The Traditional Latin Mass and the NON-Traditional Latin Mass (Novus Ordo) Are NOT the Same

Fr Zed points out that NO, even if said in Latin, is an entirely different Mass with a different theological emphasis than the TLM.

From Fr Z's Blog

Full title: WDTPRS: The Traditional Latin Mass and the NON-Traditional Latin Mass (Novus Ordo) are NOT the same simply because they are both in Latin. Wherein Fr. Z explains also the motives of those who attack the TLM.

The hatred shown for traditional sacred liturgical worship of the Roman Church, and the excuses claimed for its marginalization and extirpation are rooted in more than “Spirit of Vatican II” ideology and it’s companion specter, the papalatrous “Spirit of Vatican I”.

There is something visceral about their efforts that defies reason.  It’s a reaction from a triggering, like the striking of a ganglion or reflex point, like the application of a relic to an energumen.

Today’s Collect, for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, provides a clue as to why certain people cannot stand the Traditional Latin Mass and insist on the Novus Ordo.

Remember, that even in Latin the Novus Ordo is massively different from the TLM.  It is, in effect, a different Rite, not only by the editing out and swapping around of certain elements, but because of the very content of the orations.

When people say, “Just use the Novus Ordo in Latin!”, do they really know what they are talking about?   Mostly, no.  Some do, because they know that the content of the prayers was, by and large, radically altered from what the Church prayed for centuries.  They claim that because of Vatican II – their super-dogma, their uber-lens through which they seek to reinterpret all of Tradition, the Church no longer adheres to certain things (remember – liturgy = doctrine).   It pretty much always concerns morals.

Here is the Collect from the 1962 Missale Romanum for Holy Innocents:

Deus, cuius hodierna die praeconium Innocentes Martyres non loquendo, sed moriendo confessi sunt: omnia in nobis vitiorum mala mortifica; ut fidem tuam, quam lingua nostra loquitur, etiam moribus vita fateatur.

LITERAL VERSION (Vetus Ordo):

O God, whose public heralding the Innocent Martyrs professed this very day not by speaking but by dying; mortify in us every ill of vices; so that (our) life might confess Your Faith, which we speak with our tongue, also by (our) morals.

Look at the not-so-subtle change made to the Collect by the cutters and pasters who glued together the Novus Ordo collect:

Deus, cuius hodierna die praeconium
Innocentes Martyres non loquendo,
sed moriendo confessi sunt:
da, quaesumus, ut fidem tuam,
quam lingua nostra loquitur
etiam moribus vita fateatur.

Notice anything missing?

LITERAL VERSION (Novus Ordo):

O God, whose public heralding the Innocent Martyrs
professed this very day not by speaking but by dying;
grant, we implore, that (our) life might confess Your Faith,
which our tongue declares,
also by (our) morals.

Friends, the issue is not just whether LATIN is being used or the vernacular.  What the prayers REALLY say is at issue.

Very often, the content of the LATIN of the Novus Ordo is dramatically different.  Certain concepts were systematically expunged from the LATIN orations of the Novus Ordo, the NON-Traditional Latin Mass.

The Traditional Latin Mass (Vetus Ordo) and the NON-Traditional Latin Mass (Novus Ordo) are NOT the same simply because they are both in Latin.

Is the Novus Ordo a bad prayer.  Heavens no!  But it is a very different prayer, isn’t it.  Remove “mortification” in connection with “vice”… very different.  And those concepts are not implicit in the petition about morals.  Hardly.

Look what was cut out of the prayer for Holy Innocents: a plea to God to mortify us in respect to our vices!    What would be involved in GOD mortifying vices in us as opposed to US mortifying vices in ourselves?  Greater suffering, surely.  If God has to do it, then it’s pretty tough.

Vices are habits.  Virtues are habits.  Habits are actions that come easily for us.  If doing something virtuous is hard, then we don’t have the virtue.  It takes time and repetition and, usually, grace to build virtues and it has to be intentional.

On the other hand, vices – bad habits tending to sins – tend to develop easily in us because of the effects of Original Sin.  Some vices are worse than others.  Some are are light enough that we can make progress against them on our own, with discipline and the willingness to suffer.

Whenever we say, NO! to ourselves, we endure a measure of suffering.

However, some vices are very bad and are deeply rooted.  Moreover, they are very much under the influence of the Enemy of the Soul because they concern things that strike at the core of the image of God in which we are made.

While it is true that sins of the mind and heart are worse than merely carnal faults, let it not be forgotten that those lower sins, while they may spring from a carnal appetite, once rooted, can then with tendrils wind into the graver spiritual sins.   Think about certain carnal relationships that develop into mutual spiritual abuse.

If we ask God Himself to mortify in us some vice, it is a serious vice.  It is the kind of vice that is so dangerous for our salvation that we ask GOD to do it because it is likely that, on our own, we cannot.

During Advent we heard the cry “Make straight the path!”  When the Lord comes, He will come by the straight path whether we took steps to straighten that path or not.  And in some respects we struggle – often failing – to straighten our paths.  Then we cry to God to have MERCY on us and do the straightening now, before He comes as King of Fearful Majesty, the Straightener.

Implicit in the plea that God mortify vices in us, is a willingness to accept suffering.

Those who fight against the Vetus Ordo are viscerally triggered by these concepts, and all the other things systematically excised from the prayers of Holy Mass.  They don’t want to hear them.  They don’t want to be reminded of things like guilt, sin, expiation, propitiation, judgement, mortification, etc.

Therefore, the TLM, the Vetus Ordo is a reminder of their vices and it is a blockade to their project to re-form the Church into one in which doctrine has been slowly distorted even to the point that what is gravely sinful is called “tolerable” and then “acceptable” and then….

What might be a vicious (adjective for vice) inclination – even if unacted upon – at the foundation of the hatred the main promoters of suppression of the Vetus Ordo suffer from? The sort of vice that cries to heaven, just like the murder of innocents?

In this struggle for the doctrine, faith and morals, of the Holy Catholic Church, let’s make sure our own houses are in order.

GO TO CONFESSION.

Also, pray for those who interpret the cruel documents that have come out.

HERE