Opinion

(LifeSiteNews) — Rumor has it that the dicastery for the liturgy led by British Cardinal Arthur Roche is going to publish a constitution in the middle of next month that is supposed to deliver the final coup de grace to the traditional liturgy. One might ask: why? After all, the arguments given do not make sense.

First, it is claimed that the coexistence of two liturgical forms would threaten the unity of the Church. There is no evidence of this in practice. Even those attending traditional Mass are particularly attached to unity with the Pope and with the local bishop. In many American parishes, the two liturgies coexisted peacefully in parish churches. Before the release of Traditionis Custodes in 2021, which severely restricted the traditional liturgy, Rome conducted a poll of the world’s episcopate. The outcome of that poll was kept secret, probably for good reason. Indeed, it seems that the majority of bishops did not object to the celebration of traditional Mass in their dioceses for those who wanted it.

Moreover, the Catholic Church has many different rites: the Byzantine, the Armenian, the Coptic, the Maronite, the Syro-Malabar, etc. It has never been claimed that this threatens the unity of the Church. It is an expression of the spiritual richness of the Church lived precisely in pluralistic liturgical traditions. By the way, even in the Latin West, we have not only the Roman but also the Ambrosian rite (Archdiocese of Milan) and the Mozarabic rite (some places in Spain), among others. So it is nonsense that the old rite could not fruitfully coexist with the new, as Pope Benedict XVI had intended in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in 2007.

Moreover, it is strange that a pope like Francis would suddenly wipe out an important part of the pontificate of his immediate predecessor such as the end of the liturgical struggle while at the same time daring to claim that between his own and Benedict’s pontificate there would be no difference at all. Moreover, he flatly denies what Benedict said, namely, that you cannot simply abolish and prohibit a liturgy that has existed in the Church for 1,500 years.

So why the fanatical hatred? Why the determination to make impossible the liturgy that attracts young people and young families all over the world?

The liturgy is the place where people's faith is most affected.

That cannot have to do with the real good of the Church. It must have to do with the ideology that has taken the place of the Church’s handed-down deposit of faith among many theologians and Church leaders. The liturgy is the place where people’s faith is most affected. The ordinary faithful come to church and come into contact with Scripture readings, with the preaching of the Church, with the prayers and sacred acts of the Church. The way this all happens shapes their faith.

The traditional Catholic faith, the faith of the Apostles, of the Church Fathers, of the Saints of all centuries, is a faith in which God is central, in which man is called to honor and serve God in worship and in a moral life. The connection between God and man and between men themselves is the God-man Jesus Christ, Who redeems man from sin and death and makes men children of God. The Catholic faith is theocentric and Christocentric. The traditional liturgy is an expression of this. The traditional liturgy is theocentric and Christocentric. The center is the altar on which the sacrifice of the cross is fulfilled by the priest in the person of Christ. Priest and people are turned toward God or, if you will, toward the returning Christ. In prayers and sacred acts, the Mass is permeated by the sacrificial spirit. The Mass as the Lord’s Supper is expressed only after the sacrifice, at Communion. While everyone can participate in the sacrifice, the meal is only for those who are not excluded by grave sin from communion with God and with the Church.

This traditional Catholic faith was tainted in theological circles long before the Council by neomodernist thought, in which the focus is no longer God but man. These thoughts, in all their consequences after the Council, break through into everything we call the “spirit of the Council.” It is no longer God’s commandments and the high demands of the Gospel that are central, but man, who has “difficulty with these ideals” but who can nevertheless count on God’s mercy. The commandments are no longer commandments but, at best, ideals.

While previous Popes have tried to reverse these anthropocentric tendencies, with Francis, the dam is completely broken. His theory of “field hospital” opens ecclesial communion to all, including the unrepentant sinner. Things that have always been recognized as grave sins in the Christian tradition, such as homosexual acts, adultery (as well as only “civil marriage”), yes even polygamy, are condoned or approved with a “blessing.” The whole so-called synodal process tries to use seemingly theological arguments to claim the Holy Spirit in order to please man and to let the secular zeitgeist into the Church. In short: God and His will has given way to man’s lust; the Church has become an NGO to promote the inner-worldly welfare of people; extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church is no salvation) and the missionary mission of Christ has degenerated into a vague world brotherhood where Christ and His Gospel have lost their unique place; the concern for eternal salvation has given way to the theory of empty hell, etc., etc.

The new liturgy greatly facilitates this thinking. In the new liturgy, man is at the center. He must be made to feel nice. What he does not like must not be said. The priest no longer faces God but the people. Biblical and centuries-old prayer texts that go rather against the sense of life of modern man are deleted or modified. Many texts about sin or the punishment of hell have disappeared. It is striking that the text after the institution narrative from St. Paul about the unworthy eating of the Body of the Lord has totally disappeared from the lectionary. This is not accidental. After all, not inclusive. Not for nothing does almost everyone, if they happen to come to church, go to Communion. It is no longer about God, but about the human community to which everyone belongs. The rich prayers of sacrifice of the former Mass have been replaced by meager Jewish table prayers that have lost any sense of sacrifice. And then the deliberate replacement in many languages of “shed for many” with “shed for all.” This suggests the heresy that everybody has been redeemed automatically.

It seems that certain leaders in the Church have not only embraced neomodernist thinking but see it as the future for the Church. The Pope has not said for nothing that he wants irreversible changes for the Church.

The traditional liturgy that breathes a different spirit is a disturber in this regard. And like all fanatics, they are convinced of their own rightness and find the appeal that the traditional liturgy has for young people disastrous for the horizontal Church image in which they believe.

So it is not a battle of rites that is being waged but a battle of faith. In a speech at an American university recently, Cardinal Robert Sarah said that the struggle against the old Mass is an expression of the practical atheism that dominates our Western society and even much of the Western Church. I completely agree with him.

And therefore: whatever they come up with in Rome this time to bully the traditional faithful and to steer the Church in their desired (godless) direction, we will face persecution.

In the meantime, we must ask ourselves, is slavish obedience still a virtue under this pontificate?