The Spirit of the Liturgy

Una Voce ^ | November 17, 2002 | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

[ultima ratio]

Further: "dialectic" is a liberal code word, along with its twin "dialogue" and is a post-conciliar novelty. It had no widespread currency before Vatican II and is a mark of something far removed from Tradition.

[ultima ratio]

You ask upon what authority can the fabricated liturgy be accepted? The answer is no authority on earth can force acceptance. This is why Cardinal Ratzinger reproved Bishop Ferrario of Honolulu for excommunicating Catholics who attended an SSPX Mass. The Cardinal affirmed the attendance "did not constitute the offense of schism" and that the excommunication "lacks foundation and hence validity." It is the modernists, rather, not traditionalists, who suppress and attack what has been received and violate the true faith by doing so.

[Desdemona]

Your use of the word "modernists" keeps appearing. To you, what actions constitue "modernism" as opposed to natural evolution, in both the case of liturgy and that of catechism.

I'm just curious.

[Catholicguy]

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm

<> Tradition and the Living Magisterium link. Ultima, you are under the suzerainty of Satan in your opposition to Divinely-constituted authority<>

[Catholicguy]

<> No doubt there were some slaves of Satan back then that obejected it was a radical change because it was a different Liturgy than the Last Supper. Perhaps there was a SSSP (priestly society of saint peter) that formed a short-lived schism :)<>

[RobbyS]

Tradition is not so definite that it can be codified once and for all, not when some of its is oral. But even the written part is subject to change, because language changes. Scripture itself is under the same rule, especially since the very words of Ourl Ord were in a language other than that in which they were committed to writing. Institutions are what provide constancy, and in the case of the Church that means the apostolic succession and Petrine supremacy. My problem is that you are asking me to accept your interpretation rather than Rome's. That seems to me private judgement, and I cannot accept yours anymore than Gary Will's, someone whose views we both reject.

[RobbyS]

Even Luther and the early Reformers took this route. They claimed to read tradition better than Rome. It was a while before they outright rejected tradition as a concept, or rather reduced it to what is contained in Scripture. Calvin made themost logical case for the Reformation, but of course many Protestants rejected him as their master and now he is generally ignored.

[WriteOn]

Do you think doctrine evolves without dialectic? How? Dialectic is a process of reason. All liturgy has been formed and informed by reason. (You're not suggesting it's a product of revelation are you?)

In that sense dialectic is the organic process by which Liturgy evolves, just as it is the process by which doctrine is arrived at. Reasoning, dialectic, exchange of arguments... the same category of gift that when guided by the Holy Spirit arrive at Truth.

[Catholicguy]

Tell me who is the slave of Satan.

<> You, Ultima Ratio, other schismatics and, if what you say is true, this priest.

I was once at an SSPX Mass wherein the priest spent the entire sermon attacking the "fake"N.O. Mass and the Pope. He too is a slave of Satan

As St. Bob Dylan sang, "It may be the Devil. It may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody..."

Come back into Union with the Pope and be a slave of Jesus. Quit your schism and stop being a slave of Satan<>

[ultima ratio]

Stick to the argument. We were talking about liturgy, not doctrine. But even here, you err. The deposit of faith IS something received as revelation and transmitted over the ages. Its doctrines may be clarified--i.e., developed--over time by the use of our reason, but they may not ever be contradicted precisely because they originate through divine revelation.

The traditional liturgy is not a doctrine but a divinely ordained action. The Old Mass, in fact, is profoundly connected to ancient sacrificial rituals. For example, the ancient Judaic rite of sacrifice followed the tri-partite pattern of oblation, immolation, consummation. The Old Mass follows this same ancient sacrificial formula with its Offertory (oblation), Consecration (immolation) and Communion (consummation). Simultaneously, the Old Mass transmits the faith by underscoring Catholic doctrines in its text and rubrics.

The new Mass disgards this ancient structure--just as it ignores fundamental Catholic doctrines in order to be user- friendly to Protestants. The idea that the pope, by assembling a committee, might fabricate such a liturgy, is alien to Tradition--i.e., to the Church's own experience of herself. It is a radical notion that is directly contrary to the faith and has already brought dire consequences.

[ultima ratio]

Where to begin? There are a thousand problems with the modernist innovation. To begin with, the new missal pushes aside the notion of the ministerial priesthood in favor of the communal action of the assembly. Never once is the priest's agency in bringing about the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine ever mentioned. Only his role as presider over the assembly is mentioned--13 times. This underscores the priest's relation to the people of God, but not the power the priest alone possesses to consecrate. This is deliberate. The intention is to emphasize the Memorial Meal aspects of the Mass and to deemphasize the sacrificial aspects of the Mass. This would be but one small example of the radical break with the traditional liturgy. There are hundreds of these differences. Notice how the Old Mass begins: with the recitation of an ancient psalm beginning, "I will go up to the altar of God, to God Who is the joy of my youth." The New Mass opens by asking the assembly to recall its sins. The focus is not on God, but on ourselves. The orientation is totally different--hence the altar/table that faces the people instead of away from them, symbolically toward God.

[ultima ratio]

You are getting laughable with this "slave of Satan" crap. Try using arguments to support a viewpoint instead of throwing insults.

[ultima ratio]

First of all, I posted CARDINAL RATZINGER'S argument, not mine. I have brought his perspective home to most of you, that's all. It is his position, as well as that of Vatican I that the Pope is not an absolute monarch. The papacy is at the service of Tradition, not the other way around.

The problem with most of you on this site is you're not accustomed to thinking in this way. Such a prospect forces you to reexamine your basic premises about the papacy itself and its limitations. This is because if Tradition is master of the pope and not the other way around, then our first duty is to Tradition, not to the pope, especially one who would assault Tradition in favor of endless innovations. This is because Tradition is nothing less than the faith itself.

But when you suggest that the Petrine supremacy is actually necessary for some kind of liturgical constancy, you are speaking foolishly. The east has done quite well preserving its heritage without the papacy. In fact, it has retained its Tradition intact without a pope, whereas we have discarded ours with a pope.

[Land of the Irish]

As St. Bob Dylan sang,...

I must have missed news of his canonization, but I'm not surprised.

[ultima ratio]

You wanted an example of modernism in the catechism. Let me give one example that bugs me. Here is paragraph 105: "For this reason the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she has venerated the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body."

This is modernist double-speak. In the Tradition of the Catholic Church, Sacred Scripture has NEVER been venerated the way we venerate Christ's Body, which has been ADORED. We do not worship Scripture, but we worship Christ's Presence in the Holy Eucharist. The attempt to ignore this huge difference and to pretend the two are held in equal esteem is offensive to the faith. This is the modernist, not the traditional, view, which conflates Christ's virtual presence in Scripture with his actual presence in the Sacred Host. This phony conflation occurs over and over in the Novus Ordo Mass.

[drstevej]

That is an amazing statement given the RC doctrine of the Real Presence.

[ultima ratio]

You contend Rome is a better judge of Tradition than anyone else. What's traditional about the Novus Ordo Mass? What's traditional about Assisi Prayer meetings or kissing the Koran? What's traditional about giving openly apostate bishops the red hat? What's traditional about the Pope's visiting a synagogue to pray with Jews for a different messiah? Show me where the Church has ever supported such radical breaks with her own past--with no end in sight. You people are amazing. You sound truly desperate, coming up with such lame excuses.

By the way, it was Luther who BROKE with tradition, claiming he was returning to the primitive Church, though he had no way of knowing this apart from the Tradition he was trashing. He began as the modernists begin--by turning the altar around to face the people--a switch which Gamber has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a false assumption about the early Church. Gamber has published photos showing bas-reliefs from the first century which depict altars facing east, away from the people, toward a rising sun. Luther also, by the way, rejected the Mass as a sacrifice, much as the modernists do, insisting the liturgy was nothing more than a memorial meal. So it is post-conciliar Rome that models itself on Luther's vision, rather than on the Tradition it has received from Christ and the apostles.

[Land of the Irish]

I was once at an SSPX Mass wherein the priest spent the entire sermon attacking the "fake"N.O. Mass and the Pope.

I think the Novus Ordo wax in your years caused you to misunderstand "farce" of a Mass, to mean "fake". There's a difference.