In dealing with hard-core ‘Tridentiners’, why is it so impossible to get through to them? Why do the reasoned arguments of Catholics: from History, Theology, even Tradition, have no effect on them? Because, in final analysis, when all human arguments are exhausted and no longer anything else can be brought out to be held up to them, it is a question of Faith, Catholic Faith. A Light so powerful that, without it, arguments from other sources which depend on that Light, cannot produce the desired results on their own. With their changed faith the ‘Tridentiners’ have, in various degrees, separated themselves from the Holy Father with a real danger of becoming modern schismatics. What started off as a small disagreement has grown into a deep-seated split involving much more than a new Mass.

          Thus it should not come as a surprise to Catholics that the most potent argumentation that can be brought out in favour of the Novus Ordo is the one from Catholic Faith. The ‘Tridentiners’ will heartily agree that it is a matter of Faith, and so it has now become a matter of great importance to decide which side kept the Catholic Faith.

1.       The first serious error of the ‘Tridentiners’ to be dealt with, which directly pertains to Catholic Faith, states that “the new Mass does not involve infallibility”. Fr. James Wathen OSJ wrote this in his book The Great Sacrilege (TAN books, Rockford, Illinois, USA), dealing with it in a completely erroneous manner. The fraud is repeated in Catholics, ask questions!, circularised around Australia in the late seventies (p. 4-5). Printed there for all to read is this complete reversal of Catholic teaching:

“In 1969 the new order of the Mass was condemned on 27 counts by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci and other Catholic theologians as being unacceptable as a Catholic Mass ... So this Mass has been conclusively shown (sic!) by theologians to be not the Catholic Mass we used to have. Did you know that? You would think that the Church authorities would be grateful for this weighty judgment ... Yet Pope Paul ignored this authoritative verdict that the new Mass was not a true Catholic Mass and imposed the new Mass on the Catholic Church.”

          We can at least be grateful that we are not told here that it was Archbishop Bugnini who gave us the Novus Ordo. It is clearly shown here that they know where the new Mass came from. The authors continue:

“Are we now to believe that the ‘approval’ of a Pope can change heresy into orthodoxy, can turn a non-Mass into a Mass?”

          This is then followed by some ‘ex cathedra’ statement from these followers of Archbishop Lefèbvre in which these ‘Tridentine popes’ take it upon themselves to continue their erroneous beginnings with an appeal to and their explanation of ‘papal infallibility’ used against Pope Paul VI (see 2.). To be concluded by the classical ‘anathema-in-reverse’:

“He does not help a mistaken Pope who aids and abets his error.”

          As said, this is a complete reversal of Faith which was not followed by as formidable a Catholic as was Cardinal Ottaviani. Why???

          Because this great scholar did not condemn the new Mass “on 27 counts”. We know that he wrote a few thoughtful observations which got then bracketed with the garbage that was concocted by lesser luminaries to be presented to the world as the Ottaviani intervention. We also know that this great man submitted his own judgment to the superior authority of Pope Paul. Again: Why?

          Because this unique scholar and true theologian knows the correct procedure: true theology and true theologians fall silent when the Holy Father officially declares what belongs to the form of a Sacrament, since there he is infallible. What belongs to the form of a Sacrament must be accepted by Catholic Faith, and in that a Pope cannot err. This is so universally accepted that the ‘Tridentiners’ simply had to go further and declare Pope Paul himself illegal and an anti-pope. Instead of the Holy Father ‘falling silent’ in the face of weighty arguments, as these ‘Tridentiners’ demand with their colossal impudence, weighty arguments evaporate in the presence of papal teaching. The Novus Ordo has an Offertory, a Consecration and a Communion, the three essentials of a Catholic Mass, guaranteed under papal infallibility.

          But once again (and now taken to its ultimate perspective, Catholic Faith): what about the ‘lie’ introduced in the words of the Consecration of the wine?

          Just as the Catholic Church at the time of the Council of Trent had the unquestionable power to take the words of Christ from two different places of the New Testament and put them together in the Consecration, so has the Church of our time, the time of Vatican II, the same power to do exactly the same. In 1570 the Church took words from St. Matthew and St.Luke and put them together. And now, guided by the same Holy Spirit, the same Church takes actual words spoken by Our Lord about the universality of His Sacrifice from St. Luke, St. John and St. Paul and puts them together in the Consecration. But only people who kept untrammeled their Catholic Faith will accept that the Church can do that. If it is denied that Christ has ever said ‘that His Blood was shed for all men’, or if it is alleged that the Church in the 20th century has not got the power to take His words from different parts of Scripture and put them together as spoken by Him, then Faith in the Church has been impaired, and it is then utterly futile to rely heavily on the conviction that only Pope St. Pius V had that power.

          The New Testament has actually stated that the Sacrifice of Christ’s Passion and Death is for the redemption of the whole world, and so the Church did not put a lie in the words of the Consecration.

          And what, I ask, is more beautiful than to contemplate the magnificent harmony that the Catholic Church of our times has effected? Both expressions, ‘pro multis’, ‘for the many’, and ‘for all men’, have given rise to difficulties. ‘Pro multis’, as we saw, became accepted by the ‘Tridentiners’ as meaning exclusively that the Sacrifice of the Mass was only offered for those who would in time avail themselves of its fruits: the grace for repentance and conversion. ‘For all men’ is explained away by the same people as always meaning that ‘all men will be saved’. Undaunted, the Catholic Church now puts before us both renderings.

• In the Missa Normativa, the Latin Mass in the Novus Ordo, She reminds us by the use of the words ‘pro multis’ that not all men are saved, but that many will avail themselves of the graces necessary to enter eternal salvation, the subjective Redemption.
• In the vernacular She teaches us that Christ’s Blood, both in His Sacrifice on Calvary as in the Sacrifice of the Mass is offered to the Father so that sins may be forgiven. The objective Redemption.

          ‘Pro multis’ made the ‘Tridentiners’ complacent because it allowed some Jansenistic predestination to creep in into its use and explanation.

          ‘For all men’ makes our Modernists complacent, because of their thinking associated with their conviction that all will be saved and that no one will go to hell.

          The true Catholic Spirit rejects both excesses and works hard to extend God’s Salvation as far and as wide as possible.

2.       The second aspect in this controversy between the old and the new Mass format which pertains directly to Catholic Faith, is the appeal the Latin Massers make to a Pope: Pope St. Pius V. But an appeal to a Pope is an appeal to the Papacy itself, and the appeal to one Pope can never be played out against the authority of another Pope. If ‘Tridentiners’ appeal to Pope St. Pius V to prove Pope Paul VI wrong, then they are placing Pope Paul outside the Papacy. That is what it has come to, and that is why Catholic Faith in Pope Paul is now directly involved.

          Christ clearly gave to His successor on earth “the power to bind and to undo”: “All that you shall undo on earth shall be considered undone in heaven.” With that we have the divine guarantee that no Pope will ever undo what cannot be undone in heaven. Unfortunately for the ‘Tridentiners’, but we thank God for His Providence that we know now with infallible certainty that Pope Pius V is a Saint in heaven. Meaning that Pope St. Pius V will now be the first to consider his own Bull Quo Primum undone. And what is more, true to the Our Father, he is now teaching us ‘to do God’s Will on earth as it is done in Heaven’. For there, according to Christ’s own words, Quo Primum is now considered undone since it was undone by Pope Paul in a matter over which he, as Pope, had complete jurisdiction.

          In fact, we can even go further and quite legitimately claim that Quo Primum was undone by the very Pope who gave it to the Church, Pope St. Pius V, since it was undone by the Papacy, which makes the name of the Holy Father immaterial from then on, since every Pope carries the name of the first Pope, Peter. And if any appeal is made to him, then Pope Pius V will remind all of us to accept the verdict of Pope Paul VI as coming from himself.

          If this is unacceptable then again the result will be a loss of Catholic Faith on the part of the dissenters.

3.       A final word on the position of those troubled minds who believe that, even if Pope Paul was empowered to make changes in the liturgy, these changes, according to them, have gone too far, and so can no longer be legally or validly brought home to Pope Paul, but must be attributed to sinister influences around him. These people can believe all sorts of things, mainly

1. that the Novus Ordo could only be valid if given the right intention, but that in itself it is
2. Protestant and will lead to Protestantism and in se it is therefore unacceptable, which means
3. that the Novus Ordo is at least doubtful, and so it is safer to use the Tridentine Rite.

          Some Priests of this frame of mind reconsecrate silently in Latin after having publicly used the vernacular words of the Novus Ordo. It is obvious that no argument from theology will change this frame of mind. They must realise that, if their position leads to what appears to them to be a contradiction on the human level, their original starting point was not made from inside the Catholic Faith where no such contradictions exist. This means that a review of their Catholic position is called for. Since we are dealing here with the validity of a Sacrament in which the Catholic Church cannot err, this review must lead to an Act of Faith in the Papacy, which really is the only condition necessary for the reception of the Supernatural Light by which it can be seen that the ‘contradiction’ they stumbled over is only apparent.