Tradition in the Catholic Church differs from ordinary human history in that Catholics believe that Tradition, although part of human history, nevertheless is also part of Revelation, and therefore falls under the special protection that God has attached to the authentic preservation of His Revelation to men. Tradition is a sure guide of how Revelation is to be lived. It is called ‘Tradition’ precisely because the full title in Latin is “Traditio Revelationis”: the handing over of Revelation, i.e. the Deposit of Faith, from each generation to the next one. We have God’s guarantee that Tradition, taken in this sense, is also infallibly protected against the handing over of heresy and error. And if heresy and error are being passed on from one generation to the next, then we have God’s guarantee that, even if this is done by Catholics, it is never done validly in Name of the Catholic Church, but outside Her and away from Her. And so we have the historical fact that, even if the Catholic Church will never preach nor embrace heresy and error as part of God’s Revelation, individual Catholics, even large groups of Catholics, have from time to time succumbed to both.

          Since heresy and falsehood are contradictions of Truth, especially Revealed Truth, they pertain primarily to the intellect, to one’s faith and beliefs. That is why there is much greater freedom and liberty in the Church in practices, and discipline, ways of expressing the same Faith. Therefore, although a change in practice, in discipline, does not automatically reflect a change in Faith and belief, nevertheless it is absolutely true that a change in Faith will eventually express itself in a change in practice. Removing the statue of Our Lady from a church does not necessarily, in itself, reveal a loss of Faith in Our Lady, but a loss of Faith in Our Lady will eventually result in the removal of Her statues.

          The government of the Church is vested in Her Head, which on earth is the Pope who is primarily protected by God from heresy preaching. And it is precisely in this whole area surrounding the person of the Holy Father, that we have to look for the greatest trouble the Tridentine Mass followers have brought upon themselves. For that reason it is important to keep their earliest beginnings in perspective. Initially it may have seemed that they only differed from the Pope in a simple matter of practice, of Church discipline, from which it was not immediately evident if this also involved a change of Faith. But over the years it has become more and more apparent that initially a change of Faith was present from which it became inevitable that a change in practice would follow. For if their original difficulty with Missale Romanum v. Quo Primum had been adequately solved for them (which as we will see is not hard to do), one would expect them to be relieved and readily accept the Novus Ordo. But this has not been the case. This makes one wonder if the Novus Ordo really is the point in dispute. Driven further and further into the revelation of the real issue, it came finally to light that the kernel of the whole revolt is the acceptance of Vatican II and of his Holiness Pope Paul VI as the legitimate Pope. In other words: if the Mass format had not changed, these people, from their hidden change-of-faith, would have found some other excuse to differ from the Holy Father sufficiently to go their own way, away from the teachings of Vatican II.

          Let us now follow their argumentation from Tradition to see if this conclusion is valid.

1. The very first stand taken by the ‘Tridentiners’ was, that the Bull Quo Primum of Pope St. Pius V could never be set aside. According to the pamphlets circulated around Australia in the late seventies, they are still of that opinion, i.e when dealing with (so they think) ignorant people. Since they base their belief in the immutable character of Quo Primum on the very wording of the Bull, it should be sufficient to show from Tradition that Papal Bulls, using exactly the same phraseology, have been set aside by subsequent Popes, if the Bulls dealt with matters of Church discipline.

   1. My first example refers to the ‘emphatically strong condemnation’ that the same Pope St. Pius V uttered against anyone who would dare to change or modify the Roman Breviary: promulgated by the Bull Quod a nobis of June 7th, 1568. Like the wording of Quo Primum, any interference with the new breviary would likewise bring about the indignation of Almighty God and the wrath of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Yet 34 years later (1602) Pope Clement VIII, and again 29 years later (1631) Pope Urban VII introduced new changes, and each of these two Popes ended their bulls with the same solemn declaration. The whole pseudo-argument of the ‘Tridentiners’ evaporates even further if one considers that a Pope and Saint, Pope St. Pius X, did not consider himself bound by the disciplinary Bulls of his predecessors, and with his own Bull Divino Afflatu of 1911 issued his radically reformed Roman Breviary, and ended once again with a repetition of all the strong words used by St. Pius V. Yet again, Pope Paul VI, on the 1st of November 1970, issued his Liturgia Horarum in conformity with the directives put forward by the Second Vatican Council.

   2. Here is a second example.
      On June 23, 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuit Order through his Brief Dominus ac Redemptor. The language of this Apostolic Writ once again declares ‘the perpetual validity of the decision then taken, to be inviolately observed for future times’. Yet, in 1814 Pope Pius VII re-established the Society of Jesus.

   3. Finally, to show that no Pontiff is restricted by the untouchable edicts of his predecessors and - what is more - to show that His Holiness Pope Paul VI was not the first Pope in history to make changes to the Liturgy covered by Quo Primum. It is well known that Pope Pius XII reorganised the Liturgy of the Holy Week and re-introduced the Paschal Vigil, infringing, with these changes, on Quo Primum.

2. The next move by the ‘Latin Mass Associations’ was to ‘prove’ that, even if theoretically the Bull Quo Primum could be set aside by a future Pope, that this was nevertheless not done by the Bull Missale Romanum of Pope Paul VI. Either - some claim - because Pope Paul VI had no intention of abrogating Quo Primum or - others claim - his Bull Missale Romanum is null and void. And so - they all claim - Quo Primum still stands and must be adhered to.

   As a back-stop for their first argument it is even weaker and more fallacious than their first one. That the Holy Father intended to replace the previously existing Liturgy, there can be no doubt whatsoever. His very words (AAS, vol. 61, 1969, p. 217-222) could not be clearer:

   “We intend that the Statutes and Prescriptions which We have established shall remain firm and efficacious, both in the present and in the future, notwithstanding those Constitutions and Apostolic Ordinances of our Predecessors, including those which require special mention before they could be derogated.”

   Canon 22 of the (then) Codex of Canon Law supports the claim that Missale Romanum; has superseded Quo Primum:

   “A subsequent Law abrogates a previous one, if, made by competent Authority, it re-organises the whole matter of the previous legislation.”

   The legislation of Pope Paul VI did not do away with the Mass: it merely reorganised the Liturgy.

   In order to sustain their claim ‘that Missale Romanum of Pope Paul is null and void’, the ‘Tridentiners’ now have to prove that Canon Law assumed incorrectly ‘that Pope Paul VI is competent authority’. But then we have strayed far away from the Novus Ordo and have arrived at the heart of the revolt of the Latin Massers: their open claim ‘that Pope Paul is an illegitimate Pope because he is - and was - a heretic’. (See the various Newsletters so-called of the Latin Mass Society of Australia). But if this lies at the bottom of the Latin Massers’ case, then their case is built on an absurdity. In the final Section (Argument from Catholic Faith), when we will let the Light of Catholic Faith shine on this whole matter, we will pick up this question again and will deal with it further.

3. A third concentrated attack from the ‘Tridentiners’ which is better settled from Tradition rather than from theology (the next Section) is their assertion that the change in the words of the Consecration of the wine renders the Consecration (i) invalid (some), or (ii) gravely doubtful (others) and so, on whatever count (iii) to be avoided at all cost (all). This is a more serious charge and calculated to cause some anxiety amongst fair-minded priests and lay-people. If the point is raised in the absence of charge, mistrust and invective, an answer can be found dealing with the discrepancy between the Latin Missa Normativa (i.e. the Novus Ordo in Latin) and the various translations. But for this it is necessary that people are genuinely interested in an answer and are not subscribing to other charges and claims made by the Latin Mass people and refuted elsewhere. In other words, we can only settle this question completely satisfactorily, if we accept Pope Paul as the legitimate Holy Father competent to introduce the Novus Ordo Missae, which we accept as coming from his will. In this climate of trust and Faith the difficulty still exists, but an answer is not impossible.

   1. A first answer is that no theologian holds (since it was never taught by the Church) that only the words of the Consecration as laid down by the Bull Quo Primum constitute the form of the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist. As already stated elsewhere, there are so many different forms of the words of the Consecration, at one time or another used by the Church, that the general consensus is that the proper form of the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist is:

      “This is My Body” and “This is (the chalice of) My Blood”, spoken over the proper matter: bread and wine.

      This takes the sting out of the argument that the English words of the Consecration of the wine make the Consecration invalid or even doubtful, since the remaining words are spoken after Transubstantiation has taken place.

   2. A second answer must settle the question: “Is it true that a lie has been introduced in the very heart of Catholicism, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by the change of ‘pro multis’ in the Latin Novus Ordo to the ‘for all’ in the vernacular?”

      1. The beginning of the answer is that, apart from the words already mentioned, “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood”, we do not know the exact words Christ used after that. “For many” is used in Mt. 24:28 and Mk 14:24, but not in Luke or St. Paul. St. Luke says “pro vobis” “for you” (plural). How restrictive is that? If the Apostles were the representatives of the whole human race, the meaning of ‘for all’ as ‘for you all’ is then quite legitimate. For Christ did shed His Blood ‘for all men’.

      2. St. Paul is emphatic that Christ died for the whole human race. See e.g. Rom. 8:32, 2 Cor. 5:14, Rom. 5:12 sqq., 1 Tim. 2:6, 9:10, to mention only a few passages. See also Jn. 1:29, 3:16, 17, 6:33, 51, 1 Jn 2:2, 4:14, etc. All these texts make it perfectly clear that there is no heresy on the lips of a priest when he says during the Consecration: “This is the cup of My Blood ... which is shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven”. The change in words reflects the classical distinction between the subjective and objective Redemption won by Christ, i.e. between salvation (many) and redemption (offered to all).

      3. Finally, may I refer the reader (and I do hope that they will bring the following to the notice of any ‘Tridentiner’ in their circle of friends) to quite a few Prayers over the Gifts immediately before the Preface and the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer in the old Tridentine Mass prescribed by Pope St. Pius V, ‘Several Prayers for the Dead’:

         “Grant us we beseech Thee O Lord, that this offering may benefit the soul of Your servant Bishop N, since through the offering of these gifts You grant that the sins of the whole world are loosened.”

         (“Annue nobis, quaesumus Domine, ut animae famuli tui N. Episcopi haec prosit oblatio, quam immolando totius mundi tribuisti relaxari derelicta.)

         This is much stronger than the words of the English Consecration and should, to be consistent, be open to doubt to anyone who doubts the words of the (English) Consecration without due regard for papal authority and Church Tradition.

         Christ not only shed His Blood “for all” (St. Paul, St. John): according to this Prayer over the Gifts, the renewal of His Sacrifice in every Mass is for the undoing (relaxari) of the sins of the whole world. In the old Tridentine Rite these words constituted the heart of Christ’s Sacrifice, both on Calvary and in every Mass as the re-enactment of this Sacrifice, and they were pronounced very close to the centre of every Mass: the Consecration. They never meant, or stated, that all men would be saved. Neither, therefore, should this exclusive meaning be attached to these words when they are in use in the New Rite. The old Tridentine Rite was not frightened to stress the universality of Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross and in the Mass. Neither, therefore, should we.

      More can be said about this very question, but this is as far as it can be taken from Tradition. In the next two sections, theology and Faith, we will come back to it for further development. Suffice to say here that there are words of the Consecration which do not include ‘pro multis’, ‘for many’, showing that these words are not part of the form of the Sacrament.