The difficulties we have with the NO Mass

  • Thread starter Thread starter maurin
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

maurin

Guest
Sums up very nicely, and much better than I have been able to in previous posts.
Rome and the SSPX: a very puzzling dialogue
When Moyra Doorly began to wonder if the SSPX is right about Vatican II she asked leading theologian Aidan Nichols to address her doubts

Catholic Herald
3 July 2009

Introduction

By Moyra Doorly
catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000435.shtml

Calls for the Society of St Pius X to “accept Vatican II” have come thick and fast in the wake of recent events. Now that negotiations with the Vatican have been announced, the expectation is that the SSPX will soon follow the path taken by other traditionalist groups and allow their “attachment to some previous liturgical form of Latin tradition” to be accommodated within the folds of the Conciliar Church.

But as the Holy Father pointed out in his March 12 letter concerning the lifting of the excommunications against the Society’s four bishops, “the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature”. Which suggests that the SSPX’s 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 117 brothers, 164 sisters and thousands of otherwise ordinary Catholic supporters across the world, find themselves in an extraordinary situation for reasons that go beyond mere obstinacy and a refusal to wake up to the modern world.

Because according to The Problem of the Liturgical Reform: A Theological and Liturgical Study published in 2001 by the SSPX (Angelus Press), the Second Vatican Council has introduced a new understanding of the Mass, one that is “less an application of the merits of Redemption and more a liturgy of the saved - the liturgy of ‘a people your Son has gained for you’. Rather than being an action whereby the priest in persona Christi applies the merits and satisfactions won by Christ in His redemptive sacrifice, the Mass is the action of a people - ‘the sacred assembly, a chosen race, a royal priesthood’ - who celebrate with thanksgiving a Redemption already released in full.”

At the heart of the reforms, the study claims, is the theology of the Paschal Mystery which shifts the emphasis away from Christ’s Passion as the central salvific act, focuses instead on Christ’s Passion and Resurrection and Ascension, and no longer considers redemption principally as the result of Christ’s expiatory sacrifice on the Cross. In contrast, according to the study, “for classic theology it is the Passion rather than the Resurrection which sums up man’s salvation. The Resurrection certainly contributes to our salvation, notably as an example for us, but classic theology maintains that only the death of Christ - and not His Resurrection - has a meritorious and satisfactory value.”

Thus the new theology considers the consequence of sin, not as an offence against God which leaves man in debt to His justice, but primarily in terms of its effect upon the sinner who is turned from God’s love as a result. While classic theology has always held that Christ’s Passion was an act of sacrificial love by which He offered Himself to the Father in order to reconcile man to God and make satisfaction for his sins, the new theology focuses instead on Christ’s saving act as the revelation of God’s infinite and unconditional love for mankind. As a result, “the propitiatory character of the sacrifice of the Mass has been virtually dropped from the new missal”.

Another feature of the new theology, according to the study, is a view of the sacraments as “making something present in reality”, rather than as “signs which produce an effect”, ie grace in the soul. Thus, the liturgy becomes the sacrament which makes present the mystery of salvation veiled beneath its ritual symbols, as does the gathered assembly which makes Christ present in its midst. Christ’s presence in His Word is also emphasised in the equivalence the new missal draws between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

In this way, taking part in the liturgy becomes the means by which the people penetrate the mystery and encounter the God who reveals, hence the new emphasis on lay participation in the rites, which extends to attributing an almost sacramental role to the laity who by virtue of their royal priesthood participate in celebrating the Eucharist. In contrast, the traditional teaching is that the sacraments apply to us the merits of Christ, who is both Priest and Victim of the sacrifice, and produce the grace in the soul necessary for salvation. The laity participates “not actively in a visible liturgical rite, but by uniting themselves with the prayers and intentions of the priest by whose hands the offering is made, so that the external sacrificial rite is reflected in their interior worship”.

(cont’d)
 
What’s more, while the Extraordinary Form is an explicitly sacrificial rite as reflected in its structure - “oblation of the victim (Offertory), immolation (double consecration) and consummation (Communion)” - the Ordinary Form has taken on the structure of a memorial meal - “blessing of the food (presentation of the gifts), thanksgiving for gifts received (Eucharistic Prayer) and breaking and partaking of the bread”. Thus the new understanding of the Mass is first and foremost as a memorial, and then “as a sacrifice insofar as the memorial makes the sacrifice of the Cross present beneath the veil of mystery”. One of many examples included in the Study is the new Mysterium Fidei. Following the Consecration in the Ordinary Form, the people are invited to “proclaim the mystery of faith” according to one of three new acclamations, eg, “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again” etc. But in the Extraordinary Form, the Mysterium Fidei refers to the Consecration itself, to the fact that the body and blood of Christ are now truly present on the altar under the species of bread and wine, as its place in the traditional Prayer of Consecration makes clear, “take and drink ye all of this, for this is the chalice of My Blood, of the new and eternal testament: the mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins”. According to this change, the study claims, the Mystery of Faith no longer refers to the Real Presence of Christ brought about by transubstantiation, but to “all the mysteries of Christ’s life proclaimed and remembered together”.

Thus the SSPX refuses to “accept the Council” for reasons that go way beyond a subjective preference for a particular form of liturgical expression. While acknowledging that there are no explicit denials of traditional doctrines in the Council documents, the Study claims that the new theology has been so emphasised that the reformed missal “no longer propagates the lex credendi of the Church”.

So startling are these arguments that they could generate all manner of response. According to Dr Alcuin Reid: “The Second Vatican Council made no new doctrinal definitions. Nor did it change the traditional teaching of the Church. It proposed new ways of presenting the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church in the modern world. These approaches - ‘policies’ if you will - are not doctrines, but applications of doctrines. They must be taken seriously and their purpose must be respected, but they may be discussed, even disagreed with, in good faith.”

And yet in his letter to Pope John Paul II which forms the introduction to the study, Bishop Fellay wrote that the new theology introduced by the Council “renders the post-conciliar liturgy dangerously distant from Catholic doctrine”. Which suggests that the forthcoming doctrinal discussions between the SSPX and Rome may not proceed as quickly and easily as is currently being anticipated.

Moyra Doorly’s No Place for God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture (2007), is published by the Ignatius Press
 
Letter from a confused Catholic: Could the liturgical crisis stem from the Council itself?

By Moyra Doorly
catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000435a.shtml

Dear Fr Aidan,

The current orthodoxy is that the liturgical crisis in the Church is the result, not of the Second Vatican Council itself, but of the manner in which it has been implemented. Unfortunately, this reminds me of how western Communists reacted when the reality of life in the Soviet Union became apparent. Karl Marx’s ideas were not at fault, they insisted. The problem, instead, was how they had been put into practice.

This may be an analogy too far. But when the modernist architects sold their vision of cities fit for a brave new machine age, and the vision turned out to look like the Peckham Estate, now demolished, their response was to blame, not their own ideas, but the governments and local authorities who had cut corners and skimped on the details. And so too the undoubting feminists, who wanted to liberate women from the shackles of patriarchal marriage and establish a nurturing, sharing matriarchy - which in the real world meant children without fathers - and who now accuse the state of failing to provide adequate support.

Given that the 20th century produced so many silver-tongued visionaries determined to sweep away the past and remake the world, could the liturgical renewal simply be another example of a big idea gone wrong? And could the current liturgical crisis actually stem from the Council itself which articulated the vision? One clue is to be found in paragraph two of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM), which asserts that Vatican II reaffirmed the sacrificial nature of the Mass as affirmed by the Council of Trent in accordance with the Church’s universal tradition. The GIRM then refers to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (CSL) which states: “At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us” (paragraph 47).

But compare this with an apparently similar, but significantly different, definition of the Mass in Pope Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei: “Christ the Lord, Eternal Priest according to the order of Melchisedech, loving His own who were of the world, at the last supper, on the night He was betrayed, wishing to leave His beloved Spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice such as the nature of men requires, that would re-present the bloody sacrifice offered once on the cross, and perpetuate its memory to the end of time, and whose salutary virtue might be applied in remitting those sins which we daily commit … offered His body and blood under the species of bread and wine to God the Father, and under the same species allowed the apostles, whom He at that time constituted the priests of the New Testament, to partake thereof; commanding them and their successors in the priesthood to make the same offering” (paragraph 67, my emphasis).

Somehow the propitiatory character of the sacrifice of the Mass has been dropped from the CSL version, with the emphasis placed on a “bond of charity, a paschal banquet” etc, and the Mass is described as a memorial of Christ’s “death and resurrection”.

In the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the various terms used to “convey the dignity and excellence of this admirable sacrament” are explained, eg the Eucharist, the Sacrifice, Communion, the sacrament of peace and charity, the supper. Also explained are the three things indicated by this sacrament: “The first is the Passion of Christ the Lord, a thing past … Another is divine and heavenly grace, which, being present, is imparted by this sacrament, to nurture and preserve the soul … The third thing, which it foreshows as future, is the fruit of eternal joy and glory, which, according to God’s promise, we shall receive in our heavenly country.”

But no room is left to doubt that “the Eucharist was instituted by Christ for two purposes, one, that it might be the celestial food of our soul, by which we may be able to support and preserve life; the other, that the Church might have a perpetual sacrifice, by which our sins might be expiated”.

And also that, “it must be unhesitatingly taught that … the holy sacrifice of the Mass is not a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving only, or a mere commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the cross, but also a truly propitiatory sacrifice, by which God is appeased and rendered propitious to us.”

As far as I can make out, this is because “Christ, after redeeming the world at the lavish cost of His own blood, still must come into complete possession of the souls of men.” So states Mediator Dei 77, which continues: "In a certain sense it can be said that on Calvary Christ built a font of purification and salvation which He filled with the blood He shed; but if men do not bathe in it and there wash away the sins of their iniquities, they can never be purified or saved.’
(cont’d)
 
To be fair, the GIRM paragraph two, does include the following: “The Mass is a sacrifice of praise, of thanksgiving, of propitiation and of satisfaction.” But then it goes on to practically ignore this, as do the rest of the Council documents. Everywhere the emphasis is on the Mass as a memorial of Christ’s Death, Resurrection and Ascension - the Paschal Mystery - which the people gather to celebrate as if salvation is guaranteed because God’s love is unconditional and His justice makes no demands.

For example, the CSL points out that “the wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ Our Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He achieved his task principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and glorious ascension …” (paragraph five).

And continues: “The Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery, reading those things ‘which were in all the scriptures concerning him, celebrating the Eucharist’…” (paragraph six).

It concludes: “The Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day, which day is appropriately called the Lord’s Day or Sunday. For on this day Christ’s faithful are bound to come together into one place. They should listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus calling to mind the passion, resurrection and glory of the Lord Jesus” (paragraph 106).

Which is all very puzzling. What’s more, something seems to have happened to the teaching on the priesthood. According to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church:

“Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood are none the less ordered to one another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ … The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the Eucharist” (paragraph 10).

And the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests has this to say: “The purpose then for which priests are consecrated to God through the ministry of the bishop is that they should be made sharers in a special way in Christ’s priesthood … the eucharistic celebration is the centre of the assembly of the faithful over which the priest presides. Hence priests teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their whole life” (paragraph five).

But how can priests be “sharers in a special way in Christ’s priesthood”? Does this mean that the laity and the ordained priesthood share in the one priesthood of Christ, albeit “each in its own proper way”? As Mediator Dei points out, the priesthood was instituted at the Last Supper. Am I right in thinking that this was achieved without the presence of the lay faithful?

On this subject, according to the Catechism of the Council of Trent’s definition, “the priests of the new testament far excel all others in honour; for the power of consecrating and offering the body and blood of our Lord, and of remitting sins, which has been conferred on them, transcends human reason and intelligence, still less can there be found on earth anything equal and like to it.”

And yet somehow, the priest has now become the “president of the assembly”.

It is hardly worth quoting the Council documents on their by now familiar proposals for reforming the appearance of the liturgy. But since the reforms were intended to encourage the people to participate actively and as a unity in the Mass, and to this end the rites were simplified and the non-authentic and therefore disposable accumulations of the centuries stripped away to reveal an underlying purity and simplicity, the question is whether or not these proposals could ever have been suggested, far less put into practice, had there not been a shift in thinking on the nature of the Mass and the Priesthood.

If “form follows function”, as the architect Mies van der Rohe claimed, then the appearance and structure of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite will resemble a community gathering and a fraternal meal, because its function is considered to be just that. Similarly, the Extraordinary Form will appear as a sacrificial rite because sacrifice is considered its primary aim.

Therefore the current attempts to “reform the reform” by adding more Latin and Gregorian chant, or discouraging Communion in the hand and replacing the sanctuary rails, will not be able to overcome the fundamental opposition that the Ordinary Form has to these additions, since they are, essentially, superfluous to its requirements. After all, if the people are almost priests, why shouldn’t they receive Communion in the hand?

Since a rationalised, stripped-down, community-orientated liturgy is bound to become desacralised, rather than tinker with the appearances, surely the question has to be addressed - what was the mindset that allowed this vision of liturgical renewal to take hold in the first place?

Kindest regards,
Moyra Doorly
 
Reply a confused Catholic: The contrasts you draw are unnecessarily sharp

By Fr Aidan Nichols
catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000435b.shtml

Dear Moyra,

Thank you so much for your letter. You express - in a very lucid fashion! - your sense of confusion arising from the study you have been making of the life of the Church. This concerns especially the worshipping Church which, as we know, has changed greatly in the last 40 or so years. For the sake of anyone else who may be reading this exchange of letters, I should fill in the background. Pope Benedict is seeking to regularise canonically the situation of bishops, priests, religious and laity belonging to the Society of St Pius X. That will not be possible without a resolution of the difficulties those fellow Catholics encounter when they consider the Second Vatican Council, its documents and its aftermath.

As a Catholic journalist, you set yourself the task of investigating the nature of the charges the Society brings against the more recent teaching and practice of the Church. You then found yourself in a degree of sympathy with the objectors, based in part on your own earlier researches into changing styles in 20th-century church architecture, with their by no means always happy consequences for the ethos of the Liturgy. So your letter to me focuses on the accusations traditionalists level at the documents of the Council (and subsequent teaching instruments like the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM).

Their claim is that these official texts fail to do justice to the central act of the Church’s worship, which is the Mass, the sacrament of the saving Sacrifice of our great High Priest, now offered in a bloodless fashion (indeed, at Christ’s own insistence, through the oblation of food and drink) by the hands of the sacerdotal celebrant, the Church’s minister. The source of your confusion is this. It is not clear how to respond to these objections in a way that is persuasive because it is the truth.

May I preface my remarks by an attempt at capturing the objectors’ sympathies? Traditionalists and ourselves are surely in agreement that the forms of the Church’s worship have developed over time, not only by incremental changes so slow and anonymous as hardly to be registered by contemporaries but, on occasion, through sharp interventions from above. But this has never previously taken place in the wholesale and systematic fashion which characterised the reform of the Missal, the rites of the remaining sacraments and the other offices of the Church, undertaken by Pope Paul VI. You, Moyra, will probably support me when I say that the scale of this reform, even had its components been entirely felicitous, was imprudently chosen, since of its nature liturgical life has to strike people as something that happens, not as something that is planned. In the Latin church, in countries like our own, the effects have been at times deeply disorienting, as is obvious to someone coming into the Church (like myself) in the 1960s, and is readily discovered by the inquiring minder of a convert of later date (such as yourself). One of the principal sufferers has been the sense of the Holy Eucharist as a sacrificial act, since the combined effect of textual, ritual and architectural changes (by the latter I have in mind the almost universal adoption of celebration facing the people) has been - unintentionally, of course - to weaken the sense that this sacrament is the renewed Calvary of the Church’s oblation. And this is especially so when these changes are underpinned (as, unfortunately, is often the case) by a catechetics which prefers to concentrate virtually unilaterally on the more easily assimilable theme of the Eucharistic banquet.

But now perhaps I shall surprise you in saying that I find the contrasts you draw between the earlier and later texts you are comparing to be unnecessarily sharp. Let me take first your worries about the doctrine of the Mass, and subsequently turn my attention to the theology of priesthood. On the first of those two great subjects, I must begin by saying I do not think it is good theology to place an account of the Atoning Sacrifice of the God-man over against a description of the Paschal Mystery. The Paschal Mystery simply refers to the Atoning Sacrifice as not only offered by the Son in the Holy Spirit who is himself the Love of the Father and the Son but accepted by the Father in that same Spirit. The form his acceptance took is the Son’s Resurrection, Ascension and Session at the Father’s right, there to pour forth forever the salvation he has won for us.

Similarly, I do not think it is plausible to contrast a Eucharistic theology of propitiation and supplication with a teaching on the unity, charity and peace made available to us through communion in the Eucharistic Gifts. The Eucharistic Gifts are the Spotless Lamb whose offering is renewed in the Sacrifice of the altar. The unity, charity and peace involved are the communication to us of a share by participation in the Trinitarian life from the One who made the perfect Oblation for us once and for all. In each case - the once-for-all Sacrifice and its sacramental re-enactment, the mercy and pardon made available to sinners through Christ’s Passion cannot be separated from the gifts of communion in his Resurrection life: both are the fruit of his endlessly meritorious reconciling work on the Cross. The Mass is often called “the Eucharist”, meaning “the Thanksgiving” not in order to deflect intention from its propitiatory and satisfactory aspects but so as to underline that in it we render thanks for these blessings in their total ensemble.

(cont’d)
 
Duly pondered, these doctrinal principles should indicate the basic continuity between the two sets of texts to which you appeal: the Catechism of the Council of Trent and Pius XII’s Mediator Dei on the one hand, and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (third typical edition) on the other.

The massive attendance which is still normal at the Good Friday Liturgy indicates, I suggest, that the sense of the faithful remains fundamentally sound on the topic of the saving Sacrifice. We have not become an “Easter people” in the pejorative sense of that phrase for which the Death of Christ is only the prelude to Resurrection rejoicing. Sunday is the weekly Easter, but that is because the triumph of the Cross can only be fully viewed from the side of the Resurrection. It is not because the Cross and the Tomb are put away as Saturday night draws near. Even a Sunday Mass - or, rather (I have to correct myself) especially a Sunday Mass - should be focused on the all-sufficient Sacrifice, because only that Sacrifice made Easter possible. That is why we need to work on not only catechesis but also, in the fullness of time, a revision of the Offertory texts, the ceremonial of the Mass, and (not least) the position of the celebrant so as to re-activate the diminished but by no means extinguished feeling of the faithful for the sacramental identity of Calvary and the Eucharist of the Church. The things you mention that would increase reverence (the chant, kneeling communion, communion on the tongue) are not strictly necessary accompaniments of the Mass (the Eastern churches, for instance, stand to receive), but they are congruent with the demands of the Mass (every Mass, so including those in the Novus Ordo).

Reference to the Mass celebrant brings me to the other major point you raise, Moyra, and this concerns the relative position (theologically speaking, and not just spatially considered) of priest and people. Two key words in the explanation of Catholic doctrine, frequent in the Fathers and first enunciated, in fact, in the Scriptures, are “analogy” and “participation”.

You are correct to say that the ministerial priesthood of the ordained and the royal and universal priesthood of the baptised are two distinct yet related (“analogous”) ways of sharing in (“participating”) the priesthood of Christ. The universal priesthood is exercised most obviously in the good works which should embody faith throughout the Christian life. That general priesthood also has, however, a cultic dimension. Just as it was begun for the faithful in the sacramental mysteries of Baptism, so it finds its noblest expression in their Eucharistic worship. At Mass the baptised exercise their royal priesthood because, in Pope Pius’s terminology (see Mediator Dei 88), they are “members of the Mystical Body of Christ the Priest”, while the Head of that Body represents himself to them in the ministerial priest who, like Christ himself, stands before the Father on their behalf. The ordained minister’s analogical participation in Christ’s High Priesthood is, accordingly, different from that of the lay faithful. The latter can offer the (as yet, unconsecrated) gifts in a properly Eucharistic way only through the hands of the ministerial priest, though once those gifts have become, through the act which is his by the New Covenant sealed at the Supper, the Body and Blood of the Lamb, they co-offer with him the saving Victim to the Father. Were there, you ask me, layfolk in the Cenacle at the Last Supper? I have to answer that I don’t know. But I do know that in the High Priestly Prayer recorded from that Supper in the Gospel of St John, the Saviour prays that the apostolic priesthood may truly be consecrated so that a far wider flock may be gathered into their company. Every Mass, even when celebrated by a hermit priest in the desert, is offered in the name of the whole Church: not only validly but fruitfully for the living and the dead. The Mass of the hermit is a moving testimony to the unseen. But the mystery of the Mass finds its liturgical epiphany when celebrated with the holy people of God - and notice I add the adjective “holy”, as in the Latin original of the phrase (plebs sancta Dei), since mere demonstration of numbers signifies nothing in divine arithmetic.

The Liturgy is, normatively, an assembly (the case of the hermit is exceptional). But it is the sort of assembly described in the Letter to the Hebrews (12: 22-24), which includes the angels and saints and as its centre the “sprinkled blood” of the “mediator” which “speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel”. Unless we can insinuate that this is the assembly we have in mind, let us have done with the language of the ordained priest as “president”: colourless, banal, bureaucratic.

I hope, Moyra, that your search will be helped by these comments and that you in turn will help others to find the fullness of the faith.

Kind regards,
Aidan Nichols

Fr Aidan Nichols is a Dominican theologian. He is the author of many books, including The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England (Family Publications)
 
A Theological and Liturgical Study published in 2001 by the SSPX (Angelus Press), the Second Vatican Council has introduced a new understanding of the Mass, one that is “less an application of the merits of Redemption and more a liturgy of the saved - the liturgy of ‘a people your Son has gained for you’. Rather than being an action whereby the priest in persona Christi applies the merits and satisfactions won by Christ in His redemptive sacrifice, the Mass is the action of a people - ‘the sacred assembly, a chosen race, a royal priesthood’ - who celebrate with thanksgiving a Redemption already released in full.”
**A few question, maurin.

Is there any reason why the Eucharistic Sacrifice (my name for all the authorized Eucharistic Liturgies of the Churches) cannot be both simultaneously? I know the Western devotional tradition has always focused on the first aspect, but is not the Church bigger than just this this?

The two do not seem mutually exclusive to me.

Are your own personal objections to the Pauline Mass the Latin text itself, the present English translation (admittedly flawed), or how it tends to get celebrated in many parishes? Those are three different things.**
 
bpbasilphx said:
A Theological and Liturgical Study published in 2001 by the SSPX (Angelus Press), the Second Vatican Council has introduced a new understanding of the Mass, one that is “less an application of the merits of Redemption and more a liturgy of the saved - the liturgy of ‘a people your Son has gained for you’. Rather than being an action whereby the priest in persona Christi applies the merits and satisfactions won by Christ in His redemptive sacrifice, the Mass is the action of a people - ‘the sacred assembly, a chosen race, a royal priesthood’ - who celebrate with thanksgiving a Redemption already released in full.”
**A few question, maurin.

Is there any reason why the Eucharistic Sacrifice (my name for all the authorized Eucharistic Liturgies of the Churches) cannot be both simultaneously? I know the Western devotional tradition has always focused on the first aspect, but is not the Church bigger than just this this?

The two do not seem mutually exclusive to me.

Are your own personal objections to the Pauline Mass the Latin text itself, the present English translation (admittedly flawed), or how it tends to get celebrated in many parishes? Those are three different things.**
Click to expand...
My personal views are well-known to anyone who has read my posts on this forum. As I said in the OP, she says it better than I have beenable.
 
I would be most interested in reading Fr. Aidan’s response to her letter, if he responded. She makes clear how she regards the OF however, I do not experience it as she does. I don’t see the dichotomy between the two forms. I mean I see what she is pointing out but I don’t agree with her assessment. I’m saddened that there are members of the SSPX who say the NO mass and other sacraments are often/usually not valid.

That I acknowledge that Christ is present in those members of His mystical body gathered together at Mass, and that we receive His word in the scripture readings, doesn’t make less true or less important the fact that the priest acts in persona Christi. By the power of the Holy Spirit the priest makes Jesus present on the altar. He makes the sacrifice of Calvary present to us. Jesus offers Himself to the Father for us. The priest offers Jesus to the Father. We join ourselves, our lives, to Jesus’ sacrifice. All of these things are going on at the same time in the liturgy.
 
Generally speaking, I see the “Paschal Mystery” theology as encompassing the other one. It doesn’t take away from Jesus’s sacrificial act, but it recognizes that the Passion wasn’t the end of his work. “[Jesus Christ] was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Rom. 4:25)

No resurrection, no justification. What good would that have done us?
 
japhy said:
Generally speaking, I see the “Paschal Mystery” theology as encompassing the other one. It doesn’t take away from Jesus’s sacrificial act, but it recognizes that the Passion wasn’t the end of his work. “[Jesus Christ] was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Rom. 4:25)

No resurrection, no justification. What good would that have done us?
Click to expand...
japhy and clare,

I think the problem which pervades too many (and even if it were only 1 it would be too many) Parishes is that the focus has definitely shifted, and the lex orandi absolutely reflects this new lex credendi introduced by both the NO Mass and the so-called spirit of the Council.

And remember japhy, no Crucifixion, no Redemption.
 
Claire_from_DE said:
I’m saddened that there are members of the SSPX who say the NO mass and other sacraments are often/usually not valid.

.
Click to expand...
I’m saddened that there are those still ignorant enough of the SSPX’s position that even now they repeat this lie.
 
maurin said:
And remember japhy, no Crucifixion, no Redemption.
Click to expand...
Which is why I said the “Paschal Mystery” theology encompasses. It includes. The Paschal Mystery is the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. It starts with the Passion. You could go even further back… it starts with the Incarnation.
 
japhy said:
Which is why I said the “Paschal Mystery” theology encompasses. It includes. The Paschal Mystery is the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. It starts with the Passion. You could go even further back… it starts with the Incarnation.
Click to expand...
No argument from me there, Japhy. However the central theme, if you don’t mind such a banal phrasing, of Christianity IS the Crucifixion. The Mass has always been expressed, prior to the innovations which are eroding away Catholic Belief, as Calvary.

I believe that no matter whether one is firmly in the field of the NO, or firmly in the field of 2 millenia of Tradition, or anywhere in between, one can agree that Archbishop Fulton Sheen is someone all can turn to as an acceptable source of Orthodoxy. The Archbishop wrote a book, “Calvary and the Mass,” which explains the unchangeable reality of the Mass.

Clearly, the foucus has shifted. When is the last time you were able to walk into a NO Parish, experience silence, and be able to pray and “ready yourself interiorly” for Mass, instead of being greeted by an almost circus-like atmosphere, or feel as if you were walking into an auditorium before a show? lex orandi, lex credendi.
 
maurin said:
No argument from me there, Japhy. ** However the central theme, if you don’t mind such a banal phrasing, of Christianity IS the Crucifixion.** The Mass has always been expressed, prior to the innovations which are eroding away Catholic Belief, as Calvary.

I believe that no matter whether one is firmly in the field of the NO, or firmly in the field of 2 millenia of Tradition, or anywhere in between, one can agree that Archbishop Fulton Sheen is someone all can turn to as an acceptable source of Orthodoxy. The Archbishop wrote a book, “Calvary and the Mass,” which explains the unchangeable reality of the Mass.

Clearly, the foucus has shifted. When is the last time you were able to walk into a NO Parish, experience silence, and be able to pray and “ready yourself interiorly” for Mass, instead of being greeted by an almost circus-like atmosphere, or feel as if you were walking into an auditorium before a show? lex orandi, lex credendi.
Click to expand...
It seems maurin --the growing trend to use the ideology of --“Easter people”/" Resurrection people"----is a symptom of the loss of the the Crucifixion as being the central theme.
 
bpbasilphx said:
A Theological and Liturgical Study published in 2001 by the SSPX (Angelus Press), the Second Vatican Council has introduced a new understanding of the Mass, one that is “less an application of the merits of Redemption and more a liturgy of the saved - the liturgy of ‘a people your Son has gained for you’. Rather than being an action whereby the priest in persona Christi applies the merits and satisfactions won by Christ in His redemptive sacrifice, the Mass is the action of a people - ‘the sacred assembly, a chosen race, a royal priesthood’ - who celebrate with thanksgiving a Redemption already released in full.”
**A few question, maurin.

Is there any reason why the Eucharistic Sacrifice (my name for all the authorized Eucharistic Liturgies of the Churches) cannot be both simultaneously? I know the Western devotional tradition has always focused on the first aspect, but is not the Church bigger than just this this?

The two do not seem mutually exclusive to me.

Are your own personal objections to the Pauline Mass the Latin text itself, the present English translation (admittedly flawed), or how it tends to get celebrated in many parishes? Those are three different things.**
Click to expand...
Yes, the difference in emphasis in the NO mass is the Paschal mystery, which is also the emphasis of the Eastern Churches. I think a valid criticism of the hardline Latin traditionalist thinkers is that they are ignoring a big part of Vatican II’s intention, which was to bring to light the great theological, liturgical, and spiritual developments of the Eastern Churches and encouraged that they be studied, appreciated and honored by all Catholics.
The problem is not Vatican II, but secularization, false notions of progress, worldliness, rationalism, neo-modernism. There isn’t an ounce of any of these in the documents of Vatican II.
 
It seems that even in the Eastern Liturgies — the central theme is the Sacrifice.
orthodoxy.org.au/eng/index.php?p=74
Click to expand...
Orthodox Theology sees the Holy Eucharist as a sacrifice and this is affirmed in the words of the Priest, when he says, during the Eucharistic Canon, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all.” The sacrifice offered at the Eucharist is Christ Himself, but He Who brings the sacrifice is also Christ. Christ is, at one and the same time, High Priest and Sacrifice. In the prayer before the Great Entrance, the Priest prays: “For Thou art the Offerer and the Offered, the Receiver and the Received, 0 Christ our God…” This Eucharist is offered to God - the Holy Trinity, and so if we ask the threefold question, What is offered? By Whom is it offered? To Whom is it offered? we say in answer, Christ. In addition, the sacrifice is offered “on behalf of all and for all,” for it is a sacrifice of redemption which is brought for the living and the dead.
Click to expand...
According to St. Nicholas Cabasilas, a medieval Orthodox teacher, the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist is, as follows: “In the first place, the sacrifice is not only an enactment or a symbol, but a real sacrifice. In the second, that which is sacrificed is not bread, but the very Body of Christ. In the third place, the Lamb of God was immolated only once and for all times. The Eucharist sacrifice consists not of the real or blood sacrifice of the Lamb, but in the transformation of bread into the sacrificed Lamb” [Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, 32].
Click to expand...
According to the Orthodox Church, then, the Eucharist is not just a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice or of its enactment, but it is a real sacrifice. On the other hand, however, it is not a new sacrifice, nor a repetition of the Sacrifice of the Cross upon Golgotha. The events of Christ’s Sacrifice - the Incarnation, the Institution of the Eucharist, the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven, are not repeated during the Eucharist, yet they become a present reality. As one Orthodox theologian has said, “During the Liturgy we are projected in time to that place where eternity and time intersect, and then we become the contemporaries of these events that we are calling to mind” [P. N. Evdokimov, L’Orthodoxie, p. 241]. Thus the Eucharist and all the Holy Liturgy is, in structure, a sacrificial service.
Click to expand...
aggreen.net/liturgics/C-R_Div_Lit.html
Click to expand...
In the Divine Liturgy we do not offer to God the Father a new sacrifice but the sacrifice of His Son on the Cross — “Yours of Your own.” To quote St. John Chrysostom, “The sacrifice which we offer today, that which was offered yesterday, and each day’s sacrifice is alike and the same as the sacrifice offered on that Sabbath . . . they are one and the same, alike filled with awe and salvation.”
Click to expand...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top