The HOLY MASS: From Holy Sacrifice to "Happy Meal"
The Holy Mass is the central act of Catholic worship. As such, it is not surprising that the liturgical actions, gestures, and prayers must reflect the true Catholic Faith to a tee. In all its details, the Catholic Mass reflects what Catholics believe, and vice versa: What Catholics believe is reflected in the Holy Mass. It therefore follows that if someone were to change the liturgical actions or prayers of the Holy Mass, this would necessarily change or impact the belief of Catholics. A common Catholic adage is that the law of prayer is the law of belief: “Lex orandi, lex credendi.” Therefore, whenever changes were made to the Catholic Mass, these changes were minor and never substantial, and complete orthodoxy was always ensured so that the faithful would always have pure and sound doctrine in this principal act of worship to the Most Holy Trinity.
The Catholic Church teaches clearly that she is infallible/indefectible and spotless in the promulgation of her sacramental rites and sacred laws imposed upon all. It is not possible for the Catholic Church to promulgate a sacramental rite that is invalid, impious, harmful to souls, or evil. In fact, the Council of Trent has hurled an anathema (“let him be excommunicated”) against anyone who would dare to suggest that the Church’s sacramental rites are an incentive to impiety:
Council of Trent, Session 22, Canons of the Sacrifice of the Mass, promulgated by Pope Pius IV in 1562:
Canon 7: “If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of masses, are incentives to impiety rather than stimulants to piety, let him be anathema.”
Likewise, Pope Pius XII taught authoritatively:
Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, par. 66 (1943):
“Certainly the loving Mother [the Church] is spotless in the Sacraments, by which she gives birth to and nourishes her children; in the faith which she has always preserved inviolate; in her sacred laws imposed on all; in the evangelical counsels which she recommends; in those heavenly gifts and extraordinary graces through which, with inexhaustible fecundity, she generates hosts of martyrs, virgins and confessors.”
There are many other examples of this kind, but these suffice to make clear that the sacramental rites of the Catholic Church are without blemish and are of themselves conducive to the salvation of souls. This should not be surprising, given that the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ Himself established the Catholic Church, and promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against her. If this Church could promulgate sacramental rites that are harmful to souls and even invalid, the gates of hell would definitely have prevailed.
As all practicing Catholics assist at the Holy Mass at least once a week (on Sundays), as far as they are able, it is clear that the Faith is taught them principally and most often specifically in the liturgical rite of the Holy Mass. It stands to reason, therefore, that in order to change the faith of Catholics, to change what they believe and how they believe it, it was necessary to change the liturgical rites and prayers of the Holy Mass. The modernistic takeover of the Vatican in 1958 could never have been successful if they had only changed the beliefs on paper. Most Catholics are not familiar with papal encyclicals (which are addressed to bishops, anyway, and not to laymen), nor do they read conciliar documents; but all practicing Catholics assist at the Holy Mass at least once a week. Just as the secular-sexual revolution of the 1960’s was transported into every home via rock music on the radio, and mostly thereby took abundant evil fruit, so the New Faith of the modernists could not spread into every Catholic heart and soul except by imposing on the faithful a “New Mass” that would longer be an expression of the pure Catholic Faith but of the poisonous new modernistic faith that was officially introduced and sanctioned by John XXIII and his successors, especially Paul VI.
Interestingly enough, something very similar occurred when the Anglican heretics broke with Rome in the 16th century. They changed the Mass and sacraments to express the new faith they were preaching. In his magisterial document declaring the invalidity of the Anglican “priesthood” and “masses,” Pope Leo XIII pointed out what could very well be said of the modernistic revolutionaries of the 1960’s:
Pope Leo XIII, Bull Apostolicae Curae, par. 30 (1896):
“Being fully cognizant of the necessary connection between faith and worship, between ‘the law of believing and the law of praying’, under a pretext of returning to the primitive form, they corrupted the Liturgical Order in many ways to suit the errors of the [Protestant] reformers. For this reason, in the whole Ordinal not only is there no clear mention of the sacrifice, of consecration, of the priesthood (sacerdotium), and of the power of consecrating and offering sacrifice but, as we have just stated, every trace of these things which had been in such prayers of the Catholic rite as they had not entirely rejected, was deliberately removed and struck out.”
Note how Pope Leo emphasizes the connection between faith and worship — it is essential! The infamous Martin Luther once said, “Tolle Missam, tolle Ecclesiam” – “If you take away the Mass, you take away the Church.” He was right on this point. Note also that Pope Leo says that the Anglicans made changes to the Mass “under the pretext of returning to the primitive form,” which is precisely what Paul VI and his cohorts claimed they were doing when introducing the New Mass. By the way, it is probably not insignificant that the New Mass was promulgated on April 3, 1969, the first day of the Jewish Passover (recall that Christ established His True Sacrifice of the Mass at the same time when the Jews were celebrating Passover, in 33 AD).
Indeed, on April 3, 1969, the first day of the Jewish Passover, “Pope” Paul VI introduced what he claimed was simply a “reform” of the Catholic Mass based on “more ancient liturgical sources” (see Paul VI, Missale Romanum, 1969). He called it the “new order of the Mass,” or, in the Latin draft, the “novus Ordo Missae.” This “new order of the Mass,” a term perhaps more pregnant with meaning than he then realized, gradually came to be known as the “Novus Ordo Mass,” or simply the “New Mass.” Since then, true Catholics who have kept the Faith handed down to us unadulterated from Pope St. Peter until Pope Pius XII (who died in 1958), have come to label the entire new religion this “Mass” expresses as “Novus Ordo,” and hence we refer to it as the “Novus Ordo Religion” and their establishment in the Vatican as the “Novus Ordo Church.” This web site monitors this strange new church, and hence is called “Novus Ordo Watch.”
Below you will find some more information about the true Catholic Mass, contrasted in words and pictures with the new, Novus Ordo “Mass” of Paul VI and the new religion of the Novus Ordo Church”:
Paul VI’s Novus Ordo Missae is a threat to the Roman Catholic Faith, a ritual sacrilege, and in itself invalid (that means, the Eucharistic species do not transubtantiate but remain bread and wine.)
True Mass vs. New Mass: Some Considerations
To the left you see a picture of the true Catholic Mass. An objective observer would describe it as mysterious, glorious, reverent, awe-inspiring, and holy. It is otherworldly and is clearly directed away from man to the transcendent God, the Most Holy Trinity.
The following are two pictures of a fairly typical Novus Ordo Mass. They are by no means “unusual” or “extreme” but entirely mainstream. The picture to the right, in particular, shows a Novus Ordo Mass as it is commonly “celebrated” in retreat houses and similar circles. Reverence, mystery, godliness, and devotion are noticeably absent. The New Mass features not an all-holy Sacrifice offered to a transcendent Triune God, but a meal that is shared by a community closed in on itself and celebrating itself. The “celebration” is banal, commonplace, and dull, and of itself it cannot possibly attract devotion or vocations to the holy priesthood, which has been stripped of all dignity and all that made it special, the priest having been reduced, in essence, to a glorified social worker who is not allowed to marry (not exactly an exciting vocation for any healthy and sane boy or young man).
It is clear that a New Mass also needs a New Priesthood, and with both there came New Churches, that is, houses of worship that, likewise, no longer represented the Catholic Faith but rather reflected the New Religion, the new teachings of the modernists, which are in total contradiction with true Catholicism (the very fact that everything had to be changed after Vatican II to be in harmony with the New Religion and its new, humanitarian, hippie “Gospel” is proof enough that there is real contradiction with the Catholic Faith).
Hence, with the arrival of the modernists and their new religion, there also came new church buildings, some of them already as early as the 1950’s, with the approval of the local (modernist-in-hiding) bishop. Generally, Novus Ordo church buildings are characterized (just like their new faith and their new liturgies) by looking banal, sterile, static, and totally unlike traditional Catholic churches, the purpose of whose very architecture is to assist in lifting souls up to Heaven and to allow them to pray and think of heavenly things, in accordance with Holy Scripture: “Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:2). Traditional Catholic churches are houses of God, because Christ resides in them, in the tabernacle under the appearance of bread. Novus Ordo churches are nothing but gathering spaces in which the “community” comes to “share a meal” and celebrate itself (hence also the priest no longer faces God in the tabernacle but now faces the people, like Protestant ministers). Typically, Novus Ordo churches look so bad that they can be mistaken for libraries, community centers, medical buildings, or the local police station. And quite often, Novus Ordo churches are absolutely hideous and ugly, as you can see in some examples below.
Defenders of the Novus Ordo religion and its new doctrines and churches will often go through all sorts of hair-splitting points about how really no substantial change has occurred and everything is just still orthodox enough so as not to breach Catholic dogma and piety. This nonsense is best countered by sticking to the visible facts of what takes place and what is believed in Novus Ordo Land. The proof is in the pudding: We have a new religion on our hands, new churches, new doctrines, a new priesthood, and all of this is intrinsically connected with the almost complete disappearance of true Catholicism from the face of the earth. It should stand to reason that such occurrences are not coincidental. A new religion is not imposed by accident. Just as this world could not have been the result of chance or random occurrences among particles, so this new religion with all its impiety, so cleverly disseminated throughout the world and into the souls of unsuspecting Catholics, also requires to have been carried out by means of a master plan to defeat the Catholic Church and put up a religion that serves man, not God.
Some Examples of the New Churches:
The first picture depicts what the modernists call “Most Holy Trinity Church” in Vienna, Austria, a country that used to be very Catholic and still has many gorgeous Catholic churches. This church was designed by the modernist Fritz Wotruba (d. 1975), a man notorious for creating bizarre “art”, including nude sculptures. This Wotruba “church” was built under and approved by the infamous modernist, “Cardinal” Franz König (d. 2004), a man appointed “cardinal” by John XXIII in 1958, just after the death of Pope Pius XII.
Despite the horrendous ugliness of the above-shown buildings, there is still one Novus Ordo “church” that absolutely takes the cake. It is so-called “Mary Queen of Peace Church,” officially a Wallfahrtskirche (“church of pilgrimage” [!]), located in Velbert-Neviges, Germany. Here are two photos of this catastrophe:
So…do you dare look inside?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of the New Church, the Novus Ordo Religion officially represented in today’s Vatican. If you find it offensive and impious, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. And if it offends human beings, how much more must it offend God Himself?
The New Religion has a different face from the True Catholic Religion. The ugly buildings, the strange “Masses” and other liturgical actions, are merely the outward sign of the new, ugly, and offensive theology.
In the Catholic Church’s liturgical year, there is only one day on which the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not offered. That day is Good Friday. On this day the Church focuses totally on the Sacrifice of Calvary as it occurred on the Cross in 33 AD, and she makes supplication for the conversion of non-Catholics. The Novus Ordo church has retained intercessory prayers on that day, but they do not pray for the conversion of the Jews anymore, and even prayers for the conversion of pagans have been stripped of their substantial content. Regarding the Jews, who cannot be saved without belief in Christ as the only true Messiah (cf. Mark 16:16), the contrast between the Catholic prayer on Good Friday for the Jews and the Novus Ordo prayer “for” the Jews could hardly be more striking. See for yourself:
On GOOD FRIDAY…
The Novus Ordo Church prays:
“for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.”
But the Catholic Church prays:
“for the faithless Jews: that Our Lord and God may lift the covering off their hearts, so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ Our Lord.”
It is a great act of charity towards Jews and all non-Catholics to pray for their conversion, for we love them truly, and Christ died for them, and without conversion they will be damned to hell, that everlasting place of punishment and torture: “Those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ [Matt. 25:41]” (Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, 1445). Therefore, those who love the Jews pray for their conversion, that their souls would be refreshed and they would find Eternal Bliss in the the only true Messiah, Jesus Christ the Lord, and His Holy Church. Their Eternal Happiness is our hearts’ greatest desire.
In the Novus Ordo Church, this is what a “papal Mass” looks like.
You can call it “noble simplicity”, but it’s still the same modernist junk.