What exactly is "Novus Ordo"? Does the phrase equate to the current Catholic practices under Pope John Paul II? Or is it a phrase that points to a fringe/extremist movement that goes beyond JPII's leadership?
I know what an SSPXer/Trad is, but the term "Novus Ordo" remains fuzzy for me.
Novus Ordo specifically refers to the New Order of Mass as decreed by Pope Paul VI in 1969. Used to describe the Church, it refers to mainstream, post Vatican II Catholicism.
Following Vatican II, a new liturgy was created for the Latin Rite, which is by far the largest rite of the Catholic Church. The new liturgy was called Novus Ordo, or New Order. Traditionalists and schismatics use "Novus Ordo" as if it were a new sect, blaming all the ills of the Catholic Church on "N.O." Really its comparable to the 1911 Missal of the Anglican Church vs. the 1973 Missal. (Not being Anglican, I probably screwed up those dates.) Except since it also changed from Latin to the vernacular, the changes seem all the more drastic.
The Roman Catholic Church had had for many, many decades a huge problem combatting modernism. Naturally, all the modernist heretics saw the changes as an opportunity to slip all their demands into Vatican II, and many bad practices became falsely associated with the Novus Ordo. Of course, none of the were traditionalists, but the traditionalists portray all the Novus Ordo clergy as if they were all heretics.
A fantastic example of why this is false is the homosexual crisis. I get flamed every time I point this out, but there were more REPORTED cases dating from 1963, before Vatican II, than in 1990. By reported, I do not mean that they were reported in 1963, but that they were eventually reported, probably in the last decade. God knows how many went unreported, because the accused in now dead. In any event, the mass being in Latin did not protect anyone from the evils of pedophilia.