The much maligned Archbishop Bugnini is only part of the problem. Pope St(?) Paul approved his work, so he bears the lions share of the guilt for this Novus Ordo Missae's contribution to this crisis.
But remember, this crisis is not a liturgical crisis, it is a doctrinal crisis!
P^3
Bugnini's Principle for the Novus Ordo Missae: People of God
The following is an excerpt of a conference given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on October 29, 1984 in Stuttgart, Germany.
Editor's Note: The conference, entitled “The Church, The Priesthood, and the Tridentine Indult,” came on the heels of Pope John Paul II extending a limited indult for Catholic priests to say the traditional Latin Mass. In the portion of the conference contained below, the Archbishop critically examines the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI and the destructive theology which lies at the heart of it:
A Protestant Notion
Last year there appeared an enormous book of his [Archbishop Bugnini] on the liturgical reform, published posthumously, by one of his confreres. I recommend, if you ever come across this book, that you read the general principles. They are very instructive, and absolutely incredible—right in these general principles Archbishop Bugnini says, this liturgical reform is a profound one, aiming at restoring to its true place—for him, according to what he says—the People of God.
It is very curious to find here this notion of the People of God, which is in the new Code of Canon Law, published after the death of Archbishop Bugnini. He could not have gotten it from the new Code, so these ideas must have been around well before it. It is stupefying to read in the Documentation Catholique that the Lutheran-Catholic Commission of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, and thus an official Roman commission, said in effect that numerous points in the Council were drawn from the teachings of Luther, one of them being the notion of the People of God. They say it explicitly; so with this doctrine of the People of God, they are restoring the assembly to its true place, to give it an important role in the liturgy, implying that before the assembly did not exist, or that its role was minimal, that there was no participation; and that, now, thanks to the new liturgy, there is finally participation.
Practical Consequence: No Congregation, No Mass
There comes to mind an objection made by a certain Benedictine abbot at the conference which Archbishop Bugnini gave before 24 superiors of religious orders—I myself was present at this conference—at Rome, before the publication of the New Mass. When he introduced to us his "Normative Mass," Archbishop Bugnini spoke to us precisely about this participation of the faithful, active participation, as if before Vatican II the faithful had never participated in the Mass. And so an abbot got up and said, "Father, if I understand correctly, we should not say private Masses any more, since there is no congregation, and thus no participation by the people in our Masses." The response was, "Quite truthfully, we have not envisioned that." Incredible! As he himself said, this idea has inspired the liturgical reform, an idea which reverses the roles, giving the greater role to the assembly, and no longer to the priest and the sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Our Lord.
Priestly Spirituality: Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
I have been asked to give you a few reflections on the spirituality of the priest. I cannot very well separate the spirituality of the priest from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
To my mind there are not two different kinds of priestly spirituality, there is only one: that of his Mass, that of the Sacrifice of Our Lord, because the priest is essentially the man of sacrifice. I would say there is a transcendental relation between the priest and the sacrifice, and between the sacrifice and the priest. One cannot imagine sacrifice without a priest, and the priesthood without sacrifice. And so there is a relation there that is more than essential, transcendental really, a relation that goes beyond even the essence of the priest. So, we must go back to the idea of the Sacrifice. One can say that our sacrifice, the sacrifice which Our Lord has put into our hands, the sacrifice which Our Lord has left us, is a thing without limit, inexpressible, so divine and mysterious is it, that it surpasses everything we can imagine.
The Priest is Another Christ
To think that we are really "other Christs," and that it is His words, His words that produce His presence, that we recite these words each morning, that it is not simply a narrative but also an action, and that we say, "This is My Body," we do not say, "This is the Body of Jesus Christ." But we say, "This is My Body," "This is the chalice of My Blood," it is we ourselves who pronounce it! Consequently we are truly in the Person of Christ, it is truly Christ that we represent. It is no longer we who speak; it is Our Lord Who makes use of our lips, Who makes use of us to pronounce these words anew. There it is, I truly believe, the great program of the priest, the program of priestly life: his Mass. That is why the Mass is so important. And this program, it is not really complicated, it is very simple.
First Part in Mass: Teaching
The first part of the Mass consists in teaching: "to teach all nations," that is our role. We have to teach precisely because we have the Teaching Office. Our Lord said to us, to priests, "Teach all nations." He did not say that to just anybody, He said that to His Apostles, and so we have this role and we must teach. That is what we do in the first part of the Mass, more especially than in the other parts. May we be solicitous that our teaching truly be the teaching of the faith, that our teaching truly be the teaching of the Church! And may I point out that the faith is essentially connected with Revelation, and Revelation is essentially connected with Tradition: Faith, Revelation, Tradition! And that is why, when we say we are traditionalists, we are right. We must be traditionalists; there can be no Catholics who are not traditionalists. Tradition is part of our faith. We should not forget that there was a time of prophecy, as St. Thomas says. There was a prophetical epoch which began with the first prophets, continuing right up to the Prophet Who is Our Lord Jesus Christ: He is the Prophet, there is none greater, none holier, none more perfect, than this Prophet.
Prophetical Epoch
Thus the prophetical epoch continued right up to Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostles were joined with Our Lord Jesus Christ to announce the Gospel. After the death of the last Apostle, the prophetical epoch came to a close, was finished; there is no other prophet, there can be no other prophet after Our Lord. Who could surpass Our Lord? Who could say: "I come after Our Lord to complete what Our Lord said"? Who could say such a thing? God Himself has come, who can make himself greater than God? There are no more prophets; the time of prophecy is finished, terminated.
Dogmatic Epoch
St. Thomas goes on to say: "Then followed the dogmatic epoch," the time of definitions, that is, the time in which the contents of Revelation were defined, that which was revealed, that which is in the deposit of faith. And the popes have no other role than to define what is in the deposit of Revelation—not to add a single truth, but simply to say: "This is in the deposit of revelation." That is where Tradition comes in: Tradition, from generation to generation, from pope to pope, from council to council, the tradition of the Faith, of what has been defined, and to the extent to which it is defined it is untouchable, one can no longer touch this truth, it is defined for all times.
Truth is Always the Same
When a pope uses his infallibility, it is the deposit of faith, the treasure of our faith, there is thus a tradition, which we cannot avoid, which we must keep, hence the importance for us to always refer to the past, to refer back to what the Church had always taught. Now, this is the great error of Cardinal Ratzinger, the great error of those who are in the Church today, who say to us: "The Church is a living body and so it evolves, always changing, always in evolution, the Church is not a corpse." Truth is always the same. When I said to Cardinal Ratzinger, "Look, religious liberty and Quanta Cura are incompatible," "Oh," he said, "we are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura." We are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura, then tomorrow we will no longer be in the times of their own new truths—this is not possible!
Priest’s Teaching: Passing On Tradition
Now in this first part of the Mass, which, I would say, is the model for our own teaching, we must refer back to that, to Tradition. The essence of what St. Paul said is: "Tradidi vos quod et accepi—I have passed on to you what I have myself received." Already in his time he said that, and he said: "If an angel himself says the contrary of what I have handed on to you, or if I say the contrary of what I have passed on to you, may I be anathema!" And that is serious! And so neither do we have the right to deny what was handed down to us.
There are two other parts of Holy Mass, the part with the consecration, the Sacrifice, and then the part where the priest communicates, which are united because we are united to our Victim, Our Lord.
Second Part in Mass: Sacrifice
First, the Sacrifice. I now make a distinction between gratia sanans (grace healing) and gratia elevans (grace elevating), the grace which Our Lord gives us in Baptism, which He also gives us in the Sacrifice of the Mass. The augmentation of this grace has the aspect of "healing" and "elevating.”—Grace healing that is the sacrificial, penitential aspect, of compunction for our faults, of everything that heals us. It is the Blood of Our Lord, it is in the Sacraments, in the Sacrament of Penance... then, there is "grace elevating” which lifts us up, the Holy Ghost Who elevates us with Our Lord Jesus Christ in contemplation, in the love of the Father, in the love of the Holy Trinity. In the Sacrifice of the Mass we find ourselves as it were on the Cross again with Our Lord. That is the sacrificial and penitential aspect, the healing aspect, but also the aspect of love, of charity, of the contemplation of Our Lord.
Third Part in Mass: Communion
Next comes the third part: the communion of the faithful. Fundamentally we cannot give them more than Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we must prepare them, precisely by teaching, and then we are the doctors of their souls by the Sacrament of Penance, by the advice we can give. We must do this in such a way that souls receive Our Lord Jesus Christ under the best conditions, so that they can receive this gratia sanans and gratia elevans, and unite themselves with Our Lord the Victim, Our Lord Who praises His Father for eternity.
Healing and Elevating Grace
These are, in summary, the different aspects of the Most Holy Sacrifice, which are very important, essential, and which are an entire program of life, this is practically our entire program of priestly life. I wish that we could always gain a deeper understanding of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There you can see the change on the perspective on the Mass: if one insists only on the meal, as the progressives do now, on the meat the table, the table of the eucharistic banquet the sharing of bread, the sharing of the word—they leave aside the aspect of the Cross, the sacrificial aspect which lifts us up to heaven. Let us not separate the aspect of Our Lord which lifts us right up to the bosom of the Trinity, in the midst of praise, the propitiatory aspect of sacrifice which covers us with the Blood of Our Lord, which heals us of our maladies, precisely this "healing grace." We ought not to forget that there is "healing grace" and "elevating grace"—there are these two aspects of grace.
Comments on the 1984 Indult
I will finish this talk with a few words on the new decree which has just come out [Quattuor Abhinc Annos, aka, the "1984 Indult"]. Is it a boon, or not? It would be difficult to say that it is not a good thing, since many people have asked Rome for this liberty, that those who say the Old Mass not be persecuted. I myself also during these years have not ceased asking of Rome: leave us this liberty! And so, faced with the insistence of many people, and mine also, they finally decided to do something. Unfortunately however they have added to it incredible conditions. It's absolutely unimaginable, after all this, to be interrogating people on their opinion: Do you reject the New Mass? If you reject the New Mass, then you don't have the right to say the old one. That surpasses the imagination.
For as I said to my confreres, if one of you were asked, or, if for example, we take the Abbey of Fontgombault in France, the Benedictines, they like the Old Mass, but they have accepted the New Mass out of "obedience." Now they will surely ask for the Old Mass again. And they could ask them: "Why do you opt for the Old Mass?" "Ah, because we prefer the Old Mass. You see, the New Mass has certain features..." "Ah! You don't like the New Mass! Neither then shall you have the Old!"
That is ridiculous, because if we choose the Old Mass it is because we find it better than the new one. If you reject the new one, you don't have the right to the old one! They could quibble back and forth like that.
Politics Used by Providence
To my mind, this decree is a typical example of the present mentality at Rome, the progressive mentality. This is a progressive decree; it is not a traditional decree where Rome would act out of consideration for the holiness of the Mass, for the holiness of the faithful, for the apostolate and good of souls, the glory of God. No, it's not that. It's pure politics. They conducted a referendum... a poll... to see who were in agreement; because there was still a small group holding out, they decided to make a concession, but to also add some conditions. That is politics, the same kind they practice in democracies—it's not supernatural at all. Be that as it may, I think Providence has willed this nevertheless for now we have a foot in the door and never again will they be able to shut it! The old era is finished, now we have a foothold, and I think that the good God will permit, little by little, that there will be a return to Tradition. It has triggered the common sense of many of the faithful who say, "Finally this business is over with! Finally we can go to the Old Mass! Finally the dispute is over!"
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