Pope Paul VI forced the New Order of the Mass on the entire Church
by means of the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, thus
attempting to put an end to the most glorious jewel in the Church’s liturgical
crown: The Traditional Roman Mass (with its Roman Canon), which, in essence –
as Paul VI himself admitted – goes back, at least, to St. Gregory the Great.
The false doctrinal and spiritual “riches” he claimed would come
from the innovations based on “ancient liturgical sources” never
materialized. Under the pretense of going back to ancient and primitive
practices, the immemorial sacred Roman Canon was mangled and replaced with
other “Eucharistic prayers” that no Apostle or Church Father had ever prayed!
The Roman Mass that had been used for centuries in Latin in a
unified manner for greater “purity of worship” was forcefully replaced with
something that represented “both as a whole and in its details, a striking
departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass,” as had been solemnly
established by the Council of Trent.
As Paul VI himself admitted, “The introduction of the
vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice 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, Gregorian chant.”
Well, wasn’t he right about the sacrifice part! But he was clearly
wrong about the supposed benefits the use of the vernacular would bring. It is
widely known that the Anglican church had the most beautiful English for its
liturgy, but it is also widely known that it was useless because it was done
before empty pews in comparison with the Catholic Church that had churches full
of people devoutly praying the Mass in Latin!
Because of Paul VI’s decision to deprive the Church of her
immemorial rites, ceremonies, and language, generations of Catholics have
helplessly undergone the violent profanation of all that the Christian
centuries held supremely sacred. Catholic Worship was rendered unrecognizable
by a militant and pernicious anti-Roman spirit, as well as by incredible abuses
of every kind and in every sector.
The changes were a triumph for a protestantized mentality that
would have made Luther himself proud. It took the innovators and progressives
less time and effort than it took Protestants to savagely tear, violently
sever, and mercilessly mangle the sacred unity of the one seamless garment –
the Catholic Church. They chose to “divide and conquer” (divide et
impera) in vehement opposition to Our Lord’s prayer “that they may be one”
(ut unum sint).
YET, almost 40 years after Paul VI’s violent attempt to destroy
Catholic Worship, the traditional Roman Mass made a triumphant return: The
Catholic world was officially told that the immemorial Roman Mass was never
abrogated, and that there were requests for its greater use not only by people
who grew up with it, but also by 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.”
The liturgical Reconquista has gone on in many places because
it is realized that it was THE Roman Mass, for which Martyrs died, for which
the Church was persecuted and shed tears of blood, that gave the faithful
immeasurable treasures of piety and devotion and built a universal Christian
civilization that no other religion or form of worship could accomplish.
As Tito Casini said in The Severed Tunic: “Armed
with faith, we fight and we will fight, for Israel and within Israel, for the
Church and within the Church, mindful of those words ‘non veni pacem
mittere sed gladium,’ offering to God even this our pain in having to go to
war against ‘enemies’ who are our beloved brethren, laymen, like us, or
clerics.”
And this is done with the realization that “our
Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed
out of the oldest liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the
days when Cæsar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out the faith of
Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as
to a God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved
problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in Christendom another rite
so venerable as ours.” ~Fr. Adrian Fortescue
