WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE MISSING: WHAT WAS LEFT OUT OF THE NEW MASS

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It made my blood run cold: my Melbourne son telling me he went for a walk on Sunday, in Lockdown. A 20k walk. Wearing a mask. 

I groaned - inwardly, I thought, but perhaps not quite because he said, "It was okay, Mum. It taught me to breathe through my nose more." He did it out of consideration for others. And even when they're wearing masks, he says, you can tell when people are smiling. "I think you should act around other people like you've got Covid."

Now I wouldn't wear a mask unless forced to by law, which given the government we've got is not unlikely, but although Christ told us that He "came not to bring  peace, but the sword, for I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law"(Mt 10:34), I held my peace. Sort of.

I could have held forth on another scripture verse, 1 Cor 2:14: "But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined". But both those readings would be better explained by Father from the pulpit on a Sunday than by Mum over the phone to a son in another country. 

The question arises however, whether after 50 years or so of what I now think of as Mass in shorthand - the Novus Ordo - Father would understand it himself, let alone be able to explain it to his congregation.

For the first time in months, yesterday I went to Mass in my parish instead of online to St Michael's (SSPX) School in Burghclere, England, because at last Cardinal John Dew has relented and abrogated the unjust law of no Communion on the tongue - for Palmerston North Diocese, that is, not for the beleaguered Archdiocese of Wellington which remains the Land of Mordor, spiritually speaking, for the foreseeable future and according to one reader of this blog, maybe for ever. (If they're not completely cowed yet, Wellingtonians could emulate the RadTrads of PN, whose persistence in opposing the ban on the centuries'-old way of Communion finally paid off. (Deo gratias.)

But oh dear: being out of the habit of fasting an hour before Communion, I took a cup of coffee with me in the car and had to forgo the Sacrament. Doh. 

 1 Cor 11: 29: For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord (1 Cor 11: 29). 

How many Catholics have forgotten - if they ever knew - this warning of eternal punishment pending for receiving Holy Communion when not in the state of grace, if they die without repenting? Comparing the number who go to Confession with the number who receive Holy Communion at Sunday Masses, very few. 

Therefore are there many infirm and weak among you: and many sleep (NRSV: some have died) ibid, 30. 

If these verses were known, preached and understood, would the Church now be suffering this post-Vat II mass apostasy, the defection and desertion of millions of the not-so-faithful (272,771 just last year in Germany), a crisis unprecedented in her 2000-year history? 

And just why has this verse, and so many others which for 50 years should have been ringing in our ears like whistles from the Referee, been forgotten? 

Because this verse, like so many others, was left out of the Novus Ordo. 

The Novus Ordo is not just a shorthand but a bowdlerised version of the usus antiquior. A few days ago (being in spirit at St Michael's Burghclere) I was struck by all the praise of the "valiant woman" in Proverbs 31(13) in honour of St Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary. Why was it left out of the Novus Ordo? Because, I'd say, it doesn't fit the narrative of the feminista in the Church, one of whom for example  is now clamouring for the cardinalate of Lyons (https://cathnews.co.nz/2020/05/28/woman-theologian-archbishop-lyon/) and hordes apparently ordination 

To illustrate my point, a quote from a Freemason's letter c. 1830: "To destroy Catholicism, we should do away with women ... but since we cannot get rid of women, let us corrupt them with the Church, "Corruptio optimi, pessima".  The best dagger to strike the Church is corruption." The Freemason Monsignor Annibale Bugnini, architect of the Novus Ordo, intended to corrupt Catholic women by removing from the Lectionary any references to their traditional, God-given role as wife and mother.

The following study, writes Dr Peter Kwasniewski,  was completed in March 2016 and subsequently published as the Foreword to Matthew Hazell's remarkable reference work "Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite."

The passage of time under the reign of Pope Francis has meanwhile witnessed the welcome development of a large number of Catholics of good will beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the rupture effected by the liturgical reform. Because not everyone has this volume or expects to have it, I've been encouraged to share the Foreword with a wider audience. Nevertheless, I encourage serious students of liturgy to purchase the Index Lectionum itself, because it is a formidable research tool.
 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/01/not-just-more-scripture-but-different.htm

To summarise Dr Kwasniewski's foreword to Hazell's work I offer the following as Not Only But Also missing from the Novus Ordo OT Lectionary:

•  Ezekiel’s statement that “the soul that sinneth, the same shall die” (so judgmental );
•  the visitation of the angel to the three children in the fiery furnace (Dan. 5:47–51); and
• the apparition of the Archangel Gabriel (Dan. 9:21–26);  (no wonder we hear that angels are "so pre-Vatican II");  

• and the OT story perhaps most loved by children - Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 14:27–42). 

Let's move on to the New Testament, shall we? 

The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth: because I give testimony of it, that the works thereof are evil (Jn 7:7). Now, that hardly fits with how the modern Church accommodates the world, for instance in NZ's bishops falling over themselves to fall into line at the behest of the evil Ardern and her cohorts, with Monsignor Brian Walsh of Palmerston North Diocese still insisting that "All Governmental protocols must still be obeyed."

Mary, Mater Ecclesia 

"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own" (Jn 25-27). Pre-Vat II, this was read several times every year; now it's mentioned in passing only once, on Good Friday. The cult of the Mother of God and the Church has been virtually struck off the books.

Even worse, St Paul's solemn warning about unworthy Communions (cited above) which the Latin Mass proclaims twice every year, has completely vanished from the New Mass. Is it any wonder then, that SSPX parishes and communities, schools and priestly and religious vocations, are thriving while as Father said here last Sunday, lugubriously, to a congregation of around 50 souls, "This church" (built for 350 I think) "used to be full!" And, he went on to complain to the nearly-empty pews, "your children aren't here!" (In defence of my lot I'll state here that the only one still local had been to the Vigil - in spite of a very sore thumb - the night before, and with his two sons.

More glaring NT omissions from the Lectionary:

• 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 (1 Cor 10: 7-9;
• No man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses; that he may please him to whom he hath engaged himself. (2 Tim 2:4);
• Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires ... Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.  (1 Peter 2:11,19);
• These are they who were not defiled with women: for they are virgins (Rev 14:4a) which used to be read for the Holy Innocents (Dec 28). The New Mass is after all a creature of the '60s and the sexual revolution ... ;
• Be angry and sin not (Eph 4:23): so much for banging on about 'righteous anger' and how 'angry' Our Lord was that day in the temple; 
• Wherefore putting away lying ... He that stole, let him now steal no more; but rather let him labour ... that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need (Eph 4: 25,28)
• Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord (Rom 12:20);
• Brethren, and if a man be overtaken in any fault, you, who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness. For every one shall bear his own burden. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting (Gal 1,5);

 Really? There we all were, thinking ever since Vat II that everyone has life everlasting.

• Let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith (Gal 6:1-10);

What??? Give precedence to our fellow Catholics? Isn't that elitist? Certainly that sentiment would hardly be deemed by the liberal revisionist wing of the Church in 1969 to be 'ecumenical' - although in the true sense of the word of course, it is. And that's not the only example of excisions made in the interests of 'inter-religious dialogue' - like the following:

• ... the Jews, Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men; Prohibiting us to speak to the Gentiles, that they may be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath of God is come upon them to the end (1 Thess 2:17). That really isn't nice, not a bit;  

And speaking of being judgmental, which on no account are we allowed to be now: 

• For the time is, that judgment should begin at the house of God. And if first at us, what shall be the end of them that believe not the gospel of God? And if the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God, commend their souls in good deeds to the faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:17–18);

 And Matthew 20:16b: “For many are called, but few chosen";

• “Be not led away with various and strange doctrines . . . For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come”(Heb. 13:9, 14)
• The text of 1 Peter 5:6–11, which includes the imperative “Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour" was downgraded from Sunday to the feast of St Mark;
• The great passage in Luke 10 (vv. 1–9) where Our Lord sends out the seventy-two disciples and tells them to beg for more laborers to go out into the harvest is read two or three times a year in the Ordinary Form (New Mass), as compared with about ten times each year in the Extraordinary Form (Latin Mass). Wouldn't you think the Church needs to proclaim that far more often now than formerly? But of course in 1969 the architects of the New Mass couldn't possibly have foreseen the drastic drop in priestly vocations - or could they? Isn't that exactly what they foresaw?
  
  

• 

  Hanging of Judas by Carlo Filippo Chiaffarino ~ ca.1875

  Abolished is the gruesome reference to Judas in Acts 1: “And he indeed hath possessed a field of the reward of iniquity, and being hanged, burst asunder in the midst: and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: so that the same field was called in their tongue, Haceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.” 

Adding insult to injury is the fact that due to the prevailing tendency now to stick to the 3-year cycle of readings we miss out on many beautiful and apt verses given for the Commons of the saints.

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: we've been hornswaggled. Grievously.

It is difficult to see how omissions and renovations of this magnitude, in the midst of a vast increase in total quantity of Scripture, can be said to have conformed to the principle enunciated in Sacrosanctum Concilium §23 and agreed upon nearly unanimously by the Council Fathers: “There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.”

Readers should take note that Mr. Hazell created and runs a website, “Lectionary Study Aids,” to make available an abundance of lectionary resources—including more comparative charts, many hard-to-find scholarly articles, and complete scans of the Acta synodalia for the First Session of the Second Vatican Council. For those who are pursuing research on lectionaries, the site is indispensable.

 “Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls” (Jer 6:16).