Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: mike182d
What makes the Novus Ordo Mass inferior?

The New Mass: Inalienable Right or Inferior Rite?

12 posted on 10/14/2005 7:34:28 AM PDT by murphE (These are days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed but his own. --G.K. Chesterton)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]


To: murphE
The New Mass: Inalienable Right or Inferior Rite?

The article is not very persuasive because his entire attack on the Novus Ordo Mass is a straw-man argument and by his own submission concerning the very nature of the Sacred Liturgy leads to conclusion that I don't think any Catholic can believe.

For example:
1. Latin is the official language of the Novus Ordo Mass and only certain parts are to be replaced with the vernacular but only by exception and not the rule.
2. Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphany has pride of place in the Novus Ordo Mass and is preferred over all other forms of sacred polyphany.
3. The Tabernacle should always be front and center - in fact one of the topics of discussion at the Synod was to enforce this mandate.
4. Altar rails weren't never meant to be removed.
5. The priest is meant to face East - ad orientem.
6. The current English translations are admittedly hideous and a newer, more accurate and less politically-based, translation is in the works that is truer to the Latin text.
7. Receiving in the hand is by exception only. The practice of receiving on the tongue is still the desired method and even intinction.

8. No one is to be in the Sanctuary except ordained ministers and altar servers when needed.

His attack on the Novus Ordo Mass is an attack on a straw-man - a Novus Ordo Mass destroyed by liberal liturgists and not true to its form. Furthermore, I could argue that the ancient worship in Greek or Aramaic is even more holy than the "vulgar" Latin that the Church accepted in the 4th Century as the language of the Church. By his own reasoning, the Tridentine Mass should be rejected too.

Lastly, the Novus Ordo Mass was created by a Church Council and accepted by a vast majority of Bishops present at the Council. Jesus Christ says of the Church that "the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it." With the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass as the heart of the entire Catholic/Christian faith and the source of its very life, the "gates of the netherworld" have prevailed against His Church if the whole of a Church Council, infallible in that moment as successors to the Apostles, was able to tarnish, even slightly, the most Sacred act in the whole of the universe.

To criticize the Novus Ordo Mass is to say that Christ lied and that the Church failed to protect what was most Sacred - which was its primary function. You can criticize its abused implementation but you cannot criticize the Novus Ordo Mass without criticizing the whole of the Church and the promise of Jesus Christ.
18 posted on 10/14/2005 7:59:22 AM PDT by mike182d ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson