Chapter 2: the New Mass

Dr Schaeffer gives a brief overview of the substantial changes made to the Mass by the Deforms of Paul VI.

From One Peter Five

By Edward Schaeffer, PhD

Editor’s note: we continue our weekly serialisation of Dr. Edward Schaefer’s new book A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition. This book is an excellent introduction to Traditionalism and provides an easy way for Trads to introduce the movement to fellow Catholics who are seeking deeper answers to today’s questions. Proceeds from the book sale also help promote the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum, one of only two traditional Catholic colleges in the United States.

Read the Introduction
Read Chapter 1: Equally Valid and Holy

In 1969 a new Mass was promulgated by Pope Paul VI.  This was the first time in the history of the Church that a new Mass was created.  Up until this time, the only Mass that the Church possessed was the one given to the Apostles at the Last Supper by Christ Himself.  This Mass was shaped by the Apostles as they had been instructed by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit into various rites that are all united by this “Divino-Apostolic and Apostolic Tradition.”[1]

Indeed, the only other time in Christian history that a new “Mass” was created was during the Protestant revolution when numerous Protestant leaders created new ceremonies designed specifically to reject various aspects of Catholic teaching.  That is to say, they created new practices to shape new beliefs and teachings. The “new Mass” (novus ordo Missae) promulgated by Pope Paul VI was also created to change Catholic teachings and beliefs.[2]

The scope and breadth of the changes in the novus ordo Missae are too great to address fully here.[3] I will point out just a few to demonstrate the point that the changes were designed to change Catholic teachings and beliefs.

First, let’s begin with the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (Institutio generalis Missalis Romani) that accompanied the promulgation of the novus ordo Missae.  Paragraph Seven of this document defined the Mass as follows:

The Lord’s Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord.  For this reason, Christ’s promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of the holy Church: ‘Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst.’ (Matt. 18:20)[4]

This was a fundamental shift, a Protestant shift, from understanding the Mass as a propitious sacrifice to a gathering at a meal.  Compare this to that of the Council of Trent:

Canon 1. If anyone says that in the mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God; or that to be offered is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema.[5]

It must be acknowledged that shortly after the new definition of the Mass in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal for the 1969 edition of the novus ordo Missae was published, there was an outcry of objection.  As a result, this new definition of the Mass was quickly removed and replaced with the traditional definition that defines the Mass as the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary.  However, none of the changes in the Mass that supported the new definition were changed.  It was as if a committee had decided to build a new type of house with six sides instead of the standard four and wrote an introduction describing the new six-sided house.  When they completed the work, the committee was told, “You cannot do this.  Houses only have four sides.”  The committee then changed the description to that of a standard four-sided house, but they left the six-sided edifice.  The committee that created the novus ordo Missae changed the definition of the Mass in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal when told to do so, but it changed none of the innovations of the new Mass that supported the innovative definition.

Let’s look at just a few of these changes.  Again, the changes are too many to cover here in depth.  What follows is just a sampling to demonstrate a few points.

Readings

Holy Thursday, Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Epistle

In the TLM, the Epistle is taken from 1 Cor. 11:20-32.  In the novus ordo Missae, the Epistle is taken from 1 Cor. 23-26, a shorter selection from the same Epistle that is in the TLM.  What verses were omitted in the novus ordo Missae?  Most prominently, verses 24ff, which state

Therefore, whosever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord.  But let a man prove himself; and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice.  For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord.

This same omission happens on the feast of Corpus Christi.  Leaving out verses that emphasize the need to come to communion worthily, that is, in the state of grace, over time has resulted in viewing communion as a kind of shared meal rather than the reception of the sacrificed Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.  Thus, practice has changed dramatically: everyone goes to communion, but very few people go to confession.

Third Sunday of Lent

Epistle

In the TLM, the Epistle is taken from Eph. 5:1-9.  This Epistle follows a pattern in the Lenten Epistles in which Paul exhorts us to fight against sins of the flesh, not necessarily because these are the greatest sins, but because these are the sins we must conquer first in order to progress toward lives of virtue and, as this Epistle states it, to be “followers of God, as most dear children: and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and hath delivered Himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness.”

In the novus ordo Missae, this focus on the sins of the flesh and on the sacrifice of Christ is all but abandoned.  In Year A, the Epistle is taken from Rom. 5:1-2, 5-8.  What are the omitted verses (3-4)?  They are verses referring to penance and offering up suffering: “And not only so; but we glory also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience trial; and trial hope.” 

In Year C, the Epistle is taken from 1 Cor. 10:6, 10-12.  Again, what are the omitted verses (7-9)?  They are verses referring to sins of the flesh:

Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them, as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.  Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ: as some of them tempted and perished by the serpents. 

Admonitions to avoid sins of the flesh do not have the same importance in the novus ordo Missae that they have in the TLM.

These are just two examples, but the new Lectionary is replete with such omissions.  When viewed collectively, it becomes obvious that the intent of the new Lectionary was more than just offering an expanded exposure to Scripture.  There seems to have been an agenda behind the Scripture passage chosen and edited,[6] upon which I comment below. 

Collects and other Orations

In his text, The Work of Human Hands, Father Anthony Cekada, notes the following:

The traditional Missal contains 1,182 orations.  About 760 of those were dropped entirely [in the novus ordo Missae].  Of the approximately 36% which remained, the revisers altered over half before introducing them into the new Missal.  Thus only 17% of the orations from the old Missal made it untouched into the new.[7] 

Several years after Cekada, another scholar named Matthew Hazell did further analysis on this point.  His conclusion was that it was actually worse than Cekada thought:

[A] mere 13% (165) of the 1,273 prayers of the usus antiquiorfound their way unchanged into the reformed Missal of Paul VI. Another 24.1% (307) were edited in some way before their inclusion. A further 16.2% (206) were centonised with other prayers – effectively combining parts of multiple prayers together into a new oration. Fully 52.6% (669) of the prayers in the traditional Roman Rite have been excised from the modern liturgy, memory-holed by the Consilium ad exsequendam.[8] 

So what kinds of things were changed about the prayers in the new Mass?  Father Cekada compares a number of the old and new versions of the orations to demonstrate the striking differences.  I will share just two of Father Cekada’s examples:

Collect for the Third Sunday After Pentecost/17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

TLM

O God, the Protector of those who hope in Thee, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, increase Thy mercy towards us; that with Thee as ruler and guide, we may so pass through the good things of time that we may not lose the good things of eternity.

novus ordo Missae

O God, the Protector of those who hope in Thee, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, increase Thy mercy towards us; that with Thee as ruler and guide, we may now so use transient things that we may cling to those things which endure.

There is a shift in the new Collects to avoid “negative theology.”  Father Augé explained:

Some of these collects, in fact, spoke of, among other things, the punishments, anger, or divine wrath for our sins, of a Christian assembly oppressed with guilt, continually afflicted due to its disorders, threatened with condemnation to eternal punishment, etc.[9]

Collect for the Second Sunday After Easter

TLM

O God, Who in the humility of Thy Son, didst raise up the fallen world, grant to Thy faithful abiding gladness: that whereas Thou hast saved them from the perils of everlasting death, Thou mayest bring them to possess eternal joys.

novus ordo Missae

O God, Who in the humility of Thy Son, didst raise up the fallen world, grant to Thy faithful abiding gladness: that whereas Thou hast saved from the slavery of sin, Thou mayest bring them to possess eternal joys.

Here, while the Collect in the novus ordo Missae at least mentions sin, the idea of hell is just a little too negative for the mentality of the new Mass.

Two examples hardly show the depth of the reimagining that went into the new Missal, and these examples may seem, at first, like small matters. However, when this methodology is applied to a vast majority of the orations in the Missal, the change is profound.

Comment on the Readings, Collects, and other Orations

Looking at this shift from the perspective of an ordinary man in the pew trying to get to heaven and guide his family to the same end, I can say that a dose of guilt for sin is a good thing.  God is infinite goodness.  Even the slightest venial sin is horrific in His presence.  Guilt is that self-consciousness that I have offended my Creator, and it spurs me, out of love for my Creator, to amend my life.  Of course, guilt is not the only thing that motivates me.  The attainment of holiness also motivates me: it is my ultimate goal.  Even so, the first stage of holiness is the avoidance of evil.  Feeling guilty about committing sin is a first step toward avoiding evil.

Moreover, hell is real.  Christ was not shy in His warnings about hell.  Most people will avoid actions that will result in serious punishment.  Yes, avoiding punishment is not necessarily the highest goal of life.  Nevertheless, it is a useful tool for our fallen nature.  To avoid a wholesome awareness of the reality of hell is to encourage the temptation of thinking such things as

• it is reasonable to hope that all men will be saved;[10]
• “Hell does not exist, only the disappearance of sinful souls.”[11]

Indeed, if hell does not exist, or if no one were in it, would that not make Christ either a liar or disingenuous?  Hell does exist, and there are souls suffering there because they did not take its existence seriously.  As a fallen creature, I choose to cultivate a healthy respect for the reality of hell, so that I will do everything I can to avoid it.   We cultivate a respect for the dangers that many things in life present to us, for example hot stoves, live electric wires, deep water, etc.  Why would we not cultivate the same respect for a danger that would subject us to miserable suffering for eternity?

The Offertory

In the TLM, the Offertory is an extraordinarily beautiful rite, in which the bread and wine are set aside from secular use and offered to God for His use exclusively.  Moments later, at the Consecration, God will, indeed, use these gifts: He will transubstantiate them into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the sacrificed Jesus Christ.  Once these gifts are offered to God for His use, they are considered sacred, so much so, that if the priest were to die suddenly after the Offertory, from a heart attack, for example, the bread and wine could not be simply discarded in the trash.  The bread would have to be dissolved in water, and the dissolved bread and wine would have to be disposed of in a sacrarium.[12] 

In the novus ordo Missae, the term “Offertory” has been replaced by “the Preparation of the Gifts.”  The ancient prayers of the Offertory have been replaced with prayers that extol the greatness of man, who produced them:

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you:
fruit of the earth and work of human hands,
it will become for us the bread of life.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for through your goodness we have received
the wine we offer you:
fruit of the vine and work of human hands,
it will become our spiritual drink.

Yes, the prayers do say that the bread and wine are for offering, even if they don’t actually offer them, and, yes, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, says that, “The presentation of the offerings at the altar takes up the gesture of Melchizedek and commits the Creator’s gifts into the hands of Christ who, in His sacrifice, brings to perfection all human attempts to offer sacrifices.”[13]  So, like many parts of the novus ordo Missae, it may be possible to make ourselves think that this is an Offertory, but in reality it is another example of trying to make believe that a radically changed practice can somehow support traditional teaching.[14]  Father Ripperger offers cogent comments:

As to the Offertory, if a ritual of the Mass did not contain a proper offertory, then it would be a meal in the proper sense.  For what distinguishes a meal from a sacrifice is precisely the Offertory.  If a person slays a victim and eats it, without dedicating it or consecrating it to God by an Offertory, that is what constitutes a meal.  Whereas, once the Offertory is done, the oblata are set aside from profane use and its primary end is no longer to satisfy the one who eats it, even though that may occur.  Rather the oblata are now destined to be slain and consumed precisely for the worship of God and His pleasure.  Even though the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass retains elements of a meal by having a slaying of victim and a consummation, these elements are no longer viewed under that aspect, once the Offertory is done, because the fulfillment of the creature in the consuming of the victim is no longer the primary end.[15]

The changes to the Offertory are, perhaps, the most egregious attacks on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, completely recasting it as a shared meal, for which the “table is set” during the Preparation of the Gifts.

In the early years after Vatican Council II, the word “liturgy” was typically defined as the “work of the people,” when, in fact, its proper definition is the “work on behalf of the people.”[16] The novus ordo Missae seems to have been constructed to foster a Protestant view of the nature of the Mass as a gathered assembly at a meal rather than the renewal of sacrifice of Calvary.

The Role of Priest

In the novus ordo Missae, the priest is typically not called the celebrant, but the presider.  In the Penitential Rite of the novus ordo Missae, the priest’s confession and the people’s confession are no longer separated but combined into a single confession.  In addition, the priest often does not face liturgical east, as the one called by God to offer sacrifice in persona Christi to the Father in the name of the Church and on behalf of the faithful.  Rather, he faces the congregation, presiding over the gathered assembly.  At communion, the communion of the priest, as the one who consummates the sacrifice, is not separated from that of the faithful.  Rather, the two are merged into one communion rite with only one Domine, non sum dignus (said three times) for both the priest and the faithful.

Cumulatively, these changes to the role of the priest diminish an understanding of him as the true celebrant of the Mass, called by God to renew the sacrifice of Calvary in the name of the Church and on behalf of the faithful, and to portray him as a kind of special member of the assembly, chosen to “preside” over the gathering. 

Conclusion

Contrary to what many Catholics believe, the novus ordo Missae is not simply the TLM translated into English.  It is a fundamentally different Mass.  The changes demonstrated in this article are but a handful of the changes made, but they should be enough to make this point.

Related to this, one of the truly good things accomplished by Pope Francis during his pontificate has been to clarify this matter.  In his motu proprio ‘Traditionis Custodes,’ the pope declared that “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”[17]  That is to say that the TLM is not an “expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”  While we might argue about the accuracy of this statement, it certainly bolsters the view held by many that the novus ordo Missae and the TLM are theologically incompatible.[18]  The pope himself declared, “It would be trivial to read the tensions, unfortunately present around the celebration, as a simple divergence between different tastes concerning a particular ritual form.”[19] 

So, what does a simple man in the pew do?  It would seem that I am being forced to choose between the Mass that was given to the Apostles by Christ, nurtured, preserved and protected through the centuries, and a new Mass that was created by a committee,[20] and which, by the words of the pope himself, is fundamentally, theologically different from the Mass given to us by Christ.  Do I choose the Mass of Christ or the Mass of man?  I choose the Mass of Christ; I choose tradition.

Continued next week.

Photo by Tomás Robertson on Unsplash

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[1] See Fr. Chad Ripperger, The Limits of Papal Authority over the Liturgy (Keenesburg, CO: Sensus Traditionis Press, 2023), 67-90.

[2] See the discussion of Practice and Belief in Chapter Four.

[3] Two works that discuss these changes at length are Rev. Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands and Daniel Graham, Lex Orandi: Comparing the Traditional and Novus Ordo Rites of the Seven Sacraments.

[4] General Instruction of the Roman Missal (Institutio generalis Missalis Romani) (1969), par. 7; cited by Kennedy Hall, “Vatican II Ruined Everything,” YouTube (1 November 2022), accessed on 15 January 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FvDCVEA8D8&t=306s.

[5] Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrine Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass, accessed on 18 January 2024, www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/twentysecond-session-of-the-council-of-trent-1489.

[6] See also Peter Kwasniewski, “Is Reading More Scripture at Mass Always Better?,” New Liturgical Movement(11 November 2013), accessed 19 January 2024, www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2013/11/is-reading-more-scripture-at-mass.html.

[7] Rev. Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands, 222.  Also, Lauren Pristas has done a detailed analysis of the difference between the Collects of the TLM and those of the novus ordo Missae: Collects of the Roman Missals: A Comparative Study of the Sundays in Proper Seasons before and after the Second Vatican Council (London: T&T Clark Studies in Fundamental Liturgy, 2013).

[8] Matthew Hazell, “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’? Mythbusting, Part II,” New Liturgical Movement (October 1, 2021),  https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/10/all-elements-of-roman-rite-mythbusting.html, accessed August 31, 2024.

[9] Matias Augé, CME, “Le Collete del Proprio del Tempo nel Nuovo Messale,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 84 (1970), 287; cited in Rev. Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands, 224.

[10] See Bishop Robert Barron, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmsa0sg4Od4. See also “Bishop Barron, Marshall Taylor, and a Stonewalling on Hell” OnePeterFive, accessed on 28 September 2024, https://onepeterfive.com/barron-marshall-hell/#:~:text=Dr.%20Taylor%20Marshall,%20a%20Catholic%20commentator.

[11] “Does Hell Exist? Pope Francis says No in New Interview That Could Change Catholic Church Forever,” Newsweek (30 March 2018), accessed on 28 September 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/does-hell-exist-pope-francis-says-no-interview-could-change-catholic-church-866010#:~:text=Seemingly%20going%20against%20centuries%20of%20core.

[12] This is true for the TLM. It is not clear that this liturgical law still applies to the novus ordo Missae.

[13] Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, English trans. (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2019), no. 1350.

[14] See Chapter Four: Practice and Belief

[15] Fr. Chad Ripperger, The Limits of Papal Authority over the Liturgy, 55.

[16] Wikipedia, s.v. “Liturgy,” accessed on 19 January 2024, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy.

[17] Pope Francis, motu proprio ‘Traditionis Custodes,’ (Rome, 16 July 2021), art. 1, accessed on 20 January 2024, www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/20210716-motu-proprio-traditionis-custodes.html.

[18] See, for example, José Antonio Ureta, ´The Novus Ordo Weaponized for ‘Another Faith?’” OnePeterFive (12 August 2022), accessed on 20 January 2024, www.onepeterfive.com/the-novus-ordo-weaponized-for-another-faith/.   

[19] Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter Desidero Desideravi (Rome 29 June 2022), art. 31, accessed on 20 January 2024, www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/20220629-lettera-ap-desiderio-desideravi.html.

[20] See Chapter Nine: Ubi Caritas.