Words of Wisdom From a True Saint
"If ever we accepted the Novus Ordo Missae, we would have no more vocations: the tree would wither just as if we had taken an axe to its roots."
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
June 10, 1971
posted by PreVat2 at
8:37 PM
23 Comments:
Time has proven his words all too true. Archbishop Lefebvre, pray for you fellow shepherds that they may have your courage, and your reward.
um, no.
Here's a quote from a real saint:
"Everyday, Jesus humbles himself just as He did when He came from His heavenly throne into the Virgin’s womb; everyday He comes to us and lets us see Him in abjection, when He descends from the bosom of the Father into the hands of the priest at the altar."
St Francis Assisi
Calling all Cavemen that dwell in this lair... In the context of this post, you might want to take a gander at Fr. Z's blog, on his recent post regarding Fr. Louis Bouyer. You guys might find it interesting.
Clearly, the NO has way less fruits than the TLM objectively speaking...I do not believe this is by accident.
Baron,
Was he wrong?
I only ask because, as we can clearly see over these past 40 plus years, the Novus Ordo has born so much fruit in the way of vocations, new churches, millions entering the Faith, etc..In other words, you sound as if you really believe that JPII "Springtime of Vatican II" BS?
I don't know, something about posting a great quote on humility to defend the NO Mass strikes me as quite comical.
He was wrong, very wrong. Not just from a historical context, but a theological. It sounds to me like he believes vocations come from the actions of men and not from God. Also it sounds like he believes we can destroy the Church despite Christ's assurance to the contrary.
The quote from St Francis is to remind us that the Mass, all the Sacraments, and vocations to priesthood and religious life are gifts from God himself, not from us. Sure we should do everything we can to encourage the growth of those gifts and make people more ready to receive them, but to assert that we can thwart God, either by destroying all vocations and/or the Church herself, sounds a lot like a deification of man to me.
And what form of the Mass was St. Francis speaking of exactly?????
Please do tell. Misplaced quote alert.
As for the form of the mass, it's hard to say. He lived 300 years before the council of Trent so it may have been a more regional style which were common. However this is a red herring.
He wasn't talking about a form of the Mass, he was talking about the Sacrament of the Eucharist which takes place in the Mass. The Sacrament takes place (i.e. the quote is valid) regardless if it is OF, EF, Ambrosian, Ruthinian, Chaldean, Ethopian, Carmelite, Mozarabic, Coptic, Syro-Malankar, SyroMalabar, et alia.
Swing and a miss for Confiteor.
BARON...
Have you noticed a change in the way the Catholic Church administers Holy Communion from the way it once was? Or are you to young to remember?
Do you remember when Catholics always knelt for Holy Communion?
Do you remember when Catholic receined Holy Communion on the tongue only?
Do you remember when ONly the priest administered Holy Communion?
Do you remember our priests and sisters teaching us it was sacrilegious for anyone but the priest to touch the sacred Host?
Do you remember when tabernacles were always in the center of the altar as the primary focal point?
Why has kneeling for Holy Communion disappeared?
Why are tabernacles disappearing from the center of the churches and placed on the side, or in ANOTHER ROOM?
Why are people receiving Communion in the hand?
Why are there lay "ministers" of the Eucharist?
Why were these things changed?
If things were changed for the sake of "modern times" and "modern man", has it resulted in record crowds of "modern men" flocking into our churches to pray and receive the Sacraments? Not where I live..the bishop is closing some 50 churches!
Do we have record turnouts in our seminaries, monasteries and convents? Better check the stats, if your not sure.
The list goes on. And for St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. John Vianney, St. Thomas Aquanis and all the rest of these saints..could you not imagine with what horror they would look upon the modern mass today? Truly, they would have to say that the devil is in its midst!!!!!!!!!!
"Out of reverence towards this sacrament [the Holy Eucharist], nothing touches it, but what is consecrated: hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest's hands, for touching this sacrament." St. Thomas Aquanis.. (Summa, Pars III Q82,. Art 3)
""This method [on the tongue] must be retained." (Apostolic Epistle "Memoriale Domini") POPE PAUL VI (1963-1978)
"To touch the sacrad species ant to distibute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained." (Dominicae Cenae, sec 11) POPE JOHN PAUL II
"It is not permitted that the faithful should themselves pick up the consecrated bread and the sacred chalice, still less tha they should hand them from one to another." (Inaestimable Donum, April 17, 1980, sec9)
And what form of the Mass was St. Francis speaking of exactly?????
Novus Ordo Italian ICIL-style of course . . . NOT!
"He lived 300 years before the council of Trent so it may have been a more regional style which were common."
Baron,
Your understanding of the history of the Latin Rite is poor to say the least! The Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) was basically unchanged from the 5th-6th century (during the pontificate of Pope St. Gregory the Great)up through the Missal of 1962. Do not believe that the TLM only existed since the time of Trent. It was codified by Pope St. Pius V in 1570stating that all Latin Rite priests had the right to celebrate it forever. However, St. Francis (as did almost all Latin Rite saints)celebrated or assisted at the same Mass my family and I attend every Sunday morning. And trust me, it sure ain't the Protestant Novus Ordo!
Baron -
The swing and a miss is by you, not me. The point of the quote was the impact a complete break with liturgical tradition would have on vocations. Cardinals Bacce and Ottaviani touched on this very issue as well in their intervention. It is well documented that numerous other faithful bishops and clerics did as well.
Your quote is inapplicable and irrelevant in regards to disproving the very fact of what the Archbishop foresaw and what time has proven to be true.
And you show your ignorance with liturgical tradition when you bring up the "I don't know" in regards to what Mass St. Francis assisted at all his life and identifying the Council of Trent as a pseudo-Pre Conciliar New Order all of its own.
The Council of Trent did nothing but codify the Latin Rite already in existence at the time of the council, minus some of the accretions that had developed in monasteries over the course of the middle ages. St. Francis assisted at what we now know to be the Traditional Latin Mass. I suggest you pick up a Michael Davies book about the liturgical history of the Church or you can even download a talk on Keep the Faith.org.
To say I don't know is most correct, but that does not betray an ignorance of the Latin liturgy. True, Trent codified what was more or less going on at the time, there were regional variation. Case in point is the Ambrosian Rite of Milan. So I don't know exactly what form of the mass St Francis served in, but to say it is close to what Pius V codified would be safe. I just like being technical.
The Archbishop did not say there would be a dwindling of vocations, or a shortage of vocations but an end of vocations. Zip, nada, no more, end of the Church if the Novus Ordo was used.
My quote is very applicable because Christ is the source of all vocations. To say that we would end his efforts by using a plain and stripped down version of the Mass is just plain stupid.
I have no intention of touching Hail's rant because most of those things I agree with him on. We just disagree on the root cause.
I am simply addressing the claim by the Archbishop, may God have mercy on him, and similar assertions by PV2 that the mass that is widely celebrated the world over is trash through and through.
The Ambrosian Rite is its own rite, not a variation of the Roman Rite. Same with the Mozarabic Rite which was "resurrected" by Cardinal Ximenes during the Counter-Reformation. It is true, however, that both rites' Eucharistic prayer was the Roman Canon, more ancient than even the Byzantine Rite's Canons (Anaphorae).
Pope St. Pius X took the mass of the Roman Curia, a very "nobly simple" liturgy and embellished it with elements from the Gallican liturgies and turned it pretty much what we have today in the TLM. The problem St. Pius X faced was that there were a lot of variations going on--we would call them unwarranted innovations today--that tended to make the mass less than what it should be. No doubt these were promoted by the great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of the late Apb. Annibale Bugnini! LOL [Just kidding, but only barely so]
There were several variations of the Roman Rite's mass celebrated by various religious orders. And there were the Roman Rite's Uses at Salisbury (the Saurum liturgy of King Henry VIII's day) and York. St. Pius X allowed those variations that were at least 200 years old (or was it 100?) to remain a legitimate part of the Roman Rite.
Contrary to the assertions of (then) Msgr Annibale Bugnini, Secretary of the Post-V2 Consilium, the N.O.M. was not the result of an organic development of the liturgy. The SSPX are right when they say that the N.O.M. is a rupture of the Catholic liturgical tradition. At least I so assert this as my opinion.
I disagree with those who call the modern mass essentially a Protestant worship service. On the contrary, it is a fully Catholic liturgy, despite its warts. However, I agree that there is a Protestand spirit to it in the way the post-V2 "reformers" and their followers distorted the Constitution the Sacred Liturgy's call for full active participation by the laity.
V-2's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy called for the full active participation of the laity in the liturgy, but they meant that the laity should sing the hymns and should understand the biblical readings and those parts of the liturgy proper to them as well as proper to the priest. I think this means that they could, for example, pray the Nicene Creed with the priest (we pray it with the priest in Latin at the TLM at which I assist), hear the Collect in the vernacular, the concluding prayer in the vernacular, etc.
This is not what happened when the Concilium "reformed" the liturgy. Active participation turned into the laity assuming much of the duties that the priest (and deacon during the solemn high masses) performs. The post-V2 "reformers" and their followers clericalized the laity in the liturgy. And it continues today--an example of the Protestant spirit of the modern liturgy.
Well put Adeodatus. Though to be stickler, and because I can, I think you meant St. Pius V, not X, though they are both great men. And it was 200 years if my memory serves.
One thing I've never seen is a comparison between the Mass as explained by St Justin Martyr to the Roman Emperor Claudius (?) in the second century to the N.O. and to the Tridentine.
From what I've seen of it, the resemblance is more to the Novus Ordo ... but when I a decade or so ago read the Saint's account, I did not know much about these matters and do not remember the critical points.
Time will tell, but let's not canonize him just yet.
Baron -
You make very valid points. And I fully agree with your criticism that this particular quote overstates an otherwise legitimate position. And you are right to say that there are many reasons for the much talked about priest shortage. However, I would have to say that primary among those reasons is the dumbing down of the Mass.
My main objection, however, remains your use of the quote. First, the Latin Rite is one of four or five parent rites of the Catholic Church. It dates back to St. Peter and the canon itself comes to us from the oral tradition of the early church and was merely written down by Pope Gregory. St. Francis was born in Assisi, Italy and was a Roman Rite Catholic. He did not live in Milan for instance. It is inarguable that the Mass which St. Francis assisted at his entire life was in essence what we know today as the traditional latin mass. And the difference between the Roman, Byzantine, Ambrosian, etc. . . is hardly comparable to the difference between the traditional liturgy and the modern liturgy. One of the beauties of all the traditional liturgies is despite their obvious differences, they in substance are essentially the same. One cannot say the same thing about the differences between the traditional liturgy and the modern liturgy.
With the above said, none of us have any idea what St. Francis would have said about the modern mess. I for one think St. Francis would be so shocked by what has happened to the Catholic Church that he may have died even younger than he did. But that is only my opinion, as it is only your opinion that St. Francis would disagree with the idea that the Novus Ordo Missae is a complete travesty.
I don't see why you are dwelling on the form of the Mass in that quote. He doesn't mention either mass nor liturgy.
What he speaks of here is true at any valid mass, irrespective of form or rite. Are you somehow asserting that he would not believe this if he experienced another form? Or that this is untrue of the Mass said by the Holy Father in St Peter's?
If not, then the quote is valid.
Baron -
Whatever. If you insist that your quote is relevant to the point being made by Caveman in posting these words of Archbishop Lefebvre, then so be it. I for one still do not see those particular words uttered by St. Francis as relevant to the particular issue being addressed here. Neither Caveman nor the quote he posted is a denial of the Truth which St. Francis uttered. Nor is there a denial that the Novus Ordo is an actual, valid Mass.
The St. Francis quote is of course valid, I never disputed that, but it is not relevant to the issue at hand. The Novus Ordo has had a direct, negative effect on young men deciding to live out their calling to become priests. How many a young man has a) missed their calling due the current mess; or b) ignored their calling due to the current mess?
I would suggest to you a whole bunch of young men fall into the above two categories and I would venture to say I know, personally, quite a few.
Well, I will say this for Archbishop Lefebvre, he was right about many things. Seminary after seminary has closed. I beleive there is only one left in Ireland.
Perhaps this only makes sense to me. My point is: If Christ decends into the hands of the priest, even in the Novus Ordo, how can their possibly be an end to vocations?
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