The (Old and New) Mass and the Cross
In its twenty-second session, the bishops at Trent defined dogmatically that the Mass is a true and propitiatory sacrifice, offered to God alone.1 The Levitical priesthood being imperfect, the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and a fortiori any fitting sacrifices made by gentiles, were also imperfect. 2 At best, they were only harbingers of the perfect Sacrifice of Christ, and expressions of the Natural Law which demands sacrifice.
In its strict theological understanding, a sacrifice is the offering of some created thing to God to show man’s dependence upon and subjection to Him, attesting to God’s Supreme Dominion.3 It must be offered to God alone,4 by a deputed minister (i.e. a priest)5 and the thing must be permanently changed or destroyed.6 There needs be some union with the victim, thus a communion.7
Sin was not the cause of the need for sacrifice. The Natural Law would demand it even had man not sinned.8 Having fallen, though, sacrifice became even more necessary as propitiation—a sacrifice that would repair for the infinite offense of sin. Without a perfect and sinless priest who could offer an infinite reparation, there would be only imperfect propitiation.
By His perfect priesthood as both God and Man as well as both Priest and Victim, Christ could offer the perfect sacrifice. He did this upon the Cross. He had already done this the night before, at the Last Supper under the symbols of bread and wine, in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Passover meal. At the same time, He provided the Apostles a means to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross and His Priesthood, through visible sacrifice.
The need for this visible sacrifice was already the subject of prophecy five centuries before Christ’s Nativity. The prophet Malachi speaks of the Sacrifice of the Mass, writing: “from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My Name is great among the gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My Name a clean oblation.”9 Since this never occurred during the Old Covenant time, it can only refer to the Sacrifice of the Mass, which continues the Sacrifice of the Cross in a unbloody and sacramental manner to this day, on every continent and nation in the world.
This has been the Church’s doctrine on the Mass since the Apostles began offering this Sacrifice. Thus, “[i]f we no longer have a clear idea of the sacrifice of the Cross, if we lose the notion of the sacrifice of the Mass continuing the sacrifice of the Cross, we are no longer Catholics.”10
Sacrifice over Supper
The Mass is the fruit of the Cross, perpetuating the Sacrifice of the Cross, and a propitiatory offering connected to the Last Supper only indirectly. The Last Supper stands on the other side of Calvary in time from the Mass. The Cross makes this connection possible, and shows the primary sacrificial character of the Mass. Thus the Roman Catechism, explaining Trent’s decrees, will make a definition of the Mass, saying: “The Sacrifice of the Mass is one and the same Sacrifice with that of the Cross, for the victim is one and the same, Christ Jesus, who offered Himself, once only, a bloody Sacrifice on the altar of the cross … in obedience to the command of our Lord: ‘Do this for a commemoration of me.’ ”11 The same Roman Catechism indicates that “supper” is a less-common name for the Sacrament, because of the manner of its institution at the Last Supper, not because it is similar to a normal meal, and thus one must receive only after fasting.12
A novel emphasis, however, is presented in the original 1969 Institutio Generalis—the document which presents the theology, rubrics, and spirit of the Novus Ordo Mass. Its complete definition of the Mass was:
The Lord’s Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or assembled congregation of the people of God, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, Christ’s promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: ‘Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst.’13
Needless to say, Trent’s definition and this one flow from an entirely different theology. The former sees the Mass as primarily the continuation of the Cross, at which one might partake of Holy Communion. The latter sees the Mass as the re-enactment of the Last Supper, at which one, like at any meal, ought to eat. The consequences of that change are not trivial.
This latter definition was so objectionable that it lasted only four months, being changed in response to the Brief Critical Study of the New Order of Mass—a.k.a. the Ottaviani Intervention. As the head of Holy Office, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani wrote a prefatory letter before presenting it to Pope Paul VI. Famously, the Cardinal himself wrote that the new Mass was “as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.”14 In fact, the 1969 Institutio Generalis never once mentions the Council of Trent, only Vatican II.
The 1970 revision added a lengthy preface to the Institutio Generalis, claiming continuity and mentioning Trent—a “hermeneutic of continuity”—but the rite it summarized was never modified. It was a tacit omission that Ottaviani was correct, and a non-Catholic philosophy and theology was at the root of the changes. Thus the revision was a stopgap insertion to “save the phenomena” or pretend that later words could supply for a deficient foundation. That deficient theology was the basis for this new rite, and hand-waving would not change what the Consilium which created this new rite intended.
As the Study authors write :
[t]he definition of the Mass is thus limited to that of a ‘supper,’ and this term is found constantly repeated… [t]his ‘supper’ is further characterized as an assembly presided over by the priest and held as a memorial of the Lord, recalling what He did on the first Maundy Thursday. None of this in the very least implies either the Real Presence, or the reality of the sacrifice, or the Sacramental function of the consecrating priest, or the intrinsic value of the Eucharistic Sacrifice independently of the people’s presence. It does not, in a word, imply any of the essential dogmatic values of the Mass which together provide its true definition. Here the deliberate omission of these dogmatic values amounts to their having been superseded and therefore, at least in practice, to their denial.15
In fact, to say that the Mass is merely a memorial meal commemorating Christ’s death and Resurrection, or even a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, is explicitly and infallibly condemned as heretical by Trent.16 It must be affirmed that the Mass is the same propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross, thus a satisfaction for sin, yet in this new rite “the emphasis is obsessively placed upon the supper and the memorial instead of upon the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary.”17
This was not accidental: it was a perversion of the liturgical movement away from Catholic principles towards heretical ideas.
Supper Theology in the New Offertory and Canon
One of the liturgical movement’s own bright lights, Fr Pius Parch, who himself dabbled in experimental liturgy, wrote of the traditional offertory, “This prayer [Suscipe, sancta Pater], the richest in content of any, contains a whole world of dogmatic truth.” It shows priest as alter Christus, what the priest offers, to Whom, and the very purpose of the Mass which, “is, therefore, the same as that of the Sacrifice of the Cross.” He continues,, “[t]his prayer, so rich in doctrine, could serve as the basis for an entire treatise on the Mass.”18 Pasch, imprudently, wished for a vernacular Mass to engage the faithful more closely in its mystery, but one that was undeniably the same Sacrifice of the Cross.
That is not what the Consilium produced. Instead of a mere translation of the traditional offertory, with a text that “contains a whole world of dogmatic truth,” the new offertory became a mere meal blessing. This was, as one reformer put it, to “place what we call today the ‘words of institution’ of the Eucharist back into their own context which is that of the ritual berakoth of the Jewish meal.”19
Others were not hesitant to affirm that “[w]e have gone from an offertory in the strict sense of the word to a simple presentation of gifts which will become ‘the bread of life and the cup of salvation.’ ”20 To the extent that any notion of real sacrificial offering remained, however, the Institutio Generalis gutted it by referring to the act of offering as a joint action of the priest and faithful. It is never referred to, as in the traditional offertory, as an act of the ministerial priesthood alone, with the faithful acting only analogically with him in prayer and attention.
The prayer Orate fratres was kept in the New Mass despite the objections of many members of the Consilium. However, the new Mass and the traditional Mass treat the same text in diametrically-opposed ways, as two opposing theologies would do. From a priestly sacrifice, to which the faithful are invited to unite their prayers and attention, now it is a mere “invitation to pray with the priest,” where “[t]he meaning of the prayer is that all the faithful now gathered together unite themselves with Christ in praising the wonderful works of God and in offering sacrifice.”21 Is this, though, a mere sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving condemned by Trent, or the Sacrifice of the Cross taught by that Council, which only the priest can properly perform? The Institutio Generalis and reformers were at pains to insist on the former.
The Canon, replaced by various “Eucharistic Prayers” is when, according to the Institutio Generalis, “the entire congregation joins itself to Christ in acknowledging the great things God has done and in offering the sacrifice.”22 This is a sacrifice of praise, and not propitiatory, for the same text soon after says, “that sacrifice is celebrated which [Christ] instituted at the Last Supper, when, under the appearances of bread and wine, He offered His body and blood, gave them to His apostles to eat and drink, then commanded that they carry on this mystery.”23 It then makes clear that what is offered is not the death of Christ upon the Cross, symbolized sacramentally by the separation of the Body and Blood at the Consecration. Instead, that after the consecration that makes Christ’s Body and Blood present as food, “the Church, and in particular the Church here and now assembled, offers the spotless victim to the Father in the Holy Spirit.”24
General Intention of the New Mass
Contrary to the dogmatic decrees of Trent, the Institutio Generalis decrees that the Mass is principally and primarily “the paschal meal,” so “it is right that the faithful who are properly disposed receive the Lord’s body and blood as spiritual food,” because, “[t]his is the purpose of the breaking of bread and the other preparatory rites [i.e. the table-blessing offertory and eucharistic prayer] that lead directly to the communion of the people.”25
Thus could Archbishop Lefebvre say:
The Protestants, in the beginning, had the Catholic Mass, and they became Protestants. They denied the fundamental truths of the holy Mass: the propitiatory sacrifice, the distinction between the priesthood of the priests and of the laity, the Real Presence. They denied those things, in virtue of which they instituted a Mass derived from the Catholic Mass, but by expurgating everything that might recall these truths. Here we are now four centuries later.26
The intention of directing the liturgy away from being the Sacrifice of Calvary renewed in an unbloody, sacramental manner, and replacing it with a meal at which the faithful are expected to participate by Communion could not be clearer. The Consilium, however, was not the first to develop this idea. The arch-heretic Martin Luther insisted on “repudiating all those things which smack of sacrifice and of the offertory, together with the entire canon.”27 He also insisted that “communicating the people” was the reason that “chiefly this Supper of the Lord was instituted.”28
On this account, given the aim of Trent to initiate an anti-Protestant Counter-Reformation, the words of Ottavani that the new Mass was “as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as formulated at Trent” seem entirely appropriate.29 On the other hand a “reverent Novus Ordo” seems impossible, given that the Latin language and other externals such as the direction the priest faces, incense, and Gregorian chant, do not remedy a deficient rite any more than the haphazard band-aid upon the erroneous 1969 Institutio Generalis could modify the rite that it was meant to summarize and explain.
The changes explained above are but a few of those which undermine the Catholic Faith. Once the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass is effectively denied by omission and contextual changes, the destruction of the Priest as minister of this Sacrifice and its fruits, the over-emphasis of the “priesthood” of the faithful as members of the Mystical Body, and the denial of the Real Presence, logically follow. It is not surprising that Archbishop Lefebvre could already see this within 15 years after the promulgation of the new liturgy:
The people who regularly attend the New Mass… who do not resist all these liturgical reforms, gradually take on a Protestant mindset. When they are asked questions about mixed marriages, ecumenism, religious truth, or the possibility of salvation in different religions, they always have false ideas; they no longer possess the Church’s doctrine… even if it is not the priest who told them false things.30
The Cross is that central point linking the Last Supper to the Mass. Make the Mass only about the Last Supper, and we have an empty cross, as found in a Protestant hall. “If we leave the Cross out of the Life of Christ, we have nothing and certainly not Christianity.”31 If we leave the Cross out of the Liturgy, we certainly do not have a Catholic Mass.
Endnotes
1 Conc. Trid., Sess. XXII, Decreta de ss. Missæ sacrificio. Cap. II. (Dz 940/DS 1743)
2 Even gentiles who worshiped the true God (e.g. Melchisedech) had an imperfect priesthood and, thus imperfect sacrifices. (Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 22, a. 6, ad 1 & 2.)
3 Summa Theologica, II:II, q. 85, a. 1.
4 Ibid., II:II, q. 85, a. 2.
5 Ibid., II:II, q. 85, a. 4, ad 3.
6 Ibid., II:II, q. 85, a. 3, ad 3.
7 This could be by the priest eating a portion of the sacrifice (e.g. Lev. 6.26).
8 Ibid., II:II, q. 85, a. 1, ad 1.
9 Mal. 1.11.
10 Lefebvre, Marcel. Homily, Ecône, Nov. 1, 1990, as quoted in The Mass of All Time. (Angelus Press, 2007), p. 25.
11 Catechism of the Council of Trent, (1829), London : Folds & Sons, p. 208–9.
12 Ibid., p. 249.
13 Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (1969), §7.
14 Brief Critical Study of the New Rite of Mass, Angelus Press: Saint Marys, KS, p. 3
15 Ibid, p. 5–6.
16 Conc. Trid., Sess. XXII, Decreta de ss. Missæ sacrificio. Can 3. (Dz 950/DS 1753)
17 Brief Critical Study of the New Rite of Mass, p. 7
18 Parch, Pius. The Liturgy of the Mass. (Herder, 1961), p.184–5. Parch was a leading voice in the pre-Vatican II liturgical movement, but his students would later say he would have been horrified at gutting of the doctrinal aspects of the liturgy.
19 Bouyer, Louis, Eucharistie (Desclée, 1990), p. 109. n.b. the berakah is the blessing of food at a ritual Jewish meal.
20 Martin Patino, J. M; et al., “Nuevas normas de la missa,” BAC, 1969, p. 125.
21 Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (1969), §53–54.
22 Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (1969), §54.
23 Ibid., §55(d).
24 Ibid., §55(f).
25 Ibid., §56.
26 Lefebvre, Marcel. Spiritual conference, Ecône, June 24, 1981, as quoted in The Mass of All Time. (Angelus Press, 2007), p. 253.
27 Luther, Martin. “Formula Missæ et Communionis.” Works of Martin Luther, vol. 6 (Muhlenberg Press, 1932), p. 84.
28 Ibid., p. 93
29 Brief Critical Study of the New Rite of Mass, Angelus Press: Kansas City, Mo., p. 3
30 Lefebvre, Marcel. Spiritual conference, Ecône, Jan. 22, 1982, as quoted in The Mass of All Time. (Angelus Press, 2007), p. 254.
31 Sheen, Fulton. The Life of Christ. (Garden City, N.Y., 1977), p. 9
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