By Dencio S. Acop
Right worship! Right praise! I first heard about these phrases from Bishop Robert Barron while watching his videos. Born a Catholic, I have always worshipped through the sacraments particularly the Holy Mass. I have been serving as a lay liturgical minister for the past fifteen years. To this devout Catholic, the modern Mass is right worship because it is the only one that I have ever known since I was born. Until today. I am therefore surprised to find that the traditional form of the Roman rite of Mass, the original liturgy and forerunner of the present liturgy until 1968, is even better. It is the one referred to by Bishop Barron. In fact, as the Church differentiates between the two, the traditional rite is referred to as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (Vetus Ordo) while the modern form is the Ordinary Mass (Novus Ordo). When we read about how the saints of the Church, like Saint Ignatius and Saint Benedict, and even more contemporary converts like Thomas Merton, were touched by the Mass, our minds automatically thought it was the modern Mass that we all know which they were referring to. Little did we realize that the Mass they all alluded to was, in fact, the traditional Roman rite. This point is very significant because it is the old rite that inspires individuals to aspire to become saints which the modern rite can hardly do. Many might argue this point, but it can easily be discerned by one’s attendance to the Vetus Ordo. Why is this so? The short answer is that the Novus Ordo is simply not the rightmost form of worship that can be accorded to God, but the Vetus Ordo is. Even the latest Catholic saint, Carlo Acutis, a young person at that, worshipped in the traditional way. Doesn’t this tell us something? I wrote in my previous column how I was recently touched by the traditional Latin Mass more than I ever was by the modern Mass. It was my daughter and her husband who brought me to the TLM they worship at. Since then, I feel happy inside whenever I hear them praying in Latin, including my three small grandchildren doing everything in the old traditions. Thus, the TLM began my personal journey into understanding the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in a way that I couldn’t fully fathom before. The modern rite or Novus Ordo pales in comparison to the traditional Latin Mass (Vetus Ordo) in almost every respect. I am even more surprised that Vatican II promulgated the transformation of the already perfect Mass during the reign of Pope Paul VI. Up until that time, the liturgical rite was carefully developed through a painstaking Church process began by Pope Gregory the Great (5th – 6th Century) such that by the 16th century, the Vetus Ordo had attained its utmost form. The process incorporated carefully crafted divine liturgy towards offering sacrifice that can only be acceptable to God because it is made worthy by the unblemished sacrifice of Christ. The Mass, especially in its traditional form, is where heaven and earth meet in right worship of the Triune God. The sacrament culminates in the reception of the actual Body and Blood of Christ. No other mystery enables a faithful on earth in proper disposition to physically unite with God. It has therefore become the height and summit of the Christian life.
In hindsight, assessing the impact of Vatican II’s Novus Ordo not only reveals a decline in the supposedly increasing population of Catholic Christians worldwide, but a lowering of liturgy to suit man rather than sustaining the traditional trajectory to bring man up to the standard of liturgy that is most suited to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The feared irrelevance of the Traditional Latin Rite by the Church hierarchy since Vatican II (1962-1965) has been unfounded. The traditional rite could not drive away the truly faithful from Catholicism, but the modern Mass could and did. If the TLM has become irrelevant because of modern times, then how come it is still very much alive today so much so that it is paradoxically the Church hierarchy that is limiting and once restricted its use? Why would so many faithful Catholics, including those of the younger generations, risk even worshipping underground if they had to earning the ire of mainstream Catholicism? And why would the late Pope Benedict XVI champion the traditional rite throughout his priesthood, papacy, and even as pope emeritus? Didn’t Josef Ratzinger say: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place … (for it demands) due honor for its venerable and ancient usage” (Summorum Pontificum, 7/7/07). Also, why did the Council of Trent (16th Century) not radically alter the traditional rite even when it had the chance to do so? The “Tridentine Mass” which resulted from it was a mere codification of all existing liturgies into one universal liturgy to avoid confusion among the faithful irrespective of their places of worship. The “Tridentine Mass” was not a new form of rite but a carefully preserved unification of the disparate old ones into just one complete universal liturgy. In short, it merely universalized (Catholic means “universal”) for uniformity the traditional liturgy began in the 5th Century at least until Vatican II when it was radically altered. Truth is that the metastasized evil in the world today is also driving many Christians back to the fundamental roots of their faith centered around the old, solemn liturgy. The Consecrated Body and Blood of Christ are the only sustaining beacon through the constantly changing disposition of man’s pilgrimage on earth. But the efficacy of Christ’s redeeming glory can only attain its true value in man’s rightful worship of the divine in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist which brings Heaven and Earth together in an invocation of sacrifice, worship, and thanksgiving to the Triune God (the Holy Trinity). The Vetus Ordo (began as the Rite of Saint Gregory) is this Rite of Right Worship that has been practiced by the faithful for centuries until worldly influences undermined it in the 1960s promulgating a lame version to suit modern man than please God. This development prompted Pope Benedict XVI to eventually say: “We will soon have priests reduced to the role of social workers and the message of faith reduced to political vision. Everything will seem lost, but at the right time, at the most dramatic stage of the crisis, the Church will be reborn. She will be smaller, poorer, almost catacombal, but also more holy. Because it will no longer be the Church of those who seek to please the world, but the Church of the faithful to God and his eternal law. Rebirth will be the work of a small rest, seemingly insignificant yet indomitable, passed through a process of purification. Because that’s how God works. Against evil, a small herd resists.”
The sudden resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on February 28, 2013, was not mainly due to poor health. I believe he had wanted to use the power of his papacy to lead the Church back to its fundamental roots. If we take a closer look at his reform initiatives during his pontificate, we’d find this to be at the center of his mission. Being the height and summit of the Christian life, the Mass was a key success factor to this goal. How else can Catholicism effectively bring faithful souls to holiness and salvation if the Mass remained as Novus Ordo, when the Vetus Ordo is the holier rite that has been able to bring this about through centuries past? Among other changes, Vatican II decreed that Latin would be the “preferred” language for the Novus Ordo, but that other vernaculars could also be used. Personally, I would have much preferred that the permission to use “other” languages besides Latin should have been just the ONLY change authorized by Vatican II if the objective was to make the Mass more “understandable” to peoples. The rest of the liturgy and rite should have been preserved as they are. Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. These are perfect as they are. Rather than divide the Catholic Church, I think that Pope Benedict chose to resign to keep the Church united. A selfless man of God, Benedict is the first pope to ever resign. With his resignation, he did God’s work. It was his cross to carry. I also think that he was right when he said: “Against evil, a small herd resists.” When an organization has lost the capacity to give more weight to God than man, due to its grown size, then it begins to lose its effectiveness in resisting evil in the world. The late pope saw a return to the traditional Mass as a concrete way to fight evil in the world. While a small number within the Church is still allowed by the hierarchy to worship in this old way, mainstream Catholics naturally worship in the new modern form. It is clear from the words of Pope Benedict that he had wanted the entire Church to return to the old way of worshipping God. The following words reflect his views: “A community is calling its very being (in reference to the traditional rite) into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent. Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe again tomorrow what it prescribes today?” To this, JP Parsons in “A Reform of the Reform?”, wrote: “The symbolic repudiation of the tradition of Christendom, as (still then) Cardinal Ratzinger has stated, has contributed very greatly to an undermining of confidence in the Church in general. While it may be possible logically to believe in a Church that is an infallible guide in doctrines of faith and morals but that, for most of the time since her foundation, has promoted, in Archbishop Bugnini’s striking phrase, ‘lack of understanding, ignorance, and dark night’ in the worship of God, it is not possible psychologically to carry out a mental juggling act of this sort for very long or on a scale that involves any great number of people.” Archbishop Annibale Bugnini was a priest trusted by Pope Paul VI who had a major hand in crafting what led to the Novus Ordo consequent to Vatican II. But after Vatican II, he was reassigned as Vatican’s ambassador to Iran in 1976, a post he had no experience for. The reassignment came amidst controversial allegations that he was a Freemason, which led the pope to dissolve the office where Bugnini served as its secretary during the affairs of Vatican II. Freemasonry has been a great enemy of Catholicism since the 17th Century. Bugnini died in Iran in 1982.