In order to understand this post, it is essential that you understand that I mean no judgement of any person involved in what I saw. I claim no superiority, and am all too aware of my own failings. It would not surprise me to see any of these people in heaven before me, and above me. But truth is truth…
Due to the need to travel this weekend, I was forced to attend the novus ordo to fulfill my Sunday obligation. Even worse, it was the Saturday vigil Mass. what I witnessed made me weep.
First of all, and I will never do this again, we went to our former territorial parish. It used to be considered a “conservative” parish (whatever that means–which is nothing), and I wanted to get out of this thing as unscathed as possible. The problem is that the parish is a microcosm of the destruction of the Church at large.
I went to Mass here once or twice since my “trad”version in 2005, but I don’t remember anything dramatic about those times. But today I was immediately struck by two things:
First, a church that holds about 700 people, and that even as late as 2002 used to be full, was at most about 25% full. Nearly every head that had hair was grey. Maybe 150 people, and that included the family of a couple that was renewing their marriage vows on their 50th anniversary (and thus several guests).
I counted 7 people under 18 years of age. That fact alone was as depressing as I can relate. Where did all our friends go? Where were the families we remembered?
Gone with the wind.
Second, the change from what I knew to what is left me unspeakably depressed. I have had to endure the novus ordo from time to time in the last fifteen years, but it was a mistake to go back to the old parish. I was able to cope with how bad, how alien, the experience of it was by being in an alien locale. Almost like, well, this is horrible, but this is a foreign place with a weird, horrible, but valid rite approved by Rome. Going back to the old parish was like returning the Shire, taken over by Saruman.
Today all I saw is what we have lost. Whom we have lost. How unspeakably horrible it is. This isn’t Catholic. These people have been sold a bill of goods.
In my heart, I was convicted of my own sinfulness. I know that in some mystical, but more real than I can see way, my sins contributed to this. That was the word I received at Mass today. I held back tears.
That today was the feast of Corpus Christi made it even worse. Why? Well, the novus ordo’s changes really highlight the apostasy of the last 60 years. The epistle is the same, to a point. But it cuts out the passage about whoever eats and drinks unworthily being guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. I suppose that could make someone feel bad. And the Gospel was a switch– instead of Christ insisting that His Body was real food and His Blood was real drink, we have the sign that precedes the Eucharist: the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.
And, to make it all more horribly real, a top ten of crap songs. Table of Plenty. Canticle of the Sun. Taste and See. All screeched like the proverbial barn owl. I needn’t mention the sign of peace, because you already know. The priest, over-explaining everything, because even though it’s in English so we can understand it, it needs explaining, like a bad cooking show.
But the saddest thing, to me, was during the consecration of the Precious Blood. After the “this is the chalice of My Blood” but before the “mystery of faith”, the cantor decided to throw in the Tantum Ergo, in Latin, breaking up the order of consecration in the Missal. It just got stuck there, just because. Like somebody thought, “Hey, let’s throw in some Latin!” It stuck out like a second head, and I couldn’t help but whisper to my wife, “They have no idea what they’re doing.” I didn’t mean that as a condemnation. I didn’t mean it like the prayer of the Pharisee, thanking God that I wasn’t like the rest of men.
No, I meant exactly what I said: they have no idea. No idea what they’ve lost. No idea what they’re doing. No idea of their own patrimony.
It was stolen from them. It was stolen from us.
There are few of us left. Catholics, that is. There will be no one left to complain when Leviathan throws us in a hole to die.
As never before, I beheld Christ on the Cross.
God have mercy on my soul. May I have the grace to never more abandon Him. And God willing, may I never have to endure the novus ordo to satisfy my Sunday obligation. Please, God, restore the Mass to Your starving, dwindling faithful.
I am visiting a friend out of town. Went to a weekday mess of a mass. It took place in a corner of the “worship space” where the tabernacle was in the back of said space. The nice, almost entirely elderly people talking and visiting as if there was no tabernacle there. Priest in regular clothes walks in with his dog! He did vest and came back around to the little table that sufficed for an altar with the dog. The dog wandered from person to person all through the mass with people petting it. Of course the so called sign of peace was a big deal. After the service was over everyone returned to their visiting and chatting. My friend told me it used to even worse when the priest had three dogs. I am not making this up; it happened this past week in Billings, Montana.
“They Have No Idea What They’re Doing”
They knew exactly what they were doing. The very intent behind Vatican II was to Protestantize the Catholic Church. This has now been largely accomplished. Most Catholics are now Protestants in their beliefs and behavior. And we now have our first non-Catholic Pope.***
***“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren; that is for the Protestants.”
– Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965
Tim –
A wonderful post — and so devastatingly true!
We’re traveling this weekend and attended a Novus Ordo Mass on Saturday as well We were going to dinner with friends, and they wanted to go straight from Mass. Fortunately, we have the time this morning and have found an FSSP Church just a short drive away. We’re headed there for their 9:00 AM High Mass and hope they have a Corpus Christi procession.
Pam
>
It is all in the plan, Stan. Malachi Martin died in 1999. He wrote of a future Jesuit pope who would bring this to pass. Francis was “elected” in 2013. He detailed how “territorial parishes” would be phased out as relics of privilege and replaced with regional entities.—“What Catholics Believe” is a conservative website run by SSPX. Father William Jenkins detailed how the priesthood itself will be phased out and replaced with a “priesthood of the laity”. He claimed that the pontiff will not get involved in the sex abuse crisis so that the priesthood will be destroyed and the traditional Church will end.—I recently attended SHF in Affton. I too counted heads and looked for those under 18. Their school was recently closed. Their religious order pastor at 6 ft 5 and vibrant was transferred to their headquarters in California. One of the reformers of the seminary under AB Carlson was headquartered there. Essentially, the parish is dying.
I assisted at a Mass today in a northern state while visiting family. The priest had 2 homilies prepared and asked the pewsitters to vote on which one he would read based on their titles. He refused to say “for us men” in the creed. He sang a random tune after the petitions. Finally, instead of blessing the people at the end of Mass, he asked God to bless everyone (including him).
The poor people in the pews didn’t bat an eye. They were used to this, and probably did not know any better.
Sitting through a Novus Ordo Mass often brings 2 Bible passages to mind for me: when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and when the Jewish people sat by the waters of Babylon and wept during their exile. So many poor souls in the Church are anesthetized and have no defenses against the roaring lion. It is heartbreaking.
Since this parish was named Our Lady of Victory, I could only ask her to intercede for these souls and win them for Christ.
I visited home in Boston—it’s very much as you say. 80 percent elderly; good people offered infinite grace in a Dixie cup. How long, Lord?
What is this, attend a Novus Ordo week for traddies? I too did that today, at a funeral Mass for my spiritual role model, my 97 year old friend, God rest her soul, please say a prayer for her if you would be so kind. Her name is Anna.
It is nothing but weird to go to NO after being immersed in the EF. I just know I can’t go back, I can’t, it doesn’t fit anymore, it’s not enough and it’s too much, all at the same time. Young people want authenticity, not what the NO offers, but most Catholics are asleep at the wheel, they don’t know, and don’t care. Very sad.
Those of us used to the Gregorian Mass have all experienced it; the Holy Day where you have no option but the New Order mass (not novus ordo. It rejects the Latin except in it’s name to drape itself with the veneer of ecclesial legitimacy. If you’re going to illicitly chuck the Latin, at least be consistent). We all have experienced it: I’m a foreign man in a foreign land, the almost irresistible urge to run, the crystal clear perception that this ain’t the same religion, the cringe worthy thought that in this day and age the Holy Mass has actually been turned into a penance, and of course the disgust. That whole dog and pony show will one day come to an end. And it shouldn’t be put to rest peacefully. It should be firmly anathematized and the missals burned.
That said. I’ve also seen the reverse. Someone dear to me is a “permanent Deacon” in the New Order edifice. He is a devout and sincere man. He accompanied me to Mass one Sunday. I don’t think he’d ever been to one before since his boyhood and he probably was too young to remember.
As he left he was weeping. He said, “it makes what we do look profane.” Indeed. But being a permanent Deacon, he’s now married to the New Order concoction. Imagine what that’s like. We only have to be subjected to the NO every now and again: penance. But how about being converted to Tradition after you’re already locked in to the NO, every week, all the time? He can’t just shift parishes and pick his Mass. He’s a Deacon now, subject to his NO Bishop and his NO Pastor. Awful.
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Instead of criticizing those whom you obviously feel are inferior to you, perhaps you should rejoice that there are still people who love Christ enough to attend this monstrosity. Yes, many people there know it is a terrible Mass; no, not everyone can make it to a TLM, and yes, you do come off as condescending.
You either didn’t read the first paragraph of my post, or didn’t believe I am sincere in writing it. If the former, I ask you to read it, or read it again. If the latter, I don’t know what else to say to make you believe it.
“This isn’t Catholic.”
I have found myself saying that a lot over the last two years. But this raises the question: how does a liturgy that that is not Catholic fulfill the Sunday obligation? Further, how is it even permissible to participate in a liturgy that is not Catholic? I am not being flippant or reactive; it’s a serious question. I take it that “This isn’t Catholic” was not hyperbole.
The question of the last forty years. I wouldn’t pretend to advise here. On the one hand, the Church is incapable of promulgating an invalid or evil rite or sacramental form. So, the promulgated Mass is valid and clearly satisfies the obligation. On the other hand, the actual celebration of the new Mass rarely is as promulgated, and potentially could be altered so much as to affect validity. Yet, assuming the faithful who attend do not will the abuses that occur, and the words of consecration are not altered to invalidity, how could it not satisfy the obligation, and who would presume to risk failing to fuflll one’s obligation to assist at Mass on Sundays and holy days?
After all, this is My Body, this is My Blood, are pretty hard to mess up. Not that they couldn’t be, as I think we all know.
Then again, on the other hand, as the commenter immediately below indicates, could the new Mass be such an occasion of sin as to relieve one of the obligation to endure it for fear of sinning? These questions are beyond my pay grade, and I think this is the realm of conscience and a good spiritual director. I have heard plausible arguments on both sides from priests and laymen I respect. For my part, I have enough problems without wondering if I am justified in skipping the novus ordo because of the deplorable state of it, and its usual celebration. Just trying to get to heaven.
I can appreciate your final comment. I am trying to get to heaven too. That is why I ask. Validity is not my worry, at least in general. It can be valid and yet intrinsically offensive to God.
Understood. The crux of it is in the word “intrinsically”. If it is intrinsically offensive, then I don’t see how that doesn’t implicate the the indefectibility of the Church. If not intrinsically offensive, I don’t see how it could not satisfy your obligation, at least if celebrated as promulgated.
I am not seeking to be argumentative here, I am posing the thoughts and questions I have had for a while now, but which I do not often get an opportunity to share and which do not seem easy to answer.
To your concern about indefectibility: If the New Mass were in itself offensive to God, that would not call into question the indefectibility of the Church if it were not promulgated by the Church, as such, but by a man (or men) in the Church. It seems that the New Mass is not from the Church, as such.
From Arnaldo Da Silveira’s “THEOLOGICAL AND MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF
THE NEW ORDO MISSAE”:
“Paul VI did not have the intention of using his infallibility in the new texts of the Missal.
… It is the discourse of November 19, 1969, in which Paul VI, referring to the new Ordo, says:
“the rite and the respective rubrics ARE NOT by themselves A DOGMATIC DEFINITION: they are SUSCEPTIBLE OF THEOLOGICAL QUALIFICATION OF VARYING VALUE, according to the liturgical context to which they refer; they are gestures and terms which are related to a religious action, lively and living, of an ineffable mystery of the divine presence, which is not always realized in the same manner, an action which only theological criticism can analyze and express in doctrinal formulae which are logically satisfactory”.
Therefore, if Paul VI himself declared explicitly that the rites and the rubrics of the New Mass “are susceptible of a theological qualification of varying value”, it does not seem to us possible to sustain that the texts of the New Mass, as such, involve the infallibility of the Church. Such a conclusion would impose itself in this concrete case, even if there subsisted doubts, in the theoretical terrain, about the existence of universal ecclesiastical laws which do not involve the infallibility of the
Church.”
This quotation may not speak to your worry, as indefectibility might apply to injunctions or directives from a pope that are non-infallible. Still, it seems now that we cannot count all official acts of a pope as coming from the Church, as such. We have several examples within the present pontificate that, if they were taken to have issued from the Church, would also implicate the indefectibility of the Church.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Major premise: No one need enter into a proximate occasion of sin in order to fulfill the Church’s precepts.
Minor premise: The Novus Ordo Mass is a proximate occasion of sin against the Faith due to its inherent Protestantization.
Conclusion: You need not attend the Novus Ordo to fulfill the Sunday obligation. Remain at home and spend an hour with Our Lord via your rosary and missal.
See my reply to the commenter immediately above.
Who told you you could fulfill your Sunday Mass obligation by attending a NO Mass?
You said it yourself, it’s alien and not Catholic. Why debate legalistic points?
I can tell you from experience, it’s no better in Latin, ad orientem, and with Roman vestments. Just lipstick.
Starve the postconciliar beast. Withhold not only your money, but don’t fill their seats either.