New Front in the Liturgy Wars: Rome Requires Dominicans of the Holy Spirit to Hybridize Novus Ordo and TLM

Another Traditional Order bites the dust. What do Francis and his lickspittle toadies have against Traditional nuns? Just outright hatred of Tradition?

From Rorate Cæli

By Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Almost exactly one year ago, Rorate reported on the plight of the Dominicans of the Holy Spirit, who from their founding adhered with principled consistency to the old liturgical rites. The Vatican sent Novus Ordo apologist Fr Henry Donneaud, OP to "regularize" them in accord with the Vatican campaign against traditional religious life and traditional divine worship.

Now, there is an important update. On July 25, the community issued the following press release, which we translate here:

In a press release of the summer of 2023, we briefly touched on the liturgical question, which is particularly sensitive in these times. We pointed out that the Holy See, without asking us to renounce the vetus ordo, was inviting us to reflect on how to show, in our conventual life too, and not just on a few external occasions, that we do not exclude the missal according to the Novus Ordo.

This reflection has progressed over the past year, and elements of it have been communicated to the Holy See. At the beginning of the summer, he asked us, as you may have heard, that Masses during our community retreat at the end of July be celebrated according to the novus ordo, except on Sundays. The liturgical dignity, piety and beauty we cherish will remain, all the more so as our preacher this year is accustomed to celebrating in Gregorian ad orientem. [This is a peculiar French turn of phrase that means a new Mass ad orientem and with Gregorian chant.]

Other decisions of the Apostolic See in liturgical matters had been announced to us and were communicated to the Institute today. They significantly modify our current practice. They are set out below, so that all those interested can have access to precise information:

From the beginning of the next liturgical year, on December 1, 2024, the Holy See asks us to follow the liturgical calendar currently in force in the Universal Church for the Roman rite.

It also asks that in our various houses, Mass be celebrated according to the Novus Ordo one week of the month, with the exception of Sundays, while the Vetus Ordo remains in use for the other three weeks and every Sunday.

It specifies that the Mass readings for each day will be those of the current Roman lectionary, and that all the prefaces of the Paul VI Missal will be used for Masses according to the Vetus Ordo.

These measures require us to take an important step towards discovering the renewed liturgy. They will also give rise to fears; it goes without saying that we will ensure careful implementation (in Latin and Gregorian, ad orientem), which will continue to manifest the liturgy as the primary and indispensable source of all Christian life, according to the constant concern of the Church (cf. St. Pius X, motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini, 1903; Vatican II, SC 10).

It is equally clear to us, in consonance with our heritage, that obedience to the Holy Father remains for the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit an intangible principle to which we must conform our conduct. Our sensus Ecclesiae, our Constitutions and fidelity to the heritage of Father Berto oblige us.

We hope that these modifications will be a source of careful and profound reflection, in continuity with and respect for our approach to ecclesial docility. We are also especially keen to keep our schools in a spirit of peace, which alone comes from God.

Entrusting ourselves to your prayers, we assure you of ours, with the desire that all keep in mind the constant mission of the liturgy: inseparably to glorify God, and to lead us to holiness.

Rorate comment: This is the beginning of the end of this community, for they will be destabilized at the core of their vocation by this hodge-podge rite that has lost its integrity, treated like a toy model whose parts can be switched around at will. The nature of the demands indicates a profound disregard, even contempt, for the structural principles of the old rite (and, for that matter, of the new rite), while the nature of the "obedience" indicates a vision of religious life no longer rooted in coherent tradition but tossed this way and that by the ideological commitments of current Roman leadership.

There is a phrase, "death by a thousand cuts." We learned recently that in Virginia, at three parishes that were given a further two-year extension for the TLM, the Novus Ordo is to be celebrated one Sunday per month (it was merely a "suggestion," but the bishop seized it eagerly; or perhaps he was told that it was an unusual kind of suggestion, namely, a requirement); this is the Cupich policy now applied to another diocese. Here, a religious community may keep a mangled TLM, but once a week, they must use the Novus Ordo.

First, one Sunday a month... then two... One week a month... then two...

Those who could not obtain the total suppression of the TLM will attempt to subvert it in other ways. We could have predicted this, for the same methods have been used by the Vatican ever since the 1970s. Consider the monastery of Benedictines in Flavigny: they were "reconciled" to the Church on condition that they take the Novus Ordo as their conventual Mass, although the monks individually offer the old Mass in the mornings.

If you don't want to die by a thousand cuts, do not offer your body to the first cut.

Much more should be said; I intend to publish further about this matter of grave concern to the entire traditional world. For let there be no doubt: this imposition on a small and vulnerable community is an initial experiment, the results of which will indicate a "path forward" for doing the same on a much larger scale. Indeed, perhaps that path is already plotted in some detail, merely awaits implementation.