Fr. Albert Kallio is a Dominican, ordained in 1994 by Bishop Bernard Fellay. In this video he addresses a number of questions about the Mass before and after the changes by Annibale Bugnini. He explains in an easily understood way the impact of all the changes to the Mass put in place in the name of Vatican II. Many of those changes flew in the face of the wishes of the Council Fathers. Sadly, few of the Fathers objected when the destruction of the Mass went into effect. Here's how Fr. Kallio summarizes the disastrous impact:
The final result of all these changes is that people don't even know [the Mass] is a sacrifice....That already in itself shows that the new Mass does not express the essence of Catholic Mass which is to be a sacrifice.
He specifically mentions a number of things including the reduction of genuflections and signs of the cross throughout the liturgy. Everything worked toward the de-sacralization of the liturgy.
As a companion to this video I highly recommend Peter Kwasniewski's review of historian Yves Chiron's biography of Bugnini, What Bugnini Was Thinking When He Destroyed the Catholic Mass. It ties in well to the video by explaining the nature of the man behind the curtain. Was he an evil Machiavellian manipulator or a pathetic little clerical bureaucrat illustrating the banality of evil? I'm thinking of getting the book, but then I look around at the stacks of books ordered and not yet read and laugh. Maybe not.
Thinking about all this, I can't help lamenting all the idealistic young priests formed in the Novus Ordo who have no idea of the history and riches of the traditional Latin Mass. How could something so effective at making saints be discarded as too complicated for modern man. What an insult to both God and modern man!
Is the new Mass a new religion? Or is it Catholicism lite? Or does it incline participants to Protestantism?
The NO nurtured my faith for decades so I'm loathe to be too hard on anyone who loves it. Nevertheless, returning to the Mass of my youth was an extraordinary blessing, one that seems to make my life an active living of the beautiful Song of Songs in the Bible:
9My beloved is like a roe, or a young hart. Behold he standeth behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the lattices.Come and experience the beauty, reverence, and glory of the Traditional Latin Mass. Bask in the Son-shine. Have you ever attended one? If you come to our chapel, you may find it strange at first, but the air itself is filled with the wonder of God and His love for us. The entire Mass focuses on offering ourselves with Christ as a sacrifice of love for our own salvation and the salvation of others. It is obviously worship of God rather than a celebration of the community.
10Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.
11For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.
12The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land:
13The fig tree hath put forth her green figs: the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come:
Celebrating community also has value, but it is not the primary focus of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Yes, we pray for one another, but we face God with our worship prayers and sacrifices of atonement, not each other! And we bow before Him recognizing that it is His action that saves us, not our own or the community's.
Come visit and worship God, then celebrate with us at coffee and doughnuts. We love visitors and welcome them with joy. And if you ever get to Woodstock, my husband and I like to think of Camp Kreitzer as a little lay monastery in the country with the welcome mat always out. Hospitality is our default position. Come break bread with us. We'll eat scones made with eggs from our chicks and spread them with honey from our bees. And we'll try not to bore you with all our beekeeping stories about visiting bears and challenging seasons.
May God bless and keep us all and lead us to the heavenly Jerusalem! Pray for priests. This is the time most ordinations take place. We need holy priests, many holy priests. Let us help them with our prayers and sacrifices, especially offering for them the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
May Jesus Christ be praised!
You and I have taken different routes, during totally different time periods, to the same destination--the old Latin Mass. An older lady Lucy Feirabend became my spiritual Godmother anout 1967-1968. She introduced me to Hamish Fraser's "Approaches," Walter Matt's "The Remnant," Fr. Crane's "Christian Order, and a few other new traditional periodicals that awakened a number of us to the major problems of Vatican II, even before Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre began his seminary. Fortunately a military chaplain Fr. Cornelius Gallagher continued to say the old Mass until about 1953 when he was told he couldn't. He then retired to Arizona and used his military retirement money to fund traditional Catholic projects. Oh what stories there were of betrayals and lessons learned in those days! Ultimately I ended up with the FSSP, but the SSPX is less hesitant to "call a spade a spade." Both have contributed so much to preserving the Catholic Faith in this time of Apostasy.
ReplyDeleteAno M. A.
Yes the new Mass is a new religion if by religion you mean liturgy, devotional life and emphasis of worship. It can be the same creed (hermeneutic of continuity of Pope Benedict) so the same faith. I submit that the modernists have different creed. They are from Satan.
ReplyDeleteIf it was a new religion and Vatican II teaches heresy then the Church defected. A clear look at what the Church traditionally taught about the meaning of the dogma of indefectabilty shows that. Since the dogma of indefectability is true if Catholicism used to be true before Vatican II it cannon be the case that it is a new religion or that Vatican II taught heresy.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a Church scholar, but I believe there have been other Councils with issues that were at least partially overturned by later popes. But what is especially confusing about your comment is the statement that what was true before Vatican II must be true now. If that is the case then some of the documents of Vatican II that broke with the past are a problem. How can the document on ecumenism be brought into conformity with the past? How can a pope kiss the Koran or tell Muslims we worship the same God, one a Trinitarian God and one not? This confusion and others are a serious problem.
DeleteI have been up and down traditionalism. I’ve concluded the errors begun with Lefevrve himself. The reason I studied theology is to stop being misled. If Vatican II taught heresy, those who promote it (popes since Vatican II) have been promoting heresies in the teaching capacity. That contradicts the claim that the see of Rome can never defect as long as there is a true pope. If we go the sede route, the Church defected when all the legtimate bishop appointed by true popes died. Without legitimacy there is no apostolic succession. One can be ordained with valid rights, but without legal authorithy you cannot claim to be a successor of the apostles.
DeleteFurthermore, I have found gems such as material schismatics can be in a state of grace and be saved outside the visible Church, and not merely because of baptism of desire. The only way I can square all this is to hold that they are connected to the Church even if not in the body, something like the “error” of Vatican II. I cannot explain some things but trads SSPX or more radical are teaching errors about Church teaching. What they consider tradition is not the irreformabble Apostolic Tradition, and if so, it is not a good reason to reject apostolic authority.
I'm curious. When you say you've "studied theology" do you mean you took courses or did personal research. I think most people say Vatican II was ambiguous enough for others to use the ambiguity to teach heresy. There are certainly many preaching heresy in the name of Vatican II including popes. God is the master of salvation so I agree that anyone can be saved. My personal opinion is that at the moment of death, everyone is given a level of insight about the Church and has the opportunity to say yes and enter heaven through her. At any rate, I do not think the SSPX "reject apostolic authority." In fact they defend it. What they reject are the novelties and the breaks from Sacred Tradition that conflict with the faith as taught for millennia.
DeleteI read traditional theology manuals to know what the Church traditionally taught. There are lots of influencers who claim to be spokespersons for tradition, and you can go around for years ending up where you started.
DeleteIf no legal pope gave them permission to consecrate bishops then they aren’t any.more licit than Eastern Orthodox bishops, who are also technically validly consecrated. It doesn’t matter if they claim not to be schismatic. The men they consider to be popes don’t approve their ministry. That is definitely schismatic attitude. Supplied jurisdiction does not make them lawful successors of the apostles. It’s mainly for common error: a layman goes to them supposing they had a canonical mission. Then they can absolve his sins. It doesn’t cover the case where the layman knows where they stand and goes anyway.
Of course if they pointed out all this nobody would go to them. So they have all sorts of specious arguments to claim they are true T Catholics.
Well, I can't agree with you about supplied jurisdiction. And obviously they aren't in schism or excommunicated or the threat to excommunicate would be ridiculous. I suspect you came here from Substack to engage in the same arguments you engage in there. Are you really a closet sedevacantist? I prefer direct and honest engagement rather than innuendo and fog. And, yes, I believe the SSPX are true Catholics who love Holy Mother Church and have a zeal for souls that is often lacking among our bishops.
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