Catholics Without Catholicism

Prayed he would die before having to celebrate the Novus Ordo: Saint Padre Pio.

On Father Ray Blake’s blog  there is an interesting blog post touching on various topics.

What I found particularly worth mentioning is this section, that I allow myself to reproduce in its entirety (emphasis mine):

At the heart of St Vincent’s words is the notion of continuation, a timelessness and universality, ‘always, everywhere and by all’. The understanding of Catholic merely as ‘universal’ is a foreshortening, it is the timelessness of it that is important. In many ways the dismantling of the ancient liturgy following VII undermined the sense of ‘always’. If the worship after 1968 could be changed, so could the content of ‘the faith’ and if the changes were enforced from above, from Rome then surely this is also the source of ‘the faith’, Again, if the liturgy could vary so widely from Mass at the High Altar of Brompton Oratory, with traditional vestments and music and in Latin to Father X sitting on a bean bag wearing just a stole making it up as he went along, why could ‘the faith’ not also be variable. Despite its intention VII taught, subliminally at least, especially through the liturgy, that Catholicism was what Ratzinger would define as ‘Relativistic’, most importantly of all by Father quite literally turning his back on that which was held holy by past generations, if not smashing it with a sledgehammer.

‘The faith’ post VII, was not the faith of the previous generations, it was in a state of flux. The movement of the Blessed Sacrament in some diocese from the centre of the apse to a side chapel or a tabernacle in the corner of the sanctuary and rubrics restricting the genuflections of the priest, said what we believed yesterday about the Real Presence is not what we believe today, similarly the change in funeral rites from sombre black, the Dies Irae, intercession for the dead to Mass in thanksgiving for the life of the dead person brought in a serious undermining of one of Catholicism most important certainties about death and judgement, again it said what we believed yesterday, we do not believe today.

I agree wholeheartedly with Father Blake’s reflection. 

To me, the consequence of this is brutally clear: the Novus Ordo must die. 

It is absolutely true that the very fact that the Mass of the Ages has changed suggests that the content of the faith can be changed in the same way. The fact that this is simply not true does not change an iota in the collective perception; particularly if we consider that the New Rite was introduced exactly to signal the changes (not doctrinal, of course) going on in the Church.

The new mass destroyed mass attendance, and severely damaged the way Catholicism is perceived. This in turn caused the almost disappearance of the grandmother (correctly) teaching the faith to her nephews. Said nephews remained exposed to a priest that was, in many cases, a phony and a coward, desperately trying to look cool and to be popular. I could mention half a dozen of those from my youth without any effort. We all despised them and found them pathetic, and very unmanly. Then one wonders that there is a lack of vocations.

But really, the biggest bomb that was made to explode under the edifice of the Church was the introduction of the Novus Ordo. The Novus Ordo was wrong even before all the abuses that followed its introduction, because its very being “new” and its desire to signal “novelty” had to, had to, *had to* lead to those abuses and to the raping of the Catholic Faith. 

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi.

Get the Traditional Mass, and you will end up with Pope Pius XII.

Get the Novus Ordo, and you will end up with the Bishop of Rome, Jorge Bergoglio.

Mundabor