[Question:]{.underline} Can the rubrical changes of 1955 and 1962 be compared to the new rite of Mass?
[Answer:]{.underline} It is certainly true that liturgists of modernist tendency, including Father Bugnini, had a considerable influence in the Council for the reform of the Liturgy from the time of its foundation in 1948. This is what Father Bonneterre has to say in The Liturgical Movement (Angelus Press, 2002): “Protected from on high by eminent prelates, the new liturgists took control little by little of the Commission for Reform of the Liturgy founded by Pius XII, and influenced the reforms devised by this Commission at the end of the pontificate of Pius XII and at the beginning of that of John XXIII” (p. 94).
However, until Vatican II these were incidental questions, that did not change the liturgy in itself, such as the suppression of certain vigils and octaves, the restoration and change of the times of the Holy Week ceremonies. They did not change the Mass itself in any way, which remained the Mass of Saint Pius V, published in virtue of Quo Primum, the document with which every Missal of 1962 begins. Some changes were beneficial simplifications, such as the categorization of liturgical days into four classes, and the removal of overlapping octaves. Others can be considered regrettable, such as the shortening of the ceremony for the blessing of Palms on Palm Sunday. However, Providence and the authority of the Church prevented them from going beyond any such minor rubrical changes, such that Pope John XXIII declared himself dissatisfied with the change of rubrics that he authorized in 1960, wanting a more radical change, according to new principles, after the impending Council (Rubricarum instructum). This was to be the New Mass.
Consequently, we are duty bound to accept these minor rubrical changes, as is done in practically every traditional church and chapel world wide. Whether we personally like them or not, they are not expressions of a new, modernist theology, as is the New Mass, but rather of the same nature as the minor accidental rubrical changes that many Popes since 1570 have authorized to the Mass of Saint Pius V. The New Mass of Pope Paul VI is evil because it undermines and destroys the Faith, and must be rejected. None of these rubrical changes have any impact on the Mass as a symbol and profession of Faith, and consequently there is no objective reason to reject them.
[Question:]{.underline} Is the crisis in the Church primarily a question of the Mass or of doctrine?
[Answer:]{.underline} It is certainly true that the general Catholic in the pews is apt to be shocked much more by the changes of the Mass on a day to day and week to week basis, than by statements of Vatican II or of modernist theologians reinterpreting Catholic teachings in a non-orthodox sense. However, this does not at all mean that the liturgy comes first, or that the crisis is essential a crisis of the liturgy of the Mass.
The relationship between the Liturgy and Catholic dogma was magnificently explained by Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei, in which he condemned the excesses of the liturgical movement and explained the doctrinal basis for a true Catholic understanding of the liturgy. He there explains that it is not the Mass that comes first, and shows us what we must believe, but that it is the profession of Faith that comes first and that consequently “the entire Liturgy…has the Catholic Faith for its content, inasmuch as it bears public witness to the faith of the Church” (§47). Hence he condemns “the error and fallacious reasoning of those who have claimed that the Sacred Liturgy is a kind of proving ground for the truths to be held of faith” (§46), and defines: “The Sacred Liturgy, consequently, does not decide or determine independently and of itself what is of Catholic Faith…but if one desires to differentiate and describe the relationship between faith and the sacred Liturgy in absolute and general terms, it is perfectly correct to say: ‘[Lex credendi legem statuat supplicandi’]{.underline} — let the rule of belief determine the rule of prayer.”
Since Faith comes first, and is expressed in the Mass, so likewise does the modernist destruction of the Faith come first, and the overturning of the true Mass follow. The historical connection was particularly apparent after Vatican II. The Council promoted the modernist principles of adaptation to the modern world, the evacuation of penance, of the final last ends, of the eternity of the soul, the confusion of the priesthood of the faithful with the ordained priesthood, the undermining of the sacredness of the Mass and the sacraments, and the doctrinal relativism that opened the door to ecumenism and acceptation of protestantism as a legitimate form of Christianity. The consequence was the New Mass some four years later, which from 1969 started impressing these false principles on the minds of Catholics, destroying their Faith.
The crisis in the Church is consequently primarily one of Faith, and only secondarily one of the Mass. The New Mass is evil because it destroys the Faith, that is Catholic doctrine. The traditional Mass is Catholic, and the banner of our resistance against modernism because it preserves and nourishes the Faith.
Some have said that the preoccupation showed by Saint Pius X in his condemnation of modernism at the beginning of the 20^th^ century, and the same preoccupation showed by his disciples in defending Catholic doctrine against modernism, is a distraction from the real issue, that of the Mass, presenting the doctrinal problem of modernism as a “phantom menace”. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the novelties and changes contained in the New Mass were deliberately engineered by modernists such as Father Bugnini as a means of pushing their modernist agenda.
This point is made particularly well by Father Didier Bonneterre in the conclusion to his book The Liturgical Movement (Angelus Press, 2002): “Crushed by St. Pius X, the Modernists understood that they could not penetrate the Church by theology, that is, by a clear exposé of their doctrines. They had recourse to the Marxist notion of praxis, having understood that the Church could become modernist through action, especially through the sacred action of the liturgy” (p. 93).
Consequently the only resistance possible is a doctrinal one, and it is the application of the principles used by Saint Pius X in his 1907 condemnation of modernism in Pascendi. A typical example could be chosen. The turning around of the altar facing the people is not a haphazard invention, but an intentional novelty to express the belief that the Mass is primarily a celebration of the community rather than the action renewed by the ordained priest. This in turn comes from the modernist idea that Christ’s presence in religion is immanent and vital, continuously evolving and present subjectively in the community’s awareness, and that this experience constitutes religion, not objective doctrine. (Cf. Pascendi # 35 — 37). Likewise for the substitution of the vernacular for the sacred language, and for so many other changes. The doctrinal crisis in the Church over the past century is not a phantom, but truly the origin of the destruction of the liturgy.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.