practice and years of
iteration it took to achieve a high level of singing: “The best and deepest
things take time to assimilate, to understand, to perfect. When it comes to
liturgy in particular, we have to ght tooth and nail against the modern spirit
of immediate grati cation and quick results.”[362] Nowadays, prayer and
liturgical services are prone to being shortened (perhaps “short-circuited”
would be a better term), since the participants are either in a hurry to get to
other business, or their span of attention is just too short. For Holy Week, the
very highpoint of the Church’s year, one may observe in many new-rite
communities that the customary procession of palms on Palm Sunday is
omitted; the Reproaches on Good Friday are skipped, in spite of their immense
antiquity, beauty, and spiritual power. The Novus Ordo liturgical books are
characterized by the option of shortened versions of readings and prayers. The
modern impatience with anything not immediately understood or gratifying
extends even to (perhaps, especially to) pious activities. To this mentality, years
before it reached its peak, St. Josemaría Escrivá made a pithy reply: “‘The Mass
is long,’ you say, and I add: ‘Because your love is short.’”[363] What a contrast
may be found in old-rite communities that celebrate the Tridentine Holy
Week! The pre-’55 liturgies for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday,
Holy Saturday, can last for hours and hours, but no one complains—the rites
are so beautiful, so solemn, so moving, one forgets all about time, one is
carried beyond this passing realm into the eternal mysteries. Indeed, the very
leisureliness of the rites makes it easier for laity to go out and come back in as
the needs of little children demand.
A priest who discovered the liturgical tradition of the Roman rite and fell
in love with it rhapsodizes:

When you truly love God, you are not miserly in sharing your time
with Him in prayer, in the Holy Mass, and other liturgical exercises,
since He is constantly sharing His time with you, His beloved. Since
youth, I had been accustomed to the Vatican II revisions of the
liturgy. Thank God, through dear Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s
Summorum Ponti cum, I came to discover the solemn beauty of the
traditional Latin Mass and other Catholic practices. Yes, these are
 more demanding of our time, but if one allows them time to
penetrate the depth of the soul, one will exclaim joyfully: “Lord, it is
good for us to be here.”

Now, everything we have discussed in this chapter pertains to the essential

structure and rubrics of each of the two rites, old and new—not to the ars
celebrandi or accidental features. In other words, there is no way to make the
new rite do what the old rite does in the dozens of ways I’ve detailed. To adapt
the words of a Gospel parable, between the one and the other is xed a great
chasm, so that they who would pass from hence to there cannot, nor from
thence come hither” (cf. Lk 16:26). My contention is that, from the angle of
“time for the soul to absorb the mysteries” as from so many other angles
explored in this book, the old Mass isn’t broken, and the new Mass can’t be
xed.
 11

Discovering Tradition: The Priest's Crisis of

Conscience
The following sets of letters and my replies are real exchanges. Both priests
kindly permitted the publication of versions in which identifying personal
details were removed. I believe there are now many priests in a similar or even
identical situation of conscience, and that reading these exchanges may help
them to achieve greater clarity about what steps to take now and looking to
the future.
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
Today I write for a personal reason: I feel that I am in a battle for my very
soul, which, because I am a priest, is synonymous with the battle ercely being
waged for the soul of the Church herself at the “crisis point” where it counts
the most: the altar of God and the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries.
I have been a priest for just over ve years, and I celebrated my rst Mass
in the usus antiquior shortly after ordination. As a member of a religious
community, I became progressively aware of many issues—running the
veritable gamut of “issues” that can be faced in the Church today, but
centering upon the Sacred Liturgy—which, although somehow “tolerable” for
me as a religious brother, became intolerable for me as a priest of Jesus Christ.
My departure from my community of origin was not only a matter of moving
away from what is harmful and/or what “falsi es” the faith, but also a hope to
move toward something of greater truth and beauty. I say this not with any
animus or anger, but simply as a matter of fact.
The change in my soul upon the conferral of the priesthood brought with
it an almost instantaneous clarity of vision and honing of conscience regarding
the Holy Mass and all that ows from it. There are, simply speaking, things
that, once you know them, you can’t not know. This is the story of my priestly
life, for the more I discover about the development of doctrine and praxis
(particularly in the modern or “post-conciliar” Church), the more I feel
convicted to “do something” for the Church, my Bride, insofar as I am able,
with an appropriate acceptance of my own limited role in the Mystical Body.
More simply speaking, I can tell you that once I began to discover the
Traditional Mass and the way of life and “culture” that organically ow from it
and lead to it, I was never able to truly “go back.” This has cost me a great deal.
I have served in two “typical” parishes; in neither place did the Traditional
Mass enter in any way into my public ministry, as I was trying to “lie low.”
However, I celebrated the Novus Ordo in a very traditional manner, preached
on all of the important topics of our faith, and put a great deal of heart and
time into marriage preparation, with a particular focus on the virtue of
chastity and the sacramental life. I was loved by “the people,” but very soon
despised by the clergy who are in positions of power, and who are living very
di erent priestly lives from what I was doing my best to live. I then
experienced rsthand the very un-priestly and distinctly uncharitable ways in
which priests who are favorable and faithful to “tradition” are treated by
shepherds of the “new mercy.”
I have taken some time away from parish ministry in order to heal, and to
try to make sense out of the spiritually abusive way in which I have su ered at
the hands of shepherds who are in fact commissioned to foster priestly life
rather than to destroy it. My time apart has taken place in a religious
community dedicated to the so-called “reform of the reform.”
Although our conventual Mass and Divine O ce are “traditional,” all
community members without exception “must” commit in some way to
participation in the Novus Ordo Missæ. This in and of itself has created a
signi cant pain of heart and matter of conscience for me, as my time here
separated from the daily reality of “business as usual” in parish churches has
reminded me of what exactly it is that I believe about Holy Mass and the
concomitant care of souls; what I believe about the mystery of the Church and
the “Marriage of the Lamb”; and how I am being drawn by Our Lord to stand
in His Person as bridegroom in intimate relationship with the Church as my
Bride, particularly in the celebration of Holy Mass. The “two forms” are
presented as equally acceptable realities, almost like a liturgical café in which
anything is a perfectly ne choice. This is supported by certain writings of
Cardinal Sarah, along with Pope Benedict’s Con Grande Fiducia, the pastoral
letter accompanying Summorum Ponti cum, which, although I once
subscribed to it wholly (and still feel it to be one of his most beautiful and
fatherly overtures as Supreme Pastor of the universal Church), I can no longer
nd adequate to the magnitude of the problem.
With all of this comes much ambiguity, stemming from liturgical visions.
My brothers and I do share the desire for a “beautiful” liturgical life, but for
me, this beauty is not a merely aesthetic matter. It is deeper, more
philosophical, even ontological: it has to do with what is there in the rites of
the Church—or not there. The brethren do share bonds of good will, and I
thank God for that...but without an objective standard to which we are subject,
how can a community grow in an ordered way? This, Dr. Kwasniewski, is my
grief, not only for my community, but for our beautiful and ailing Church.
I face a critical “crisis question” as to whether or not I can, in good
conscience, continue to celebrate the Novus Ordo Missæ at all. This crisis is
not “new,” nor has it been arrived at capriciously. It has mounted, slowly but
surely, with each o ering of a form of the Mass that I know to be a signi cant,
vacuous, and even harmful departure from the Church’s organic tradition, and
thus from her integrity and her e ective care of immortal souls, of which I, as
a priest, am a steward.
In my early priestly life, I was “gung-ho” for the “reform of the reform”
and believed that it was “the way forward” for the Church. I simply do not
believe this anymore. A not insigni cant contributor to my change in mind
and heart has been the phenomenon of so often nding myself somehow more
thwarted for endeavoring to “beautify” the New Mass than if I were simply to
o er the Traditional Mass (!). It is as if the Novus Ordo was built for
deconstruction and self-destruction. As Martin Mosebach says in the
foreword to your book, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, “the Liturgy is
the Church.” This goes for any Mass that is celebrated, for “the Church”
ritually embodied therein is “made present” through the ars celebrandi of the
very ritus et preces of which the Mass of any rite is woven. I ask myself, and
now, with great pain of heart: How I can continue to contribute to and
perpetuate what I perceive as a lie—the lie of equivocation, arti ciality, the
spiritual crime of neglect and “malnutrition” of the faithful—knowing full well
that I am “dis guring” the Church by the o ering of a “dis gured” Mass?
I have grown and developed in my thought on this subject with much
time, study, and experience, and with the heartbreak of seeing all over the
world the gaping chasm and bottomless lacuna that have opened up and are
leaving souls veritably lost because of the Novus Ordo (even when “celebrated
reverently”) and all that goes with it. This last line is key for me: “all that goes
with it.” For although the problem centers upon the Mass, it is not “just”
about the Mass. It is about the Church, my Bride, in her integrity and vital
coherence. I am in a “battle for my soul,” which is synonymous with the battle
for the very soul of the Church.
Your perspective and “sense” of what I have shared—even your “checking”
me on anything I have said that may be out of place, overstated, myopic,
“extreme,” or the like—would be most welcome. With great gratitude to you
for your time and the promise of my prayer for you and your family,

Father N.

Dear Father,
Thank you for your words of appreciation, and for trusting me with the
story of your trials. I am grateful every day for what the Lord is doing in His
Church, as He leads many souls to see hard but liberating truths. He is making
use of this undeniable crisis we are passing through as a giant alarm bell to
awaken people to the deeper causes of our malaise.
Everything you described about your path from the Novus Ordo to the
traditional Roman liturgy mirrors exactly my own experiences, thoughts, and
feelings. As you must know from having read Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis
and Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, for twenty- ve years I was in
charge of providing music for both “forms” of the Mass and the Divine O ce,
directing choirs and scholas at each, and becoming intimately acquainted with
the texts, rubrics, ceremonies, and music of each. Over the same period, I
studied the history of liturgy as well as liturgical theology. Slowly, the
conviction grew in me that the liturgical reform was not merely unfortunate
in this or that point, but truly a disaster for the Church.
I went through all the usual phases. The rst “naïve” phase is that the
problem wasn’t the reform in itself, but how it was implemented. The second
“hopeful critic” phase was that the reform does have problems, but they can be
mitigated by good practice and eventually reformed from on high. The third
“realistic” phase is that the reform is awed in its fundamental principles; it
cannot be redeemed but must be rejected in favor of the classical Roman rite.
You know the arguments as well as I do, but it takes time to come to grips
with the magnitude of the problem—time, much reading, much experience,
much prayer, and a certain intuition, which I hardly dare to call mystical and
yet which seems to be given from above: an immediate, unanswerable
conviction of the rightness of the tradition and the wrongness of its modern
replacement. As you say, one reaches a point where one cannot not know, and
feel in the depths of one’s soul and bones, that something is seriously wrong in
the Novus Ordo, and seriously right in the traditional worship of the Catholic
Church.
The Novus Ordo did not come to be in the way that living things are
conceived, born, mature, and reach their apogee; it came to be as machines are
built in the age of industry and technology. This helps explain why fabricated
rites engender mysticism only with the greatest di culty and o er scant
nourishment to the contemplative life. Only real food and drink can satisfy
our hunger and thirst, can produce healthy eyes, skin, esh, bones. The Lord in
His Divine Providence did not give His Church access to sacramental grace
apart from sacramental signs; He did not give us signs apart from the rites
that situate them; He did not give us rites apart from prayers, lessons, music,
and ceremonies. All of this is necessary for a healthy diet, not just “the form
and matter of the sacrament,” as neoscholastic reductionism would have it.
One might as well reduce a multi-course meal to protein powder and vitamin
tablets.
“Rad trad” readers have sometimes stumbled over my tolerance for the
Novus Ordo, an attitude that I admit can be found in the aforementioned pair
of books. This benign toleration is now a thing of the past. It is just as you say
with regard to Con Grande Fiducia and Summorum Ponti cum: these are
watershed documents for their place and time, considering the uno cial
dogma of never questioning the Council or anything done in its name, but
they are frightfully compromised by the constructivist assertion that there is
no rupture, which is patently false, and by the liturgical relativism of multiple
forms of a single rite, which mirrors the doctrinal and moral relativism
characteristic of our times.
But now I am preaching to the choir, or at least to a cantor. What I had
meant to say is that some readers have found my attitude towards the Novus
Ordo troubling, because they, being quicker than I (as St. John was quicker in
reaching the tomb than St. Peter), had already, possibly long ago, reached the
conclusion that the new rites could not be endorsed and must be avoided. A
philosophy professor from Europe once wrote the following to me:
 You expose the aws of the Novus Ordo in a very compelling way.
The whole thing has been a disaster and deprives too many souls of
the good they’d receive for sure were they introduced to the
traditional Mass. Now I was wondering: how is it that you still
(according to what you write in Noble Beauty) work for the Novus
Ordo with chants and music even though you repeatedly claim—and
rightly so—that the whole Bugnini invention should disappear? I
understand the idea of liturgical peace and allowing for people who
attend the New Mass to get a glimpse of real sacred music and so
on, but don’t you think that this supports the surviving of what
would best be dead and buried once and for all?

I answered:

I have struggled with this question for decades. Up until recently,

my responsibilities included directing music at both the usus
antiquior and the usus recentior, but I found myself loving the
former more and more, and hating the latter; serving the one, and
despising the other. In fact, it became a psychological torture to
attend the Novus Ordo. I knew that I should leave it behind forever.
Now I am attending the old Mass exclusively and I am “in heaven”—
at least in the liturgical re ection of heaven. For me, my work with
the Novus Ordo was always practical or pragmatic in nature: it was
part of my job, and I wanted to do the best I could (for my own sake,
too, not just for the congregation: the Gregorian chant made the
Pauline Mass bearable to my psyche and my sensorium, if not to my
intellect). But I agree with your general point, that it would be
better to let this “banal on-the-spot fabrication” perish, and to put
all of one’s energy into worshiping the Lord in the way most worthy
of Him and most perfective of us. That is what I am doing today,
and my future books will clearly re ect this turn in my thinking.

The only substantive di erence between your path and mine is that you
came to see all these things through the grace of ordination and the daily
round of priestly duties, while I came to see them as a musician, oblate, and
liturgical theologian who couldn’t help noticing “one thing after another.”
Your awakening reminds me of words spoken by the late Bishop Vitus
Huonder in an interview:

I have of course studied very closely the new rite and the traditional
rite. This study has pointed out to me the signi cant di erences: for
example, that certain texts have been shortened, suppressed, such as
the prayers that are very important for the priest. Now, I can live
only on all these prayers in the traditional rite. It is clear that they
fortify the priest, that they especially reinforce the faith, but also
the gift of self during the Mass. One is truly before God, before
Jesus and not simply in front of a community. All that, I can
rediscover in the traditional rite; it is so precious and, let’s say, so
intemporal that I don’t want to go back....I no longer want to do it
[the Novus Ordo]. I sense simply that I can no longer do it, because
when you are immersed in the traditional Mass, you simply come to
a point where you sense that you can no longer do anything else.[364]

Thus, I do not think you are “crazy,” “extreme,” “ideological,” or whatever

labels your enemies or your fears might put on you. Rather, you have been
following in a serious way the instinct of faith, the movement of charity, the
requirements of devotion, the demands of the virtue of religion—the need for
total consistency among the lex orandi, the lex credendi, and the lex vivendi.
Continual exposure to the traditional liturgy with all that accompanies it, as
you rightly add, together with a willingness to absorb and ponder its lessons,
will necessarily show the bankruptcy of the ersatz liturgy constructed by
Pistoian rationalists, Protestant ecumenists, communist sympathizers, and
probable Freemasons, the bankruptcy of the entire project of (as some call it,
scorchingly but accurately) “neo-Catholicism.”[365] It is a hard but salutary
awakening. Some traditionalist writers use the cultural meme “red pill” to
describe this process of the scales falling from the eyes.
(I hasten to add that some traditionalists don’t have the philosophical and
theological education that would enable them to make distinctions and to
draw only those conclusions that are demanded by the evidence. For example,
seeing serious faults in the reformed liturgy, they draw false conclusions about
its validity; seeing the repeated abuse of the papal o ce, they draw false
conclusions about the incumbency of the see; attending to the elements of
modernism in John Paul II, they draw the false conclusion that his entire life’s
work is to be rejected out of hand. One could multiply such examples
inde nitely.)
We know that God can bring good out of evil, and this is why He can and
does sanctify souls even with the instruments of an unholy reform, as He can
raise up sons of Abraham from lifeless stones. Yet His ordinary modus
operandi is to raise up sons from fathers, not from stones, and in like manner,
He raises up the Church from its paternal tradition, at the hands of priests
who are truly fathers in that tradition, handing down the family name and
inheritance.
Many priests, religious, and laity have written to me over the years, saying,
in essence, “This modern project is hollow and harmful, and I can’t pretend to
support it anymore; I don’t want to lend it the slightest credibility, or even
brush up against it.” They wonder what in the world to do next: “Can I still go
to Mass at my local parish?” “What order should I join?” “Can I even celebrate
the new Mass again?”
The Lord gives us intuitions and convictions this powerful in order to
move us to take suitable action for the glori cation of God, our own
sancti cation, and the edi cation of the entire Body of Christ. In this sense,
“riding it out,” “getting along,” or “o ering it up” seem to be self-destructive
options. Unless one is comfortable running the risk of spiritual schizophrenia,
nervous breakdown, or the violation of one’s conscience by turning away from
God’s inspirations, a decision eventually has to be made for or against
traditional Catholicism.
Such decisions are fraught with peril and anguish. One priest who wrote
to me had been transferred multiple times because he kept refusing to
distribute Holy Communion in the hand or to use extraordinary ministers.
Another priest who refused to distribute into people’s hands was nally
removed from ministry altogether; he now serves as a TLM supply priest,
traveling to persecuted communities. Several priests I know of have been
suspended for preaching against sodomy (this will happen more and more). A
priest who had rediscovered the Faith via the charismatic movement joined up
with a new religious order, and nally had to leave it when he learned how to
celebrate the old Mass and saw, as if for the rst time, the essence of the Mass
as propitiatory sacri ce, as humble homage, as ardent supplication of the Most
Holy Trinity, as the sovereign prayer both public and personal. A diocesan
priest wrote to me in agony because his soul longs to celebrate the traditional
Mass but he is stuck celebrating an English versus populum “Ordinary Form”
for a congregation that hardly believes anything. There are even a few bishops
about whom one could say all the same things.
You have accurately perceived the heart of the ecclesial crisis, which is the
crisis of the liturgy and therefore also of the priesthood. We will remain in
this crisis until the traditional liturgy is fully restored and the modern
experimental liturgy is repudiated.
One cannot embrace both traditional and modern liturgy, since their
principles are contradictory. One cannot believe that the Holy Spirit was
guiding the Church all through the ages, and then take up with a liturgy
whose fundamental premise is that the Roman liturgy, for centuries, was
lacking many features it ought to have had and was chock-full of corruptions
requiring removal. Indeed, Antoine Dumas, chief editor of the new orations,
complained that the Collect of Easter Sunday transmitted a “Gregorian
deformation.”[366] One cannot praise the spirituality of the great saints, from
the Desert Fathers to the Benedictines to medieval mystics to the Carmelite
Doctors and beyond, while e ectively contradicting them in liturgical and
devotional practices.[367]
What is to be done? It seems to me that the only way forward is to join a
religious community or society of apostolic life that is clear-sighted and
courageous enough to celebrate exclusively a traditional liturgy, be it the
Roman rite or a use speci c to the order. Along this way lies peace of
conscience and comfort of soul, light for the mind and warmth for the will.
Along this way lies the most exacting and rewarding exercise of the gift of the
priesthood, together with the most abundant fruit for faithful Catholics who
are seeking God in the sublime mysteries of His love.
Do you know the book In Sinu Jesu: When Heart Speaks to Heart—The
Journal of a Priest at Prayer? Here are three passages I would like to share with
you, in which Our Lord speaks:

I will not abandon or forsake you. I am faithful. I have chosen you

and you are Mine. Why do you doubt My love for you? Have I not
given you signs of My favour? Have I not shown you that My mercy
has prepared for you a future full of hope? Did I not promise you
years of happiness, of holiness, and of peace? My blessing is upon
 you and the designs of My Heart are about to unfold for you. You
have only to trust Me. Believe that I will keep you as the apple of
My eye. You are safe under My Mother’s mantle. I hold you close to
My wounded Heart. Trust that I will bring about all that I have
promised you.

Go forward in simplicity, free of fear and trusting in My merciful

providence to prepare all things for a future full of hope. Leave the
preparation of the future entirely in My hands. Your part is to
remain faithful to the adoration I have asked of you.

O er the present to Me, and I will attend to repairing your past and
to preparing your future.

I will raise up prayers for you to the Father of Lights, asking Him, by the
intercession of Our Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. John Vianney, and your
holy guardian angel, to send you the light you need to know your next steps
and the strength to persevere in spite of all obstacles. The Church is passing
through a crisis that can be surmounted only by heroic faith. Good people will
be pummeled and shaken up, yet by this means the cha will be drawn away
and the fat of wheat prepared as a sacri ce to the Lord. This, too, is one of the
works of Our Lady, through which she will bring to birth a puri ed clergy and
a puri ed Church.

Your brother in Christ,

Peter Kwasniewski

A second exchange, with a di erent priest, follows.

LETTER 1
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
A mutual friend forwarded to me the letters between you and the priest
entitled “Discovering Tradition: A Priest’s Crisis of Conscience.”
Just as a sort of prolegomenon, I came across the Traditional Mass in high
school after a reversion experience. As so many do, I started researching the
Old Mass and, as a result, began attending a local FSSP parish, where I learned
how to serve. Later, after I had entered the diocesan seminary, I studied how to
celebrate the TLM with the help of a Fraternity priest, and my rst Mass (as
celebrant) was in fact a traditional Low Mass. It was very important to me to
signify in which liturgical/cultural “stream” I stood. Since then, I celebrate the
Old Mass regularly—both privately and publicly. The traditional Mass has
been the pillar of my priestly life. I cover my mouth with respect to the Novus
Ordo...
No doubt, the death of an actually Catholic culture and a sense of the
sacred/piety within the Church, the death of catechesis, the death of the
capacity for deep prayer (both corporate and private), the death of a spirit of
penance and the nobility of su ering (or, frankly, a sense of anything being
noble at all), the neglect of the sacraments (especially confession), the
preponderance of gay (or at least soft and emasculated) clergy, the ubiquity of
sacrilege especially with respect to the Blessed Sacrament, show tunes at Mass
and the death of the re ned culture that grew out of the Mass of the Ages,
Communion in the hand, the exchange of roles between clergy and laity,
etc....it all causes me grief and anguish.
And so, I do admit that most of what is said in that letter exchange has my
empathy, but many of the problems discussed in the letters concerning the
Novus Ordo are actually for me more reason not to “jump ship.” When I
joined the local seminary, the parishioners at a traditionalist parish cocked
their heads and asked why I didn’t just join a group like the FSSP, and my
reason given then remains my reason for staying now: to put it brie y, I have
problems with apparently retreating into the traditional “ghetto” and
abandoning the sheep. I admit this is a problem and a su ering more peculiar
to the priestly heart than the lay, but I’m sure you can understand. They really
are sheep without shepherds, and even granting that some of the decay in the
Church at large, as well as in the average parish, is perpetuated with malice, I
would readily say that most of it is not. Most of it is simply ignorance,
resulting from the spiritual abuse of bad priests neglecting to provide for,
protect, and discipline their spiritual children.
Again, I am more than sympathetic to the sentiments of your interlocutor,
and to be honest, the appeal of a traditional monastery is sometimes
overwhelming. But my priestly heart breaks that another priest would
apparently leave the sheep to the wolves of liberalism and modernism. It is
beautiful that he has been given the grace to see the surpassing excellence of
tradition, but how can I not be grieved when yet another foxhole around me is
emptied because the man in it has apparently despaired of the cause? I am a
priest in order that God may be glori ed by the salvation of souls. Isn’t it the
Novus Ordo Catholics who most need the hand of good priests formed by
sacred tradition to pull them out of the pit of hell, guratively and literally?
I stay because my people are literally dying in their sins, because for sixty
years they have scarcely been told that there is such a thing as sin. How can I
not be disappointed to see another good priest running for apparently greener
pastures, when “an enemy” has sown so much darnel and salt in the eld of
souls? I feel like St. Francis Xavier when he said:

We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the
Christian religion a few years ago. No Portuguese live here—the
country is so utterly barren and poor. The native Christians have no
priests. They know only that they are Christians. There is nobody to
say Mass for them; nobody to teach them the Creed, the Our Father,
the Hail Mary and the Commandments of God’s Law... Many, many
people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only:
there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have
thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris,
and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of
those with more learning than charity: “What a tragedy: how many
souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to
you!”

I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and
so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents
entrusted to them. This thought would certainly stir most of them
to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is
saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human
a airs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his
choice. They would cry out with all their heart: Lord, I am here!
What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like—even to
India.

I might add: “even to a Novus Ordo parish.”

 Thanks so much for your time and charity in reading what has
inadvertently turned into a manifesto, and thank you even more for your time
in responding, if you see t to do so.

Sincerely in Christ,
A Priest in the Trenches

LETTER 2
Dear Father,
I well understand where you are coming from and why you are doing as
you are doing. I myself directed choirs and scholas for decades in the Novus
Ordo, and my goal was always to bring the riches of the Church’s sacred music
to the faithful in the pews—and to the clergy, too, who often appreciated it just
as much or more, since it helped them pray the Mass better.
At the same time as I was providing music for the Novus Ordo, I was also
leading music for the traditional Latin Mass. For almost that entire period, I
attended both forms alternatingly. This gave me a close-up perspective on the
di erences and prompted me to think, over and over again, about what had
been removed, changed, added, etc. I couldn’t really avoid it, with my close
involvement in planning and executing the liturgy. Plus, as an Aristotelian
philosopher I always want to know why—why was this or that inserted,
deleted, revised, made optional, etc., and I cannot rest with super cial answers.
This led me to extensive research, which illuminated my experiences. I nally
realized that there had been a profound rupture in the Roman liturgical
tradition, and that this was going to have ripple e ects until the end of time
(or until the rupture is itself de nitively canceled out). It would ripple into our
attitude towards doctrine and dogma; our moral and social life; our asceticism
and aesthetics; and obviously, our sense of the basic good of tradition as such.
Re ections like these prompted me to formulate my thesis: reverence is
not enough; one needs to be united with the tradition as it developed under
the guidance of Divine Providence. (I argue for this thesis in detail in my book
The Once and Future Roman Rite.) As a result, I began to feel somehow
complicit in perpetuating the rupture, again in spite of the obvious good of
promoting sacred music and reconnecting laity piecemeal with their heritage.
Now, this is not to say that there should never be soldiers in the trenches,
or even generals of armies, who make the best of a muddy, messy situation and
press on towards eventual victory. There is much to admire in those who can
do this, in spite of the constraints, imperfections, ignobility, incomprehension,
resistance, and other problems encountered on the battle eld. Every wise
soldier and especially every prudent general must nevertheless keep hold of his
best weapons and use them whenever he can. So the priest who knows how to
celebrate the old rite and appreciates its value must not only keep it at the
heart of his own priestly life, but also share it with his people more and more.
Traditionis Custodes has obviously obstructed this necessary work or rendered
it more di cult, but good priests will nd ways to work around it, looking
ahead to a time when this unjust parody of law will be rescinded and replaced
by a saner policy. Pope Benedict’s recognition of the healing power of liturgical
tradition remains as true as ever it was.
Thus, I urge you, as far as you can, for your own sake and for the poor
sheep, to o er the traditional liturgy—not just the Mass, but baptism, penance,
extreme unction, the divine o ce. The surprising resurgence of the old liturgy
is a balm provided by God in our di cult times for those who are su ering
the “grief and anguish” you so well describe. May Our Lord abundantly bless
your care of souls, especially in its di cult moments.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

LETTER 3

(one year later)

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski

You may not remember that we had a brief exchange a while ago. I’m
emailing again because I owe you something of an apology. When we last
corresponded, I defended the position that priests sympathetic to tradition
should remain where they are precisely because the situation is so desperate.
My thinking has developed, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the glory
of God and the salvation of my soul are my rst and most basic and most
necessary work, and while the thought of what could be interpreted as leaving
the ock to the wolves does cause me considerable distress, I do not believe
that I can secure those primary objectives while remaining in my current
situation. For that reason, I’ve begun looking for traditional orders to join.
I thought I would let you know, given our prior discussion. Thank you for
your work generally, and your prayers for me personally, and know of mine for
you.

Peace to you in Christ!

A Priest in the Trenches

LETTER 4
Dear Father,
It’s good to hear from you again.
The realization you describe is becoming increasingly common. I am
contacted regularly by priests, religious, and especially seminarians who are
trying to gure out what to do when they see that the liturgical reform has
opened a Pandora’s Box that cannot be shut but must be buried (if we can alter
the old myth that way). It is a veritable abuse pandemic, and the most subtle
evil of it is that even a “reverent celebration” is a personal achievement of
options tastefully chosen, within parameters negotiated between the
expectations of bishops and the tolerance level of congregations. In other
words, it’s something like an auction at which the liturgy goes to the highest
bidder.
It took me a long time to reach the conclusion that restoration is the only
way forward; I resisted it pretty sternly for about ten years. I did my utmost as
a choir director to promote the “hermeneutic of continuity” and to practice
“mutual enrichment.” I led chant and polyphony at the NOM, and encouraged
the dialogue TLM.
But then my studies overtook my naivete and I realized, not without
considerable anguish of spirit, that the problems were “baked in” to the
reform, like the our and sugar of a cake; they were (as the saying goes)
features, not bugs. This fundamentally changes the objective nature of the gift
of worship in both senses: a gift received from the Church’s tradition and a
gift given to God, who deserves the greatest and the best—and who deserves it
rst, prior to any human considerations.
The liturgical tradition of the Church re ects these lines of the psalmist:
Con teantur nomini tuo magno: quoniam terribile et sanctum est: et honor
regis judicium diligit. Tu parasti directiones. “Let them give praise to thy great
name: for it is terrible and holy: and the king’s honour loveth judgment. Thou
hast prepared directions” (Ps 98:3–4). The same psalm describes God as
ulciscens in omnes adinventiones eorum, “taking vengeance on all their
inventions” (Ps 98:8), that is, what they substitute for the right order He has
established, the directions He has prepared. Elsewhere in the psalms we read:
Peccatori autem dixit Deus: Quare tu enarras justitias meas, et assumis
testamentum meum per os tuum? “But to the sinner God hath said: Why dost
thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hast
hated discipline: and hast cast my words behind thee” (Ps 49:16–17). He makes
the same reproach to us: Why, O reformers of the liturgy, do you repeat my
Scriptures in your fat new lectionary, and enact my new covenant on your
Cranmer tables? You hated the discipline I established in my Church over the
course of two millennia; you have put my words—the developed liturgical
expressions I inspired in her—behind you, into the memory hole. Sacri cium
laudis honori cabit me: et illic iter, quo ostendam illi salutare Dei. “The
sacri ce of praise shall glorify me: and there is the way by which I will shew
him the salvation of God” (Ps 49:23). It is by the God-fearing sacri ce of praise,
o ered in accord with immemorial tradition, that God will be honored as He
demands and deserves.
And yet, having seen this truth, my job obliged me to continue providing
music for both Masses. I sought refuge in the Gregorian chants and tried to
put all my concentration into them, using their beauty as a kind of
psychological shield. This, ultimately, struck me as somewhat Pelagian:
attending Mass became an ascetical e ort in which my will had to conquer my
intellect, and in which I had to force myself not to pay attention to certain
grating aspects of Paul VI’s rite. What was blocked, in any case, was precisely
the kind of trustful surrender to the liturgy that one ought to be able to
practice without even a second thought.
I loved the people I was working with, but the liturgical diet was, in one
way, too sparse, and, in another way, too diverse and contradictory. I felt like I
was being torn in two; that which should have been, in imitation of heaven, a
place of “refreshment, light, and peace”—the sacred liturgy—was a source of
discontentment, stress, and con ict. I reached a point where I needed to leave
the schizophrenia of a “biformal” community and move to a “full service”
traditional parish.
 It’s one thing to choose to be a Martha instead of a Mary; serving Christ
actively can be legitimate, even if contemplative nuns and monks have chosen
the better part. It’s another thing to choose to be a Nicodemus who can visit
Christ only at night, as it were. Eventually one has to “break ranks” with the
party of the scribes (Consilium) and join the party of the apostles (Roman
tradition).
Hence, I feel that I understand something of what you are going through.
If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski
 PART 2

Did—Does—the Old Mass Need to Be

Reformed
 12

The Liturgical Rollercoaster and the Temptation of

Tinkeritis
In Part I, I have argued that the reform was fundamentally mistaken in its
principles, causes, and elements. It unleashed a period of iconoclasm and
mayhem that has denuded churches, desacralized worship, and depressed or
driven away the faithful—and now its proponents even try to hunt down and
eliminate any vestige of the old rite that might compete with it. The reform
dreamt of by Annibale Bugnini, drawn up by the more progressive wing of the
Liturgical Movement, and driven through by a pope bent on modernizing the
Faith introduced a catastrophic rupture in Catholic liturgy that cannot be
repaired from within the new rite, genetically deformed as it is. Assembling a
committee of trigger-happy liturgical “experts” whose brains are stu ed with
debatable scholarship and ideological agendas was not the way to improve
anything that has been handed down to us by the Church. Of this one may be
certain. The only sound response is the full restoration of the Roman rite in
its bimillennial plenitude.
In the second part of this book, I will examine the other side of the coin:
Did the old rite really need to be reformed? Or is it defensible, indeed
preferable, just the way it is? Of course, as I shall discuss without mincing
words, we need to hold ourselves to high standards, to what might be called
“best practice”: rubrics should be carefully followed, ministers well trained,
choirs and scholas up to task with the appropriate music, the faithful taught
from the pulpit and supplied with resources to use as they wish, such as
handouts, chant booklets, or daily missals.
I am convinced, and will argue, that the Tridentine rite allows for the
realization of the legitimate goals of Sacrosanctum Concilium better than the
Novus Ordo does (even assuming Ratzingerian best practice for the latter,
which, needless to say, seldom obtains).[368] Nor should it seem strange that
this would be so. After all, most of the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement
thought that the solution was not so much to change the Church’s rites as to
educate the people in the rites we have received as our inheritance. Even
Sacrosanctum Concilium goes out of its way to say: “There must be no
innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires
them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way
grow organically from forms already existing” (SC 23). Yet as we saw in chapter
1, it was none other than Paul VI who, in a General Audience of November 26,
1969, openly endorsed and defended the ousting of Latin and the repudiation
of Gregorian chant, in spite of manifest conciliar teaching to the contrary—
teaching that he, in company with over 2,000 bishops, had approved only a few
years earlier. This degree of contempt for an ecumenical council can hardly be
found in the annals of Church history. With such agrant disobedience in the
shepherd, it is no wonder his ponti cate was marked and marred by such
disobedience in the ock. It could be seen as a form of divine poetic justice.[369]
One of the rst objections raised against Catholics who love the
traditional Latin Mass and labor for its broadest possible restoration is that we
are viewing the past through rose-colored glasses and that, in reality, things
were terribly bad before the Council and urgently needed changing. The
problem with making this claim or refuting it is that the relevant historical
evidence one might draw upon is vast and diversi ed, with many anecdotes
and con icting elements. Nevertheless, while admitting for the sake of
argument that there were plenty of problems prior to the Council, I think it is
safe to say there is one supremely obvious di erence between the period before
the heyday of liturgical rupture (ca. 1964–1972) and the period after.[370]
Before this period, Catholics around the world were known for their
widespread attendance at Mass, and it seems that a great many people were
trying to be devout, or at least respectful, at Mass. Worshipers praying the
rosary or reading devotional books at Low Mass may not have exhibited the
pinnacle of participatio actuosa, but then again, as the Liturgical Movement
pointed out, many places had never implemented what St. Pius X had called
for—namely, that Mass be sung, that the people sing the chants and dialogues
of the Mass Ordinary, and that they become familiar with the actual prayers of
the liturgy. Still, there was a distinctively Catholic thing that Catholics did
every Sunday (and the more pious, more often than that); they knew that this
was the Holy Sacri ce of the Mass, that Jesus was really and truly present in
the Eucharist, and that you couldn’t receive Him if you were in a state of
mortal sin.
Mass attendance was already decreasing in the mid- to late sixties, for
social and cultural reasons known to all, but after the liturgical rupture
embodied in the Pauline missal, attendance fell precipitously. The situation we
have on our hands today, with only a small percentage of the baptized still
going to church at all, has its birth in this period of unprecedented liturgical
insolence, experimentation, disruption, and confusion. A decline had already
set in, to be sure, but it was the outrageous shock of substituting a new rite of
worship for an age-old bearer and transmitter of Catholic identity that
con rmed de nitively the modernizing madness of the institutional church.
To paraphrase Joseph Ratzinger, if this is how the Church treats her most
valued possession, her mystical treasures, what other reversals or betrayals can
be expected from her? Would anything remain stably in place? Could doctrine
itself survive the onslaught?[371]
The unrelenting series of synods called by Francis—the family synods, the
youth synod, the Amazonian synod, and the multi-year synod on synodality—
are the logical continuation and completion of the conciliar process. The years
during and after the Council were preoccupied with changing ritual and
discipline as widely as possible, while doctrine seemed to be left untouched,
but all along the modernists have been laying the groundwork for “renovating”
the doctrine as well. Given the freedom to do so, there is almost nothing in
the faith that they would not falsify or modify, in the same way that almost
nothing in the Mass was left intact.
Sadly, even with a liturgy entirely in the vernacular, Catholics today by and
large seem barely aware of those basic truths of the faith mentioned above—
and again, it’s not reasonable to say the problem is merely poor education. The
very form of the liturgy doesn’t convey those truths as e ectively. If you don’t
hear aloud (or read in your missal) prayers indicating that the Mass is a true
and proper sacri ce, then can we say that the Eucharistic liturgy is being true
to itself, true to its very nature and purpose? In short, the reformed liturgy was
as much a repudiation of Sacrosanctum Concilium’s principles as the
traditional liturgy would have been the scene of their ful llment if only
patient formation had been pursued.
 In this sense, I de nitely concur with Dom Alcuin Reid that authentic
liturgical formation is the golden key to participatio actuosa, and that without
this formation, no amount of ddling and dgeting with the liturgy is ever
going to make a real and profound di erence in how the people participate.[372]
They will be devout or semi-devout spectators at a TLM, bored or semi-bored
spectators at a Novus Ordo. For this reason, too, a growing number today are
of the opinion that the traditional liturgy, which carries within it so very
much to participate in, is the ideal point of departure for the spiritual
revitalization of Christian worship that Pope John XXIII seemed to have
numbered among his objectives for Vatican II but that Paul VI thwarted with
his myopic modernizations.
Does this mean there can never be change in the liturgy handed down by
our forefathers? That conclusion would not seem to follow from anything I’ve
argued; on the contrary, the liturgy should continue to develop organically,
because that is both a sign and a cause of its vitality.[373] For example, it is good
that the old missal can now accommodate some of the most beloved saints
canonized after 1960, the vast majority of whom knew only the traditional
Mass.[374] All the same, it is eminently understandable that, after the
maelstrom of the past sixty years, change doesn’t seem to be high on the list of
desiderata for lovers of the sacred liturgy. Truly organic development takes
time, plenty of time, and no one need be in a rush (though moderns typically
are, and that is more than half their problem). The improvements most
desperately needed in the Church today are those that will take place in our
minds and hearts when we throw ourselves anew into the Church’s treasury of
worship and so learn how to be Catholic once more. Fundamentally, we
ourselves are the ones who need reform, not the liturgy.
Just when one thinks that one has stepped o the heaving, rickety train or
storm-tossed boat of liturgical change, someone of an impeccably reformist
mentality will come along and propose unleashing Sacrosanctum Concilium
on the usus antiquior, or returning to 1965, or cobbling together a hybrid rite
from the old and new books, or some other such monstrosity. So many of
these issues have been thought through, fought over, re-thought and re-
fought, that one would think we had safely entered a period of deep skepticism
about further tinkering with the TLM’s structure, prayers, ceremonies, and
customs, which are found upon long acquaintance to be eminently tting.
 At The Catholic World Report on January 31, 2017, Fr. Peter
Stravinskas published “How the Ordinary Form of the Mass Can
‘Enrich’ the Extraordinary Form.” Before I comment on his fourteen
suggestions, I will say that I appreciate Fr. Stravinskas’s honesty in
admitting that the Novus Ordo has little to do with what the
Council Fathers believed they were agreeing to when they signed
Sacrosanctum Concilium, even though we also know (as discussed in
chapter 1) that Bugnini and Co. created enough loopholes in the
document to drive a eet of lorries through. That being said, it is
perplexing that Fr. Stravinskas does not seem to have noticed that
almost all of his suggestions have been the subject of many
previously published articles critiquing the very “improvements” he
advocates. I will now take up each of Fr. Stravinskas’s suggestions for
how the new rite can enrich the old and brie y explain why, on the
contrary, they would do nothing of the sort.

1. ADOPT THE REVISED LECTIONARY

The traditional lectionary could have been gently expanded with additional
ferial readings that had once actually existed in the history of the Western
rites, without displacing the existing annual cursus. As I suggested some time
ago,[375] readings for the feasts of particular saints could have been augmented
without di culty—e.g., St. Anthony of Egypt could ttingly have had an
Epistle and Gospel perfectly re ective of his life and continued witness in the
Church today: St. Paul about our struggle not being with esh and blood, etc.,
and the Gospel that prompted his own conversion: “If thou wilt be perfect, go
sell what thou hast, and give to the poor” (Mt 19:21). Unfortunately, the
reformers after Vatican II opted to create a new multi-year lectionary that has
almost nothing in common with historical Roman precedent[376] and con icts
in numerous ways with the genius of the Roman rite.
Quite apart from whether or not it can be seen as faithful to the Council’s
desiderata, the Novus Ordo lectionary is gravely awed because of its unwieldy
bulk, its omission of “di cult” texts, its watering down of key spiritual goods
emphasized in the old readings, and its diremption from the sanctoral cycle.
No human mind can relate to so great a quantity of biblical text spread over
multiple years: it is out of proportion to the natural cycle of the year and its
seasons; it is out of proportion to the supernatural cycle of the liturgical year.
The revised lectionary does not lend itself readily to the sacri cial nality of
the Mass but, inasmuch as it appears to serve a didactic function, sets up a
di erent goal, quasi-independent of the o ering of the Sacri ce. The use of
the names “Liturgy of the Word” and “Liturgy of the Eucharist” underlines the
problem: it is as if there are two liturgies glued together. They are seldom
joined by the obvious connection of being related to one and the same feast,
since the new lectionary prefers to ignore the saints in its march through the
books of Scripture. Catholics who love the Roman rite should be unafraid to
maintain and to argue that the traditional Mass possesses what is, in many
ways, a superior lectionary. An attempt to replace it with the new lectionary
would be an impoverishment, not an improvement, of the rite.[377]

2. INCORPORATE ADDITIONAL MASS FORMULARIES

The addition, to Paul VI’s missal, of “historic euchological material”—that
is, prayers drawn from ancient liturgical books or collections—was done in an
utterly inorganic manner, as committees of archaeologizing experts met to
discuss their favorite textual digs, and all the bones and teeth, jewels and plates
they recovered—many, no doubt, in excellent shape, but not something to be
grafted on tout court by executive at. In this “enrichment” there was also a
huge amount of excision and progressive rewriting, in other words, a
distortion of the lex orandi.[378] This has been thoroughly documented in
Lauren Pristas’s Collects of the Roman Missals, augmented by the yeoman’s
work of Matthew Hazell.[379]

3. EXPAND POSSIBILITIES FOR SOLEMNITY

While I agree with Fr. Stravinskas that sung Mass should be the norm or
at least far more common, especially on Sundays and Holy Days,[380] the
potential pitfalls of the new mix-and-match model of progressive solemnity
need to be honestly reckoned with. One writer o ers the following defense of
the rule that everything must be sung in a sung Mass:

One of the biggest liturgical shifts following the council was the
breakdown of clear lines between the High Mass (everything audible
sung) and Low Mass (nothing sung). Like many of the things that
 came as a part of the council’s liturgical reforms, I think the shift
was meant well, but in practice, it has failed spectacularly.

I understand the concept of what it intended to do. In theory, it

would enable a parish to have more liturgical singing—for example, a
priest singing all the dialogues and his prayers, even if a choir or
cantor could not be present. Or it could allow a congregation to
chant the ordinary (in addition to the priest chanting his parts),
even if a cantor capable of chanting Propers could not be present. It
would allow the Sung Mass model (that is, the ideal) to be more
widely used, in situations where it would have been otherwise
impractical or impossible in the Extraordinary Form, where a sung
Mass cannot be celebrated without a cantor capable of chanting the
Propers of the Mass. In other words, Progressive Solemnity should
enable Masses to be generally celebrated in a more ideal manner,
bringing things higher and closer to the ideal of a sung liturgy.

However, it has had the exact opposite e ect in almost every case.
Instead of allowing priests to bring things closer to the ideal and to
sing more, it led to a widespread laziness where singing the actual
Mass itself has become quite a rare thing. The allowance to sing
every prayer or a minimal number of prayers has caused most
priests to sing very minimally (if they follow the rubrics) or even
none (if they ignore them), e ectively annihilating the sung Mass
from use in most parishes. Human nature being what it is, we often
need rules to keep us on the straight and narrow.[381]

To this may be added a widespread experience on the ground: the challenge

presented by the obligatory nature of singing at a High Mass, and the obvious
coherence of that Mass when integrally sung, is a mighty incentive for
everyone involved—celebrant, cantors, choir—to work hard to achieve the goal.
[382]

4. ELIMINATE DUPLICATE RECITATIONS

Fr. Stravinskas objects to the manner in which, at High Mass, the priest is
required to repeat a number of texts that are being sung by other ministers.
Yet this practice possesses a profound theological rationale and brings spiritual
bene ts, as I mentioned in chapters 9 and 10 and will discuss at greater length
in chapter 15. Such a defense may readily be given of all the other supposedly
“useless repetitions” that the liturgical reform purged from the Mass, such as
the repeated Con teors, the ninefold Kyrie, the sixfold Domine, non sum
dignus, and the nearly daily use of the Gloria.[383]

5. RESTORE THE OFFERTORY PROCESSION AND PRAYER OF

THE FAITHFUL
The “o ertory procession” as it was fashioned by the Consilium bears little
resemblance to any historical precedent in the West; it is a fanciful creation
loosely based on the custom of people handing in bread and wine before the
service began.[384] Its current form seems to be another method for giving jobs
to lay people, like the Works Progress Administration for the unemployed in
the Great Depression.
As for the Prayer of the Faithful (also termed the General Intercessions),
one might well question their role. A motley collection of petitions, usually
poorly written and even more poorly read,[385] disturbs the natural ow of the
liturgy as it proceeds from the readings into the Profession of Faith, which is
the natural response to God’s revelation of Himself, then into the O ertory.
The homily already threatens to disturb the liturgical ow because it
represents more the temporal human axis of liturgy, but a good homily need
not last for more than a few minutes, and if it is truly good, it has whetted the
soul’s appetite for the Bread of Life by pondering the Word of God. With the
solemn chanting of the Creed, the eternal divine axis of the liturgy decisively
reasserts itself, as the soul exercises the gift of faith in preparation for the
o ering of the elements that the Lord will transform into the gift of Himself.
Seen from “above,” looking at the structure and ow of the liturgical action,
the intercessory prayers mark an awkward caesura.
It is di erent in the Good Friday liturgy because this liturgy is already
radically di erent from the form that evolved for the other days of the year.
The public intercessory prayers have all the more power and force for being
specially and solemnly recited on Good Friday, the day on which we recall the
historical event of the Lord’s sacri ce and death. One is almost knocked over
by the power of the Good Friday liturgy; one only waters down its forcefulness
by borrowing its custom of general intercessions and distributing them widely
—albeit super cially—throughout the year.
It is unnecessary to establish a separate part of the liturgy for a Prayer of
the Faithful as long as one uses the Roman Canon with its stately intercessions
for the Church, the pope, the bishop, priests, and people, and, after the
consecration, for the faithful departed. There is a pause at the Memento,
Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum for remembering those for whom
we have promised to pray and “all those dear” to us. Once more, the Placeat
tibi is intercessory, and rightly so: it brings to a full close the majestic action of
the sacri ce begun at the Suscipe, Domine and tracing an arc whose apogee is
the elevation and whose perigee, if I may so speak, is the Domine, non sum
dignus, when the glori ed Lamb of God, of in nite holiness, is besought to
heal our souls, that he may enter and make His dwelling there. The end joins
with the beginning in a cycle that is not Nietzsche’s despairing eternal
recurrence but the joyous certainty of faith: He who created the world at the
beginning, He who re-created it by His Incarnation, will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead, and will give to His faithful servants the
reward of everlasting happiness.

6. RE-ORDER THE DISMISSAL RITE

Fr. Stravinskas dislikes the TLM’s placement of the nal blessing after the
Ite missa est. If, however, we understand the Mass to be the o ering of the
Holy Sacri ce, then Ite missa est is most appropriately said when the liturgical
o ering is complete, namely, after the Postcommunion: for it can mean “go, it
[the sacri ce] is sent to God,” as well as “go, the Mass is complete.” The
blessing of the people is, in that sense, an afterthought—a most welcome one,
to be sure, as is the Last Gospel that recalls the mystery of the Incarnation, of
which the liturgy just enacted is an extension.
After the people respond Deo gratias to Ite missa est (or to Benedicamus
Domino), the priest turns around to pray a last private prayer, the Placeat tibi,
which allows the congregation time to kneel in preparation for the blessing of
the priest. I’ve grown to appreciate kneeling for that nal blessing, which has
habituated me to value a priest’s blessing as something special, in the way that
the traditional rite of blessing holy water teaches one to appreciate this
sacramental more than a hasty pseudo-blessing from the Book of Blessings.[386]
7. MOVE THE “FRACTIO” FROM THE LIBERA NOS TO THE
AGNUS DEI
Here once again, the reformers, by moving the breaking of the Host and
the depositing of a particle of it in the chalice from the moment of the
embolism immediately after the Lord’s Prayer to the moment of the Agnus
Dei after the sign of peace, went far beyond the mandate of the Council in
disturbing a very ancient custom for no discernible good reason. The Agnus
Dei is a later addition to the Order of Mass (and certainly a very worthy one)
made by Pope St. Sergius I at the end of the seventh century.[387] The Fraction,
on the other hand, is as ancient and universal as the Mass itself. The separate
consecrations of the bread and wine, also an ancient and universal feature of
all historical Christian rites, represents the shedding of Christ’s Blood, which
is to say, the separation of His Blood from His Body, and hence His death. The
fraction ritual, at which they are reunited, represents the Resurrection.[388]
In accordance with the Western Church’s ancient tradition, the priest
from the Preface until the end of the Libera nos has thus far only addressed
God the Father in prayer.[389] Only after the Fraction, the representation of the
Resurrection, does he say (and the choir sing) the Agnus Dei, addressing the
Son, the Lamb of God whom St. John sees in the heavenly court, acclaimed by
the angels and saints: “The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and
divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction.”
And only after this has been accomplished does the celebrant invite the
faithful into the peace of the risen Christ, after which the rite of the Pax
begins. The old missal’s addition of “always” to the celebrant’s address to the
people, “May the peace of the Lord always be with you,” which occurs only
here, emphasizes this vision of Christ in eternity.
The modern displacement of the fraction to the Agnus Dei has turned a
crucial moment in the Mass into an afterthought, and something which is
routinely not even noticed by the congregation, as they are busy shaking each
other’s hands. Indeed, the change is both theologically incoherent and, one
may truly say, disrespectful to Christ, as Michael Foley points out:

Placing the kiss before the fraction and before the commingling [as
the NO does] blurs and confuses the gurative signi cance of this
part of the liturgy.... Under the current arrangement, the sign of the
 risen Christ’s peace is now being exchanged before the sign that
Christ is risen from the dead; the people of God are savoring the
joys of the resurrection while Christ still lies mystically su ering
and dying on the altar.[390]

Given “that the liturgy should be restored in such a way that its texts and rites
express more clearly the holy things which they signify” (SC 21), this mutation
is supremely ironic.

8. MAKE CLEAR THAT THE HOMILY IS A TRUE PART OF THE

SACRED LITURGY
Rather: let us make it clear that the homily is not a part of the liturgy.
Please! Although restricted to those whose ordination grants them authority
(in principle) to preach, preaching is not part of the Church’s public worship
that is done by Christ the Head in union with His members. A beautiful
symbol of the distinction between the priest as an individual man and the
priest as alter Christus, image of the archetype, is the custom of the priest
removing his maniple (sometimes also his chasuble)[391] before he ascends the
pulpit to read the readings in the vernacular and preach on them or on some
other suitable theme. After he is done, he descends, resumes the vestment(s),
and continues the Holy Sacri ce at the altar.
Clearly this is a healthy distinction to make. In every other part of the
Mass, it is Christ primarily acting, with the priest following His lead,
conforming to His pattern—symbolized by the Latin language, the unchanging
prayers, the appointed readings, the formality of every scripted action, the
Canon or Rule which brings the entire people to the foot of the Cross on
Calvary and communicates to them none other than the Body and Blood of
the Lord Jesus Himself, the beloved Son in whom the Father delights, the
unblemished Lamb o ered as a sweet-smelling oblation. As Robert Lazu
Kmita observes:

In the liturgical context, the particular person of the priest (that is,
everything that gives him subjective identity—his ideas, opinions,
feelings) no longer exists. The explanation goes as follows: in the
context of sacred ceremonies, the priest merely conforms perfectly
to everything he must perform. In front of the holy altar, he does
 nothing to highlight his own creativity, opinions, or ideas: for he
must carry out a series of actions and gestures, all of which are
precisely codi ed by the millennia-old Tradition of the Church. I
repeat: nothing that the priest must do in the liturgical context is
his own “invention.” Everything is given, already established.
Practically, he must “empty” himself in an act of perfect humility,
allowing the High Priest (according to the order of Melchizedek),
Jesus Christ, to accomplish through His divine power, together with
the Holy Spirit, the Eucharistic sacri ce o ered to God the Father
for our forgiveness and the restoration of harmony between us and
the Supreme Being.[392]

At the time of the homily, in contrast, it is the individual priest who

comes to the fore and acts in propria persona, since his words, his actions, are
no longer precisely those of Christ. His divestment of chasuble and/or maniple
makes a symbolic statement that it is now he, as an individual, who is going to
expound the Word of God, to the best of his ability. History proves countless
times that a preacher can preach heresy or can otherwise fail in his duty;
Christ, through the liturgy, never preaches heresy, and the priest, when acting
as a living instrument of Christ, never fails to accomplish the work of the
Master.[393]

9. MAINTAIN THE INTEGRITY OF THE SANCTUS

Fr. Stravinskas also protests against the separation of the Benedictus from
the Sanctus by the choir in certain sung Masses, insisting that if a polyphonic
setting of the Sanctus is so lengthy it cannot be sung straight through, then it
stands condemned by Tra le Sollecitudini.
Fr. Stravinskas must be misremembering no. 22 (“It is not lawful to keep
the priest at the altar waiting on account of the chant or the music for a
length of time not allowed by the liturgy. According to the ecclesiastical
prescriptions the Sanctus of the Mass should be over before the elevation, and
therefore the priest must here have regard for the singers. The Gloria and the
Credo ought, according to the Gregorian tradition, to be relatively short”),
which, when read together with no. 8, which notes that a motet may be sung
after the Benedictus in a Solemn Mass, implies that Pius X accepts the custom
of splitting the Sanctus into two parts, with the Benedictus sung after the
consecration of the wine. One might argue that the more elaborate Gregorian
settings of the Sanctus, and especially the best polyphonic settings, bring the
Canon—insofar as the Canon really begins with the Preface—into that e usive
mode of prayer that is not natively Roman but is characteristic of the East. A
silent Canon enwrapped (as it were) by a Palestrina Sanctus fuses the Roman
prosaicness and “legalese” of the text, heard though it be only by the priest,
with a “doxological” element, making it a rather di erent total experience
from the Canon as said by St. Leo the Great or in the early Ordines Romani.
How tting it is when the choristers, singing a polyphonic Sanctus, stop
after the rst Hosanna, as if crying out to welcome the King entering into the
Holy City; then kneel in silence to adore the Blessed Sacrament elevated, as if
Christ were just that moment passing by their marveling gaze; and, standing
again, resume their prayer with the tting words: “Blessed is He who comes in
the name of the Lord.” Worthy is the Lamb, the Son of David, exalted on high
in His glori ed humanity and now really present upon the altar, to receive this
resounding Hosanna!
In any case, a proposal that would require the Sanctus and Benedictus
from Palestrina’s Missa Papæ Marcelli and every other such work to be
permanently discontinued except as concert hall specialties must have
something deeply wrong with it.

10. ADOPT THE RUBRICS OF THE NOVUS ORDO FOR THE

COMMUNION RITE
Our eager reformer wishes to see everyone chant the Lord’s Prayer
together. However, in the historical Western rites, the celebrant is the only
one who chants the bulk of the Pater Noster, whether at the Divine O ce or
at Mass, in his capacity as minister of the High Priest and representative of
the people. The antiquity of this practice is evident from the way St. Augustine
of Hippo and St. Gregory the Great speak of it as a thing taken for granted in
their day.[394] The shape of the plainchant tells a story, too: the tone dips down
at Et ne nos inducas in tentationem (a distinctively priestly tone used also at
the end of the Secret leading into the Preface), whereupon the people are cued
to respond, Sed libera nos a malo. It is in the bones of the rite, so to speak.
As for saying the remainder of the prayers aloud, such as the embolism,
this only adds verbosity. Everyone knows what the priest is praying for, and we
can all fruitfully immerse ourselves in the intense silence. That short silence
after the Lord’s Prayer is much appreciated by the congregation, as it enables
us to re ect on the transition from the worship of the Lamb to the partaking
of the Lamb in Holy Communion.

11. FACE THE PEOPLE WHEN ADDRESSING THE PEOPLE;

FACE GOD WHEN ADDRESSING GOD
In keeping with the mid-century reformers, Fr. Stravinskas thinks that the
readings are solely meant as instructional moments for the people, and
therefore demands that the minister read them facing the people. But the
longstanding custom of doing the readings either eastward (for the Epistle) or
northward (for the Gospel) has a rich history and theology supporting it.[395]
We should recover our understanding of the symbols, not jettison them for
rationalistic reasons.

12. UNITE THE OLD AND NEW CALENDARS

Fr. Stravinskas opines that the feast of Christ the King should be
celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Traditional Catholics beg
to di er. Pius XI’s intention in instituting the feast, as can be gleaned from his
encyclical Quas Primas (no. 29), is to emphasize the glory of Christ as terminus
of His earthly mission, a glory and mission visible and perpetuated in history
by the saints. Hence the feast falls shortly before the Feast of All Saints, to
emphasize that what Christ inaugurated in His own person before ascending
in glory, the saints then instantiate and extend in human society, culture, and
nations. It is a feast primarily about celebrating Christ’s ongoing kingship over
all reality, including this present world, where the Church must ght for the
recognition of His rights, the actual extension of His dominion to all domains,
individual and social. Indeed, there’s also the obvious fact—unmentioned in
Quas Primas but surely in everyone’s mind when the feast was established—
that the last Sunday in October had, for centuries, been celebrated as
“Reformation Sunday.” Pius XI’s intention, consistent with the encyclical as a
whole, was to insist on the rights of Jesus Christ here and now, and the
corresponding duties of men and nations on earth: a Catholic counter-Sunday,
reminding the world not only of the comprehensive Kingship of Jesus Christ
(so often denied socially and culturally by various teachings of Protestantism)
but also of the worldwide kingly authority of His Church. Paul VI replaced
this feast with a feast of Christ, King of the Universe, placed at the end of the
Church year to emphasize the eschatological ful llment of the kingdom of
God in the world to come. The texts of the feast were pruned of references to
Christ reigning through the laws, arts, and institutions of Catholic states. In
other words, as Archbishop Lefebvre memorably puts it, “they have uncrowned
Him.” We wish to have no part in that rude marginalization of the Redeemer-
King of mankind.[396]
Subsequent to the publication of Fr. Stravinskas’s article, the Vatican itself
(as noted above) made provision for the celebration of some of the more
recently canonized saints.[397] Nevertheless, as we discussed in chapter 2, the
Novus Ordo calendar as a whole is a disaster, with its loss of the Pentecost
octave and Sundays after Pentecost, loss of correct days for Epiphany and
Ascension, loss of Epiphanytide, loss of Septuagesima, loss of Ember Days, and
on and on. The drastic mutilation of the temporal cycle removed from the
Roman rite almost all of its characteristically Roman features.[398] The new
calendar, the handiwork of a “trio of maniacs” as Bouyer calls them, needs to
be scrapped, and the usus antiquior calendar reclaimed as the norm; regional
and recent saints may then be carefully added to it, making generous use of
commemorations rather than jettisoning long-honored saints already present.

13. MODIFY THE RUBRICS

Fr. Stravinskas repeats the call for removing “useless repetitions,” without
showing that he has even tried to grasp the practical or symbolic value of the
repetitions in question. In chapter 15, I will delve into his example, the
multiple signs of the cross in the Canon. There are many reasons not to reduce
or remove repetitions, not the least of which is that they are not at all useless.
[399] A modern mentality that dictates we should cut out anything not

immediately and obviously useful should advocate tonsillectomies and

appendectomies for everyone. A better comparison would be the di erence
between poetry and prose. The hard-nosed rationalist might say, “Surely, all
that fancy language isn’t really necessary for getting the point across in plain
old prose,” but poetry has special resources of its own, a distinctive voice or
manner of speaking, that is by no means incidental to the poet’s message but
essential to its full expression and reception. We need to expand our notion of
what is useful by thinking of what is noble and tting, what transcends the
merely utilitarian as it rises to the poetic and the mystical.

14. RENAME THE TWO PRINCIPAL PARTS OF THE MASS

Fr. Stravinskas argues for retiring the division of the Mass into “Mass of
Catechumens” and “Mass of the Faithful,” a nomenclature we apparently owe
to Dom Fernand Cabrol in the 1920s,[400] and for replacing it with “Liturgy of
the Word” and “Liturgy of the Eucharist,” as in the Novus Ordo. The classic
division makes more sense. The rst Christians saw in the Holy Eucharist the
ful llment of what the Jews read about in their Scriptures; thus, the liturgical
connection between reading and o ering sacri ce was understood to be much
deeper than two back-to-back segments of ritual, one pertaining to “books”
and the other to “sacraments” or “mysteries.” From a Patristic perspective, one
might say that Cabrol’s division points to two aspects of the life of faith: the
approach to Christ, as a Jew or Gentile called to salvation by confessing His
name and receiving the rites of initiation, and the abiding in Christ as one
who has already been incorporated into Him in the waters of rebirth, the
anointing from above, and communion with His Body and Blood.
Consequently, while there may indeed be some actual catechumens at Mass
who are living the drama of being “on the outside looking in,” so to speak,
there is something in this distinction that pertains to all of us in our
pilgrimage of faith to glory, as we repeatedly confess Jesus Christ as Lord—and,
when we have fallen into sin, receive absolution through Confession, which
renews our baptismal grace—and can now, at the threshold of the Holy of
Holies, reap the fruits foretold in the Scriptures that are read aloud to
everyone. Even in the midst of the most radical religious shift the world has
ever seen within one religious tradition—from the Mosaic law to the grace of
Christ, from the Torah to the Gospel, from the many sacri ces of the Old
Covenant to the one all-holy and all-su cient sacri ce of the New Covenant—
the tradition teaches us continuity, not rupture and discontinuity. There was a
transition not from letter to spirit, but from a cosmic catechumenate to an
eternal delity, from one Mass to another Mass—or rather, a seamless
transition from the outer chamber of expectant preparation to the inner
chamber of loving communion.
On the other hand, the new terms are seriously misleading. Since the
central and de nitive “word” is Jesus Christ, the Logos or Verbum of the
Father, made esh for us men and for our salvation, the expression “Liturgy of
the Word” should refer par excellence to the Holy Eucharist itself—or even
more, to the Eucharistic sacri ce, because in this sacri ce the Word uttered by
the Father is o ered back to Him, thanks to His human nature, in a perfect
self-o ering, and it is this oblation of Christ on the Cross that empowers us to
become “hearers” and “doers” of the word of God. The problem, then, with the
phrase “Liturgy of the Word” is that this Word is really and fully present most
of all in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. A sign of the di erence is that, while we
o er incense to the Gospel in honor of Him whose Gospel it is, it would be
sinful for someone to bow down and adore the lectionary, placing his faith and
trust in it, and loving it above all things, whereas it is precisely this adoration
or latria that must be given to most holy Eucharist; indeed, as St. Augustine
says (and Benedict XVI often quotes him to this e ect), we would be guilty of
sinning were we not to adore It. Hence the Novus Ordo’s division is more
confusing than it is enlightening. It betrays a Protestant exaltation of the Bible
as the principal Word of God and the basis of the Christian religion—a view
no Catholic could hold.[401]
In any case, it is odd when an author claims that Pius XII’s denunciation of
“antiquarianism” would apply to those who wish to retain such a term as
“Liturgy of the Catechumens,” which was never more than an uno cial
categorization about a century old, yet simultaneously indulges in just the kind
of antiquarianism Pius XII did warn against by advocating the restoration of
supposedly ancient but long-since-discontinued practices like an o ertory
procession or general intercessions modeled after those of Good Friday.

HANG UP THE HAMMERS AND SAWS

Thus, we have a grab-bag of proposals for fourteen putative
“improvements” to the old rite—every one of which, on closer inspection,
deserves to be dismissed. There could have been fourteen other suggestions—
or 140, for that matter.
I do not wish to be seen as making a personal attack on the author of these
proposals. I respect him for his priesthood and his admirable defense of
Catholic orthodoxy over many decades. For present purposes, he stands in for
an entire class of professional, semi-professional, and unprofessional liturgists
and liturgical reformers who, over the decades, have presented their “laundry
lists” of lamented defects and favorite improvements—lists that rarely
coincide, often con ict, seldom edify, and never suggest that the author has
stepped back to ask, in all humility, why centuries of great theologians and
devout clerics never complained, never sought an overhaul of the Church’s
ceremonies, but instead commented lovingly on each and every detail of the
rites they inherited. In chapter 4, I quoted St. John Henry Newman to the
e ect that no two men will ever agree on reforms, and if they proceed with
some plan or other, everyone will be discontented with whatever happens.[402]
That is exactly what has happened, and it suggests that our forefathers were
wiser than we are in their stubborn conservatism.
But some people will never learn. Under the current Vatican regime—who
knows how long it and its programs (I had almost said pogroms) will endure—
there are campaigns under way to enforce liturgical “updates” on communities
that have been accustomed to the peaceful use of the old rite. For the one
thing that must never, ever be allowed is an untroubled continuation, in the
present, of a life of worship rooted in the past. As we saw in Fr. Stravinskas’s
proposals, there will always be those who are so enamored of this or that
“improvement” that they can barely sleep at night knowing that someone,
somewhere, is not bene ting from it. Or worse, there are people so enamored
of the cult of obedience that they cannot rest until everyone has been made to
submit, on bended knee, to the latest desideratum from a dicastery’s desk, even
if it enforces less time on their knees in divine worship. Such authoritarians
will cloak their plan to soften and ultimately liquefy conservative opposition
under smiling expressions like “gestures of communion,” “institutional
solidarity,” and “synodal discernment.”
In a press release dated July 25, 2024, the Dominicans of the Holy Spirit, a
community of nuns that celebrated the traditional rite for decades but was
then ordered by the Vatican to begin adopting the Novus Ordo, announced
that the Vatican had given them detailed stipulations as to how they should
proceed in the future:

From the beginning of the next liturgical year, on December 1, 2024,

the Holy See asks us to follow the liturgical calendar currently in
force in the Universal Church for the Roman rite [i.e., the Novus
Ordo calendar]; it also asks that in our various houses, Mass be
celebrated according to the Novus Ordo one week of the month,
with the exception of Sundays, while the Vetus Ordo remains in use
 for the other three weeks and every Sunday. It speci es that the
Mass readings for each day will be those of the current Roman
lectionary, and that all the prefaces of the Paul VI Missal will be
used for Masses according to the Vetus Ordo.[403]

That is the beginning of the end of this community, for they will be
destabilized at the core of their vocation by a hodge-podge rite that has lost its
integrity, being treated like a toy model whose parts can be switched around at
will. The nature of the demands indicates a profound disregard, even
contempt, for the structural principles of the old rite (and, for that matter, of
the new rite), while the nature of the “obedience” indicates a vision of religious
life no longer rooted in coherent tradition but tossed this way and that by the
ideological commitments of current Roman leadership.
The Vatican here targets a vulnerable community of nuns, heavily reliant
on the outside support of priests,[404] in order to pilot an experiment that it
would like, if possible, to extend to all TLM institutes, such as the Priestly
Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the
Institute of the Good Shepherd, the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer, the
Fontgombault monasteries, and so forth: namely, not to suppress the old rite,
but to hybridize it with the Novus Ordo. Thus, the diktat might be issued that
the old Ordo Missæ may be retained but the Novus Ordo calendar, lectionary,
and prefaces must be used at all times, instead of the ones proper to the
classical Roman rite.
This deconstruction by hybridization, and the resulting fractures in unity
it would bring about in the traditionalist movement, would be the next and
more subtle strategy for o cials who have realized they cannot achieve direct
and total abolition of the old rite. If you can’t beat them, why not assimilate
them in some fashion?
Such moves would, as noted above, undermine the integrity of the rite and
make it a hodge-podge. As Joseph Shaw is especially good at explaining,[405] the
old rite and the new rite each has its own “design principles,” if one may use
that expression. Each is consistent from start to nish in pursuing certain
goals with certain means. In the old rite, the in exibility of the rubrics, the
separation of priest from people, the use of a hieratic language, the frequent
periods of silent prayer, the exclusive use of the Roman Canon, the xed,
limited, and repeated texts, etc., form a phenomenological and theological
unity. In the new rite, the compact order of celebration, the interaction with
the people, the verbalization of nearly everything, the vernacular extroversion,
the options, the looser movements, the ample portions of Scripture, the
clerically controlled silences, and so forth, also form a phenomenological and
theological unity.
I think that clergy and laity who are familiar with the two rites are well
aware of the many profound di erences between them. While the new rite
presents itself as an assemblage of modules, a design feature that can be
explained both by the manner of its genesis out of committees and by the
intention of situational adaptability, the old rite is most de nitely nothing of
the sort, and it cannot be treated like a LEGO kit in which one can swap out
blue pieces for yellow ones. Indeed, as we have seen in this chapter, almost
every proposal for “improving” the old rite either rests on questionable
antiquarian premises or betrays a faulty understanding of how the old rite
works.
Anyone who knows about the hundreds of obvious and subtle di erences
between the old and new calendars will see immediately that combining the
old rite with the new calendar is a non-starter. For one thing, the
hagiocentricity so characteristic of the old rite will be instantly compromised.
[406] For another, the symbolic and numerological patterns that ll the old

calendar will be lost without a trace.[407] Of all the changes, the one that is
most alarming is the forcing of the new lectionary into the old rite. Much has
already been written on this topic, so we need not dwell on it here.[408]
The experiment in alternating between the old and new rites was already
tried years ago by the monks of Norcia, who started as a “biritual” community
that o ered Mass in both the Novus Ordo and the Vetus Ordo, while singing
the old monastic o ce. Over time, the incoherence of the alternating rites, the
clashing of calendars, the lack of tight interaction between Mass and O ce,
and other inconveniences so pressed upon them that the monks unanimously
chose a fully traditional way of life and worship, which instantly brought “pax
liturgica”—the ability to rest in the liturgy of tradition, as countless monks,
clerics, and laymen had done for centuries. And in this case, the cause of the
monks’ lack of peace wasn’t a hybridized rite—God forbid!—but a mere
alternation between old and new.
 There is a phrase, “death by a thousand cuts.” We learned recently that in
Virginia, at three parishes that were given a further two-year extension for the
TLM, the Novus Ordo is to be celebrated one Sunday per month (it was
merely a “suggestion,” but the bishop seized it eagerly; or perhaps he was told
that it was an unusual kind of suggestion, namely, a requirement); this is the
Cupich policy now applied to another diocese. In the case of the French nuns,
a religious community may keep a mangled TLM, but once a week, they must
use the Novus Ordo. First, one Sunday a month...then two.... One week a
month...then two.... Those who could not obtain the total suppression of the
TLM will attempt to subvert it in other ways. We could have predicted this,
for the same methods have been used by the Vatican ever since the 1970s.
Consider the monastery of Benedictines in Flavigny: they were “reconciled” to
the Church on the condition that they take the Novus Ordo as their
conventual Mass, although the monks individually o er the old Mass in the
mornings.
If you don’t want to die by a thousand cuts, do not o er your body to the
rst cut.
I feel genuinely sorry for the Dominicans of the Holy Spirit, as they now
embark on the bumpy, cratered, agitating road of incoherence that wiser
monks and nuns have left behind. A forced and clumsy attempt to t new in
old, and old in new, will make the resulting neither-this-nor-that liturgical life
more self-conscious and wearisome. And to think they are making this shift in
2024—decades after the problems of the new rite have been exhaustively
experienced and canvassed! After so many souls, responsive to the same Holy
Spirit who raised up for us these noble apostolic rites in their millennial
plenitude, have successfully disowned the “banal on-the-spot product” for
good! Thus we see the devastating results of placing obedience to renegade
authorities higher than obedience to any other principle, including the
universal and unanimous acceptance of liturgical tradition that has
characterized Western religious life from its dawn until the rise of
hyperpapalism.
Nor is my concern limited to the current heads, more or less competent,
of Roman dicasteries. For there are gures within the traditional movement
who would gladly throw open the gates to the Trojan Horse of late Liturgical
Movement innovations in order to maintain what they consider the core of
their commitment. For example, in certain years on Pentecost Monday of the
Chartres pilgrimage, the Epistle and Gospel have been read in French toward
the congregation rather than being chanted in Latin while facing eastwards
and northwards.[409] Apparently many French and German priests who o er
the TLM believe that the readings should be given in the vernacular only, and
facing the people. This mentality is a consequence of a fundamental failure to
understand the role of the Word of God in the Eucharistic liturgy, re ecting
widespread errors—largely rationalist in origin—about the exclusively or
primarily “instructional” nature of the rst part of the Mass.[410]
Imagine a future pope—let us call him Pius XIII, perhaps hailing from
Africa or Asia—who, with all the good intentions in the world, wishes to end
the “liturgy wars” and therefore decides to produce a hybrid missal for the
“Roman rite” that combines what he, or a committee he appoints, decides are
the best features of the old and new missals. With liturgical knowledge and
praxis being as abysmal as they are in the second Dark Ages we are passing
through, it is almost a foregone conclusion that such a hybrid rite, though it
would doubtless begin from the old Ordo Missæ, probably in its 1965
Belvedere Torso form (where the head of the preparatory prayers and the feet
of the Last Gospel are lopped o and only the bulk remains), would adopt the
new lectionary because it is considered such a great success, indeed a necessary
step of progress in the Church’s relationship with the Bible.[411]
I have no inside information about what is being planned, but it’s not
di cult to connect the dots and to make projections. I say none of this to be a
fearmonger or to promote anxiety. I simply wish to warn traditional clergy and
faithful of the kind of maneuvers our antagonists have in mind, so that we can
make sure we ourselves understand well the rationale behind every part of the
traditional Roman rite and, on that basis, are prepared to o er respectful but
rm resistance to any attempts at diluting or destroying its integrity. If or
when the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
(or the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life) issues the command to adopt the new calendar, the new lectionary, the
new prefaces, etc., we must be ready to say: Non licet. Non possumus. It is not
permitted. We cannot do it.
 13

Just Say No to ’65—and ’62

The position that has dominated the traditionalist world for a long time is
that we should be content with the 1962 missal (and accompanying liturgical
books) as our point of departure for a healthy liturgical future. After all, the
1962 missal is the last editio typica prior to the upheavals occasioned by the
Council; it is still in some recognizable continuity with the Tridentine rite; it
was enjoined upon us by Church authority in the motu proprio Summorum
Ponti cum. Although that motu proprio’s conciliatory policy has in recent
years been sent into early retirement and replaced with an extermination
campaign, some traditionalists, at least, will be inclined to hold on to its
provisions.
Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, a retired Papal Nuncio, makes a rousing
case for “pressing the reset button” on the Roman liturgy by abandoning a
failed experiment and taking up again the traditional rites of the Catholic
Church.[412] He o ers a brisk version of what Joseph Shaw’s book The Case for
Liturgical Restoration provides in much greater detail. Then, with admirable
candor, Archbishop Gullickson broaches the million-dollar question:

I am avoiding the burning issue of setting a date for the reset. I used
to think that going back to the 1962 Missal and to St. Pius X and his
breviary reform was su cient, but the marvels of the pre-Pius XII
Triduum as we have begun to experience them leave me speechless
on this point. Perhaps the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI on the
mutual enrichment of the two forms will provide the paradigm for
resolving the question of which Missal and which breviary. My call
for a return to the presently approved texts for the Extraordinary
Form, then, is inspired by a certain urgency to move forward, to
further the process. I do not feel quali ed to take a stance in this
particular matter of where best to launch the restoration.
 In a contrasting position, Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman urges that we
must still take seriously the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium and that,
accordingly, the 1962 missal will not pass muster:

I still see a validity in a mild reform in the liturgy along the modest
lines actually mandated by the Council: vernacular readings, setting
aside the duplication of the celebrant having to recite prayers, etc.,
that were being sung by other ministers, a less obtrusive priestly
preparation at the beginning of Mass, etc. And the conciliar
mandate for reform cannot be just forgotten as though it never
happened: it must be faced and dealt with, either by reforming the
reform made in its name, or by a speci c magisterial act abrogating
it.

That is why the interim rites interest me—OM65 [the Ordo Missæ
of 1965] is clearly the Mass of Vatican II while also clearly being in
organic continuity with liturgical tradition. It left the Canon alone
as well as the integral reverence of the liturgical action. Even
Lefebvre was approving of it. What distorts our perception of OM65
is that we have seen 50 years of development since, and cannot help
but see OM65 as tainted by what came after it.

Moreover MR62 is a rather arbitrary point at which to stop

liturgical tradition. For some committed trads this is an imperfect
Missal, even a tainted one. Is a pre-53 Missal better? Or a pre-Pius
XII one? Or maybe pre-Pius X? Why not go the whole hog and
argue for pre-Trent—after all, Geo rey Hull sees the seed of
liturgical decay there? We end up in a situation in which each
chooses for himself on varying sets of idiosyncratic principles. It is
ecclesiologically impossible. The Catholic Church has a magisterial
authority which establishes unity in liturgy. That this has been sadly
lacking for some decades is not an argument for ignoring
magisterial authority altogether. Then we may as well be
Protestants.[413]
 Dom Hugh is willing to admit that Bugnini and Co. were busy behind the
scenes throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, plotting and eventually carrying
out the rape and pillage of all that remained of the Western liturgical
tradition. He nevertheless thinks that, in the world outside the Politburo, the
1965 missal was generally seen—and can still be seen today—as the reform that
lines up with the Council’s desiderata. This, then, should be where the reset
button takes us.[414]
For a long time, I sincerely tried to understand, appreciate, and embrace
Sacrosanctum Concilium. I assigned it to students every time I taught a course
on liturgy, and in our discussions I leaned into its best Catholic content (for
there are some veins of precious metal here and there). But it was not possible,
after reading Michael Davies, and later Henry Sire’s Phoenix from the Ashes
and Yves Chiron’s biography of Annibale Bugnini, to see in this document
anything other than a carefully contrived blueprint for liturgical revolution.
[415] It contradicts itself on several points and takes refuge more often than not

in ambiguities put there deliberately (and this we know from documentary

evidence examined in chapter 1—no need for conspiracy theories). When you
delve into the history of this document—when you learn about the chicanery
involved in its drafting, discussion, approval, and implementation—you have to
get down on your knees to ask the Lord for the grace of faith, otherwise you
will be in danger of losing it. Nowhere does the darkness of the human side of
the Church appear darker than in the systematically dishonest dismantling of
centuries (and in some cases, millennia) of religious ritual.[416]
For me, the evaporation of the honorable status of Sacrosanctum
Concilium came from a deeper re ection on its abolition of the O ce of
Prime.[417] A document that would dare abolish a liturgical o ce received and
practiced for 1,600 years—part of the sevenfold diurnal prayer o ered to God
by an innumerable throng of monks, nuns, friars, hermits, deacons, priests,
and bishops—vitiates itself from the get-go. Since none of the documents of
Vatican II contains de de statements or anathemas, the charism of
infallibility is not expressly involved. Given their contingent nature, a bunch
of pastoral recommendations such as form the bulk of this Vatican II
constitution can obviously be mistaken. As I have pointed out many times, a
proposal for action is neither true nor false (although it is usually justi ed in
light of certain truths and can be argued against in the same way). A proposal
for action is prudent or imprudent, wise or unwise, successful or unsuccessful.
Ever-mounting evidence indicates that the aims and means of the radical arm
of the Liturgical Movement were grievously o -target; the corresponding
assumptions of the Council about what “had to be done” to the liturgy ended
up misreading the signs of the times. These aims, means, and assumptions
violated the axioms of religious anthropology, sociology, and psychology, not to
mention those of dogmatic theology, moral theology, and ascetical-mystical
theology. The proposals for reform bought into modern assumptions that have
not stood the test of time; indeed, they had already been e ectively criticized
before and during the Council.[418] So it seems to me no feather in its cap that
the ’65 missal better re ects the con icting and problematic ideas of the
Council; that would be all the more reason to give it a pass.
Archbishop Lefebvre, like other conservatives at the Council,[419] had been
naïve enough to believe in 1963 that only the modest reforms agreed upon in
the conciliar debates and texts would be executed, and that there would be, a
few years later, a partially vernacular, slightly simpli ed, but still recognizably
Roman Catholic liturgy. The so-called 1965 missal, already an ugly enough
duckling, was widely believed to be what the Council ordered. To take a
notable piece of evidence, when the Abbot of Beuron sent the pope a copy of
the latest postconciliar edition of the famous German Schott missal, the
Cardinal Secretary of State Amleto Giovanni Cicognani sent a letter, on behalf
of Paul VI and dated May 28, 1966, with the ringing a rmation: “The singular
characteristic and primary importance of this new edition [of Schott] is that it
re ects completely the intent of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy”(!).[420]
The experimental previews of the 1967 Missa Normativa—basically, a
rough draft of the Novus Ordo—were greeted with astonishment by many of
the bishops who came to Rome that year. One of them was John Cardinal
Heenan, archbishop of Westminster, later to be famous for his 1971
intervention with Paul VI that rescued the traditional Mass for England and
Wales (the template for the worldwide “indult” later issued by John Paul II).
Having witnessed Bugnini’s Missa Normativa, Cardinal Heenan wrote: “At
home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young
men who come regularly to Mass. If we were to o er them the kind of
ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel we would soon be left with a
congregation mostly of women and children.”[421]
In the same period—the exact year is not speci ed—Archbishop Lefebvre
(then Superior General of the Congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost)
visited Rome for a meeting of Superiors General. He later reminisced about
the indomitable in uence Bugnini then enjoyed, as he enthusiastically lectured
the gathering about a “new Mass” that would be radically di erent from what
had been celebrated for centuries.[422] Once Lefebvre had seen up close the
impresario of the circus, he would have realized that his signature was (to use
an expression of another writer) “obtained through trickery.”[423]
In any case, the idea that the 1965 Ordo Missæ represents the
implementation of SC is hard to sustain in light of repeated statements by
Paul VI (and other o cials on his behalf) that what he promulgated in 1969 is
the ultimate ful llment of the liturgy constitution.[424] 1965 was presented
publicly (though not always consistently) as an interim step on the
evolutionary process away from medieval-Baroque liturgy to relevant modern
liturgy.[425] The “moment of truth,” I think, is when students of liturgy realize
that the 1962 missal is extremely similar to that of 1965 in this respect: it, too,
was an interim missal in the preparation of which Bugnini and other liturgists
working at the Vatican had changed as much as they felt they could get away
with. These liturgists had experienced a triumph of renovationism with the
Holy Week “reform” of Pius XII—a dramatic makeover that deformed some of
the most ancient and poignant rites of the Church, scattering novelties hither
and yon—and they were rolling along with the momentum. The abolition
under Pius XII of most octaves and vigils, obligatory additional Collects, and
folded chasubles, inter alia, is part of this same sad tale of cutting away some
of what was most distinctive and most precious in the Roman heritage.[426]
This is why the exclusivist 1962 and reformist 1965 positions are rapidly
losing ground throughout the world, particularly as the internet continues to
spread awareness of the ill-advised and sometimes calamitous “reforms” that
took place throughout the twentieth century in various areas of the Roman
liturgy, with Holy Week looming largest. Since I, too, disagree with the 1962
and 1965 camps, I would make the case for returning to the last editio typica
prior to the revolutionary alterations of Pope Pius XII: the Missale Romanum
of Benedict XV, issued in 1920.[427] It is by no means arbitrary for
traditionalists to land there. Except for some newly added feasts (the calendar
being the part of the liturgy that changes the most), it is in all salient respects
the missal codi ed by Trent. It is the Tridentine rite simpliciter. For those of
us who believe that the Tridentine rite represents, as a whole and in its parts,
an organically developed apogee of the Roman rite that it behooves us to
receive with gratitude as a timeless inheritance (in the manner Greek
Catholics receive their liturgical rites, which also achieved mature form in the
Middle Ages), a pre-Pacellian missal gives us all that we seek, and nothing
tainted.[428]
As we have seen, even to this day one will nd people suggesting
“improvements” that could or should be made to the old missal, or who believe
that Sacrosanctum Concilium places on the Church an obligation to reform
the old rite, such that it cannot be left in its traditional form. Those who have
lived long and intimately with it are usually the last to be convinced that the
suggested improvements would actually be anything of the sort.[429] We should
ip the tables and ask: Why is a constitution from 1963 still believed to be in
need of implementation? Yes, it stipulated some changes; but that was over
sixty years ago, and just as we have reconsidered, modi ed, or sometimes
quietly ignored things said in Gaudium et Spes that sound dated or naively
optimistic today, so, too, six decades of living with Sacrosanctum Concilium
have exposed dubious assumptions, exploded theories, and reductionistic
notions of “pastoral” that caused immense damage in their (mis)application
and could easily cause new and gratuitous damage, or at least confusion and
unrest, in any future (mis)application. If only the teaching of St. Pius X, Pius
XI, and Pius XII on the faithful’s participatio actuosa is implemented (as has
been done in many traditional communities), the most important desiderata of
the Council will already have been attained, and we can gratefully leave the
more embarrassing bits—especially no. 34, re ective of a rationalistic
mindset[430]—embedded in the annals of the 1960s.
It is pertinent to recall the very wise words of Fr. John Berg, Superior
General of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter:

There have always been a few voices which have advocated a

“hybrid” missal, but this is unfortunately symptomatic of the
liturgical age in which we live. These voices are often found among
 those who have no pastoral charge and look at the liturgy mostly as
an object of study. The problem is that if you ask ten of them, each
will give you a di erent point which needs to be changed. It also at
times betrays a rather condescending attitude—experts who really
want to help the “poor faithful” who would live the liturgy more
fully, for example, “if only the priest read the Collect facing the
congregation from the sedilia.” In other words, no real connection
with the actual prayer life of our faithful, and ultimately, I regret to
say, not helpful. It is not the faithful in the pews each Sunday
clamoring for such things.

We have trained hundreds of diocesan priests, pastors, to o er the

Mass according to the Missal of 1962 and, to the best of my
knowledge, none of them have any interest in looking to change the
Missal. They are just pleased to nd a liturgy which is stable, where
they do not have to make decisions, and choose options, and
animate the congregation, and wonder how it could be improved....
It has always been the position of our Fraternity that now is not the
time to make changes to the Missal, if indeed there were the need
for such to be made, and that we need rst to have a long period of
time where the liturgy is simply lived rather than being constantly
scrutinized and “tweaked.”[431]

Interestingly enough, a not insigni cant number of priests who belong to

the Fraternity of St. Peter have gone over decisively to the pre-’55 Holy Week;
this is already the default position for the Institute of Christ the King and the
Institute of the Good Shepherd. Traditional Benedictine monks and nuns are
either already pre-’55 or moving in that direction.[432] It is, in fact, impossible
to follow the history of liturgical reform after World War II and not see it as a
continuous process of demolition and reconstruction, initially cautious as the
trial balloons were sent up, and later increasingly audacious as radical
reformism took possession of the Holy See, experimental pastoralism pervaded
the middle management, and hyperpapalism made possible a rupture that no
Catholic in premodern history could have imagined, let alone consented to.
Without a doubt, no special permission is required to use the Tridentine
rite as found in the liturgical books prior to the deformations introduced
under Pius XII. The basis is nothing other (and need be nothing more) than
the “Summorum Ponti cum Principle”: “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. It behooves all of us to preserve
the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give
them their proper place.” If the millennium-old Roman Holy Week does not
count as one of the riches that developed in the Church’s faith and prayer,
what could possibly qualify? If earlier generations did not hold as sacred these
august ceremonies at the core of the Church’s year, was anything ever held
sacred? The authentic Roman rite, in its pristine integrity, remains sacred and
great for us too; there can be no question of its being harmful or forbidden.
Let those who understand that right liturgy depends on tradition, on universal
ecclesial acceptance and transmission, and not on arbitrary diktats that shift
from one papal reign to another, be prepared to do the right thing: to receive
the liturgy whole and then to transmit it intact to the next generation. Tradidi
quod et accepi.
 14

Too Many Saints—Too Many Intercessors?

On July 12th, the classical Roman rite celebrates the feast of St. John Gualbert,
Abbot, with a commemoration of Sts. Felix and Nabor, martyrs who were
praised by St. Ambrose and enshrined by him in Milan. The Collect for the
commemoration of the latter is noteworthy:

Præsta, quæsumus, Domine: ut, sicut nos sanctorum Martyrum

tuorum Naboris et Felicis natalitia celebranda non deserunt; ita
jugiter su ragiis comitentur. Per Dominum... [Grant, we beseech
Thee, O Lord, that just as the birthdays we are celebrating of Thy
holy Martyrs Nabor and Felix never forsake us, so may they always
accompany us by their prayers. Through our Lord...]

Nearly every time I praise a “lesser” saint’s feast on the traditional

calendar, inevitably I encounter resistance: “We should get rid of a lot of these
obscure or territorial saints and leave more room for local or modern saints.”
The ones who make these comments may love the traditional liturgy, but they
seem to agree with the rationale that led to the removal of over 300 saints from
the general calendar in 1969.[433] I would like to suggest, in all kindness, that
this gigantic overhaul was excessive, disproportionate, harmful, and
uncharacteristic of liturgical history, which tends to prune rather than to
purge, and which prefers to make room for more rather than to cut away. Yes,
St. Pius V removed some saints from the calendar of the 1570 missal, but his
cuts are trivial compared with those made by Paul VI—and besides, Pius V’s
successors pretty soon after began adding back saints that Pius had removed.
[434] A university student once sent me this note:

In my liturgy class, we discussed the calendar. What you wrote about

St. Felix of Valois—“Who is this obscure saint, and why is he
cluttering our calendar?”—was the exact mindset the professor
strove to pound into students’ minds that day. He described how
 over the centuries, “certain elements crept into the calendar” (his
words), and these elements had clouded over the meaning of Sunday,
plus many saints and feastdays held no meaning for us anymore and
sometimes were mythological. But, he said, as if to clinch his point,
“other popes have cleaned out the calendar before.”

Thank you for being willing to defend the old calendar and its rich
sanctoral cycle and prayers. Any time I’ve tried to defend the beauty
of the traditional rites in class, the things I’ve pointed to have been
declared “unnecessary for modern man.” Well, to that I respond, the
Mass should not have changed for modern man; modern man
should have changed for the Mass.

“The calendar was too cluttered, it needed a lot of pruning.” That’s what all the
modern liturgists said and still say. I used to think so, too—until I got to know
the traditional missal well, over years of daily Mass-going, and came to love
the richly-layered cycle of saints, famous and obscure, ancient and modern,
and came to love, too, how they crowd into certain clusters, sometimes even
forming “octaves” of a sort.[435]
My appreciation of the density of the old calendar grew still more during
the year in which I attended Mass at an oratory of the Institute of Christ the
King, whose clergy follow (somewhat inconsistently, but with growing
conviction) a sanctoral calendar of circa 1948. In this calendar there are even
more saints, and frequently double commemorations. I have to say: so far from
seeming cluttered, it’s like a big Catholic family with kids all over the place,
and everyone happy. The multiple orations enrich the liturgy’s prayerfulness
and power, rather than detracting from a “simplicity” or “focus” conceived in
rationalist terms. Anyone who knows great works of art knows that they
achieve their cumulative e ect through multiple simultaneous means, and that
their unity and coherence rely upon a carefully balanced harmony of many
parts, including tiny and seemingly insigni cant details. Multiplicity and
complexity are not the problem; only pointless multiplication and a random or
confused complexity are a problem. I am reminded of the insight of Martin
Mosebach:
 It was the new Western way of perceiving the “real” sacred act as
narrowed down to the consecration that handed over the Mass to
the planners’ clutches. But liturgy has this in common with art:
within its sphere there is no distinction between the important and
the unimportant. All parts of a painting by a master are of equal
signi cance, none can be dispensed with. Just imagine, in regard to
Raphael’s painting of St. Cecilia, wanting only to recognize the value
of the face and hands, because they are “important,” while cutting
o the musical instruments at her feet because they are
“unimportant.”[436]

Doubtless, we cannot say of the details of the sanctoral cycle that all are of
equal importance; this claim would be easier to argue for the xed Order of
Mass. Nevertheless, we love our saints—especially that somewhat “arbitrary”
group that our tradition, in its slow meandering, has put right in front of us in
the missal. The combination of famous and obscure saints, and the
concentration of martyrs and confessors of antiquity, is itself a resounding
lesson: we do not pick and choose our saints at Mass to re ect our
preoccupations or favoritisms; the saints pick us, as it were, by coming to us
down through centuries of devotion. It is another expression of the “scandal of
the particular” inseparable from the very essence of Christianity. No matter
how wonderful a more recent or more local saint may be, this quality, in and of
itself, does not justify the suppression of another saint who has been
liturgically venerated by countless Christians for many centuries.
The solution we should favor is to let saints pile up on a given day, but
decide which one gets the Mass and O ce (so to speak) and which one gets
the Commemoration. The main cause of the purge in 1969 was a positive dread
of having more than one set of orations per Mass, since evidently Modern
Man™ was deemed too stupid to follow more than one thread at a time. How
di erently things appear in an era of emails, texting, and social media!
And even if, as the liturgists say, calendric simpli cation has happened
before in the history of the Roman rite, was it necessary between the mid-
1950s and the early 1970s? Who was clamoring for it? The People of God? The
parochial clergy? Truth be told, it was no one but the professional liturgists,
lovers of “clear and distinct” Cartesian modernity, with its glassy, steely mien,
as of hygienic instruments, silver aeroplanes, and whirring time-saving
appliances. The lamentable empty-headedness of today’s Catholics regarding
their own heroes is, needless to say, not caused exclusively or even primarily by
the loss of a rich sanctoral cycle, but surely we cannot avoid seeing a
connection.
Consider the following exchange between two art historians, Martin
Gayford and Philippe de Montebello:

MG: Some would say that putting a religious work in a museum

removes its most crucial meaning. It wasn’t intended—or at least
only intended—to be appreciated as a painting; it was made to be
prayed before, to stand on an altar while a priest performed Mass.

PdM: Well, the meanings are in danger of disappearing anyway. The

modern public by and large no longer reads the Bible, no longer
knows the stories represented in the pictures. The role of museums
in re-educating people in sacred stories and doctrines is very large.
One could almost make the case that museums ll a gap that the
churches are increasingly leaving in teaching the lives of the saints,
Christ, and the Virgin, plus the stories of the Old Testament. All of
the pictures and sculptures in most museums carry a label brie y
telling the story, something that you do not nd in church.[437]

“The pictures and sculptures...carry a label brie y telling the story, something
that you do not nd in church.” Yet this is exactly what my St. Andrew’s Daily
Missal (reprint of the 1945 edition) and countless other hand missals did and
still do for the laity: they tell us something about every saint and make them
beloved companions of the journey.
Note that this postconciliar demotion of the cultus of saints goes hand in
hand with the ecumenical downplaying of all that is distinctively Catholic, the
pseudo-purity of “focusing on Christ” when even He is pushed away from the
closed circle, and the utter ine ectiveness of the verbal didacticism of reading
so much Scripture. The Catholics of old undoubtedly knew more about the
saints and the stories of the Bible than modern believers, who are so much
more “literate” and “educated.” However many causes there are of the stygian
vacuity of the modern Catholic mind, we can say without hesitation that the
traditional Roman liturgy, by emphasizing the saints vastly more than the
modern liturgy does, lled the minds of the faithful with the cultus of the
Virgin and the saints. As Dom Guéranger writes in the general preface to The
Liturgical Year:

In order that the divine type may the more easily be stamped upon
us, we need examples; we want to see how our fellow-men have
realized that type in themselves: and the liturgy ful ls this need for
us, by o ering us the practical teaching and the encouragement of
our dear saints, who shine like stars in the rmament of the
ecclesiastical year. By looking upon them we come to learn the way
which leads to Jesus, just as Jesus is our Way which leads to the
Father. But above all the saints, and brighter than them all, we have
Mary, showing us, in her single person, the Mirror of Justice, in
which is re ected all the sanctity possible in a pure creature.[438]

I have to say, in passing, that the older Roman calendar reminds me much
more of the Byzantine calendar, which expressly names saints in the liturgy
every day. Of course, it works di erently because the Byzantine daily liturgy is
not nearly as shaped and “governed” by the saint as the Roman one is—there is
no concept of a “Mass of a Virgin” or a “Mass of a Confessor” in the Divine
Liturgy: it has a few special antiphons sprinkled throughout for the saint, and
then the rest is generic or seasonal. Still, the Eastern and Western traditions
bear witness to the norm throughout Christian history until the Protestant
revolt: “the more saints, the merrier.” The presence of saints on the calendar is
seen as augmenting the glory of Christ rather than detracting from Him, as
indeed the original placement of the feast of Christ the King right before the
feast of All Saints underlines.
Twenty- ve years of working under both Roman calendars, old and new,
gave me a vivid experience of the truth of Louis Bouyer’s acerbic estimation of
the reform:

I prefer to say nothing, or little, about the new calendar, the

handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed, with no good
reason, Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost, and who
scattered three-quarters of the Saints higgledy-piggledy, all based on
notions of their own devising! Because these three hotheads
 obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because
the pope wanted to nish up quickly to avoid letting the chaos get
out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted![439]

To return, then, to our starting point, Sts. Nabor and Felix. For many
centuries the Church at prayer told her Lord that the birthdays of these
martyrs “never forsake us” and saw this recurring date as a promise that their
intercession, too, would always be ours. Every time I encounter these “obscure”
saints, I thank God for making them part of my life, for connecting me to the
memory of their triumph and the power of their living intercession. Nor will
this grand old calendar of saints ever cease to be followed within the Catholic
Church, notwithstanding the feeble fulminations of faded ower-children.

ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN YOU

In the modern missal of Paul VI, rst issued in 1969, an entire celebration
of the Holy Mass, using licit options, can take place without even once directly
asking the saints to pray for us or without asking the Lord to grant us that the
saints would pray for us. If, however, the Con teor is used, as well as the
Roman Canon, then at least twice we do ask for the help of their prayers or
directly ask them to pray for us. But it is rare for the Con teor and the Roman
Canon to be chosen in the same celebration, and, depending on the celebrant’s
habits, neither of them may ever turn up.
Here is a synthesis of some of the teaching, in the modern missal’s
Ordinary of the Mass, on the intercession of the saints. By their intercession,
we receive sure support. Their fervent prayers sustain us in that all we rightly
do. Their merits and prayers can gain us the constant help and protection of
God. We rely on their constant intercession in the presence of the Lord for
unfailing help.[440] So the postconciliar missal recognizes the great help that
can be obtained by the People of God through the intercession of the saints.
And yet it very often, according to the options made use of, does not ask for
this intercession.

In Eucharistic Prayer II it says:

Have mercy on us all, we pray, that with the blessed Virgin Mary,
Mother of God, with blessed Joseph, her Spouse, with the blessed
 Apostles, and all the saints who have pleased you throughout the
ages, we may merit to be co-heirs to eternal life, and may praise and
glorify you...

The mercy requested is that we, the faithful, would merit to be with the saints
in eternal life—but their intercession is not asked for.

In Eucharistic Prayer III it says:

May he make of us an eternal o ering to you, so that we may obtain

an inheritance with your elect, especially with the most blessed
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with blessed Joseph, her Spouse, with
the blessed Apostles and glorious Martyrs and with all the Saints,
on whose constant intercession in your presence we rely for
unfailing help.

Although it is praised, the intercession of the saints is not explicitly requested.

It is an important thing in the “economy of salvation,” the Lord’s
household arrangement (so to speak), that we ask. “For every one that asketh,
receiveth” (Mt 7:8), Our Lord taught us. This implies that whoever does not
ask, does not receive—or at least, does not receive as much as he might.
The saints are constantly interceding for us. Their merits and prayers are
e cacious and operative in the ow of divine grace to us, in the communion
of saints. But they could do so much more for us if only we were to ask for
their intercession and help.
Here we can see one of the ways in which the traditional Roman missal is
superior to the postconciliar one, as regards both the welfare of the Church
militant and the salvation of the entire world. In the traditional Ordo Missæ,
the intercession of the saints is requested seven times. In a very common and
perfectly licit variation of the modern Mass, the intercession of the saints is
requested zero times. What di erence might this make in the life of the
Church on earth?
But that is only the rst level of the issue. As my friend Hilary White likes
to say, one reaches what one thinks is the bottom, and then a trap door opens,
and one realizes that the bottom is further down. “Have we hit rock bottom
yet?” is, in liturgical discussions, by no means a frivolous question. So, when we
discover that even the 1962 missal, as much better than the Novus Ordo as it
is, is vastly inferior to the practices of the pre-’55 missal as regards precisely
this point—the intercession of the saints—we realize that the Novus Ordo was
not a sudden departure but rather continued, more radically of course, a
process of denudation, evisceration, and suppression that was already
underway prior to the Council, and which appeared to legitimize the direction
in which the Consilium acted.
As I discuss in the last chapter of The Once and Future Roman Rite, for
centuries it was the custom for priests to say or to sing more than one set of
orations (Collect, Secret, Postcommunion) at Mass. The rubrics told the priest
which additional prayers to use. For example, in Advent, from the rst Sunday,
the missal prescribed the addition of a second set of orations beseeching the
aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a third set praying either for the Church
or for the pope, although if there were saints to be commemorated, their
prayers would be used instead.
Here, for example, are the orations that were added “to implore the
intercession of the saints” in the time between Puri cation and Ash
Wednesday and during the time after Pentecost:

Collect. Defend us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all dangers of

mind and body; and through the intercession of the blessed and
glorious ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God, together with blessed
Joseph, Thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, blessed N. [titular saint
of the church], and all the saints, mercifully grant us safety and
peace, that all adversities and errors being overcome, Thy Church
may serve Thee in security and freedom. Through the same Lord
Jesus Christ Thy Son...

Secret. Graciously hear us, O God our Savior, and by the virtue of
this sacrament protect us from all enemies of soul and body,
bestowing on us both grace in this life and glory hereafter. Through
our Lord Jesus Christ...

Postcommunion. May the oblation of this divine Sacrament both

cleanse and defend us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and, through the
intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with
 blessed Joseph, Thy blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, blessed N.
[titular saint of the church], and all the saints, render us at once
puri ed from all perversities and freed from all adversities. Through
our Lord Jesus Christ...[441]

A large number of the required additional orations had precisely this character
of invoking the intercession of the saints. “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Mt
7:7).
On Sundays, too, saints would be commemorated instead of simply
ignored. In late June it would be quite possible to have a situation where the
Third Sunday after Pentecost fell within the Octave of the Sacred Heart and
of the birth of Saint John the Baptist. The priest at Mass would say or sing
Sunday’s oration, followed by those of the Sacred Heart and of Saint John the
Baptist. Ask, and it shall be given you, grace upon grace.
Prior to 1955, the maximum number of orations at a Low Mass on simple
days was ve or seven (depending on circumstances). In 1955, this number was
reduced to three, and mandatory prayers of the season were abolished. In 1960,
the possibility of additional orations was reduced still further, and, for most
Sundays of the year, done away with altogether. Ask not, receive not.
Think about this: thousands of priests were praying for these intentions
daily at the altar, in the voice of the Church, in the name of Christ—the prayer
most pleasing, most acceptable, most heard...and then suddenly, all these long-
established, saint-saturated prayers...GONE.
If we believe in the power of prayer—if we believe that liturgical prayer is
the highest form of it, being o ered to the Lord by His Bride and Mystical
Body—then wouldn’t this gaping omission have some consequences? Is it
possible to believe that the sudden abandonment of praying for the pope with
quite speci c and “demanding” intentions in thousands of Masses, or the
sudden abandonment of pleading for various needs with the Virgin Mary, local
patron saints, and even all of the saints day by day from the altar, could have
no e ect in the spiritual order, no e ect in the Church on earth? Is it possible
to believe this and still be a believer in the reality of God and the e cacy of
prayer?
It is not fanciful to think that there is at least some connection between
the o cial abandonment of liturgical prayer asking for the intercession of the
saints, the strengthening of the pope, and other such intentions, and the
grievous a ictions of the Church on earth since about the time when these
orations were systematically canceled. It hardly seems coincidental that neo-
modernism slithered out of the shadows and injected its venom into the
Church’s bloodstream starting in the ponti cate of Pius XII, who dared to
bring scissors and white-out against the Tridentine missal.
 15

Allegory as a Key to Understanding Traditional Liturgy

In discussions of the liturgy, one often hears something like the following:
“Granted, the changes may have gone too far, but you have to admit that there
were some things in the old Mass that needed to be changed. Sacrosanctum
Concilium was asking for changes, and it did issue some real (though modest)
directives—and perhaps in a future revision of the traditional Roman Missal,
these improvements could be made.”
Nowadays I always want to ask (and if I am on the scene, I do ask) exactly
which changes the person has in mind and why he thinks they would be
improvements. With few exceptions, arguments in favor of changes to the
missal’s texts, rubrics, or ceremonies do not carry conviction with those who
understand (and therefore love) the meaning of those texts, rubrics, or
ceremonies, as we saw in chapter 12 when evaluating Fr. Stravinskas’s fourteen
proposals. At this point in my life, after many decades of experience with the
traditional liturgy, knowing and loving its purity of doctrine, poetic
expressiveness, poignant symbolism, e ortless integration of clergy, people,
and musicians, and (not least) unerring psychology and pedagogy, I tend to
have the most serious misgivings about any of the proposed “improvements”
that people suggest. Such “improvements” would be obtained at the cost of
harming the integrity of the liturgical rite—a cost too high to pay for
debatable gains.

THE PRIEST RECITING ALL TEXTS, EVEN AT HIGH MASS

My view was not always thus. There was a time, years ago, when I thought
that the old Mass could be improved in this way or that. For example, I once
believed it was self-evident that the priest should not be repeating the
antiphons, prayers, and readings that the schola and other ministers were
already singing. I had read liturgical scholars who pointed out that this had
resulted from the backwards in uence of the Low Mass upon the High Mass
and who judged it to be a super uous redundancy, a sort of subtle clericalism
that required the priest to cover all the roles or else “his Mass” would not be
complete. I remember arguing in a forum that during the Gloria and the
Credo, the priest should not recite the text and then sit down, but sing it
along with the people, standing all the while with them.
But I no longer agree with the so-called experts. I have come to see beauty
and wisdom in the development that led to the priest’s personal recitation of
all the texts in an usus antiquior High Mass. Because the priest stands at the
altar in persona Christi, he stands in the person of the “whole Christ,” head
and body. He performs gestures and recites prayers both in the direction of
Christ to the faithful, the downward mediation of sacred things, and in the
direction of the faithful to Christ, the upward o ering of gifts and prayers.
The moment of perfect assimilation to Christ the High Priest comes at the
moment of consecration, when the priest speaks as if he were none other than
Christ Himself, whose living icon and instrument he indeed is: Hoc est enim
Corpus meum...Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis mei...
The ministerial priest’s identity is thus consumed by and hidden within
the singular, all-perfect ontological priesthood of Jesus Christ. But when the
priest says out loud Nobis quoque peccatoribus, there he is representing the
people, the members of Christ’s mystical body—for in the head of this body
there is no sin, while in its members there are imperfections that must be
overcome to make their incorporation all the more de nitive. Hence, in his
very sacramental identity, the priest represents the whole Christ, head and
body, and it is tting that he maintain this role of complete representation
from start to nish—from the beginning of the Mass, bowing before the altar
in humility and confession, until the very end, blessing the people and
reminding them of the sublime Incarnation of the Word, plenum gratiæ et
veritatis. The dramatic symbolism of the liturgy admits of no interruption, no
mixed messages.
With this truth in mind, it becomes clearer why, under the hand of Divine
Providence, the custom developed that the priest recites all of the Propers,
readings, and prayers, even when subordinate ministers, a schola, or the people
are reciting or singing some of them. When the priest recites the Introit, he is
standing in the person of Christ the prophet, announcing some mystery that
has been accomplished in the Lord’s earthly mission. When the priest recites
the threefold Kyrie with its quiet, somber rhythm, he is beseeching the mercy
of almighty God, again acting visibly in the person of the one High Priest who
o ers sacri ce on behalf of sinners. When he intones the Gloria, he acts as
representative of the people, the members of Christ, who worship the triune
God; this, too, is a priestly act, one that belongs to all the faithful but is
nevertheless most proper to him, in virtue of his possession of Holy Orders.
When he reads the Gospel, it is as the living image of Christ that he reads it.
None of this downplays or dilutes the roles that other ministers or singers or
the people themselves have and should have; instead, it merely draws into
maximal unity the liturgical action by having it ow from and return to the
same Alpha and Omega, Christ Himself, whose unity of being and operation is
represented to our senses by the one and only celebrant: Tu solus Altissimus...
Apart from the Mass of a priest’s ordination, which is partially concelebrated,
in the TLM there is never concelebration but always an emphasis on the one
priest o ering in the likeness of Christ our High Priest, with everyone else
occupying subordinate positions, even if they too are ministerial priests. It was
both natural and right that, over time, this sacerdotalist gravity should draw to
itself all the texts of the Mass, without, however, depriving anyone else of his
proper task in the hierarchical execution of the rite. Thus, in the Roman rite
there developed a unique combination of absolute Christic primacy, refracted
hierarchy, and gratuitous redundancy that re ects the way things actually are
in the kingdom of heaven.[442]
Many such examples can be given from the liturgy. The priest performs
gestures and recites prayers that are tting not only to the head, Christ as
High Priest, but also to the members of Christ’s body, the Church, bone of His
bone and esh of His esh. To repeat, as he represents the whole Christ, head
and members, so it is eminently tting that he, who has been fashioned to the
image and likeness of the Mediator between God and man, should ever have
on his lips and in his heart the prayer of the head as well as the responding
prayers of the members.[443]
True it is, and a wonderful mystery, that all Christians share in the
priesthood of Christ: each of the faithful is baptized a priest, prophet, and
king. The sacramental character indelibly imprinted upon the soul at baptism
is a title to worship the true and living God, bestowing the right to partake of
the other sacraments and, ultimately, to receive their fruit, eternal life. The
baptismal character empowers the Christian to receive further gifts of grace,
to o er pleasing worship, and, above all, to receive the precious Body and
Blood of Christ. This is classic doctrine, taught by St. Thomas Aquinas, many
other doctors of the Church, and the Magisterium itself. So it is no less right
and tting that the faithful sing those parts of the High Mass that pertain to
them, such as the Ordinary—the dialogues, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus,
Agnus Dei, etc.—and that they perform the bodily actions called for by rubric
or custom, and join their fervent silent prayer to that of the priest who
represents them. In so doing, they exercise their priestly o ce. Each does that
which is proper to him to do, and is united in spirit to all the others, under
the headship of Christ.
This, truly, is a vision of order, harmony, peace, and wisdom. It is the order
we see in germinal form in the New Testament, manifested in the epochs of
Church history, inherent in Catholic Tradition, unfolded in the organic
development of the liturgy. As hellbent as the liturgical reformers and radicals
were (and still are) to overthrow this natural and supernatural hierarchy, they
are kicking against the goad, like Saul, and might as well kick against an
immovable rock. It is our privilege as Catholics to be the many and varied
members of the Mystical Body and to nd our sanctity in serving humbly in
the place to which we have been summoned by Divine Providence. This
includes, of course, the priest serving to the maximum in his priestly role,
without embarrassment, attenuation, or dispersion.
My argument is founded on objective facts about the very nature of the
liturgy and the priesthood—an objectivity that is beautifully symbolized and
enacted by the customary practice under discussion, and therefore duly
impressed upon the faithful who attend the Mass. Yet there is a further
dimension I have not touched on: the subjective or personal devotional value
of the celebrant’s recitation of these antiphons, prayers, and readings.
Many priests who celebrate the usus antiquior nd the opportunity to
“work through” the entire Mass to be a precious help to their own participatio
actuosa in worshiping the Lord. The reason is not far to seek: given the
traditional practice of “parallel liturgy,” in which multiple things are
happening at the same time, the priest, if he did not recite everything in order,
would frequently miss the opportunity to attend to a certain part of the Mass
and take it into his mind and heart as the rite proceeds. For example, since the
choir is singing the Introit while the priest is reciting the prayers at the foot
of the altar, he would miss the bene t of re ecting on the Introit, which sets
the tone for the day’s Mass, if, after ascending to and kissing the altar, he did
not take a moment to recite the Introit himself. The same applies to all the
di erent moments of the celebration. Indeed, it would be bizarre if the priest
could enjoy the bene t of reading the entire Mass when o ering a Low Mass
but be deprived of that spiritual nourishment when o ering a High Mass; that
would make the High Mass, from the point of view of the priest’s devotional
engagement with it, inferior to a lower grade. The integrity and “ ow” of his
liturgical act would thus be broken and impoverished.
The wisdom of Catholic tradition ensured over time that everything a
priest does in the Low Mass is replicated in the High Mass, yet without
detriment to any of the High Mass’s peculiar perfections. A fusion of High
and Low was thus brought about, uniting the personal piety of recitation to
the ceremonial splendor of diversi ed roles. One might almost apply to this
happy solution the expression used in an Alleluia verse for Our Lady: the Mass
reconciles in itself the lowest with the highest.[444] No one loses out; no
crumbs, so to speak, are lost.

THE MINISTERS’ SITTING DOWN AFTER READING THE

GLORIA OR CREDO
Purists may be willing to accept the above account, but they generally balk
at the custom of the minister(s) sitting down during the singing of the Gloria
and Credo after having recited those texts quietly at the altar. In discussions of
the classical Roman rite and the twentieth-century liturgical reform, one
example that always comes up of “something that just had to change” is the
custom whereby the ministers—the priest at a Missa cantata, the priest,
deacon, and subdeacon at a Missa solemnis—return to their seats for the
duration of the sung Gloria and Credo after they have recited the text
themselves at the altar.[445] The reform-minded will protest against both the
“duplication” of the text and the alleged oddity of everyone sitting during the
singing of these parts of the Mass Ordinary. Shouldn’t the clergy sing the texts
together with the people, and everyone remain standing?
Here I will not comment on practical reasons for sitting, such as giving
older or in rm clergy a chance to rest, or giving clergy of any age a suitable
way to wait for the completion of a lengthy piece of polyphony. I would also
not dispute that the custom I have sometimes seen at Benedictine monasteries,
where the ministers remain standing during the entirety of the Gloria and the
Credo, can be tting for the relatively short duration of chanted Ordinaries. I
do not maintain that the ministers should sit down as a rule. The rubrics do
not state that they must sit down; sitting is permitted as a concession. They
may remain standing the whole time, a posture that will always retain its
resurrectional signi cance, as it does to this day in the Eastern tradition.
Rather, taking it for granted that there are theological reasons for
duplicating and practical reasons for sitting, I would like to consider some
theological connections that have occurred to me over the years as I have
watched this custom and thought about it. The contemplative atmosphere of
the classical Roman liturgy has nurtured in me a patient, open-minded,
speculative disposition towards texts, music, and ceremonies. My habit of
mind is now to ask, in accord with the allegorical method of our ancestors:
“What meanings can I glean from the liturgy as it exists in front of me?”
rather than “How could it be improved according to my own ideas?”
It was the Solemn High Mass that drew my attention to the Christological
meaning of being seated. I can honestly say that I had never pondered the
mystery of the “session” or seatedness of the Son of God until I had seen
ministers at the High Mass and Solemn Mass moving from the altar in a
liturgically digni ed manner and sitting down ceremonially. Until then, “sits
[or is seated] at the right hand of the Father” had been no more than a line
rattled o when reciting the Apostles’ Creed or the Niceno-
Constantinopolitan Creed. Yet it is a mystery important enough to receive
many mentions in the New Testament[446] and in liturgical texts. In the Gloria
itself: Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis: “Thou who art seated at
the right [hand] of the Father, have mercy on us.” In the Credo: Et ascendit in
cælum, sedet ad dexteram Patris: “And He ascended into heaven, [and] is seated
at the right [hand] of the Father.”
At the time of the Creed, the three major ministers line up in their usual
order, the priest at the altar, the deacon behind and below the priest, and the
subdeacon behind and below the deacon. The priest chants the incipit, Credo
in unum Deum, with all three ministers bowing their heads, and the schola,
with the people, takes up the rest of the chant. The deacon and subdeacon step
up on either side of the priest and the three of them recite the remainder of
the Creed together. At Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine: et
homo factus est, they genu ect.[447] This being completed, they rise and return
to the sedilia at the side of the sanctuary. The priest, who primarily represents
Christ in the o ering of the Mass, is seated, and together with him, the people
sit down.[448] Around this time, the schola (and in some places the people too)
are likely to be singing the words: passus et sepultus est—Christ, having
su ered, was laid in the tomb. The Creed almost suggests this natural moment
of rest as it mentions the lowest and humblest point of the Savior’s descent
among us. At the same time, the subdeacon remains standing beside the priest
while the deacon receives the burse from the MC and, accompanied by him,
brings it to the altar to set forth the corporal. During this time the cantors are
usually singing Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in
cælum. The reason we can turn from the primarily Scriptural part of the
service to the Eucharistic sacri ce proper is that Christ is indeed risen from
the dead, and death hath no more dominion over Him. Because He is glori ed,
no longer subject to mortal limitations, He is able to renew His sacri ce
among us in sacramental form and to bestow on us His divine life. By His
Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, session at the right hand, and pouring forth
of the Spirit, He opened the sevenfold font of sacramental grace that brings us
to heaven.
The Creed then acknowledges the seating of Christ at the right hand of
the Father, and His return in glory: sedet ad dexteram Patris: et iterum
venturus est cum gloria. Call it accidental, if you wish, but I nd it very
beautiful that as this Christological confession is sung, the principal minister,
icon of Christ, occupies his seat or throne as does Christ the Lord in heavenly
glory, while the deacon, also bearing His image, prepares the altar for the
“return” of the King, and the subdeacon stands at attention. Shortly after, the
deacon returns to the side, and both he and the subdeacon take their seats. In
this way, the various intertwined mysteries the Creed mentions at this point—
around the Resurrection, Ascension, and Session—are all somehow put on
display, as if being acted out before our eyes.
Then, when the schola sings: Et vitam venturi sæculi, “[and I believe] in the
life of the world to come,” all make the sign of the cross, the ministers rise,
and the people rise as well. This nal strophe of the Creed has just mentioned
the general resurrection (literally, standing up again) of the dead and the life
without end in heaven, when all the blessed will share the glory of the risen
Lord. How appropriate that the “general rising” takes place right at this point
in the Creed!
It is as if we are permitted to “act out,” in a sense, certain of the mysteries
confessed, even as the priest during the Canon “acts out” some of Christ’s
gestures, as Michael Fiedrowicz describes:

The traditional rubrics of the Roman Canon call for a “reenacting”

of Christ’s actions through the celebrating priest. He not only reads
aloud the words of institution, but copies Christ’s gestures as they
are described: at the moment of the accepit panem/calicem he takes
the o erings in his hands, which were anointed by the blessing [in
the old rite of ordination] (in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas),
lifts his eyes (elevatis oculis), gratefully (gratias agens) bows his head,
makes a sign of the Cross at the benedixit, and in a humble attitude
completes the transubstantiation, with his arms touching the altar,
once more emphasizing the union with Christ.[449]

Years after the above “picture” was formed in my mind, I decided to

consult Bishop William Durandus, whose Rationale Divinorum O ciorum
had recently entered my library. Sure enough, he had beat me to the main
point, once more demonstrating that “there is nothing new under the sun”
(Eccles 1:9). Book IV, chapter 18 concerns “Of the Seating of the Bishop or the
Priest and the Ministers,” of which the following lines are apropos:

He is seated in a prominent place, so that just as the vinedresser

cares for his vineyard, he cares for his people; for the Lord, seated in
the highest heavens, guards His city (cf. Ps 126:1).... Sitting down
after the prayer signi es the seating of Christ at the right hand of
the Father after His Ascension, for the seat naturally goes to the
victor. Thus, the seating of the priest designates the victory of
Christ.... The seating of the ministers signi es the seating of those
to whom it is said: You shall also sit on the twelve thrones, judging
the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28): namely, those who now reign
in heaven; those who labor in the choir signify those who are as yet
pilgrims in this world.... Some ministers sit with the bishop,
through whom is understood that the members of Christ at last
 have repose in peace, about which the Apostle says: He seated us
together in heaven, in Christ (Eph 2:6), or else those who judge the
twelve tribes of Israel; others remain standing, through whom is
understood those members of Christ who continue with the
struggle in this world.[450]

We should also bear in mind that in a church with no pews in the nave (as was
the case for the better part of Church history),[451] the sitting of the clergy
would more obviously accentuate their special role in the liturgy. St. Thomas
Aquinas quotes St. Gregory the Great: “It is the judge’s place to sit, while to
stand is the place of the combatant or helper.”[452]

IN DEFENSE OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION

Allegorical interpretation of the liturgy, illustrated by my presentation of
the sitting of the ministers, was totally rejected during the period of liturgical
reform, and even earlier by liturgists who tended towards rationalistic or
reductionistic explanations (Fr. Adrian Fortescue comes to mind, although he
was fortunately inconsistent in his error). Here’s the kind of argument I mean:
“We know that the lifting up of the chasuble by the deacon and subdeacon, or
the servers, at the elevation of the host and the chalice was only because the
Gothic chasuble was made of heavy material and ornament, and the priest
needed help getting his arms up high.” The implication is: “And therefore it
can’t have anything to do with the story in the Gospel about the woman with a
ow of blood who touched the garment of Christ in order to be healed. That’s
just a willful, arbitrary connection some ignorant person made in a devotional
book, and then it got spread around.”
This, as can be plainly seen, is no more than a Catholic version of the
modern tendency that C.S. Lewis called “nothing buttery,” namely (in the
words of George Gilder) “dismissing non-material qualities as ‘nothing but...’
some lower physical property.”[453] Life is “nothing but” chemical processes;
mind is “nothing but” ring neurons; love is “nothing but” hormones; and so
forth. The liturgical equivalent is easy to recognize. The subdeacon’s use of the
humeral veil for the paten is “nothing but” a holdover from the early Roman
fermentum rite. The conclusion, whether stated or implied, is always: “And
therefore it should be abolished.” Which, indeed, is what the reformers did:
they stripped away nearly everything that no longer served an immediate
practical function or had lost its original (known or hypothesized) purpose.[454]
Those who study the history of the liturgy often discover that certain
practices later held to be richly symbolic had or may have had quite prosaic,
practical, or accidental origins—origins in which their later symbolism played
no part whatsoever. Yet this makes no di erence at all to the validity of
allegorical interpretations, for the simple reason that any given practice
(construed broadly to include minister, object, action, cessation of action, etc.)
presents itself to the worshiper now as part of an ensemble of ceremonial and
symbolic actions, thereby acquiring, as if magnetically, new meanings, new
interpretations, new resonances. In its ne texture of details, the traditional
liturgy speaks both the same messages and new messages to each generation.
Like an ancient epic poem, the same text reads di erently in this or that age,
without losing its remarkable ability to transcend them all. The most potent
and transformative signs are not those that are limited to a single de nite
meaning, but those that are, to use a favorite word of Dante’s, “polysemous,”
turning this way and that, accumulating layers of associations.
As with patristic and medieval exegesis of Scripture, it simply does not
matter if we “read into” the liturgical rites an intention that was not present in
the human author’s or initiator’s mind, and this for two reasons. First, the
ultimate author is God, the First Cause, who sees further and intends more
than His created agent is capable of seeing and intending. For example, it was
no surprise to Him that the number of signs of the cross made in the Solemn
Mass would achieve, after many centuries, the numerological perfection of 7 ×
7 + 3. Second, even subjective or arbitrary interpretations can be essentially in
harmony with the objective referent, as meditating on the mysteries of the
rosary can be essentially in harmony with the re-presentation of these
mysteries in the Mass,[455] and, moreover, can be personally helpful to the one
who “indulges” in them. It is like St. Augustine’s rule for Scripture: any
interpretation or application that is not contrary to the Church’s faith or to
the sovereign rule of charity is legitimate—indeed, was already known to God
from all eternity, even if some interpretations are superior to others in their
contextual delity, applicability, nuance, or depth.
This ancient-medieval exegetical freedom, exercised on the traditional
rites given to us by the same ancient and medieval Church, has very often led
me to notable breakthroughs in my understanding of the mysteries of the
Christian faith and how to live my life—in ways that I don’t recall happening
with the Novus Ordo. There are several reasons for this di erence, but for my
present purposes, the key di erence is that the Novus Ordo was fashioned by
its architects to be immediately understandable and understood: “what you see
is what you get.” It tends to “make sense” immediately and without remainder,
and that is precisely why it is boring, and why people have to write books and
articles about how to make Mass not a boring experience, or why one should
embrace its boringness as a virtue.[456] In contrast, the old liturgy has
accumulated so many features over the centuries that, like a vast rambling
mansion that seems never to run out of rooms, closets, attics, passageways,
gardens, elds or forests to explore, one never really “sees it all” or “gets to the
bottom of it.” It is more of a closed book than an open book, yet a book that is
freely o ered to be opened and pondered ad libitum.[457]
The analogy between the Bible and traditional liturgical rites deserves to
be underlined: on the one hand, a book that was written by a single divine
author and as many as a hundred inspired human authors, coming together
over a period of 1,300 years (from ca. 1200 BC to AD 100); on the other hand,
Christian rites that were guided by a single Holy Spirit, built up into their
mature form by apostles, bishops, popes, and other saints over a similar span
of time (the period from the apostolic age to the high Middle Ages). With
similar gestations, guiding principles, and aims, it seems probable, at very least,
that Scripture and Liturgy ought to be susceptible to the same spiritual
creativity in tandem with xity of content.[458] A negative con rmation is
found in the fact that biblical modernism rejects the spiritual senses just as
liturgical modernism rejects liturgical allegory. Yet the spiritual senses of
Scripture are patently evident in Scripture itself: St. Paul in 1 Corinthians
10:11 says “these things [from the old covenant] happened in gure [tupikōs]”
and Galatians 4:24 relates how the things said about the two sons of Abraham
are said “by an allegory [allēgoroumena].” Christ reads the Old Testament
mystically, as when he refers to the “cornerstone” of Psalm 117:22 and the “sign
of Jonah.” Nor is the principle of a mystical reading of the liturgy a peculiarity
of Western Christianity. Nicholas Cabasilas’s Commentary on the Divine
Liturgy notes how the Byzantine rite works on two levels simultaneously: its
prayers address God and help us, while its ceremonies represent “Christ and
the deeds he accomplished and the su erings he endured.”
Therefore, lovers of the liturgical tradition: do not be afraid to attach
meanings to ministers, objects, or actions, or to adopt the meanings given in
devotional literature, if they help you to pray.[459] One sign of a great work of
art is that it has the wherewithal to provoke, and the capacity to support, many
responses, all more or less closely tied to its ingredients and o ering diverse
paths of access into it. The Mass is the greatest work of art the West has ever
known, exceeding all others in its intelligible density and its fertility of
cultural power. Reading o “spiritual senses” from its literal sense is no less
natural and tting than doing the same with the narrative of Israel in the Old
Testament or the narrative of Christ in the New.

THE MANY SIGNS OF THE CROSS: USELESS REPETITION OR

RECURRENT MNEMONIC?
On the rst page of his beloved introduction to the Mass,[460] Dom
Prosper Guéranger utters these decisive words: “The Sacri ce of the Mass is
the Sacri ce of the Cross itself; and in it we must see our Lord nailed to the
Cross; and o ering up his Blood for our sins, to his Eternal Father.”
Throughout the work, Guéranger lovingly comments on the signi cance of
each of the many signs of the cross that the priest makes, upon himself, over
the people, over the host and chalice, with the host and chalice, etc. It never
once occurs to him to criticize or to express perplexity about the number of
these signs. He takes it for granted that they are present because they are
meaningful, and it is our task to understand their meaning.
Fiedrowicz speaks thus of Frankish developments in the Roman Canon:
“The Canon, which was meanwhile being prayed in silence, was embellished by
means of many gestures, bows, and signs of the Cross, to become a vivid action
of the priest (actio).”[461] The 1243 Franciscan edition of the Roman Curia’s
Ordo Missæ was the rst to incorporate detailed rubrics for “genu ections,
bows, signs of the Cross, and other gestures,” which “became a rm element of
the Roman rite through such exact recording, later continued (1498; 1502) by
the papal Master of Ceremonies Johann Burchard of Strassburg with minute
arrangement of even the smallest gestures.”[462]
Fiedrowicz later expands on a particular aspect of this rituality:
 The signs of the Cross, which in various forms accompany many
prayers or are accompanied by them, emphatically connect the
sacri ce on the Cross, which obtained forgiveness of sin and eternal
life, to particular parts of the celebration of the Mass, e.g., the
request for forgiveness after the Con teor (Indulgentiam,
absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum), the close of the Credo
(et vitam venturi sæculi), and the reception of Communion (Corpus
Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam
æternam). The sign of the Cross made at the close of the Sanctus
during the words Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini recalls
that the entrance into Jerusalem began Our Lord’s Passion, to
which, as a mystery to be realized, vivid witness is given again and
again on the altar with profound numerical symbolism, above all by
the numerous signs of the Cross made over the bread and wine, or
the Body and Blood, respectively, during the prayers of the Canon.
Even in the slightest gestures, for instance the thumbs crossed over
each other in a cross at the spreading of the hands over the
Eucharistic o erings (Hanc igitur oblationem), the sign of salvation
is present in order to indicate Christ as the sacri cial lamb.[463]

Later in the book he enters into this matter more deeply:

The sacri cial character of the Canon is emphasized also by the

multiple signs of the Cross that accompany it in ornate
arrangement, functioning as either e ective blessings or symbolic
illustrations. Before the consecration they possess a sanctifying
function of preparing for the Eucharistic transubstantiation:
benedicas hæc ✠ dona, hæc ✠ munera, hæc ✠ sancta sacri cia (Te
igitur); benedictam ✠, adscriptam ✠, ratam ✠ (Quam oblationem);
benedixit ✠ (Qui pridie; Simili Modo). Equally before and after the
consecration they partly illustrate and intensify terms of blessing
and sancti cation—sancti cas ✠, vivi cas ✠, benedicis ✠ (Per quem
hæc omnia)—and partly identify and distinguish particular words as
being sacred: corpus ✠ et sanguis ✠ (Quam oblationem); hostiam ✠
puram, hostiam ✠ sanctam, hostiam ✠ immaculatam, panem ✠
 sanctum vitæ æternæ et calicem ✠ salutis perpetuæ (Unde et
memores); sacrosanctum Filii tui ✠ corpus ✠ et sanguinem ✠
(Supplices te rogamus). The signs of the Cross witnessed since the
eighth century were in part originally rhetorical pointing gestures
that, according to ancient custom, accompanied the spoken word
and were gradually stylized into a cross. The twenty- ve signs of the
Cross in toto thus continually refer to the sacri ce of the Cross.[464]

A short digression is in order as to the antiquity of these signs. Fr. Barthe

notes:

So far as concerns the numerous signs of the cross made during the
Canon, if one agrees that the rst of the Ordines Romani, “Ordo I”
(a ceremoniale, or book of rites and ceremonies, for the Papal Mass
on Easter morning, dating to the eighth century), is evidence of a
Roman ritual tradition several centuries older, then its attestation of
the repetition of these gestures during the Canon would con rm
that they originated in the Late Antique period.[465]

One would think their antiquity would have won them protection from the
supposed champions of returning to earlier and “purer” forms of worship. But
just as we know that today’s loudest proponents of synodality are the most
autocratic and the least collegial, so too yesterday’s loudest proponents of
“recovering the way the early Christians prayed” turned out to be the most
modern in their assumptions and the least respectful of unbroken customs
whose origins are lost in the mists of time. One begins to sense a pattern...
Fiedrowicz cites St. Thomas[466] in support of Passion-symbolizing crosses,
eloquently summarizing:

The multiple signs of the Cross are always and everywhere signs of
remembrance, which refer to the Passion of Christ and identify the
Mass as the realization of the sacri ce of the Cross. Moreover, the
signs of the Cross before and after the consecration are also symbols
of the blessing and grace that are contained in the Body and Blood
of Christ and are to ow out over Christ’s mystical body. Especially
after the consecration, the signs of the Cross emphasize the identity
 of the Eucharistic species with Christ’s Body and Blood, o ered up
on the Cross.[467]

In his 1955 book The Great Prayer: Concerning the Canon of the Mass, the
convert historian Hugh Ross Williamson noted:

During the Canon of the Mass, the sign of the cross is made
twenty-six times. It is almost as if the Church were determined that,
however attention may wander and words become a mechanical
repetition, however dry the devotion or lazy the intellect, the body
at least shall focus the meaning.... Yet the signs are not repetitive.
The twenty-six fall into six separate groups each having its own
particular signi cance.[468]

Williamson proceeds to connect the rst three with the Trinity, the second
ve with the wounds of Christ, the two at the consecration with the twofold
blessing narrated in the Last Supper, and so forth, in keeping with the
allegorical tradition best summarized in Barthe’s Forest of Symbols. In short,
the plethora of carefully numbered signs of the cross throughout the Mass and
particularly in the Roman Canon is part of the Catholic Church’s lex orandi
that reveals her lex credendi.
A sign that this was once a widely understood fact may be seen in the
attitude of Protestant reformers. In his scorching 1969 pamphlet The Modern
Mass: A Reversion to the Reforms of Cranmer—a crucial precursor to Michael
Davies’s far better-known book Cranmer’s Godly Order—Williamson reminds
us: “Cranmer forbade the Crosses [i.e., the signs of the cross] and the Elevation
but kept an approximation to the words, which now meant something quite
di erent, to give the illusion of continuity.”[469] The removal of these signs of
the cross is one of several vivid di erences between the lex orandi of the
venerable Roman Canon and that of the so-called “Eucharistic Prayer I” of
Paul VI’s modern missal.[470]
Back in high school, I went on a youth retreat (pretty useless and
annoying, as I recall) in which I remember an older priest making fun of the
old Latin Mass, which at that time I did not know at all, like the infant Samuel
“who did not know the Lord” (1 Sam 3:7). This priest said, with a slightly
mocking laugh: “We used to have to make so many signs of the cross, it was
like...we were brushing ies o , or something!” That stuck with me for some
reason.
Later, when I discovered the old Mass, I noticed how the new generation
of clergy o ering it did these signs much more reverently—they took care in
how they did them. Some still rush a bit, human weakness being what it is, but
most of the clergy trace out deliberate signs of the cross in order to put
themselves in mind of what they are about. They would agree with the opinion
of François Cassingena-Trévedy:

Provided that it is really lived with love, and no longer performed in

a cranky and mechanical way, the richness of gestures in the
Tridentine celebration, with its signs of the cross, its kisses, its
genu ections, eminently favors, in the deepest sense of the term, the
commitment of the celebrant in the act he carries out: in a
movement at once gymnastic and spiritual, it draws the gift of his
own body, the real presence of his body (that is to say, of his whole
being) to the Body he presents; gesture after gesture, sign after sign,
it sews and binds the celebrant to the altar of the Lord and recalls
his body to the Body.[471]

To my surprise, years later I came across another reference to ies in

relation to the sign of the cross. It was in a short text called The Nine Ways of
Prayer of St. Dominic, a description left to us of how the great saint was
accustomed to praying. How could I fail to be struck by the description given
of the ninth?

While he prayed it appeared as if he were brushing dust or

bothersome ies from his face when he repeatedly forti ed himself
with the Sign of the Cross. The brethren thought that it was while
praying in this way that the saint obtained his extensive penetration
of Sacred Scripture and profound understanding of the divine
words, the power to preach so fervently and courageously, and that
intimate acquaintance with the Holy Spirit by which he came to
know the hidden things of God.[472]
 Did St. Dominic in his passionate embrace of the Cross, in his repeated
action of crucifying himself (as it were), know something that the polite,
e cient, apathetic managers of the Consilium did not? Yes. Though to the
frivolous observer he seemed to be “brushing dust or bothersome ies from
his face,” he was in reality communing with the Cross, with which he
“repeatedly forti ed himself.” He knew the secret of the lover of Christ. One
who loves the Lord as he did will not complain but rather rejoice to nd this
primary symbol of His love and of our response to His love everywhere in the
Mass, with its signs of the Cross that He bore for us, and that we take up in
order to follow Him.
This is the sort of di erence between the old rite and the new rite that is
at once subtle and overpowering. It is subtle enough that a layman may not
notice it for a long while, especially when rst assisting at the usus antiquior.
But soon enough, the attentive will perceive the cruciform liturgy; he will
begin to sense how the priest is chained and con gured to it; he will catch
notice of the shining mysterium dei sunk within the chalice of blood—and
one sees, one knows, that this is the Mass of the Holy Sacri ce.
In the Canticle of Canticles, the lover wishes to lavish all the expressions
of love he can upon the beloved, and she wishes to reciprocate. We see the
same exchange of love in the intense mysticism of the traditional Mass. No
wonder fervent young people, and above all, priests, are so strongly drawn to it
and a ected by it. The di erence between old and new rites is the di erence
between the “drunken madman”[473] who, falling under the fascination of God,
seeks the Divine Lover’s face, and the sober bureaucrat who makes eye-contact
with others, seeking their approval.

LOST AND FOUND IN THE FOREST

As Barthe points out (using an evocative phrase from Baudelaire), for over
a thousand years the Roman Mass was approached as a “forest of symbols.”
Every part of the rite, every ceremony, down to the smallest sign of the cross
or movement from left to right or incensation pattern, was eagerly mined for
meaning. Yes, one might say these meanings were imposed, but one could also
say they were discovered, elicited from the rite itself, due to the extreme ease
or naturalness with which our forefathers saw spiritual meanings in all kinds
of things, above all in Scripture. They extracted the full juice of the grape and
allowed it to mature into rich wine.
 So far from this being “eisegesis” (i.e., reading into something what can’t
possibly have been intended to be there), it is a form of spiritual exegesis based
on the belief that God has communicated something of His in nite depth of
truth to all that He has made or caused, which thereby serves as some
revelation of Himself—including the liturgy that emerged from the Age of
Faith. Yes, human authors and architects may not have been thinking of all
that is present in their writings or their works, but God knows, and wills,
deeper meanings than His human instruments can fathom. This is taken for
granted by our ancestors, and one who reads St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s
sermons on the Song of Songs or William Durandus’s commentary on the
Mass can readily see how fruitful this assumption is, as they discern layer after
layer of signi cance in what might have seemed purely functional or
historically conditioned or even initially arbitrary. Barthe:

The Christian liturgy—and the Roman liturgy in particular—

developed and thrived within a tradition of commentary and
meditation that was fundamental for its understanding, running
parallel with the same way of approaching Scripture. The rationalist
in uences that led to the decline and eventual rejection of the
mystical or spiritual senses of Scripture in favor of a narrowly-
conceived literal sense led to a narrowing of liturgy as well, which
was reduced to its material parts and their various functions. While
in recent decades the importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture
has been reclaimed, its liturgical equivalent remains in shadow.[474]

Reading Barthe, I was struck once again by the transformation of mind

that occurs when a person comes to appreciate the inner continuity and
coherence of the Roman rite (by which I mean, of course, the usus antiquior,
the only Roman rite there is). When you understand the Mass in each of its
parts, down to the grainiest detail, you see that everything is in the right place:
it all makes sense, ts together, and nourishes meditation. The sterility of the
academic rationalism that rejected the allegorical approach was the necessary
precondition for the violent dismantling and reconstruction of liturgy that
took place in the twentieth century, much as the mechanistic assumptions of
modern materialistic medicine are the precondition for sex changes, which
treat organs like computer components.
 To skeptics, Fr. Barthe makes the unanswerable rejoinder that

this spiritual commentary on the liturgy is already at work in the

New Testament, particularly in the Apocalypse, but also in the
Epistle to the Hebrews and in the Gospel according to St. John. The
Apocalypse itself proceeds in this way to complex mystical
interpretations of cultic objects that will go on to serve as models
for patristic and medieval authors: the seven lamps are the seven
spirits of God (4:5); the gold cups full of perfume represent the
prayers of the saints (5:8 and 8:3–4); and the ne linen with which
the Spouse is clothed signi es the virtues of the saints (19:8).[475]

The introduction is a marvelous compact history of the allegorical reading

of the Mass. He says, for example, concerning Amalarius of Metz (c. 780–850):

One of Amalarius’s principal ideas, which he acquired as part of an

already well-established tradition and which became a key element
in the spiritual interpretation of the Eucharistic sacri ce, is that
there is a link between the unfolding of the Mass and the history of
salvation: the Mass represents the mission of Jesus Christ, from the
proclamation of his arrival on earth, to which the Introit
corresponds, sung by the choir, who in their turn represent the
choir of prophets who foretold Christ’s arrival, up to his Ascension,
to which corresponds the Ite missa est, the dismissal of the faithful
(we will return to this), with which those assisting at the Mass are
dismissed just as Christ dismissed his apostles on the Mount of
Olives.[476]

One of the nest fruits of Barthe’s study is a revitalized appreciation of the

normativity of the Solemn Mass, since the rich symbolism unfolded in the
sources is very much keyed to the presence of all the ministers doing all that
belongs to them:

The special characteristic of a Solemn Mass is that it revolves

around the actions of three sacred ministers: the priest, the deacon,
and the subdeacon, who all belong to the major orders. And the
 three of them, from one point of view, are simply one; and when a
single bench without a back (called the sedilia) is available, they all
sit on it together. This is because the three ministers of the Solemn
Mass all represent the same Jesus Christ in three di erent states:
yesterday, today, and world without end.

The subdeacon represents the Old Testament, Jesus Christ

yesterday, who was proclaimed partly in the sayings of the prophets,
and partly in gures by the saintly individuals who preceded his
coming. As is appropriate, the subdeacon always occupies the lowest
rank, that of incompleteness....

The deacon represents the New Testament, Jesus Christ today,

proclaimed in his fullness by the apostles and their successors, the
bishops, who are the propagators of the Gospel....

The celebrant himself is most fully identi ed with Jesus Christ

today and world without end, as he presently is and always will be,
in glory in heaven. The celebrant is the instrument and the
representative of Christ glorious and victorious, the Christ who
makes himself really present on the altar in the elements of bread
and wine in order to accomplish there his sacri ce for the remission
of sins and to the glory of his Father. The priest who celebrates at
the altar is the image of Jesus Christ priest and victim, but an
unbloody victim in his heavenly state.[477]

Particularly illuminating is Barthe’s discussion of the O ertory of the

Mass. Modern liturgists denounced with increasing clamor the Roman rite’s
“doublets,” namely, elements that seemed to them redundant or uselessly
repetitious. Adhering to the odd and ahistorical belief of Romano Guardini
that devotion is characterized by repetition but liturgy by linear singularity,[478]
they claimed in the twentieth century that the medieval O ertory needlessly
and confusingly anticipated the Canon and therefore needed to be radically
modi ed. As mentioned in chapter 10, their solution was to jettison nearly all
of the existing O ertory and to replace it with a faux-Jewish “workerist”
blessing of bread and wine, surely one of their most infamous and audacious
acts.[479] It is hard to evade the impression that such reformers were like the
Enlightenment and Victorian critics who complained of obscurities,
infelicities, and improprieties in Shakespeare’s plays and therefore felt
themselves justi ed in diligently “correcting” them for modern readers.
Looking back today, we can only marvel that otherwise literate and competent
people should be so blind to the extraordinary perfection of the Bard’s works,
as he achieved his goals with full mastery of materials. A far greater perfection
belongs to the Mass, which has been called the greatest work of art in Western
civilization. Though the missal and other liturgical books are the patient work
of many minds over many centuries, they, too, achieve their goals with full
mastery.
Barthe guides us to see the meaning, so poorly grasped by reformers, of
the intentional parallelism between the Roman O ertory and the Roman
Canon.[480] So far from this being an example of useless repetition or
incoherent anticipation, it is a glowing example of how the liturgy proceeds by
way of preparation and reinforcement, building a system of cross-references
that allow the fullest meaning to be grasped—much as men have two eyes and
two ears in order to see and to hear a single reality better, or as a train rides on
two parallel tracks in order to remain stable and not veer to the left or right.
Indeed, just about every cognitive process involves multiple sources that are
compared with and complete one another. What would be strange is reducing
the approach to truth to a single line, unaccompanied and unrelational; nor is
it at all surprising that no divino-apostolic liturgical rite exhibits this
rationalist aw. Drawing on premodern wisdom, Barthe defends precisely the
sacri cial O ertory:

Here we enter the O ertory, strictly speaking, a term that must be

understood in the strong sense of a “sacri ce.” The oblations that
will shortly be consecrated are brought to the altar and unveiled. All
the Christian liturgies, in a spiritual pedagogy married to the very
rhythm of the Incarnation—“when he cometh into the world, he
saith: Sacri ce and oblation thou wouldest not: but a body thou hast
tted to me.... Then said I: Behold I come: in the head of the book it
is written of me: that I should do thy will, O God” (Heb 10:5–7)—
proceed to a sort of pre-consecration. At once, the liturgical
sequence is upset: the O ertory anticipates the act that is going to
reproduce the sacri ce of the Cross, just as Christ anticipated the
o ering of the Passion.

Allegorically, this moment of the Mass therefore recalls those

moments in Christ’s life in which more than elsewhere he o ers
himself in an anticipation of his Passion: the o ering of Christ to
the Father, as we have just seen, when he came into the world and
entered the womb of Mary; the o ering of Christ in the Temple, at
the Presentation; and the o ering during the Agony in the Garden
of Gethsemane, which is recalled particularly when the priest invites
the ministers to pray (Orate fratres...), an invitation like that of
Gethsemane (Lk 22:40), and when the priest prays in silence,
recalling the solitary prayer of Christ on the Mount of Olives.

At this point we must emphasize the traditional comparison of the

O ertory of the Mass with the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
Surely that Presentation was above all a liturgical action? This rite
applied to rstborn males, forty days after their birth. It was when
parents really repurchased their male rstborn, for whom in
substitution they gave the animals o ered in sacri ce. The rite
re ected the preservation of the rstborn of the Hebrews during
the tenth of the plagues of Egypt, and the sacri ce of Isaac
demanded of Abraham his father. Firstborn male children and
Abraham’s rstborn son are both gures of Christ, the sacri ced
Son of God: gures that were not yet fully realized, since the
rstborn of the Hebrews had been spared, as had Abraham’s only
son.

By this act Jesus showed what he had come into the world to
accomplish: his self-o ering on the Cross and for eternity. He did
this rst on the altar and in the temple formed by the womb of his
mother. He next demonstrated it on the day of the Presentation in
the Temple at Jerusalem. He nally repeated it in the Garden of
Gethsemane.... At the Presentation Mary o ered her Son in advance
as a sacri ce as she would one day have to o er him to God on
Calvary, in the manner of a priest who, at the Mass, o ers in
 advance the oblations that he is again going to o er (in the
sacri cial sense of the word) at the consecration. Mary also lifted up
Jesus in her hands to put him in the hands of Simeon, who
represents the eternal Father, in the same way that the priest lifts up
a little above the altar the host and the chalice that he o ers. By this
o ering in the Temple, Jesus Christ was made ready to be o ered in
his entirety, in the same way that the oblations are prepared for the
perfect o ering that takes place at the consecration.[481]

Proceeding to show that the many other “doublets” of the Roman rite are
equally carefully contrived to bring out the fullest depth of theological
meaning, as are the equivalent doublets in the Byzantine rite, Barthe helps us
to see, from new perspectives, the profound analogies between East and West
that the liturgical reform almost obliterated and that the Roman rite in its
classical integrity preserves as a witness to catholicity.[482]
Did not all these rites take their cue from the Word of God, in which
repetition and parallelism are key features? Hebrew poetry cannot be
understood unless one grasps its use of parallel phrases that echo one another
in a sort of conceptual rhyme. And who could forget the thunderous verse in
chapter seven of the prophet Jeremiah? “Trust not in lying words, saying: The
temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord” (Jer
7:4). As if to say: it is not enough to have a consecrated building; one must live
as a consecrated people, receiving humbly and gratefully all that the Lord
wishes to give. It’s not enough to have a “valid Mass”; one must have the
fullness of tradition, which is the fullness of validity: valid from and for a
people the Lord has made His own, in a grand spousal love announced,
anticipated, achieved, and ful lled, renewed upon our altars and eternalized in
heaven.
The foregoing are characteristic examples of the insights Fr. Barthe has
gathered by his assiduous labors in the vast treasury of the allegorists. How
ironic it is that, at the very time when the Roman rite is under renewed papal
and episcopal attack, the traditional movement is producing a mighty
literature on this rite’s beauty, ttingness, and orthodoxy, compared with
which the reformed rite’s promotional literature is limp, untruthful, and
uninspiring. Such a thought brings both comfort and con dence.
 In addition to the work from which we have been quoting—Fr. Claude
Barthe’s A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning—new
publications in the same vein include Honorius Augustodunensis’s Jewel of the
Soul (Harvard University Press, 2023);[483] Pope Innocent III’s The Mysteries of
the Mass and The Four Kinds of Marriage (Angelus Press, 2023); William
Durandus’s Rationale Divinorum O ciorum (Paschal Light, 2019–2021);[484]
Urban Hannon’s Thomistic Mystagogy:St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries
on the Mass (Os Justi Press, 2024); Abbé Franck Quoëx’s Liturgical Theology in
Thomas Aquinas:Sacri ce and Salvation History (Catholic University of
America Press, 2023); Jean-Jacques Olier’s The Mystical Meaning of the
Ceremonies of the Mass (Angelico Press, 2024); and Pierre Lebrun’s The
Mass:A Literal, Historical, and Dogmatic Explanation of Its Prayers and
Ceremonies (Ubi Caritas Press, 2024).
This renaissance in spiritual commentary on the traditional rites responds
to a deep hunger, in our deracinated postmodern West, for the inherited
wisdom of the ages. Far from discarding this wisdom as did haughty reformers
of yesteryear, Latin-rite Catholics should receptively immerse themselves in its
light and embrace its works as their rightful inheritance.
 16

The Importance of Understanding and Abiding by the

Rubrics
For over 1,600 years, the Church in the West has sung her readings at Mass in
the Latin tongue. Having grown up with the texts, their chant tones clothe
them to perfection. For a long time now, she has read the Epistle towards the
east and the Gospel towards the north, o ering them up as part of the high-
priestly sacri ce of the Mass, for the glori cation of God and not merely for
the instruction of the people (as the Protestants would maintain). When it was
thought desirable to convey the readings also in the vernacular, Holy Mother
Church, in imitation of Our Lady, “kept these things and pondered them in
her heart”: she did not abolish the chanted Latin readings but gave permission
for them to be read aloud in the vernacular afterwards, from the ambo or
pulpit.[485] There is absolutely no reason to change the Catholic practice of
chanting the Epistle and Gospel in Latin, and every reason to conserve it for
the theological and spiritual patrimony it transmits.
A friend shared with me a video of the Ponti cal Mass celebrated by
Robert Cardinal Sarah at the end of the Chartres pilgrimage on May 21, 2018.
The liturgy was going along magni cently, as one would have every reason to
expect—until the Lesson and the Gospel. At this point, the subdeacon faced
the people rather than the East, chanted only the title of the reading in Latin,
and proceeded to speak aloud a French translation. The Latin reading was
never chanted ad orientem in its ancient and thrilling tone. Then along came
the deacon, and instead of chanting the Gospel in Latin facing northward, he
again faced the people, and after singing the title, proceeding to read the
Gospel in French, omitting to sing it in Latin.
This practice is contrary both to the spirit of the ancient Roman liturgy
and to the rubrics that govern its celebration. As to the rubrics, the case is
easily made. The 2011 Instruction Universæ Ecclesiæ of the Ponti cal
Commission Ecclesia Dei states in no. 26: “As foreseen by article 6 of the Motu
Proprio Summorum Ponti cum, the readings of the Holy Mass of the missal
of 1962 can be proclaimed either solely in the Latin language, or in Latin
followed by the vernacular or, in Low Masses, solely in the vernacular.”
Only in a Low Mass, therefore, is it permitted to substitute vernacular
readings for Latin—and note, it is permitted, not required or recommended. In
fact, for reasons I shall discuss below, it is always better to read the lections in
Latin rst, and then read them in the vernacular from the pulpit just before
the homily, if it is judged pastorally wise. But at a sung Mass, a fortiori a
Solemn High Mass, a fortiori a Ponti cal Mass, the readings are always to be
sung in Latin, with the correct ceremonial and directionality. What happened
in the Chartres Mass is a liturgical abuse, no di erent in kind from the host of
abuses with which the Novus Ordo is plagued.
This violation of rubrics was no doubt intended as a “pastoral adaptation”
or “accommodation.” Nevertheless, it is an example of exactly what we must be
careful not to do. Many of the worst aberrations and deviations in the 1960s,
when the old Mass was already being subjected to torture and
dismemberment, and subsequently the ruinous missal of Paul VI, arose exactly
from such supposedly “pastoral considerations.” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who, as we
discussed in earlier chapters, toiled at the Bugninian abattoir before regretting
his complicity, already caught the whi of a weird pastoralism in the 1950s
that wanted to change everything in the name of “relevance” and “outreach.”
In opposition, Bouyer taught that liturgy is rst of all “given, a traditional
given.”

From a material point of view it is a precisely circumscribed object:

the whole of the rites and ceremonies, of readings and prayers that
are written down in the books called the Missal, the Breviary, and
the Ritual. It is something we can desire to enrich, as every living
Christian generation enriches Christian spirituality, Christian
morals, even dogma; but it is something that has rst to be received,
received from the Church.[486]

A major di erence between the theology of the Roman rite and that of
Paul VI’s modern rite is the di erence in how readings are understood. For the
former, the readings at Mass are not merely instructional or didactic; they are
an integral part of the seamless act of worship o ered to God in the Holy
Sacri ce. The clergy chant the divine words in the presence of their Author as
part of the logike latreia, the rational worship, we owe to our Creator and
Redeemer. These words are a making-present of the covenant with God, an
enactment of their meaning in the sacramental context for which they were
intended, a grateful and humble recitation in the sight of God of the truths
He has spoken and the good things He has promised, and a form of verbal
incense by which we raise our hands to His commandments, as the great
O ertory chant has it: Meditabor in mandatis tuis, quæ dilexi valde: et levabo
manus meas ad mandata tua, quæ dilexi, “I have meditated on Thy commands,
which I have greatly loved: and I have lifted up my hands to Thy
commandments, which I have loved.”
The chanted Latin reading is an expression of adoring love directed to God
before it is a communication of knowledge to the people, and the form in
which it is done should re ect this primacy. In the ancient liturgy, always and
everywhere God enjoys primacy. Nothing is done “simply” for the people. Holy
Communion, which is manifestly for the bene t of the people, is nevertheless
treated with adoration, reverence, care, and attentive love, being distributed
exclusively by the hands of the ordained, on the tongues of the kneeling
faithful, with a paten held underneath. All eyes are thus xed on the
Eucharistic Lord, giving Him the primacy that is His due. It should be no
di erent with the utterance of the divine words, in which we nd a symbolic
incarnation of the Word of God that nourishes our souls in preparation for
the divine banquet of the Most Holy Sacrament.[487]
Vernacularization and mere recitation of the readings at High Mass
betrays the telltale rationalism, utilitarianism, and minimalism of the Synod of
Pistoia, whose proposals for liturgical reform were repudiated by Pope Pius VI.
So far from being solely instructional, the chanting of the Word of God is a
quasi-sacramental action in and of itself, as Martin Mosebach argues with
regard to the use of incense, candles, and the prayer Per evangelica dicta,
deleantur nostra delicta (which, to translate quite literally, would be “through
the gospelish things read, may our sins be wiped away”).[488] Another
con rmation is found in the traditional rites for the ordination of deacons
and subdeacons:

After the bishop vests the new deacon in the stole and dalmatic, he
presents the Gospel book and says: “Accipe potestatem legendi
Evangelium in Ecclesia Dei, tam pro vivis, quam pro defunctis. In
 nomine Domini.” “Receive the power of reading the Gospel in the
Church of God, both for the living and for the dead. In the name of
the Lord.” The part about reading the Gospel for the dead would be
nonsense if the reading were merely a practical instruction for those
members of the Church Militant who happen to be present at a
particular Mass. The rite for subdeacons has a similar formula with
the Book of Epistles, with reference to power to read them both for
the living and for the dead.[489]

The chanting of the reading is truly part of the activity of worship, and,
like the other prayers of the Mass, it should be distinguished by words of a
sacral register, hallowed by tradition. No one will complain if this formal
liturgical chant, which takes only a few minutes in any case, is followed up
with a recitation of the vernacular text before the homily. But the latter should
never be substituted for the former.
I have learned about priests in France and Germany who, in keeping with
this cavalier pastoral attitude, also change the Ecce Agnus Dei and Domine
non sum dignus into the vernacular. Seriously: has it ever really caused
di culty for the faithful to understand what is meant by these phrases, which
are repeated at every Holy Mass? Additionally, some clergy in Germany, who
have apparently learned nothing from the past sixty years, persist in recycling
the old saccharine German paraphrase-Masses,[490] which they fob o on the
people instead of sharing with them the riches of Gregorian chant, as every
pope, especially in the period from 1903 to 2013, has urged should be done.[491]
Then there are practical concerns, based on those stubborn little things
known as facts. Congregations who attend the usus antiquior today are often
made up of faithful of diverse linguistic backgrounds, because in many locales
only a single Latin Mass is available, and all the people of the surrounding
territory gather for it. On a visit to St. Clement’s in Ottawa, I learned that
about 40% of the faithful are Francophone and 60% are Anglophone; Latin
serves as the common liturgical language that unites them. In the United
States, when Hispanic Catholics attend a Latin Mass, the Latin is closer to
their native tongue than English would be. Another city parish of which I am
aware draws a diverse linguistic mix of families: English, Romanian, Polish,
Russian, Czech, Italian, and Spanish. Quite apart from delity to the rubrics,
such situations present a genuine pastoral reason for the consistent use of
Latin!
In this respect, the Chartres Mass a orded us a spectacular lack of pastoral
common sense. This is an international pilgrimage of people. Even if French is
the language of the majority, there would be plenty of attendees for whom it is
not a rst language, and a sizable number who do not speak it at all. To read
the lections in French alone reveals a nationalist, regionalist, and culturally
imperialist attitude.[492] As Pope John XXIII noted in Veterum Sapientia, only
the use of the venerable and universal Latin tongue is exempt from such
problems: no longer the language of a nation or empire, it belongs equally to
all.[493]
It would be opportune for religious congregations and societies of
apostolic life that utilize the usus antiquior to monitor such liturgical abuses
and correct them before they spread. How can clergy expect the faithful to
show due obedience to their fathers in Christ, if these same fathers are not
faithful to the inherited liturgy? Is it too much to ask that priests follow the
spirit and the letter of the Roman rite as it has been passed down to us,
without introducing the deviations and creative adaptations of the Liturgical
Movement? We have seen where those ended up: the Novus Ordo.
To my amazement, there are voices in the traditional Catholic world that
consistently support liturgical irregularities. With surprise and
disappointment, I learned that one of these voices belongs to a German
member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, who on June 28, 2018, published
a column in the major Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost, entitled “Zeit,
‘danke’ zu sagen” (“Time to Say Thanks”), in which, after expressing his
con dence in the rightness of the founding of the FSSP in 1988 and its
peaceful role within the Church, he veers into an attack on a perceived type of
traditionalist:

I see an unexpected danger for the traditional movement

somewhere else in the Church, that is to say, in a hyperliturgization
[Hyperliturgisierung]. Despite all the theological narrowness of
which one might accuse Archbishop Lefebvre, he had the zeal of a
true shepherd who is concerned with the salvation of souls. To him,
the preservation of the liturgy was not an aesthetic end-in-itself. Far
more, he saw the liturgical crisis as part of the crisis of faith that
 was endangering the salvation of many souls. His intention was
highly pastoral, in the full Catholic sense of the word. He was not
concerned with rubrics, that is, with the letter of liturgical rules, but
with their spirit. He was not altogether against reforms, but only
against reforms that cloud over the spirit of the liturgy.

In my rst year as a priest in the Society of St. Pius X, on Sundays I

served at a chapel where they sang, on alternating weeks, Gregorian
chant and Schubert Masses [i.e., Mass paraphrases in German]. No
one had thought anything of that. The phenomenon of a liturgical
purism that despises German songs in the liturgy, rejects the direct
reading of Epistle and Gospel in the vernacular [i.e., without their
having been rst read or chanted in Latin], and cultivates an
excessive rubricism to the point of a missionary self-gagging,
crossed my path much later, especially in lay circles. Thus [outside]
critics of the traditional liturgy are o ered a target, while
newcomers have a more di cult start. One enters upon an oblique
path at the end of which liturgy appears to be the hobby of an
exclusive club of exotic aesthetes.

I am grateful to Cardinal Sarah that, at the concluding Mass of the

Chartres pilgrimage, he set a sign and gave a reminder about the
correct measure of the way one ought to celebrate: “with a noble
simplicity, without useless additions, false aestheticism, or
theatricality, but with a sense of the sacred that rst and foremost
gives glory to God.”[494]

Consider the eerie similarity between the way this priest is arguing today
and the way that Annibale Bugnini and his liturgist comrades were arguing
about the “urgent need” to modify the old Mass. Chiron’s biography of
Bugnini details just how willing were the liturgical “experts” of the 1940s, ’50s,
and ’60s to experiment with the liturgy, as if it were their personal possession.
No established rubrics could hold them back, in spite of nearly constant
warnings and reproofs from the popes, the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and
other curial o cials. The attitude seemed to be: “If we have a good enough
reason to break the rubrics to try something new that we think is a pastoral
improvement, then we have su cient justi cation.” This attitude was the acid
that dissolved any notion of a received, inherited rite to which we are humbly
subject, by which we allow ourselves to be shaped and guided.[495]
Once this erroneous attitude had established itself, it was relatively easy to
discard the entire rite in favor of a fabricated one. Why not? It’s all about what
we want to do. The Novus Ordo was simply the crown placed on decades of
liturgical experimentation rooted in rationalism, voluntarism, and pastoralism.
In some ways, it was the archetypal expression of a council that claimed to be
not dogmatic but pastoral, a council that was content with rambling texts that
tack to and fro like a sailboat trying to catch the wind, even as the Tridentine
rite in its majestic solidity and stability is the perfect expression of the
genuine pastoral concern and luminous dogmatic teaching of the Council of
Trent, valid for all time, all places, all cultures.
In their myopia, partisans of the later phase of the Liturgical Movement
thought that they, and not the providentially unfolded tradition of the
Church, knew best what Modern Man™ needed. To them, it was evident that
he needed as much vernacularization as possible. That is why Latin was
eventually thrown out of the window completely. They also thought nearly
everything needed to be simpli ed, so they sought greater and greater
simpli cation—be it in vestments (away with the amice and maniple and
biretta), in furnishings (away with six candles, antependia, and reliquaries), in
the texts of the Mass (away with the Propers, second or third orations, Psalm
42, Prologue of John, Leonine prayers), in the ceremonies of the Mass (away
with osculations, signs of the cross, genu ections, ad orientem), or in its music
(away with ancient chant).
It never seems to have occurred to the Liturgical Movement that quite
possibly what an increasingly secular and materialist age needed was precisely
a movement in the opposite direction—towards greater liturgical symbolism, a
richer pageantry of ritual, a fuller immersion in Gregorian chant with its
incomparable spirituality, all of which was already on o er in the Roman rite.
What Modern Man needed most of all was to be rescued from the prison of
his own making, namely, the rationalist anthropocentrism of modernity. To
our shame, the Catholic Church freely stepped into this prison through the
liturgical reform, in its many intended and unintended consequences. In this
sense, the proposed cure turned out to be more of the same disease, which is
why, predictably, it has made the patient worse, not better.
The accusation of “hyperliturgization” is therefore ironic. Clergy who
defend departures from the rubrics—often nationalistic departures from the
universal Roman tradition—are the ones who deem themselves competent to
make improvements or adjustments to the liturgy. They are the
hyperliturgists. Those who wish to attend a Roman Mass that, at least as
regards what is speci ed in the liturgical books, is the same everywhere in the
world, even as the Catholic faith is the same, are not hyperliturgists; they are
not even liturgists. They are faithful Catholics. They are Catholics who believe
that what the longstanding tradition of the Church o ers them, such as the
chanting of the readings in Latin, is going to be spiritually superior to some
“adaptation” or “inculturation” that this or that priest, or group of priests, may
happen to think is better.[496] We are called to dwell in the house of the liturgy
as grateful guests, not to re-engineer it as project managers.
Those who make changes like this in the liturgy are no doubt acting in
good faith. But they are not acting with humble trust that there are always
many layers of meaning in the liturgy that go beyond what we, with our
necessarily limited understanding, might perceive to be the purpose of some
ceremony or text or music or vestment. They are acting, in short, by their own
lights. But what we must do, especially today, is to act by the light of Catholic
tradition, until we have learned again, like children in grammar school, why it
developed in the rst place. We need to learn our ABCs again before we dare
to make our own contributions, whatever those might be (and may God
preserve us from “creativity”).
What about the charge of “rubricism,” ung in the face of those who cite
Universæ Ecclesiæ 26 or any other binding prescription? The charge is quite
misplaced. The phenomenon of rubricism occurs when the liturgical or
theological rationale for a given practice is forgotten, and all that one has to
stand on is a rubric, a prescription of positive human law. If one cannot say
why a practice is right and tting but simply shouts “That’s the rubric and we
must follow it!,” or if one breaks out into a cold sweat at three o’clock in the
morning because one suddenly realizes that four manuals disagree about how
many inches apart the items on the credence table should be, then perhaps one
might merit being called a rubricist. But my defense of the rubrically correct
way of doing the readings at a High Mass expressly refers to the liturgical-
theological rationale behind the rubrics.
Rubrics are good when the practices they guarantee are themselves good
and right and tting. It is not the other way around, namely, that something is
good because the rubrics dictate it. That is legal positivism. The Church under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit learns the best way of doing something—best
either in practical terms, or for theological/spiritual reasons, or both—and
then she formulates it as a rubric and enforces its observance. For example, the
priest’s holding thumb and fore nger together after consecration arose as a
custom, gradually spread, and was nally taken up into the rubrics enjoined on
all.[497] That is usually how such things develop. A great problem of twentieth-
century Catholicism was that rubrics had become a cottage industry. The
Sacred Congregation of Rites, followed in turn by the Consilium, followed by
the Congregation for Divine Worship, were cranking out new rubrics year by
year, leading to a weariness and annoyance with the whole business. Forgotten
was the theological and spiritual meaning of the rubrics, the reason they
developed in the rst place.
A rubricist is one who insists on the rubrics for their own sake. A
traditionalist insists on the rubrics because they protect and promote
something important—something that one rst has to understand
theologically and spiritually, after which the rubrics are seen to be right.
Rubrics have legal force because they are promulgated by legitimate authority,
but they have their intrinsic force from the nature of the thing itself.[498]
“Pastoral” priests who ignore or contradict the sound rubrics of the old
missal are demonstrating not “ exibility within rules,” but an antinomian
mentality characteristic of the modern period, with its habit of calling
traditions into question and giving rst place to utilitarian and pragmatic
considerations. When a priest sees a traditional rubric not as the guardian of a
theological or spiritual truth but as an arbitrary dictate of law, he will be all
the more willing to violate it whenever he thinks he has a better idea.
This whole question of how readings are to be done is more important
than it may seem at rst blush, because it is not an isolated issue. It is one
among several backdoors through which sel ess and tireless reformists may
enter the traditional movement and turn it—or at least geographical portions
of it—into a recapitulation of the Consilium’s descent into insatiable tinkering,
modifying, expurgating, reinventing, archaeologizing, and ultimately
transmogrifying the liturgy, always in the name of “pastoral improvements.”
This, and not loving care for the traditional ars celebrandi, will be the “self-
gagging” we need to avoid.
The faithful deserve and have a right to a traditional Mass o ered in
accordance with the wise slogan “Say the Black, Do the Red,” sourced from the
purest springs of the Tridentine inheritance. After decades of confusion, the
Church is being given an unparalleled opportunity to restart the celebration of
the liturgy with a correct attitude and praxis. If we mess it up this time with
short-sighted pastoral adaptations, we will have no one to blame but ourselves
when we slide into a second “liturgical reform” from which Divine Providence
may not rescue us.
It would be irresponsible for me to leave this topic without a nal
admonition. The readings are a form of worship o ered up, certainly; yet they
are not latria alone, but a pronouncing of God’s words to men, in the presence
of the ecclesia: they are a speech-act to human hearers simultaneously with
being raised up to God in praise. For this reason, it is imperative that the
subdeacon, deacon, and priest, when chanting texts, should enunciate the
words intelligibly, with distinct articulation of syllables, no impression of
unseemly haste or garbled vocables, and a good command of the tones to be
sung. A layman familiar with Latin should encounter no di culty in following
the chanted readings. To be sure, it requires some e ort to chant loudly and
distinctly, but when it is done, the e ect is edifying, as the word rises aloft on
wings, taking possession of the space and of the ears.

THE PRICE OF DISREGARDING THE RUBRICS

It had never occurred to me to think of certain liturgical abuses I often
saw when younger, such as priests ad-libbing prayers, people clapping during
Mass, and casual behavior on the part of one and all, as potentially mortal sins
until I stumbled across a couple of texts in St. Thomas that awakened me to
this real possibility. For some reason, such abuse had seemed to me—to the
extent I’d given the matter any thought—a venial sin, more of a nuisance, an
inconvenience, an o ense to the faithful in the pews who deserve better, but
not a severance of the friendship of charity with God. And yet, as I ponder the
matter more carefully, it seems to me that there is, after all, something very
serious happening whenever a minister knowingly departs from the Church’s
rule of worship as expressed in the texts and rubrics of the liturgy (which, of
course, he is required to be familiar with; ignorance is no excuse). The
disregard or violation of text or rubric is an expression of contempt towards
Christ and the authorities He has established to rule in His name.
Here is what St. Thomas says in an article of the Summa theologiæ on the
sin of the fallen angels:

Mortal sin occurs in two ways in the act of free-will.

In one way, when something evil is chosen—as man sins by choosing

adultery, which is evil of itself. Such sin always comes of ignorance
or error; otherwise what is evil would never be chosen as good. The
adulterer errs in the particular, choosing this delight of an
inordinate act as something good to be performed now, from the
inclination of passion or of habit; even though he does not err in his
universal judgment, but retains a right opinion in this respect. In
this way there can be no sin in the angel; because there are no
passions in the angels to fetter reason or intellect...nor, again, could
any habit inclining to sin precede their rst sin.

In another way, sin comes of free-will by choosing something good

in itself, but not according to proper measure or rule; so that the
defect which induces sin is only on the part of the choice which is
not properly regulated, but not on the part of the thing chosen—as,
for example, if one were to pray, without heeding the order
established by the Church. Such a sin does not presuppose
ignorance, but merely absence of consideration of the things which
ought to be considered. In this way the angel sinned, by seeking his
own good, from his own free-will, insubordinately to the rule of the
divine will.[499]

What I nd striking about this text is that, when St. Thomas wishes to nd an
example of a human sin to which he can tly compare the kind of sin Satan
and the other malicious angels committed, he chooses praying without
heeding the order established by the Church! In the heavens there is a rule to
which the angels must submit in their pursuit of their own good, and likewise
on earth, there is a rule to which men must submit in their pursuit of the
good of holiness. A failure to consider the established order in the macrocosm
of the universal society of intellectual and rational creatures is re ected in a
failure to consider the established order in the microcosm of ecclesiastical
society; the latter is a miniature fall from grace, that is, a fall from the divine
will, which manifests itself to us as an order into which we can freely insert
ourselves, or against which we can freely revolt.
It is, in other words, not the choice of something bad in its very de nition
that characterizes the fallen angel, but the choice of something good, yet in a
perverted way. Those who o er the Church’s prayer, which is man’s noblest
and best act as a creature, but violate or mutate the rubrics according to their
own whims and wishes, are o ering a gift vitiated, to some extent, by a will
insubordinate to the rule of the divine will. This need not necessarily detract
from the objective value of the gift, but it will certainly a ect the subjective
bene t of the o ering for the o erer and possibly for those who share in it.
Indeed, St. Thomas in a di erent text seems to say that those who
knowingly consent to liturgical abuses deprive themselves of the grace of the
sacrament. As long as they know that the Church calls for a certain way of
acting and speaking, and they know that a celebrant is deviating from this,
they must either consent to it or internally reject that deviation. It makes no
di erence if they think that these violations of the rubrics are warranted by
some political agenda or perceived “pastoral need,” since the liturgy, the
ministers, and the faithful are all subject to the Church’s judgment and law.
Here is how his argument reads:

Sometimes the one who celebrates a sacrament di erently [than

prescribed] does not vary the things that are essential to the
sacrament [i.e., the form and matter], and in that case, the sacrament
is indeed conferred; but the recipient does not obtain the reality of
the sacrament unless he is immune from the fault of the one
celebrating it that way.[500]

That is an astonishing claim: one does not receive the res sacramenti, the very
grace the sacrament was instituted to give us, if one embraces the fault of the
minister who unlawfully varies even things that are not essential to the
conferral of the sacrament.[501] Such a claim brings into sharp relief the
seriousness with which St. Thomas took the liturgical law of the Church, a
perspective widely shared by his contemporaries. It is a perspective that, while
slowly reviving among us, still has many converts to win.
Sometimes the itch to be creative or experimental or spontaneous or
informal with the liturgy comes from a mistaken view that this is somehow
more humble, more “authentic,” more in keeping with the needs of the
moment or the locale. But, as we saw earlier, C. S. Lewis puts his nger on
what’s really happening here (and a line like this is well worth repeating): “The
modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of
humility; rather it proves the o ender’s inability to forget himself in the rite,
and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”[502]
With his usual perceptiveness, Lewis is pointing to a peculiar sort of pride
or vanity or vainglory that consists in not abandoning oneself to the structure
and content of the rite, in having to be the one who constructs it in midair,
who cleverly (or not so cleverly) adapts it, who produces it as if he were its
author—all the while inserting his ego into every nook and cranny. By not
surrendering to the rite and its ceremonial demands as established by rubrical
law, such a man cannot forget himself—and he cannot allow others to forget
him, either. It is as if the attention that God rightfully demands is
compromised, our attention being split between the transcendent object of the
ritual as ritual, and the immanent object of the performance before us. A sign
of this split is that the “proper pleasure of ritual” is either not experienced by
the worshiper or experienced in a muted and unsatisfactory way.
Although examining this claim would take us far a eld, it is worth
remembering that St. Thomas holds that virtuous action is accompanied by its
own proper pleasure and that taking delight in the good is a sign of moral
maturity. So we ought to enjoy our worship of God—not the way we enjoy God
Himself, obviously, but in a way that recognizes our need (and God’s provision
for our need) to emerge rejuvenated, enlightened, consoled, strengthened.
This, I think, is what Lewis has in mind, and his assessment of the pride of the
minister as well as the injury in icted on the faithful helps us better
understand how St. Thomas can compare violation of liturgical order to the
pride of the fallen angels and how he can see consent to such violations as a
form of self-deprivation of the sacrament’s grace. But we may also think about
the magnitude of the crime incurred by the revolutionaries who overturned
the entire liturgical order of the Latin Church and opened the oodgates to
abuses great and small that continue to our day like a generational curse. The
only way out is to step away from the constant tinkeritis that seized hold of
the Church after World War II, and to take up again, humbly and gratefully,
the Roman patrimony embodied in the last editio typica of the integral
Tridentine rite.[503]

TWO “DISOBEDIENCES” COMPARED

The analysis o ered here of obedience to rubrics helps us to see their role
more clearly. They are not the most important thing, for they presuppose a
context that makes sense out of them—let’s call it customary good practice,
itself shaped by spiritual and theological reasons. If, thanks to a hypertrophic
development of legal positivism, rubrics become detached from tradition and
reason, they could also become impediments to the right o ering of the
liturgy. Conversely, the removal of sound rubrics thanks to a revolutionary
spirit brings with it a host of evils, ranging from looseness and distraction to
irreverence and profanation.
Well-informed young priests of today are aware of these problems. Thanks
to studying Benedict XVI and other authors, they know that the Novus Ordo
has serious aws and lacunae to which the TLM can supply remedies, for it is
the re ned expression of centuries of practice and re ection. Plus, Benedict
encouraged them to think in terms of “mutual enrichment”—although the
enriching tends to ow in one direction. So, they set about xing what is
broken. Some try to x it on a modest scale by wearing an amice and maniple
(not required, but then again, not forbidden), observing canonical digits,
incensing in the elaborate old manner, and keeping their eyes down when
looking toward the congregation. In addition, they choose what is already
allowed, such as using Latin and chant, praying ad orientem, and giving
Communion on the tongue to kneeling faithful.
Others go further, introducing major “Tridentinisms”: they add back
certain silent prayers, such as those at the O ertory; they genu ect after the
consecration rather than only after the elevation; they say the Canon almost
inaudibly; they receive the Eucharist prior to turning around and showing It
to the congregation. The epitome of this Tridentinizing approach may be seen
in Fr. Richard Cipolla’s “A Primer for a Tradition-Minded Celebration of the
OF Mass,” published at New Liturgical Movement on September 14, 2017.[504]
The trouble with this last approach (and, indeed, with some of the earlier,
more modest examples) is that, strictly speaking, none of it is allowed. It is
against the Novus Ordo’s rubrics and the Vatican directives that interpret
them. The journal Notitiæ, which has provided o cial guidelines for the
Novus Ordo for decades now, stated repeatedly that elements from the old
missal were never to be incorporated into the new, and that the celebrant
should not do so; nothing beyond what is speci cally mentioned in the new
rite may be done. This was back in the days when the rupture was plainly
admitted, before it became politic for a time to deny there was a rupture. We
are, of course, right back to the same spot:

It must never be forgotten that the Missal of Pope Paul VI, from the
year 1970, has taken the place of that which is improperly called “the
Missal of St. Pius V” and that it has done this totally, whether with
regard to texts or rubrics. Where the rubrics of the Missal of Paul
VI say nothing or say little in speci cs in some places, it is not
therefore to be inferred that the old rite must be followed.
Accordingly, the many and complex gestures of incensation
according to the prescripts of the earlier Missal (cf. Missale
Romanum, T. P. Vaticanis, 1962: Ritus servandus VII et Ordo
Incensandi, pp. LXXX-LXXXIII) are not to be repeated.[505]

As it was said in response n. 2 of the Commentary Notitiæ 1978, p.

301: where the rubrics of the Missal of Paul VI say nothing, it must
not therefore be inferred that it is necessary to observe the old
rubrics. The restored Missal does not supplement the old one but
has replaced it. In reality, the Missal formerly indicated at the
Agnus Dei [the rubric] “striking the breast three times,” and in
pronouncing the triple Domine, non sum dignus, “striking the
breast...[he] says three times.” Since, however, the new Missal says
nothing about this (OM 131 and 133), there is no reason to suppose
that any gesture should be added to these invocations.[506]

As generally happens, it [the manner of a priest’s raising hands and

joining them at the Preface or at the nal blessing] is a matter of a
habit which comes from the rubrics of the former Missal. The
 indications of the OM, however, should be observed... Thus the
ancient rite should not be retained...[507]

While I am fully prepared to call into question the credibility of the

Congregation or Dicastery of Divine Worship and even the canonical standing
of its decisions, there is no doubt that such quotations well express the
dominant intention of liturgical severance that has animated the Vatican from
1969 onwards, with a short and partial reprieve under Benedict XVI. What I
do not see room for is a gradual “Tridentinization” of the new rite, because, as
I argued in Part I, this is neither consistent with its rubrics nor ultimately
possible given its extensive genetic mutations (nor, as discussed in chapter 8,
compatible with its spirit of simplicity and immediate comprehensibility). The
Eucharistic species may be the same, but the liturgical species is di erent, and
there is no evolutionary path from the one to the other.
So, the Tridentinizing new-rite priests, though undoubtedly actuated by
the best motives, are choosing to be disobedient in the name of a higher
obedience to what their conscience dictates as “dignum et justum” for the
celebration of the Holy Sacri ce. They may not feel it to be unsustainable, they
may even believe it to be required of them, but they cannot deny it involves a
con ict of principles.
In reaction to this insoluble di culty with the Novus Ordo, other priests
reach a point where they realize: “All that I’m doing is trying to turn the new
rite into something rather like the TLM or at least with its best features. This
is ultimately impossible and, in any case, a thankless and pointless task. Why
not just take up the TLM and be done with it?” It should hardly surprise
anyone that many priests who used to o er a “fancy” Novus Ordo switched
over at some point to the “real McCoy.” The traditional elements themselves
have a way of pushing one in that direction, since they all came from the great
liturgical tradition and readily cohere in their proper context, namely, the old
rite. While there is, for instance, something exceedingly awkward about a
Latin Gradual chant in the NO, it ts smoothly and elegantly into the TLM.
Such examples could be multiplied by the dozens.[508]
The quest for the “perfect Novus Ordo” is about as elusive as the hunt for
Red October—actually, more so. Once one realizes that every “good”
instantiation of it is the result of about a hundred moving pieces having been
put together in “just the right way” by several individuals (all of whom could
change at a moment’s notice), and once one intimately experiences the old
Roman rite as something permanent and beyond messing with, then one is
brought to the certain knowledge that the former path is a dead end, the
latter, a highway for our God. Some priests will, in due course, arrive at an
unshakable moral certainty: “I can’t abide that travesty, and I’m not leaving this
treasure.” They nd in the old rite exact, detailed rubrics that leave nothing to
chance or whim; all is done in a manner most tting, serene, reverent, and
symbolically apt. Although it is a great challenge at rst, mastery of the
rubrics, when it becomes second-nature, allows the priest to pray the Mass
fervently, without distraction, forgetting himself in his focus on Christ. As
Mosebach eloquently observes:

The great mystics of the past never felt rubrics to be a burden. Even
the twentieth century had a great mystical saint, Padre Pio, from
Apulia, who was given the stigmata and, with his ve bleeding
wounds, read the Mass in iron submission to the rubrics. Formerly,
seminarians learned rubrics so well they could perform them in
their sleep. Just as pianists have to practice hard to acquire some
technique that is initially a pure torture, but ultimately sounds like
free improvisation, experienced celebrants used to move to and fro
at the altar with consummate poise; the whole action poured forth
as if from a single mold. These celebrants were not hemmed in by
armor-plated rubrics, as it were: they oated on them as if on
clouds.[509]

In the era of Traditionis Custodes, these priests are likely to be told at

some point that they are “not allowed” (or no longer allowed) to say the
traditional Latin Mass. But they know that the war against the TLM stems
from ill will and lacks legitimacy, and that no pope or bishop on earth has the
authority to abolish or prohibit what was, and cannot cease to be, the
immemorial liturgical rite of the Church of Rome.[510] So these priests will
continue to say the TLM, come what may. They will be blamed for their
“disobedience,” even as all conscientious objectors are blamed for resisting
structures of sin, but they know in their consciences that they are acting in the
name of a higher obedience to the common good of the Church and of the
People of God, which is inseparable from the o ering of the Holy Sacri ce of
the Mass and of the other sacramental rites in the way that is dignum et
justum.
Let us now compare these two scenarios.
Is not the second “disobedience” more coherent and more defensible than
the rst? The rst, which makes a custom house-blend of novus and vetus
elements, is hard to justify within the context of a liturgy already non-
liturgical in its “optionitis,” the sport of ideological innovators and political
abusers. The second, however, is easy to understand and to justify, because it is
founded on the solid rock of a praiseworthy, supremely venerable lex orandi.
There is a certain willfulness or arbitrariness in the rst scenario that is
absent in the second. In the rst, one could ask a priest: “By what authority do
you make this or that modi cation to Paul VI’s missal?,” and any answer he
might give would sound subjective; there is no objective way to know if a
Novus Ordo has become “traditional enough” or “reverent enough” or “Roman
enough.” In the second scenario, one could ask him: “By what authority do you
o er Mass with the old missal?” The answer: By its inherent goodness,
rightness, ttingness, authenticity; due to its continual reception and approval
by the Church of every century in the course of its gradual growth,
culminating in the missal St. Pius V “canonized” in Quo Primum—a missal
(and a mentality) that was handed down faithfully through the 1920 editio
typica. This answer would be as objective and stable as the endless
Tridentinizing experiments are subjective and unstable.
A curious passage recorded only in the Gospel of Mark (8:22–25) may help
illustrate the di erence between these two scenarios. We see a blind man being
healed by Jesus, who, instead of healing him all at once, as He often does on
other occasions, carries out the healing in stages:

Some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him to touch
him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the
village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon
him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and
said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.” Then again he
[Jesus] laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was
restored, and saw everything clearly.
It was only when Our Lord laid His hands upon the man’s eyes a second time
that the man’s sight was fully restored. The initial cure was partial; the
de nitive cure took another round of divine work. This parable could be and
has been given many possible (and compatible) interpretations, but it strikes
me as an apt allegory for the two stages described above.
The man in need of healing is the modern Catholic, and especially the
modern cleric: blind to Tradition, to reverence, to beauty, to continuity—even,
at times, to truth itself. The Lord begins to heal this blindness, but what is
often the rst step—conservatism—is still a topsy-turvy world, where things
are not as they seem; where, for example, a novel liturgy, the modern product
of a modern committee, is treated as if it were traditional and in continuity
with Tradition.
With the patience of divine pedagogy, the Lord completes the healing. At
last, the man “looks intently”; he is “restored”; he “sees everything clearly.”
Such is the priest, such the layman, who is given the grace to look intently at
the ways things really are; who is restored to his own inheritance, which he
then seeks to restore for others; who sees clearly where the call of obedience
should, and should not, take him.
 17

In Defense of Readings in Latin

As the last chapter recalled, the motu proprio Summorum Ponti cum made
allowance for doing the readings solely in the vernacular. Although this
permission was said to apply to Low Masses alone (in sung Mass the readings
must be chanted in Latin), and although it is only an option that need never be
chosen, the very mention of the idea has prompted proponents of a “modi ed”
usus antiquior to suggest that in the future we should simply drop Latin
readings altogether and replace them with vernacular versions, in keeping with
their understanding of the desire of the Second Vatican Council to make the
Mass more “accessible” to the people.[511]
Needless to say, changing the readings of the usus antiquior into the
vernacular as a rule would be a major change in the manner in which this
form of the Roman rite is celebrated; it would mark a rupture in the way the
Mass has come down to Catholics of the Latin rite for well over 1,600 years. In
this chapter, I would like to re ect on some of the many reasons why we
should stalwartly resist such a vernacularization of the readings.

THE SACRED LANGUAGE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH

With the passing of ages, and even with considerable organic development
in the various rites and uses of the Holy Sacri ce of the Mass, the Catholic
Church never jettisoned the mother tongue of the Roman rite. Latin became a
sacral and hieratic language, and served a role that has been compared with
that of ancient Greek for the Greek Orthodox, of Hebrew for the Jews, of
Quranic Arabic for the Moslems, and of Sanskrit for the Hindus. Such
languages are not simply exchangeable with a vernacular, as if the two stand on
the same level, or as if any translation o ered to the people could be said to
convey the full meaning of the original religious text, which serves as a
perennial gravitational center that keeps the forces of diverse cultures and
circumstances from assuming control.
 Put di erently, doing the readings in Latin is not equivalent to doing them
in the vernacular, because the former, as perfected and xed over time, is for
us the very language of formal liturgy, while the latter is a diverse and ever-
changing medium of ordinary communication. It is a rationalist fallacy to
think that languages are all equal to one another, so that it is a matter of
indi erence whether readings are given in Latin or in a vernacular language.
Every language is a bearer of cultural, aesthetic, and even political values; every
language ows from, evokes, and reinforces a certain “domain,” greater or
smaller, older or younger. It is therefore not the same experience to give or to
hear readings in Latin and to give or to hear them in (say) English or Spanish.
The one vehicle is universal, tied down to no particular people or nation or
age, redolent of the ages of faith, suited to the sacred ambiance of the church.
The other, whatever its merits, does not have the same qualities.

SEAMLESS GARMENT OF THE LORD

Another argument in favor of preserving Latin for the lections at Mass—
and by no means a negligible one, given the sanctifying function of the liturgy
—comes from the experience of worshipers accustomed to the unity and
coherence, formality and dignity of the traditional Roman rite.
Akin to the seamless garment of the Lord, this rite is woven of
ecclesiastical Latin from top to bottom, with Greek and Hebrew trim. To shift
from Latin dialogues and orations to vernacular readings is experienced as a
jarring disruption, an awkward movement away from theocentric focus and
ceremonial formality. One steps outside of the realm of the liturgical action,
which is primarily oriented towards the adoration of God, into a didactic
mode directed exclusively to the people at hand.
There is a time and place for such instruction, namely, the homily; and it is
neither inappropriate nor surprising that in many places the readings are read
in the vernacular from the pulpit prior to the homily. The inclusion of such
vernacular readings is not considered to be part of the liturgical action, and for
good reason: it is a moment of teaching the people, and is not directed to God
per se. In the classical Roman rite, in contrast, the readings, whether spoken
or chanted, are o ered up to God as a kind of verbal incense, a spiritual
o ering of the word to the Word before whom we come in adoration. The
words here are a prayer of praise and petition. They do teach us (how could
they not?), but their function in the Eucharistic liturgy goes far beyond
conveying a doctrinal message.
At the time of the homily (and, where it is customary, reading out the
lections in the vernacular), it is the ministerial priest who comes to the fore
and acts in propria persona. The priest’s acting in persona Christi, on the
other hand, is symbolized, as mentioned in chapter 12, by the use of Latin
throughout the rest of the Mass for the appointed prayers, readings, and
Canon. The integrity of the parts of the Mass—that fact that many disparate
elements come together in one great o ering of worship—is strongly brought
home to the worshiper by the use of this noble, ancient, and worshipful
language. The whole is a owing river, a seamless garment, a landscape in
which the various distinct objects are gathered together into a natural unity of
environment. Think of mountains covered with pine trees—one can see many
individual items, but the whole view is utterly one. In a Latin liturgy, there is
no awkward transition or lack of transition from part to part; there is simply
the ow of one great action of Christ the High Priest, teaching, ruling,
sanctifying.

SYMBOLISM OF SOLEMN READINGS

One may not, of course, deny that the word of God is the word of God
regardless of what language it is in. The point is rather a symbolic one, at least
as regards the lections at Mass. It should be readily apparent that symbolism is
not something incidental to the liturgy but is rather a constitutive dimension
of the entire sacramental system. Put di erently, how we do the readings, how
we treat the book in the handling of it and the chanting of it, is just as
important as—and in some ways more important than—the speci c message
delivered in any given set of readings. The special way Scripture is treated in
the classical Roman rite is already a powerful formation of the soul of the
believer.
Among the most moving and beautiful signs of the latreutic or adorational
function of the readings in the usus antiquior are those moments strewn
throughout the course of the liturgical year when the priest, ministers, and
faithful genu ect during a reading or Proper, as described below in chapter 19
(see page 308). Sadly, in the new liturgy, this passionate yet peaceful gesture is
done only twice a year, at the moment of the narration of the death of our
Lord on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. One might compare this reduction to
the parallel reduction of the number of times the faithful genu ect at the Et
incarnatus est. When worshipping in the old rite, the faithful kneel for that
statement every time the Creed is recited or sung, in a poignant reminder that
the Incarnation of the Son of God is the center of all time and indeed of all
reality (and the Creed, be it noted, is appointed to be said or sung more often
in the TLM than in the NO); in Paul VI’s new Mass, the rubrics call for
kneeling at the Et incarnatus est exclusively on Christmas and the
Annunciation, and in practice, such kneeling causes confusion when
attempted, through lack of familiarity. In the usus antiquior, exactly parallel to
the kneeling at the Et incarnatus is the kneeling at Et Verbum caro factum est
of the Last Gospel.
In these and many other instances, we see how the traditional Mass
literally embodies our faith by bringing into play not only man’s mind or
voice, but his entire body—as be ts a religion founded on the Word-made-
esh.

THE SACRALITY OF THE ACT OF READING

One way in which the ancient Mass sets apart the word of God for special
veneration and allows the faithful to perceive its unique character is by
treating it in a way that mere profane texts are never treated, namely, by
chanting it in its entirety at any sung Mass. Right away, we are catapulted into
a di erent world, the world of God, in which his holy words, so beautiful and
so beloved, must be lovingly lingered over, savored and reverenced, lifted up in
a solemn sacri ce of song. One cannot overestimate the formative power of
the chanted readings to communicate immediately to the faithful that we are
plunged into God’s holiness when we encounter His revelation.
This liturgical action of reading puts us in contact with the source of
sancti cation, and does so in a way that deserves a treatment no less noble
than that which any part of the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus,
Agnus Dei) or the Preface of the Mass receives. How strange it would be to
chant so many other prayers, written by holy men but not equivalent to the
revealed word of God, and yet to leave unchanted the very words of God
himself! If it is only the lover who sings, according to St. Augustine, should
not the lover of God sing most of all the words of God?
With this theological background in mind, it is fair to say that the
chanting of the lections would su er considerably from a sudden and rash
shift to vernacular readings. The chanting tones for the various classes of
readings are ancient, solemn, noble, and perfectly tted to the Latin language.
Although vernaculars can be sung with adapted tones, the Church of the
Roman rite had never done this historically, and so an organic opportunity for
developing well-sung vernacular chant never occurred. In any event, the very
worst thing that could happen would be the loss of chanted readings right at a
time when this magni cent custom has reentered the life of the Church
thanks to the sung and solemn celebrations of the usus antiquior.
In the Low Mass, by contrast, when the Epistle and Gospel are merely
spoken, proper reverence for the word of God is assured by the priest reading
it at the altar, signifying two things: rst, that this word of Scripture is derived
from and ordered to the primal Word of God, Jesus Christ the High Priest, the
Lawgiver, the very life of the word; second, that this word of Scripture is so
sacred that it is not treated like any other word (e.g., announcements or
homily), but is reserved to the spiritual domain symbolized by the altar of
divine sacri ce. This is a guarantee that the uniquely sacred character of the
text will be appreciated and respected. There is ample room in the homily to
apply the word of God to the lives of the faithful, so there is no need to fear
too great a “separation” between the domain of the spiritual and the domain of
life in the world. The word of Scripture should never be severed from its home
—the Word, the font of life, the re of love, the pleasing and acceptable
sacri ce of holiness.
That is why it is not only not confusing for the priest to chant or read the
readings at the altar, but eminently tting for him to do so whenever the
liturgy is not of a more solemn character, with a greater diversity of
hierarchical ministers. The more solemn the liturgy, the more appropriate it is
to separate out its elements and give each of them greater prominence. The
chanting of the readings (as with the celebration of the rest of the rite) in a
direction other than towards the people symbolizes that conversio ad Deum or
turning to God which is the entire purpose of both Scripture and the Holy
Sacri ce.

WIDESPREAD LITERACY
Lastly, in this age of widespread literacy and hunger for the sacred, there is
no pressing need for the change from Latin to vernacular. In the words of
Sacrosanctum Concilium, “there must be no innovations unless the good of
the Church genuinely and certainly requires them” (SC 23). It is clear to all
who are involved in the movement to recover traditional worship in the
Roman rite that the Latin language is a dearly loved and particularly beautiful
sign of the unity of the Catholic Church and the grandeur of our bimillennial
history. As far as participatio actuosa is concerned, either the readings can be
given in the vernacular after they are read or chanted in the Church’s mother
tongue (such as right before the homily, as is done in many places); or today’s
faithful can follow along in their daily missals, pick up a printed sheet at the
entrance of the church, or even glance at a TLM smartphone app (of which
there are a dozen at least, and in every major language).
No one goes to the traditional Mass in order to “hear Scripture,” much
less to gain biblical expertise, since that is hardly the purpose of the Holy
Sacri ce; we go to worship God and be nourished by His word and His esh,
and to this profound and speci c purpose the modest but well-chosen
selection of Scripture passages in the classical Roman rite makes a decisive
contribution.[512] It is my conviction, and that of many of my fellow Catholics
in the traditional movement, that the Latin language makes a similarly decisive
contribution—one that deserves to be understood, cherished, and preserved for
all future generations.

BUT WHAT ABOUT TRADITIONIS CUSTODES?

The Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes is illicit on numerous grounds
and should be ignored or resisted rather than accepted and implemented.
However, here is not the place to make this case, which I together with many
others have made elsewhere.[513] Besides, whatever we may think of the motu
proprio, it is (as of writing) still “on the books,” and we cannot stop some
people from treating it as law, until a future pope rescinds this act of violence
so contrary to the Church’s common good. Thus, we must be prepared to deal
with certain problems that may arise, problems caused in part by what appears
to be an almost total ignorance on the part of the document’s drafters of how
the traditional Latin Mass actually functions in practice.
A case in point is Article 3 §3, which states: “In these celebrations the
readings are proclaimed in the vernacular language, using translations of the
Sacred Scripture approved for liturgical use by the respective Episcopal
Conferences.”
 1. Note that the formulation does not prohibit (nor could it) the reading
or chanting of the readings in Latin, as included in the o cial liturgical books
of the Missale Romanum of 1962 (and preceding years), following immemorial
tradition. Thus, the Epistle and the Gospel may still be read or chanted in
Latin, and ought to be—not least because of the pastoral expectations of the
people, who have come for the Church’s o cial and venerable liturgy, not for
substituted vernacular readings.
2. What this statement would require, strictly speaking, is that in
celebrations according to the old missal, readings shall be proclaimed in the
vernacular language at some point. In keeping with longstanding custom, this
can surely be from the pulpit before the homily (when there is a homily). But
it is always understood, as in the liturgical legislation for the Novus Ordo, that
an extra step like this may, “for appropriate pastoral reasons,” be omitted. In
the English text published by the Vatican, the motu proprio says “the readings
are proclaimed,” not “the readings must be proclaimed.” The former phrase
indicates a general state of a airs that would be compatible with something
not being done every time, as if one were to say “the passengers are seated,”
though a few might be standing or walking; the latter stipulates a sole way of
doing a thing, as in “the passengers must be seated.”
3. The classical Roman rite has its own o cial liturgical books for the
chanting of the Epistle by the subdeacon and the Gospel by the deacon at the
Solemn Mass. Since it is a non-negotiable principle that liturgical texts should
be read in their integrity using the appropriate liturgical books as per the
rubrics, in a Solemn Mass it is clear that the Epistle and Gospel must be
chanted in Latin. Similarly, the altar missal used by the priest at Low Mass or
at a Missa cantata has the proper readings printed in it as integral parts of the
texts of the day’s Mass, and therefore they too should be read or sung at the
appropriate time from the missal (or from a book that exactly reproduces the
readings of the missal), not read or sung in translation. A translation may be
read later from the pulpit.
4. Translations into modern vernacular languages currently approved for
the Novus Ordo do not match the readings printed in the Missale Romanum
of 1962 or earlier years. The vocabulary of the old Vulgate and the new
translations based on (sometimes questionable) modern biblical scholarship
are su ciently di erent that one would be hard-pressed to maintain their
exact equivalency. For example, the New American Bible signi cantly departs
from the Vulgate in the psalms and in verses like the Johannine Comma read
on Low Sunday, which is altogether absent from the NAB. Someone who read
only from the NAB would therefore be violating the spirit and the letter of
the liturgical celebration, contrary to liturgical laws of universal application.
[514] Furthermore, the NAB as used at the Novus Ordo is not the same as what

is sold by publishers, nor is it what will be used in the new translation of the
Liturgy of the Hours and the new edition of psalms for the lectionary, which
have been revised. In other words, at least in the USA, matching a currently
approved vernacular edition to the lections of the traditional Missale
Romanum would be to some extent impossible, and in any case a complicated
business and pastorally inopportune.
5. Prior to the liturgical reform, the Church had already approved
translations for liturgical use that actually correspond to the content of the old
missal, such as the “Confraternity Bible” produced under the auspices of the
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine between 1941 and 1969, and based on the
Vulgate and, to some extent, the Douay-Rheims. To read from the
Confraternity edition would technically be to read from a version that won the
approval of the US bishops at the time that corresponds to the missal in
question. There may be other versions printed in hand missals that would be
suitable for use in the pulpit.
6. There are many ironies in Traditionis Custodes. One of them is that
Article 3 §3 seems to wish to require for the old Mass something that is not
even required in the new Mass. It is a perfectly licit option, although
exceedingly rare, for the readings at the Novus Ordo to be done entirely in
Latin (said or sung), with no translation being given. Indeed, according to its
governing rubrics, one could licitly celebrate an entire Mass in English but do
the readings in Latin. Needless to say, no one does this, but it is compatible
with the rubrics and the pertinent canon law. It seems strange to require at
the old Mass something that is not even obligatory for the new.
In reactions to the motu proprio, on occasion one sees a disturbing lack of
imagination and exibility among some who do not seem to understand the
nuanced reading one must bring to every piece of legislation. In particular,
they seem to think that it is not a great loss to substitute vernacular readings
for Latin ones. This, however, would be both a mistaken reaction to the motu
proprio and a mistake in liturgical praxis itself. It is crucial, whatever we do,
not to lose the tradition of reciting or chanting the readings in Latin in the
Mass of the Roman rite. This is a non-negligible and non-negotiable part of
our Catholic heritage, an element in the integrity of the Missale Romanum
that is fraught with theological meaning. We would do well to rediscover this
treasure and to protect it from extinction, rather than joining forces with
geriatric iconoclasts who want to smash it before they expire.

AGAINST VERNACULAR READINGS IN THE TRADITIONAL

MASS
As we have seen, Traditionis Custodes reignited the debate over doing
readings at the TLM exclusively in the vernacular—a possibility that
Summorum Ponti cum had already opened up for Low Masses. Since
traditionalists tend to understand that the readings are an integral part of the
missal and of the act of worship and that continuity ought to be maintained
among all elements of the liturgical action, that option was, thankfully, seldom
used. In many places, readings were already being given in the vernacular from
the pulpit prior to the homily, and most of the faithful have translations in
their hand missals (or on their phones—not a method I approve of, for reasons
I will not go into here). By and large, it is a non-question and a non-starter
within the TLM world, and this latest assault on the integrity of the Latin
liturgical tradition has met with a resistance both principled and pragmatic.
Nevertheless, this topic deserves to be revisited from time to time in order
to understand better the rationale for sticking with the tradition, particularly
as one does occasionally encounter traditionalists who seem bent on
recapitulating the phylogeny of the Liturgical Movement. Here’s what a friend
who is quite sympathetic to the TLM wrote to me:

I personally nd that one of the best things about the Novus Ordo
is vernacular readings. I take a via media approach; I don’t believe
“pastoral” adaptations should be made in the liturgy, but I do enjoy
how, in the Novus Ordo, the Word is proclaimed in the vernacular.
When I have been at Latin Masses, I love the chanting of the Epistle
& Gospel, but then when the priest goes and reads it from the
pulpit before the homily, it is often done in a rushed, sloppy, and
awkward manner. What is the justi cation for retaining the
readings in chanted or spoken Latin? Like I said, I think it’s
 beautiful, but in my idealized liturgy which I imagine to be the fruit
of a Third Vatican Council called for by Cardinal Sarah-turned-
Pope Benedict XVII, it largely looks like the 1962 Missal but with
vernacular readings.

This is indeed a complex question. There are two aspects of the issue. First,
what is the purpose of the reading of Scripture at Mass? And second, how can
we practically overcome the language barrier that Latin presents to most?
In terms of the rst aspect, there is no doubt that the traditional liturgy
views, and treats, every component as primarily doxological and latreutic;
nothing is merely didactic or informative. (This is why, as Martin Mosebach
points out, the homily comes across as an interruption in the action: it is
certainly merely didactic and informative, and therefore doesn’t smoothly
harmonize with the rest of the liturgy, which is a ritual of worship, a sacred
action.) Because of this fundamental orientation to God, the readings are
chanted like prayers, incense is used, a ceremonial procession is formed. The
Novus Ordo, in contrast, was unfortunately composed at a time when it was
all the rage to think of readings at Mass as a sort of communal Bible study,
and that is why the Liturgy of the Word is so dreadfully verbose, static, and
anthropocentric. Everything is read (almost never sung), towards the people,
from the ambo, and without a sense that this Word is being o ered up to God
and raising the minds of the faithful up to Him in prayer.[515]
At the Latin Mass, everything is done primarily for God and only
secondarily for the people: nothing is “just for the people,” as if we’re turning
our backs on God and saying: “Pardon us, we have some business of our own to
take care of now; we’ll come back to You later.” The phrases customarily used
to describe the two main parts of the Mass—“Mass of the Catechumens” and
“Mass of the Faithful”—each speaks of a missa, and this, not only because it
was thought that certain categories of people were “sent away” ( rst, the
catechumens after the readings, and then the faithful after the nal
thanksgiving), but also because, as the medieval commentators explain, missa
est means “it is sent”: our o ering to God is sent up to Him by the hands of
angels! In ancient Israel as in the Church, much of our worship consists in
o ering words up to God as a verbal sacri ce, parallel to our o ering up of
incense to Him. “The priests of the Lord o er incense and loaves to God,” says
Leviticus 21:6—repeated in the O ertory antiphon of the feast of Corpus
Christi. As incense pervades the church but also rises up, so too does the Word
of God: it is not shot forth to the people (as if they are the pupils drilled by a
teacher), but exalted so that it may rain down on them. Yes, there is something
sacramental and mystical in this descent: there is a blessing in the repetition of
the hallowed words of the liturgy that goes beyond their rational content. In
the Liber specialis gratiæ, St. Mechtild of Hackeborn says that Christ spoke to
her these remarkable words:

You shall understand that when you say any psalm or prayer which
any saints prayed when they were alive on earth, then all of those
saints pray to me for you. Additionally, when you are in your
devotions and speak with me, then all of the saints are joyful and
worship and thank me.

It is surely no small thing for us to be reciting and singing the very same
words that most of the saints of the Western half of the Church had on their
lips across all the centuries. These are words of diachronic unity, reverberating
harmony, and revelatory power.
In terms of the second aspect mentioned above, it seems there are better
ways to accomplish the good of comprehension than chucking out a stable
practice of over 1,600 years’ duration and replacing it with the use of embattled
compromise translations that please no one, being (depending on who you are
talking to) dated, too casual or too formal, too prosaic or too poetic, too loose
or too literal, etc. Most modern Westerners are still literate enough to nd
following along in a missal no di culty, and since the translations in the
missals are not o cial, they can vary in style. I have come to prefer this multi-
sensory and more laissez-faire approach. If the reading from the pulpit is done
well, it reinforces the proclamation. On most Sundays I engage with the
reading multiple times: at Mass when I hear it in Latin and possibly read it;
again when it’s read from the pulpit; and then in the parts that come up in
Vespers. The old approach in fact saturates you slowly in Scripture rather than
hosing you from the re hydrant.
We can and should also make a concerted e ort to teach Latin to all
Catholics, both children and adults. Any serious religion teaches serious stu
to its followers: the Jews teach Hebrew, the Moslems teach classical Arabic,
etc. If we cared about our heritage, you can bet that every schoolchild would be
translating passages from the Vulgate, which is a more enormously
consequential text in the history of the West than Homer, Virgil, Dante,
Shakespeare, or [insert name of favorite famous author].
I deliberately place the next consideration after the foregoing points to
avoid the accusation of aestheticism. However, it is quite true, and rather
obvious, that the Tridentine liturgy possesses a colossal unity of form and
substance—a unity to which the use of Latin makes a signi cant contribution.
Like the foreigner who (according to Samuel Johnson) “tells part of his
meaning by words, and conveys part by signs,”[516] the liturgy makes use of
both: the words alone are not enough, nor are the non-verbal signs, but
together they constitute a whole that is greater than its parts. We understand
the uniqueness and the divine authorship of the words of Scripture better
when we hear them read or chanted in Latin than if we heard them only in the
vernacular; but their exalted status is no less emphasized by the elaborate
treatment accorded to the book, the kissing of it, the incensing of it, the
processing with it. We don’t do that kind of thing with ordinary books.
It is often said that a major driving force in the Catholic liturgical reform
was the secret Protestantizing sympathies of many of the liturgists and their
not-so-secret obsession with lowest-common-denominator ecumenism. That
seems to be true in all kinds of ways.[517] We should not forget, all the same,
that most of the early Protestants were a good deal more conservative, more
“traditional” in their instincts, than the Catholic liturgists of the 1960s or
their ragtag sympathizers today. I wrote about this elsewhere in connection
with the manner of receiving Holy Communion,[518] but here is a passage in
which Martin Luther expresses a desire to preserve the ancient languages in
worship:

Now there are three di erent kinds of Divine Service. The rst, in
Latin, which we published lately, called the Formula Missæ. This I
do not want to have set aside or changed; but, as we have hitherto
kept it, so should we be still free to use it where and when we please,
or as occasion requires. I do not want in any way to let the Latin
tongue disappear out of Divine Service; for I am so deeply
concerned for the young. If it lay in my power, and the Greek and
Hebrew tongues were as familiar to us as the Latin, and possessed as
 great a store of ne music and song as the Latin does, Mass should
be held and there should be singing and reading, on alternate
Sundays, in all four languages—German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. I
am by no means of one mind with those who set all their store by
one language [in context, this seems to mean German].[519]

Of course, I wouldn’t say we should do anything, or keep something,

because Luther said so or did so. Rather, the point is that the “Catholic”
liturgical reformers and implementers—including Paul VI—were, in certain
ways, more Lutheran than Luther himself. That’s why the pope’s good friend
Jean Guitton was right to say in an interview that Paul VI’s intention was “to
bring the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.”[520]
Meanwhile, the truly universal or catholic, and dare I say Pentecostal,
attitude of the Catholic Church was well expressed by Maisie Ward in 1937, in
sentiments that have been echoed and reechoed by countless laymen and
clergy down through the centuries: “This union of localization and universality
nds expression in the miracle of tongues on Whit Sunday and to-day in the
language and liturgy [viz., the Latin Mass] which unites, at one altar, men
severed by national languages and national interests.”[521] With gratitude to
their ancestors, with love for their descendants, the heirs of the Judaeo-Greco-
Roman civilization in its Western and Latin sphere owe it to themselves and to
the Church as a whole to pass on enthusiastically what they have humbly
received and gratefully enjoyed.
 18

The Truthfulness of the Pre-1955 Good Friday Prayer

for the Jews
Jesus the Christ says of Himself that He was sent “only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel” (Mt 15:24), among whom He inaugurated His visible mission
“to seek and to save the lost” (Lk 19:10). There is, then, something peculiarly
ludicrous, not to say impious, in the embarrassment of modern churchmen
over the Church’s permanent and inescapable mission to convert the Jews, the
children of Israel, among whom Our Lord was born. They are still the lost
sheep; they are lost and must be sought, won over, baptized in the life-giving
waters of salvation. Their lack of faith in the Messiah sent into the world from
and for them cannot be shrugged o as an unfortunate di erence of opinion
when, in reality, it is a crippling spiritual defect and a cause of condemnation.
Thus, it is entirely right and just that Catholics pray for the Jews as follows:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews [per dis Judæis]: that
Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they
too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. [No instruction to
kneel or to rise is given, but immediately is said:] Almighty and
eternal God, who dost not exclude from Thy mercy even Jewish
faithlessness [Judaicam per diam]: hear our prayers, which we o er
for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of
Thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their
darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and
reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

That is the formulation found in the pre-1955 Mass of the Presancti ed on

Good Friday.
Fr. Henri de Lubac—no traditionalist, to be sure—devotes an entire chapter
of his famous work Medieval Exegesis to the meaning of the word per dus in
patristic literature, and (surprise!) it turns out that it does not mean
“per dious” as this word is used in modern parlance, according to which it
means “treacherous” or “malevolent.” In Christian vocabulary, it is the right
word to designate the idea of being unfaithful to a commitment one had
undertaken. The Israelites accepted the old covenant, which was ordered to
accepting the Messiah. By not having received Him when He came, they were
guilty of in delity to the Lord. Thus, the phraseology is absolutely correct.
Per dus and its derivatives occur twenty times in the traditional Hispano-
Mozarabic missal: once against those who stoned St. Stephen, a few times
against pagans, sometimes against heretics, and at other times against
irreligious sinners without further distinction—all correct usages.
In 1955, Pius XII introduced the rst unnecessary change to this venerable
Good Friday prayer by inserting the standard instruction for kneeling and
standing. John XXIII yielded to political pressure by removing the words
per dis and per diam. The rite of Paul VI simply jettisoned the traditional
prayer altogether, replacing it with a typically Hallmarkian text. It was a nal
misstep for Benedict XVI, in “rehabilitating” the usus antiquior, to replace the
John XXIII version with a brand-new prayer of eschatological rather than
evangelical orientation, which makes it inferior, as Christian prayer, to the
ancient prayer. For comparison’s sake, here are Paul VI’s and Benedict XVI’s
versions:

[Novus Ordo, 2011 translation:] Let us pray also for the Jewish
people, to whom the Lord our God spoke rst, that he may grant
them to advance in love of his name and in faithfulness to his
covenant. [Prayer in silence. Then the priest says:] Almighty ever-
living God, who bestowed your promises on Abraham and his
descendants, hear graciously the prayers of your Church, that the
people you rst made your own may attain the fullness of
redemption. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Benedict XVI substitution in the 1962 missal:] Let us pray also for
the Jews: may our God and Lord enlighten their hearts, so that they
may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men. (Let us pray. ℣.
Let us kneel. ℟. Arise.) Almighty and everlasting God, who desirest
that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth,
 mercifully grant that, as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into Thy
Church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ our Lord. ℟. Amen.
[522]

This succession of changes seems to concede the anti-Catholic argument

that there really was something “antisemitic” about the old prayer, when it
does no more than translate the teaching of the New Testament into the lex
orandi. Balking at this lex orandi is a backhanded way of balking at divine
revelation. Ironically, those who show themselves to be guilty of per dia are
the Christians who cease to pray and work for the conversion of all, including
the Jews.
Catholics who make grateful use of the pre-’1955 Holy Week liturgy should
be in a position to defend the classic prayer rather than accept the false
premise that there was something wrong with it. On the now-defunct
Foretaste of Wisdom blog there was a ne piece entitled “St. Thomas Aquinas
on the Relationship between Christianity and Judaism after Christ,” which
gathered the following quotations.
1. Christianity is the continuity (ful llment) of the faith of the Judaism of the
Old Covenant.

As regards the substance of the articles of faith, they have not

received any increase as time went on: since whatever those who
lived later have believed, was contained, albeit implicitly, in the faith
of those Fathers who preceded them.[523]

2. Judaism after Christ is not the continuity of the faith of the Judaism of the
Old Covenant.

Accordingly we must say that if unbelief be considered in

comparison to faith, there are several species of unbelief,
determinate in number. For, since the sin of unbelief consists in
resisting the faith, this may happen in two ways: either the faith is
resisted before it has been accepted, and such is the unbelief of
pagans or heathens; or the Christian faith is resisted after it has
been accepted, and this either in the gure, and such is the unbelief
of the Jews, or in the very manifestation of truth, and such is the
 unbelief of heretics. Hence we may, in a general way, reckon these
three as species of unbelief.[524]

3. The Old Law was a step, a bridge from the law of nature to the New Law of
the Gospel. It is inherently temporary and ordered beyond itself.

Hence, the New Law is called a law of love and consequently is

called an image, because it has an express likeness to future goods.
But the Old Law represents that image by certain carnal things and
very remotely. Therefore, it is called a shadow (as in) Colossians 2:17:
“These are but a shadow of the things to come.” This, therefore, is
the condition of the Old Testament, that it has the shadow of future
things and not their image.[525]

In the present state of life, we are unable to gaze on the Divine

Truth in itself, and we need the ray of divine light to shine upon us
under the form of certain sensible gures, as Dionysius states (Cœl.
Hier. i); in various ways, however, according to the various states of
human knowledge. For under the Old Law, neither was the Divine
Truth manifest in itself, nor was the way leading to that
manifestation as yet opened out, as the Apostle declares (Heb 9:8).
Hence the external worship of the Old Law needed to be gurative
not only of the future truth to be manifested in our heavenly
country, but also of Christ, Who is the way leading to that heavenly
manifestation. But under the New Law this way is already revealed:
and therefore it needs no longer to be foreshadowed as something
future, but to be brought to our minds as something past or present:
and the truth of the glory to come, which is not yet revealed, alone
needs to be foreshadowed. This is what the Apostle says (Heb 11:1):
“The Law has a shadow of the good things to come, not the very
image of the things”: for a shadow is less than an image; so that the
image belongs to the New Law, but the shadow to the Old.[526]

4. That the Old Law is said to be “everlasting” and that the call of God is
“without repentance” does not establish that the Old Law remains in force as
such or that it was not God’s intention to bring it to an end in the fullness of
time.

The Old Law is said to be “for ever” simply and absolutely, as

regards its moral precepts; but as regards the ceremonial precepts it
lasts for ever in respect of the reality which those ceremonies
foreshadowed.[527]

In this way one avoids the opinion of the Jews, who believe that the
sacraments of the Law must be observed forever precisely because
they were established by God, since God has no regrets and is not
changed. But without change or regret one who disposes things may
dispose things di erently in harmony with a di erence of times;
thus, the father of a family gives one set of orders to a small child
and another to one already grown. Thus, God also harmoniously
gave one set of sacraments and commandments before the
Incarnation to point to the future, and another set after the
Incarnation to deliver things present and bring to mind things past.
[528]

5. Professing “Judaism” after the time of Christ—that is, holding on to the Old
Covenant in its oldness after it has been ful lled—is objectively a grave sin
based on a grave theological error.

All ceremonies are professions of faith, in which the interior

worship of God consists. Now man can make profession of his
inward faith, by deeds as well as by words: and in either profession,
if he make a false declaration, he sins mortally. Now, though our
faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old; yet, since
they came before Christ, whereas we come after Him, the same faith
is expressed in di erent words, by us and by them. For by them was
it said: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,” where the
verbs are in the future tense: whereas we express the same by means
of verbs in the past tense, and say that she “conceived and bore.” In
like manner the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as
having yet to be born and to su er: whereas our sacraments signify
 Him as already born and having su ered. Consequently, just as it
would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of
faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old
said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to
observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old ful lled with
devotion and delity. Such is the teaching of Augustine (Contra
Faust. xix, 16), who says: “It is no longer promised that He shall be
born, shall su er and rise again, truths of which their sacraments
were a kind of image: but it is declared that He is already born, has
su ered and risen again; of which our sacraments, in which
Christians share, are the actual representation.”[529]

6. The Old and New Laws are not parallel; the Old Law was a step in God’s
divine economy, in which the New Law is the goal.

Accordingly, then, two laws may be distinguished from one another

in two ways. First, through being altogether diverse, from the fact
that they are ordained to diverse ends: thus a state-law ordained to
democratic government would di er speci cally from a law
ordained to government by the aristocracy. Secondly, two laws may
be distinguished from one another, through one of them being
more closely connected with the end, and the other more remotely:
thus in one and the same state there is one law enjoined on men of
mature age, who can forthwith accomplish that which pertains to
the common good; and another law regulating the education of
children who need to be taught how they are to achieve manly deeds
later on. We must therefore say that, according to the rst way, the
New Law is not distinct from the Old Law: because they both have
the same end, namely, man’s subjection to God; and there is but one
God of the New and of the Old Testament, according to Romans
3:30: “It is one God that justi eth circumcision by faith, and
uncircumcision through faith.” According to the second way, the
New Law is distinct from the Old Law: because the Old Law is like a
pedagogue of children, as the Apostle says (Gal 3:24), whereas the
New Law is the law of perfection, since it is the law of charity, of
 which the Apostle says (Col 3:14) that it is “the bond of
perfection.”[530]

In all of this, St. Thomas shows himself to be the faithful interpreter of

Tradition, as this quotation from St. Augustine shows:

For we see that [the] priesthood has been changed; and there can be
no hope that what was promised to that house may some time be
ful lled, because that which succeeds on its being rejected and
changed is rather predicted as eternal. He who says this does not yet
understand, or does not recollect, that this very priesthood after the
order of Aaron was appointed as the shadow of a future eternal
priesthood; and therefore, when eternity is promised to it, it is not
promised to the mere shadow and gure, but to what is shadowed
forth and pre gured by it. But lest it should be thought the shadow
itself was to remain, therefore its mutation also behooved to be
foretold.[531]

In light of this rock-solid teaching from the Church’s Common Doctor, it

is impossible to maintain that the traditional (pre-1955) version of the prayer
for the conversion of the Jews on Good Friday constitutes an “antisemitic”
attack on them. Rather, it expresses accurately, elegantly, and charitably the
teaching of the New Testament and of the Church, ordered to the salvation of
all mankind in Christ—especially the people chosen in view of the Christ, the
true and natural Son of God.
I should like to close with a quotation from an article published in (of all
places) Theological Studies in the year 1947, by John M. Oesterreicher, “Pro
Per dis Judæis”:

To conclude with a proposal made from time to time: that the

Church should modify the expression per dia Judaica and restore
the ancient order for the Good Friday prayer, I should like to
venture an opinion. The Church will hardly alter the words per dia
Judaica, which, as we have shown, are not intended to dishonor the
Jews, and this because she may not and will not forget Christ’s claim
for recognition from His own people. She, the custodian of truth,
 must call things by their proper names; thus, Israel’s resistance to
Christ, unbelief. Indeed, she would be an enemy of the Jews did she
conceal from them the source of their unrest.[532]

In 1947, it was still possible for a scholar naively to say: “The Church will
hardly alter the words...” and that “she may not and will not forget Christ’s
claim for recognition from His own people.” It has, alas, been much too long
since the statement “the custodian of truth must call things by their proper
name” has been obviously and undeniably true; on the contrary, it often
appears as if the very last thing the Church will do today is call anything by its
proper name, least of all sins. Caught up in the spirit of the times, our author
Oesterreicher later took to “Judaizing” opinions himself, and no doubt
abandoned these earlier perfectly Catholic judgments of his.
After the reformatory carnage through which we have passed since then,
we are in a position to learn a lesson from our mistakes as we work to restore
the traditional Roman rite.[533] The lesson is: never be embarrassed by the
traditional lex orandi. Pray it; seek to understand it; defend it. The Church’s
prayer is our guide in the spiritual and intellectual life, not the prey and sport
of the latest cultural fads, philosophical sects, or secular crusades.
 19

The Grace of Stability: How Liturgy Forms the

Christian Soul
Catholics who assist at the traditional liturgy of the Church quickly come to
love one monumental fact about it: its stability, regularity, and constancy.[534]
With a few exceptions due to local calendars or unannounced votive Masses,
one can come to any Tridentine liturgy and know within moments which
Mass in the missal is being celebrated—and then know exactly how that Mass
will unfold for the remaining half-hour or hour, since everything is xed in
place. What a consolation to know that the celebrant is not being asked to
exhibit the state of his mind in extemporaneous remarks, or his pastoral
judgment in choosing from dozens of options in a row! The Mass is simply
the Mass—older, greater, stronger, and steadier than any of us mere mortals.
We can gratefully entrust ourselves to its lofty spiritual pedagogy and
accumulated wisdom. We are not the drivers but the passengers. The driver is
Christ our Lord, and never once in the liturgy (except perhaps in a homily
gone awry) are we confronted with a jarring disjunct between the principal
Celebrant and His intelligent instrument.
People who have practiced lectio divina or the prayerful reading of the
Bible know that it works best with the slow assimilation of a chosen text. One
must mortify the desire to read too much or to skip all over the place. One
often has to read and re-read a passage before it penetrates the mind and, even
more, the heart. In just the same way, the great strength of the one-year
lectionary contained in the traditional Missale Romanum is that it a ords the
worshiper time to absorb a certain set of luminous biblical passages, extremely
well chosen for their liturgical purpose. Meeting these texts repeatedly, one
puts them on like a garment, or assimilates them like food and drink. One
begins to think and pray in their phrases. What happens with the lectionary
happens, in turn, with the entire liturgy. The xity of the TLM from top to
bottom, from Collect to Postcommunion, from Psalm 42 to the Prologue of
John, facilitates a liturgical lectio divina that can range over the words of the
entire missal, in both its repeated and changing parts, that is, the Ordinary
and the Propers.[535]
To have the light and warmth of contemplation, you rst need the re of
prayer; to fuel prayer, you need the wood of meditation; and to have
meditation, there has to be reading. Reading presupposes something xed and
stable to be read, internalized, remembered, pondered. Any improvisation at
this level, or any overwhelming quantity of text or a constantly changing text,
will tend to thwart the slow and steady building of memory, the shaping of the
imagination, and the fertilizing of the intellect. If you throw too much wood
on the re, you put it out. If the wood is green, the re smokes. And if there is
no kindling and no match, the re can’t be started. All of these things have to
be in place: the right ingredients in the right order, with the right proportions
and the right timing. More than fteen hundred years of slow and highly
conservative liturgical development produced the right content, the right
order, the right proportions, and the right timing.[536] Because the new liturgy
has vastly more text and the way things play out is subject to the choices of
celebrant and musicians, the content and proportion of parts is quite malleable
and liable to enormous imbalance, and the pacing or feel of the liturgy is not
invariable and focused.
This, then, is the fundamental problem with praying the new liturgy: it is
too pluriform, too gigantic, and too mutable to sustain a meditative
engagement or lectio divina with its texts, music, and gestures. One cannot
simply surrender to it and take on its own identity, since the wills and
intellects of various secondary agents are too much in play, making its identity
like the chameleon’s color. One might well ask the question: “Will the real
Novus Ordo please stand up?”[537] It would be hard to deny that there are
correlations between the character of the revised liturgical books, the
customary crowd-oriented ars celebrandi, the lack of ascetical-mystical life
among so large a part of the clergy, and the shallowness, if not heterodoxy, of
preaching. All these things reinforce one another; there is little to oppose
them from within the form of the liturgy itself.
In the traditional liturgy, the daily stability of the Mass and its relatively
limited selection of readings, together with the recurrence of the psalms in the
weekly cursus of the Divine O ce, strongly supports a liturgical lectio divina
that is decisive in deepening the spiritual life of clergy and laity. In particular,
one pro ts from the powerful correlation of the antiphons and readings of the
O ce with those of the Mass. I speak here from personal experience.
Although I had already begun to attend the usus antiquior Mass at Thomas
Aquinas College, I came to know it well when, at the International Theological
Institute in Austria, I was able to attend a daily 6:00 a.m. Low Mass over a
period of several years. Going through that cycle day by day profoundly
formed me and won me over to the old prayers and calendar. I believe it would
win over any serious Catholic who was given the grace of such consistent
exposure. Later on, as I began to pray the old Divine O ce, the numerous
connections between the Mass and the breviary were a cause of continual
delight and strengthened my life of prayer.
Moreover, the overwhelming xity of traditional liturgical forms makes
the times when there are di erences in the prescribed liturgy so much more
striking. The omission of Psalm 42 and the doxologies during Passiontide
makes us feel we are being stripped and humiliated with Christ. The dona eis
requiem of the Agnus Dei at the Mass for the Dead reminds us (as do so many
other details of the Requiem Mass) that we are o ering up our prayers
primarily for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed.[538] One thinks of
those times in the year when a genu ection is stipulated for a certain verse of
Scripture that cries out for the total response of the believer, in body and soul
(I am speaking here of passages other than the nal verses of Prologue of John
at which we genu ect in nearly every Mass). On Epiphany and during its
octave, when the priest reads or chants the Gospel of the Magi falling down
and worshiping the Christ-child, the priest and everyone along with him
bends the knee in silent adoration. In Lenten Masses, the priest kneels at the
Tract Adiuva nos; on Palm Sunday, the Finding of the Holy Cross, and the
Exaltation of the Holy Cross, at the Epistle (ut in nomine Jesu omne genu
ectatur); and on a number of other occasions, such as the third Mass of
Christmas, when the Prologue of John is read; at the end of the Gospel for
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent (Jn 9:1–38); during the Alleluia before
the Veni, Sancte Spiritus Sequence; and at votive Masses of the Holy Spirit,
the Passion of the Lord, and Deliverance from Mortality.
Discrepant moments like these, in an otherwise monolithic and highly
determined pattern of prayer, have a de nite psychological e ect: it is like a
great composer who knows how to use a touch of sharp dissonance that makes
the prevailing consonance all the more powerful, or a great painter who adds a
touch of bright red to an otherwise subdued canvas. The old liturgy has a
masterful grasp of how human psychology works. We must have things mostly
the same in order to pray well; yet we must have occasional di erences to keep
us from becoming rote and robotic. The old rite’s blend of the same and the
di erent is exquisitely balanced.
The rationalistic instinct that multiplied the new rite’s quantity of texts
also abolished almost all the unique features and di erentiations found in the
old rite: there was a simultaneous attening of rites into uniformity and an
uncontrolled expansion of material in the lectionary and missal. Sadly, we can
note that both the uniformity and the expansion are characteristic of
industrial methods of mass production. Indeed, the word “mass” in
contemporary English has two meanings: the density of matter and a
widespread group of similarly-minded individuals. The modern Mass exhibits
excess of material as well as a democratic leveling of di erences within that
material. This phenomenon can be seen in the multi-year lectionary, which,
although many times larger than the traditional one-year lectionary,
nevertheless contains less of the total breadth of Scripture’s actual message
because of its studied avoidance of passages that could “o end” modern
readers or be “misunderstood” by them.[539]

THE PROVIDENTIAL PATH FROM EXTEMPORANEITY TO

FIXITY
Catholics who worship with the Church’s traditional rites see the xity,
stability, and relative compactness of sacred formulas as supremely tting to
the nature of the liturgy and as helpful for the laity’s fruitful participation. At
work here is an ironclad law. In the words of Belgian philosopher Marcel De
Corte, writing in 1977:

Because the soul of each member of the faithful is oriented towards

God, the unchanging [traditional] Mass realizes the union in God of
all those who take part. Each goes according to his or her personal
disposition, and according to the grace of God that sustains them.
Some unite themselves to God in this or that part of the Mass, this
or that phrase, this or that formula; others do so in others. Even
those who are present only in body take part in the Mass to a degree
 that is not nil. The Tridentine Mass is the only one that is truly
“personal and communal.”

For the Mass to be attended and participated in with such analogical

degrees, it must always remain the same in its meaning and signs.
Any change introduced disrupts the accustomed momentum of the
soul as it rises to God above the vicissitudes of this world. Any
change breaks the cohesion of the faithful. The mere fact of having
allowed di erent Eucharistic Prayers can only disperse attention,
diminish it, extinguish it. Because it’s always the same, the
Tridentine Mass creates habits (in Latin, habitus)—stable qualities
that perfect the faithful’s faculties, their being and their actions.
Regularly repeated physical exercise strengthens the limbs.
Regularly repeated religious practice brings the action of the
supernatural ever more deeply into the soul. God does not despise
this psychological law, which He Himself created, and which the
most rudimentary experience of human life reveals to the most
untrained eye. In order to live, and above all to access the spiritual
life, man urgently needs all those earthly substitutes for eternity:
identity, permanence, repetition, refrains, accumulation of
synonymous expressions, etc.[540]

At this point, conventional liturgical scholarship will object: “Liturgy in

the earliest centuries of the church was extemporaneous, improvised, full of
variety. Only later on did it ossify, petrify, and fossilize into medieval and
Baroque forms.” (They love to use verbs like that, which express their utter
disdain for things that don’t change over the centuries: they are “ossi ed,
petri ed, fossilized.”) But are the liturgists correct? Not really. Let’s consider
how and why the Church moved from liturgy-in-a-state-of- ux to xed and
stable liturgy.
For starters, in their gatherings for worship, ancient Christians do not
seem to have practiced “casual” or “informal” prayer in the way in which the
relaxed Christians of today practice it. All the records we have indicate set
prayer forms not only among the Jews whose Scriptures are full of formulaic
prayers but also among the earliest Christians, several of whose hymns are
preserved in the New Testament and in Patristic literature.[541] Gregory Dix,
Adrian Fortescue, Paul Bradshaw, and other scholars note that the prayers of
the Christians, o ered up by their leaders in a spontaneous but tradition-
informed manner, acquired consistent formulaic patterns over time and
settled into repeatable rites and ceremonies.
After a few centuries of ever-solidifying praxis, improvisation ceased to be
a feature of the liturgy—and this, for obvious reasons. Christianity is a religion
with deeply conservative instincts: we are holding on to what has been given to
us once for all in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the depositum dei.[542] From
the very beginning, St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians, and by extension all
Christians, to “stand rm and hold to the traditions” that he and others taught
them (2 Thess 2:15)—which undoubtedly included liturgical traditions. A
devout bishop who celebrated the Eucharist would arrive at satisfactory ways
of speaking to which the people became habituated,[543] and his successor,
drawn from the local clergy, would naturally wish to follow in his footsteps
and model his own liturgical prayer after that of his father in Christ. As
Michael Davies observes, when a community had a holy bishop who was
accustomed to praying in certain ways, his successor would have every reason
to imitate him, and the people every right to expect that continuity.
Otherwise, how would the ancient sacramentaries—manuscripts full of
carefully formulated orations—have ever developed to begin with?
The eloquent and polished prayers we nd in the oldest extant liturgical
books did not suddenly drop down from heaven; they are the faithful
re ection of the actual practice of Catholic communities gathered around
their God-fearing bishops. In this way it was normal, one could say inevitable,
that xed anaphoras, readings, Collects, antiphons, etc., would develop and
stabilize over time. Thus, it should come as no surprise to nd, no later than
the seventh century and possibly as early as the fth, a complete cycle of
Propers for the Roman rite. Gennadius of Massilia ( fth century) says of St.
Paulinus of Nola, fecit et sacramentarium et hymnarium, he made both a
sacramentary and a hymnal (De viris illustribus, XLVIII). There is an account
in St. Gregory of Tours of a bishop who, from repetition, had everything
memorized, and when on one occasion the altar book was missing (it had been
maliciously stolen), he was able to do his part from memory.
In short, improvisation has not been a characteristic of the liturgy for
1,500 years or more. The evidence we have points to the relatively rapid
development of xed forms. The early Church was in a divinely-willed state of
formation, and had wider and freer powers precisely because she was in an
embryonic condition, growing rapidly and establishing her institutions under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit.[544] The same Spirit guides her gently and
gradually into set forms, which are the fairest owers of those early
developments. He prunes what is less worthy and nourishes what is more
worthy. We should therefore expect, as time goes on, that the liturgy will
become more and more solid, de nite, xed, and perfected. It will be handed
down increasingly as a familyinheritance, an approved profession of the
Church’s one faith. It is absurd to think that the Holy Spirit did not intend
this consolidation of formulas as a positive good, or that the Church erred in
remaining a jealous guardian of the spelled-out content of inherited liturgical
books. It would be no less ridiculous to assert that the same Spirit, after having
willed such a state of a airs for 1,500 years, would suddenly will its dissolution,
dilution, or replacement. So much for improvisation—or optionitis, which
might be called a soft version of improvisation.
The development of liturgy parallels the development of dogmatic
determinations in the early councils, with their ever more precise creeds that
cut o all heretical depravity. Just as we do not have the “freedom” to go back
to the looseness and ambiguity of the early centuries, although modernists
seem to wish they could do so, we do not have the freedom to toss out matured
prayer and replace it with our own “on-the-spot fabrications.” Catholics who
live later on in history enjoy the immense blessing and privilege of carrying
more re ned and more precise formulas on their lips. Those who live after an
Ecumenical Council (except for the last one) are at a decisive advantage
compared with those who lived before it, since they can now profess their
faith in the Lord and confess His holy Name using a more perfect expression
of the truth, and with less danger of lapsing into error about the highest, best,
and most di cult things. Those who live after 1570 enjoy the blessing and
privilege of worshiping in a received rite that has been solemnly acknowledged
as a veritable ark or bastion of the Catholic faith.
The development of the liturgy in this respect is much like the
development of languages. Yes, a language such as French or German or
English is ever developing, but it is much more the same than di erent from
decade to decade and even, as time goes on, century to century. English as we
write it today is much the same as that which was written 300 years ago; any
literate person can pick up Samuel Johnson and read him without much
di culty (perhaps looking up a word here or there).
Yet a notable di erence obtains between vernacular languages and
“hieratic” languages—those that, having attained a certain richness or fullness
of development, were then taken up into religious practice as tongues
dedicated to the invocation and evocation of the sacred. The hieratic languages
—e.g., Hebrew, ancient Greek, ecclesiastical Latin, Church Slavonic—are, as
regards their use in divine worship, unchanging and unchangeable. They do
not need to develop any more, since they are perfect at expressing what their
respective liturgies need them to express. Only if, per impossibile, revelation
itself were to change would the long-received and unanimously accepted
language conveying it need to change. A hieratic language becomes an external
sign of the internal stability, consistency, and timelessness of the religious
truths conveyed through it. It does not deviate to the left or to the right in its
unerring delivery of the message. Its linguistic completeness not only
participates in divine attributes but helps bring about our participation in
these attributes. In this way, a sacred language has a sacramental function.[545]
A vernacular language, on the other hand, is intended to be the medium of
daily discourse, the supple tool of life in the world, which is rife with change.
The vernacular will never be done changing, re ecting the hustle and bustle of
the people who use it—which is exactly how the Novus Ordo was intended to
uctuate according to some of its leading architects, as we saw in chapter 5. It
is to escape this mutability and instability that the religious instincts of all
peoples have enshrined their highest forms of worship and doctrine in hieratic
or classical languages. The vernacular is for this world of change, of
Heraclitean ux; the hieratic is for the eternal world that always abides, like
Parmenidean Being, penetrating in the form of dogma and doxology through
the shifting veils of this world.
Although some Eastern Christian liturgies are celebrated in the vernacular,
the spirit of these rites is extremely conservative. The Eastern priest might
add a personal intention during the litanies, but the xed prayers are exactly
that: xed, nalized, admitting of no improvement. It would be a species of
arrogance to tamper with inherited prayers attributed to great saints like St.
John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory, St. James, St. Romanus the Melodist.
That, too, was the attitude of the Latin Church towards the pillars of the
liturgy: the antiphons, the readings, the O ertory, the Canon, the calendar, the
use of certain psalms at certain times of the day or in certain seasons. We
might have augmented, extrapolated, enhanced, ornamented, even occasionally
pruned the dense growth, but in no sense did we throw o what earlier
generations held to be sacred and great.
The limits of translations into the vernacular are evident when we
consider the more than ten-year-long saga over the 2011 English translation of
the modern “Roman Missal.” After so much ink spilled, so many versions and
revisions haggled over, such bitter partisan polemics, so much anticipation and
emotion, uncomfortable facts remain: this new translation is very uneven, in
some places theologically problematic;[546] above all, it is still a translation of
texts that are objectively awed and represent discontinuity, as Lauren Pristas
and Fr. Cekada have amply demonstrated. So much fuss—for an inherently
awed missal. At present, years of e ort are being poured into retranslating
the Liturgy of the Hours, when this is even more of an irremediable disaster
than the missal (and that’s saying something).
Consider, on the other hand, the situation in any parish or chapel that
celebrates the old rite. The prayers are the classic prayers that have piously
addressed the Lord and formed faithful sons of the Church for centuries. And
the people in the pews have hand missals with noble, traditional translations
of the prayers. Sometimes these translations aren’t fully accurate, either—but it
doesn’t matter as much, because the worship being o ered to God is not the
translation, it is the altogether reliable Latin in the missal. When we use the
Church’s mother tongue and follow her time-honored tradition, we nd peace,
security, stability: no decades-long battles about what register of language to
use, no disappointments about opportunities lost. The old rite abides far
beyond all that nonsense; it is serious about worshiping God, and it does so
without fuss, without cutting corners, without compromises. Once again, the
future of the Roman rite is the Roman rite in its slowly developed perfection,
not the version that resulted from some weird experimental editorial hack-job
intended for that most unstable of targets known as “Modern Man.”
“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face, from the disturbance of
men. Thou shalt protect them in thy tabernacle from the contradiction of
tongues” (Ps 30:21), or, as another translation has it, “In the covert of your
presence you will hide them from the plottings of man. You will keep them
secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Ps 31:20 ASV). Yes: we are
weary of the plottings of liturgists and the strife of vernacular tongues; we
seek the secret pavilion of tradition, the covert of God’s holy presence. There
we dwell in His ine able peace, in the fear of His greatness and the love of His
glory.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US AND THE FIRST

CHRISTIANS
Hence, the essential response to the objection “Wasn’t liturgy in the
earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised?” is at once
simple and profound: we are not in the same position as the early Christians.
They had the rst contact with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; they had
the guidance of the Apostles and the Apostles’ immediate successors; they had
to develop for themselves a liturgy out of Jewish precedents and apostolic oral
tradition. It was a unique situation. The need to design or write a liturgy is, in
fact, a sign of imperfection, because it belongs to a phase of institutional
immaturity. On the other hand, because of how central the liturgy is and will
be for all future generations until the end of time, the writing of liturgy
requires a special charism of the Holy Spirit—a profound spiritual maturity,
discernment, and inspiration on the part of anyone who would dare to write
liturgical texts or chants.[547] According to St. John Henry Newman, it follows
that liturgical rites already elaborated possess an inherent sanctity and nobility
that will not and cannot be surpassed by later generations.[548] Since, as time
went on, such rites became more stable, re ned, explicit, and expressive of
their sacred content, Christians received them accordingly with reverence, as
gifts handed down from their forebears. This process of development—which
is at the same time a process of explicitation and solidi cation—must be held
to be a work of the Holy Spirit, as Pope Pius XII reminded the Church in his
encyclical Mediator Dei of 1947.[549]
After 1,500 or 2,000 years have passed, the situation is not and could never
be the same as it was for the early Christians in the decades and centuries
immediately after Christ. The reformers’ argument from antiquity is invalid
from the word “go.” Nor has this argument the wherewithal to be taken
seriously. Henry Sire demonstrates in Phoenix from the Ashes that the
twentieth-century reformers invoked antiquity as an excuse for their
modernist agenda, since as a matter of fact (1) they did not restore much that
was ancient; (2) they abolished many things that were known to be ancient; (3)
and they invented much that was utterly novel. How such people, whose
motley work is clear for all to see, can expect us to credit their a ected motives
is quite beyond me.
The main argument of the postconciliar reformers, expressed in countless
pamphlets and publications, boils down to this: “We are now celebrating the
Mass as the early Christians did, and dropping away all the ‘accretions’ that
accumulated like soot over time and obscured the original purity of worship.”
But there are devastating aws in this argument.
First, we have exceedingly few details about what the early Christians did,
so most arguments are based on imaginative reconstructions, in the way that a
scrap of ancient pottery might be extrapolated into a full vase or a tooth found
in Africa into a hypothetical prehistoric human. Evidence from cultural
anthropology suggests that early Christian worship, so far from being a
simple, homey a air, was probably quite elaborate—as elaborate as it could be,
given the restrictions imposed by persecution. An unanswerable proof is the
fact that the moment Christianity became legal in the early fourth century, its
churches and liturgy rapidly blossomed into grand architecture and
ceremonial. This would only have happened if there had been a pent-up
dynamism in that direction all along.
Second, many arguments based on antiquity have subsequently been
proven false, such as the claim that St. Peter’s Basilica was built with the
sanctuary at the western side and the priest standing behind the altar facing
the nave so that celebration “toward the people” could be carried out, which
was then taken as ancient precedent for “restoring” the versus populum stance
at Mass. Yet the shrine was built in this exceptional manner due to
unavoidable geographical constraints, and the priest faced as he did precisely
in order to be ad orientem. The disposition of the people was not a
consideration. The work of Stefan Heid in this regard has been decisive: he has
demonstrated that eastward orientation was taken as a given by the early
Christians, who would have been quite surprised to hear about any other
practice.[550]
 In conclusion, Pius XII taught in Mediator Dei that we must believe that
the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages and that the
developments that occur are part of God’s plan. The liturgical developments of
the Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation period are—if not in every last
detail, yet at least in the main—providential. To cast them away in favor of a
questionably reconstructed “primitive church model” is not only to exalt mere
hypotheticals over real facts, it is an assertion that the Holy Spirit guides the
Church less and less as time goes on, and that we must strip away what each
age has added in order to return to the purity of our origins. This is
Protestantism; this is liberal “higher criticism”; this is modernism. All of it
was rightly condemned by the Church, once and for all.[551]

HOW “FORMS” DEFINE RELIGIOUS BELIEF—OR

UNDERMINE IT
Let’s take a small concrete example of a liturgical custom that developed
for good reason and endured for centuries before being unceremoniously
discarded by the revolutionaries. For a thousand years, priests o ering Mass in
the Roman rite observed canonical digits, the rule that they should hold their
thumb and fore nger together from the time of the consecration until the
ablutions (a rule still observed, of course, wherever the traditional Latin Mass
is celebrated). This custom re ects the Church’s faith in the Real Presence.
After the consecration, Our Lord is really, truly, substantially present wherever
the outward appearances of bread and wine are present, which means: every
last particle of the host. For this reason, the priest should not casually handle
other things after touching the host, but keep those two ngers together
(except, of course, when handling a consecrated host) until he is able to wash
them in the ablutions. In this way, the priest is continually reminded of the
awesome mystery he is handling with his ngers—and so are the laity.
As a layman, it bothered me that this longstanding and sensible custom
had disappeared in the new rite, so I decided to pose a number of questions to
a sizeable group of priests who celebrate the usus antiquior, primarily to learn
the importance they themselves attach to the custom. The results were
published at New Liturgical Movement in ve installments, with a concluding
re ection.[552] One priest responded to the series with the following account:
 At the Mass in which I was ordained a deacon, the Eucharist was
“served” from a glass dish of sorts....I puri ed it with great care after
Holy Communion; it required a rather noticeable period of time to
do so, which was obviously more than local clergy and people were
used to. After that Mass both the vocation director and the
ordaining bishop “corrected” me on this matter, with the bishop
reminding me that the puri cation was only a “ritual puri cation”
and that such care was not needed in carrying it out, since a
sacristan would wash everything after. (A totally incoherent
position.)

This was my introduction—and a rather painful one, at that—to the

practical lack of faith on the part of the clergy in the Real Presence,
which I have witnessed and experienced many times in the eleven
years since then. I say “practical,” because few would deny the Real
Presence [in theory] and most would even defend it quite eloquently.
But the way they actually handle the Eucharist betrays their lack of
understanding and/or belief. This is particularly the case with how
they handle the Precious Blood, the puri cator, etc.

Therefore, when I began to study the usus antiquior and learned

about the detailed and systematic process of puri cation, which
really leaves little room for error, and of the practicalities such as
holding the consecrating digits together until puri cation, my faith
was con rmed. And, although knowledge of the Church’s historic
practice served, perhaps, to heighten my awareness of just how bad
things generally can be now, and thus heightened my sense of pain,
yet at the same time, it was a consolation to know that I was on the
right track.

This author has put his nger (if I may say so) on the nub of the problem.
The Catholic faith is not something purely abstract that we learn and assent to
as an intellectual exercise. We learn our faith and discern its meaning through
practice, through what we do with or to the words, things, and persons that
embody this faith. How we speak to, or about, Our Lord; how we handle the
sacramental signs and, above all, His all-holy and life-giving Body and
precious Blood; how we treat our priests, and how they treat their people: this
is where we will nd out, experientially, day after day, whether or not the
Catholic religion is believed and lived, or if a rival system of belief may have
supplanted it.
In how we practice, we teach ourselves; by our example, we teach those
around us, especially children. This is where modern liturgy has grievously
failed, in numerous ways and as a matter of practice, through its repudiation of
the meaning of vital forms of expression—forms that convey the essence and
purpose of the Mass. What is at stake in the escalating tensions between
divergent liturgical “sensibilities” is not just mere “form” (as if we were talking
about matters of taste or ne art), but rather, the meaning inherent in form
and expressed by it—that is to say, truth. And not truth alone, but justice,
since, by the virtue of religion, we are required to give to God and the things
of God that which they rightly demand and which we owe as His creatures
and dependents.
The reverent forms and practices of the traditional liturgy point to and
express vital truths about the Holy Sacri ce of the Mass; the numerous casual
practices that permeate Novus Ordo liturgies are not coherent with the
meaning and purpose of the same. Some Novus Ordo proponents criticize
those who adhere to the traditional liturgy as people xated on form; in reality,
it is impossible not to care about form, since there is no truth accessible to us
humans without the clothing of form. Every liturgy comes to us as a concrete
set of meaning-bearing forms, and the meaning borne will be either full, rich,
accurate, and nourishing of orthodoxy, or banal, impoverished, ambiguous, and
inadequate to our needs. In this sense, everyone is xated on form because
human language and spiritual activity are formal things, through and through.
The primacy of form, and the corresponding duty and priority of getting it
right, are inescapable; there is no “essential thing,” independent of form, that
is “enough” for us. No doubt, truth is known by the divine intellect apart from
any created form; but men know the truth as expressed in a de nite way,
under sensible and intelligible signs.[553] Some signs are well suited to the truth
they signify, and others are not. For example, solemnity is compatible with,
indeed required by, the notion of the sacred, while casualness and spontaneity
are not.
 Martin Mosebach’s book The Heresy of Formlessness illuminates the folly
(and ugliness) of imposing on ourselves the modern faith in an abstract society
in an abstract world with abstractions reigning globally and governing
relationships individually, as opposed to the real spiritual vitality that can be
found in things—real things with a place and a history—that resonate in the
spiritual realm.[554] This sensitivity to material reality is something our society
has lost—not only the idea that there is a spiritual reality encompassing the
material world, but also that we touch the spiritual through what we do with
matter, or, in other words, that the forms of things and what we do with them
matter in the life of the spirit. One sees the same Cartesian contempt for the
esh in the liturgical reform, which stripped bare the inherited treasury of
forms in order to present as purely verbal and conceptual a worship as is still
consonant with public human activity.[555]
Modernity fears the Catholic religion because Catholicism reminds it—
reminds us—that reality includes the supernatural, that which encompasses
and penetrates the natural with mysterious powers that reason can approach,
but only through faith and analogy. This approach requires a surrender to the
divine and an acceptance of tradition that modern epistemology in its
egocentric rationalism and promethean voluntarism cannot tolerate. Like
liberalism, a halfway house between Catholicism and atheism in Newman’s
analysis, the Novus Ordo is a halfway house between a time-embracing, time-
transcending Tradition and a Modernity trapped in its own death spiral.

HUMILITY OF SERVICE IN FIXITY OF FORM[556]

According to St. Benedict in chapter 5 of his Holy Rule, the root of
humility is that a man must live not by his own desires and passions but by the
judgment and bidding of another: ambulantes alieno judicio et imperio. When
St. Benedict sets about ordering the monastic liturgy, he doesn’t speak like a
man who is making things up as he goes along, or setting up a committee to
produce the order of worship. Rather, he continually looks to how things are
already being done elsewhere. He carefully enumerates the psalms as prayed by
the monastic fathers before him; he mentions the Ambrosian hymn and the
canticles used by the Church in Rome. Even when fashioning his monastic
cycle of prayer, he is constantly looking to existing models. In like manner,
chapter 7 warns us against “doing our own will,” lest we become corrupt and
abominable. This is the true spirit of liturgical conservatism, piety toward
elders, and the imitation of Christ. We are not the ones who determine the
shape of our worship; we receive it in humility as an “alien judgment” that we
make our own. To do otherwise is to put the axe to the tree of humility.[557]
Liturgical prayer has always been the foremost way of inculcating submission
to Christ and His Church, so that we can learn His ways, and assimilate His
prayer, and drink of His wisdom—which will certainly not be something we
ourselves could have “cooked up” on our own. Thus, we take His yoke upon
us...the yoke of tradition.
Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, it was uncontroversial in
Catholic circles to believe that the sacred liturgy’s being xed, constant, and
stable is a special perfection, enabling it to serve as an immovable rock on
which to build one’s spiritual life. The liturgy’s numerous and exacting rubrics
were understood as guiding the celebrant along a prayerful path of submissive
obedience, in which he could submerge his personality into the Person of
Christ and merge his individual voice with the chorus of the Church at prayer.
The formal, hieratic gestures transmitted an eternally fresh symbolism while
limiting (if not eliminating) the danger of subjectivism and emotionalism. The
priest or other minister was conformed to Christ the servant, who came not to
do His own will but the will of Him who sent Him. He is commanded what to
speak and what to do; he never speaks of himself.[558]
Even as the Son was “emptied of glory” in taking on the form of a slave, so,
too, is the priest who enters His kenosis, sharing the hiddenness, humiliation,
passion, and death of Christ. Our Lord, the great High Priest of the New
Covenant, said: “I cannot do anything of myself ” (Jn 5:30). Here we have
perhaps the most radical justi cation of the priest’s being tethered to the
liturgy by unchanging texts and comprehensive rubrics. It is a tethering so
complete that he may truthfully say: “I cannot do otherwise.” If he thinks or
acts otherwise, he has not yet become a slave, in imitation of the One who
assumed the likeness of a slave. Worse, if he is encouraged to do otherwise by a
liturgical book, that book is a smudged and fractured mirror that does not
re ect the Word.
This is why we ought to nd disturbing one of the major novelties of the
postconciliar liturgical books, namely, that the celebrant is given many options
among which he may choose as he wishes, as well as opportunities for crafting
his own speech: “in these or similar words.”[559] Confronted with such a phrase,
one might legitimately ask: “How similar is similar?” In reality, the word of the
liturgy and the word of the minister ought to be homoousios, of one and the
same substance, not homoiousios, of a similar substance. In the action of
selecting options and extemporizing texts, the celebrant no longer perfectly
re ects the Word of God who, as the perfect Image of the Father, receives His
words and does not originate them, who does the will of another and not His
own will. The elective and extemporizing celebrant does not show forth the
fundamental identity of the Christian: one who receives and bears fruit, like
the Blessed Virgin Mary; one who conceives with no help of man, by the
descent of the Spirit alone.[560] Instead, he adopts the posture of one who
originates; he removes this sphere of action from the master to whom he
reports; he carves out for himself a zone of autonomy; he denies the Lord the
privilege of commanding him and deprives himself of the guerdon of
submission. For a moment, he leaves the narrow way of being a tool and steps
on to the broad way of being somebody. He becomes not only an actor but a
playwright; his free choice as an individual is exalted into a principle of liturgy.
He joins the madding crowd that says, in the words of the Psalmist: linguam
nostram magni cabimus, labia nostra a nobis sunt;quis noster dominus est?
“We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is Lord over us?” (Ps
11:5).
But since free choice is antithetical to liturgy as a xed ritual received from
our ancestors and handed down to our descendants, choice tends rather to be a
principle of distraction, dilution, or dissolution in the liturgy than of its well-
being. The same critique may be given of all of the ways in which the new
liturgy permits the celebrant an indeterminate freedom of speech, bodily
bearing, and movement. Such voluntarism strikes at the very essence of liturgy,
which is a public, objective, solemn, and common prayer, in which all
Christians are equally participants, even when they are performing irreducibly
distinct acts. The prayer of Christians belongs to everyone in common, which
means it should belong to no one in particular. The moment a priest invents
something that is not common, he sets himself up as a clerical overlord vis-à-
vis the people, who must now submit not to a rule of Christ and the Church,
but to the arbitrary rule of this individual.
 In the liturgy above all, we must never speak “from ourselves,” but only
from Christ and His beloved Bride. The deepest cause of the missionary
collapse of the Church in the Western world is that we have lost our
institutional and personal subordination to Christ the High Priest, the
principal actor in the liturgy, the Word to whom we lend our mouth, our
hands, our bodies, our souls. For the past sixty years it has not been perfectly
clear that we are ministers and servants of another, intelligent instruments
wholly at His disposal. On the contrary, the opposite message has been
transmitted over and over again, whether in words or in deeds: we have “come
of age,” we are shaping the world, the Church, the Mass, the entire Christian
life, according to our own lights, and for our own purposes. It is not di cult
to see that this is an inversion of the preaching of Christ and of the tradition
of the Church. We see here an exact parallel to what has happened with
marriage: when so-called “free love” entered into the picture, out went
committed love and heroic sacri ce, and in came lust, sel shness,
dissatisfaction, and an unspeakable plague of loneliness. “Without me, you can
do nothing” (Jn 15:5). In the realm of sexual morality as in the realm of
liturgical morality, we have been permitted to see what we can accomplish
without Christ and without His gift of tradition—namely, nothing. This is
why we must begin again humbly, like little children ready to memorize
lessons taken from absolutely reliable sources.

OFFERING MASS FROM THE MISSAL OF THE HEART

As priests know better than anyone else, the smooth celebration of

the usus antiquior requires the memorization of a signi cant
number of prayers ahead of time, so that one need not be squinting
at cards, or surrounded by servers with cheat-sheets, or embarrassed
by long delays while one looks for the elusive page in the altar
missal. These prayers include (depending on the design of the altar
cards on which they typically appear):

Psalm 42
Con teor
absolution and short dialogue
Aufer a nobis and Oramus te
 blessing of incense
Munda cor meum and Jube Domine
Per evangelica dicta
Orate fratres
Supplices te rogamus
Ecce Agnus Dei
formula for Communion
Benedicat vos

This requirement of memorization, far from being a mere guarantee of

e ciency, has its own profound value: it is one more way in which the ancient
liturgy demands that the celebrant “put on the mind of Christ”—or better,
enter into His Heart—by means of “knowing by heart” certain prayers of the
Church that mold him into the image of their sentiments. Prayers run the risk
of remaining external to the celebrant as long as they are merely written in the
missal, because their location is an external book. Memorized prayers, on the
other hand, are already internal(ized) and, as such, are available as a wellspring
of piety within. The heart has become the book, the living book from which
the Mass is celebrated.
In one of the many letters that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher
when the latter was in the Royal Air Force during World War II, we read:

If you don’t do so already, make a habit of the ‘praises’. I use them

much (in Latin): the Gloria Patri, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Laudate
Dominum; the Laudate Pueri Dominum (of which I am specially
fond), one of the Sunday psalms; and the Magni cat; also the Litany
of Loretto (with the prayer Sub tuum præsidium). If you have these
by heart you never need for words of joy. It is also a good and
admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you
can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstances keep you from
hearing Mass.... Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many
songs, or with his hands can touch the harp: his possession is his
gift of ‘glee’ which God gave him.[561]

In the famous book He Leadeth Me, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, describes what
he did to avoid going insane in his solitary con nement: “After breakfast, I
would say Mass by heart—that is, I would say all the prayers, for of course I
had no way actually to celebrate the Holy Sacri ce.”[562] Elsewhere he recounts
how he and his fellow missionaries had prepared themselves in a lumber camp
in the Urals for the hardships to come: “Over and over again in the evenings,
when others were chatting or reading or playing cards, we would repeat to
each other the prayers of the Mass until we had learned them by heart.”[563]
The culture to which J.R.R. Tolkien and Fr. Ciszek bear witness is a culture
of sacred text, stability, repetition, memory, and inexhaustible meaning, even
in the midst of the most barbaric conditions of war or imprisonment.
Fast forward to the optimistic post-War world of the 1960s, where sacred
and secular are blurring together, stability is misidenti ed as fossilization,
memory is written o as nostalgia, morals are loosening, and the givenness of
tradition—in reality, a weight of glory—is felt as a cha ng burden. With its
programmatic variability, large number of texts, and paucity of obligatory
prayers in the Mass ordinary, the missal of Paul VI strikes at the root of this
age-old disciplining, stocking, and shaping of memory (and therefore of man’s
mind and heart) by xed liturgical formulas. Its novel instruction to speak
“these or similar words” interferes with the ritual subjugation of the individual
ego to the common voice of the Church.[564] The fact that certain words are
not xed—not deemed worthy of being xed and of being committed to
memory forever—shows that the real appeal is to imagination, the power of
constructing, rather than to memory, the power of conserving and
contemplating.
When a priest knows and says the same thing at certain moments in the
liturgy, he unites in this act with all the other worshipers who know (or can
easily know) the same prayer. They are brought together even if the priest is
praying silently and not facing them. Paradoxically, when a priest instead uses
his imagination to say out loud a new formulation of words, this content from
his mind is necessarily going to be di erent from what might be in your mind.
Thus, when the priest “uses similar words,” he becomes, by that very fact,
dissimilar from you, and so, over against you in his distinctiveness, rather than
together with you in a common discipleship to the given liturgy. Memory and
xed forms draw us together and make of us one body with a shared past and a
shared future. Imagination and loose liturgical forms, on the other hand,
assemble us temporarily into a sui generis body that links up with no past and
no heritage, which intends no future and no permanence. It is like the
di erence between carving stone or wood, and drawing pictures in the sand; or
better, like the di erence between lifelong matrimony and a weekend ing.
Our identity comes from our “collective memory,” the continually renewed
remembrance of who and what we have been, and all the cultural forms that
embody it. This remembrance is not primarily conceptual or intellectual but
dwells in concrete, visible, audible, tangible expressions that serve as prompts
for signi cant feelings and actions.
Jeremy Holmes describes how every civilization known to history develops
a literary canon of some kind, made up of myths told in epic and lyric form,
histories of heroes, law codes, sagacious adages, and the like. The artists of this
culture see the all-pervasive presence of the canon not as a burdensome
limitation to their creativity but as the necessary condition for their own
fruitfulness, a perpetual source of inspiration and direction that channels and
intensi es their powers. They so internalize the canon that it becomes less like
an object external to them and more like their own eyes and hands, through
which they see and feel the world. The canon equips them with tools that
nature could not have supplied, a vast vocabulary surpassing what any
individual could arrive at by himself.[565]
The traditional Roman liturgy was just such a literary canon for the clergy,
for intellectuals and artists, for the pious folk who ocked to it and were
shaped by it, century after century, father and son, mother and daughter. It
was the internal linguistic form of the Western Church that gave her her very
identity; it was the eyes and hands through which she saw and felt creation.
The liturgy was the core of the Church’s collective memory, since it was the
one reality that concerned everyone, all the time, drawing the many parts into
unity and imparting a de nite character to the whole. All this happens when
there is a stable sacred text of inexhaustible meaning that permeates the
memory of man. It still happens wherever the authentic Latin liturgy lives on.
I think here of my experience learning the server’s responses at Mass as a
young adult. I printed a tiny card for myself with the prayers at the foot of the
altar and so forth, and used to keep it tucked into my sleeve when serving.
After a time, the prayers had become so internalized that the card was no
longer needed. This felt like a new step into freedom: those prayers of the
Mass were now completely within me. One night, when I had trouble falling
asleep, I found myself running through the prayers at the foot of the altar,
reciting Psalm 42 and all that comes after. It draped a wonderful peace over my
soul. When my mind is racing or I am su ering from stress, I begin to recite
Psalm 42 slowly, and, comforted by its words, I become calm.
Disciplined internalization of traditional ecclesial prayer leads to freedom,
peace, and joy. For the one who attends to what he is saying, it opens ever
more layers of meaning and levels of self-surrender. For the entire Church, it
provides the inspiring example of the fusion of a person and his o ce, or
better, the submersion of a person in his o ce, and weans us from the
distinctively modern temptation of originality, a quality that is proper to God
alone. Pope John Paul II recognized that something analogous was true about
catechizing the young:

At a time when, in non-religious teaching in certain countries, more

and more complaints are being made about the unfortunate
consequences of disregarding the human faculty of memory, should
we not attempt to put this faculty back into use...in catechesis, all
the more since the celebration or “memorial” of the great events of
the history of salvation requires a precise knowledge of them? A
certain memorization of the words of Jesus, of important Bible
passages, of the Ten Commandments, of the formulas of profession
of the faith, of the liturgical texts, of the essential prayers, of key
doctrinal ideas, etc., far from being opposed to the dignity of young
Christians, or constituting an obstacle to personal dialogue with the
Lord, is a real need, as the synod fathers forcefully recalled. We must
be realists. The blossoms, if we may call them that, of faith and piety
do not grow in the desert places of a memoryless catechesis.[566]

CONCLUSION
The past sixty years of liturgical praxis have taken a serious toll on the life
of faith in our communities. The Novus Ordo perspective xates on validity
and fails to recognize the deep connection between form and meaning, that is,
praxis and truth. The consequences of this error are now unmistakable.
According to Bishop Robert Barron, for every new Catholic, six are leaving the
Church. Surveys indicate that large numbers of Catholics do not believe in the
Real Presence.[567] The Covid pandemic only accelerated the already glaring
di erences between the traditional practice of Catholicism and its modern
substitute, wherein Mass can be treated as a “non-essential service.” The loss
of faith evidenced statistically is understandable, even predictable, given that
the main source of catechesis for most Catholics is the Mass. A concerted
return to the traditional liturgy is, therefore, not simply bene cial but
necessary for the continued life of our churches. Bishops who do not grasp
this in time will preside over the white-chasubled, alleluia-saturated funerals
of cremated dioceses.
Nevertheless, we have reason today to be of good cheer, for the problems
noted in this chapter are more and more widely acknowledged, and the only
sensible solution to them is the restoration of the fullness of traditional
Catholic worship, whose appeal to the young who encounter it is by now so
obvious that all the major secular newspapers are talking about it. The goal of
restoration is currently very much out of favor in Rome, but the enemies of
tradition are predominantly very old and have little time left to implement
their agenda, nor have they much support at the grassroots level. What will
happen when the last barriers fall down in the coming years is not di cult to
predict. A liturgy as ideal for the life of prayer as is the classical Roman rite—
that life of prayer to which we are all called by God, and to which our baptism
invisibly impels us—is bound to regain ascendency when the revolution
expires.
In the cycles of history, including the history of salvation unfolded for us
in Scripture, we see times of exile, and in those times, the varied responses
people make to their exilic condition. It seems that we are living in a peculiar
time marked by institutional self-exile, as if churchmen had become Pharaohs
and Pontius Pilates. That is no excuse for failing to do what we can and must
as sons of Abraham, children of Israel, and disciples of Christ; rather, it is the
perfect opportunity to pray for and seek a return to Catholic tradition, having
at its heart a liturgy that is worthy of—and truly communicative of—the most
important work the Church does: o ering to the Lord the holy oblation in
peace, ourselves united, in faith and love, with the spotless Lamb.
 20

The Minor Options of the Old Rite and How They

Avoid Optionitis
Thirteen years after Pope Benedict XVI mentioned in 2007 that the old missal
might be expanded by new prefaces and new saints’ feasts, the then-
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its capacity as the successor to
the Ponti cal Commission Ecclesia Dei, issued two decrees on March 25, 2020
concerning the 1962 Missale Romanum (MR1962). The one, Quo Magis, adds
seven prefaces, while the other, Cum Sanctissima, makes provision for
celebrating Mass in honor of saints canonized after 1960.[568] The provisions
bend over backwards to avoid stomping on anything already in the MR1962
general calendar. The principle of commemorations is generously applied (that
is, no saint or feast or vigil will ever get “dropped,” and a lengthy list of 3rd-
class feasts are declared inviolable). Put simply: no saint is removed from the
calendar or bumped out by any other saint.
The celebration of saints canonized post-1960 is optional: the Vatican is
not requiring but permitting (e.g.) St. Pio of Pietrelcina, St. Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross, or St. Elizabeth of the Trinity to be celebrated or commemorated
on their feastdays.[569] We have to bear in mind that a very great number of
saints canonized after 1960 lived, in fact, decades or centuries before the
liturgical reform and are as much “saints of the Tridentine Mass” as any of the
saints currently honored in the old general calendar. Indeed, Padre Pio was
vehemently opposed to the liturgical reform as it played out in the 1960s until
his death in 1968.[570] As I discussed in chapter 14, the calendar of the
traditional Roman rite is extremely “saint-friendly” and has always heartily
accumulated feasts and commemorations, in contrast to the tradition-
scorning, saint-suppressing mentality re ected in the general calendar for the
Novus Ordo rolled out by Paul VI in 1969, from which over 300 saints had
been removed.[571]
Admittedly, the thought of a well-meaning young priest who knows no
better commemorating “St. Paul VI” at the TLM is enough to make one’s
viscera twist and one’s esh crawl, but it is hard to imagine any well-informed
priest who has the “pulse” of his traditional congregation even considering the
o ering of a TLM in honor of controversial saints of more recent times, let
alone actually doing it.[572]
Seven new prefaces have been added, but of these, three are neo-Gallican
prefaces already found in many editions of the Missale Romanum 1962, with
their use now being unrestricted (oddly, the fourth neo-Gallican Preface, the
one for Advent, is not listed, yet it would remain permissible according to
earlier legislation that has not been rescinded, namely, the Ecclesia Dei Ordo),
while the other four are based on ancient sources, albeit somewhat modi ed.
Reception of the decree allowing seven more prefaces has been decidedly
more ambivalent. While no one questions the legitimacy of adding a preface
from time to time, in practice the Roman rite has been characterized for many
centuries by a limited number of prefaces and an extremely conservative mind
when it comes to expanding the repertoire. Adding seven at once is an upward
bump with no historical parallel. Moreover, several of the texts have been
tampered with in comparison to their actual ancient sources.[573] It seems to
me that the use of the prefaces will have to be a matter of ongoing theological
and pastoral discernment. In any case, the utmost caution may be
recommended: it would not do to take all of the prefaces on board at once, and
whenever any such preface is to be used, it seems advisable to make the Latin
text with a translation available as a handout, incorporate it into a worship aid,
or print it in the bulletin.
It took thirteen years to reach these decisions. In the decrees transmitting
them, the possibilities are repeatedly said to be optional. This is how liturgical
reform should be done: as Gregory DiPippo likes to say, “run the ag up the
agpole and see who salutes; if no one salutes, take it down.” This is a far cry
from the slap-dash draconian imposition of the Novus Ordo under Paul VI. In
fact, one might say the decrees represent a gentle encouragement for organic
development. They e ectively say, “Here are possibilities; use as they may be
helpful,” thereby removing the reproach that the MR1962 is frozen in pack ice.
From this point of view, the new provisions t well with the worldwide
movement to recover the pre-’55 Holy Week and other glories of the old rite
that were damaged under Pope Pius XII. We are looking at a living liturgy, not
something that exists only in books printed in a certain arbitrary year,
re ecting (as MR1962 does) the mentality of the liturgists of that period.
The decree about saints subtly notes that, on the one hand, it is to be left
to the discretion of superiors (not to the celebrant on the spur of the moment)
which provisions will be utilized; and on the other hand, that the traditional
Roman rite has seen optional sanctoral and devotional Masses in the past:
“Throughout the post-Tridentine period, and up till the rubrical reform
carried out by Pope St. Pius X, the calendar included no less that twenty- ve
such so-called ad libitum feasts.”
The most frequently repeated criticism of the 2020 decrees has been that
they introduce, or risk introducing, into the celebration of the usus antiquior
an unwelcome and indeed uncharacteristic spirit of “optionitis.” Critics will
say that the classical Roman rite is known and loved for its objectivity,
stability, and xity—these being the qualities of any perfected liturgical
tradition—and that the clergy should not have options at their disposal.
While I agree that the classical rite has these desirable qualities,[574] I think
we should be careful not to overstate our case by speaking as if options have
never had a place within it—a highly circumscribed place, to be sure, and one
that does not threaten the integrity and “predictability” of the rite, but still, at
the end of the day, options. I will look at several examples: alternative readings;
votive Masses and Masses pro aliquibus locis; multiple orations; some minor
matters; and, paraliturgically, the style of vestments.

ALTERNATIVE READINGS
Unlike the new lectionary, the old lectionary, built into the missal, almost
never gives an option as to what reading is to be used on any given day or for
any given Mass formulary. However, in the Commons there are a few
instances of “alternative readings.” For example:
• in the Mass Me exspectaverunt for virgin martyrs, the Gospel is
Matthew 13:44–52 or Matthew 19:3–12;
• in the Mass In medio ecclesiæ for doctors of the Church, the Epistle is 2
Timothy 4:1–8 or Ecclesiasticus 39:6–14;
• in the Mass Salus autem for several martyrs, the Gospel is Luke 12:1–8 or
Matthew 24:3–13.
It gets really interesting with the Mass Lætabitur justus for a martyr not a
bishop, where three Epistles are listed: 2 Timothy 2:8–10 and 3:10–12; James 1:2–
12; and 1 Peter 4:13–19, as well as two Gospels: Matthew 10:26–32 and John
12:24–26.
There is a rubric in the Commons section of the missal— rst appearing, I
think, in the 1920 edition—that states that the Epistles and Gospels printed
within one of the Commons can be used ad libitum for the Mass of a saint,
unless the Mass formulary directs otherwise. In the Sanctorale, there is either
the minimal instruction to follow the Common or, more rarely, the additional
direction to use a speci c Gospel. A rubrical expert I consulted had never seen
preconciliar diocesan ordines specifying these in any way; he has a collection
of about fty which, though di ering greatly in style and content, make no
reference to the choice of pericopes where several are given. We should see this
as a small example of liberty within the otherwise (blessedly) monolithic old
missal.
In my admittedly limited experience over the past few decades, priests
rarely avail themselves of these alternative readings. It seems they follow the
principle articulated by a friend of mine: “Whatever text will be the least
trouble to read is the one that is most likely to be read.” (He initially came up
with this principle to explain why, when it comes to the new lectionary, priests
so rarely break out of the mold of the lectio continua that plods along from
day to day, even though for almost any of the saints they could choose a more
appropriate reading if they wished.) Yet hand missals always print these
alternative readings right alongside the other readings for the Common, so it
is hard to see why they should not be used. This is a case where admirable
Scripture readings already given in the old missal are being neglected in
practice.

VOTIVE MASSES AND MISSÆ PRO ALIQUIBUS LOCIS

We take it for granted that any time there is a feria, when the Mass of the
preceding Sunday could be said again, a priest is also free to make a choice of
any of the Votive Masses contained in the missal. There is a longstanding
custom of using the Mass of the Most Holy Trinity on Monday; that of the
Holy Angels on Tuesday; that of St. Joseph, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul,
or All Holy Apostles on Wednesday; that of the Holy Ghost, the Blessed
Sacrament, or Jesus Christ Eternal High Priest on Thursday; that of the Holy
Cross or of the Passion of Our Lord on Friday; and that of the Blessed Virgin
Mary on Saturday—but, apart from the Saturday Mass of Our Lady, this
association of themes and days is merely a recommendation and does not have
any obliging force.
Beyond these popular Votive Masses are a host of others that some priests
use quite regularly and others seem strangely unfamiliar with or uninterested
in: Mass for the Sick (I have never actually been present when this formulary
has been used!); Mass for the Propagation of the Faith (interestingly, this one
has an alternative Epistle, 1 Timothy 2:1–7; the Epistle listed rst is Sirach 36:1–
10, 17–19); Mass Against the Heathen; Mass for the Removal of Schism; Mass
in Time of War; Mass for Peace; Mass for Deliverance from Mortality or in
Time of Pestilence; Mass of Thanksgiving; Mass for the Forgiveness of Sins;
Mass for Pilgrims and Travelers; Mass for Any Necessity; Mass for a Happy
Death. (I would add that when a priest is going to celebrate with one of these
formularies, he should somehow announce it to the people, either in the
bulletin if he has decided it in advance, or on a sheet posted near the inside
church door, or in a brief mention after emerging from the sacristy and before
starting the prayers at the foot of the altar.)
Moreover, altar missals usually feature a section towards the back called
Missæ pro aliquibus locis, Masses for certain places. Like Votive Masses, these
too may be chosen under certain conditions. My 1947 Benziger altar missal,
with a commendatory letter signed by Cardinal Spellman, has quite a
substantive “M.P.A.L.” section: page (131) to page (196). It includes such worthy
feasts as The Translation of the Holy House of the Blessed Virgin Mary on
December 10, the Expectation of Our Lady on December 18, the Espousal of
the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph on January 23, the Flight of Our Lord Jesus
Christ into Egypt on February 17, the Feast of the Prayer of Our Lord Jesus
Christ on the Tuesday after Septuagesima, and many others.[575]
All of these feasts share in common the trait that they are not normally
prescribed but allowed to be used when there is no impediment. They must be
chosen in order to be used; they are, in that sense, options and meant as
options.

MULTIPLE ORATIONS
One of the worst casualties of the 1960 rubrical revisions was the loss of
multiple orations at Mass (Collects, Secrets, and Postcommunions) and at the
Divine O ce (Collects). This runs contrary to the Roman tradition in the
second millennium, when multiple orations were a universal feature. The
history of the question of how many orations were allowed is quite complex.
Here it su ces to speak of the period after 1570, when it was normal for the
priest to say the oration of the day, followed sometimes by a commemoration
of a saint, other times by a required seasonal oration or required prayer (oratio
imperata), and concluding with a third oration at his choice (ad libitum
eligenda).[576] There is a magni cent corpus of orations printed in the
Tridentine missal for precisely this reason, too few of which have remained in
use after the asphyxiating limitations imposed by John XXIII’s rubrical reform.
We can see here, once again, that Holy Mother Church recognized a
certain “ordered liberty” on the part of the celebrant, who was thus able to
pray liturgically for his own needs, for those of the local community, or for
those of the larger world.

MINOR MATTERS
Five other areas in which a choice is required are:
1. Whether to precede the Sunday High Mass with the Asperges, or to
start with the entrance procession accompanied by the Introit antiphon;[577]
2. Whether to remain standing or to sit down during the Kyrie, the Gloria,
and the Credo;
3. Which tone to use for the orations, readings, and Preface;
4. Whether or not to use incense at a Missa cantata;[578]
5. Whether to observe an “external solemnity” for the Sacred Heart of
Jesus or the Most Holy Rosary, to enable the maximum number of faithful to
participate in the celebration of these feasts.[579] It is important to recognize
that here we are looking not at an obligatory transferral, where the feast is
simply packed up and moved—an aberration possible only in the Novus Ordo
—but at a separate additional celebration of some feast, which has already been
celebrated on the proper day.[580]
It is true that the foregoing choices are limited and the things being
chosen are entirely de ned; there is no room for creativity or extemporization.
Nevertheless, they constitute options.

STYLE OF VESTMENTS
While this nal example does not concern something in the liturgical rite
as such but only something associated with it, it is (oddly) one of the most
controversial among traditionalists: I refer to the simple fact that the celebrant
has, in theory, the option of wearing either Gothic vestments or Roman
vestments. (I say “in theory” because not every sacristy is equipped with both
kinds.)
In the Western tradition, the original vestments received their aesthetic
perfection in the so-called Gothic period, but, over the course of the
Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, a strikingly di erent style
emerged, known (more or less accurately) as the Roman style. The di erence
between a Gothic conical chasuble and a Roman “ ddleback” chasuble could
not be more pronounced.[581] Some, especially Liturgical Movement
enthusiasts who rst sipped the chalice of medieval romanticism before
drowning in the cups of modern rationalism, insisted that the Roman style of
chasuble was an outrageous corruption; for others of a reactionary bent, it has
become a shibboleth of Tridentine identity. One still occasionally hears a
traditionalist layman explaining to his neighbors at the co ee hour that “at the
Novus Ordo the priest wears this full draping kind of chasuble, but at the
Latin Mass he wears the old-fashioned Roman ddleback.” If I overhear
something like that, I share with them photographs of glorious traditional
Masses from Australia, where Gothic is practically the only thing in existence,
whether architecturally or vesturally.
I think there is room for both styles. Noble vestments have been created
along the entire spectrum; aesthetic preferences are not only allowed but
inevitable. Again, to my knowledge, the Church has never speci ed that one or
another style of vestments must be used, as long as every essential piece is
present (including the amice and maniple); she again allows an ordered liberty
of choice.

AVOIDING THE WORSHIP OPTION

The decree Cum Sanctissima permits, among other things, the observance
of saints during Lent whose feasts were always impeded and reduced to
commemorations by the 1960 code of rubrics’ insistence on privileging every
feria of Lent. No one disputes that the Lenten ferias are absolutely wonderful,
and they deserve their prominence. But it was poor thinking that allowed for
no exibility with regard to celebrating, even during Lent, feasts of saints who
enjoy a particular prominence in this or that community. Surely for Catholic
schools, St. Thomas Aquinas may get his full due on March 7; surely for
religious communities, St. Gregory the Great on March 12; surely for the Irish,
St. Patrick on March 17. The CDF decree restores a reasonable exibility, with
the feria always commemorated. (The Novus Ordo runs into intractable
di culties because it has abandoned the wisdom of commemorations, which
prescribes that when two things con ict, both should somehow be liturgically
present, rather than one of them simply being dumped. The same problem, it
must be admitted, already a ects the 1962 missal to a large extent, especially
with sung Masses—yet another reason to return to the 1920 editio typica.)
In regard to the foregoing examples, I would say that clergy and laity are so
accustomed to the choices involved that perhaps they do not even notice that a
choice is involved. What I mean is that we expect a priest to have the freedom
to choose a Votive Mass on a feria, and everything else about the Mass is so
predictable that it all seems inevitable; but a major choice was made
beforehand to do the Votive instead of repeating the prior Sunday. It’s like a
skier considering various trails to descend—once he commits himself to a trail,
he is committed to the whole of it until he exits at the bottom. The choice is
preliturgical, so to speak, rather than intraliturgical.
Not every choice need be construed as, or need have the psychological and
pastoral e ect of, the deservedly decried optionitis of the Novus Ordo. In the
Tridentine rite, all options are safely folded within the dominating unity of its
architecture and the exacting prescriptions of its rubrics, and therefore acquire
the same rituality. In the Novus Ordo, in stark contrast, the options are so
numerous and concern such basic elements of the liturgy—its opening rite and
penitential rite, the readings of the day vs. those of the Commons, whether the
O ertory is said aloud or silently, which Eucharistic prayer to use[!], what and
when to sing, etc. etc.—that the rite itself can barely hold on to its rituality and
becomes, in a sense, a giant Worship Option. This, it seems to me, is the
fundamental di erence between the Vetus Ordo, even with the few options
placed at its disposal, and the Novus Ordo.

WHEN DISPUTES BECOME FATAL

The preceding list of a small number of strictly-controlled options in the
old rite allows us to appreciate all the more a colossal fact: the disagreements
that occur within the realm of the Novus Ordo belong to an entirely di erent
order of magnitude from those that occur within the realm of the traditional
Latin Mass. In the world of the usus antiquior, we nd disagreements like the
following:
• whether orchestral Masses (e.g., Mozart’s) should be performed, or
whether they run contrary to the spirit of the liturgy;
• whether to follow exactly the Solesmes rhythmic markings or to
incorporate the ndings of chant paleography;
• whether the people should sing the Mass Ordinary together with the
choir, or the choir alone should sing;
• whether a Gothic chasuble is better than, worse than, or equal to, a
Roman ddleback;
• whether to remove the chasuble before preaching, or only the maniple;
• whether buckled shoes are worth reviving or may be considered an
a ectation;
• whether this much lace is too much lace.
Such disagreements, I think all would agree, are, in the grand scheme of
things, about relatively minor matters. At their ercest, such disputes might
be compared to boxing or wrestling; at their mildest, to chess or culinary
tastes. Everyone agrees about the essentials: the Mass is a true and proper
sacri ce; the universal tradition of ad orientem worship and the Western
tradition of the Latin language are ever to be retained; the Ordinary and
Propers of the Mass are always to be recited or sung, and if sung, normatively
in Gregorian chant; the Roman Canon is the heart of our central act of
worship, and like the heart’s beating, it takes place in silence, hidden within;
the sanctuary, which represents the Holy of Holies and the court of heaven
gained by Christ the High Priest, is o limits to all but ordained ministers and
the men or boys deputed to substitute for them; the awesome mystery of the
Holy Eucharist is to be received kneeling, on the tongue, in an attitude of
utmost humility and adoration, from hands specially anointed for the purpose
of consecrating, carrying, and giving the Lord.
We might compare such di erences as there are to the performance of a
stately piece of Baroque music, where musicians ornament the music in
diverse ways, but according to the conventions of the period and the
indications of the gured bass. Two performances of Bach’s St. Matthew
Passion or Handel’s Messiah may vary in many details, but the music in both
cases is still obviously the same, with the same words, in the same order, and
with largely the same impact.
 In the world of the Novus Ordo, we also nd disagreements—indeed, quite
a number of them. Here are examples:
• whether the Mass is primarily to be understood and enacted as a sacri ce
or as a meal;
• whether the language used should be the age-old Latin, a “sacral”
vernacular, or a contemporary vernacular;
• whether traditional sacred music should be employed a lot, a little, or
never, with modern popular styles in its place;
• whether the priest in accord with bimillennial tradition should o er the
Mass facing eastwards, or rather facing the people;
• whether the priest should pray the only traditional Roman anaphora, the
Roman Canon, or choose another one from the menu;
• whether Mass should be recognizably the same throughout the world or
radically inculturated;
• whether women should serve in as many liturgical ministries as possible,
or the tradition of men only in the sanctuary should be retained;
• whether lay people should handle the true Body and Blood of Christ, or
whether only ordained ministers—bishops, priests, and deacons—should do so;
• whether this sacrosanct, august Mystery of the Flesh and Blood of God
should be placed on the tongues of kneeling faithful, or into the hands of
people standing in line.
It is not di cult to see that the number, nature, and magnitude of
disagreements in this realm vastly exceed those found in the traditional realm.
These disagreements—let us be honest about it—are more like warfare between
countries. The sides are embedded in their trenches; they re away with
belligerence and take no hostages. Indeed, if someone in 1950 had been given a
list of the disputed points above, he would have reasonably assumed that it was
an accurate statement of disagreements separating Catholics from Protestants,
or believers from modernists.
This monumental contrast between the two worlds should give us pause
and prompt serious re ection. How does this welter of deep disagreements
across the board about the lex orandi of Paul VI (and, therefore, inevitably,
about the lex credendi of the People of God) square with the consistent
teaching and practice of Paul VI’s eponym? The Apostle Paul placed much
emphasis on unity, not only in matters of doctrine but also in matters of
practice, where he urged conformity with tradition: “The things which you
have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, these do ye, and
the God of peace shall be with you” (Phil 4:9). “We charge you, brethren, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every
brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have
received of us” (2 Thess 3:6). “Ful ll ye my joy, that you may be of one mind,
having the same charity, being of one accord, agreeing in sentiment” (Phil 2:2).
“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you
all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you
be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment [in eodem sensu, et in
eadem sententia]” (1 Cor 1:10). Or, in the words of St. John: “Remember then
what you received and heard; keep that, and repent” (Rev 3:3).
Which of the two worlds we have discussed better embodies the apostolic
advice to receive the tradition gratefully and wholly, and thereby be at peace; to
withdraw from the disorderly who walk not according to tradition; to have
one mind, in one accord, speaking the same thing, walking by the same
judgments?
The same teaching is consistently given from the early Fathers through the
Middle Ages down to the modern period. The Council of Trent says:

This holy Synod with true fatherly a ection admonishes, exhorts,

begs, and beseeches, through the bowels of the mercy of our God,
that all and each of those who bear the Christian name would now
at length agree and be of one mind in this sign of unity, in this bond
of charity, in this symbol of concord; and that mindful of the so
great majesty, and the so exceeding love of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who gave His own beloved soul as the price of our salvation, and
gave us His own esh to eat, they would believe and venerate these
sacred mysteries of His body and blood with such constancy and
rmness of faith, with such devotion of soul, with such piety and
worship as to be able frequently to receive that supersubstantial
bread...[582]

In the culminating lines of Pope Pius XII’s famous encyclical on the

liturgy, Mediator Dei—which makes for eye-opening reading, as one sees how
brazenly the teaching on almost every page has been contradicted by the
course of events—the ponti declares:
 May God, whom we worship, and who is “not the God of dissension
but of peace” (1 Cor 14:33) graciously grant to us all that during our
earthly exile we may with one mind and one heart participate in the
sacred liturgy which is, as it were, a preparation and a token of that
heavenly liturgy in which we hope one day to sing together with the
most glorious Mother of God and our most loving Mother, “To
Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction and
honor, and glory and power for ever and ever” (Rev 5:13).[583]

This is from 1947, one year before Annibale Bugnini, joining the Vatican’s
commission for liturgical reform, began his slow ambitious climb to
prominence and ultimate hegemony over the Hamletesque Montini.
A reader once wrote to me:

People wedded to the new liturgy have narratives and they become
invested in them, especially as they get older. To concede the
superiority of the traditional liturgy would mean having to rethink
more aspects of that narrative than they are ready to do, especially as
it would involve admitting to being wrong for a long time about
things of great importance. It is a shame, because the traditional
Roman rite is fully the heritage of every Catholic, yet so few avail
themselves of it.

When all is said and done, the only narrative that can make sense for a
Catholic is continuity with his own heritage, with stronger allegiance to that
which has been of longer use. Received forms and practices have intrinsic
value, according to the mind of Christ and the Church; they enjoy the
privilege of seniority, settled reception, and proven e cacy. So, while one
might be wrong in one’s “take” on this or that aspect of one’s heritage (I refer
to the disputed questions listed at the head of this section), one will never be
mistaken in principle by adhering to tradition. Whereas the moment one
abandons this compass, one is in a ship a oat at sea, with no established route
and no guarantee of arrival, con ned with passengers who are confused,
restive, and strongly at odds about what to do next. It should come as no
surprise that Catholics wish to be passengers on a ship that knows whence it
comes and whither it goes, and has all the means for a safe and speedy journey
—with amicable di erences of opinion along the way, yet with the guarantee of
fraternal harmony in all that matters most.
 21

Progressive Solemnity: Traditional Interpretations and

Methods
As we saw in the previous chapter, adaptability and variability are certainly
possible with the TLM. However, they are not the result of parish committees
or inculturation workshops. Rather, they derive from the possibilities inherent
in the rite itself, according to its millennial development, and involve choices
from among many legitimate incidental features. In this chapter, I will explain
the possibilities and choices we have available to us for di erentiating our
celebrations, beyond the priest’s choice of formularies for the day.
In the world of the postconciliar liturgy, one encounters a concept of
“progressive solemnity” that has little to do with the Latin liturgical tradition.
Basically, the idea is this: start with a spoken Mass as your baseline, and then
add things on to it ad libitum: for an ordinary day, sing the “presidential”
parts; on a feast, add the Propers; on a very special day, bring on the incense
and chant the Introit, etc. In practice, at least in my experience, it ends up
being a random series of steps: on weekdays we sing the Alleluia but nothing
else; on feasts, we sing maybe the Gloria and the Alleluia; on Sundays we do
the four-hymn sandwich and the celebrant sings his parts. Since there is much
confusion about what rubrics, if any, govern these sorts of decisions, just about
any mix-‘n’-match combination can happen.[584]
With the traditional Roman rite, this confusion is simply not possible: a
Mass is either a Low Mass or a Missa cantata or a Missa solemnis, etc., and
each has strict requirements about what is to be sung (or not sung). As a result,
followers of the traditional rite tend to use the forms of Mass as a way of
distinguishing calendrical solemnity: ferias or low-ranking feasts will be Low
Masses; high-ranking feasts are Missæ Cantatæ; Sundays and Holy Days are
Solemn High Masses, if the ministers for it are available; and a bishop may be
invited in for a Ponti cal High Mass on the most special occasions of all.
While this is understandable for practical reasons (bishops are not
commonly available to ponti cate, and even a deacon and subdeacon can be
hard to come by), we should recognize that it is not the primary way in which
the liturgical tradition of the Church distinguishes degrees of solemnity. In a
church su ciently well equipped with ministers, such as a monastic
community or a cathedral with canons, the liturgy will be sung every day; it
could be solemn every day. The normative—in the sense of fundamental and
exemplary—form of liturgy will always be the Ponti cal Mass chanted by a
bishop or an abbot, or the nearest thing to it, the Missa solemnis.
On one of my visits to the Benedictine monastery of Norcia, I remember
how beautiful it was to attend Solemn Masses all week long. It showed me that
this can indeed be a norm rather than an exception. Moreover, since the
monks were so skilled in liturgy and chant, and there was no homily, Solemn
Mass took less than an hour. Each day nevertheless had a distinctive feel to it
because of the intelligent use of other ways of distinguishing ranks of feasts
and ferias that Catholic tradition has developed over the centuries. Taking the
solemn form as normative does not mean placing everything at the same level
of solemnity. The solemnity is distinguished rather by the accidents, the
manner or mode in which the elements of the liturgy are con gured.
Liturgically speaking, “solemn” refers rst of all to a Mass with priest,
deacon, and subdeacon, or to a ponti cal Mass with bishop, archpriest, deacon,
and subdeacon. However, by extension, “solemn” refers to all that enhances the
grandeur or splendor of the liturgical rite, underlines its seriousness, and
magni es its festal character. Having a priest, deacon, and subdeacon is what
gets you solemn ceremonies; but even if one were to do this on a daily basis or
fairly regularly, there are still ways to di erentiate between ferias and feasts.
That is what I am primarily concerned with in this chapter: the
“phenomenology” of solemnity, not the rubrical and juridical de nition of it.
There is ritual or ceremonial solemnity, where one has the full complement of
ministers and ceremonies, and then there is something that might be called
calendrical solemnity, observing the ranks of feasts. A rst-class feast should
not be celebrated in altogether the same manner as a fourth-class feast (in
normal circumstances; there might be a peculiar reason to do otherwise). How
do we make the di erentiations in the calendar line up with the
di erentiations in the liturgy? My proposal is that we should not do this solely
by the use of low, sung, or Solemn Mass, even if that’s going to be the way it’s
done in most places, for pragmatic reasons.
GRADATIONS IN CHANT
While every liturgy should ideally be chanted, there are notable
distinctions within the repertoire of chant itself. Fr. Dominique Delalande,
OP, observes:

It is too obvious to be denied that a celebration sung in the

Gregorian manner is more solemn than a celebration which is
merely recited; but this statement is especially true in the modern
perspective of a celebration which is habitually recited. The ancients
had provided melodies for the most modest celebrations of the
liturgical year, and these melodies were no less carefully worked out
than those of the great feasts. For them the chant was, before all
else, a means of giving to liturgical prayer a fullness of religious and
contemplative value, whatever might be the solemnity [i.e., rank] of
the day. Such should also be our sole preoccupation in singing. As
long as people look upon the Gregorian chant solely as a means of
solemnising the celebration, there will be the danger of making it
deviate from its true path, which is more interior.[585]

Put di erently, Fr. Delalande is saying that chant is integral to the expression
of the liturgy, not a mere ornament tacked on, like a bow on a Christmas
present, and that we do well to utilize the di erent spheres of chant rather
than merely toggling back and forth between recited and sung.
Ordinary. For example, the Mass Ordinary given in the Liber Usualis for
ferias is short and simple, while the Ordinaries suggested for Solemn Feasts
(Mass II, Kyrie fons bonitatis, or Mass III, Kyrie Deus sempiterne) are
melodically elaborate and grand in scope. Five Ordinaries (III–VIII), of varying
complexity and length, are suggested for Doubles. Simpler feasts of Our Lady,
e.g., the Holy Name of Mary on September 12, might use Ordinary X, Alme
Pater, while loftier feasts such as the Immaculate Conception or the
Assumption could use the great Mass IX, Cum jubilo.
Creed. Similarly, the Liber makes available six settings of the Creed (and a
few other chant settings are in circulation as well),[586] which vary considerably
in their ornateness or “tonality.” Once again, the choice of a Creed melody can
re ect something of the nature of the feast or occasion or season.
 Preface. The missal o ers three tones for the Prefaces: simple, solemn, and
more solemn (solemnior). For a ferial Mass, a Requiem, or a lesser feast, the
simple tone should be used; for a higher-ranking feast, such as that of an
apostle or doctor, the solemn tone could be used; for the highest feasts, such as
Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart, the
Immaculate Conception, or the Assumption, the more solemn tone would be
highly appropriate. (In an oft-repeated anecdote, Mozart is said to have
claimed that he would gladly exchange all his music for the fame of having
composed the Preface tone. If he said this, he would doubtless have been
thinking of the more solemn tone, which is indeed of rare beauty.)
Propers. The Proper chants should be sung in full in any case, but for a
special occasion with incense and more ceremonial, a verse from the
O ertoriale Triplex might be used, and at Communion time, verses and a
doxology to go with the antiphon.
Beyond the chant, there are other obvious and subtle ways to elevate or
lower the solemnity of a particular day on the calendar, so that ferias do not
seem the equal of feasts of saints, and feasts of saints the equal of feasts of Our
Lady, and these, in turn, the equal of those of Our Lord. It is true that many of
the following presuppose a well-stocked sacristy, the contents of which have
been assembled over a long period of time by people with good taste who
understand that there is symbolic value in having more than one kind of any
given item.

IN THE REALM OF SIGHT

Since, as Aristotle says, the sense of sight is the one that gives us the most
information about things, it is not surprising that the largest number of
modes for signaling solemnity pertain to the visual domain.[587]
Copes, chasubles, dalmatics, tunicles. It is obvious that plainer vestments
should be used for ferias, more decorative ones for feasts, and over-the-top
ones for solemnities. There are churches that have special sets used only at
Christmas and/or Easter, or for a patronal feastday, etc.
Other vestments. For a feria, the alb can be plain; for a feast, it can be
patterned; for a solemnity, with lacework. When worn with a Roman chasuble,
the design of the alb becomes an important aesthetic element in itself.
Similarly, the surplices of acolytes can be plain white or with worked borders;
the cassocks can be black throughout the year but red for Christmastide and
Paschaltide.[588]
Chalice, paten, and other vessels. It is obvious that these can be of simple
or ornate design; in gold or silver or a combination thereof; with or without
stones; taller or more squat, Romanesque, Gothic, or Baroque; engraved or
plain; etc. This is one detail that is particularly noticed by the faithful, because
of the custom of gazing upon the chalice as it is elevated and praying: “My
Lord and my God!”[589]
The Processional Cross. This can be of silver or of gold; a simple design or
an ornate design; smaller or larger.
Candles and candlesticks. There are many ways to use candles in relation
to varying degrees of festivity or solemnity. The most obvious are: to use gold
or gold-and-marble candlesticks for Sundays and feasts; to light “the big six”
above the altar for sung Masses, versus lighting two smaller candlesticks on
weekdays for Low Mass; to have a special elaborate set for the highest
occasions; to use silver or wooden candlesticks with unbleached candles for
Requiems and Good Friday.
Reliquaries. Most churches will display reliquaries throughout the year
except during Eucharistic Adoration or at a Requiem. However, a church with
enough reliquaries can vary the relics placed out. Obviously when a saint’s feast
arises, his or her relics should be present. But a nobler occasion can call for the
most ornate reliquaries to be displayed, and in some places, all relics are
brought out on November 1. This is another small way of lifting minds and
hearts to God, who is glorious in His saints. The same observation can be
made of monstrances: a simpler one might be used for First Fridays, a more
elaborate one for Corpus Christi or other feasts of the Lord.
Flowers. An obvious advantage of a traditional high altar is the perfect
accommodation it makes for oral arrangements on the gradine or ledge above
the mensa. Anyone who has seen a well-decorated high altar knows that
owers add the nishing touch of natural beauty to a supernatural
environment. The arrangements can be modest, of one or two colors or types
of plant, or lavish, large, and in many colors and varieties of plant; there can be
two or four arrangements (one or a pair for the Epistle side and one or a pair
for the Gospel side), or even additional vases on stands, as long as symmetry is
always preserved. The vases, too, can be varied, made from glass or di erent
metals, in diverse colors or styles. Needless to say, the owers or foliage put
into the vases should always be cut; potted living plants are not to be used.[590]
Altar cards. Instead of having only one set of prefabricated altar cards,
multiple sets may be obtained, of di erent designs in di erent kinds of frames,
with the larger and more elaborate for feasts and the simpler for weekdays.
Sometimes sacristies will have a very plain set for Lent, to contrast it with the
rest of the year; and a distinct set for the Requiem Mass, in sober black and
white and silver, is highly to be recommended (not least, because the texts and
rubrics of the Requiem are somewhat di erent from those of any other Mass).
If possible, commission a calligrapher to prepare altar cards that will be unique
to your church, and if this isn’t within reach, at least obtain a high-quality
reproduction of a more elegant set than the mass-produced options.[591]
Altar frontals (antependia). Since the altar itself represents Christ the
High Priest, the custom arose long ago of robing it in a vesture of colored
cloth hung over the front, much as a cope or a chasuble covers a priest. This
covering, its color determined by the liturgical color of the day, highlights the
prominence of the high altar and ampli es the impact of the feast or season.
Frontals come in all levels of formality, from simple designs of a single color
with perhaps a couple of bands of contrasting color (say, white and gold) to
elaborate designs with multiple colors, orphreys, and appliqués. One sees here
the possibility of distinguishing the levels of feasts and seasons by having more
than one set of antependia in a given color, even as sacristies will have
di erent sets of vestments of the same color.[592]
Missal stand. The “workhorse” of the altar, the missal stand is seldom
considered an artistic object, but all it takes is some exploring to see how many
di erent designs are available: with latticework or with solid surfaces, in silver
or in gold, with or without semi-precious stones. A wooden stand is
appropriate for Requiems or penitential occasions. Before there were missal
stands, there were cushions, and these ought to be rescued from their oblivion.
[593] Done in liturgically colored fabrics, they complement well the rest of the

ensemble. The stand can also be covered: “It is tting that the missal-stand
should be draped with a covering of the same color as the vestments of the
celebrant, unless the stand is out of the ordinary by reason of its precious
material or beautiful workmanship in which case the veil may be dispensed
with.”[594]
 Wall hangings. To mention this idea is to risk rolled eyes in American
readers, who might have nightmares of banners produced in the CCD First
Communion class: “a darkness so thick it could be felt,” to borrow a phrase
from Exodus 10:21. But here I am referring to the elegant red banners lowered
from the ceiling to add a bright note for festal occasions.[595] In central Europe
I have seen ribbons of white and gold festooned over the sanctuary during
Paschaltide; I’m sure there are similar customs in many Catholic cultures. A
similar function could be allotted to processional banners, which might be put
out, upright in their stands, on occasions referenced by the banner artwork
(e.g., for the feastday and octave of the Sacred Heart, a banner depicting that
object of veneration). If done tastefully (and that proviso applies to every item
in my list), these things give prominence to the day or the season, which in
turn helps make us aware of its message, without the need for tedious verbiage.

IN THE REALM OF SOUND

Chant variations. I have already discussed the considerable diversity within
the corpus of Gregorian chant. Beyond that, one should take into account the
use of isons or drones, organum, and alternatim with men and women (or
monophony and polyphony)—always bearing in mind that, as with spices, too
much of a good thing is distasteful.[596]
Ad libitum chants present other ways of marking levels of solemnity. For a
ferial Solemn Mass, one might simply let there be silence after the O ertory
and Communion antiphons. (I never tire of reminding musicians that the
belief that every moment must be lled with music is a form of psychological
insecurity called kenophobia.[597] ) For a feastday, one could choose a votive
chant from the Liber or another Solesmes book.
Polyphony. For greater occasions, equal voice or mixed choir motets would
be most appropriate, as polyphony already stands out from chant as more
splendid or majestic, although certainly no more perfect qua liturgical music.
When the choral forces are equal to the challenge, music scored for double
choir or for small and large ensembles, or choral music with instruments, can
make a feast unforgettably grand.
Pipe organ. It goes without saying that the pipe organ has much to
contribute in regard to levels of solemnity. In a church with a ne organ, its
very silence already says that we are at a lower level. When, on the other hand,
all stops are pulled for a processional or a postlude, we feel in our bones that
we are present for the coming or the departure of the King.[598]
Bells. Among the rarest “ ne touches” is that of having one set of
sanctuary bells for weekdays and another for Sundays or other solemn
occasions. The e ect is instant: the very di erence in the sound of the tinkling
bells transmits an immediate message about the occasion. Churches with bell
towers may ring the large bells during the consecration. This, again, can be an
excellent distinction between ferias and feasts, or weekdays and Sundays:
ringing or not ringing the big bells. (Where I lived in Austria, however, they
rang the tower bells every day at consecration; nor would I say that this is
inappropriate!)

IN THE REALM OF SMELL

Incense comes in a wide variety of types, so we can vary the type used
according to the liturgical calendar, with this scent for Christmas, that one for
Lent, that other one for Paschaltide, and so forth.[599] Most well-stocked
sacristies settle into a routine along these lines, but it is worth giving some
thought to it. We know how powerful the sense of smell is for memory
associations. Think of what it would be like if families attending the same
church for decades always smell a certain Ethiopian incense at Christmas, and
a certain Somalian one at Easter, just as they might be accustomed to smelling
turkey and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving or lamb with mint jam at Easter. In
church their noses will instantly draw them into the feast even before their
minds have had a chance to process the words being sung. At the Incarnation,
the Word assumed our senses, not just our mental faculties. The Lord, too, had
his favorite scents at home, the ones that perhaps He most associated with His
mother and foster-father.

IN THE REALMS OF TASTE AND TOUCH

This, admittedly, is a more di cult area to speak about, because the liturgy
as such communicates mostly through man’s noblest and most rational senses,
sight and hearing, with smell coming in third. For taste and touch, there is not
much more to discuss than furniture and the type of altar bread used.
Nevertheless, even here there is room for a judicious variety. At least for
the priest, di erent large hosts could be used for di erent seasons, as some of
them are plain while others have imprints of the cruci xion or a lamb, and
di erent wines might be assigned, such as a drier wine for Lent and a sweeter
wine for Paschaltide. The accidents, after all, are meant to point to the reality
commemorated, and since sensibles are mutually exclusive (by which I mean,
the same wine cannot be dry and sweet at the same time and in the same
respect), the accident of taste is not excluded from symbolism. Certainly there
is a notable di erence in taste between a pure white host and a more wheaten
host.
As for the lowliest sense in Aristotle’s hierarchy of sensation, touch: if the
altar servers are accustomed to using portable kneeling pads, or if the people
have a detachable kneeling pad along the Communion rail, such pads could be
removed during penitential seasons. The knees, at least, would register the
di erence right quick. A layman could also choose to kneel straight on the
oor for Mass rather than using the retractable kneeler.

CONCLUSIONS
The point of the foregoing overview is not to suggest that all of these
di erent things should be done all at once, much less to imply that all of them
are equally important, but merely to give lots of ideas of how the Catholic
tradition, especially through the ne arts, has o ered us a plethora of ways to
di erentiate levels of solemnity[600] —even if every Mass o ered were to be a
Solemn High Mass.
All these things pertain to the execution of liturgy, but the laity for their
part could mark the di erence in days with how formally they dress, which
rosary they bring to Mass, which daily missal or devotional book they use. It
happens rather often, for example, that women have di erent veils, some
simple, some more elaborate, for di erent occasions; some will use a white
chapel veil during Christmastide and Eastertide and black the rest of the year,
or will have veils in darker shades of the liturgical colors. Perhaps even more
popular for festive occasions is the wearing of hats or bonnets.
I am the rst to admit that none of these things is “essential,” but that is
also somewhat beside the point. What is essential in the liturgy, at least in a
canonical mindset, is relatively minimal. The fullness of liturgical life should
go well beyond the minimum to embrace all the ways in which human beings,
as creatures of esh and blood, can communicate about invisible mysteries
through sensible means.
 22

Modest Proposals for Improving the Low Mass

With the large number of Masses now being o ered in the usus antiquior
worldwide, it is fair to say that Catholics are experiencing some of the same
problems that were pointed to as reasons for the liturgical reform prior to the
Council. While the list of such problems is lengthy, none of them in fact
justi ed the liturgical reform as it actually played out. Nevertheless, one would
hope that the traditional movement could learn from past mistakes and make
a special e ort to avoid the same in the current fraught ecclesiastical situation.
Since the manner of carrying out the Mass redounds immediately to either
the edi cation and devotion of the priest and people or to their distraction
and frustration, it behooves us to take it seriously. For indeed, nothing could
be more serious than the sacramental re-presentation of the Sacri ce of the
Cross.
In this chapter, I will look at three common problems: inaudible,
inarticulate muttering of servers at Low Mass; rapid- re delivery of the Latin
prayers by the priest, as if he were in a race against time; and a celebrant
violating the clara voce rubrics by treating a parochial Mass as if it were a
silent monastic Mass, thereby depriving the people of the opportunity to hear
those parts of the Mass that, according to centuries-old rubrics, Holy Mother
Church wishes them to hear. It is important to note that none of my proposals
requires changing the predetermined rubrics or structure of the Mass itself. In
the spirit of the initial phase of the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement,
they merely call upon priest and servers to observe more closely the existing
rubrics, which will in turn augment the reverence of the sacri ce and the
laity’s understanding of and unity with it.

THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PRIEST AND SERVERS

While it would be ideal to have liturgy served by clerics in minor orders,
religious brothers, or seminarians, most of the time Catholics have recourse to
“altar boys” lling in for acolytes. And I have no complaint about the
institution of altar boys as such, provided they are tall enough and serious
enough to ful ll their functions in the sanctuary. There are many social and
spiritual bene ts for the boys, not least the opportunity given to them of
learning the liturgy up-close, acquiring habits of discipline, and actively
discerning a priestly vocation.[601]
However, as we learn from the High Mass, which is the real template of
the Low Mass, the servers may be seen as making responses on behalf of the
entire body of the faithful. At High Mass, we all sing Et cum spiritu tuo, and
at Low Mass the servers speak the same words (in this chapter I am
purposefully not discussing the Dialogue Mass, a twentieth-century
aberration). Moreover, as the Roman rite developed, the preparatory prayers or
prayers at the foot of the altar ceased to be purely private prayers for the priest
and ministers; they belong to the faithful, too, who treasure them, follow them
in their missals or from memory, and wish to hear them at Low Mass. As if in
tacit acknowledgment of this fact, nearly all of the priests whose old rite
Masses I have heard over the past thirty years utter Psalm 42 and the
additional prayers prior to the Aufer a nobis with a level of voice that can be
readily heard throughout the church.
It is therefore asymmetrical and irritating when the servers mumble,
swallow, or whisper their responses to the priest’s well-articulated phrases. It
is the liturgical equivalent to someone walking with one normal leg and one
peg-leg. Here is how it comes across to the faithful in the pews:
Priest. In nómine Patris, et Fílii, ✠ et Spíritus Sancti. Amen. Introíbo ad
altáre Dei.
Servers. Ad Deum qui lætí cat juventútem meam.
P. Júdica me, Deus, et discérne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab
hómine iníquo, et dolóso érue me.
S. Quia tu es, Deus, fortitúdo mea: quare me repulísti, et quare tristis
incédo, dum a ígit me inimícus?
P. Emítte lucem tuam, et veritátem tuam: ipsa me deduxérunt, et aduxérunt
in montem sanctum tuum, et in tabernácula tua.
S. Et introíbo ad altáre Dei: ad Deum qui lætí cat juventútem meam.
P. Con tébor tibi in cíthara, Deus, Deus meus: quare tristis es, ánima mea,
et quare contúrbas me?
 S. Spera in Deo, quóniam adhuc con tébor illi: salutáre vultus mei, et Deus
meus.
P. Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto.
S. Sicut erat in princípio et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculórum.
Amen.
P. Introíbo ad altáre Dei.
S. Ad Deum qui lætí cat juventútem meam.
P. Adjutórium nostrum ✠ in nómine Dómini.
S. Qui fecit cælum et terram.
And so forth, throughout the liturgy. The dialogue is often so unequal that the
priest might as well be the only one speaking, in a bizarre, vivisected
conversation, somewhat like overhearing a telephone call. If such servers are
representing us at the foot of the altar, they are doing a poor job of it. Why
don’t they speak up a bit—“enunciate and articulate!,” as my high school
rhetoric teacher used to say? Again, this is not about using a loud voice. It is
simply about using a normal audible voice and not rushing through the words.
They are, after all, prayers, and prayers are worth taking the time to pray. Deo
gratias after the Epistle should sound like it means “Thanks be to God,” and
the same with Laus tibi, Christe, “Praise to Thee, O Christ.”
Am I asking too much of these well-meaning and sometimes clueless boys?
No. I believe that those who train altar boys should teach them what the
words mean, and teach them how to enunciate them and articulate them at a
normal volume and a walking, not running, pace. Not:

P. Kyrie eleison.

S. Kyrie eleison.

P. Kyrie eleison.

S. Christe eleison.

P. Christe eleison.

S. Christe eleison.
 P. Kyrie eleison.

S. Kyrie eleison.

P. Kyrie eleison.

Above all, at the end of the O ertory, these words should be distinct and
audible at Low Mass:

Suscípiat Dóminus sacrifícium de mánibus tuis ad laudem et

glóriam nóminis sui, ad utilitátem quoque nostram, totiúsque
Ecclésiæ suæ sanctæ.

And moving into the Preface dialogue, it is totally un tting to hear the
following:

P....per omnia sæcula sæculorum.

S. Amen.

P. Dóminus vobíscum.

S. Et cum spíritu tuo.

P. Sursum corda.

S. Habémus ad Dóminum.

P. Grátias agámus Dómino Deo nostro.

S. Dignum et justum est.

The priest is inviting us, in one of the most beautiful phrases of the Roman
liturgy, to “Lift your hearts on high!,” and the response should be in earnest:
“We have lifted [them] up to the Lord!” Then, in a phrase rich with Eucharistic
meaning: “Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.” To which the response
must be equally meaningful, as if the servers are senators speaking for a holy
nation: “It is worthy and just.” These are not phrases to be rattled o under
one’s breath; they are to be sounded forth in public.
The inaudibility of the servers, the disharmony it creates with the priest,
and the lack of “purchase” it o ers the congregation are matters that deserve
to be taken seriously by the adult trainers who prepare the servers and by the
MCs who regulate the teams. This is not a di cult problem to correct, but it
does require awareness, attentiveness, and follow-through, together with
positive reinforcement (“Johnny, it was great how you spoke your responses so
clearly today. Keep it up!”).

HASTE IN CLERICAL RECITATION OF TEXTS

A related matter of concern is the post-Summorum reappearance of clergy
who habitually rush through the Low Mass. As far as I can tell, we are dealing
in most cases with genuinely good men who intend no disrespect to Our Lord
and no disedi cation to the faithful. Nevertheless, machine-gun Latin —

Paternoster,quiesincælis:Sancti céturnomentuum:Advéniatregnum
tuum:Fiatvolúntastua,sicutincælo,etinterra.Panemnostrumquotid
iánumdanobishódie:Etdimíttenobisdébitanostra,sicutetnosdimít
timusdebitóribusnostris.Etnenosindúcasintentatiónem.

AgnusDei,quitollispeccátamundi:miserérenobis.AgnusDei,quitollis
peccátamundi:miserérenobis.AgnusDei,quitollispeccátamundi:dona
nobispacem.

Dómine,nonsumdignus,utintressubtectummeum

Dómine,nonsumdignus,utintressubtectummeum

Dómine,nonsumdignus,utintressubtectummeum

— does not carry any conviction of being speech truly addressed to the face of
a living Person with whom one is communicating, as two friends would talk to
one another, nor, for this reason, can it in fact increase the devotion of the
speaker or of the listeners. It seems, on the contrary, to be a lost opportunity
on the part of both priest and people for the intensi cation of acts of
adoration, faith, humility, contrition, and other virtues. In spite of the daily
repetition of the Mass, we could truthfully apply to its celebration the familiar
words of the Quaker who said: “I shall pass this way but once; any good that I
can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let
me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” This particular
Mass will never be repeated, nor will this particular congregation assist at it, at
least in this moment of their lives. And as we know from the dogmatic
theologians, the subjective devotion of the priest and of the people have a role
to play in the spiritual fruitfulness of the Mass.
Perhaps the most germane statement made on this subject is that of St.
Francis de Sales: “Beware of haste, for it is a deadly enemy of true devotion;
and anything done with precipitation is never done well. Let us go slowly, for
if we do but keep advancing we shall thus go far.”[602]
Dom Chautard, author of The Soul of the Apostolate—one of the few truly
essential spiritual books written in the past century—has a lot to say on this
subject. The author spends several pages unpacking the meaning of the prayer
said before the Divine O ce, in which the cleric asks for the grace to recite it
digne, attente, devote, worthily, attentively, devoutly:

DIGNE. A respectful position and bearing, the precise

pronunciation of the words, slowing down over the more important
parts. Careful observance of the rubrics. My tone of voice, the way
in which I make signs of the Cross, genu ections, etc.; my body
itself: all will go to show not only that I know Whom I am
addressing, and what I am saying, but also that my heart is in what I
am doing. What an apostolate I can sometimes exercise [this way]!...

DEVOTE. This is the most important point. Everything comes back

to the need of making our O ce and all our liturgical functions acts
of piety, and, consequently, acts that come from the heart.

“Haste kills all devotion.” Such is the principle laid down by St.
Francis de Sales in talking of the Breviary, and it applies a fortiori to
the Mass. Hence, I shall make it a hard and fast rule to devote
around half an hour to my Mass in order to ensure a devout
recitation not only of the Canon but of all the other parts as well. I
shall reject without pity all pretexts for getting through this, the
 principal act of my day, in a hurry. If I have the habit of mutilating
certain words or ceremonies, I shall apply myself, and go over these
faulty places very slowly and carefully, even exaggerating my
exactitude for a while....

O my Divine Mediator! Fill my heart with detestation for all haste

in those things where I stand in Your place, or act in the name of
the Church! Fill me with the conviction that haste paralyzes that
great Sacramental, the Liturgy, and makes impossible that spirit of
prayer without which, no matter how zealous a priest I may appear
to be on the outside, I would be lukewarm, or perhaps worse, in
Your estimation. Burn into my inmost heart those words so full of
terror: “Cursed be he that doth the work of God deceitfully” (Jer
48:10).[603]

St. Leonard of Port Maurice counsels the priest in the following words:

Use all diligence to celebrate with the utmost modesty, recollection,

and care, taking time to pronounce well and distinctly every word,
and perfectly to ful ll every ceremony with due propriety and
gravity; for words ill articulated, or spoken without a tone of
meekness and awe, and ceremonies done without decorum and
accuracy, render the divine service, instead of a help to piety and
religion, a source of distress and scandal. Let the priest keep the
inner man devoutly recollected; let him think of the sense of all the
words which he articulates, dwelling on their sense and spirit, and
making throughout internal e orts corresponding to their holy
suggestions. Then truly will there be an in ux of great devotion into
those assisting, and he will obtain the utmost pro t for his own
soul.[604]

There is no question that a reverent Low Mass can be o ered in thirty

minutes by a priest whose Latin ows well, who is extremely adept at the
ceremonies, and who knows many of the prayers by heart. It is also true that
sometimes Low Mass takes longer than it should because the celebrant is still
learning the ropes and has not yet “mastered” the liturgical form. But
regardless of the total duration, any appearance of rushing in words or
gestures is never edifying and always detracts from the dignity and beauty of
the celebration—and consequently from the prayerfulness it is meant to induce
as well as the spiritual fruit likely to be derived from it.
Small things make a di erence in the spiritual life; why would it not be the
same in the greatest act of worship we can o er to God, the Holy Sacri ce of
the Mass? For a long time, Catholics have fought simply to have access to the
old Mass, an immense reservoir of grace, doctrine, and godly piety. We should
not stop ghting for that access if we do not yet enjoy it or if it has been
discontinued in our area, but now that we are some years down the road from
the Mass’s reintroduction on a wider scale, it is time to correct bad habits into
which we may have inadvertently slid.
Some may be wondering: Why should we concern ourselves with such tiny
matters when the Church on earth seems to be falling apart in front of our
very eyes? My view, however, is quite the opposite. The crisis we are living is
one of worldliness, lukewarmness, in delity, and apostasy. The ultimate
solution to it is not investigations (however necessary), proclamations of doom
and hand-wringing (however correct and satisfying), or a urry of activism
(however tempting). The solution begins and ends with drawing near to the
Father and joining with the citizens of the fatherland. Now is the very best
time to attend to the service of Almighty God in His holy sanctuary and to do
what is right, because it is right, for the love and glory of God. Fidelity in little
things is rewarded with greater blessings, and in delity in little things leads to
blessings being taken away. This is the teaching of Our Lord Himself.[605]

THE PARISH LOW MASS IS NOT A “SILENT” MASS

One Pentecost octave, I happened to be visiting a big city and decided to
go to a nearby Latin Mass on the Ember Friday. I invited two acquaintances to
come with me.
I was surprised when Mass began and I could hear nothing of the dialogue
of priests and servers. “Perhaps this is just— for some reason—how they do the
prayers at the foot of the altar,” I thought to myself. The priest mounted the
steps and went to the missal to recite the Introit. Again, total silence. My
bewilderment turned to frustration and disappointment as the entire Mass
continued, with hardly a single word of it being audible. The only thing
recited clara voce was the Domine, non sum dignus before the Communion of
the faithful.[606]
Since I was traveling, I did not have my St. Andrew’s Daily Missal with me,
and my two guests, who are not regular attendees, had no access to the Propers
either.[607] I wasn’t expecting this lack of a missal to be a problem, as I can
follow the Latin to a great extent if I can just hear the words. Hearing
nothing, I was simply watching a priest say his private Mass. The motions are
beautiful and the silence is prayerful, but I still felt deprived of access to the
parts of the Mass that the Church intends the faithful to hear. Even aside
from verbal comprehension (which, I recognize, is often overrated nowadays),
it is comforting to hear the Latin words oating through the church at the
appropriate times. There is bene t in hearing the Gloria, the Credo, the
Sanctus, the Agnus Dei.
Evidently my guests felt a similar perplexity, since they both said to me
afterwards at breakfast: “Is the old Mass always so completely silent?” I had to
respond: “No, it’s not supposed to be. When I attend Mass elsewhere—with the
Fraternity of St. Peter, or the Institute of Christ the King, or a diocesan priest
—one can hear most of the Mass of the Catechumens, and some parts of the
Mass of the Faithful.”
The rubrics of the usus antiquior stipulate unambiguously which parts of
the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass are to be recited in an elevated tone of
voice. A traditional Missale Romanum contains at its head the Rubricæ
generales Missalis, rubrics telling the celebrant what to do and say, and how to
do it and say it. Let’s take a 1920 editio typica as our reference point. Chapter
XVI concerns De his quæ clara voce, aut secreto dicenda sunt in Missa, or
“Concerning things that are to be said in the Mass with an audible voice or
silently.” Here is my translation of the pertinent paragraphs (underlining for
emphasis):

In a private Mass the following are to be said clara voce: the

antiphon and psalm before the Introit, the Confession and that
which follows (except Aufer a nobis and Oramus te); again, the
Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, Dominus vobiscum, Oremus, Flectamus
genua, Levate, Collect or Collects, Prophecy, Epistle, Gradual,
Alleluia, Tract, Sequence, Gospel, Creed, O ertory antiphon, Orate
fratres (just those two words), Preface, Nobis quoque peccatoribus
 (just those three words), Per omnia &c. with Pater noster, Per omnia
&c. with Pax Domini, Agnus Dei, Domine non sum dignus (just
those four words), Communion antiphon, Postcommunion or
Postcommunions, Humiliate capita, Ite missa est or Benedicamus
Domino or Requiescant in pace, Blessing, and Last Gospel or other
Gospel. All the rest is to be said secreto.

Of great interest is the next paragraph, which speci es that clara voce means
spoken in such a way that those around may hear and follow:

The priest ought to take the utmost care that things which are to be
said clara voce are pronounced distinctly and appropriately—not
very quickly, so that he can pay attention to what he reads, nor
exceedingly slowly, lest the listeners be a icted with tedium;
neither with a voice excessively raised, lest others be disturbed who
perhaps might be o ering Mass in the same church at the same
time, nor
with one that is too faint [submissa], lest those gathered around
be unable to hear, but in a moderate and earnest tone, that it may
both stir up devotion and be accommodated to the listeners that
they may understand what is read.[608] Those things, on the other
hand, which are to be said secreto should be pronounced in such a
way that only the priest himself may hear them, and they are not
heard by those gathered around.

The “marching orders” contained in this rubric, however owery its

expression, are not especially hard to grasp and put into practice. While it is
true that some churches are so vast that even a priest speaking clara voce
might not be able to be heard or understood by those sitting far away, I have
found that it depends not so much on the size of a church but on its
architecture, and on such factors as whether the heating or air conditioning is
blowing, or fans are running, or other ambient noise is coming in. At the
church I visited on that Ember Friday of Pentecost, it was not di cult to hear
the priest when he did speak up. Despite the great volume of space, the Latin
was perfectly comprehensible; the acoustics would be excellent for a Missa
recitata or Missa lecta.
 It seems to me important to recognize an uno cial distinction not
discussed in the rubrics. There is a di erence between a publicly scheduled
Mass o ered at the high altar in the expected presence of a congregation of
people, and a “private” Mass of a monk at a side altar in a monastery, adjacent
to a dozen other monks simultaneously o ering Masses. At Clear Creek, Le
Barroux, Norcia, Silverstream, and other such places, those whispered early
morning Masses—with the faithful seldom more than a few feet away from
their chosen side chapel—seem like quite a di erent a air from a scheduled
public parochial Mass at a high altar in the main church, with the
circumstantes standing dozens or possibly hundreds of feet away. The latter
scenario demands more care on the part of the priest to ensure that the
audible parts are indeed audible.
I was grateful to be able to assist at Holy Mass during the Pentecost
octave, immerse myself in prayer, and rejoice in the beauty of God’s house; I
was even more grateful to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion.
Nevertheless, it disturbed me to be cut o from the antiphons, orations, and
readings that Holy Mother Church wishes the faithful to be able to hear with
their ears. It seems to me that priests, if any may have fallen into bad habits in
this regard, ought to bear in mind that speaking those parts of the Proper and
Ordinary clara voce, as speci ed in the rubrics, is a way of showing respect and
consideration to the faithful who come to church to drink from the greatest
source of prayer we enjoy as Catholics: the sacred liturgy.

“REACTIVE PARTICIPATION”
As we have seen, the paragraphs that call for clara voce really do exist and
really do govern the celebration of Mass. They are not “a personal preference,”
or an attempt at quashing legitimate diversity, or a Trojan Horse for the
Dialogue Mass or the Radical Liturgical Movement, since they have been in
the missal for a very long time—for centuries, in fact.
Let’s review what was said. (1) Priests should observe the rubrics of the
missal. (2) This is even more the case if the rubric is designed to ensure that
the public prayer of the Church is shared with the public. (3) It is a good thing
to be able to hear the prayers of the Mass that are meant to be said or sung
aloud, regardless of whether one has a daily missal to hand or not. Indeed, if
one likes to follow the Proper of the Mass but happens to be sans missal,
audibility becomes still more important.
 And let’s review what was not said. (1) There should never be any silence at
all for meditating or for praying the rosary. (2) Everyone should be saying
everything at Mass—“dialogue till you die!” (3) A silent monastic Mass is evil
and should be abolished. (4) My personal preferences should be those of
everyone else. (5) Everyone should have his eyes or nose glued into a hand
missal.
Here are ve pieces of advice for critics of the Missa recitata:
1. Learn to read the rubrics. They are quite interesting, have a rich history,
and are there for a good reason. At least, this can be safely assumed until the
reform—at rst tipsy, later intoxicated—gets into full swing in the 1960s.
2. Abusus non tollit usum. The deformation of right principles by 1960s
reformers does not diminish the rightness of said principles. For example, the
reformers wanted the liturgy to be within the hands and hearts of the faithful.
Fair enough. Then they slashed and burned the inherited liturgy, with its
immeasurable treasures, and built a sleek new liturgy that re ected their
modern prejudices, all in order to put their ideas into the hands and hearts of
the faithful. Bad business; nothing short of a betrayal of right principles. Yet
the desideratum did not cause the disaster, since the same desideratum is
entirely compatible with a di erent state of a airs.
3. Slippery slope arguments are amongst the weakest. “If you think the
priest should speak up, or the faithful join their prayers to the Church’s, then
—then—it’s only a matter of time before you’ll want—the vernacular! and
Communion in the hand! and altar girls! and...” Really?
4. A Low Mass o ered according to the rubrics will still have plenty of
silence in it, during which the faithful may pray a rosary or meditate in some
other manner. No one in the traditional movement wants to do away with the
silent Canon that we all dearly love. By this time, we have learned a thing or
two from the dark years of autodemolition.
Why have some people arrived at the idea that a stone-silent parish Low
Mass, contra rubricas, is either ideal, or at least a form of legitimate diversity?
(Again, read carefully: I am speaking of a regular parish Mass intentionally
o ered in the presence of a congregation, not a monastic side-chapel Mass at
6:00 a.m. with a couple of overachieving scouts on their knees in the shadow of
the arch.)
1. The Missa murmurata was a highly useful precaution against English
soldiers combing through the hedges and bogs to arrest Irish priests. Noise
attracted danger. It is thus the safer option.
2. The Missa murmurata is also as remote as possible from the Novus
Ordo and all its pomps and works. One gets to relish a nice chunk of quiet
personal prayer, while leaving “that liturgy business” to the priest, and then
one can receive Communion. In short: the ideal Communion service! (And
people wonder where the abuses of the postconciliar period came from? Hint:
they were already in place, albeit less o ensively!) This is what I like to call
“reactive participation”: anything at all that has a parallel in the Novus Ordo,
such as the congregation singing, or the priest speaking audibly, or preaching
based on the Scripture readings, should never be done in the old Mass.
While skittishness about repeating abuses ushered in by the Novus Ordo—
above all, the reformers’ faulty notion of what constitutes “active
participation”—is fully understandable, one ought not to allow such a fear to
cloud one’s better judgment. Likewise, while the practice of silent Masses was
prudent in Ireland under English oppression (one thinks of the famous
painting Mass in a Connemara Cabin by Aloysius O’Kelly) and indeed testi es
to the heroic fortitude of a great Christian people under trying circumstances,
it hardly constitutes an exemplar of the best we can do in a time of freedom.
Priests who remember starting up the TLM again after its near extinction
remember what it was like in those bumpy days. Any movement towards
having the people participate, any hint they should do something besides
ipping pages in the red booklet or suppressing noisy kids, was met with “You
don’t mean the Dialogue Mass, Father?” In other words, anything but
Cleveland circa 1956 was perceived as stepping onto the slippery slope.
Now, one need have no bone to pick with Cleveland or with 1956 in order
to have a fundamental objection to the notion that the public side of the
Church’s prayer should be given to God in a non-public manner that the
faithful, even if they wish to do so, cannot internalize in the normal way in
which speech is heard and pondered. The very texts of the old Mass are full of
ageless wisdom and burning charity.[609] This is our common possession as
members of the Mystical Body of Christ, and some of it—the parts, namely,
speci ed in the rubrics under discussion—is meant to be prayed in common, in
such a way that those who either have a missal or have learned Latin can
follow and internalize those antiphons, prayers, and readings if they wish.
Outside of individual higher states of prayer, which in any case go beyond
words, people have a normal human expectation to hear and grasp the words
of the liturgy. After all, it is not, as such, a private ine able ecstasy, but a verbal
sacri ce of praise.
The admiration for St. Pius X is surely well-deserved. It was this Pope who
not only encouraged frequent Communion but also urged Catholics to “pray
the Mass, not merely pray at Mass.”[610] There is more than one way to carry
out this advice, and indeed, as Pius XII famously said, not even the same
person always wants or needs to pray the same way.[611] Some days we look at a
missal, other days we don’t; some days we might pray the Sorrowful Mysteries
and meditate on the Cruci xion during the Canon, other days we might sit
there quietly, watching, listening, silently absorbing the gestures that are a
sublime form of prayer unto themselves. The rubrics of the Church are meant
to guard and foster all these ways of participating, not to dictate only one way
to the laity; and yet, allowing for slight di erences, there must be a correct way
for the priest to o er the Mass if our worship is not to explode into as many
di erent liturgies as there are celebrants. This incoherent pluralism is just
what the Novus Ordo has unleashed upon the Church, and we can see the
fragments of faith and innocence scattered about, past all hope of recollection.
In short, there ought to be an objective stability in how Mass is o ered so
that the faithful know what to expect, know what Holy Mother Church is
sharing with them to nourish their prayer, and may accordingly conform
themselves to the liturgy in order to pray as best they can, in their several
ways.
 23

Should the Postures of the Laity be Regulated,

Legislated, or Revised
Over the years, I have noticed an interesting group of people who are
passionate about the subject of the postures of the laity at the traditional Latin
Mass. They sometimes have the zeal of crusaders warring against a stubborn
enemy, be it indi erence (laity who couldn’t bother to care who’s kneeling or
standing or sitting, when, or why), diversity (varying customs from country to
country or even church to church), or disorderliness (lack of uniformity at the
same Mass). To them, it is very important that a consistent rubric derived
from custom or argument be created and implemented. Editors of missals and
missalettes likewise often provide directives on when to kneel, sit, or stand; the
Baronius missal comes with a nicely-printed insert in two colors, with
columns for High Mass and Low Mass.
One sympathizes with them. We all know about the mayhem that can
occur inside a church when the congregation is made up of a mix of regular
attendees and newbies who are clueless about what’s going on in the TLM. At
various moments, certain decisive individuals kneel decisively, and people look
around sheepishly as if to gure out what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes
you have a visiting European, or perhaps an American who intensively studies
Liturgical Movement brochures, who follows a di erent set of customs; the
confusion multiplies. One can understand, from a purely pragmatic point of
view, why a common rubric might be helpful.
This is the perspective o ered by a friend who sent me the following
letter:

Ever since I started attending the Latin Mass last year, I have
wondered about the physical gestures done by those around me. For
example, making the sign of the cross during the prayer after the
Con teor, during the Gloria, and during the Sanctus, as well as
striking the breast during the consecration. I am not sure if I am
 supposed to be doing all these or not (or even what all of them are—
is there a list somewhere?).

Having grown up in the Novus Ordo, I have been accustomed to

seeing people all doing the same thing, and I had always been told
that it was wrong when certain individuals did their own thing (e.g.,
kneeling during the Agnus Dei), on the basis that “since the Church
doesn’t say we’re supposed to do these gestures, we’re not supposed
to do them.” Am I mistaken in thinking that a gesture of the people
must be approved or instructed to be done by the General
Instruction of the Roman Missal? Would this assumption only apply
to the Mass of Paul VI?

I suppose my inclination toward uniformity in gestures comes from

a desire to have the “say the black, do the red” consistency of the
Tridentine Mass equally present for both the priest and the people.
I want to go to Mass and (to quote one of your books) “know what I
am going to see and hear. The same texts, the same gestures, the
same ethos, the same Catholic religion.”[612] Am I misguided in
desiring that consistency among the congregation?

In one way, I lean toward desiring to perform more gestures as a

layperson. I’m not sure why, but it seems like a more wholly
immersive experience if my arms are symbolizing a truth of the
liturgy in addition to my legs (kneeling and standing). On the other
hand, my desire to “do” more might just be a symptom of the late
Liturgical Movement’s faulty desire to create more opportunities for
“active participation,” as if my standing there in reverent, attentive
participation isn’t enough. I am torn and don’t know what to do, in
both the old and new Mass.

My response was as follows.

You raise a great question about bodily participation. The wonderful thing
about the old Mass is that the laity’s bodily postures and actions were never
regulated. For nearly 2,000 years, and even now, there are no rubrics that
govern what the laity do. Whether they stand, sit, kneel, beat their breasts,
make the sign of the cross—all of this is up to them.
The liturgical reformers, who were often of a bureaucratic and even fascist
mentality,[613] were disturbed about this lack of uniformity, which struck them
as devotionalistic if not dissolute, and succeeded in creating, in the Novus
Ordo, a totally regulated set of actions for the congregation (as you surmised,
the General Instruction pertains only to the modern missal). The problem is,
what they agreed on is rather minimalistic, so that one ends up with the
surprising paradox that the old rite tended, in the customs that grew up
around it, to promote more bodily activity during the Mass, while the new rite
tends to encourage something more cerebral and passive. Elsewhere, I
document the wide variety of actions that are often seen at the TLM (note: as
customs, not as requirements).[614]
I suggest that you relinquish the very modern idea that everyone should be
doing the same thing at the same time. It may be tting to make certain
physical gestures, but they simply can’t be imposed or demanded. It seems
better that books (or occasionally homilies) should explain to the faithful how
their discreet imitation of some of the priest’s gestures can be a way to make
their prayer more holistic, more “whole-person,” and more likely to elicit real
prayer—without any of it being required. Basically, if it helps, do it; if it
doesn’t, no bother.
To my mind there is a judgment call with the Novus Ordo. If you attempt
to do all of the old gestures at it, you will probably become a distraction to
others, and perhaps to yourself as well. If, on the other hand, you’re far back in
the nave with a pew of your own and no one is likely to notice you, why not do
some of the same gestures that one would do during the old Mass? It may be a
form of that “mutual enrichment” Benedict XVI called for. When I was still
attending the Novus Ordo, I found myself making all sorts of “extra-rubrical”
signs of the cross, kneeling when I wasn’t “supposed” to, and so forth. I could
get away with it easily enough because I basically lived in the choir loft!
To this, my intrepid friend responded:

My experience, together with your writings, has convinced me that

active participation is more perfectly present in the TLM. I am,
however, still left with some confusion.
You said that I should relinquish the modern idea that everyone
should be doing the same thing. I can see why this idea is wrong
when it is motivated by bureaucratic and fascist intentions, but I do
not understand what could be wrong with it when it springs from
an authentic desire for liturgical unity among the laity, consistent
with the precise liturgical unity demanded of priests during the
Mass. If it is demanded down to the last detail that the priest have
speci c physical gestures, why is it unreasonable to similarly
demand speci c physical gestures from the laity?

It seems like such a demand would promote the liturgical unity and
consistency you so often extol. I remember you telling me once
about why the rubrics of the traditional Latin Mass were originally
“nailed down”: years of regional liturgical variances had resulted in a
certain anarchy within Catholic worship. To recover liturgical unity
in the face of the Protestants, the Church demanded that priests
adhere to the rubrics she put forth, which were not novel but had
organically developed through the centuries.

The situation with the laity seems similar to me. Even if distraction
by what others are idiosyncratically doing during Mass is the sole
detrimental result of the lack of gestural unity, that lack itself seems
to contradict the marvelously regimented spirit of the old Mass.
Would it not be helpful for the Church to put forth a set of TLM
rubrics that de nitively list the physical gestures she wants the
people to follow, as long as the gestures on the list are the ones that
have organically developed through centuries of tradition?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the shortcomings of a regulated set

of actions created by the liturgical reformers. In order to avoid the
danger of minimalism, doesn’t it seem better to establish a more
thorough and rightly-ordered rubric?

Your advocacy of “extra-rubrical” gestures in the Novus Ordo

surprises me, considering what the General Instruction says in no.
42 (2011 ed., USA): “The gestures and bodily posture of both the
 Priest, the Deacon, and the ministers, and also of the people, must
be conducive to making the entire celebration resplendent with
beauty and noble simplicity, to making clear the true and full
meaning of its di erent parts, and to fostering the participation of
all. Attention must therefore be paid to what is determined by this
General Instruction and by the traditional practice of the Roman
rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of
God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice. A common
bodily posture, to be observed by all those taking part, is a sign of
the unity of the members of the Christian community gathered
together for the Sacred Liturgy, for it expresses the intentions and
spiritual attitude of the participants and also fosters them.”

The part I put into italics sounds reasonable to me; am I barking up

the wrong tree?

In response, I wrote:
There is something indescribably beautiful about people being allowed to
pray in their own way, and peacefully. Now, obviously, some large-scale
postures can be expected of everyone: this is consistent with piety, and who
would complain? We all stand at both Gospels (the Gospel of the day and the
Last Gospel); we all kneel at the Et incarnatus est and during the Canon. There
are some other widespread customs.
But the moment one tries to legislate details such as “everyone makes the
sign of the cross at these eight times, and everyone beats their breasts at these
four times, and everyone should bow their heads at these ve times,” etc., it
becomes extremely di cult to implement and enforce, and also turns into an
occasion for policing and hectoring. It’s too complicated to ask it of everyone
all the time; I don’t even do quite the same thing each time I attend Mass! As
you know, it depends at least in part on how slowly or quickly the priest is
celebrating it and how well one can hear the priest and servers.[615]
To achieve total uniformity, one would have to “put people through their
paces,” like a marching band or a squadron of soldiers. In addition, one would
practically be forced to simplify to a minimalist extent, as has indeed occurred
with Novus Ordo rubrics for the laity. The very thought of it makes me
cringe. I honestly don’t think it’s either possible or desirable to nail down
every last detail for an entire congregation. Obviously it is di erent for the
priest: he is the one o ering the awful and sublime Sacri ce, in persona
Christi capitis, and for him there must be rigid and rigorous rubrics in order
to avoid accidents, excesses, defects, arbitrariness, confusion, scandal, etc.
There are relatively few ministers in the sanctuary compared to the number of
faithful who might be assisting in the nave; and the major ministers spend
years in training, becoming true masters of their holy discipline. For the laity,
it su ces to have broad agreement on major postures and then to enjoy a
broad latitude about everything else.
Even when it comes to the major postures, customs di er from country to
country. Why should the bishops or liturgists of the USA or Canada, the
United Kingdom or Ireland, Poland or Germany, etc., get to be the ones who
decide how the rest of the world will behave?
Jacques and Raïssa Maritain were convinced that Rome was the friend of
liberty in this regard—even as late as the years just before the Second Vatican
Council; and perhaps, indeed, she once was. Here is what they say in a book
published in French in 1959 and in English in 1960:

Against the pseudo-liturgical exaggerations it behooves one to

defend the liberty of souls.... Rome has always been vigilant in
opposing any attempt to regiment souls. She knows that the spirit
of the liturgy requires respect for the Gospel liberty proper to the
New Law. On the contrary, in holding as valid one single form of
piety, that in which each one acts in common with the others, and
in demanding of all that by word and gesture they obey the
liturgical forms with a military precision; in challenging or putting
in question private devotions, nay even the adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament outside of Mass, those who confuse liturgy and pseudo-
liturgy impose on souls rigid frameworks and burden them with
external obligations which are of the same type as the observances
of the Old Law.[616]

So, in a truly Catholic spirit, we should let the French kneel throughout
Mass if that is how they pray best, let the Germans stand a lot instead, and let
the Americans alternate between kneeling and sitting; let the people in some
countries or chapels make all the Mass responses, while others say a few, or
none at all. Catholicity involves both holding the most important things in
common, and having a wide variation and exibility in how things that are not
matters of natural or divine law are conducted. I am reminded of the old
saying, which is no less true for being vague and overused: In necessariis
unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas—in necessary matters, unity; in
doubtful matters, liberty; in everything, charity. I think one would be
extremely hard-pressed to argue successfully that a regulated uniformity of lay
postures and gestures during Mass is something essential to our fruitful
participation in the liturgy. As Fiedrowicz writes:

In typical Catholic vastness, a great variety of individual possibilities

for participation accompany the rubrical strictness of the rite that
do not need to be regulated in any way, but should be respected.
Even being silently present and merely watching do not necessarily
indicate a lack of interior involvement. The very act of listening, be
it with the ears or with the heart, is assuredly a form of active
participation.[617]

I would hazard to guess that most traditional Catholics prefer it when

everyone is doing the same things in regard to the major actions of standing,
sitting, and kneeling, as it removes occasions of confusion and distraction and
assists in prayerful engagement with the liturgy. But this much has become
clear to me from my travels: whenever I am somewhere unfamiliar, I don’t sit
in the front row but rather towards the back, and, keeping my wits about me, I
look at what the majority are doing and follow the local custom, as St.
Augustine recommended long ago in his Letter 54 to Januarius. Few things are
worse than the stranger who acts like an angel sent by God to correct
singlehandedly the waywardness of backwater yokels. If it matters much to you
to keep your own postures, that’s an equally good reason to sit far in the back—
where you won’t be a bother to the rest.[618]
 24

The Liturgy as a Temple

Toward the end of His life on Earth, Our Lord Jesus Christ was walking one
day through the temple in Jerusalem—a vast structure of noble design, made
by human hands, fashioned by Israelites who dared to dream that this was
“God’s house” the way that Herod’s palace was Herod’s house. The fact that
the rst temple built under Solomon had been razed to the ground by the
Babylonian army does not seem to have convinced the children of the
covenant that their dream was doomed to failure.

And as He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples said to
Him: “Master, behold what manner of stones and what buildings
are here!” And Jesus answering, said to him: “Seest thou all these
great buildings? There shall not be left a stone upon a stone, that
shall not be thrown down.” (Mk 13:1–2)

The temple was only ever meant to be a temporary sign of God’s

indwelling in Israel—a union destined to be ful lled in the Word made esh,
the temple not made by human hands, where God and man are one,
indissolubly and forever. The body of Christ is the tabernacle of the Most
High, the place where His glory dwelleth. Hence, in the plan of Divine
Providence, the Romans in A.D. 70 destroyed the temple made by human
hands, clearing the way for the worldwide temple of the Mystical Body of
Christ.
This is not to say that the Christian religion is disembodied, as a certain
spiritualistic strain in Christianity, with a strong tendency towards
iconoclasm, has been tempted to believe, especially in the eighth, sixteenth,
and twentieth centuries. On the contrary, we have a new and better temple,
the Body of Christ, which—or rather Who—is really, truly, substantially
present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, housed in every tabernacle
of the world.
 Each Catholic church is a place in which “the whole fullness of deity dwells
bodily” (Col 2:9), making even the humblest chapel greater, worthier, and more
glorious than the rst temple of Solomon or the second temple of Zerubbabel,
expanded by Herod. What Our Lord says about the lilies of the eld could be
applied to Catholic churches: “I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his
glory was arrayed as one of these” (Mt 6:29)—for “behold, a greater than
Solomon is here” (Mt 12:42).
It is tting, then—indeed, more than tting, required by the moral virtue
of religion—that our churches be designed and decorated in such a way that
they point unambiguously to and boldly proclaim the temple that is Jesus
Christ Himself, inseparable from the temple of His Mystical Body, the
Catholic Church.[619] In this way, a church imitates and continues the mission
of the forerunner who cried out: “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold Him who
taketh away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29).
The sacred liturgy, too, should point to Christ and proclaim Him. As the
opus Dei or work of God, as an action primarily from God and for Him, it
should share in His own attributes as He has revealed them to us in the
history of salvation, and present them to us for our internalization. It should
appear to be what He Himself is: ancient of days, stable, indestructible,
permanent, strong, holy, transcendent, mysterious, at times bewildering.
Above all, it must not seem to be “made by human hands”—that is, a merely
human, temporal, this-worldly, secular project—for we would rightly hold it in
contempt, and it would have to su er the same fate as the Solomonic and
Herodian temples. Rather, we could place on the lips of the liturgy, as a living
reality fashioned by a divine hand in the womb of the Church, the words of
the psalmist:

Thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in

my mother’s womb....My frame was not hidden from thee, when I
was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the
earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were
written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when
as yet there was none of them. (Ps 139:13, 15–16 RSV)

How di erent, shockingly so, is the Novus Ordo (Seclorum, one is

tempted to add), where the liturgy is, and displays itself as, the work of human
hands, revamped according to modern ideas, subject to human manipulation,
in a cacophony of vulgar tongues, forming ever new cultural compounds like
an unstable element!

And some saying of the temple that it was adorned with goodly
stones and gifts, He said: “These things which you see, the days will
come in which there shall not be left a stone upon a stone that shall
not be thrown down.” (Lk 21:5–6)

In reading these haunting words, how can we not be reminded of the

reformed liturgical rites, which were built up by committees of men, experts
with owing phylacteries of scholarship, who were adorning (as they saw it)
the liturgy with “goodly stones and gifts” specially conceived for Modern
Man? These “great buildings,” all of them, will be thrown down, for they are
not the temple formed over the ages by the Holy Ghost in the womb of Holy
Mother Church, where the traditional liturgical rites in all their wonderful
extravagance were knit together, intricately wrought, fashioned in secret.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mt 12:25). The new liturgy is
a house divided against itself: it is no longer the Roman rite organically
developed over many centuries, but a new fabrication made up of bits and
pieces of antiquity and modernity. It is like the vision interpreted by the
Prophet Daniel:

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold there was as it were a great statue:
this statue, which was great and high, tall of stature, stood before
thee, and the look thereof was terrible. The head of this statue was
of ne gold, but the breast and the arms [were] of silver, and the
belly and the thighs of brass: and the legs of iron, the feet part of
iron and part of clay. (Dan 2:31–33)

Even so is the new liturgy, an imposing work of human hands that is

fatally awed by its lack of unity, integrity, consistency, and cohesion. It is not
the one Roman rite of the ages, but a voluntaristic product of hundreds of
“experts” working in tandem on little committees, murdering to dissect. The
only “unity” their product enjoys is the positivistic approval of Paul VI, which
is incapable of fusing the statue into one substance and breathing into it the
breath of life.
A compilation known as The Lives of the Desert Fathers tells us about a
certain John the Hermit:

His only food was the Communion which the priest brought him
on Sundays. His rule of life permitted nothing else. Now one day
Satan assumed the form of the priest and went to him earlier than
usual, pretending that he wanted to give him Communion. The
blessed John, realizing who it was, said to him: “O father of all
subtlety and all mischief, enemy of all righteousness, will you not
cease to deceive the souls of Christians, but you dare to attack the
Mysteries themselves?”[620]

This, on a massive scale, is what the father of all subtlety and all mischief,
enemy of all righteousness, has dared to do in our times: he has attacked, at
their root and in all their branches, the Mysteries of our salvation. He has
done so by inducing men to corrupt the liturgical rites of all the sacraments
and sacramentals, and the Divine O ce, and then to cling to these as if they
were better than the visible image of the invisible God we had received from
our forefathers. He has sown doubts, errors, and confusion in dogma and
morals, nding many willing accomplices among those who proudly boast of
the superiority of modern times, of modern ways of thinking and acting.
We know what happened to the great statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:

Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without
hands: and it struck the statue upon the feet thereof that were of
iron and of clay, and broke them in pieces. Then was the iron, the
clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and
became like the cha of a summer’s threshing oor, and they were
carried away by the wind: and there was no place found for them:
but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain, and
lled the whole earth. (Dan 2:34–35)

Like all symbolic visions, this one admits of multiple ful llments and
applications. Daniel interpreted it in regard to a succession of kingdoms,
culminating in a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Can it say something
further to us today?
The stone that strikes the great fabrication of human ingenuity is “cut out
of a mountain without hands.” The giant and terrifying monolith towering
over us, a product of feverish squadrons of laborers, is shattered by a little
stone that owes its existence to a supernatural sculptor. This stone grows to
become a great mountain that lls the whole Earth.
Does this not sound like the Catholic traditionalist movement? It began
small, but it is growing, and its growth, being of the Holy Ghost, cannot be
thwarted. It loves and defends and promotes not the “banal on-the-spot
fabrication” of committees, but the accumulated and inherited treasury of the
ages, the worthy vessel of the Incarnate Word, the singing and silent witness
of the glory of God. This movement will become a great mountain that lls
the whole Earth, as the experiment in monumental statuary falls to pieces,
decade after decade.
To adapt an ancient liturgical text from the Easter Vigil, we could cry out:
“O happy fault, that preserved for us so great a liturgy!” The radicalized
Liturgical Movement in the middle of the twentieth century was hell-bent on
tinkering with the Roman liturgy, slowly denaturing and disintegrating it,
especially from 1948 onward. Should we not, as counterintuitive as it sounds,
be grateful that the proponents of change went as far as they did? Their hubris
made them eventually turn away from the historic Roman rite and create a
new rite to replace it; but this meant the abandoned Roman rite was left more
or less intact, and returning to it is far simpler than if it had continued to be
endlessly tinkered with. The outrageous magnitude of the liturgical revolution
was permitted by Divine Providence in order to make it possible to return to
the preceding tradition in full, as faithful clergy and laity over time come to
see the corruption and the reasons for repudiating all of it—including the
antiquarian simpli cations and dis gurations introduced during the 1950s
under Pius XII, who provided the opening that Paul VI needed. Around the
world, traditionalists are awakening to the full magnitude of the harm that
was wrought. Ever more clearly, they see the only way forward: total adherence
to the Roman rite in its Tridentine form, prior to the arrogant meddling of
myopic experts.
The Holy Sacri ce of the Mass in its potent purity, and the traditional
liturgy in general, exorcises the spirit of modernism out of the Church.
Nothing is more urgently needed than this exorcism—and it is already
happening, wherever tradition has established a beachhead on the enemy’s
territory.
 Epilogue
The sacramental sacri ce accomplished by the double consecration is always
pleasing to God in itself. To the extent, however, that the new rite fails to
respect the gifts of tradition that Our Lord Himself inspired in His Church
and fails, moreover, to give Him, here and now, the honor and reverence due
to Him in our external worship, to just that extent is it displeasing to the same
Lord of history and of holiness, and should not continue in existence. The
innovations and antiquarianisms that dominate the modern rite of Paul VI
cannot but be harmful to the Church’s identity, coherence, and mission. There
is no future for a liturgy that has severed its ties to the past, its bond to the
Faith of every generation, unfolding across the ages. The ersatz lex orandi is
defective in its texts, rubrics, and ceremonies; it fails to embody adequately and
communicate clearly the full lex credendi of the Catholic Church.[621] This is
an objective wound in the Body of Christ and cannot be papered over with
charitable intentions or surreptitious improvements.
While I sympathize with a priest who wishes to do his utmost to o er the
Novus Ordo as best he can, with the right intention and spirit, it is hard to
nd objective historical or theological grounds for supporting that approach
as a formal policy or principled project, which is what I take the phrase
“reform of the reform” or even “doing the Novus Ordo well” to mean: a way of
reconnecting the Novus Ordo to the organically developed liturgical tradition
of the West embodied in the Vetus Ordo—a tradition from which it departed
in toto by the simple fact that everything was submitted to the scrutiny of the
experts and ltered through their ideological system (what a friend calls “the
Great Unfreeze”). By dint of this process, which is forever baked into its
existence, whatever remains is thoroughly modern, even the elements that
come from the past.[622] If the liturgy is not treated as a gift of tradition that
we humbly receive, it becomes a product we make, a thing we validate and give
rights to—which we could just as easily toss aside. It seems to me that this is
part of the reason why some clergy, such as Fr. Bryan Houghton and Fr.
Roger-Thomas Calmel, said from the rst moment that they could not, in
good conscience, o er the Novus Ordo. They were spiritually sensitive, and
their judgment was correct, against the backdrop of their intimate experience
of the traditional rite.
Do I think that a priest sins by saying the modern rite? No, if in his mind
and heart he considers it to be a worthy and acceptable rite for o ering the
always-worthy sacri ce of the Cross. I used to consider it to be such, as one
may nd in many articles of mine from years past; but my shift in thought and
the reasons for it have been articulated no less clearly.[623]
What I have written above may sound like an exaggeration, a failure to
make various distinctions. I assure you: as a Thomist, I am capable of making
distinctions till the cows come home. However, distinctions are not magic;
they cannot overcome certain kinds of fundamental di culties. I don’t agree
with the opinion that the Church may never err in matters of universal
discipline; if her rulers unmoor themselves from traditional principles and
practices, they are bound to enforce on the people something that will
occasion harm and damage, even if it is, strictly speaking, free of heresy.
Deducing an infallible soundness of universal discipline from the dogma of
papal infallibility requires a number of assumptions and a lot of whistling in
the dark; a negation of it does not threaten indefectibility.[624] One assumption
in particular deserves to be rejected, namely, that liturgy is merely a matter of
changeable discipline over which popes have complete disposal. To the extent
that any pope has spoken or acted as if he has absolute power over cumulative
tradition, he is undermining the nature of his own o ce.[625]
I believe a great deal of messiness is compatible with the human
governance and divine support of the Church, provided that access to the
means of salvation (especially sacramental grace) remains available to those
who seek it out and that the tradition of the Church continues to endure
somewhere, anywhere, without deformation. There is no question that the
tradition does endure, not just here or there, but in many places, in many
minds and hearts. Even if the barque of Peter has been overtaken by pirates,
ransacked, and crippled, it will not sink to the bottom and perish. The ship
will need a complete change in captaincy and crew before there is any real
hope of the liturgy being restored to its immemorial and venerable form, in
accord with the sovereign law of Divine Providence. Lest anyone object that
such a change is unrealistic, that the old rite will never be restored, it is well to
remember that this kind of defeatism is not what drives salvation history,
which is lled with twists and turns not even the most imaginative human
author could concoct. Thankfully, a Divine Captain is at the helm, which
should ll us with undying hope.
It can hardly be surprising that there will be enormous di erences of
opinion on how to interpret the strange liturgical situation into which
churchmen of the twentieth century have maneuvered the Bride of Christ on
earth. I have no desire to attack the good intentions of a priest who seeks to
improve his local parish’s liturgical life. Especially since Traditionis Custodes,
tradition-loving priests have been put in an almost impossible situation: what
is most precious and inspiring to them, the celebration of the old rite, has
been rudely withdrawn; they have little guidance and even less support when it
comes to the restoration of the sacred. So they make shift; they do what they
can, according to their own lights, to replicate this or that aspect of liturgical
tradition, as far as it can be accommodated or tolerated. Often they do so for
the sake of their own sanity, for their peace of soul. All this is undoubtedly
true. Nevertheless, I have argued that taking this path of an attempted sanatio
and elevatio of the modern rite of Paul VI is inherently problematic,
counterproductive, and even spiritually dangerous, and that it must not be
seen as “the way forward” or even as “a good path,” simply speaking. It is an
approach riven with violent internal contradictions, one that will only
perpetuate the deepest aws in the new rite and in the mentality that forced it
upon us.
What, then, is a devout, tradition-loving priest to do? I have given a lot of
attention to this question in my books True Obedience and Bound by Truth,
but the short answer is: a priest of Jesus Christ, to be most fully conformed to
the Eternal High Priest from whose wounded and glori ed humanity the
sacred liturgy of the Church streams forth across all centuries of the Church,
should commit himself in a principled way to the exclusive celebration of the
traditional rites of the Church, nding a way to do so even when it means
struggle, displacement, or ostracization. He should not imagine that he can
turn the Novus Ordo into the Roman rite, that is, into a legitimate and
authentic rite of the Catholic Church, for this is altogether impossible. There
is no incremental way to get from the one to the other. Instead, the priest
must take up a traditional Catholic rite—it could be the Roman rite, the
Dominican use, the Sarum use, etc., depending on circumstances—and commit
himself to providing it for the faithful. As Martin Mosebach succinctly puts it:
 The liturgy IS the Church—every Mass celebrated in the traditional
spirit is immeasurably more important than every word of every
pope. It is the red thread that must be drawn through the glory and
misery of Church history; where it continues, phases of arbitrary
papal rule will become footnotes of history.[626]

The faithful, for their part, must stand fast and truly be what they are called:
faithful to all that the Catholic religion is and does.
What might this look like in practice? I cannot outline every possible
scenario, but we could envision the following. A diocesan priest goes to his
bishop and says, with all simplicity: “I no longer celebrate the Novus Ordo; I
just can’t do it anymore in good conscience. I celebrate only the traditional
Roman rite. I understand if you have no place for me, but I hope that you will
nd pastoral work that I can do, as I am eager to continue serving.” An
understanding or at least a exible bishop may react by assigning this priest to
hospital or prison work, letting him go to a Carmelite convent as a chaplain,
or sending him to a remote country parish attended by only a small number of
people. A less friendly (not to say heartless) bishop might simply “cancel” him
on the spot, saying: “If that’s your settled view, then I have no work for you to
do, and you are discharged from all responsibilities, with your salary cut in
half.” Such a priest might then take steps to incardinate into another
friendlier diocese; petition to join the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter or other
institute or community, if they will have him; or clandestinely minister to
underground communities of traditional faithful. Thanks to Pope Francis,
Cardinal Roche, Archbishop Viola, and the middle managers who implement
their vicious policies, such underground communities exist in well-established
networks and are prepared to be very generous in nancial and personal
support for clergy who keep tradition alive in our midst.
Let’s not forget, too, that with the ever-growing number of deaths and
retirements among the clergy, soon any bishop who wants to sta a decent
number of parishes will be compelled to use every priest he can nd; and so, if
more priests were more resolute and absolute in their commitment to
tradition, more bishops would be forced to accommodate them. A bishop who
still believes the Catholic faith and cares for the spiritual good of his ock—I
realize this may be a minority, even a rather small minority at this point—will
not fail to assign the TLM-exclusive members of his presbyterate to parishes,
chapels, oratories, and the like. There is strength in numbers and,
paradoxically, in fewness of numbers; there is strength equally in an
uncompromising black-and-white stance, where one does not leave the door
open by a crack (“I prefer the TLM but I’m willing to do the Novus Ordo”) but
closes it rmly: “I celebrate exclusively the TLM.”
In short, a priest should make the right decision and let Divine Providence
decide what further use to make of him, rather than feeling he should
continually repeat decisions that, in his heart of hearts, he knows to be
compromises or capitulations concerning what is most intimate and
important, what is most priestly and most divine. These are so many detours
to a dead end. What is needed now is simplicity, clarity, consistency, courage,
and zeal. Such qualities will mark out the priests who have lent themselves
wholeheartedly to the Lord’s work of purifying and restoring His Church,
which has fallen into ruins. May His Providence grant that there be more and
more such priests as time goes on.
In the state where I grew up, New Jersey, there are three exclusively TLM
chapels I have often visited as an adult. All three began as independent chapels
in the evil days of the immediate post-council, when I was just an infant. The
priest in charge of each had simply said, “I am not going to stop o ering the
traditional Mass and sacraments for my ock. It would be wrong to do so.” Of
course, all the usual penalties were thrown at them, but they persevered. In
time, the priests died and the people were left with a conundrum. The stories
are complicated but we can simplify by saying that, in each case, the chapel was
regularized with the diocese in which it stood: the Our Lady of Fatima
chapel in Pequannock was entrusted to the FSSP (and it was there that my
wife, a convert, made her rst confession and her rst Holy Communion);
the Mater Ecclesiae chapel in the town of Berlin was erected as a diocesan
parish, one of the few TLM-only parishes in the country run by a diocesan
priest (and it was there that my wife and I were married in 1998, in a
Tridentine High Mass on the feast of St. John); the St. Anthony of Padua
Oratory in West Orange was entrusted to the care of the Institute of Christ
the King (and it was there that a priest, a friend of mine, o ered a Requiem
Mass for my mother’s soul shortly after she died). All three of these places, for
obvious reasons, have a special place in my heart and in my wife’s heart. All
three chapels began in acts of overt “disobedience” to papal and episcopal
tyranny; all three are ourishing today, “in full communion with the local
bishop,” as the saying goes. The Lord does indeed write straight with crooked
lines. None of them would exist but for the stalwart priests who established
them and the unyielding faithful who built them up in their love for the
unchanging Catholic faith and for the venerable Roman rite that perfectly
expresses it.
Without heroic individuals among the clergy and the laity who stood up
for what they knew to be right, in spite of any and every command,
prohibition, threat, or penalty, there would not be a traditional movement
today. Today’s tradition-loving faithful are often ignorant of the inspiring and
harrowing stories from the years after the Council, and therefore often do not
understand the determination and wisdom necessary to resist ecclesiastical
self-destruction whenever it ares up, like a benign tumor that turns
malignant again. I highly recommend becoming familiar with this history, for
it is not only inspiring but instructive. Without such loyal resistance, our Mass
and much else in our Roman tradition would long ago have been torn from us
forever, thrust down the memory hole and utterly forgotten. That is what the
architects of reform intended, as I recalled in Part I, and it looked for a time as
if they might succeed. The Fraternity of St. Peter and the Institute of the
Good Shepherd, to take two major examples, simply would not exist without
Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X. Summorum
Ponti cum was, in part, the fruit of Joseph Ratzinger’s re ections on the sad
state of a airs in which faithful Catholics who love the faith and love the
liturgy were treated worse than sorted and recycled garbage.
Underground chapels and independent chapels will be the temporary
placeholders, the well-planted seeds, of future parishes run by the so-called
“Ecclesia Dei communities” or by diocesan priests, once a future pope restores
something like the policy of Summorum Ponti cum (or an even better policy).
Of this we may be con dent. Just as in the 1970s it was necessary for some
priests to work outside the canons and norms when the Church structures
were dominated by modernists dismantling the Faith, so too in our era it will
be necessary for some priests to work outside the canons and norms precisely
with a view to preserving and handing on the Faith in its fullness, protecting
the ock from preying wolves. In God’s good time, the Church structures as
Christ willed them will be replenished by the in ux and participation of those
who, in the time of crisis, refused to collude with the forces of dissolution and
desacralization. It is more important to keep the great liturgical tradition alive
than to fall into line with irrational ecclesial diktats or to preserve a self-
destructive “communion” with hierarchs who spurn tradition and the
common good.
We are again at a crossroads, just as Archbishop Lefebvre was in the early
1970s;[627] and again, the same boldness and conviction will be needed.
Obviously, I advocate working with the Church’s pastors—to the extent that
they are willing to be worked with, reasonably and charitably—and thus I
believe that, wherever bishops still care about their ocks, the best way
forward is to bring into a diocese the Ecclesia Dei institutes, as long as they
have not been forced by the Vatican to undergo “aggiornamento.” At this
moment in time, both the Vatican and most bishops are ready to hurl
traditional Catholics under the bus, and run over them backwards and
forwards. Faced with such persecution, the true lover of the fullness of
Catholic tradition does not simply surrender and abandon the fort to its
enemies. He resists, in a calm and principled manner. In such grim
circumstances, independent and underground chapels will arise of necessity—
and they should. I see disobedience, irregularity, and independence as last
resorts; but I also do not condemn them, as long as the individuals involved
understand clearly that their stance is and must be temporary, that is, it will
last only until better episcopal counsels prevail and regularization becomes
possible with the diocese, under the local bishop.
I therefore condemn and have no truck with sedevacantism in any of its
varieties. I wish to be as clear as possible: it is one thing to work outside legal
structures in a case of necessity, and quite another to reject the visible
structures of the Church and its rulers. The independent priests I am speaking
of here and encouraging to carry out their pastoral work—it is better, perhaps,
to call them priests who have been forced into an independent situation
against their will—are still praying for the pope and the local bishop in the
Canon of the Mass. They have been forced out of the institutional structures,
but their intention is always to remain within them and united to the one and
only Church established by Jesus Christ. A sign that this is their true belief is
that they are always ready to be canonically regularized by those who will not
persecute them for being Catholics.
I would even say—and I am aware of independent and underground priests
who are already in the habit of doing this—that once a year the priest de facto
in charge of a community should send a courtesy letter to the local bishop,
telling him that the community is praying for him and for the pope every day
in the Mass and that he is prepared to meet with the bishop to discuss an
amicable arrangement whereby the chapel may be incorporated into the
diocese as a parish, an oratory, a shrine, or what have you. Naturally, nine out
of ten times this letter will either be ignored or receive a reply to the e ect of,
“We don’t recognize you, we don’t want you, go away and stop bothering us.”
Still, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? “The Lord seeth not as man seeth;
for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the
heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
Hardly a day goes by when one does not hear the objection: “Obedience is
the surest way to sanctity, as is demonstrated by the Saints time and again. We
have no other choice than to trust Holy Mother Church. A person cannot
separate himself from the pope and the magisterium without risking danger in
his personal life, or even risking his salvation.” I would reply: Fair enough; this
is true as long as it really is Holy Mother Church at work, and not renegade
churchmen; as long as the pope is teaching and practicing the Faith; as long as
the Magisterium is in fact coherent with perennial doctrine and sound
discipline. A failure to make distinctions like these is a failure to exercise both
the faculty of reason and the gift of faith.[628] Let’s not forget that the
“obedience above all things” mentality has been a major instrument in the
dissolution of Catholic tradition and the sex-abuse crisis.
I am someone who tries to see things realistically and sympathetically
from all points of view, without committing myself so de nitively to one
course of action that I rule out every other defensible opinion or prudential
avenue. I view the diocesan TLMs, the SSPX, the non-sede independents, and
the Ecclesia Dei communities as being like the Army, the Navy, the Air Force,
and the Marines. All are needed to win through to victory. The rupture with
Catholic tradition after Vatican II is a metaphysical wound in the Church that
must be healed if the Church is ever to ourish again. Its loss is not merely
something to be regretted as unfortunate, like a church felled by earthquake, a
manuscript lost by negligence, or a diocese rattled by bankruptcy. The loss of
traditional Catholicism is a profound and grievous loss for the spiritual lives of
all the faithful, with the gravest consequences for the living out of the Faith in
the modern world and for the transmission of this inestimable gift to future
generations. Therefore, I regard the retention of the TLM as a life-and-death
matter, as something immeasurably more important than obedience to those
who would crush it or who would treat the faithful attached to it as
untouchables and outcasts.
Just as a homeowner may use lethal force against an intruder breaking in,
though he may not do so in any ordinary situation, so I believe that there are
times when bold steps need to be taken against those who are violating our
fundamental rights and duties as Catholics. Everyone who loves the Church’s
traditional rites must agree with this perspective to one degree or another—
why else would we bother having any attachment to an old rite that Pope Paul
VI made very clear should be discontinued? The traditionalist movement exists
because it disagrees, and disagrees strongly, with the prudential judgments of
several popes in a row.[629]
Legal positivism is no way to live a coherent Catholic life, since it would
mean putting on and taking o our beliefs and practices like cheap clothing,
depending on which drill sergeant happens to be in charge. No sane person
had ever thought or acted that way prior to Vatican II, but now it seems to be
taken as a virtue. Not only is it no virtue, it is the vice of inconstancy—a form
of psychological promiscuity, contempt for truth, negation of life-experience,
an unseriousness about spiritual things and a super ciality of life that is worse
than outright de ance (cf. Rev 3:15–16), an insult to one’s ancestors, and a
refusal of one’s patrimony. In a word: inhuman and unchristian, and thus,
o ensive to God.
Above all, let us not underestimate the sinfulness of what this pope, his
curia, and his toadies in the hierarchy are doing as they seek to suppress the
most venerable rite of Christendom and, in so doing, injure the faithful
legitimately attached to it. The pope is the servus servorum Dei, the servant of
the servants of God: his role is to preserve and protect the tradition he has
received and to feed the ock in abundant pastures. Instead, this pope and his
henchmen have uttered the cry Non serviam: I will not serve the orthodox
Faith, I will not serve sound Catholic morality, I will not serve Catholic
tradition, I will not wash the feet of the disciples of Christ. Therefore, the
bishops who follow the lead of Francis and his court make this Non
serviam their own; and the priests who follow these bishops do the same. As
obedience cascades down through the chain of command, so too does
disobedience. Of this hated and hateful disobedience, we wish to be absolutely
free and uncontaminated, as, with all the saints and angels, we yield our
willing obedience to Christ, to His truth, to His divine worship handed down
across the millennia.
The stakes are high, and that is why it is not a time for niceties,
compromises, or shoulder shrugs, but a time for integrity, honor, and
fortitude. Ours is a dire situation, but faith, zeal, and perseverance will pay o
in the long run, as it did for our forefathers in the traditional movement. To
me, a poignant sign of the care of Divine Providence is the return of growing
numbers of Catholics to the use of just those liturgical books that were placed
on the butcher’s block over half a century ago, Catholics who are now praying
the very prayers that were canceled out and pasted over. The Benedictines have
a motto: Succisa virescit, “hewn down, it ourishes anew”—itself a variation on
one of the oldest sayings of all: sanguis martyrum semen christianorum, “the
blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.” There may well be a special
fruitfulness in the blood of witness that, over the centuries, so many priests
and faithful have shed, literally or metaphorically, as their Catholic worship
was attacked by iconoclasm, be it of the imperial Byzantine, Protestant, or
Modernist variety.
The Catholic churches that manage to stay open in the coming decades—as
opposed to the vast number of buildings that will either be shut down as the
mainstream Church collapses into its predicted demographic sinkhole or be
burned down by progressivist radicals—these open churches will sooner or
later get the Mass of the Ages back. The movement to recover and restore
Catholic worship cannot be eradicated. That has been tried, and the attempt
failed. Tradition can be cut down by the blades of persecution or wither for
lack of support, but deep in the soil its roots abide, full of vigor. Watered by
blood and coaxed by the light of grace, new growth will come taller and
stronger. Succisa virescit.
 APPENDIX I

Are We Justi ed in Calling Paul VI's Rite the "Novus

Ordo"?
Those who spend time in liturgical discussions are guaranteed to encounter at
some point the following objection: “You shouldn’t be speaking of the ‘Novus
Ordo’ or the ‘Novus Ordo Mass.’ This isn’t what it’s called. That’s a
traditionalist label—a way of attacking the reformed missal of Pope St. Paul
VI,” etc.
This matter deserves a closer look.
While “Novus Ordo [Missæ]” is not a typical way in which the Vatican
itself, post-1969, has preferred to denominate the Order of Mass created by
the Consilium and promulgated by Paul VI on April 3, 1969, it is nevertheless a
phrase found in a couple of o cial documents and does not seem to have
ru ed feathers until later on.
The rst thing to establish is that Paul VI constantly attached the word
“new” to his ongoing liturgical reforms of the 1960s. For example, in his
general audience of March 7, 1965, he spoke of a “new order [of worship],” a
“new scheme of things,” “new liturgical books,” “new form,” “new liturgy,”
“new habit,” and “liturgical innovation”—and all this, about changes far less
drastic than those he would promulgate four years later. A fortiori, the
application of novus to the missal of 1969 is entirely justi ed on the basis of its
own promulgator’s habits of speech.
Let us not forget that many things people today would assume must have
entered with the Novus Ordo in 1969 were already around prior to it, as the
traditional liturgy was progressively dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s: the
priest praying versus populum instead of ad orientem, a deviation endorsed in
Pius XII’s revamped Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil services;[630] having the
people say the Lord’s Prayer at the liturgy together with the priest, something
never done in the Roman tradition prior to Pius XII’s Good Friday service;
praying the Mass in the vernacular, which came in here and there
experimentally; dropping the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last
Gospel, an amputation executed in 1965; bringing in new ad experimentum
lectionaries; the admission of multiple Eucharistic Prayers; the discarding of
some liturgical vestments; and so forth.
Coming nearer to our topic: in the general audience of November 19, 1969,
which attempted to explain why a new missal was to be imposed, Paul VI—this
time with much greater justice—referred to “a new rite of Mass” (four times),
“a new spirit,” “new directions,” “new rules,” “innovation.” In the general
audience one week later, he mentioned “the liturgical innovation of the new
rite of the Mass” and mentioned the “new rite” seven times; he used words like
“new,” “newness,” “renewal,” “innovation,” “novelty,” a total of eighteen times. I
comment in detail on these two general audiences in chapter 4 of my book,
The Once and Future Roman Rite. As if to drive home the point, the words
“Novus Ordo Missæ” were stamped on the front cover of the original edition.
Interestingly, the phrase “Novus Ordo Missæ” was used, if I am counting
correctly, eighteen times in the famous Short Critical Study of the New Order
of Mass of September 25, 1969, submitted to Paul VI with the signatures of
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, one of the highest ranking Vatican prelates (in
spite of the hatred directed at him by the anti-Roman faction at the Council)
and long-time head of the Holy O ce, and Cardinal Antonio Bacci, one of the
greatest Latinists of modern times.[631] This tract employs the expression as if
it is obvious, familiar, and unobjectionable, and to my knowledge no one at the
time disputed the appropriateness of it, even though much else in the critical
study was the subject of hot debate.
As far as I am aware, the rst time the expression “Novus Ordo Missæ”
shows up in a papal magisterial document is in an address delivered by Paul VI
at a consistory for the appointment of twenty cardinals on May 24, 1976.[632] In
this address he uses the expression novus Ordo [Missæ]: usus novi Ordinis
Missæ and novus Ordo promulgatus est (“the use of the new Order of Mass”;
“the new Order has been promulgated”).[633]
In April of 2010, the O ce for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme
Ponti placed a short document on the Vatican website entitled “The Priest in
the Concluding Rites of the Mass.” Although the text is redolent of Benedict
XVI and the reign of his MC Guido Marini, and although it refers plentifully
to “ordinary” and “extraordinary” forms, it remained on the Vatican website
long into the reign of Francis; it was nally removed not long ago.[634] This
document refers to the “Novus Ordo” (tout court) and the “Vetus” [Ordo],
albeit using scare quotes for the latter term.
All of the foregoing was known to me prior to discovering an article at
Pray Tell by Max Johnson dated January 14, 2010: “From Where Comes ‘Novus
Ordo’?” (Would that Pray Tell had opted for the more eloquent title “Whence
Cometh ‘Novus Ordo’?,” but the spirit of Comme le Prévoit has long prevailed
in those quarters.) As one would expect, the article complains that the phrase
has become weaponized by traditionalists into a “title” for the Mass instead of
being a simple passing description, like saying “new hymnal” or “shiny new
book,” that has no substantive (theological) meaning. This view would seem to
be di cult to sustain in light of Paul VI’s veritable paean to innovation in the
1969 audiences mentioned above and the Vatican’s use of the term as late as
2010. The changes made to the Mass are not merely incidental or super cial,
like a new typeface or a new binding for a missal, but cut into the bone and
marrow of the rite.
The conclusion I reach is, understandably, quite di erent from Pray Tell’s.
I think it is fair to call the Consilium’s fabrication “novus,” which means both
novel and strange. Whatever it is, it is most de nitely not the Roman rite, as I
demonstrate on multiple grounds in The Once and Future Roman Rite. The
relentless traditionalist critique has indeed made of “Novus Ordo [Missæ]” a
pejorative term—and that is no worse than it deserves.
 APPENDIX 2

Discovering the Latin Mass Brings Lots of Questions

Author’s note: the following was a real correspondence that took place mostly
in the year 2022. Its themes closely track those of this entire book. My
correspondent describes in deeply insightful ways her discovery and
conversion to traditional worship. I believe readers will bene t from this
personal, existential witness.
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
My family and I are attending the Latin Mass more and more often these
days, and nding it exerts, to our surprise, a strong pull. I say to our surprise,
because for such a long time we were die-hard devotees of the reverent Novus
Ordo that has long been available to us and where all our friends are. But the
con dence that once came easily is now wavering.
I’m writing to you to ask about a possible doctrinal basis for what I’m
experiencing in the TLM in contrast to the new rite. I’ve been attending the
TLM nearly every morning for the past week. It feels throughout the Mass as
though a steady and continual stream of grace or assimilation to Christ is
pouring forth. I don’t experience this in the Novus Ordo, which for a long
time has felt dry and almost burdensome to me, though I attended the Novus
Ordo daily and had always sought out the most reverent expressions thereof.
After the TLM, I feel as though I’m in a heightened state of contemplation
which remains until I get up to leave. Again, this rarely happened with the
Novus Ordo, and when it did, it didn’t occur in the same expansive and
e ortless way. Every few years, God seems to surprise me in a manner that
renovates my entire outlook. This feels like such an occasion. I’m full of
wonder and in search of a doctrinal basis for what I’m experiencing.
Might it have to do with the TLM being a more objective rite, a fuller
expression of Christ’s form, as you discuss in Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic
Birthright? I’m much intrigued by your discussions of the TLM’s objectivity as
it pertains to Christ’s form communicated in and through the Mass. I would
love recommendations for written analysis of how the heightened objectivity
of the TLM might relate to Aquinas’s understanding of form and our
conformity to Christ that occurs through grace and the sacraments.
 I should say that I’m not at this point following the speci c prayers of the
TLM in a missal, though I know generally the order of what is occurring.

With gratitude,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

Your experience is exactly mine and that of so many others: the grace of
contemplation is given more easily in this rite. I think there are a lot of
reasons. The “sonic iconostasis” is one of them. The role of the Latin sacral
language cannot be overstated. More subtly, the “sacerdotalism” of the old rite
—its concentration in and on the person of the priest o ering Mass—is not
only superlatively bene cial to the priest, but paradoxically augmentative for
the laity’s experience. In a more obvious way, the spaciousness and silence of
the rite allow “time to absorb the mysteries.”[635]
The position of the priest ad orientem is incalculably helpful in orienting
the Mass to God, and therefore the souls of all who participate in it. Either
stance, ad orientem or versus populum, transmits a manifold “message”—and
that message is transmitted independently of subjective intentions.
Finally, since you mentioned objectivity, I have written in a couple of
places about the contrast between a “Benedictine” approach and a “Jesuit” one,
[636] and suggest that we can understand a lot about our situation through that

contrast.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I was thinking on the way home from Mass this morning that thanks to
immersing myself in the TLM for the last several weeks (by attending it
almost daily and re ecting on it afterwards), I now have a new grasp of
Aquinas’s sensibility—the understated dignity, expansiveness, and grandeur of
his writings. I had long thought I needed to attend and appreciate the Mass
that is closest to the one he himself would have celebrated. Thanks be to God I
nally did. What I didn’t realize was how much more wonderful—wonder-full
—it would be! As I said, God seems to surprise me every few years with
something that drastically but joyfully revises my perspective. Perhaps this is
his way of keeping me humble.
Above all, I continue to be awestruck by the overwhelming sense of God’s
presence in the TLM. I’m still reeling from the contrast but in a good way. I
nally understand all of the references to the Mass as a cosmic reality. I nally
understand why preconciliar authors attained to such profundity and to such
reverence for the Mass. I keep waiting for all of this to wear o as novelty
recedes, but it isn’t. Deep down, I don’t expect it to. The experience is too
profound to be delusional.
Most of our friends are “reform of the reform” people, as we ourselves
were up until recently. We’ve not yet disclosed to them our attraction to the
TLM and are discerning how to go about this, even as we try to retain enough
memory of our former mentality to be able to communicate the new
perspective more intelligibly.

With gratitude,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

I quite agree—Aquinas (and the medievals in general) make much more
sense when one lives in the realm of prayer they inhabited.
One thing I have realized over the past three decades is that Catholic
tradition had developed organically for millennia to a point where everything
“clicked,” where it all made sense: the doctrine, the discipline, the liturgy,
everything mutually reinforced and re ected everything else. That’s what we’d
expect, isn’t it, from an institution led by the Holy Spirit, and with so much
time for re nement? I’m convinced, too, that a major reason why the
revolutionaries could gain control in the mid-20th century is that most
Catholics were taking too much for granted and running on the fumes of a
great tradition, and so were unprepared for the challenge of modernity or its
distillation, modernism.
It’s rather di cult to break through to “reform of the reform” [ROTR]
types, because they are (a) already in possession of a lot of truth and so can’t
imagine they are missing something major, (b) they have a sort of subtle
defensiveness, because they know—at some level—that the liturgy was
massively changed and that the changes have been destabilizing, but they
 gure if the pope wants the new thing, it must be good; (c) they feel judged if
someone says “I used to think the way you do (or go to the church you still go
to), but I’ve found something richer and deeper...”
I think the Mass of the Ages lms, especially episode 2, can be very
powerful aids in this process, if people are willing to watch them. I am
particularly eager to hear your thoughts on it, as I consider it one of the best
exposés ever produced on a di cult subject—di cult in both senses:
challenging to present accurately, and a bitter pill to swallow...unless and until
one sees it as a “red pill” that frees us from comfortable, harmful illusions.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I must rst apologize for stating the obvious in my prior email about
Aquinas being analytical. I’ve had so many new insights in the wake of this
“conversion” to the TLM that I’ve not yet sorted them all out. I think the
point I was groping towards was this: Aquinas was an analytical type and yet
never called for, or never would have been drawn to, a rationalistic Mass along
the lines of the Novus Ordo. He was too immersed in the lofty mysteries of
theology to think that a liturgy should be “clear and distinct” and instantly
accessible to an “audience”; he of all men would have appreciated the silences,
the language of symbols, the melismatic chants, the objective rituality.
By the way, “ROTR” is a very funny acronym. It looks like “rotor” and
suggests the robotic quality of the rationalistic rite along with the forced
conglomerations of argument that often imbue the ROTR outlook. Humor is
a welcome tonic in these days of cultural insanity. (It’s funny, too, that Pope
Francis speaks of an “automatism” in the TLM without apparently recognizing
the rationalistic seedbed of the Novus Ordo.) I agree with and nd helpful
your analysis of why ROTR types might have a hard time breaking through to
a deeper appreciation of the TLM. It seems that some of the ROTR folks who
do break through have started to wear out with the Novus Ordo—it’s as if they
just can’t pretend anymore that this actually is the “source and summit” of our
religion. If it is, the religion seems kind of pathetic. This was happening to me,
as I’ve already related, though I didn’t understand exactly what was happening
or why until I broke through with the TLM.
 It seems to me that ROTR rationalism leads to an overreliance on moral
teachings as fuel for prayer and holiness. The Novus Ordo, even in its most
reverent forms, lacks the fullness of what the Mass ought to be, so ROTR
people turn to moral theology in a quest to recover the coherence lacking in
the Novus Ordo. But this is problematic on a number of levels and has bad
side e ects. Of course, one ought to a rm and adhere to orthodox moral
teachings, but they shouldn’t be used as substitutes for the integrity that ought
to subsist in the Mass. The liturgical and cultural life should sustain and
inspire the moral life. Morals are only interesting, let alone livable, when
there’s something else behind and beneath them.
I’m still trying to get my mind around the fact that there’s a valid rite
which mediates grace (and isn’t devoid of Christ’s Eucharistic presence and
sacri ce, as was the Protestant liturgy in which I grew up) and yet does not
mediate the grace of contemplation as e ectively as the TLM. I’m also trying
to understand why God allowed us to remain in the Novus Ordo for decades.
Ultimately, I’m grateful for the ease and depth of prayer in the TLM, and I’m
grateful we’re being led in this direction. But I’m working to fathom the
implications of it. Perhaps God uses all the e orts one made to attend reverent
Novus Ordo Masses through the years—the habit or exertion entailed in that,
in swimming against the current to pray as well as one can amid the
rationalism and other de ciencies of the Novus Ordo—to fuel one’s prayer in
the TLM. As one eventually wears out with the Novus Ordo, God then uses
whatever depth of prayer one attained through it, despite that rite’s objective
de ciencies, within the new TLM context, as analogously God might do when
an ardently practicing Protestant converts to Catholicism. At the same time,
using the holiness reached through the grace mediated in the de cient Novus
Ordo would be an instance of God, through the grace of the Cross, bringing
forth good in spite of privation. The privation itself nds no justi cation
except in so far as it can be the occasion of a greater good by the grace of the
Cross.
I’m not owed a perfect understanding, and God may want me not to
understand it fully, for the sake of humility. With a seismic shift like this, I feel
obliged to understand the implications as best I can. It is always painful to
realize how much better o one would have been had one seen the light
sooner, but the endurance of this pain gives one something else to o er up in
union with Christ’s sacri ce, drawing closer to Him thereby.
 With gratitude,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

You have su ered the neglect of anyone who writes a long and intelligent
letter, precisely because it deserves a real response and not a quickly dashed-o
“reply”!
I get what you’re saying about Aquinas. I went through the same process of
discovery. It had seemed to me for a long time that Aquinas was a proto-
rationalist; indeed, that is the main reproach leveled against him by the
Eastern Orthodox. But then I spent more time on his poetry, his sermons, and
his actual life (as narrated to us by those who knew him), and I began to realize
that his style of writing and arguing is an aesthetic (rhetorical) choice, much as
the choice of oil or watercolor or charcoal is for an artist. He wanted to
present the logoi as clearly as possible, to minimize the danger of equivocation,
fallacy, and recourse to the imagination or the emotions. Yet what we see is
only the tip of the iceberg of Thomas’s spiritual depths, as we catch a glimpse
of them in his biography and non-academic writings.
Your comment about an overreliance on moral theology to ll the gap of a
religion without much liturgical substance is very perceptive. I think this is
part of the reason people got so excited about John Paul II. In his moral
theology, in his theological anthropology, he o ered something of real
intellectual substance, which looked wonderful next to the postconciliar
pablum. But it was always rather rare ed and highbrow. The liturgy is high
theology translated into symbol, gesture, chant, and art, and everyone can
relate to it, indeed relatively easily, although without ever exhausting the
meaning.
That we have a valid rite that does not mediate the grace of contemplation
is part of the “mystery of iniquity” of our times. Every age of the Church has
its own version of this mystery. Ours is the bungled liturgical reform, which
ended up undermining everything it claimed to be achieving. It seems to me
that the Church’s indefectibility requires that there always be a rite that
mediates sanctifying grace, i.e., the grace apart from which we cannot be saved;
but it would not require that a rite mediate other graces, gifts, fruits,
perfections, attainments.
 You wonder about why the Lord left you for so long in a postage-stamp
yard, so to speak, when just outside there was a vast and beautiful forest to
wander in! Your conclusion is the same as the one I came to in my own life:
through this inadequate diet, God was teaching me how to hunger and thirst
for Him, and when I nally got to the pure source (liturgically speaking), I was
more than ready for it—I was panting for it. It frightens me to think of souls
that do not nd this oasis, this garden... I think some of them muddle along
well enough, but others lose interest or drift away. There is a deeply tragic
aspect to the past sixty years: the Council that was called to make the faith
come alive among modern men has nearly su ocated it. And although
churchmen apologize nowadays for everything under the sun, including plenty
they should not apologize for, they never apologize for having caused or
tolerated or ignored this tragedy.
When you speak of God’s using even a privation as an occasion of good,
you state a profound truth. Just as we would not defend Scott Hahn’s
Protestantism (nor would he) and yet we thank God for what it prepared him
to become as a Catholic and how it has tted him to be a great ambassador for
the Bible among Catholics, so too we can thank God for what He has given us
on the way to the fullness of liturgical Tradition, because, no doubt, we—I
mean, you and I—would likely not have been able to reach this nal point
without passing through the earlier stages. Other people will have other paths,
like those blessed o spring nowadays who grow up exclusively with the TLM,
or the people one meets who convert directly from Protestantism to
traditional Catholicism; but without a doubt, speaking for myself, I would
never have been able to be a “TLM apologist” without having rst had a long
and intimate familiarity with the Novus Ordo—indeed, with several kinds of
Novus Ordos (since it is more like a genus than a species).
Thus, when you write “it is always painful to realize how much better o
one would have been had one seen the light sooner,” are you not simply stating
salvation history in a nutshell? The story of Israel is the story of humanity is
the story of each man: we could always have been “better o ” from this or that
point of view, and yet God manages to bring good out of evil and greater goods
out of lesser goods. This is precisely what enables us to recognize His hand,
His largesse, when it intervenes, which in turn magni es our gratitude and
our humility. It’s enough to make one dizzy with His ingenuity and infatuated
with His a ection. He truly is a “God of surprises”—just not in the way that
our poor misguided pope thinks!

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I nally have time to reply to your generous response. I enjoyed Mass of
the Ages, Episode 2. It is very well done—surely one of the best video
treatments of this subject to date, if not the best. While respectful of the
ecclesial authorities involved and any aspirational intentions, the video is
unabashedly truthful as to the reality and the damage done. The restraint and
respect shown by the commentators make the critique all the more poignant
and powerful. I thought Alcuin Reid summed up the reformers and reform
superbly when he said they were “culturally naive.”
This is the sixties in a nutshell. There seems to have been this sense that
humanity could wipe the slate clean and recalibrate everything according to
simplistic premises. It does indeed remind one very much of the Protestant
Reformation. “We’re tired of complexity. Let’s get rid of this gobbledygook and
start over!” And just as mainline Protestant denominations swelled like red
giants headed for collapse, Catholic revolutionaries decided to adopt their
failing schema! It’s very sad. The mainliners were able to put up a pretty good
front still in the sixties, especially in the USA, so I can see how a group of
shallow-minded Catholics might be deceived into thinking they needed to
imitate the model or else face extinction. This is also the pattern of today’s
Catholic progressivists with whom I became well acquainted during my years
in college. They were eager to embrace already collapsed ideologies “or else
we’ll be made fun of and won’t t in socially or survive!”
It reminds me also of the lesser but still egregious cultural naivete of
Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in their Church Life Journal series. Why don’t
these writers on liturgy spend a month or maybe several months attending the
Mass that they think needed reforming, if only to be better informed about
the nature of the reform? How can one assess the progress made by a new
technology without understanding how the old technology worked? It only
makes logical sense. But that’s where the “we all need to be united in worship
and trust the popes” argument comes in. That does make a degree of sense
according to the principle lex orandi, lex credendi—but not if the TLM is
vastly better and the reform a deracination of the original. In this case, one
needs to see that we should all be united in worship through a return to the
TLM and then assess the liturgical reform by its superior light.
What is especially salutary about your writing, I nd, is that you have
con dence that the traditional rite will one day be the central and standard
rite. This is critical. Just as progressivists falsely imagine a story of inevitable
progress, one can also succumb nowadays to a vision of accelerating and
inexorable decline, especially in times as degraded as these. We must rather put
our con dence in Christ and His sacraments and then let the historical drama
unfurl. As Christ said to Peter, what concern is it to you if John lives and you
die? These are lesser matters. The one thing needful is to keep our eyes on the
Lord perceived through the sacramental forms in which he chooses to appear
to us.
I had a good meeting with Fr. N. a couple of weeks ago. He emphasized
that God is outside of time and can therefore in an instant restore to us the
graces we might have been given had we been attending the TLM our whole
lives instead of spending decades in the Novus Ordo or worse. This gets back
to the salvation history theme you summarized. God brings forth good from
every evil. We need not and should not justify the evil or try to make it t into
a logical progression towards the good. Rather, we call it what it is and ght
against it, while also asking God to bring forth good from it by the power of
the Cross. Each of us can recognize the good that God has brought forth from
evils that have marked our lives and the broader course of history, but we don’t
think the evils were good in themselves. The latter approach tries to defang
evil by naturalizing it, whereas the former puts faith in the grace and power of
the Cross.
I agree too that obsessive recourse to the life and theology of John Paul II
is another instance of people seeking substitutional forms of coherence which
ought to have been available in the liturgy properly celebrated. This
overreliance on two orthodox popes and their theological works makes
conservatives like Weigel vulnerable to errors and to intra-Church leftist
critique. At the same time Weigel looks similar to progressivists in the sense
that there’s an appearance of trying to create from whole cloth—via John Paul
II and Benedict—a new Catholic culture from the ruins of the reform,
infamously attributing the ruins to poor “implementation” of the reform
rather than acknowledging the depth of problems in the reform.
In 2006, Joseph Bottum published an essay in First Things that confronted
the destruction of Catholic culture in the USA.[637] I remember reading and
meditating on this essay at the time it was published, when I was fresh from
years of chaos in a theology department and had experienced a number of
Catholic parishes in di erent states, and was beginning to realize how
inadequate our own RCIA formation had been. I remember being struck by
the essay and wondering, “How did this happen?” I recall hypothesizing at the
time something like: “These are huge cultural movements; the immigrant
communities that kept this cultural element of the Church going likely
dispersed when they started making money, gaining wider acceptance, and
moving to the suburbs; these changes were bound to happen because of
Weigel’s thesis about institutional maintenance, because the Church can’t be
based on cultural identities forged defensively; and at least we still have the
Real Presence, the re-presentation of Christ’s sacri ce, and a core of sound
doctrine, which is what matters anyway even if some rebel against it...” But
now I see that changing the Mass was at the causal epicenter of these other
negative changes, to say nothing of wider cultural changes it detonated in
America, Europe, and elsewhere.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow but made less so when one experiences the
beauty and richness of the TLM and feels a ood of graces pouring forth from
it as I have in recent months. One realizes at once, fully and wrenchingly, the
tragedy of the liturgical reform and the needless cultural destruction that
followed upon it—but one sees this, mercifully, in the refreshing, calm,
relieving, and peaceful light of Christ’s presence in the TLM. Yes, one
shouldn’t have a closed Catholicism that expels anyone who isn’t part of one’s
cultural group (à la Weigel’s and the progressivist’s portrayal of the Church’s
tendencies or problems pre-Vatican II), but neither should one have a
Catholicism that is non-cultural, ahistorical, formed-purely-along-doctrinal-
lines (however sane and sound the doctrine), and harmfully-stripped-down-
sacramentally (however valid Christ’s work therein). This is, as Alcuin Reid put
it, culturally naive. And this isn’t the Catholicism of St. Thomas Aquinas,
however pure and clear was his understanding of doctrine. It’s the Protestant
error all over again.
 Gratefully yours,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

I’m glad you enjoyed Mass of the Ages Episode 2, and I certainly agree
with your analysis of the 1960s “counterculture,” which, ironically, was really
an intensi cation of the evils already present in Western liberalism.
As for poor Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy, they are so convinced of the
superiority of “everything Vatican II” that they cannot imagine a world in
which an older way of worshiping turns out to have been right all along. It’s a
form of the modernist prejudice that all things new are better. And for such
people, even entertaining the scenario of attending a TLM for a while to check
it out would feel like disobedience and pride. In this way they deprive
themselves of such a great good. It’s interesting how fallen human beings don’t
realize when a principle they would normally agree with applies back to them:
for surely, CHW would say “Of course one cannot write well about a subject
with which one is not well acquainted,” but then they go and do it in spades.
As for having con dence that the superior rite will win out again, I’ll
admit that I’m hoping for a miracle on the scale of Noah’s ood or Pentecost,
since right now the “new paradigm” seems to be baked in, hard-wired, fused
like metal, injected into the bone marrow. But we do know that huge systems
can collapse with astonishing speed: the history of empires shows this, with
the rise and fall of rulers and their armies. Indeed, the triumph of Christianity
itself could never have been humanly predicted, and yet it happened, in the
teeth of persecution of all kinds.
It sounds like Fr. N. was very helpful in his way of discussing how God
brings good out of evils. A seminarian once tried to persuade me that it would
be more humble to accept liturgical defects or ugliness or even abuses in a self-
denying spirit like that of St. John of the Cross, who sought out su erings
rather than consolations, than to pursue the restoration of tradition when the
hierarchy, who are our fathers in Christ, do not support it, or positively forbid
it. My response to him develops an account of how patience and toleration
di er essentially from acceptance or approval.[638]
I loved what you had to say about Weigel and the weakness of the neocon
position. They do not see that “it’s the Mass that matters,” or, as Lefebvre once
memorably said: “The Mass is the Church and the Church is the Mass.”
Obviously that is a hyperbolic expression; he is not asserting a simple
equivalency. What he perceives is that the Mass mystically sums up and
presents the Church to us, it is the clearing house, the axis or nexus, the core,
the primary symbol, the point of departure and point of arrival. Because it is
what it is, change to it necessarily cascades into change everywhere.
I’ve often wondered if God permitted this terrible calamity of the
1960s/70s to reanimate and reenergize the Catholic love for the Mass and the
Holy Eucharist. Not immediately, but rather in the way the Jews became more
devout due to the Babylonian captivity, and paved the way for the coming of
Christ and the rst disciples. It seems an extraordinarily dangerous “gamble”
on His part, but it wouldn’t be the rst time God has acted with breathtaking
boldness. For example, where the TLM has revived in our time, it is celebrated
with great beauty and care, with fervent participation, moreso (it seems) than
was the case in some places before the Council. God seems to be forming for
Himself a remnant. Not that we should too quickly assume we are that
righteous remnant, but rather, we should humbly give thanks that we, for no
merits of our own, were chosen to carry on the tradition of the Faith at a time
when it is being literally bartered away by our bishops, who shutter their
churches as dioceses fail.

Cordially in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

It is good to acknowledge the full reality of the calamity and the ensuing
decline in order to develop a proper strategy of response. “Managed decline” is
a good term for it. Bishops today often act as though it’s inevitable, as though
secularism has a more compelling and merciful narrative to which the Church
must adapt, damaging its own integrity. I know this defeatism and its
lamentable results all too well. Secularism and its false mercy merely enable
people to damage themselves through disordered actions. Thanks be to God
that we have the Mass and Blessed Sacrament, the foundation of all order, as
you said. No wonder Satan wants them suppressed. You wrote somewhere that
faithful adherents of the Latin Mass will be the ones still standing when all
else is reduced to rubble. The glory will be God’s, for He is, even now, bringing
about a renaissance through those who are being hunted down and villainized
from all sides, by both ecclesial and secular authorities. It is an astonishing
story that will inspire future generations.
Our Lord seems to have been laying the groundwork in our family for
quite some time. Providentially, my children and I had read together Ronald
Knox’s The Mass in Slow Motion a couple of years ago. My instinct then was
that to understand the present Mass as fully as possible, one ought to
understand how it used to be. Also, I wanted them to have a concrete sense of
the Mass that the great saints had celebrated down through the ages, the Mass
that had undergirded most of the history of the Church, because we were
studying the saints and the history of the Church and of Europe, and I
thought we would be leaving something out if we neglected the Mass that was
in place for most of the saints and this history.
Perhaps I imagined the relationship between TLM and Novus Ordo as
being similar to the relation between an original classic work and an abridged
version. I remember saying something like “to fully understand and appreciate
the Mass we celebrate, we must make an e ort to understand how the original
one was structured.” It seemed like common sense to me. In our home studies
we’ve always emphasized the superiority of original works of literature to
abridged ones, so at some level I must have been aware that an abridged
version of the Mass was bound to be inferior! But I felt at the time that it
might be somehow subversive to pay too much attention to the original,
especially when the Novus Ordo, with Christ’s sacri ce re-presented and his
Real Presence therein, was so far superior to the Protestant liturgies I grew up
with. I didn’t know what to make of this feeling. And the typical arguments
and narratives about “how necessary and good the reform was” kept a hold on
my thinking.
As I have gotten to know the TLM better and better, one thing for which
I’m very thankful is that the TLM makes a person less dependent on or
desperate for charismatic priests and homilists—which is what one obsesses
over in the Novus Ordo realm, where you practically have to develop a rolodex
of the priests who say Mass “well” and/or preach the Gospel faithfully. Of
course, one always hopes for excellence in any priest, but I feel relieved that
the Mass is less about the individual priest in the TLM. In our experience it is
pretty much the same from priest to priest. This is the way it ought to be.
 Gratefully,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

So true that the priest in the TLM makes less of a di erence—and that is a
such a relief for him and for everyone!
Your story is quite interesting to me. It’s like Francis Thompson talking
about “the Hound of Heaven”: Our Lord was pursuing you and trying to reveal
more to you, and happily, you were docile!
I love your comparison of new and old rites to abridged and unabridged
literature. It’s true that one can keep the “essence” of a story while dropping
out lots of details or digressions, but then one loses so much richness,
atmosphere, the world the author subcreated. Martin Mosebach puts it this
way: who would ever say that any element in a painting by Raphael was
super uous, even if there are bits and pieces that could be omitted without
destroying the subject? Even the empty spaces, the weeds on the ground, the
wisp of cloud in the sky, has a role to play, like the face, hands, and body of the
main saints depicted. That is the way any great work of art is, and the
traditional Mass is abundantly that way. You see this especially in a well-
executed Ponti cal Mass.
You mention once feeling subversive just to be thinking about the old
Mass. But the most challenging moment for any Catholic, I personally believe,
is when he comes to the realization that evil operators have been working
behind the scenes and even at the highest hierarchical levels to transform the
“faith once delivered to the saints” into a modernist or quasi-modernist, quasi-
protestant “catholicism lite” for Modern Man. They are the true subversives.
This is challenging because the depth of iniquity, the cynicism, the deception,
and the consequences for the loss of souls are staggering. It is, has been, the
biggest shock of my life, and I feel like it’s taken me decades to process it and
come to a place of interior peace, where I can see the evil for what it is, put my
trust in God, and adhere to the truth no matter how unpopular it may be.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

 You describe well the challenging moment in which one has the negative
realization about corruption in the Church. I’ve had three such lightbulb
moments: rst, when I realized that Protestantism was a deviation and
Catholicism vastly superior; second, when I realized post-conversion in
graduate school that the Catholic Church was deeply divided and had people
in it who were trying to modify or eliminate essential doctrines; and most
recently, in my awakening to the superiority of the TLM and the catastrophic
impact of the liturgical reform. This latter has been a startling surprise
because I had thought lightbulb #2 was the nal such realization I needed to
have. Little had I known all of these years that #2 had in large part been
caused by #3.
Has anyone to your knowledge written a book or article on ways the TLM
harmonizes with principles of good design? I’ve ordered Dr. Shaw’s new book
on the petitioning by artists and intellectuals on behalf of the TLM. I’m
looking forward to reading it—it’s telling that artists and intellectuals, even
non-Catholics, perceived what Novus Ordo architects did not.
I have noticed the use of design principles in your and others’ writing,
which is partly what gave rise to this question. It would be interesting to look
at the TLM through the lens of recent theorists on what constitutes good
design and/or “branding.” I was watching an interview today with Paul Rand,
who designed iconic logos for IBM, UPS, ABC, and others. He related the
following story. About 20 years after he designed the ABC logo in the 1960s,
he heard, in the ’80s, that some ABC executives had the impulse to update
Rand’s logo for the times. They devoted many dollars and much angst to
exploring the possibility. Finally, they decided to conduct a survey, from the
results of which they concluded that the original logo had accumulated such
massive recognition and associative value, due to decades of use, that it would
be far too costly to dispense with it. Would that Paul VI and his reformers had
been as wise and humble as the ABC executives!

Gratefully,
Amator Veritatis

Dear Amator Veritatis,

That book, The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals, is fantastic! You will love
it. I ranked it one of my favorite books of 2023.
 I don’t know of an ex professo treatment under the heading of design
principles, although innumerable commentators talk about symmetry, order,
parallelisms, symbology, the “architecture” of the Mass, etc. The comparison
between Classic Coke and New Coke is so obvious that it’s given rise to a
plethora of articles, posts, and memes. Eric Sammons’s ne article on the
subject is verging on ten years old (a classic, in internet terms!).[639]
You could be describing my own journey, except that #1 for me was from
mainstream lukewarm Catholicism to the charismatic movement; then #2
from there to “conservative” Catholicism; then #3 to tradition. Just as Our
Lord healed a blind man on one occasion in steps, it seems that most of us
need to be led from station to station—as if, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, we cannot
bear too much reality, and have to be expanded and toughened up for it.
I wish you and your entire family many blessings as you put your roots
down in the traditional Faith—a mighty tree whose roots plunge into the
depths of the ages and whose massy trunk supports far- ung branches heavy
with fruit, pro ering shade to weary pilgrims. Thanks be to God that, in spite
of our unworthiness, we have been led to a home on earth that re ects the
beauty and echoes the song of the heavenly Jerusalem. Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Yours in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski
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WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

“The Acorn and the Oak Tree: In Defense of Liturgical Growth and
Maturation.” Tradition and Sanity Substack, January 23, 2025.
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Syrian.” Rorate Caeli, June 18, 2020.
“Adventures in the Lex Orandi #3: Comparing the Old and New Orations for
Our Lady of Sorrows.” Rorate Caeli, September 15, 2021.
Are Canonizations Infallible?: Revisiting a Disputed Question. Edited by Peter
Kwasniewski. Arouca Press, 2021.
“Are Pews in Churches a Problem—and, If So, How Much of a Problem?” New
Liturgical Movement, July 27, 2020.
“The Beautiful Death: Why We Favor Cut Flowers in the Sanctuary.” New
Liturgical Movement, May 1, 2023.
“Benedictine Monks on Incense: Sourcing It and Making It.” New Liturgical
Movement, February 10, 2020.
“Between Christ the King and We Have No King But Caesar.” OnePeterFive,
October 25, 2020.
Bound by Truth: Authority, Obedience, Tradition, and the Common Good.
Angelico Press, 2023.
“The Centenary of the Last Integral Editio Typica of the Missale Romanum.”
New Liturgical Movement, July 25, 2020.
“Clari cations on the Reign of Novelty: A Letter Exchange with a Friendly
Critic.” Tradition and Sanity Substack, September 9, 2024.
“A Collect Worthy of Royalty.” (On St. Hedwig.) Rorate Caeli, October 16,
2020.
“Comparison of Old and New Prayers for Blessing of Ashes.” OnePeterFive,
February 26, 2020.
“A Comparison of the Old and New Blessing of Candles on Candlemas.” New
Liturgical Movement, February 1, 2021.
“The Council Fathers in Support of Latin: Correcting a Narrative Bias.” New
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“Crocodile Tears and Hand-Wringing: No GPS Coordinates for the Unicorn.”
Tradition and Sanity Substack, August 26, 2024.
“Defending So-Called Doublets by Understanding Parallelism.” New
Liturgical Movement, September 30, 2024.
“Deliver Thy Church, O Lord, from a awed liturgy.” (On St. Felix of Valois.)
Rorate Caeli, November 20, 2018).
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come.” Tradition and Sanity Substack, October 10, 2024.
“Divine Drunkenness, Mystical Madness.” Tradition and Sanity Substack, May
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“Don’t stop celebrating: After Christmas Day, Christmas continues.”
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Latin Mass. Are we doing it wrong?” Fr. Z’s Blog, February 15, 2020.
1 “Reforming the Irreformable?,” New Liturgical Movement [NLM], February
9, 2014. A few years ago, another erstwhile “reform of the reform” proponent,
the French theologian and Gregorian chant specialist Denis Crouan, likewise
came to his senses; see Gregory DiPippo, “A Reform-of-the-Reform Paladin
Throws in the Towel,” NLM, January 29, 2022.

2 Each successive change involves a break with longstanding tradition or

discipline, beginning with the abolition of the subdiaconate and minor orders
and their replacement by the “instituted ministries” of lector and acolyte, open
to laymen (1972). Then followed the permissions given for lay men and women
to function as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (1973),
Communion in the hand (1977 for the USA, by virtue of an indult), altar girls
(1994), the presence of cremated remains of a body at the funeral liturgy (1997
for the USA, by virtue of an indult), the washing of women’s feet at the Holy
Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper (2016), and female instituted lectors and
acolytes (2021).

3 I use the quali er “adequate” because it is not true that the “reform of the
reform” is all about aesthetics. The traditionally minded priest who
thoughtfully chooses the Con teor and Kyrie (the rst of three options for the
Penitential Act) and the Roman Canon is obviously concerned with the
content of the rite.

4 By “juridical” is meant that the new rite was believed to have been
promulgated by the same authority that promulgated the old. For someone
who believes the pope has the authority to do such a thing, the Mass of Paul
VI is to be considered the “Roman rite” because it was imposed by the Bishop
of Rome and is the rite used by Catholics belonging to the Western
patriarchate. Nevertheless, Dr. Kwasniewski has called this conclusion into
question with rigorous argumentation: see his books The Once and Future
Roman Rite and Bound by Truth.

5 The non-identity of the Pauline missal with the Roman rite was a rmed by
no less an authority on the subject than Joseph Gélineau, SJ, who was involved
in its production. He bluntly states in Demain la liturgie:Essai sur l’évolution
des assemblées chrétiennes (Cerf, 1976), 10: “the Roman rite as we knew it no
longer exists; it has been destroyed [Il est détruit].”

6 Aidan Nichols, OP, Looking at the Liturgy:A Critical View of Its

Contemporary Form (Ignatius Press, 1996), 119. Although this passage is
highlighted in my copy of the book (which I obtained and rst read in early
1997), it evidently took a long time to sink in.

7 Adrian Fortescue, J.B. O’Connell, and Alcuin Reid, The Ceremonies of Holy
Week & the Vigil of Pentecost Described According to the Missale Romanum
editio XXIX post typicam 1953 (Éditions Pax inter Spinas, 2022), 19.

8 See “Editor’s Preface,” in Sacred Liturgy:The Source and Summit of the Life
and Mission of the Church, ed. Alcuin Reid (Ignatius Press, 2014), 8–9.

9 See St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium 23:1–3. This sort of change has
already occurred with the Holy See’s allowance, since 2020, for the optional use
of several new prefaces and for the optional celebration of the feasts of certain
saints canonized since 1962. Arguably, it may be happening likewise by the
recovery of older parts of the Roman tradition that were hastily abandoned
and replaced in the postwar period.

10 Some people object to the phrase “Novus Ordo,” considering it to be

inaccurate or demeaning. I use it because Paul VI himself used it, as explained
in Appendix I.

11 This was at the International Theological Institute, then in Gaming, where

Greek Catholics of many nationalities shared a Byzantine chapel and took
turns o ering the daily liturgy. Later, in Lander, Wyoming, we always
conducted the Divine Liturgy in English.

12 To read a summary of what I learned, see “Byzantine, Tridentine,

Montinian: Two Brothers and a Stranger,” in Peter Kwasniewski, The Once
and Future Roman Rite:Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after
Seventy Years of Exile (TAN Books, 2022), 279–311.
13 Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “a traditional rite”: where the
Tridentine rite is not available, I attend an Eastern Catholic rite.

14 Robert Hugh Benson, Confessions of a Convert (The Cenacle Press, 2022),

ix–x.

15 The Catholics who fell away from the faith or drifted into schism due to
the scandal of the liturgical reform are the “unremembered dead”—the
nameless casualties of a triumphal march of progress that did not care about
its victims or deemed them necessary sacri ces to the Moloch of the Future
(to borrow a phrase from Benedict XVI in a di erent context). These people
deserve our sympathetic remembrance and prayers, and our hard work to
reverse something of the damage that traumatized and alienated them.

16 This is exactly the line that has been taken in the ponti cate of Francis. See,
out of countless examples, Jonathan Liedl, “Personal Experience, Not Moral
Absolutes, to Steer Synod Study Group’s Discernment on Sexuality
Questions,” National Catholic Register, October 3, 2024; Grégory Solari,
“Traditionalism creates a distance between the heritage of past generations
and the contemporary ecclesial community,” La Croix International, October
4, 2024. Solari says outright: “The key di erence between these two
understandings of formalizations [viz., living transmission vs. dead tradition]
lies in whether or not the life (lex vivendi) of the community is prioritized in
shaping formalized prayer (lex orandi) and de ned doctrine (lex credendi).”
For him, prayer and doctrine should take a back seat to the ever-changing “life
of the ecclesial community.”

17 The bitterness, resentment, and anger of elderly clergy and religious

towards the revival of traditional Catholicism in our day is at least partially
connected with the psychological abuse visited upon them in the sixties, when
they were coerced into conformity with a new paradigm that was presented as
an unrepealable replacement of the Tridentine inheritance. When they see
young people now happily taking hold of these things again as if the trauma of
the conciliar and postconciliar period had never happened (and as if their own
su erings were in vain), it must be like salt and vinegar in the wounds. One
should not overlook, as well, the Stockholm syndrome. See Peter Kwasniewski,
Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright:The Genius and Timeliness of the
Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico Press, 2020), 205–12.

18 Abandonment is not too strong a word. When is the last time you heard
mention of the kingship of Jesus Christ over nations, cultures, laws,
governments?—and yet it is no less true today than it was in 1925 when Pius XI
issued his encyclical Quas Primas. See Joseph Husslein, SJ, The Reign of
Christ, the Immortal King of Ages (Arouca Press, 2024; originally published in
1928).

19 Roger Buck, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum:From Secularism and the New Age to
Christendom Renewed (Angelico Press, 2016), 10–11.

20 I refer here to the language, respectively, of Benedict XVI’s Summorum

Ponti cum and of Francis’s Traditionis Custodes: in the former, “the Roman
Missal promulgated by Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi
(law of prayer) of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite” (art. 1); in the latter,
“the liturgical books promulgated by St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, in
conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression
of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite” (art. 1). That both of these claims are
unsustainable has been demonstrated in my book The Once and Future
Roman Rite, but the present book will also have much to o er in refuting
them.

21 This ourishing also requires undoing the major liturgical changes from
1948 to 1962, all of which tended in the direction of the deformation of the
Roman rite. See Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 333–75.

22 For a taste of what the content was like, see my article “What the Ordinary
Form Could Be: The Vienna Oratory,” Views from the Choir Loft, June 5, 2014,
www.ccwatershed.org/2014/06/05/what-ordinary-form-could-be-vienna-
oratory.

23 On Quo Primum as dogmatic and not merely disciplinary, see Peter

Kwasniewski, True Obedience in the Church:A Guide to Discernment in
Challenging Times (Sophia Institute Press, 2021).
24 In addition to older classics by Ralph Wiltgen, Michael Davies, Dietrich
von Hildebrand, Romano Amerio, and others, several recent books enhance
the critique of the Council: Roberto de Mattei, The Second Vatican
Council:An Unwritten Story, trans. Patrick T. Brannan et al. (Loreto
Publications, 2012); H. J. A. Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes:The Making,
Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition (Angelico Press, 2015); Yves
Chiron, Between Rome and Rebellion:A History of Catholic Traditionalism
with Special Attention to France, trans. John Pepino (Angelico Press, 2024).

25 I make the case for this interpretation in my essays “Vatican II: Requiescat
in Pace,” in Peter A. Kwasniewski, ed., Sixty Years After:Catholic Writers
Assess the Legacy of Vatican II (Angelico Press, 2022), 93–122, and “Vatican II as
Cause of Cultural Revolution: Questioning the Victim Narrative,” Tradition
and Sanity Substack, February 19, 2024.

26 SC 89, emphasis added.

27 See John Lamont on the vast civilizational resources needed for the
development of an orthodox prayer form suited to the Christian religion:
“Dominican Theologian Attacks Catholic Tradition (Part 4): What Is At Stake
in the Attempted Suppression of the TLM?,” Rorate Caeli, September 20, 2023.

28 See the tract “Rites and Customs of the Church” and the sermon
“Ceremonies of the Church” in John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence,
and Ritual:A Selection of Texts, ed. Peter A. Kwasniewski (Os Justi Press, 2019),
69–80, esp. 78–79. See also Wolfram Schrems, “The Council’s Constitution on
the Liturgy: Reform or Revolution?,” Rorate Caeli, May 3, 2018. As Joseph
Ratzinger wrote to Wolfgang Waldstein in 1976: “The problem of the new
Missal lies, on the contrary, in its abandonment of a historical process that
had always gone on, before and after St. Pius V, and in the creation of an
entirely new book, albeit from ancient material, and whose publication was
accompanied by a kind of ban on what had existed before, a ban, moreover,
never seen in juridical and liturgical history.” On this statement and its
implications, see Réginald-Marie Rivoire, FSVF, Does “Traditionis Custodes”
Pass the Juridical Rationality Test? A Canonical-Theological Study, trans.
William Barker, FSSP (Os Justi Press, 2022), 40.
29 It is a form of poetic justice that Prime, in spite of this attempted
suppression, has remained alive and well among clergy, religious, and laity who
adhere to the traditional liturgy.

30 For an extended discussion of the di erence between the original Liturgical

Movement and its cancer phase, see Peter Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty,
Transcendent Holiness:Why the Modern Age Needs the Mass of Ages
(Angelico Press, 2017), 89–112; cf. Kwasniewski, Reclaiming Our Roman
Catholic Birthright, 48–53.

31 The contradiction in approaches is signaled in the names Divine Providence

permitted these men to bear. The word “prosper” suggests a ourishing from
presently available resources, such as those of the historic liturgy, while as a
proper name it reminds us of Prosper of Aquitaine, who is credited with the
original formulation of what would become the pithy maxim lex orandi, lex
credendi—a principle Pope Pius XII would later attempt to subvert in the
encyclical Mediator Dei, even as he earned the disgrace of being the rst to
appoint Bugnini to a position at the Vatican. The name Annibale, on the other
hand, harks back to the military general Hannibal, a brilliant strategist who
fought against Rome, even as his namesake battled for modernity against
Roman tradition.

32 On the Synod of Pistoia, see Kwasniewski, Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic

Birthright, 149–60; John Parsons, “A Reform of the Reform?,” in Thomas M.
Kocik, The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate:Reform or Return
(Ignatius Press, 2003), 211–56; Geo rey Hull, The Banished Heart:Origins of
Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church (T&T Clark, 2010), 53–67. In his The
Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II:Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic
Reform (Oxford University Press, 2020), Shaun Blanchard praises Vatican II
for ful lling Pistoia’s program.

33 John F. Baldovin, SJ, “Vatican II’s liturgy constitution turns 60—preparing

the constitution,” The Pilot, November 3, 2023.

34 See “Does Pius VI’s Auctorem Fidei Support Paul VI’s Novus Ordo?,” in
Peter Kwasniewski, The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism, vol. 1:
Theological Re ections on the Rock of the Church (Arouca Press, 2022), 84–90.

35 See Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975, trans.

Matthew J. O’Connell (The Liturgical Press, 1990), 221.

36 Gélineau, Demain la liturgie, 9–10; translation mine.

37 Indeed, even these were modi ed, except not in such a way as to invalidate
them.

38 For the implications of this ltration, see my article series “The Reign of
Novelty and the Sins of the Times: Why the Novus Ordo Is Solely Modern in
Content,” Tradition and Sanity Substack, August 5, 8, 12, and 15, 2024.

39 In this speech Paul VI refers to “the liturgical innovation of the new rite of
the Mass,” and uses the expression “new rite” seven times; he calls the changes
a “novelty” more than once, e.g., “this novelty is no small thing,” and repeats
the word “innovation.” In Paul VI’s mind, this was a new rite, a novelty, an
innovation—that is why it is called the Novus Ordo. We should not smudge
the clarity with which he speaks his intentions. A week earlier, in his audience
of November 19, he uses the same vocabulary and dares to say: “It is an act of
coherence of the Church with herself. It is a step forward for her authentic
tradition. It is a demonstration of delity and vitality, to which we all must
give assent....It is a law. It has been thought out by authoritative experts of
sacred Liturgy; it has been discussed and meditated upon for a long time. We
shall do well to accept it with joyful interest and put it into practice
punctually, unanimously, and carefully.” One does not know whether to be
more astonished at the brazen abuse of language or at the ominous tone with
which he lowers the boom. These speeches might as well have been inspired by
the propaganda depicted in George Orwell’s 1984. For more on the
nomenclature associated with the modern rite, see Appendix 1. For analysis of
this speech of Paul VI’s, see Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 128–
38.

40 John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

(Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), pt. 2, ch. 7, p. 354,
www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter7.html.
41 Cited in Parsons, “A Reform of the Reform?,” in Kocik, Reform of the
Reform?, 223.

42 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (February 22,

2007), note 6.

43 “Change and Permanence in Liturgy: Questions to Joseph Ratzinger,” in

Collected Works, vol. 11: Theology of the Liturgy, ed. Michael J. Miller
(Ignatius Press, 2014), 523.

44 The new-rite “solemn Mass” done by the Oratories in such cities as

London, Oxford, Toronto, and Vienna are clearly not what any of the popes
from Paul VI to the present has seen t to o er the Church as a model, much
less as a requirement. Msgr. Richard Schuler (1920–2007), longtime pastor of
St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minnesota, is often brought up as an example of the
hermeneutic of continuity (see his collected writings: Sacred Music and
Liturgy After Vatican II, ed. Virginia A. Schubert [Arouca Press, 2024]), but the
simple fact that one can name so few like him points up not only his own
heroic delity in swimming against the tide but also the inherent
improbability of the chosen approach.

45 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones:Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-

Merikakis (Ignatius Press, 1998), 148.

46 “Les laïcs et la defense de la messe traditionnelle: Entretien avec Cyril

Farret d’Astiès à propos de son ouvrage les cinquante ans du missel de Paul VI,”
Paix Liturgique Letter 776, December 18, 2020,
www.paixliturgique.com/a _lettre.asp?LET_N_ID=3064; translation mine. For
an alternative translation of the entire interview, see my article “Why Are
Laity So Involved in the Liturgical Debate? And Why Is the Continued
Struggle Necessary?,” NLM, July 10, 2023.

47 Such, at any rate, was the claim; and yet there is much evidence that modern
artists and intellectuals were fascinated with and strongly attracted to the
Catholic Church’s depth of tradition, culture, and thought. See Joseph Shaw,
ed., The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals:Petitions to Save the Ancient Mass
from 1966 to 2007 (Arouca Press, 2023).
48 Yves Chiron, Annibale Bugnini:Reformer of the Liturgy, trans. John Pepino
(Angelico Press, 2018), 81–82.

49 Chiron, Bugnini, 82.

50 Maike Hickson, “New biography describes great in uence of Fr. Joseph

Ratzinger in Vatican II,” Rorate Caeli, December 11, 2020. See Paolo
Pasqualucci, The Parallel Council:The Anomalous Beginning of the Second
Vatican Council (Gondolin Press, 2018).

51 Text available online at https://salbert.tripod.com/SClel.htm.

52 The comments were rst printed in the Abbey Newsletter by the Very Rev.
Dom Gerard, OSB, Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine, Le Barroux, with a translation
likely by Paul Crane, SJ in Christian Order, vol. 35, no. 10 (1994): 454. The
interview in which Guitton made the remarks was subsequently transcribed
and published in full: Yves Chiron, with François-Georges Dreyfus and Jean
Guitton, “Entretien sur Paul VI” (Éditions Nivoit, 2011); see pp. 27–28, posted
online by Sharon Kabel in “Catholic fact check: Jean Guitton, Pope Paul VI,
and the liturgical reforms” (https://sharonkabel.com/post/guitton/); translation
mine. For a di erent translation of part of the second paragraph, see chapter 5.

53 See Yves Chiron, Paul VI:The Divided Pope, trans. James Walther (Angelico
Press, 2022), 117, 188, 215.

54 The Pope Speaks:Dialogues of Paul VI with Jean Guitton (Meredith Press,

1968).

55 Conor Dugan, “A Deeper Context: Overlooked book provides insight into

Vatican II debates,” Catholic World Report, September 2, 2020.

56 D.Q. McInerny, “Re ections on the Loss of Latin, Part I,” Latin Mass
Magazine, vol. 28, no. 4 (Christmas 2019): 33–34.

57 Thus, SC 21 authorized a “generalem instaurationem” of the liturgy, where

instaurationem means restoration, while generalem means of a wide scope (in
the sense that it includes the Mass, the Divine O ce, etc.)—not something
integer, “integral,” concerning the totality, to its root level. Similarly, SC 31
says “in libris liturgicis recognoscendis,” where recognitio means revision, not
reform. Neither instauratio nor recognitio means “reform”; the Latin word
reformatio is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. However, the
Consilium interpreted its task as one of “integer instauratio” in the
Instruction Inter Œcumenici 48: “Donec integer Ordo Missæ instauratus
fuerit.” One can see how boldly the Instruction takes a giant step forward.
Progressivists will assert that SC called for “radical reform,” but there is no
basis for it in the Latin text. My point is that the Bugnini Method was
followed rigorously: SC did not ask for everything the liturgists wanted—but
after its promulgation they helped themselves to what they wanted
nonetheless.

58 An excellent introduction to the Consilium may be found in “The

‘Consilium ad Exsequendam’ at 50—An Interview with Dom Alcuin Reid,”
published in two parts at NLM, February 7 and February 12, 2014. For much
more detail, see Christiaan W. Kappes, “Consilium and Vatican 2: Everything
You Wanted to Know About Its Make-Up, Function, etc. (Replete with
Graphs),” https://www.academia.edu/8837932.

59 Nicola Giampietro, The Development of the Liturgical Reformas Seen by

Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948 to 1970 (Roman Catholic Books,
2010), 166–67. Merriam-Webster de nes promemoria as “a formal note
embodying the written record of a diplomatic discussion.”

60 Giampietro, 192.

61 Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer:From Youth and Conversion to

Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After, trans. John Pepino (Angelico
Press, 2015), 219.

62 Lauren Pristas, The Collects of the Roman Missals:A Comparative Study of

the Sundays in Proper Seasons Before and After the Second Vatican Council
(Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 208.

63 Matthew Hazell, “The Scattering of the Propers: A Case Study in the Mass
Formularies of the Ordinary Form,” NLM, July 15, 2020.
64 See my article “‘The Liturgy Has Been Dismantled’: Portland Archbishop
Robert Dwyer’s Assessment in 1971,” NLM, September 16, 2024.

65 See, inter alia, Ratzinger, The Spiritof the Liturgy, IV, 1, in Theology of the
Liturgy, 98–105.

66 Michael P. Foley, “The Glow of the Ember Days,” Rorate Caeli, September
23, 2015.

67 Peter Day-Milne, “Remember the Ember Days? (Part I),” Adoremus,

November 22, 2021.

68 Arnaud Devillers, FSSP, “Ember Days of Lent,” The Missive, March 13,
2019.

69 In fact, the Ember Days were taken o the general calendar and delegated
to the episcopal conferences for local adaptation. Amidst all the chaos, not a
single conference got around to reestablishing them. The fact that their loss
seems to have been the result of combined clumsiness and indi erence
underlines how badly the “reform” was managed; no secular art museum would
treat even its least valuable items as carelessly. See Matthew Hazell, “Ember
Days in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms: An Accidental Elimination?,”
Rorate Caeli, March 10, 2022.

70 See my article “Is Modern Man ‘Incapable of the Liturgical Act’?,” NLM,
October 12, 2020.

71 For a full examination of this theme, see Gerard G. Steckler, SJ, The
Triumph of Romanticism (Os Justi Press, 2023).

72 Bronwen McShea, “Bishops Unbound,” First Things, January 2019,

www. rstthings.com/article/2019/01/bishops-unbound.

73 John Lamont, “The Catholic Church and the Rule of Law,” in Peter A.
Kwasniewski, ed., Ultramontanism and Tradition:The Role of Papal Authority
in the Catholic Faith (Os Justi Press, 2024), 78–106.
74 See chapter 19; cf. my article “In Praise of Irregularity,” NLM, April 4, 2016.

75 Of this multi-decade process, there is no better overview than Chiron’s

Bugnini.

76 In 1948 Bugnini had a questionnaire sent to “almost a hundred liturgical

experts in all parts of the world” on behalf of the Roman periodical
Ephemerides Liturgicæ, concerning a prospective “reform of the Missal,
Breviary, calendar, Martyrology, and other liturgical books.” Bugnini writes:
“This questionnaire, sent as it was by the editorial sta of a periodical regarded
as the semi-o cial voice of Roman liturgical circles, was the rst alarm signal
that something was stirring. In those days it was unheard of for anyone to
challenge even a rubric or to use the word ‘reform.’ The questionnaire was
therefore a bold move. In this case the proverb was proved true: ‘Fortune
favors the brave.’” Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy, 11. For commentary, see
Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 281–85.

77 John Hunwicke, “Liturgy and Vatican II: what did they think they were
voting for?,” Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment, March 23, 2019.

78 See John Hunwicke, “Some priest called Ru ...and: Did Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre make a big mistake? (1),” Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment, March
3, 2017, and this trio of articles: Peter Kwasniewski, “The Council Fathers in
Support of Latin: Correcting a Narrative Bias,” NLM, September 13, 2017;
“What They Requested, What They Expected, and What Happened: Council
Fathers on the Latin Roman Canon,” NLM, August 8, 2022; “The Lie That Was
Told to Over 2,000 Council Fathers at Vatican II,” NLM, May 27, 2024.

79 Quoted in Alcuin Reid, ed., A Bitter Trial:Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel
Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes, expanded edition (Ignatius Press,
2011), 23–24. For a refutation of this simplistic reasoning, see Peter
Kwasniewski, “Games People Play with the Holy Spirit,” in idem, ed., Illusions
of Reform:Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in Defense of the
Traditional Mass and the Faithful Who Attend It (Os Justi Press, 2023), 134–50.

80 See “My Journey from Ultramontanism to Catholicism” in Kwasniewski,

The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism, 1:1–27.
81 For example, the Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council (1215) forbade clergy
to watch mimes, entertainers, and actors, visit taverns, and play games of
chance or even be present at such, and enjoined them to have a crown and
tonsure, while bishops were ordered to wear linen; moreover, it was ordered
that Jews and Saracens living in Christian lands had to wear a distinctive mark
of dress, and could not leave their houses during the Triduum. There are many
analogous examples if one reads the annals of the ecumenical councils.

82 I have done a good deal of this scrutinizing in my book Turned Around;see

also Part II below.

83 His critical evaluation is quoted at greater length below on p. 243. It is a

little hard to know which three maniacs Bouyer is referring to, as there were
so many involved in the project. The Consilium’s Cœtus for the calendar
comprised Bugnini, A. Dirks, R. van Doren, J. Wagner, A.-G. Martimort, P.
Jounel, A. Amore, and H. Schmidt, though we know that Jounel was the
leading spirit. For further reading, see Michael P. Foley, “The Reform of the
Calendar and the Reduction of Liturgical Recapitulation,” in Alcuin Reid, ed.,
Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century:Contemporary Issues and Perspectives
(Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 321–41.

84 Joseph Shaw, “Transferred Holy Days, 2: The Dates,” LMS Chairman,

January 10, 2014; cf. idem, “Must I Go to Mass on Monday?,” Catholic
Answers, November 19, 2024, where he says of the above feasts and several
more: “These are not just convenient dates; they establish a web of symbolic
connections across the liturgical year.”

85 Richard Cipolla, “Epiphany and the Unordinariness of Liturgical Time,”

Rorate Caeli, January 10, 2014. It is true, as Michael Foley has explained (“The
Origins and Meaning of Ordinary Time,” Antiphon, vol. 23, no. 1 [2019]: 43–77),
that Msgr. Pierre Jounel, who proposed Tempus per annum, did not intend
the pejorative sense of “mundane” as opposed to “special.” Nevertheless, the
theory behind his proposal was so arcane and implausible that it never caught
on popularly; we are abandoned to the usual associations.
86 Kate Edwards, “Not the Octave of the Epiphany!,” Saints Will Arise, January
7, 2014, https://saintsshallarise.blogspot.com/2014/01/not-octave-of-
epiphany.html.

87 Cassian Folsom, OSB, “Summorum Ponti cum and Liturgical Law,” a talk
given at the London Oratory, December 13, 2013. Over 300 saints were
removed from the Novus Ordo’s calendar: see my article “The Sanctoral
Killing Fields: On the Removal of Saints from the General Roman Calendar,”
NLM, November 16, 2020, and chapter 14 below.

88 At least, when there were rigors of fasting and abstinence. In the old
calendar, all Lenten weekdays, Ember Days, and vigils were days of fast, on
which only one regular meal could be taken. Paul VI enjoys the dubious
distinction of having reduced the fasting days to only two: Ash Wednesday and
Good Friday. This represents a departure from the unanimous practice of East
and West stretching from the earliest Christian records to the mid-1960s, or
an almost 2,000-year practice. So much for looking to the ancient Church as a
model.

89 The phrase is from André Rose, who was a member of Cœtus 18bis but
later expressed sharp criticisms of its work. See the melancholy analysis by
Pristas, Collects of the Roman Missals, “Septuagesima,” 95–111.

90 The rst, of course, was the Arian crisis. See John Henry Newman, The
Arians of the Fourth Century (University of Notre Dame Press/Leominster:
Gracewing, 2001), note 5: “It was mainly by the faithful people that Paganism
was overthrown; it was by the faithful people, under the lead of Athanasius
and the Egyptian bishops, and in some places supported by their Bishops or
priests, that the worst of heresies was withstood and stamped out of the sacred
territory” (446); “I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the
divine dogma of our Lord’s divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and
(humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the ‘Ecclesia docta’ [the Church
taught, i.e., the non-hierarchy] than by the ‘Ecclesia docens’ [the teaching
Church, i.e., the hierarchy]; that the body of the Episcopate was unfaithful to
its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at
one time the pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great
see, at other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did
what obscured and compromised revealed truth” (465–66). See also Roberto de
Mattei, “Resistance and Fidelity to the Church in Times of Crisis,” in idem,
Love for the Papacy and Filial Resistance to the Pope in the History of the
Church (Angelico Press, 2019), 105–30.

91 The conversation has indeed been taking place for some decades, and we
must be careful not to overlook or forget earlier contributions of the
traditionalist movement, such as the work of Klaus Gamber, Michael Davies,
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jean Madiran, and Roger-Thomas Calmel. A ne
example on our current topic would be John Parsons’s “Reform of the
Reform?,” originally published in Christian Order, November–December 2001,
and republished as Appendix 6 of Kocik’s Reform of the Reform? Apart from
its magni cent clarity and depth of thought, this article demonstrates that the
skepticism about ROTR recently expressed by Fr. Kocik and others has been
around for quite some time in the circles of those who know their liturgical
history and theology.

92 See, too, the same author’s “Reforming the Irreformable? A Postscript,”

NLM, March 1, 2014.

93 The most important publications of Kocik in this connection are the book
already mentioned (The Reform of the Reform?); “A Reform of the Reform?,”
in Alcuin Reid, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (Bloomsbury T&T
Clark, 2016), 317–38; and “The Reform of the Reform,” in Reid, Liturgy in the
Twenty-First Century, 19–50.

94 As Joseph Ratzinger famously called it in 1992. “What happened after the

Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of
development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process
of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it—as in a
manufacturing process—with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”
From Ratzinger’s preface to the French edition of Gamber’s The Reform of the
Roman Liturgy: La Réforme Liturgique en Question (Éditions Saint-
Madeleine, 1992), 8, translated on the back cover of the English edition of the
book. For the full text, see my article “Translation of Ratzinger’s Preface to the
French Edition of Klaus Gamber,” NLM, February 8, 2023. An alternative and
somewhat softened translation may be found in Ratzinger, Theology of the
Liturgy, 537–38.

95 Mark Kirby, “Let nothing be preferred to the Work of God,” Vultus Christi,
February 20, 2014, https://archive.ph/lTOsz.

96 Hugh Somerville Knapman, “The Lament of a Liturgical Loner,” Dominus

Mihi Adjutor, February 18, 2014.

97 For example, Paul VI allowed male laity to do readings at Mass; John Paul II
allowed female laity to read and serve at Mass; Francis decreed that female
laity may be “installed” as “lectors and acolytes.” A similar pattern may be
discerned in the loosening-up of communion customs over time. As for the
never-enforced call for removing abuses, see chapter 6.

98 Monika Rheinschmitt, “Further thoughts on ‘inculturation’: Why ignore

the liturgy that sustained the evangelization of the entire globe?,” Rorate Caeli,
July 5, 2022.

99 Richard Cipolla, “The End of the ‘Reform of the Reform’: Father Kocik’s
‘Tract 90,’” Rorate Caeli, February 12, 2014.

100 I invoke this Aristotelian distinction in an analogous sense: the accidents

of a rite would be the particular cut of a vestment, the variety of incense, the
use of this or that type of supplementary music, and so forth; whereas its
substance would be the order of ceremonies, the content of prescribed texts
and chants, the rubrics that govern actions, and so forth. My claim (expatiated
in my book The Once and Future Roman Rite) is that the Novus Ordo di ers
from the Roman rite in regard to the substance of the liturgical rite, not (only)
its variable accidents.

101 There is nothing “irreversible” about liturgical reform, since it concerns

contingent prudential decisions. Hence, Pope Francis is guilty of absurdity
when he writes: “We cannot go back to that ritual form which the Council
fathers, cum Petro et sub Petro, felt the need to reform” (Apostolic Letter
Desiderio Desideravi, no. 61). But of course we can; today’s pope and today’s
bishops are not bound to agree necessarily with the reformatory program of
their predecessors in the 1960s. If their predecessors had the right to launch a
reform, then their successors have no less right to direct, redirect, or undo
that reform. Indeed, a rigid adherence to the 1960s would, according to their
own logic, convict them of a spirit of nostalgia and backwardism that refuses
to “read the signs of the times” or to remain open to the Holy Spirit. (A
refutation like this has its limits, especially as I would not concede a “right” to
reverse liturgical tradition on the scale on which that reversal was done. I am
merely pointing out that “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”)

102 One need only study Pristas’s Collects of the Roman Missal to see what
was done to the Collects and why. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; the
same thing can be seen with prayers used for all of the sacraments, the Divine
O ce, the blessings of persons and objects, exorcisms, and so forth. There is
precious little that has not been corrupted, save the bare sacramental forms
necessary for validity. To say that “a rite is valid” or “a prayer is Christian” is
rather like saying of a person, “he is conscious” or “he is alive.” It gets you
something important, to be sure, but only the rst of many levels that are
meant, by God’s providential design, to work together.

103 From Phillip Campbell, “The Novus Ordo and Conversion,” Unam
Sanctam Catholicam, September 20, 2020; see the same author’s articles at the
same place, “The Problem of the ‘Reverent Novus Ordo,’” September 10, 2020;
“Reform of the Reform: Liturgical Russian Roulette,” December 5, 2022; “The
Unsalvageable Novus Ordo,” December 25, 2019.

104 Although many have written on this topic, Fr. Hunwicke o ers helpful
and fascinating discussions on the auctoritas of Latin in the liturgy and the
auctoritas of having but one anaphora in the Roman rite (search his weblog for
“auctoritas”). For extensive discussion of the authority of tradition in general
and of the traditional liturgy in particular, see Peter Kwasniewski, Bound by
Truth:Authority, Obedience, Tradition, and the Common Good (Angelico
Press, 2023).

105 Here is how Ratzinger puts it: “After the Second Vatican Council, the
impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters,
especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council.
Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do
with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact,
the First Vatican Council had in no way de ned the pope as an absolute
monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to
the revealed Word. The pope’s authority is bound to the tradition of faith, and
that also applies to the liturgy. It is not ‘manufactured’ by the authorities. Even
the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding
integrity and identity.... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the
service of sacred tradition.... The greatness of the liturgy depends—we shall
have to repeat this frequently—on its unspontaneity.” The Spirit of the
Liturgy, IV.1, in Theology of the Liturgy, 102–3.

106 Inter alia: SC 23, 28, 36, 54, 112–116.

107 The ignoring of the preceding Magisterium was made far easier by a last-
minute decision on the part of the conciliar liturgical commission to remove
73 out of 115 footnotes from the nal draft of Sacrosanctum Concilium—
namely, precisely the references to such documents as Mediator Dei that
might have “controlled” the interpretation and implementation of the
constitution. Curiously, the person who explained in 1964 (after the fact) why
the notes were pulled without explanation to the council fathers, making the
lightweight version a fait accompli, was none other than Pierre-Marie Gy, OP,
who years later would condemn Joseph Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as
unfaithful to the Second Vatican Council. See Susan Benofy, “Footnotes for a
Hermeneutic of Continuity: Sacrosanctum Concilium’s Vanishing Citations,”
Adoremus Bulletin, vol. 21, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 8–34,
https://web.archive.org/web/20160817074120/http://adoremus.org/AdoremusSp
ring2015.pdf. The rst two pages, summarizing her ndings, can be found at
https://archive.ccwatershed.org/media/pdfs/15/06/03/13-43-26_0.pdf. When
Adoremus republished those two pages online on September 23, 2024, they
modi ed the text to downplay the sleight-of-hand—an action that re ects the
original sleight-of-hand.

108 One thinks, for instance, of the work on cultural anthropology of Mary
Douglas or Anthony Archer. For a discussion of the latter, see Joseph Shaw,
“The Old Mass and the Workers,” LMS Chairman, July 3, 2013.

109 Vetus Ordo, old order (of worship), is said by way of contrast to Novus
Ordo, new order (of worship). See chapter 8 for a full treatment of the
nonviability of the chanted Latin Novus Ordo, a contradictio in terminis.

110 I will address this problem of “optionitis” a number of times in this book,
as it is a far bigger problem than most realize, not only for strictly liturgical
reasons, but also for spiritual and psychological ones.

111 Mark Kirby, “Home from the Liturgical Thirty Years War,” Vultus Christi,
February 23, 2014, https://archive.ph/Lw8RV.

112 John Adams, October 11, 1798, “Letter to the O cers of the First Brigade
of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts,” in Charles Francis
Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States
(Little, Brown, and Co., 1854), 9:229.

113 An objection might be raised: Are there not aspects of the old liturgy that
are also up to the celebrant’s discretion? And should you not argue against
them, as well? The truth is that the realm of choice in the old liturgy is
extremely narrow, and is always a choice between fully articulated elements. In
some Commons, there is a choice of Epistles or Gospels. On a solemn day, a
priest may choose to wear gold instead of a di erent liturgical color. He may
choose to sing the most solemn Preface tone rather than the more solemn
tone. If his missal has the Gallican prefaces, the rubrics allow him to use them
on speci ed days. But notice how small a range of choice is allowed, and how
its components are already fully spelled out—the priest invents nothing. There
is no putative right to extemporize; and the most essential elements, such as
the Canon, can never be altered. The holiest thing is beyond the realm of
choice; it is a given. The Byzantine liturgy is the same: which of the anaphoras
is to be used is dictated to the priest by the calendar, not left up to his pastoral
discretion. We will come back to these points in chapter 20.

114 See “Why the Traditional Mass Is Kingly and Courtly” in Kwasniewski,
Turned Around, 56–78.
115 See “The Spirit of the Liturgy in the Words and Actions of Our Lady” in
Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 53–87.

116 In chapter 10, I explain just how the TLM does this.

117 A point to which I will return in chapter 19.

118 See chapter 5.

119 As Jeremy Holmes explains: “‘Ancestor’ comes from antecessor, which

means foregoer, forerunner, the one who goes before; ‘tradition’ comes from
traditio, a delivering, derived from the verb trado, to give, to give over, to
deliver. In this mode of experiencing time, the ancestors have gone before;
they have run the path on which we are now running; they are ahead of us on
that path; they have given to us or delivered to us something, perhaps trail
markers, instructions on how to walk, how to run, how to climb, what to
avoid, where the dangers lie, equipment for the journey, instruction on what
lies at the end of the path, and so forth. We are coming behind. We receive
what they have given us, and in turn we deliver it to those coming behind us....
By following them we enter into our inheritance and make it our own with
them.” Moreover, “because human reason is by nature tradition-dependent, a
literate society naturally creates a canon, namely, a set of writings that embody
and transmit a tradition. Because a canon is the means of passing on a society’s
innermost life, the life of the mind, it also serves as a medium for that life as
members of society think via the canon, speak via the canon, and interpret the
world via the canon.” Cur Deus Verba:Why the Word Became Words (Ignatius
Press, 2021), 59, 64, 66. These insights can be easily applied to the traditional
liturgy as the canon formed by our Catholic antecessoresat prayer.

A failure to receive this canon of tradition and to pass it on is a hidden but

potent form of sel shness, as Roger Scruton intimates: “The dead and the
unborn are as much members of society as the living. To dishonor the dead is
to reject the relation on which society is built—the relation of obligation
between generations. Those who have lost respect for their dead have ceased to
be trustees of their inheritance. Inevitably, therefore, they lose the sense of
obligation to future generations. The web of obligations shrinks to the present
tense.” “Rousseau and the Origins of Liberalism,” The New Criterion, October
1998, https://newcriterion.com/article/rousseau-the-origins-of-liberalism/.

120 John Henry Newman, “Use of Saints’ Days,” Parochial and Plain Sermons
II, Sermon 32, in Kwasniewski, ed., Newman on Worship, 95–96.

121 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Psalms, trans. Albert Marie Surmanski

and Maria Veritas Marks (Emmaus Academic, 2021), on Psalm 15:5, no. 112:
“quasi dicat: non solum hereditas mea in se præclara est; sed est ita præclara
mihi, quod nullo modo mutarem eam.”

122 Benedict XVI, Homily at the Inaugural Mass for the Beginning of the
Petrine Ministry, April 24, 2005.

123 It is also, by extension, a rejection of the providential guidance of the Holy

Spirit. See chapter 19; cf. “Sinning against the Holy Spirit” in Kwasniewski,
The Once and Future Roman Rite, 67–72.

124 St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one asking why there are so many members in a
natural body—hands, feet, mouth, and the like—it could be replied that they
are to serve the soul’s variety of activities.... The natural body is a certain
fullness of the soul; unless the members exist with an integral body, the soul
cannot exercise fully its activities” (Commentary on Ephesians [1:23], chap. 1,
lect. 8, no. 71). Thus, the body expresses what is in the soul; it is the outward
face, the signature, the language, of the soul. Similarly, the liturgy expresses
what is in the Church’s soul; it is her face, signature, and language.

125 G.K. Chesterton, “The Queer Feet,” in The Complete Father Brown
(Penguin, 1981), 51.

126 Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes, 251. The chapter “The Destruction of the
Mass” in this book (pp. 226–86) is among the best concise accounts of what was
done to the Mass in the liturgical reform, why, and how.

127 In order to understand how it was possible for Bugnini to achieve all that
he did, one must understand the self-doubting, con icted, dialectical, and
mercurial Paul VI, his prevailing fear of not keeping up with modernity and
not enjoying the respect of the modern world. A careful and not
unsympathetic portrait may be found in Chiron’s Paul VI; cf. my
“Animadversions on the Canonization of Paul VI,” in Peter Kwasniewski, ed.,
Are Canonizations Infallible?:Revisiting a Disputed Question (Arouca Press,
2021), 219–41.

128 From a conference given by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1982. The full text was
printed in the Angelus magazine, vol. 15, no. 3, and may be found online at
www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Archbishop-Lefebvre/The-In ltration-of-
Modernism-in-the-Church.htm.

129 International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Documents on the

Liturgy1963–1979:Conciliar, Papal, and Curial Texts, trans. Thomas C. O’Brien
(The Liturgical Press, 1982), no. 37.

130 Ratzinger, Milestones, 19–20.

131 See my articles “New Interview with Fr. Charles Murr on Mother
Pascalina, Bugnini, Paul VI, and Other Major Figures,” Rorate Caeli, October
10, 2020; “Rooms broken into, dossiers stolen, death threats, armed guards,
assassinations... Fr. Charles Murr on Vatican intrigues surrounding Cardinals
Baggio, Benelli, Villot, and Gagnon,” Rorate Caeli, December 18, 2020; “New
historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s association with
Freemasonry—Names are named,” Rorate Caeli, May 6, 2020; “Was the chief
architect behind the New Mass a Freemason? New evidence emerges,”
LifeSiteNews, October 12, 2020. Murr’s books are worth reading for the
insights they provide: The Godmother:Madre Pascalina, A Feminine Tour de
Force and Murder in the 33rd Degree:The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican
Freemasonry.

132 Arendt says this about Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi administrator of
concentration camps during World War II: “Despite all the e orts of the
prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a ‘monster,’ but it was
di cult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion
would have been fatal to the entire enterprise [of his trial], and was also rather
hard to sustain in view of the su erings he and his like had caused to millions
of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed and almost never
reported.” Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin
Classics, 2006), 54.

133 Mark Amorose, City under Siege:Sonnets and Other Verse (Angelico Press,
2017), 34.

134 See “Games People Play with the Holy Spirit,” in Kwasniewski, ed.,
Illusions of Reform.

135 As demonstrated in Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite.

136 As shown by John Salza and Robert Siscoe, True or False Pope? Refuting
Sedevacantism and Other Modern Errors (STAS Editions, 2015), 493–524.

137 See Kwasniewski, True Obedience and Bound by Truth.

138 Saints have had run-ins: the visionaries of Fatima, for example, were
persecuted by local Freemasonry; and when, in February 1917, St. Maximilian
Kolbe witnessed a march of Freemasons in Rome, carrying images of St.
Michael being crushed by Lucifer, he responded by creating the Knights of the
Immaculate.

139 See the sources mentioned eight notes above.

140 See “Pillar Investigates: USCCB gen sec Burrill resigns after sexual
misconduct allegations,” The Pillar, July 20, 2021.

141 See Roberto de Mattei, “True and False Conspiracies in History. In

memory of Father Augustin Barruel (1741–1820),” Rorate Caeli, January 13,
2021; or, more extensively, idem, The Paths of Evil:Conspiracies, Plots, and
Secret Societies, trans. Nicholas Reitzug (Sophia Institute Press, 2023).

142 Peter Kwasniewski, “Freemasonry and Catholicism: Implacable Enemies,”

The Remnant online, July 22, 2020.
143 See Robert Moynihan, “Letter #8: The Long Hand,” at Inside the Vatican,
April 23, 2020. Even Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor Fernández reiterated
this point: see Courtney Mares, “Vatican doctrine o ce rea rms that
Catholics cannot be Freemasons,” Catholic News Agency, November 15, 2023.

144 See “Freemasons Celebrate Vatican II...,” Catholic Truth, June 23, 2014;
Timothy Flanders, “Why do the Freemasons Love Pope Francis?,”
OnePeterFive, April 7, 2017.

145 Bouyer, Memoirs, 225.

146 See Peter Kwasniewski, “The Pope’s Boundedness to Tradition as a

Legislative Limit,” in idem, ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s
War:Catholics Respond to the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes on the
Latin Mass (Angelico Press, 2021), 222–47.

147 See my article “Who Was Captain of the Ship in the Liturgical Reform?
The 50th Anniversary of an Embarrassing Letter,” NLM, June 24, 2019.

148 See Gregory DiPippo, “Paul VI’s Dislike of the Liturgical Reform,” NLM,
April 19, 2018; John Zuhlsdorf, “A Pentecost Monday lesson: ‘And Paul VI
wept,’” Fr. Z’s Blog, May 21, 2018.

149 Chiron, Bugnini, 7.

150 Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Devastated Vineyard (Franciscan Herald

Press, 1973), 71.

151 See “The Peace of Low Mass and the Glory of High Mass” in Kwasniewski,
Noble Beauty, 235–55.

152 See “Why It Is Better Not to Understand Everything Immediately” in

Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 191–212.

153 Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes, 374–75.

154 Vigil on the Occasion of the International Meeting of Priests: Dialogue of
the Holy Father Benedict XVI with Priests, St. Peter’s Square, June 10, 2010.

155 “For the Record: Full translation of Benedict XVI letter of support to
Müller after dismissal by Francis,” trans. Francesca Romana, Rorate Caeli,
January 2, 2018.

156 von Hildebrand, The Devastated Vineyard, 70.

157 The rst phrase is from the “Document on Human Fraternity for World
Peace and Living Together” signed by Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmad
el-Tayeb in Abu Dhabi on February 4, 2019; the second phrase is from Pope
Francis’s comments during a meeting with youths in Singapore on September
13, 2024.

158 Keith Lemna, The Apocalypse of Wisdom:Louis Bouyer’s Theological

Recovery of the Cosmos (Angelico Press, 2019), 106.

159 William F. Buckley Jr., Nearer, My God:An Autobiography of Faith

(Doubleday, 1997), 97.

160 That we can name the exact author of the texts for the feast of Corpus
Christi—St. Thomas Aquinas, by the invitation of the pope—stands out for its
rarity. We have, in addition, scattered indications: Pope St. Sergius is said to
have added the Agnus Dei to the Mass, and the feast of Candlemas; Pope St.
Gregory the Great moved the Our Father to a di erent place; Sedulius Scottus
is author of the Introit text “Salve, Sancta Parens”; and so forth. But for the
vast majority of what is said and done in the liturgy, the roots are deep, the
authors unknown.

161 See “Lay Ministries Obscure Both the Laity’s Calling and the Clergy’s” in
Peter Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ:Recovering the Roles of Clergy and
Laity in an Age of Confusion (Crisis Publications, 2021), 83–102.

162 And they are two rites, even if the convenient legal ction of two “forms”
was felt to be necessary to medicate a schizophrenic situation. This
nomenclature lasted from 2007 to 2021. Pope Francis correctly set it aside in
Traditionis Custodes—but mistakenly equated the Novus Ordo with the
Roman rite. See “Two ‘Forms’: Liturgical Fact or Canonical Fiat?” in
Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 145–77.

163 On the evils of indeterminacy, optionitis, and liturgy as personal

accomplishment, see chapters 4 and 7.

164 See, for starters, Alfons Cardinal Stickler, “Recollections of a Vatican II

Peritus,” NLM, June 29, 2022; Alcuin Reid, “Sacrosanctum concilium and the
Reform of the Ordo Missae,” Antiphon 10.3 (2006): 277–95; idem, “The Liturgy,
Fifty Years after Sacrosanctum Concilium,” Catholic World Report, December
4, 2013; idem, “Does Traditionis Custodes Pass Liturgical History 101?,” in
Kwasniewski, ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, 252–59; Joseph Shaw,
“Vatican II on Liturgical Preservation,” LMS Chairman, January 17, 2017; idem,
“What Sort of Mass Did ‘Vatican II’ Want?,” LMS Chairman, May 24, 2016;
Anonymous, “The Old Liturgy and the New Despisers of the Council,” Rorate
Caeli, July 5, 2022; Robert W. Sha ern, “The Mass According to Vatican II,”
The Catholic Thing, July 10, 2022. See also note 56 on p. 24.

165 On Ferrara, see p. 14.

166 See chapter 1.

167 This is no exaggeration. A German mathematician calculated that, given all

the moving pieces in the introductory rites, the readings, the Eucharistic
Prayers, the selection of music, the use (or not) of lay ministers, the language
employed, what is spoken or sung, etc., the total number of possible
con gurations of the Novus Ordo would be 5,000 × 500,000,000 = 5 × 103 × 5 ×
108 = 25 × 1011 = 2.5 × 1012, or more than two trillion possibilities. A similarly
staggering calculation can be made in regard to the new rite of baptism: “Not
counting the possible variety in the use of ‘similar words,’ the total number of
possible combinations for the Novus Ordo Baptism is 3 × 96 × 2 × 2 × 4 × 2 × 3
× 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 2 = 1,327,104.” Daniel Graham, Lex Orandi:A Comparison of
the Traditional and Novus Ordo Rites of the Seven Sacraments (Loreto
Publications, 2017), 13.
168 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Image of the World and of Man in the Liturgy and
Its Expression in Church Music,” in Theology of the Liturgy, 451.

169 The innovation of the General Intercessions (or Prayer of the Faithful) is
particularly gratuitous, since the kind of intercessions found on Good Friday
were never in daily or weekly use in the Roman tradition, and the Roman
Canon already intercedes for the Church’s leaders, all those gathered at Mass
and those dear to them, and the entire Church on earth and in Purgatory.
Moreover, prior to 1955, a second and third oration were always added to the
primary orations of the day, with petitions for seasonal or speci c needs.
Bidding prayers did exist in other contexts in the West, e.g., before the
Sermon and notices at Sunday Mass in the Sarum use, and the litany added to
Lauds and Vespers in penitential seasons. They are omnipresent in the East.
The Roman Rite is just not that concerned with speci c intentions being
stated at every Mass—though naturally every layman was encouraged to bring
his own petitions to the Mass and o er them in the many silent spaces that
accommodated personal prayer in symbiosis with liturgical o ering.

170 Andrew Shivone, “The Glorious Form of the Liturgy,” Humanum Review,
Language: Issue Two, https://humanumreview.com/articles/the-glorious-form-
of-the-liturgy.

171 John Henry Newman, “Thoughts Respectfully Addressed to the Clergy On

Alterations in the Liturgy,” in Kwasniewski, ed., Newman on Worship, 1–2.
Note that Newman’s example of a change motivated by a “shallow and
detestable liberalism”—the removal of the imprecatory psalms—was enacted by
Paul VI in the new Liturgy of the Hours. See my article “The Omission of
‘Di cult’ Psalms and the Spreading-Thin of the Psalter,” Rorate Caeli,
November 15, 2016.

172 From an article no longer online, the text of which was copied in 2014.
This analysis of the “modularity” of the Novus Ordo explains why some less
kind but no less correct commentators have called it the “Frankenmass”: as
previously mentioned, the content of the liturgy was divided among 46 groups
or cœtūs of experts who trotted o to separate little arenas wearing their
scholarly blinders. The results of the groups were sewn together by a central
committee, under the directorship of Bugnini, then arti cially animated by
papal decree. The result may be something that clumsily steps around like a
living thing, but all the sutures are clearly visible, and the light of integrity is
absent in the eyes.

173 After Traditionis Custodes, we have seen the same dynamic playing out
among traditional clergy and with traditional communities: the “new policy” is
to cancel them, washing away years of spiritual and physical growth. It is
absolutely wrong to allow the work of God to be canceled by ecclesiastical
dictators; the clergy and communities dedicated to the TLM must stand up in
defense of what they know to be true, good, right, and holy, persevering with a
clear conscience, regardless of the consequences. Canon law wielded as a
weapon of wickedness has no more e cacy than the fantasies of a madman.

174 For further thoughts along these lines, see my article “‘The Rupturist
Rubric’: The Attempt to Cut O the Liturgy from Tradition,” NLM, July 14,
2022; and Cyril Farret d’Astiès, “The Mass of Paul VI ‘Well Celebrated’—a
Myth!,” Rorate Caeli, November 17, 2021.

175 On the loss of chant as a result of the way the Council embraced musical
pluralism, see Garrett Meyer, “‘Other Things Being...Equal’? A Critique of
Sacrosanctum Concilium 116,” NLM, October 14, 2024.

176 Indeed, it is the default assumption. See my article “The Normativity of Ad

Orientem Worship According to the Ordinary Form’s Rubrics,” NLM,
November 23, 2015.

177 Session XXII, Chapter 9, canon 9;

www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/twentysecond-session-of-the-council-of-
trent-1489.

178 See my article “The Mounting Threat of Coercive Concelebration,” NLM,

July 22, 2019.

179 See Peter Kwasniewski, The Holy Bread of Eternal Life:Restoring

Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety (Sophia Institute Press, 2020), 93
n94, 147–50.
180 See Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 181–86.

181 To use an expression of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s.

182 From the Abbé Georges de Nantes’s “Letter to My Friends,” no. 178,
August 6, 1964. Like Padre Pio, de Nantes was reacting to the devastation
already being visited on the Tridentine Mass in the mid-sixties, prior to the
coup de grâce of 1969. For the quotation as well as the mention of Congar, see
https://crc-internet.org/our-doctrine/catholic-counter-reformation/critical-
study-second-vatican-council/de-ecclesia-lumen-gentium.html.

183 Cindy Wooden, “Archbishop says most bishops see importance of

‘Traditionis Custodes,’” National Catholic Reporter, January 21, 2022. The
quotations of Roche through p. 91 are taken from this interview.

184 See note 4 on p. 70.

185 See Shaw, “Pope Pius V and Liturgical Reform,” in idem, ed., The Latin
Mass and the Intellectuals, 3–17.

186 See Michael Charlier, “‘He is damaging the entire series of his
predecessors...and thus himself and the papacy’: The insoluble contradiction
between Francis and Paul VI,” Rorate Caeli, January 21, 2022.

187 On this problem, see my article series “The Reign of Novelty and the Sins
of the Times.”

188 Translated by Matthew Hazell in “The Eastertide Collects in the Post-

Vatican II Missal: A Problematic Reform,” Rorate Caeli, May 17, 2021.

189 Matthew Hazell, “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’? Mythbusting,
Part II,” NLM, October 1, 2021.

190 Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass:History, Form, and Theology of

the Classical Roman Rite, trans. Rose Pfeifer (Angelico Press, 2020), 239, with
ample notes there.
191 Illustrations of these points can be seen by looking, for example, at the old
orations for February 8, 10, 22, and 27, March 24, April 28, May 3, June 22,
September 15 and 17, October 3, 10, 16, and 17, November 6, 15, and 25, the
Sacred Heart, the Holy Family, the Holy Name of Jesus, the Seventeenth
Sunday after Pentecost. A comparison with the new rite at almost any point
will disclose how much of the traditional lex orandi has been erased.

192 For examples that are by no means atypical, see my articles “Adventures in
the Lex Orandi: Comparing Traditional and Modern Orations for St.
Augustine of Canterbury,” Rorate Caeli, May 28, 2020; “Adventures in the Lex
Orandi #2: Old and New Versions of St. Ephrem the Syrian,” Rorate Caeli,
June 18, 2020; “Adventures in the Lex Orandi #3: Comparing the Old and New
Orations for Our Lady of Sorrows,” Rorate Caeli, September 15, 2021.

193 See my foreword, “Not Just More Scripture, But Di erent Scripture,” in
Matthew P. Hazell, Index Lectionum:A Comparative Table of Readings for the
Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite (Lectionary Study
Press, 2016).

194 See Kwasniewski, “Why We Use a One-Year Lectionary of Readings,” in

Turned Around, 133–66.

195 See “Games People Play with the Holy Spirit,” in Kwasniewski, ed.,
Illusions of Reform, 134–50.

196 Diane Montagna, “Traditionis Custodes: Separating Fact from Fiction,”

The Remnant, October 7, 2021; “Traditionis Custodes: More Facts Emerge
(What the Bishops of the World Actually Told Francis),” The Remnant,
October 28, 2021; “Traditionis Custodes: A Weapon of Mass Destruction,” The
Remnant, November 29, 2021.

197 See “Gregorian Chant: Perfect Music for Christian Worship” in Peter
Kwasniewski, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence:Three Gifts of God for
Liturgy and for Life (TAN Books, 2023), 88–115.

198 Christopher Lamb, “Stubborn opposition to Vatican II ‘not Catholic’ says

cardinal,” The Tablet, August 28, 2022.
199 See https://whispersofrestoration.blog/2018/02/28/resource-liturgy-
comparison-chart/. In chapter 1 of Lex Orandi, Daniel Graham o ers a
similarly harrowing and undeniable account of eleven parallels between the
Novus Ordo rite of baptism and pre-existing Protestant versions of the rite.

200 F. A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer
(John Hodges, 1891), 196. Already long before the Council of Trent, Western
liturgical rites and uses featured just such a proleptic oblative O ertory: see
Gregory DiPippo, “The Theology of the O ertory—Series to Resume,” NLM,
February 27, 2015.

201 See Martin Luther, Formula missæ et communionis pro ecclesia

Wittembergensis (1523), in Works of Martin Luther, vol. 6 (Muhlenberg Press,
1932), 88. A description of Luther’s plan for Mass and his reasoning about what
to keep and what to reject is found in Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI, 220–24.

202 From “The Theology of the Liturgy” in Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy,
542–45; cf. 207–17. See also Michael Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass (Angelus
Press, 2009), 329–47. In connection with the theme of sacri ce, see José Ureta’s
illuminating essay: “A Brief Study of Certain Theological Deviations in
Desiderio Desideravi,” https://onepeter ve.com/wp-
content/uploads/2022/08/Ureta-Complete.pdf.

203 See Kwasniewski, “False Antiquarianism and Liturgical Reform,” NLM,

September 2, 2024; Once and Future Roman Rite, 197–215; Reclaiming Our
Roman Catholic Birthright, 149–57.

204 See Stephen Bullivant, Mass Exodus:Catholic Disa liation in Britain and
America since Vatican II, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2019).

205 This quotation came under renewed discussion because the second episode
of the Mass of the Ages lm trilogy misquoted it as if it referred to the entire
Mass rather than to the prayer of Good Friday. The Mass of the Ages issued an
o cial apology and correction. Yet as Gregory DiPippo pointed out: “The
statement is nevertheless a fair summary of the ethos of the reform as a whole.
The reformers unquestionably saw their mission not as the restoration of the
liturgy which the Council had asked for, but the remaking of it in their own
image and likeness. Ferdinando Cardinal Antonelli, who was a member of the
Consilium, and in principle very much in favor of reform, stated this outright
in his memoirs. And furthermore, this remaking did unquestionably consist in
the reformers identifying, each according to his own personal ideas, what in
the liturgy constituted an ‘obstacle,’ whether it be to the comprehension of the
faithful, ecumenical progress, or some other hazily identi ed but
unquestionably desirable goal, and taking it out. And this is why they took
advantage of the highly imprudent ambiguity of Sacrosanctum Concilium’s
statement that ‘elements which...were added (to the liturgy) with but little
advantage are now to be discarded,’ and discarded any number of elements
that are attested in every single pertinent liturgical book of the Roman Rite as
far back as we have them.” DiPippo, “Muphry’s Law Comes After Mass of the
Ages (Part 1),” NLM, July 23, 2022.

206 See “The Participation of the Protestant Observers in the Compilation of

the New Catholic Liturgical Texts” in Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, 625–29.

207 Chiron, with Dreyfus and Guitton, “Entretien sur Paul VI,” 27–28.

208 Athanasius Schneider, in conversation with Diane Montagna, Christus

Vincit:Christ’s Triumph over the Darkness of the Age (Angelico Press, 2019),
223–24. Right before this, Bishop Schneider explains how the Calvinist
communion method di ers from the one described by St. Cyril of Jerusalem in
the fourth century.

209 “Archbishop Roche: Vatican is Preparing New Document on Liturgical

Formation,” Gaudium Press, English edition, May 16, 2022,
www.gaudiumpress.ca/archbishop-roche-vatican-is-preparing-new-document-
on-liturgical-formation/; emphasis added.

210 “Il papa bambino e il primo compleanno di Traditionis custodes,”

Munera:Rivista Europea di Cultura, July 15, 2022, quoted by Luke Coppen,
“Traditionis custodes—1 year on,” The Pillar, July 15, 2022.

211 See Andrea Gagliarducci, “The increasing in uence of the liturgical school
Sant’Anselmo in the Vatican,” Catholic News Agency, July 22, 2021; Luisella
Scrosati, “The clique of Saint Anselm conducts the war against ancient Mass,”
Rorate Caeli, February 27, 2023.

212 Annibale Bugnini, C.M., Press Conference, January 4, 1967, in

Documentation Catholique 1967, col. 829, cited in Rivoire, Does “TC” Pass the
Juridical Rationality Test?, 30–31. For a di erent translation of the rst part of
this quotation, see p. 50 above. Cf. Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy, 267–68:
“The ideas of experiment and adaptation are closely linked. Adaptation is a
necessity if the liturgy is to be the action of all God’s people and, while
maintaining its essentials everywhere the same, to be integrated with the
reality of each people and each nation.... A decisive approach to them [viz.,
adaptations] will be the task of the third phase of the reform, once the general
revision of the liturgical books has been completed, since the latter provide the
basic structure....” The entire chapter (267–76), indeed the whole of Bugnini’s
tome, makes it clear past all gainsaying that such gures as Bergoglio, Roche,
Viola, and Grillo adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to
Bugnini’s vision.

213 “It would not be right to identify this liturgical renewal with the reform of
rites decided on by Vatican II. This reform goes back much further and
forward beyond the conciliar prescriptions. The liturgy is a permanent
workshop.” Joseph Gélineau, SJ, The Liturgy:Today and Tomorrow, trans.
Dinah Livingstone (Paulist Press, 1978), 11. As we saw earlier, Bugnini (Reform
of the Liturgy, 221) describes Gélineau as “one of the great masters of the
international liturgical world.”

214 Annibale Bugnini, “Rinnovamento nell’ordine,” Notitiæ 61 (February 1971):

52.

215 Anscar J. Chupungco, “Costituzione conciliare sulla sacra liturgia. 15o

anniversario,” Notitiæ 149 (December 1978): 580.

216 Clement McNaspy, SJ, Our Changing Liturgy (Hawthorn Books, 1966), 32–
33. McNaspy was a member of the Board of Directors of the Liturgical
Conference and then editor of the magazine America.
217 Hugh Somerville Knapman, “Pursuing a Point,” One Foot in the Cloister,
April 13, 2019.

218 Roger Buck, The Gentle Traditionalist Returns:A Catholic Knight’s Tale
from Ireland (Angelico Press, 2019), 126, 129–30.

219 Malcolm Schluenderfritz, “Prayer Cards, Painting Class, and Liturgy

Wars,” Where Peter Is, December 9, 2021.

220 See note 11 on p. 7.

221 This is manifestly true of South America. Africa is a more complex

question, but the growth of the Church there is no victory tale for Vatican II,
as it has markedly slowed in the decades since the Council. See Is African
Catholicism a “Vatican II Success Story”? Questioning the Conventional
Narrative, ed. Peter Kwasniewski (Os Justi Press, 2025), 33–42.

222 See Shawn Tribe, “Inculturation: Japanese and Chinese Madonnas,”

Liturgical Arts Journal [LAJ], May 15, 2018; “The Oriental Chasuble of Dom
Pierre-Célestin Lou Tseng-Tsiang, OSB,” LAJ, October 4, 2017; “Liturgical Arts
Quarterly 1935: ‘Christian Art in the Far East,’” NLM, April 20, 2010. Claudio
Salvucci has done yeoman’s work in the area of Catholic Native American
inculturation. See, e.g., his “Forming Scholars of Native American Liturgical
‘Uses,’” LAJ, February 27, 2018, and https://hoquessing.com/native-liturgies/ for
in-depth research tools.

223 See chapter 19.

224 C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford University Press, 1942), 17.

225 Mike Lewis, “Liturgical Renewal and Traditionalist Trolls,” Where Peter Is,
December 11, 2021.

226 Mike Lewis (@mfjlewis), “They have plenty of arguments for why even the
stupidest parts are absolutely necessary,” 𝕏, December 11, 2021,
https://x.com/mfjlewis/status/1469847612484472837.
227 See, for instance, Eric Sammons, “The Politicization of Ad Orientem,”
Crisis Magazine, February 7, 2022.

228 See Joseph Shaw, “Why Catholics started leaving the Church in droves
after Vatican II,” LifeSiteNews, July 18, 2019; idem, “Survey reveals why
Catholics leave Church, including because of watered down teaching,”
LifeSiteNews, July 19, 2019.

229 Hannah Brockhaus, “Vatican archbishop: Traditional Latin Mass

‘experiment’ not successful in reconciling SSPX,” Catholic News Agency,
November 16, 2021.

230 See “Pope Pius V and Liturgical Reform,” in Shaw, ed., The Latin Mass and
the Intellectuals, 3–17.

231 See note 14 on p. 90.

232 In short, if Traditionis Custodes is right, then it is wrong; for if the new
liturgy re ects a new theology not in continuity with the past, then it is not
the past that is wrong, but Francis and by extension the heretical school of
thought for which he serves as the mouthpiece (see Julia Meloni, The St.
Gallen Ma a Exposed [TAN Books, 2021]; “The Crimes and Heresies of Pope
Francis, Their Causes and E ects, and the Action to Be Taken,” Rorate Caeli,
May 2, 2024). For an irrefutable argument against TC based on the
impossibility of the Church contradicting herself in the way in which the
motu proprio would necessitate, see the essay by an anonymous priest, “The
‘Hermeneutic of Rupture’ Cancels Pope Benedict—and the Council,” in
Kwasniewski, ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, 341–56.

233 See note 1 on p. 69.

234 See note 4 on p. 70, and Farret d’Astiès, “Mass of Paul VI ‘Well
Celebrated’—a Myth!”

235 Michael Sean Winters, “As Francis reinforces limits on Latin Mass, it’s past
time to embrace Vatican II,” National Catholic Reporter, February 27, 2023.
236 Gregory DiPippo, “The Revolution Is Over,” NLM, August 1, 2021.

237 And yes, this phrase is totally justi able: see Kwasniewski, Once and Future
Roman Rite, 33–77. The Quam oblationem of the Roman Canon conveys this
Pauline idea in Rom 12:1 to perfection: see ibid., 236–37.

238 International Theological Commission, “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the

Church” (2014), nos. 61–63; 65.

239 For the theological case against female altar servers and lectors, see my
book Ministers of Christ.

240 On Eucharistic good practice and contrasting abuses, see my book Holy
Bread of Eternal Life.

241 Numerous photos illustrating the things just mentioned are compiled at
the post “Crocodile Tears and Hand-Wringing: No GPS Coordinates for the
Unicorn,” Tradition and Sanity Substack, August 26, 2024. YouTube has made
possible the compilation of a vast catalog of liturgical abuse footage, from
decades ago down to the present, that substantiates the claims of
traditionalists. I know personally a man who, on a visit to a foreign country for
a conference, just happened to step inside a church where a priest was
performing a New Age-style baptism, caught it on video, and sent it to the
Vatican, which subsequently, on further investigation, discovered that this
priest had used an invalid formula for hundreds of people, none of whom were
therefore actually baptized. If this layman had not decided to step into that
church, how much longer would the travesty have continued? What we see
online, so far from representing “only the worst,” represents the tip of the
iceberg.

242 See “No Eucharistic Revival without Restoration,” Tradition and Sanity
Substack, April 20, 2023.

243 See my article “Fidelity to Liturgical Law and the Rights of the Faithful,”
OnePeterFive, July 3, 2017.
244 Unlike his predecessors (and his successor), Benedict XVI actually did
something to initiate a counterforce: he liberalized the old Roman rite to serve
as an objective standard, a stable reference point, an impetus for a “new
Liturgical Movement.” The policy of Summorum Ponti cum, welcomed by
younger clergy and magni ed by the internet, was beginning to have a knock-
on e ect in the Novus Ordo sphere—and that is the primary reason things
were beginning to improve on that side of the liturgical divide: the
“gravitational pull” of the old rite.

245 Francis, Letter to the Bishops of the Whole World Accompanying the
Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes.

246 See Gerald Murray, “Papal Abuse of Liturgical Law,” The Catholic Thing,
March 22, 2022.

247 See, e.g., “Why Doesn’t Pope Francis Kneel Before the Blessed Sacrament?,”
Torch of the Faith News, June 2, 2016, www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?
extend.1332; Philip Pullella, “Pope kisses feet of South Sudan leaders, urging
them to keep the peace,” Reuters, April 12, 2019.

248 So great a global protest met the initial draconian rules that some
exceptions had to be made; nevertheless, the policy remains contrary to canon
law, a ne exhibit of the antinomianism that reigns in the upper echelons of
the Church these days. See Edward Pentin, “After Outcry, Vatican Eases
Restrictions on Individual Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica,” National Catholic
Register, June 22, 2021.

249 See John Zuhlsdorf, “Can’t get ‘Liturgy of the Hours’ in Latin,” Fr. Z’s
Blog, September 6, 2017.

250 See “Pope Francis simpli es papal funeral rites,” Aleteia, November 21,
2024; Michael Ho man, “Putting the Nail in the (Pope’s) Co n,” Crisis
Magazine, December 6, 2024.

251 See, e.g., Michael J. O’Loughlin, “Mass for LGBTQ Catholics met with
protesters in St. Louis,” Outreach, April 26, 2024,
https://outreach.faith/2024/04/mass-for-lgbtq-catholics-met-with-protesters-
in-st-louis/.

252 Martin Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness:The Roman Liturgy and

Its Enemy, trans. Graham Harrison (Angelico Press, 2018), 15–16.

253 On these three kinds of problems, see the two articles by Matthew Hazell
already mentioned, “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’?” and “The
Scattering of the Propers,” and his “The Prayers for the Feast of St. Lawrence
in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms,” Rorate Caeli, August 10, 2021.

254 See, inter alia, Pristas, Collects of the Roman Missals.

255 Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands:A Theological Critique of the

Mass of Paul VI (Philothea Press, 2010). Cekada’s work is invaluable for its
exhaustive analysis of the tendencies found in the Novus Ordo, but his
assertion of its invalidity is unwarranted by the evidence. All the same,
sacramental validity is not a panacea; for the validity of the new Mass makes
its lack of respect for tradition, for the priesthood, for the faithful, and for
Christ Himself, all the worse.

256 See my articles “Comparison of Old and New Prayers for Blessing of
Ashes,” OnePeterFive, February 26, 2020; “A Comparison of the Old and New
Blessing of Candles on Candlemas,” NLM, February 1, 2021.

257 See “The Gift of Liturgical Tradition” in Kwasniewski,

ReclaimingOurRoman Catholic Birthright, 161–79.

258 See Jason Morgan, “Triumph of the Will: The Novus Ordo, RIP,” The
Remnant online, August 3, 2021.

259 See Sebastian Morello, “Revolution and Repudiation: Governance Gone

Awry” and Massimo Viglione, “‘They Will Throw You out of the Synagogues’
(John 16:2): The Hermeneutic of Cain’s Envy against Abel,” in Kwasniewski,
ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, 94–99 and 103–11.

260 See Gregory DiPippo, “What Is an Ideology?,” NLM, May 7, 2022.

261 See David Larson, “Live Like the Amish?,” Crisis Magazine, September 8,
2021.

262 See note 31 on p. 99.

263 All ten saints—Titus Brandsma (†1942); Devasahayam Pillai (†1752); César
de Bus (†1607); Luigi Maria Palazzolo (†1886); Giustino Russolillo (†1955);
Charles de Foucauld (†1916); Anne-Marie Rivier (†1838); Maria Francesca di
Gesù Rubatto (†1904); Maria di Gesù Santocanale (†1923); Maria Domenica
Mantovani (†1934)—knew exclusively the old Mass, for whom it o ered a
golden path to holiness; they had died in the odor of sanctity well before the
Novus Ordo was even a twinkle in the young Bugnini’s eye. It is very di cult
to see how the times in which they lived, especially those who lived into the
twentieth century, were so spectacularly di erent from the 1960s/70s or from
today that the old rite would have been suitable for them but not for us.
Conversely, if there is something so wrong with the old rite that it must be
banished altogether, why was it so prized by these saints whom the Church
has honored in the highest possible way?

264 I will return to this poignant observation in the next section of this
chapter.

265 Zac Mabry (@ZacMabry), “There are two pizzas in front of you: A and B.
You could have Pizza A, but you choose Pizza B. Then you put all your e ort
into making Pizza B more like Pizza A,” 𝕏, August 24, 2019,
https://x.com/ZacMabry/status/1165337938210766848.

266 See the section “Two ‘disobediences’ compared” in chapter 16.

267 Thomas Gullickson, “Liturgy Summer Course 2019: Moving Forward—My

Plea for Full Liturgical Restoration,” ad montem myrrhae, August 2, 2019,
https://admontemmyrrhae.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-best-vehicle-for-church-
renewal-and.html.

268 See Joseph Shaw, “The Death of the Reform of the Reform Part 3: Falling
between two stools,” LMS Chairman, February 25, 2014. I will develop this
point further in the next chapter.
269 John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ed. David J. DeLaura (W.W.
Norton & Co., 1968), Note E. The Anglican Church, p. 254.

270 Roy Peachey, 50 Books for Life:A Concise Guide to Catholic Literature
(Angelico Press, 2019), 58.

271 I refer to the late and much-missed Fr. John Hunwicke. See his excellent
blog, Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment, which his family is keeping online.

272 Peachey, 58.

273 See “When a Bishop Outlaws or Restricts Private Traditional Masses” in

Kwasniewski, Bound by Truth, 200–13.

274 See chapter 11.

275 The list of priests who valiantly carried on o ering the TLM in spite of
illicit prohibitions is long and includes many impressive gures. In addition to
Fr. Bryan Houghton, one may recall Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, OP; Dom
Gérard Calvet, OSB; Fr. Yves Normandin; and Fr. George Kathrein, CSsR. I list
the books about them or written by them in the chapter “The Rights of
Immemorial Tradition and the Limits of Papal Positivism” in Bound by Truth,
102–20; see 114n19.

276 John Zuhlsdorf, “A diocese smells the co ee: starts planning for decline of
the Novus Ordo and growth of the TLM,” Fr. Z’s Blog, January 20, 2020.

277 Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops Accompanying the Apostolic Letter

Summorum Ponti cum, July 7, 2007.

278 See my article “The Mass Should Not Be a Torture Device,” NLM,
February 7, 2022.

279 The following is based on a real exchange of letters occasioned by the rst
section of this chapter.
280 Gregory the Great, Epistola 76, PL 77:1215–16,
www.fordham.edu/Halsall/source/greg1-mellitus.txt.

281 See Kwasniewski, “The Normativity of Ad Orientem Worship.”

282 Some apologists for the Novus Ordo will cite canon 7 of the Council of
Trent’s Session XXII: “If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments, and
outward signs, which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of Masses,
are incentives to impiety rather than the services of piety: let him be
anathema.” Sadly for these apologists, the anathema vindicates precisely those
ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs of the “received and approved rites”
of tradition that were considered de cient or defective by twentieth-century
reformers, who therefore believed they had the right and the duty to overhaul
the rites, rejecting many elements. Consequently, so far from supporting the
Novus Ordo, this canon rather undermines the entire logic behind it.

283 Yves Normandin, Pastor Out in the Cold:The Story of Fr. Normandin’s
Fight for the Latin Mass in Canada (Angelus Press, 2021).

284 See Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 33–77; 279–311.

285 See “Liturgical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, and Clericalism” in Kwasniewski,

Holy Bread of Eternal Life, 203–13.

286 For example, bishops—like Cardinal Cupich in Chicago—who discourage

or even try to forbid Catholics from receiving Our Lord kneeling and/or on
the tongue. See “Limits to Episcopal Authority over Holy Communion” in
Kwasniewski, Holy Bread of Eternal Life, 227–39; Amy Welborn, “Up...o your
knees!,” Catholic World Report, December 13, 2024; Anthony Esolen,
“Tradition and Treachery,” Crisis Magazine, December 27, 2024; Fr. John A.
Perricone, “Chicago: Where Eucharistic Revival Goes to Die,” Crisis Magazine,
January 2, 2025.

287 Martin Mosebach, “The Church’s reform disaster: No one wants to see the
causes of the abuse scandal. Yet they can be clearly identi ed,” Rorate Caeli,
July 24, 2024.
288 See my book True Obedience for an explanation of why such opposition
cannot properly be considered disobedience but is obedience to higher
obligations. See also my article, “Why Are Laity So Involved in the Liturgical
Debate?”

289 Leo Darroch, Una Voce:The History of the Fœderatio Universalis Una
Voce (Gracewing, 2017).

290 See Michael Davies’s masterpiece Cranmer’s Godly Order:The Destruction

of Catholicism through Liturgical Change, rev. ed. (Roman Catholic Books,
1995).

291 Matthew Hazell, “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’?”

292 Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness, 2. This author is certainly right to say

that the external beauty must be sought for, and that the willed absence of it is
evil: “The doctrine of supposedly ‘inner values’ hidden under a dirty and
decrepit shell is something I nd highly suspicious. I already believed that the
soul imparts a form, a face, a surface to the body, even before I learned that it
was a truth de ned by the Church’s teaching authority. Consider me a
Mediterranean primitive, but I do not believe a language that is untrue, full of
deceit, and lacking in feeling can contain ideas of any value. What applies in
art must apply to a far higher degree in the public prayer of the Church; if, in
ordinary life, ugliness shows us the presence of untruth, in the realm of
religion it may indicate something worse” (ibid.).

293 See “Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass” in Kwasniewski,
Once and Future Roman Rite, 109–43.

294 Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, no. 42.

295 Mosebach (Heresy of Formlessness, 186) used this phrase to describe the
traditional ceremonial for reading the Gospel, but it readily lends itself to the
way the entire classical liturgy works, as Joseph Shaw explains in Sacred and
Great:A Brief Introduction to the Traditional Latin Mass (Os Justi Press, 2023).

296 Kwasniewski, ed., Newman on Worship, 386.

297 See my article “Why Restricting the TLM Harms Every Parish Mass,”
Crisis Magazine, August 13, 2021; cf. chapter 7.

298 For Shaw’s extended treatment of this topic, see “Understanding Liturgical
Participation” in Joseph Shaw, The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of
Modernity:Essays of a Traditional Catholic (Os Justi, 2023), 57–85.

299 Shaw’s nal article in the series, “Part 5: 1965?,” falls outside the current
discussion. I return to the 1965 interim missal in chapter 13.

300 See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Liturgy and Personality (The Hildebrand
Project, 2016).

301 Recall the words of Andrew Shivone on p. 72.

302 For a defense of this claim in relation to the Roman liturgy’s shift from
Greek to Latin, see “Was Liturgical Latin Introduced As—and Because It Was—
the Vernacular?,” in Kwasniewski, ed., Illusions of Reform, 114–22.

303 Moreover, when anything traditional but optional in the Novus Ordo is
done, it thereby becomes a personal accomplishment posited by the pastoral
discretion, intellectual conviction, and good taste of the celebrant, and thus
re ective of his personality or “ars celebrandi.” That is my own primary
critique of the “reverent Novus Ordo” and the ROTR, as chapter 7 set forth.

304 This, incidentally, shows that the Missa cantata should be privileged in
traditional circles a great deal more than it tends to be. The read Mass (Missa
lecta) or Low Mass is understandable for reasons of devotion and convenience,
but its prevalence in parishes is partially the result of a subtle form of Western
liturgical minimalism that sees many of the normative “externals” of the
Roman rite as dispensable or even distracting/detracting from spirituality—an
attitude dangerously akin to Protestant iconoclasm. In reality, the gestures,
postures, vestments, music, and architecture are icons of the wedding feast of
the Lamb. In the East there is a Sunday annually celebrated as the “Triumph of
Orthodoxy,” commemorating the victory of the iconophiles and exalting the
holy icons; in the West we are still ghting for our triumph over iconoclasm.
305 Bugnini (Reform of the Liturgy, 340) is explicit about this: “The point of
departure for the reform should not be ‘private’ Mass but ‘Mass with a
congregation’; not Mass as read but Mass with singing. But which Mass with
song—the ponti cal, the solemn, or the simple sung Mass? Given the concrete
situation in the churches, the answer can only be: Mass celebrated by a priest,
with a reader, servers, a choir or cantor, and a congregation. All other forms,
such as ponti cal Mass, solemn Mass, Mass with a deacon, will be
ampli cations or further simpli cations of this basic Mass, which is therefore
called ‘normative.’”

306 See my article “The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness,

Fittingness, and Authenticity,” NLM, November 9, 2020.

307 Book of Special Grace, which was translated in medieval England as Booke
of Gostlye Grace. Mechtild was domina cantrix (head cantress) at the
renowned Benedictine monastery of Helfta until her death; in a vision Christ
called her his “nightingale.”

308 Christian Gregory Savage, “Music and the Writings of the Helfta Mystics,”
Thesis for the Master of Music, Florida State University, 2012, p. 47.

309 “Cum autem psalmos aut aliquam orationem tuam Sancti in terris
oraverunt legis, omnes Sancti pro te orant. Cum vero meditaris, vel mecum
loqueris, omnes Sancti gaudentes me benedicunt” (Liber 3:11, 210), cited in
Savage, 53. The rejoinder that there are now saints in heaven who were
accustomed to praying with the rites of Paul VI does not change the fact that
at least 99% of the saints were familiar with traditional liturgical rites, versus
at most 1% who were not. Moreover, that one could be sancti ed in spite of an
impoverished liturgy should be no surprise from the vantage of God’s power,
but it does nothing to change objectively what is wrong with a ruptured
liturgy and how this rupture generally impedes the work of sancti cation in
the Church militant.

310 Edouard Guillou, Le livre de la messe:Mysterium dei—Le texte de la

messe de saint Pie V, with a foreword by Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre (Éditions
Fideliter, 1992; originally published in 1975).
311 Joseph Kreuter, OSB, “A 1933 Sermon on the Missal: ‘Having perfectly
worshiped God in this life, the faithful will be prepared to take part in the
heavenly praises,’” rst published in the journal Orate Fratres of October 7,
1933; reprinted at Rorate Caeli, June 28, 2019.

312 See Hazell, “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’?”

313 “A Diocesan Priest Discovers the Traditional Mass,” from the 2014
Conference for Catholic Tradition: The Mass, Heart of the Church, audio at
https://soundcloud.com/angeluspress/a-diocesan-priest-discovers-the-
traditional-mass. Recall Phillip Campbell’s similar conclusion, quoted on p. 36.

314 On the pivotal role of tradition and literary canon in the formation of
human beings and societies, see Holmes, Cur Deus Verba, 57–68.

315 Sebastian Morello, Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries:Recovering the

Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality (Os Justi Press, 2024), 65–67.

316 The word “pope” coming, of course, from the Greek word páppas, an
a ectionate way of saying “father.”

317 There are many ne treatments of this subject, both online and in print.
Uwe Michael Lang’s Turning Towards the Lord:Orientation in Liturgical
Prayer (Ignatius Press, 2009) is the place to start. A de nitive scholarly account
has been published by Stefan Heid, Altar and Church:Principles of Liturgy
from Early Christianity (The Catholic University of America Press, 2024). For
an overview, see “Why We Worship Facing East” in Kwasniewski, Turned
Around, 1–28.

318 “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community
into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what
lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself.” Ratzinger, The Spirit of the
Liturgy, II, 3, in Theology of the Liturgy, 49. Writes Thomas Howard: “People
who are fellowshipping with each other, and sharing, are, characteristically,
facing each other. People who are worshipping are, all together, facing
something else, namely, the Sapphire Throne.” The Night Is Far Spent:A
Treasury of Thomas Howard, ed. Vivian W. Dudro (Ignatius Press, 2007), 255.
319 See Gerard O’Connell, “Pope Francis: There will be no ‘reform of the
reform’ of the liturgy,” America, December 6, 2016; Jonathan Liedl, “The City
of Big Shoulders—and Liturgical Confusion: Chicago Faithful Flummoxed by
Inconsistent Liturgy Policy,” National Catholic Register, June 27, 2022.
Channeling the current Vatican line, Cardinal Roche said in an address given
to newly ordained bishops gathered in Rome: “The cause of ecclesial
communion will be best served if you are faithful to the principles of the
reform and faithfully internalise them. We are not called to rethink, much less
‘reform’ the reform, rather we are called to understand it, receive it, and apply
it. There is no turning back from this path.” Arthur Roche, “Ecclesial
Communion and the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes,” in Dicastero per i
Vescovi, Il Ministero Episcopale in Una Chiesa Sinodale (Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 2024), 146.

320 Audio at www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NghUaqUlY.

321 For a thorough treatment of this contrast, see “Why the Priest Is Separated
from the People” in Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 29–55; cf. 123–26.

322 I defend this practice—an instance of the in uence of the Low Mass on the
High Mass, which most liturgists deplore—in chapter 15.

323 The way that the Novus Ordo con ates the priest’s communion and that of
the people testi es to Protestant in uence. As Catholic theology teaches, while
it is desirable for as many of the people as possible to receive communion
(provided they are in a state of grace and properly disposed to do so), it is
necessary only for the priest to communicate in order to have a valid
celebration of the Mass. This is because the priest, in representing Christ,
represents the entire Mystical Body, head and members; the sacri ce of the
Cross is complete in and of itself even before its fruits are communicated to
individual members of the human race.

324 Recall Ratzinger’s description of how “an unprecedented clericalization

came on the scene” after the Council: “Now the priest—the ‘presider,’ as they
now prefer to call him—becomes the real point of reference for the whole
liturgy. Everything depends on him. We have to see him, to respond to him, to
be involved in what he is doing. His creativity sustains the whole thing.” The
Spirit of the Liturgy, II, 3, in Theology of the Liturgy, 48.

325 See my article “‘For I Will Not Give You a Kiss as Did Judas’: On Sacred
and Profane Kissing,” NLM, April 6, 2020.

326 For more on the silent Canon, see Kwasniewski, Good Music, 283–92.

327 As I have had occasion to say many times, it does not matter that the
Roman rite once lacked these genu ections and that they entered into practice
at di erent moments of history and in di erent ways. What matters is the
repudiation today of customs that developed for good reason and have existed
for centuries of unbroken practice in our corporate worship. It is one thing to
lack some perfection, and another to tear it out. No one is to blame for a man
born without sight; Cornwall is rightly blamed for gouging out Gloucester’s
eyeballs. One imagines our liturgical Cornwalls bending to their task: “Out,
vile genu ection! Where is thy groveling now?”

328 William Mahrt, “Unintended Consequences,” Sacred Music, vol. 142, no. 2
(Summer 2015): 4.

329 This is too well documented to be denied anymore except by the

Pollyannas of the world. See Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy, 541–57, and
the extensive discussion of the liturgical reform in Sire, Phoenix from the
Ashes. In one parish in Montana, when the minister of Communion said “The
Body of Christ,” recipients were instructed to reply, “Yes we are!” (instead of
“Amen”). This innovation was then replicated elsewhere.

330 St. Augustine loves to speak about the communal meaning of the Holy
Eucharist, e.g., in Book 10 of the City of God. In his Encyclical Ecclesia de
Eucharistia no. 40, John Paul II addresses this point: “Augustine e ectively
echoed this call when, in recalling the Apostle’s words: ‘You are the body of
Christ and individually members of it’ (1 Cor 12: 27), he went on to say: ‘If you
are his body and members of him, then you will nd set on the Lord’s table
your own mystery. Yes, you receive your own mystery’ (Sermo 272: PL 38, 1247).
And from this observation he concludes: ‘Christ the Lord...hallowed at his
table the mystery of our peace and unity. Whoever receives the mystery of
unity without preserving the bonds of peace receives not a mystery for his
bene t but evidence against himself ’ (ibid., 1248).” This rich Augustinian
theme has nevertheless been abused by being taken out of its metaphysical and
liturgical context.

331 The architects of the liturgical reform were enamored of ecumenism to

such an extent that they admitted they were trying to recast the Roman rite in
a manner that would be acceptable to Protestants, as we saw in chapter 5. The
conservative Protestants were only too happy to concede a “presence” of Christ
in the Mass, but emphasis on sacri ce was anathema to them (as it were). For
extensive documentation, see Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, 269–380.
Admittedly, the new rite retains the Orate, fratres (in spite of the desire of
many on the Consilium to do away with it: see Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy,
180n79, 358, 371n38, 379), which shows that the Protestant mentality did not
conquer altogether. However, what remains in regard to sacri ce is exiguous in
comparison with what the traditional rite possesses, showing a decisive shift of
focus and emphasis.

332 I recognize that it is customary for cathedrals, due to their size and the
continual tra c of pilgrims, to have a special Blessed Sacrament chapel, nor
does this seem un tting, considering that often the chapel itself is the size of a
parish church and is splendid decorated for its purpose, o ering a place of
quiet out of the bustle in the nave. Additionally, the traditional Ponti cale
Romanum calls for the tabernacle to be empty for certain ponti cal
ceremonies—presumably the better to emulate the situation expected in a
cathedral—but when the ceremonies are over, the Holy Sacrament is reposed
with appropriate signs of respect.

333 Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy, 544.

334 Chad Pecknold, “Why do so few US Catholics believe in the Real Presence?
Look at the liturgy,” Catholic Herald, August 9, 2019.

335 What I am driving at here is given consummate expression by Fiedrowicz

(The Traditional Mass, 214–15): “The exterior forms of veneration and
adoration that belong to the classical rite of the Mass are the best way of
guaranteeing the corresponding interior attitudes. Prayers of preparation,
genu ections, and bows are not tri es that could be omitted without
diminishing the faithful completion of the holy action. The interior encounter
with the sacred must manifest itself outwardly, involving and being supported
by an exterior form. The traditional liturgy insists that interior sentiments are
plausible only if at the same time they appear in an outwardly appropriate
manner. In the same way, the liturgy is aware of the formative power that the
sensible can exercise on the spiritual condition.

“With the number of its sacred signs, the beauty of its altars, the preciousness
of its chalices and vestments, and its ceaseless expressions of reverence, the
classical rite guarantees this correspondence of interior belief and exterior
form. This rite is, so to speak, safeguarded against a possible discord between
that which one believes and that which one sees. Here is found the perfected
unity and harmony between that which is to be performed and the way in
which it is performed. The classical rite does not require anything to be
believed that one does not—symbolically—see.”

336 See my articles “St. Thomas on the ‘Asperges’ (Sprinkling Rite),” Views
from the Choir Loft, August 7, 2014, and “Things That Remit Venial Sins—The
Traditional Liturgy Is Full of Them,” NLM, February 8, 2016.

337 St. Benedict cites this verse in chapter 60 of his Rule when speaking about
a priest who desires admission to the monastery, who, he says, may be
admitted only on condition of agreeing to abide by the entire rule—as if to say:
the only reason for him to come here is to embrace and bene t from the
monastic discipline. The liturgy, too, is something we should approach only if
we are ready to embrace its discipline, which is the sole way to obtain its
bene ts.

338 According to the older and better rubrics, the celebrant doubles (that is,
quietly recites) the Epistle while it is being chanted by the subdeacon. After
giving the subdeacon the blessing, he then doubles the interlectional
antiphons. Once he is nished, the subdeacon transfers the missal to the
Gospel corner and the deacon receives the Evangeliarium. The celebrant then
doubles the Gospel while the schola continues the chants. By the time the
celebrant has nished the Gospel, it is usually time to impose incense and get
ready for the Gospel procession.

339 Various experts in the liturgical reform originally proposed that there
should be no prayers for the bread and wine at all but that they be simply
lifted up and put back down, in what was called a depositio (see Angelo
Lameri, La «Ponti cia Commissio de sacra liturgia praeparatoria Concilii
Vaticani II». Documenti, Testi, Verbi [CLV, 2013], 238, 347, 474, citing
documents from 1961, 1964, and 1966). This was too much even for Paul VI, an
otherwise enthusiastic proponent of Bauhaus liturgy; along with some of the
other members of the Consilium, he insisted that the actions had to be
accompanied by some words (see Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy, 358, 375, 379).
Bugnini and Co. complied, but looked to Jewish precedent rather than
Catholic.

340 See Kwasniewski, Good Music, 283–92; Noble Beauty, 71–74, 202–3, 241–47;
Once and Future Roman Rite, 251–52.

341 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, IV, 5, in Theology of the Liturgy, 136–
37.

342 Robert Sarah, with Nicolas Diat, The Power of Silence:Against the
Dictatorship of Noise, trans. Michael J. Miller (Ignatius Press, 2017), 129.

343 A prayer beginning with the words Libera nos. On the superiority of the
traditional embolism over its Paul VI replacement, see my article “Deliver us,
we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils past, present, and to come,” Tradition
and Sanity Substack, October 10, 2024.

344 Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, no. 108.

345 From The Love of the Sacred Heart, Illustrated by St. Mechtilde (Burns,
Oates, and Washbourne, 1922), 164.

346 See, for example, Scriptum super Sententiarum IV, D. 9, Q. 1, art. 4, qa. 2,
sol., quoted and discussed in Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 225–
26.
347 Mother Mectilde, The True Spirit of the Perpetual Adorers of the Most
Holy Sacrament of the Altar, ch. 6; unpublished translation.

348 See Kwasniewski, Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright, 17 n17; 251;
294.

349 There is, of course, a traditional form of the giving of the Pax, in which
the image of the High Priest bestows it rst on the major ministers around
him, and the latter, in turn, carry it further down the hierarchy. See Joseph
Shaw, The Case for Liturgical Restoration (Angelico Press, 2019), 75–80.

350 See Summa theologiæ II-II, QQ. 81–91.

351 I allude here to well-meaning musicians who endeavor to ll every spare

moment of a sung Mass with music, as if it would somehow be a failure in
competence to allow a period of silence toward the end of the O ertory or the
end of Communion time. On this problem, see Kwasniewski, Good Music,
276–82.

352 See Kwasniewski, Holy Bread of Eternal Life, 78–88. I will not comment
here on the Leonine Prayers recited after Low Mass, but they too ttingly
keep the faithful on their knees in corporate supplication, serving as a
welcome “bu er” between the conclusion of Mass and exiting into the world.

353 André Gushurst-Moore, Glory in All Things:Saint Benedict and Catholic

Education Today (Angelico Press, 2020), 161.

354 “The Sensible Bond: Why I left the SSPX milieu,” Learning My Catholic
Faith, September 28, 2013,
https://web.archive.org/web/20231124125101/https://learningmycatholicfaith.bl
ogspot.com/2013/09/the-sensible-bond-why-i-left-sspx-milieu.html. It bears
saying that I do not quote from this essay to endorse its overall argument.

355 Pius XII, Mediator Dei, no. 93.

356 Chad Ripperger, “The Spirituality of the Ancient Liturgy, Part 2,” in Latin
Mass Magazine, vol. 10, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 31.
357 Ray Blake, “Mystery of the Trinity,” Fr Ray Blake’s Blog, June 15, 2014,
https://web.archive.org/web/20240523184152/http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co
m/2014/06/mystery-of-trinity.html.

358 The Novus Ordo is the rst liturgy in the history of the Church to specify
in rubrics the postures required of the laity at each point (sitting, standing,
kneeling) as well as the gestures they are to do (and not do, as per the journal
Notitiae); it is also the rst liturgy to presuppose the presence of pews. Prior
to this, all postures were governed by custom alone, which remains the case in
old-rite communities (and which explains why one will nd a certain diversity
of customs around the world). For documentation, see my article “Are Pews in
Churches a Problem—and, If So, How Much of a Problem?,” NLM, July 27,
2020. Amy Welborn (“Up...o your knees!”) notes a sharp irony for the so-
called “age of the laity” ushered in by the Council: “Pre-V2, the rubrics micro-
managed the clergy and let the laity alone for the most part. Post-V2, the
landscape is reversed. The clergy can do whatever, er, these or similar words,
sorry, and the laity are micromanaged.”

359 Joseph Shaw, “Evangelii gaudium 3: open and closed worship,” LMS
Chairman, January 1, 2014; cf. chapter 23.

360 For detailed discussions of the true and false meanings of participatio
actuosa (actual or fully realized participation), see Kwasniewski, “How the
Usus Antiquior Elicits Superior Participation” in Noble Beauty, 191–213; “A
New (Old) Perspective on Active Participation” in Reclaiming Our Roman
Catholic Birthright, 55–75; “How Not to Understand Active Participation” and
“When Piety Is Mistaken for Passivity, and Passivity for Piety” in Kwasniewski,
Ministers of Christ, 131–51.

361 Gregory DiPippo, “Beyond Pius V by Andrea Grillo—Review by Dom

Alcuin Reid,” NLM, January 21, 2014.

362 Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 185.

363 Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, no. 529.

364 “An Interview with His Excellency Bishop Vitus Huonder,” Society of St.
Pius X, District of the USA, October 1, 2021,
https://sspx.org/en/news/interview-his-excellency-bishop-vitus-huonder-
26764.

365 On the terminology, see Christopher Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr.,
The Great Façade:The Regime of Novelty in the Catholic Church from Vatican
II to the Francis Revolution (Angelico Press, 2015), esp. 23–33.

366 See Lauren Pristas, “Theological Principles That Guided the Redaction of
the Roman Missal (1970),” The Thomist 67 (2003): 157–95, at 170. As Yves
Daoudal comments: “The neo-liturgy was manufactured in an openly anti-
traditional way. It was necessary [claimed the reformers] to recover the purity
of the liturgy of the rst centuries, going beyond, as one of its principal
manufacturers dared to say, the ‘Gregorian deformation,’ namely of Saint
Gregory the Great. This is enough to deny any legitimacy to this ‘reform.’
Nothing in the Church can be done against tradition, especially when one
pushes impiety to the point of speaking of a ‘deformation’ for which the
principal codi er of the Latin liturgy, one of the greatest popes and doctors of
the Church, would have been responsible.” “Enough is Enough,” Rorate Caeli,
February 1, 2022.

367 See my article “Sun, Moon, and Stars: Tradition for the Saints,”
OnePeterFive, February 3, 2021.

368 The remainder of this subsection is adapted from Kwasniewski, Noble

Beauty, 208–13.

369 See my article “Paul VI: A Pope of Contradictions,” NLM, December 10,
2013. Someone might be tempted to say: “The pope is, of course, above a
council, and he need not follow a council’s promulgated documents at all;
indeed, their very meaning is so completely subject to his judgment that one
could never say that a pope was rejecting or disobeying a council, since it has
authority only by his consent and has meaning only by his interpretation, and
he can withdraw that consent or change that interpretation.” But such a view
would be nothing other than an irrational ultramontanism that no Catholic
who respects reason, tradition, the magisterium, or the papacy should ever
countenance.

370 Detailed evidence for the three claims I will make—(1) that there was a
decline setting in already in the mid-’60s, before the new Mass was rolled out;
(2) that prior to the Council, or prior to the end of it, Mass attendance was
nonetheless still quite high, across the board; (3) that after the liturgical
reforms began in the 1960s, and, in good measure, due to them, attendance
dropped more and more precipitously—can be found in Bullivant’s Mass
Exodus. What preconciliar authors meant by “worrying pastoral indicators”
looks like a dreamland in comparison to where things had already gone by the
1970s and 1980s, let alone now. For instance, Rahner in the 1950s sounded the
alarm about most Catholics being “Sunday-only” Catholics, whereas now,
sociologically speaking, it’s only the hard-core who are even there on Sundays.
A graph in Bullivant’s book (267–69) illustrates the unrelenting decline from
the mid-’60s onwards. For further data and analysis, see Shaw, “What Vatican
II Did to the Church,” in idem, The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of
Modernity, 101–18; cf. 215–37.

371 The original quotation: “A community is calling its very being into
question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and
highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it
seem downright indecent. Can it be trusted any more about anything else?
Won’t it proscribe again tomorrow what it prescribes today?” Joseph Ratzinger,
Salt of the Earth:Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the
Millenium, trans. Adrian Walker (Ignatius Press, 1997), 176–77.

372 See the following by Alcuin Reid: “‘Thoroughly imbued with the spirit and
power of the liturgy’—Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation,” in
idem, ed., Sacred Liturgy:The Source and Summit, 213–36; “Active Participation
and Pastoral Adaptation,” in Liturgy, Participation and Sacred Music (CIEL
UK, 2006), 35–50; “In Pursuit of Participation—Liturgy and Liturgists in Early
Modern and Post-Enlightenment Catholicism” and “Pastoral Liturgy
Revisited,” in idem, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy, 133–51 and 341–63.
373 On true and false development, see Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman
Rite, 196–215.

374 I will return in chapter 20 to the topic of “new saints in the old Mass.”

375 See Peter Kwasniewski, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis:Sacred Liturgy,

the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church (Angelico Press, 2014),
124–38.

376 See Gregory DiPippo’s ve-part series on the topic at NLM, published
from November 17–December 11, 2013: “Did the Roman Rite Anciently Have
Three Readings?”; “Is the Ambrosian Lectionary an Older Form of the
Traditional Roman Lectionary?”; “Is the Ambrosian Liturgy a Source for the
Modern Lectionary?”; “Is the Medieval Liturgy a Source for the Modern
Lectionary?”; “Sacrosanctum Concilium and the New Lectionary.”

377 For arguments against the new lectionary’s content and structure, see “Why
We Use a One-Year Lectionary of Readings” in Kwasniewski, Turned Around,
133–61; Peter Miller, OSB, “Bible by the Pound: Would the Holy Spirit Agree
that More Bible is Better at Mass?,” in Kwasniewski, Illusions of Reform, 180–
97.

378 On the process of tearing up ancient texts and stitching the bits back
together to create new texts, see Gregory DiPippo, “A Tradition Both
‘Venerable’ and ‘Defective,’” NLM, February 3, 2015; idem, “The New Rite
Prefaces for Advent,” NLM, December 24, 2015.

379 On the inherent problem of the scissors-and-paste method of “making

liturgy,” regardless of how good the material is, see Kwasniewski, “The Reign
of Novelty and the Sins of the Times”; Once and Future Roman Rite, 1–77;
Noble Beauty, 33–50.

380 On the problem of the dominant Low Mass and the rare High Mass, see
chapter 8 and Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 235–55.

381 Anonymous, “All-or-Nothing vs. ‘Progressive Solemnity’: A Response,”

NLM, December 10, 2014.
382 See chapter 21 for further discussion of progressive solemnity.

383 See “Why We Repeat Ourselves in Traditional Worship” in Kwasniewski,

Turned Around, 109–32.

384 See Paul Bradshaw, “Gregory Dix and the O ertory Procession,” Theology,
vol. 120, no. 1 (2017): 27–33.

385 There is no doubt that the intercessions can be done in an elevated style,
and even chanted; once upon a time, I made a notable e ort in this direction
by providing model texts, which I myself had “test-driven” as a cantor. See my
article “How Can We Elevate the Quality of the ‘Prayer of the Faithful’?,”
NLM, May 11, 2015. However, this experience was not enough to convince me
that the good of having such intercessions outweighs the di culties
mentioned above.

386 See the chapter “Priests Who Want Holy Water Must Use the Rituale—
Despite Episcopal Prohibition,” in Kwasniewski, Bound by Truth, 222–26.

387 See Gregory DiPippo, “An Important Liturgical Reform of the Eighth
Century,” NLM, March 31, 2011. The reform mentioned in the article’s title is
Gregory III’s addition of Thursday Lenten Masses in the early eighth century.

388 See Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols:The Traditional Mass and Its
Meaning, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2023), 127–31.

389 A tiny handful of Secrets are addressed to the Son, all but one of them
quite late additions; at most Masses, the priest has spoken to the Father since
the beginning of the O ertory, apart from the prayer Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas.

390 Michael Foley, “The Whence and Whither of the Kiss of Peace in the
Roman Rite,” Antiphon 14 (2010): 45–94, at 76.

391 In most places, the priest removes his maniple and places it on the missal
before genu ecting and moving to the ambo for the readings and the homily,
then resumes the maniple for the Credo. It seems that the original reason for
removing the chasuble and/or maniple was that, back in the day, when
homilies were much lengthier and more energetic a airs, the priest did not
want to ruin the vestments’ decorations by rubbing them too much against the
pulpit’s edges, and, at the same time, welcomed a break from wearing the
additional garments (a far from negligible consideration in Mediterranean
lands in summer). In any case, the maniple is worn only for the o ering of the
Mass; when, e.g., there is a procession after Mass, it is taken o . As I discuss in
chapter 15, the original “literal” meaning of a certain action can legitimately
become the basis for “spiritual” meanings, as occurred with the lifting of the
chasuble at the elevation: originating as a way to assist the priest in lifting his
arms beneath a heavy “bell” chasuble, it later became a symbol of the woman’s
touching of the holy garment of Christ in order to be healed. See my article
“The Lifting of the Chasuble at the Elevations: Touching the Hem of Christ’s
Garment,” OnePeterFive, November 9, 2022.

392 Robert Lazu Kmita, “Sacred Gestures and Symbols: Why Communion in
the Hand is Unacceptable,” The Remnant online, September 20, 2024.

393 For a fuller explanation, see my article “The Homily Is Not Part of the
Liturgy,” The Remnant online, January 15, 2021.

394 Kwasniewski, Illusions of Reform, 67–68.

395 See my pair of articles: “Why the Epistle Should Be Read Eastwards and
the Gospel Northwards,” Tradition and Sanity Substack, December 16 and 19,
2024. I return to this topic in chapters 16 and 17.

396 Those who wish to understand the shift in the lex orandi and all that it
entails for the lex credendi and lex vivendi may consult my articles: “Should
the Feast of Christ the King Be Celebrated in October or November?,” Rorate
Caeli, October 22, 2014; “Between Christ the King and We Have No King But
Caesar,” OnePeterFive, October 25, 2020; “May His Kingdom Come: Catholic
Social Teaching, Part VII—The Kingship of Christ, Source and Summit of the
Social Order,” Catholic Family News, October 25, 2020; cf. Michael P. Foley, “A
Re ection on the Fate of the Feast of Christ the King,” NLM, October 21,
2020.

397 See chapter 20.

398 See Gregory DiPippo, “The Octave of Pentecost: A Proposal for Mutual
Enrichment,” NLM, June 16, 2011.

399 See the comparison of the rosary to the Mass in Kwasniewski, Noble
Beauty, 257–62; cf. “Why We Repeat Ourselves in Traditional Worship” in
Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 109–32.

400 On the terminology “Mass of the Catechumens/Faithful” and also

“Liturgy of the Word/Eucharist,” see Lynne C. Boughton, “An Imagined Past:
Initiation, Liturgical Secrecy, and ‘Mass of the Catechumens,’” Antiphon, vol.
25, no. 2 (2021): 161–210.

401 For more on this problem of nomenclature, see my article “Why the ‘Word
of God’ for Catholics is not only the Bible, but more importantly, Jesus
Himself,” LifeSiteNews, August 29, 2019. Boughton points out that Cabrol’s
informal nomenclature was based on a view of the disciplina arcani and the
dismissal of catechumens that has now been subjected to serious doubts. And
yet, ironically, while Cabrol’s division was never re ected in any o cial
liturgical book (being limited to hand missals), the “Liturgy of the
Word/Liturgy of the Eucharist” division, which is even more dubious, has been
engraved by papal power into liturgical books—one more example of faulty
scholarship enforced on the Church.

402 See pp. 73–74.

403 “Communiqué du 25 juillet 2024,” translated from www.dominicaines-du-

saint-esprit.fr/fr/communique-du-25-juillet-2024/, emphasis added.

404 This trial run selected a vulnerable group of nuns who seem to be in the
grip of a false conception of obedience. The visitator who acted as liaison was
Henry Donneaud, OP, who, as it happens, wrote a critique of the French
edition of my book True Obedience. John Lamont penned a refutation of his
critique and of his entire theological orientation: “Dominican Theologian
Attacks Catholic Tradition: Defending Kwasniewski against Donneaud’s
Positivist Reductionism,” published at Rorate Caeli in four installments in
September 2023; a PDF of the whole is available at https://bit.ly/4gSSqTz.
405 See his books The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity and
Sacred and Great.

406 See chapter 14.

407 See my article “The Stigmata of Saint Francis, Appearing and

Disappearing in the Liturgy,” NLM, September 17, 2018, and the chapter “The
Loss of Riches in the Sanctoral Cycle” in Kwasniewski, Resurgent in the Midst
of Crisis, 124–38.

408 In addition to points raised earlier in this chapter and in chapter 17, see
the more extended treatment in Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 133–66.

409 See chapters 16 and 17.

410 It goes without saying that there is an instructional aspect, and that is why
it has usually been the custom for the preacher to read the readings in the
vernacular from the pulpit before his sermon. This is not a liturgical reading
but a paraliturgical reading, for the bene t of those who do not know the
Latin readings or have not followed them in a hand missal. Nor does it hurt to
hear and read the readings twice, a point to which I will return later.

411 For a refutation of this view, see Miller, “Bible by the Pound.”

412 See Gullickson, “Liturgy Summer Course 2019.”

413 Hugh Somerville Knapman, “Saving the New Mass?,” Dominus Mihi
Adjutor, July 15, 2019.

414 To brush up on what the 1965 missal was like, read Msgr. Charles Pope, “A
Look at the ‘Actual Mass’ of Vatican II: the 1965 Missal,” Community in
Mission, January 28, 2015. Joseph Shaw discusses why it is a non-starter: “The
Death of the Reform of the Reform, 5: 1965?,” February 27, 2014.

415 See chapter 1.

416 I refer to “thousands of years” because the sacri cial rituals of the Hebrews
and many aspects of temple worship inform traditional Catholic liturgy—and
many of these features were abolished in the “reform.” See, for instance,
Gregory DiPippo’s insightful seven-part series “Torah and Haftarah in the
Roman Liturgy” at NLM, published from September 20–October 21, 2023:
“Part 1: Torah and Haftarah in the Roman Liturgy”; “Part 2: The Ember
Saturday of September”; “Part 3.1: The Ember Saturday of Lent”; “Part 3.2: The
Ember Saturday of Pentecost, and Good Friday”; “Part 4: An Inheritance
Repudiated”; “Part 5.1: The Easter Vigil”; “Part 5.2: The Easter Vigil,
Concluded.” See also Alisa Kunitz-Dick, “AUDI, ISRAËL: Jewish Feasts in the
Propers of the Traditional Roman Rite,” Rorate Caeli, August 31, 2021.

417 A re ection prompted by Schrems, “The Council’s Constitution on the

Liturgy: Reform or Revolution?”; see chapter 1 above. As Matthew Hazell
points out, the abolition of Prime was not originally part of Vatican II’s liturgy
constitution: it was only added to Sacrosanctum Concilium at a very late stage
(October 21, 1963, to be precise: see
https://archive.org/details/ASII.3/page/114/mode/2up). What had previously
been described in the preparation of SC as an “extreme solution...contrary to
the whole liturgical tradition”
(https://archive.org/details/ADPIII.2/page/n43/mode/2up, p. 49) was sprung on
the Council Fathers as a last-minute amendment, on the basis of only two
cardinals and an unspeci ed “many” bishops
(https://archive.org/details/ASII.3/page/132/mode/2up, pp. 133–134)—more
evidence of the shenanigans perpetrated by the liturgical progressives, who
could, and did, easily run circles around a behemoth of more than 4,000
prelates.

418 As can be seen, for example, in the reactions of the academic and cultural
gures pro led in Shaw’s The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals.

419 Jerome Stridon, “The Cœtus[Internationalis Patrum]: Trad Godfathers at

Vatican II,” OnePeterFive, December 12, 2022.

420 See my article “Seeking the Origins of ‘Versus Populum’ in the United
States,” Tradition and Sanity Substack, October 19, 2023.
421 Quoted in Reid, A Bitter Trial, 102; the complete intervention of Cardinal
Heenan at the 1967 Synod may be found on pp. 102–4. See the excellent
commentary by Richard Cipolla, “The Devirilization of the Liturgy in the
Novus Ordo Mass,” Rorate Caeli, June 26, 2013.

422 The full account is quoted above on pp. 48–49.

423 See my article “Prophets of Truth in a Decadent Age,” NLM, May 18, 2015.

424 See “Paul VI on liturgical reform, Part 6,” Pray Tell, September 6, 2018, and
Corrado Maggioni, “Fifty years of the Missal promulgated by Paul VI: A
reform for the renewal of the Church,” Pray Tell, April 17, 2019. I discuss the
infamous addresses of 1965 and 1969 in Once and Future Roman Rite, 109–43.

425 See Joseph Shaw, “The Mass of 1965: back to the future? Why it is not an
option,” Rorate Caeli, February 27, 2014.

426 Archbishop Gullickson says, in the same address (“Liturgy Summer Course
2019”): “While we are at it: When it comes to calendar...isn’t older better? From
me you will get a resounding ‘yes’, especially if we are talking about vigils and
octaves, and giving the proper denomination to times and seasons.” See
Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 333–75.

427 Needless to say, particular feasts that subsequently entered the calendar
and met with a serene reception, such as that of St. Thérèse of Lisieux or of
Christ the King, or the Preface added for the Sacred Heart, should be
included, while Propers that may be controversial for one reason or another
(e.g., the untraditional Common of Popes; the rewritten Assumption Mass; the
Propers for Pius X that make use of the Bea psalter) should be relegated to an
appendix for those who wish to use them.

428 For a full argument arriving at this conclusion, see Once and Future
Roman Rite, chapters 2 and 12. The Novus Ordo was the lightning rod on
which modernism expended all its fury. In this way, the worst evils were
de ected from the old liturgy, which was set aside in a condition only partially
damaged by Pius XII’s deformations, and these can easily be reversed—far
more easily than the reform could ever be reformed. Bringing the Novus Ordo
back into harmony with tradition would require changes as numerous and
profound as those that were unleashed in the 1960s—and to what purpose? The
authentic Roman rite is already to hand in the missals published between 1920
and 1948, though indeed for most days of the year any old-rite missal
published in the past 400 years would su ce, so little has the content changed.

429 The question of the reform of the Divine O ce under Pius X is a separate
can of worms. It is easy to see that the Church should restore some elements
of the traditional Roman o ce that were lost, such as the Laudate psalms in
Lauds, but it is by no means easy to see exactly how the old cursus psalmorum
and calendar may be taken up again while privileging the recitation of the full
psalter as often as possible. Indeed, probably the only way to resume the
traditional (pre-Pius X) o ce is either to dissever the hours from the sanctoral
or to make parts of the o ce optional for active clergy; both of these are, in
their own way, radical changes. The situation with the O ce is vastly more
complex than the situation with the altar missal or the other sacramental rites.
Fortunately, at least for members of the Benedictine family, an alternative
already exists: taking up the 1934 Antiphonale Monasticum, which preserves
an ancient heritage and lacks the worst aspects of Pius X’s reforms.

430 SC 34 reads: “The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they

should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should
be within the people’s powers of comprehension, and normally should not
require much explanation.” This description bears no resemblance to any
apostolic liturgical tradition that we know of, Eastern or Western. The
Pistoian rationalism of this paragraph has been the target of countless
critiques since 1963—not surprisingly, since, as Aristotle once observed, no one
can fail to hit a big target when aiming at it (Metaphysics II.1). On this strange
provision of SC, see Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 109–32.

431 “An Interview with Father Berg, FSSP,” The Latin Mass, vol. 22, no. 1
(Winter/Spring 2013): 6–13, at 9–10, www.latinmassmagazine.com/pdfs/Berg-
interview-LM-2013-1-WinSpr.pdf.

432 While it is true that historically the SSPX has been staunchly against
restoring the pre-’55 Roman rite, with Archbishop Lefebvre decisively
intervening in the matter of “the Nine” who were expelled in March 1983
(largely for disobeying his instruction to cleave to the 1962 missal), I have
received reliable reports that a growing number of Society chapels are
returning to the traditional Holy Week ceremonies. May this good sense
ultimately prevail in all individuals, institutes, and communities that adhere to
the usus antiquior! At the moment, the prospects are admittedly mixed: the
July-August 2024 issue of the SSPX’s Angelus magazine raises the question and
provides the o cial reply that the use of the pre-’55 ceremonies is absolutely
out of the question, and, moreover, opines that the ex-Ecclesia Dei
communities’ openness to this discussion just shows that they have no
principles and do what they do for personal, subjective reasons of taste.

433 See Kwasniewski, “Sanctoral Killing Fields.”

434 “In St. Pius V’s reform of the Roman liturgical books, the feast of the
Presentation is suppressed, along with those of SS. Joachim and Anne,
precisely because they all derive from an apocryphal gospel. This went far too
strongly against the grain of traditional piety, and all three feasts were swiftly
restored, St. Anne’s by Pius’ own successor, Gregory XIII, in 1584, the
Presentation by Sixtus V the following year, and St. Joachim by Gregory XV in
1622.” Gregory DiPippo, “Liturgical Notes on the Presentation of the Virgin
Mary,” NLM, November 21, 2021. See my article “Polluting the Internet with
Falsehoods,” OnePeterFive, October 10, 2023.

435 See my article “The Stigmata of Saint Francis.” Saints removed from the
new calendar (or kept only as optional memorials and with generic prayers
instead of the more speci c ones given to them in the old missal) often turn
out to be surprisingly “relevant” in light of more recent developments in world
history, as I have shown in many places: see, inter alia, “Deliver Thy Church, O
Lord, from a awed liturgy,” Rorate Caeli, November 20, 2018 (on St. Felix of
Valois); “Two Collects Most Appropriate for Our Times,” Rorate Caeli,
February 10, 2018 (on St. John of Matha and St. Scholastica); “St. Catherine of
Alexandria—broken on the Consilium’s wheel,” Rorate Caeli, November 24,
2017; “An Expansive Counter-Reformation Lex Orandi Retains Its Relevance,”
NLM, July 5, 2021 (on St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria); “A Saint—and a Mass—for
Our Times: St. Camillus de Lellis,” Rorate Caeli, July 17, 2020; “‘The heathens
have de led Thy holy temple... Revenge the blood of Thy saints!’: On the
Thymotic Realism of the Traditional Latin Mass,” Rorate Caeli, July 28, 2020
(on SS. Nazarius, Celsus, Victor I, and Innocent I); “A Collect Worthy of
Royalty,” Rorate Caeli, October 16, 2020 (on St. Hedwig); “Large Catholic
families are promoted by the traditional liturgical calendar,” LifeSiteNews, July
6, 2021 (on St. Felicitas and her seven sons, as well as Ru na and Secunda);
“‘Vera fraternitas’: June, the month of brothers,” LifeSiteNews, June 8, 2021 (on
SS. Primus and Felician, Mark and Marcellian, Gervase and Protase, and John
and Paul). Consider also how the Nativity extends out to Epiphany on January
6, forming four concentric circles of celebration: (1) Christmas, (2) the octave,
(3) the twelve days, and (4) the forty days that end with Candlemas. See my
article “Don’t stop celebrating: After Christmas Day, Christmas continues,”
LifeSiteNews, December 24, 2019.

436 Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness, 185.

437 Martin Gayford and Philippe de Montebello, Rendez-vous with Art

(Thames & Hudson, 2014), 110–11.

438 Prosper Guéranger, OSB, The Liturgical Year, trans. Laurence Shepherd
(The Newman Press, 1948), vol. 1, “Advent,” 17.

439 Bouyer, Memoirs, 222–23.

440 Exact phrases: “By their intercession, sure support” (Preface I of the
Saints); “their fervent prayers sustain us in all we do” (Preface II of the Saints);
“their merits and prayers [can] gain us [God’s] constant help and protection”
(Eucharistic Prayer I); “[the] constant intercession in your presence [of the
saints] [can give us] unfailing help” (Eucharistic Prayer III).

441 Translation from the St. Andrew Daily Missal, 1945 edition, p. 1712.

442 When I say “refracted” I mean that all ministries and participations
whatsoever, from that of the bishop down to the lowliest baptized child, are all
precontained in Christ the High Priest and derived from Him in the form of
diverse capacities, actions, and o ces.
443 This should not be taken to imply that the properly dialogic parts of the
Mass, such as the prayers at the foot of the altar or the Preface dialogue, ought
not to be conducted as dialogues with other ministers. It is merely to say that
it is appropriate for the priest to “shuttle,” as it were, between Head and
members, as a mediator does by de nition—as when St. Augustine says that
Christ, as Son of God and son of man, prays the psalms sometimes in the
person of God and sometimes on behalf of sinful man.

444 Cf. Alleluia verse for the Mass Salve from the Puri cation until Shrove
Tuesday: “in se reconcilians ima summis,” “reconciling in Himself the lowest
with the highest.”

445 I have decided not to address here the question of the (likewise optional)
sitting of the clergy during the Kyrie, although the enterprising reader will
nd it pleasant to meditate on the allegorical interpretations that might be
pro ered.

446 See Mk 16:19, Acts 7:55, Rom 8:34, Heb 1:3, Rev 3:21.

447 This genu ection is required by the rubrics on the Annunciation and for
the three Masses of Christmas. On other days, the ministers are in fact free to
return directly to the sedilia after they nish reciting the text of the Creed.
Once there, they would remove their birettas and bow their heads at the Et
incarnatus est. Alternatively, if the ministers will not be seated during the
Creed, then, at the descendit de cælis, they go down to the top step, kneel at
the edge of the footpace, and genu ect for the Et incarnatus est; then,
returning to the altar, the deacon goes to retrieve the corporal in the burse and
spreads it out, the celebrant and subdeacon moving aside a little.

448 Customs vary as to when the congregation sits down. At many places,
everyone waits until the deacon has nished setting up the altar. There are no
rubrics that govern the people at the TLM, but I would say this custom doesn’t
make sense. The priest is the only celebrant, and when he sits, everyone should
sit. The ministers can continue doing what they need to do.

449 Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 274.

450 William Durand, Rationale IV:On the Mass and Each Action Pertaining to
It, trans. Timothy M. Thibodeau (Brepols, 2013), 168–69.

451 See my article “Are Pews in Churches a Problem?”.

452 Summa theologiæ III, Q. 58, art. 1, ad 3, citing Hom. xxix in Evang.

453 George Gilder, “The Materialist Superstition,” The Imaginative

Conservative, September 8, 2012.

454 For a notable example, see “The Displacement of the Mysterium Fidei” in
Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 263–77.

455 See Pius XII, Mediator Dei, no. 108.

456 See, for example, Timothy P. O’Malley’s Bored Again Catholic:How the
Mass Could Save Your Life (Our Sunday Visitor, 2017). O’Malley does not, of
course, expressly admit that the Novus Ordo is boring, but many of the
aspects of Mass that he identi es as di cult for modern people are in fact
bound up with the new liturgy’s verbosity, horizontality, dullness, banality,
sentimentality, and so forth; nor does he grapple seriously with the old
liturgy’s power of attraction for very diverse and young congregations, who
apparently do not nd it boring. For numerous testimonials, see Reyers
Brusoe, ed., The Latin Mass and the Youth (Cruachan Hill Press, 2024); David
Dashiell, ed., Ever Ancient, Ever New:Why Younger Generations Are
Embracing Traditional Catholicism (TAN Books, 2022); Jesse Romero, What
Attracts Men to the Sacred Liturgy—and Why (Sophia Institute Press, 2024).

457 See Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 191–212.

458 As Claude Barthe notes in his introduction to a mystagogical classic, “The

search for the spiritual sense hidden beneath the letter of the ceremony is an
extension of the search for the spiritual sense hidden under the letter of the
books of Sacred Scripture...and, like that sense, is inexhaustible and even
in nite, as St. Gregory remarked.” Jean-Jacques Olier, The Mystical Meaning
of the Ceremonies of the Mass, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2024),
xx.
459 I will recommend some literature at the end of the chapter.

460 Originally entitled Explanation of the Prayers and Ceremonies of Holy

Mass:Taken from Notes Made at the Conferences of Dom Prosper Guéranger,
Abbot of Solesmes, it has been republished as The Traditional Latin Mass
Explained (Angelico Press, 2017).

461 Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 20.

462 Fiedrowicz, 23–24.

463 Fiedrowicz, 208.

464 Fiedrowicz, 281. Usually, twenty-six signs of the cross are counted.

465 Barthe, Forest of Symbols, 108.

466 Summa theologiæ III, Q. 83, art. 5, ad 3.

467 Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 282.

468 Hugh Ross Williamson, The Great Prayer:Concerning the Canon of the
Mass (Gracewing, 2009), 22.

469 Hugh Ross Williamson, The Great Betrayal:Thoughts on the Destruction

of the Mass (Arouca Press, 2021), 35.

470 Additional di erences are detailed in chapters 8 and 9 of Kwasniewski,

Once and Future Roman Rite.

471 Cited in Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 205 n36.

472 This work was written by an anonymous Bolognese sometime between

1260 and 1288. The text may be found at
www. sheaters.com/stdominic9ways.html.

473 See my essay “Divine Drunkenness, Mystical Madness,” Tradition and

Sanity Substack, May 25, 2023.
474 From the back cover of Barthe’s Forest of Symbols.

475 Barthe, Forest of Symbols, 10.

476 Barthe, 14.

477 Barthe, 24–25.

478 See Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane
(Crossroad, n.d.), ch. 1, note 10, pp. 30–31.

479 Oxford Dictionaries de nes “workerism” as “a theory or view of society

that (excessively) emphasizes the importance or centrality of the working class.
Also more generally: any theory, policy, or view that supports workers and
their rights and interests.” After World War II, this view gave birth to the
experiment of “worker-priests” who would dress in lay clothes and work in
factories in order to be in solidarity with the proletariat; the socialist and even
Marxist overtones brought discredit on the experiment. The Liturgical
Movement displayed a milder form of workerism that highlighted the
contribution of man to the rite, the dignity of work, the labor of harvest; its
poster-child might be the institution in 1955 of a feast of “St. Joseph the
Worker” on May 1, an explicit attempt to “baptize” the International Workers’
Day of Communist fame. The replacement of the medieval O ertory formulas
with labor-themed blessings belongs to the same mentality.

480 See Barthe, Forest of Symbols, 84–88 for all the texts, which are also given
online in my article “Defending So-Called Doublets by Understanding
Parallelism,” NLM, September 30, 2024. For more on how the Roman
O ertory deliberately anticipates the sacri ce of the altar through a gure of
speech called “prolepsis,” see Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 158;
Gregory DiPippo, “The Theology of the O ertory—Part 6: Prolepsis in the
O ertory,” NLM, June 26, 2014.

481 Barthe, Forest of Symbols, 76–79. A small correction: the rstborn were
redeemed at a price, not by animal sacri ce (that was for the mother’s
puri cation).
482 See Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 279–311.

483 Many excerpts from this work may be read in my review, “Adorning the
Soul with Allegorical Gems,” OnePeterFive, July 19, 2023.

484 This translation in nine volumes was done by Janet Gentles. The Prologue
and Books 1 through 4 were also newly translated by Timothy Thibodeau, but
those volumes seem to be out of print at this time.

485 In fact, the tradition of reciting the readings aloud in the vernacular
outside their liturgical proclamation in Latin traces back to the tenth century,
at least in the English-speaking world. See Nico Fassino, “The Epistles &
Gospels in English: A history of vernacular scripture from the pulpit, 971–
1964,” Hand Missal History (https://handmissalhistory.com/Feature-Epistles/),
2023.

486 “Après les journées de Vanves. Quelques mises au point sur le sens et le
rôle de la Liturgie,” in Études de pastorale (Cerf, 1944 and Abeille, 1944), 383,
cited in John Pepino, “Cassandra’s Curse: Louis Bouyer, the Liturgical
Movement, and the Post-Conciliar Reform of the Mass,” Antiphon 18.3 (2014):
254–300, at 270.

487 For a more extensive treatment of this topic, see the next chapter.

488 See Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness, 98; 118; 130. See also Michael P.
Foley, “The Per Evangelica Dicta,” NLM, October 18, 2024.

489 A comment left at “Why We Say the Black and Do the Red,” Fr. Z’s Blog,
June 11, 2018.

490 The most famous of these is Schubert’s Deutsche Messe, a work in nine
movements written in 1827 and originally intended for Catholic services,
although approval was denied at the time; it came into its own later, in the
twentieth century. The movements are poetic paraphrases of parts of the
Mass, not actual translations of the liturgical texts. Prior to the Novus Ordo,
they would have been sung by a congregation while the priest at the altar said
the Mass according to the missal. However, after Vatican II, the paraphrases
have been completely substituted for the texts in the missal. I experienced this
rsthand at the local German Mass in the village in Austria where I lived for
seven and a half years.

491 I do not object to vernacular hymns being sung before and after High
Mass, that is, during the procession of ministers and at their departure, since
these lie outside of the liturgy proper. Singing hymns in the vernacular once
the Mass has started seems extremely un tting, as it shatters the “sonic
iconostasis” of Latin. To supplant what is liturgical with what is non-liturgical
is Protestant, not Catholic or Orthodox.

492 Let one example su ce to make the point: “Vernacular liturgy in Africa
for a great number of Africans is, in reality, liturgy not in their mother tongue,
but in a second language, often the former colonial language.... The practical
result is a very widespread use of the former colonial languages in the liturgy,
and a concomitant increase in those languages’ perceived prestige.... Latin does
not belong to any particular tribe, nor is it the language of any colonial power;
furthermore, it is not the language of contemporary European or American
cultural in uence.” Shaw, The Case for Liturgical Restoration, 271–72.

493 In the words of Pope John XXIII, “Of its very nature Latin is most suitable
for promoting every culture among diverse peoples, for it gives no rise to
jealousies, it does not favour any one group, but presents itself with equal
impartiality, gracious and friendly to all.” Apostolic Constitution Veterum
Sapientia (1962), no. 3.

494 Translation mine; at the end, the priest is quoting from Cardinal Sarah’s
homily at Chartres.

495 See “Why We Follow Inherited Rituals and Strict Rubrics” in Kwasniewski,
Turned Around, 79–108.

496 While rubrics and reverence for tradition prevent the priest from
changing the liturgy as such, local custom can have a real e ect on the actions
and postures of the laity during Mass, as we will see in chapter 23.
497 See my article “‘The Fingers that Hold God’: The Priestly Bene ts of
‘Liturgical Digits’: Historical, Theological, and Liturgical Conclusions,” NLM,
March 8, 2018.

498 This is why a traditionalist is consistent in saying that rubrics ought to be

followed, but also that some rubrics are better than others, because of what
they require and why they require it; and, indeed, that some rubrics are bad,
such as the Novus Ordo rubric that during Mass no one should genu ect to
Our God and Lord Jesus Christ, really present in the tabernacle, even when
passing in front of Him. The abolition of genu ection in a rite in which
genu ection was the rule for centuries is stupid and wrong. It is an act of anti-
reverence, of irreverence. It is “on the books,” but much in the same way that
any bad law is on the books, and deserving of as much observance. As we saw
in chapter 10, Fr. Ray Blake observed that the Novus Ordo does not seem to be
concerned very much with latria, except in words (sometimes). This, of course,
is pertinent to the tendency to see the readings as having only a didactic value,
without a latreutic function within the liturgy.

499 Summa theologiæ I, Q. 63, art. 1, ad 4.

500 In IV Sent., D. 4, Q. 3, art. 2, qa. 2, ad 4: “Ad quartum dicendum, quod aliter

celebrans quandoque non variat ea quæ sunt de essentia sacramenti, et tunc
confertur sacramentum; sed non consequitur aliquis rem sacramenti, nisi
suscipiens sacramentum sit immunis a culpa aliter celebrantis.”

501 I interpret St. Thomas to mean that when the attendee consents to an
abuse he would be guilty of fault, but if he did not know it or notice it, or
having noticed it, rued and spurned it, he would not be guilty.

502 Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 17.

503 See my article “The Centenary of the Last Integral Editio Typica of the
Missale Romanum,” NLM, July 25, 2020; cf. Once and Future Roman Rite, ch.
12.

504 I defended this approach in my article “Two Attitudes toward Ordinary

Form Rubrics: Kantian Duty and Aristotelian Epikeia,” NLM, January 8, 2018.
At this point I would distance myself from the opinions expressed in that
article and in Fr. Cipolla’s from 2017.

505 Notitiæ 14 (1978): 301–302, no. 2, emphasis added.

506 Notitiæ 14 (1978): 534–535, no. 10.

507 Notitiæ 14 (1978): 536–537, no. 12.

508 It’s true that some celebrations of the Novus Ordo are more aesthetically
appealing than others. As mentioned earlier, for over twenty- ve years I served
as a choir director doing my utmost to elevate the NO with chant and
polyphony (I did this simultaneously with providing music for the TLM). The
di culty is that the “smells and bells” dimension is only one layer, the rst and
most obvious. The second layer is the very content of the rites, in their texts
and rubrics. At that second level, a profound discontinuity appears between
the old and new forms of the Mass, to the point of making it impossible to
maintain they are just two versions of the same Roman rite (in spite of
Benedict XVI’s pacifying innovation in declaring them to be so). When a
person realizes that the Tridentine rite has authenticity (which I would de ne
as remaining in manifest and substantial continuity with its well-established
and perfected historical form, derived and developed out of its apostolic root)
and the Novus Ordo does not (since it originated quite obviously with the
Consilium in the period 1963–1969, with 46 committees of experts through
whose lter everything had to pass), he loses whatever appetite he may have
had for the reform of the reform. Or, to put it more succinctly: When you
celebrate the old rite, you are lifted up by the work of anonymous geniuses.
When you celebrate the new rite, you are weighed down by the work of well-
known mediocrities.

509 Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness, 132.

510 See Kwasniewski, True Obedience; Bound by Truth; From Benedict’s Peace
to Francis’s War.

511 Some have gone so far as to advocate that the entire TLM should be
translated into the vernacular, suggesting that this might be a mutually
acceptable way of ending the “liturgy wars.” They do not recall that for a few
short years in the mid-sixties, something like this was done—and it was still
rejected as inadequate by the liturgists of the day as well as by Paul VI. While
one might say that the Anglican Ordinariate o ers something akin to this
possibility, the proposal is a non-starter until progressive liturgists are gone
for good. All the same, the arguments that I will make in this chapter on
behalf of keeping the readings of the TLM in Latin can easily be extrapolated
to a defense of Latin for the entire rite from start to nish—a case I have made
at greater length in “Why We Pray in Latin” in Turned Around, 167–90.

512 See Miller, “Bible by the Pound,” in Kwasniewski, Illusions of Reform, 180–
97.

513 See Kwasniewski, ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War; Kwasniewski,
True Obedience and Bound by Truth; Rivoire, Does “TC” Pass the Juridical
Rationality Test?

514 See, for more details, Matthew Hazell, “Demanding the Impossible:
Traditionis custodes and Vernacular Readings,” Rorate Caeli, July 20, 2021.

515 See my articles “Homogeneity vs. Hierarchy: On the Treatment of Verbal

Moments,” NLM, October 16, 2017 and “‘Moments of Liturgical Action’:
Recovering the Sacramentality of Biblical Lections,” NLM, January 24, 2022.

516 Samuel Johnson, On the “Epitaph to James Craggs,” in The Works of

Samuel Johnson (J. Nichols and Son, 1810), vol. 6, “Life of Pope,” 206.

517 See chapter 5 and Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 208–15.

518 See my article “What modern Catholics can learn from Eastern Christians
and Protestants about reverent Communion,” LifeSiteNews, May 18, 2021.

519 B.J. Kidd, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation

(Clarendon Press, 1911), 195.

520 See Kabel, “Catholic fact check: Jean Guitton, Pope Paul VI, and the
liturgical reforms.”
521 Maisie Ward, The Wilfrid Wards and the Transition, vol. 2: Insurrection
versus Resurrection (Sheed & Ward, 1937), 7. For particularly insightful
defenses of the role of Latin in the liturgy and in the Catholic Church more
generally, see Shaw, The Case for Liturgical Restoration, 139–68; idem, The
Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity, 57–85; idem, ed., Latin Mass
and the Intellectuals, 18–30, 43–47.

522 This English translation is taken from The Campion Missal and Hymnal,
courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed. Benedict XVI promulgated the text in
Latin only, since that is the version to be used on Good Friday in the usus
antiquior—for those who have not con dently returned to the pre-55 Holy
Week.

523 Summa theologiæ II-II, Q. 1, art. 7.

524 Summa theologiæ I-II, Q. 10, art. 5.

525 Super Heb. X.1, no. 480.

526 Summa theologiæ I-II, Q. 101, art. 2.

527 Summa theologiæ I-II, Q. 103, art. 3 ad 1; see also the corpus in full.

528 Summa contra gentiles IV.57, 2.

529 Summa theologiæ I-II, Q. 103, art. 4.

530 Summa theologiæ I-II, Q. 107, art. 1; see also the responses to the
objections.

531 City of God, XVII, 6. Translated by Marcus Dods, from Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, ed. Philip Scha (Christian Literature
Publishing Co., 1887), rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight,
www.newadvent.org/fathers/120117.htm.

532 John M. Oesterreicher, “Pro Per dis Judaeis,” Theological Studies 8 (1947):
80–96; online at https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1007&context=oesterreicher.

533 For further reading on this topic, I recommend Brian Harrison, “The
Liturgy and ‘Supersessionism,’” CatholicCulture.org, item 9168; “The Good
Friday Prayer for the Jews,” in Shaw, The Case for Liturgical Restoration, 275–
91; John Hunwicke, many articles at
https://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/search?q=jews.

534 This section includes material drawn from Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty,
228–32.

535 For an exquisite example from a Jesuit writing in 1932, see C.C. Martindale,
The Words of the Missal (Os Justi Press, 2023).

536 This is not to say that there is only one ideal combination of content,
order, proportions, and timing for the entire Church; each of the traditional
liturgical rites of East and West has developed its own combination that
re ects its own “genius.” The point is that a successful recipe requires a proper
balance among all these factors, which is noticeably absent from the Novus
Ordo.

537 See chapter 4.

538 This, in contrast to postconciliar funerals and Masses for the dead, which
are almost entirely focused on the living who are present, due to the
assumption (often stated explicitly) that the deceased is already rejoicing with
all his friends and relatives in heaven and thus requires no prayers. In a severe
manner, the traditional Requiem Mass orders the entire service to the bene t
of the deceased soul, which is no doubt why it was particularly loathed by
reformers both of the sixteenth century and of the twentieth. See Phillip
Campbell, “Two Deaths and Two Masses: The Healing Power of the Requiem,”
Unam Sanctam Catholicam, September 13, 2024.

539 See my article “A Tale of Two Lectionaries: Quality versus Quantity,”

NLM, January 16, 2017.
540 Marcel De Corte, “Sur les variations du clergé catholique,” Itinéraires 210
(February 1977): 92–104; translation mine.

541 This is not to say that every passage in the NT that is styled a hymn by
scholars was, in fact, utilized as a hymn; many false claims have been made in
this regard. See Matthew Hazell, “‘Expert Consensus’ in the Post-Vatican II
Liturgical Reforms: More Half-Truths and Dated Scholarship,” NLM, August
24, 2024. The di erence between the supposed “Christ hymns” in Colossians
and Philippians and the “hymns” in the book of Revelation is that we are
speci cally told some of the texts in Revelation are sung by the angels and/or
saints (5:9 .; 15:3 .). There is thus a hymnic quality to them, regardless of how
well they t into the genre of hymn. Further, although one can question
whether texts like the Magni cat were originally composed as hymns, there is
very clear evidence that they were quickly taken up as such by the early
Christians.

542 Indeed, this is what the Son of God Himself did, to set us an example:
“Our Lord Jesus Christ was accustomed to this kind of [ritual] worship—
indeed, when he joined his parents and fellow Jews in weekly worship, he
entered into the ritual. No one had ever heard of spontaneous public worship.
The early Church, in great wisdom, realized that this is a principle that goes to
the root of the mystery of our being. Spontaneity is a good and precious thing.
The Lord loves any lisping, stammering, broken, and halting words we can
o er to him, as he loves the buzzing of bumblebees and the braying of
donkeys. But when we come together for the particular act of o ering our
corporate, regular, recurring adoration of him, then we need a form.... The
worship of the ancient Church is far from being a matter of endless tinkering,
experimenting, and innovating. The entire mystery of revelation and
redemption is unfurled for us in the Church’s liturgy. That liturgy is here in all
of its plenitude, majesty, and magni cence, judging us” (Howard, The Night Is
Far Spent, 255, 266).

543 Funnily enough, we see this even today among well-practiced Protestant
preachers when they are o ering public prayers, for which they have developed
their own vocabulary and formulas. The result is not random but carefully
channeled, even predictable. Thomas Howard frequently comments on this
phenomenon, which he considers a natural testimony to the human need for
rituality: see The Night Is Far Spent, 175–83, 227–28, 254–55. I have encountered
the same thing in the Catholic Church. For example, in a certain diocese,
almost every “spontaneous” prayer I ever heard began: “Good and gracious
God...” I don’t know who introduced this alliterative and rhythmic phrase, but
it reproduces successfully in the wild.

544 One may consider what Charles Cardinal Journet said about the di erence
between the apostolic period and the succeeding ages (The Theology of the
Church, trans. Victor Szczurek [Ignatius Press, 2004], 116–22, 156–57) and apply
it analogously to the early age of worship in contrast with later ages of
worship. See also “Formulating laws of organic development” in Kwasniewski,
Once and Future Roman Rite, 51–61.

545 As Fr. Matthew McCarthy, FSSP, once preached: “Only because of piety
can there be a tradition, stability from generation to generation, like the same
piece of land passed on as an inheritance. St. Paul writes: ‘I preached to you the
gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you
hold it fast...for I delivered to you as of rst importance what I also received’ (1
Cor 15:1–3). The meek and pious transcend the present moment. Formed by
venerable tradition, they reap the wisdom of the ancients and begin to
participate in the eternal wisdom, in the eternal stability—in the very eternity
—of God. In contrast, putting aside the wisdom of the ages, the impious live by
their own myopic insights. Drawn this way and that by rerum novarum
cupidine—the lust for novelty—imprisoned by the spirit of the age, they are
condemned to instability. Neither they nor their followers will ever achieve
rest.” Text shared with author.

546 For many examples of mistranslations, including a few that contain

outright theological error, see Ansgar Chupungco, The Prayers of the New
Missal (Liturgical Press, 2013). A summary is given by Michael Joncas, “An
Issue for Future Liturgical Translation (I): Correcting Already-Approved
Mistranslations,” Pray Tell, October 16, 2017. It goes without saying that many
things to which progressive “liturgical experts” object in the 2011 ICEL
translation are, in fact, improvements both on what preceded it (1973) and on
what was going to be (1998)! In that sense, my citing of Chupungco and Joncas
is in support not of better translations, but of abandoning the Sisyphean
project of vernacularity.

547 See Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 181–82.

548 See quotation on p. 44; for more such passages, see Newman on Worship,
Reverence, and Ritual, ed. Kwasniewski, 1–6, 69–80, 95–96.

549 Pius XII insists that even liturgical rites that developed as late as the
medieval and Baroque eras “owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who
assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world (cf. Mt
28:20)” (Mediator Dei, no. 61). Consequently, to question the inherited forms
in the radical way they were questioned in the 1960s was a kind of sin against
the Holy Spirit; see Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman Rite, 61–72.

550 See Heid, Altar and Church; cf. Lang, Turning Towards the Lord.

551 See my article “The Acorn and the Oak Tree: In Defense of Liturgical
Growth and Maturation,” Tradition and Sanity Substack, January 23, 2025.

552 See my article “‘The Fingers that Hold God.’”

553 See “The splendor of the truth” in Kwasniewski, Once and Future Roman
Rite, 24–27.

554 Dietrich von Hildebrand expounded similar insights in his magni cent
work Liturgy and Personality.

555 See Morello, Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries, 13–39.

556 This section was adapted from Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 91–93, 99–
102, 104–5; there the points are developed further.

557 St. Benedict allows for a redistribution of the psalms, as long as monks
rigorously hold to the principle of praying the full psalter in one week. It
would not con ict with humility for a monastic community to make some
adjustments to the cycle of psalms, yet it would smack of temerity to reject the
most ancient and stable pillars of the o ce, such as praying the whole psalter
each week and using Psalms 109–112 for Sunday Vespers and Psalms 66, 50, 117,
62, and 148–150 for Sunday Lauds.

558 See John 5:30, 8:28, 12:49–50, 14:10, etc.

559 See Paul Turner, In These or Similar Words:Praying and Crafting the
Language of the Liturgy (World Library Publications, 2014). A synopsis may be
found at http://paulturner.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ml-in-these-or-
similar-words.pdf. As to the very limited options available to the priest
o ering the old Mass, see note 31 on p. 41 and the next chapter.

560 See Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 53–87.

561 Letter no. 54, dated January 8, 1944, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien,
revised and expanded edition, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher
Tolkien (HarperCollins, 2023), 95. The last line is J.R.R.’s translation of Anglo-
Saxon verses from the Exeter Book, which he had just quoted in their original
form.

562 Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, with Daniel Flaherty, SJ, He Leadeth Me (Ignatius
Press, 1995), 54.

563 Ciszek, 124.

564 Another indication of the Enlightenment pedigree of the Novus Ordo.

“Rousseau also anticipated the contemporary hostility toward memorization.
‘Emile,’ he decreed, ‘will never learn anything by heart’—thus reversing at a
stroke an educational tradition that began with Plato’s Academy, one that
made possible the vast accumulation of knowledge in medieval society.”
Scruton, “Rousseau and the origins of liberalism.”

565 Holmes, Cur Deus Verba, 62–68, 166, 226–27, 238–40. It is for the same
reason that we should cleave to a venerable translation of Scripture, made in a
sacral register. Such a translation is more memorable precisely because it is
poetic, striking, resonant, and oft-repeated over the course of centuries, giving
its phrasings cultural weightiness. This is why the New American Bible—
written in what Anthony Esolen dubbed “Nabbish,” a “bumping boxcar
language”—is a translation built to fail, one that will never be the inspiration
for any high culture. Moreover, the changing translations of Scripture and
liturgical texts used in the Novus Ordo, such as the psalms and hymns, make it
far more di cult for the sacred formulas to nd a place in the heart. The text
of the Gloria in Latin—that marvelous hymn that has been set to great music
countless times, in chant, in polyphony, in homophony, in every style—has not
changed since the fourth century. Meanwhile, the vernacular translations of it
will never be stable for more than a few decades, and their musical settings are
appropriately transitory. If we value divine, eternal, essential truth (as we claim
to in our catechisms), then we ought to take more seriously the potent
counter-message that is being uttered by our liturgical habits.

566 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendæ, no. 55.

567 The Pew Research Center survey of 2019 and the Vinea Research survey of
2022 reached di erent conclusions, but questions about the accuracy of both
surveys continue to be asked. The survey results of the Real Presence Coalition
(https://realpresencecoalition.com/), based on 12,680 completed responses,
should also be taken into account. Undoubtedly there is a crisis of faith,
re ected in poor Mass attendance, indiscriminate reception of Holy
Communion regardless of mortal sins or irregular marital status (with little
use of Confession), the notable disjunct between supposed belief and actual
behavior, and so forth.

568 For a summary of these documents, with apposite quotations, see Gregory
DiPippo, “New Prefaces and Feasts for the EF Missal,” NLM, March 25, 2020.

569 Cum Sanctissima lists the Class III feasts that cannot be impeded, so if a
saint canonized after 1960 has a feastday that falls on any other Class III or IV
day, that saint can be celebrated using the appropriate Common in the missal.
Thus, St. Pio of Pietrelcina’s feast of September 23, St. Teresa Benedicta’s on
August 9, and St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s on November 8 could all be
celebrated (with, respectively, commemorations of St. Linus, St. Romanus or
the Vigil of St. Lawrence, and the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs).
570 See Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro, The Last Mass of Padre
Pio:The Secret Soul of the Stigmatic Saint, trans. Marianna Gattozzi (Angelus
Press, 2019); Phillip Campbell, “The Obedience of St. Padre Pio,” Unam
Sanctam Catholicam, July 29, 2023.

571 See Kwasniewski, “Sanctoral Killing Fields.”

572 See Kwasniewski, “Animadversions on the Canonization of Paul VI.”

573 Gregory DiPippo has published a study of each of the new Prefaces at
NLM; all the links are gathered in my article, “Roundup on the CDF Decrees
on New Saints and Prefaces for the TLM,” NLM, July 13, 2020.

574 See the preceding chapter.

575 Prior to the 1962 missal, the use of these Mass formularies was restricted
to the places where the feasts were celebrated. “The Mass of a Saint given
among the Masses for Certain Places may not be used as a votive Mass, except
where the feast is celebrated by apostolic indult; otherwise, a votive Mass of
the Saint must be taken from the appropriate Common.” Joseph Wuest,
Matters Liturgical (the Collectio Rerum Liturgicarum), trans. Thomas W.
Mullaney (Frederick Pustet, 1956; repr. Angelus Press, 2023), no. 254, f, pp. 468–
69. This would be one of those rare instances where a post-’54 rubric is
superior.

576 To be more precise: Sometimes there is a choice only between the prayer
for the pope and the prayer for the Church (from Advent until the
Puri cation); sometimes it is ad libitum (after Candlemas until Ash
Wednesday; the time after Pentecost); during Lent, the prayers are xed. On
days (i.e., Semidoubles and Simples) that call for a minimum of three orations
and leave the third to the celebrant’s choice, the celebrant does not have the
option to omit a third prayer. He still must choose some set of orations to ll
the third slot.

577 The Asperges is mandatory only in cathedral and collegiate churches where
the O ce is sung, to be done after Terce and before the Sunday conventual
Mass. In parochial churches, the Asperges is optional, except where custom
would demand the practice. The Asperges can be done only once per Sunday;
thus, if there is more than one sung Mass on a Sunday, a decision has to be
made as to which is the principal Mass ( ttingness suggests the one closest to
the time when Terce would be prayed). See Wuest, Matters Liturgical, no. 401,
p. 799.

578 It is worthy of note that the Code of Rubrics promulgated by John XXIII
in 1960 added options to the actions of the celebrant and other ministers. For
example, no. 399 allows the celebrant who o ers more than one Mass on All
Souls to omit the sequence at all but the principal or rst Mass; no. 523 allows
for sitting at sung Masses during the singing of the Sequence in addition to
during the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo as allowed in the 1920 General Rubrics; no.
426 allows the use of incense in all sung Masses that are not solemn (prior to
the 1960 Code, the use of incense in a non-solemn Mass was allowed only
where a papal indult had been granted to a diocese or country, and even then it
was limited to Doubles of the First and Second Class).

579 Whether or not to have an external solemnity for Corpus Christi is in

some places a free decision but in the USA and certain other countries, this
feast must be both celebrated on its proper day and observed on Sunday.

580 See Gregory DiPippo, “A Note on External Solemnities in the EF,” NLM,
April 27, 2016.

581 The Eastern Christian equivalent to the chasuble, the phelonion, also
evolved in a parallel way to the Western chasuble. How often one hears
Eastern Christians (whether Catholic or schismatic) say something like the
following: “In the West, you kept on changing over time, but in the East we
always retained the ancient ways. Our liturgy, our churches, our vestments,
always the same, while yours evolve.” Well...one learns through study that this
isn’t so. Relatively speaking there may be less change and more continuity in
the East, but there are still developments: the texts and ceremonies of the
liturgy were elaborated over time and reached maturity well after the period of
the Church Fathers; the layout and decoration of churches have seen multiple
variations; and the vestments have seen modi cation too. In the West, the
chasuble was shortened and the sides were cut o ; in the East, the phelonion
was shortened and the front was cut out. Both were practical responses to an
originally fairly impractical vestment. See Shawn Tribe, “The Development of
the Shape of the Eastern Phelonion (Chasuble) and Its Parallels to the Same in
the Latin West,” LAJ, November 18, 2024.

582 Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, ch. 8.

583 Pius XII, Mediator Dei, no. 209.

584 See Fr. David Friel’s critique of the notion of “progressive solemnity” in
the article of that name at Views from the Choir Loft, December 21, 2014.

585 “Le chant grégorien,” in Initiation théologique, v. 1: Les sources de la

théologie (Cerf, 1950), 255–56, cited in Marc-Daniel Kirby, “Sung Theology:
The Liturgical Chant of the Church,” in Beyond the Prosaic:Renewing the
Liturgical Movement, ed. Stratford Caldecott (T&T Clark, 1998), 148 n62.

586 Thus, The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Hymnal (Os Justi Press, 2023) has a
total of eleven settings: the six standard ones plus a seventh in wide
circulation; the Ambrosian; and three from Du Mont: Missa Regia, Missa
secundi toni, and Missa sexti toni.

587 “The senses which operate through external media, viz., smelling, hearing,
seeing, are found in all animals which possess the faculty of locomotion.... But
in animals which have also intelligence they serve for the attainment of a
higher perfection. They bring in tidings of many distinctive qualities of
things, from which knowledge of things both speculative and practical is
generated in the soul. Of the two last mentioned, seeing, regarded as a supply
for the primary wants of life, is in its own right the superior sense; but for
developing thought, hearing incidentally takes the precedence.” Sense and
Sensibilia, ch. 1, 436b18–437a6, trans. J.I. Beare, in The Complete Works of
Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton University Press, 1984), 694.

588 I suggest readers become intimately familiar with the online Liturgical
Arts Journal, which thoroughly covers vestment periods, styles, colors, and
manufacturers, not to mention every other liturgical artifact known to man.
589 See my article “We, Too, Are the Sacri ce We O er,” OnePeterFive, June
17, 2020.

590 See my article “The Beautiful Death: Why We Favor Cut Flowers in the
Sanctuary,” NLM, May 1, 2023.

591 See, e.g., Shawn Tribe, “Hand Illuminated Altar Cards by Pelican Printery
House,” LAJ, June 9, 2021; Daniel Mitsui, “New Illuminated Altar Cards,” LAJ,
November 24, 2017; idem, “Altar Cards for the Requiem Mass,” LAJ, April 15,
2021; John Paul Sonnen, “Requiem Mass Altar Cards,” LAJ, December 9, 2020.

592 For a detailed treatment, see Shawn Tribe, “The Historical, Theological,
Liturgical and Artistic Case for Altar Frontals,” LAJ, November 16, 2017.

593 See Shawn Tribe, “The Missal Cushion,” LAJ, February 4, 2020.

594 Wuest, Matters Liturgical, no. 157, h, p. 266.

595 See, for an example, John Paul Sonnen, “The Custom of Festive Hangings
in Rome: The Chiesa Nuova,” LAJ, January 1, 2025.

596 See Kwasniewski, Good Music, 103–4; Joseph Ahmad, “Droning at Mass,”
NLM, January 3, 2020; idem, “Singing Upon the Book: Further Methods of
Chant Harmonization,” NLM, October 7 and 8, 2020; David Clayton, “Using
Drones as Harmony—A Simple Way to Add to the Spiritual E ect of Sacred
Music,” The Way of Beauty blog, December 27, 2017.

597 See “‘Where Has God Gone?’ The Pressure of Horror Vacui” in
Kwasniewski, Good Music, 276–82.

598 See Kwasniewski, Good Music, 234–38. On all these questions of music
(chant, polyphony, organ), see Patrick John Brill, The Great Sacred Music
Reform of Pope St. Pius X: The Genesis, Interpretation, and Implementation
of the Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (Os Justi Press, 2025).

599 See my article “Benedictine Monks on Incense: Sourcing It and Making

It,” NLM, February 10, 2020.
600 See Shawn Tribe, “Keeping Feasts with Greater Festivity,” LAJ, July 5, 2019.

601 See my article “Ordained, Assistants, and Faithful: On Hierarchical

Participation in Three Spheres,” OnePeterFive, February 23, 2022.

602 See the re ections of Archbishop Gullickson: “Velocity: Haste as Liturgical

Abuse,” ad montem myrrhae, January 12, 2020,
https://admontemmyrrhae.blogspot.com/2020/01/velocity-haste-as-liturgical-
abuse.html.

603 Jean-Baptiste Chautard, OCSO, The Soul of the Apostolate, trans. A

Monk of Our Lady of Gethsemani (TAN Books, 2008; originally published in
1927), 266; 268–69.

604 Leonard of Port Maurice, The Hidden Treasure:Holy Mass (TAN Books,
2012), 51.

605 Lk 16:10–12; Lk 19:12–27; Mt 25:14–30; cf. Kwasniewski, Turned Around, 79–

108.

606 In my consternation, I tried to come up with excuses for the priest and
server: “The church is so large, perhaps the priest simply couldn’t speak in a
way that the faithful could hear” (I am, needless to say, opposed to rigging up a
lapel mic or an altar mic connected to loudspeakers); but then the easy
audibility of his voice when he did speak up made me realize that the silence
for the rest of the time was a chosen policy.

607 No one is required to use a missal, of course; but for the priest to say
silently that which is supposed to be said aloud—again, not according to my
personal opinion, but according to the requirement of the rubrics—is for him
to impose his personal devotional preference on the rest of us in the
congregation.

608 I take this to mean that those who know Latin should be able to follow
the clara voce portions without the use of a hand missal—which makes sense,
since hand missals were not widely and easily available prior to the twentieth
century.
609 This is why I agree with Fr. Joseph Kreuter’s sermon on the use of the
missal. See p. 154.

610 See “When Piety Is Mistaken for Passivity, and Passivity for Piety” in
Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ, 141–51.

611 Pius XII, Mediator Dei, no. 108: “The needs and inclinations of all are not
the same, nor are they always constant in the same individual.”

612 See Kwasniewski, Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright, 125,

emphasis added.

613 See James Baresel, “The Liturgists and the Fascists,” Rorate Caeli, August 3,
2023.

614 See “How the Usus Antiquior Elicits Superior Participation” in

Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 191–213.

615 See chapter 22. Cf. John Zuhlsdorf, “Excessive pious gestures during Mass,”
Fr. Z’s Blog, January 12, 2019; Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ, 141–51.

616 Jacques Maritain, Liturgy and Contemplation, trans. Joseph W. Evans (P.J.
Kenedy & Sons, 1960), 88–90.

617 Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, 228.

618 Fr. Zuhlsdorf o ers similar advice in “What are the authentic rubrics,
postures for lay people at the Traditional Latin Mass. Are we doing it wrong?,”
Fr. Z’s Blog, February 15, 2020. An entirely separate question is whether or not
pews belong in Catholic churches. Were they a good invention? Do they have
serious drawbacks? See my article “Are Pews in Churches a Problem?”

619 See my article “Unambiguous Theocentricity: Church Architecture and

the Traditional Mass,” OnePeterFive, June 6, 2018.

620 The Lives of the Desert Fathers, trans. Norman Russell (Cistercian
Publications, 1981), 93.
621 As has been demonstrated by now too many times to count. Scholars
whose names quickly come to mind: Dobszay, Pristas, Fiedrowicz, Barthe,
DiPippo, Foley, Hazell.

622 For the full argument, see my aforementioned series “The Reign of
Novelty and the Sins of the Times,” and “Clari cations on the Reign of
Novelty: A Letter Exchange with a Friendly Critic,” Tradition and Sanity
Substack, September 9, 2024.

623 See Kwasniewski, Bound by Truth and “The Reign of Novelty.”

624 The argument about the so-called “secondary objects of infallibility” can
be grossly exaggerated. This is why we have people going around saying
canonizations must be infallible, even though this is a theological opinion that
has never been de nitively accepted. It’s a begging of the question: they assume
canonizations have a strict and necessary relationship to faith and morals, and
so are infallible, instead of analyzing whether the premise is correct (see
Kwasniewski, ed., Are Canonizations Infallible?). Similarly, with the liturgy,
there are aspects that pertain to infallibility—I think validity and lack of
explicit heresy are the only ones—but the rest can be argued to be subject to
defectiveness, even a harmful defectiveness. That is one of the reasons I reject
the invoking of Auctorem Fidei to justify the new liturgy: for the reform
endorses the very errors of the Synod of Pistoia that Auctorem Fidei
condemned.

625 I argue this point at length in my book Bound by Truth, but also in my
essay “The Pope’s Boundedness to Tradition as a Legislative Limit,” in
Kwasniewski, ed., From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, 222–47.

626 Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness, 188.

627 Here I would like to make a brief remark, entirely positive, about the vital
contribution that the Society of St. Pius X has made to the ght for tradition.
While I am not prepared to say that it alone is responsible for the
traditionalist movement—this would be an unhistorical oversimpli cation—
nevertheless Lefebvre was the galvanizing and organizing gure who gave it
structure and worldwide prominence, and his Society today continues to bring
authentic divine worship and orthodox preaching, catechesis, and schooling to
many Catholics. For this we must be grateful.

628 See my article “Hyperpapalism and Luther: Strange Bedfellows,” Tradition

and Sanity Substack, November 27, 2023.

629 All these points in the present Epilogue are developed at much greater
length in the second book of the trilogy of which I spoke in the Preface—
namely, Bound by Truth.

630 At the one, the priest is instructed to bless the palms facing the people, as
opposed to blessing them at the altar; at the other, a basin of paschal water is
blessed facing the people, the priest having his back to the altar. See also my
article “Seeking the Origins of ‘Versus Populum’ in the United States.”

631 Alfredo Ottaviani, Antonio Bacci, and a Group of Roman Theologians, The
Ottaviani Intervention:Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, trans.
Anthony Cekada (Philothea Press, 2010). For more on its history, see Clemens
V. Oldendorf, “Lessons from the Sixties: Selective Synodality and Princely
Protests,” NLM, October 24, 2019.

632 The text, in Italian, may be found at www.vatican.va/content/paul-

vi/la/speeches/1976/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19760524_concistoro.html.

633 Nowadays the phrase “Novus Ordo” has been extended to mean virtually
the same thing as “the reformed liturgical rites.” Thus, one will hear people
speak of “Novus Ordo baptism,” “Novus Ordo breviary,” and the like.
Although we readily understand what is meant, it would be more accurate to
say the “new rite of baptism,” the “new liturgy of the hours,” and so forth,
since “Novus Ordo” is just an abbreviated form of “Novus Ordo Missæ”: it is
speci cally about the order followed in the o ering of Mass. However, one
may justi ably refer to the “Novus Ordo lectionary” and “Novus Ordo
calendar” because of their close association with the Mass.

634 An archived version of the document is available at

https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025515/https://www.vatican.va/news_servi
ces/liturgy/details/ns_lit_doc_20100422_sac-riti-conclusione_en.html.
635 See chapter 10 above.

636 See “Di erent Visions, Contrary Paths” in Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty,
115–33; “Objective Form and Subjective Experience: Life Teen under Scrutiny,”
in Kwasniewski, Good Music, 227–33.

637 Joseph Bottum, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano: Catholic
Culture in America,” First Things, October 2006.

638 Peter Kwasniewski, “Finding Christ in Present Su erings Does Not Mean
Embracing Abuse, Error, or Deformation,” OnePeterFive, February 8, 2023.

639 Eric Sammons, “New Coke: If Today’s Catholics Were In Charge,”

OnePeterFive, December 9, 2015.