BENEDICT'S 'RESIGNATION', NOVUS ORDO VALIDITY

 

Benedict XVI resigns: "It was like he was telling us what he'd had for breakfast"

It's eleven years today since Benedict XVI sort of resigned the papacy, a staggering event which was announced to the world first by an incredulous, intrepid woman reporter watching on closed-circuit Tv who remembered her high school Latin well enough to understand what he was adding to a pro forma, date-setting meeting of cardinals. 

Intrepid, because veteran ANSA reporter Giovanna Chirri could barely control her physical reactions to the shock. 

Chirri couldn’t comprehend that the conservative German theologian who spent his life upholding church rules and doctrine would take the revolutionary step of resigning. "(T)he pope was reading so calmly," says Giovanna Chirri,"it was like he was telling us what he had had for breakfast that morning." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-latin-vatican-city-church-italy-b2254221.html

Now, eleven years on, the argument as to the validity of that so-called resignation - and its unintended effect of enabling the so-called election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio - still rages in the Catholic world. (In fact a reader of this blog is working on dissecting this issue on this page. Watch this space.)

Another, subterranean and volcanic issue, lies in the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass (New Mass). Traditional, "backward" Catholics' supposed denial of that validity was the mendacious reasoning advanced for Traditionis Custodes, Bergoglio's suppression of the Mass of All Time, as the Traditional Latin Mass has been known for well over 2000 years. Well yeah, stats show that 0.01% of traditional Catholics believe the New Mass is invalid.  But who are, in fact, the overwhelming majority who deny the validity of the New Mass? 

Why, none other than Novus Ordo Massgoers themselves, and the stats prove it. Stats which repeatedly announce their disbelief - to the tune of 70% in the US and almost certainly more in New Zealand, given the nation's pagan character - in the source and summit of our Catholic Faith, the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

So by a large majority, New Massgoers deny the validity of the words of Consecration. They don't believe them, so they deny the validity of the Mass. QED. (We hasten to add, as tact would seem to demand, that lacking the theological qualifications to do so, we do not deny the validity of the New Mass. But it would seem prudent, in view of our final end, that is the salvation of our souls, to attend the Mass which for hundreds of years nourished billions of saints - the Traditional Latin Mass.)

We might as well acknowledge, on this anniversary, the contribution made by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger to the genesis of the fiasco that is the Novus Ordo. 

Ratzinger ... was just thirty-five years old in 1962 when the Second Vatican Council began. Already known as a brilliant theologian, he attended all four sessions as peritus, or expert, to Cardinal Joseph Frings ... Ratzinger wrote an account and analysis of the theological debates among the bishops, giving his verdict on what had been achieved. These four pamphlets make up the book Theological Highlights of Vatican II, and they still have the freshness about them of that springtime of the church. Almost every page breathes “the spirit of Vatican II”—the spirit that Ratzinger, as cardinal prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from 1982 to 2005, would later denigrate.

As far as the young Joseph Ratzinger was concerned, episcopal collegiality, papal authority, the liturgy, the question of religious freedom, ecumenism, and the church’s approach both to other religions and to secular culture were all in urgent need of reforming scrutiny by the council fathers. At the time, the future Pope Benedict was counted as one of the most influential “progressives” (to use a term Pope Paul VI himself used). 

Collegiality, writes Ratzinger in Highlights, is the council’s answer to the “most important” question confronting the third session—papal centralism. “Even the person indifferent to religion,” he declares, “sees the papal primacy as an obstacle to the union of Christendom.” https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ratzinger-vatican-ii

Oh, the richness of the irony! What the future Pope Benedict saw as "papal primacy" has degenerated under this pontificate so-called of Jorge Bergoglio into papolatry. The "pope" harangues not just the faithful but the entire world, almost daily and often on worldly topics only loosely connected (as everything is, in the end) to the Faith, most egregiously in his peddling of the pill, the infamous Jab, which has dispatched uncounted millions into eternity and in a state of unrepented apostasy at that, and so an eternity in Hell. And those who dare resist him are, in the best manner of tyrants and ideologues, consigned to those very peripheries which he and his shepherds boast of haunting. 

(T)hat fatal year, 1969 (when the Novus Ordo was promulgated - ed), a letter addressed to the Pope, utterly unnoticed by the press, (was) signed by 6000 Spanish priests.¹⁰We shall not speak of the doctrinal Catholic reasons; we could not expose them better than the document A Brief Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, which Your Holiness has recently received, accompanied by a letter signed by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, and which one would need to refute in details according to the doctrine of the Council of Trent if one wished to prove the orthodoxy of the Novus Ordo. Mr. Max Thurian affirms in La Croix of May 30, 1969 that, with the Novus Ordo “non Catholic communities will be able to celebrate the Last Supper with the same prayers as the Catholic Church. Theologically this is possible.”

 

Pope Paul VI thanking the 6 Protestant ministers
for their assistance in creating the New Mass.
Max Thurian is circled.

(I)f the celebration by a Protestant is theologically possible, this means that the Novus Ordo expresses no dogma with which the Protestants are in disagreement. But the first of these dogmas is the Real Presence, essence and center of the Mass of St. Pius V. Could a Protestant pastor celebrate the Novus Ordo if he was to perform the consecration in the intention used by the Catholic Church? “Lex orandi, lex credendi”: the liturgy is the highest expression of our faith.

Where shall we go if, in the best of cases, the Mass silences the Catholic truths? If the good people, with no knowledge and against their will, are thrown into heresy, as long as they preserve the Christian morals (unfortunately, they do not), they will save their soul. But this will not be the case of those who will have pushed them into it. Most Holy Father, we do not want to endure this responsibility. 

(E)ven if one wanted to contest the heretical elements of the New Mass, the sole refusal to profess Catholic dogmas quintessential to the Mass renders the new liturgy deficient. It is like a captain who refuses to provide his shipmen with a proper diet. They soon become sick with scurvy due, not so much to direct poison, as from vitamin deficiency. Such is the new Mass.

The correct definition of evil—lack of a due good—clearly shows that the New Mass is evil in and of itself regardless of the circumstances. It is not evil by positive profession of heresy. It is evil by lacking what Catholic dogma should profess: the True Sacrifice, the Real Presence, the ministerial priesthood. This deficiency had already been denounced by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci months before the New Mass was promulgated:

The recent reforms have amply demonstrated that new changes in the liturgy could not be made without leading to complete bewilderment of the faithful, who already show an indubitable lessening of their faith. Among the best of the clergy, the result is an agonizing crisis of conscience, numberless instances of which come to our notice daily.¹⁴  

It is clear that the Novus Ordo no longer intends to present the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent… It represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of the Council of Trent. The “canons” of the rite definitively fixed at that time erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the mystery."[2]

 A law is legitimate only when it is duly promulgated by the lawfully constituted authority. But to this condition must be added another of supreme importance and essential to make it a law: it must be for the common good.[1] And precisely on this score, the 

Novus Ordo Missae (NOM) is most defective as was attested at the time of its promulgation by no less than Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci:

It is clear that the Novus Ordo no longer intends to present the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent… It represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of the Council of Trent. The “canons” of the rite definitively fixed at that time erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the mystery."

 As to the final “Nonobstant”, it is too generic to pretend to abrogate the perfectly clear legislative act of St. Pius V who promulgated the Mass of All Time. It appears that Paul VI never wanted to render his missal mandatory, with a truly juridical obligation. Why?

• The original Constitution concluded rather innocently with: “

• From all that has been said so far regarding the New Roman Missal, in the end, we are now pleased to draw a conclusion.”⁵ But, sensing that something was missing, the French and Italian translators (not to speak of other versions) boldly modified the text making it say: “We want (placet!) to give force of law (cogere et efficere!) to everything (quiddam!) which we have exposed above regarding the new Roman Missal.”

• The same translators also completed the authentic Latin text of the Apostolic Constitution, adding: “We order that the prescriptions of this Constitution become effective on November 30th of this year, the First Sunday of Advent.”⁶ Both these modifications and additions objectively constitute a forgery. This alone manifests the essential problem of a Constitution which some wish to be mandatory, but which, in its authentic tenure, is not.

• The question remains why Pope Paul VI seemed to substitute in fact another law to one which he did not abrogate by right. Worse is the other stunning question: why did he not say clearly that he did not want to abrogate the other? Why leave the minds of confused priests and laymen in the agonizing doubt that everything was taking place then as if the authors (which ones?) were imposing an obligation while letting you free to believe the opposite?

• 

  Jean Guitton, friend and confidant of Pope Paul VI

  
  
  
  
  (A)n intimate friend of the Pope, Jean Guitton, has stated that: "There was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist service."..⁹ http://archives.sspx.org/news/is_new_mass_legit/is_the_new_mass_legit.htm

(A)mong Catholics who attend Mass regularly in ordinary parishes ... very few would say that the Mass is invalid, because they would not recognize the power of the syllogism in the paragraph above. Generations of wretched catechesis have left millions of lay Catholics with only a vague idea of what the Eucharist is, what the Mass accomplishes. Still the fact remains that most Catholics reject—or perhaps, more accurately, are indifferent to—this most central dogma of the faith. If they are indifferent, all the more reason why they may drift away from the Church. If they reject Catholic teaching, then they undermine the unity of the faithful. https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/who-denies-novus-ordo-is-valid-prepare-for-surprise/

The problems of the Novus Ordo Missae are indeed manifold, firstly for its theological deficiencies, such as the minimalizing of the sacrificial and sacerdotal quality of the Mass as well as the doctrine of the Real Presence. This was in fact an intended object in order to ecumenically placate the Protestants.

Another,  more serious, object was intended by the Pact of the Catacombs, of which Marxist enterprise, jettisoning evangelism, 'Pope Francis' is the fulfilment.

The Catecombs Pact: marinated in eco-socialism, committing the Church "in the face of extreme global warming" to an "integral ecology in which all is interconnected."

To better understand the issue of the New Mass, I would suggest reading The Ottaviani Intervention as well as the books of Michael Davies. [1]

However, this being said, the Novus Ordo Missae is sacramentally valid per se, that is, the consecration of the Sacred Host and Precious Blood does take place when offered “by the book”. The issue of invalidity occurs when there is a defect in any of the four criteria required for the validity of any sacrament: matter, form, intention and minister https://akacatholic.com/roman-rite-qa-how-was-mass-originally-offered/

The validity of the Novus Ordo Missae on precisely that issue is vigorously contested by the late Rev Fr P D Meuli STD, UJD, PhL, LLB, Rotal Advocate, Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, in his 80-page Res Sacramenti. Fr Meuli cogently argues that "with the alteration of one word the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, and with it the Mass, was destroyed." That one-word alteration is the substitution, in the words of consecration, of "all" in place of "many", thus destroying the unity of faith signified by transubstantiation. 

That substitution was and continues to be an egregious error. As long as it is around it is doing horrendous damage (60). It is impossible for the words for you and for all to signify the union or unity of the Mystical Body. It is impossible because all are not now, have not been, nor ever will be members of the Mystical Body.(61). (Res Sacramenti.)

 

Christ Healing the Blind
El Greco

 Do Thou, we beseech Thee, O Lord mercifully hear our prayers, that we being loosed from the bonds of our sins, may by Thee be defended against all adversity.

– From the Collect for the Quinquagesima Sunday