PRIEST WHERE IS THY MASS? MASS WHERE IS THY PRIEST?
The
heading of this section is the title of a book published in 2003 by Angelus
Press, the printing company of the Society of St. Pius X. This 195 page book contains the accounts of
interviews with sixteen priests who withdrew from their priestly ministry in
the Church for a number of reasons, but for almost all of them the dominant
reason was their objections to the Novus Ordo Mass. The book
contains many statements which defame practices of present day Catholicism, and
are very offensive to members of Holy Mother Church. More
pointedly, some of these interviews are diatribes against the Church which are
reminiscent of the polemics of typical pamphlets and other writings at the time
of the Reformation. Some of those
interviewed either state directly, or strongly imply, that the Novus Ordo Mass is
an invalid Mass. We prove the
falsity of this claim at the link Validity. Therefore if these priests would celebrate the
Novus Ordo Mass in
Latin using Prex Eucharistica
I (Eucharistic Prayer I) they would be celebrating a Liturgy of the Eucharist, a Mass of the Faithful
in Pre-Vatican II terminology, which is almost identical with its Tridentine counterpart.
Some
interesting quotations from this book are:
Page 17: “It is more faithful to the Catholic faith to say
the Tridentine Mass “illicitly” than, with all the
faculties of the bishop, to say the Novus Ordo.”
Page 23: “You have the faithful out there who show signs of
just thirsting for some reverence during the Mass, and so it’s a
suffering to know that what they are getting is only a discounted, dime store
version.”
Page 88: “All the New Mass does is make Protestants out of
Catholic People.”
Page 90: “I felt that I had been displeasing God by saying
the New Mass.”
Page 103: “insofar as any Mass is schismatic, it is evil”, again:
“certainly if it is a Mass said by a schismatic, it is evil.” Does this mean that every Mass said by a
priest of the Society of St. Pius X is evil since these priests are schismatics?
Page 115: “What the bishops brought into existence at
Vatican II was demonic.”
A copy of this book was sent to every priest
in the United
States,
presumably to induce them to defect to the Society of Pius X. On the back cover the claim is made that none
of the sixteen priests are members of the Society of Pius X. This is highly misleading since many of them
are associated with chapels or other institutions operated by the Society.
The
website of the Society of Pius X explains why they believe that Catholics
should have nothing to do with the Novus Ordo Mass. They assert
that the new rite is Aa liturgy for a modernist religion which would marry
the Church and the world, Catholicism and Protestantism, light and darkness.@ The claim is
made that this new Mass mixes Catholic elements (a priest, bread and wine,
genuflections, and signs of the cross, etc.) with Protestant or heterodox
elements (a table, common-place utensils, communion under both kinds and in the
hand, etc.). In actuality the
so-called table is just as valid an altar as the turned around ones of the
pre-Vatican II liturgies, the utensils are not common-place, and the practices
of communion under both kinds and in the hand are not innovations, but rather a
return to ancient Church practices. More
serious is their claim that Athese Masses can be of doubtful validity@, and Aany Catholic who is aware of its harm, does not have
the right to participate.@ The close
identity between the Tridentine Canon and Eucharistic
Prayer I of the new Mass , which we demonstrate at the link
Validity, renders these two
assertions fatuous.
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