[jec1ny]

I am not going to address much of your post. Since it does not have bearing on the issue at hand. However a few points do call for a response.

"Whoever it is that has told you that the Mass is a mere matter of "discipline" was lying to you"

Where did I say that? The Mass is extremely important. But it is not unalterable. Never has been. Never will be. It changed fairly dramatically just from 1570 to the last edition of the pre Vatican II MISSALE ROMANUM (1962). Anyone who would suggest otherwise had best be prepared to produce evidence to support their position. I am quite prepared to do so. Just have a glance at the various Apostolic Decrees and papal bulls printed in the front of all the pre Vatican II Missals. They all lost changes ordered by the various popes.

"The Bull Quo Primum was not an off-the-cuff, disposable document that any future pope can choose to ignore."

The first part of your sentence is correct. The second is false. Quo Primum (hereafter QP for short)was an important document but its status was disciplinary NOT dogmatic. It commands the use of a set of rubrics and a missal. It lays down those exceptions the pontiff regarded as acceptable. Nothing more and nothing less. If you believe otherwise, please offer me direct quotes or specific evidence. On what do you base you claim that QP is dogmatic? Even the schismatic SSPX does not make that claim.

"Could the current pope overturn the dogma of the Immaculate Conception?"

QUO PRIMUM was NOT an infallible declaration of a dogma. Hence your comparison to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is irrelevant. Apples and oranges.

"What we have today is a pope who is actively countenancing the public distribution of Holy Communion to public heretics. Such an offense against the Faith of Catholics would have been sufficient for public outcry in ages past. Why not today?"

That is an opinion. It is also totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

"In case you missed it, because of the Phenomenolgy of JPII, objective, moral acts are no longer being used as the criteria upon which moral judgments are made. According to this bad philosophy, the subjective sentiment of the individual is the touchstone of right and wrong, and because of that moral evil -- perhaps what Pope Saint Pius X was referring to when he spoke of the poison of Modernism injected into the root of the tree, killing the trunk and all the branches -- we now have a pope and bishops who decline to stand up for truth in the face of objective moral evil in front of them, because in answer to the question "what is truth" their answer is, "we don't know."

I did miss it. Further I reject your statement as so absurd that it borders on neurotic. You are now presuming to pass judgment upon the person of the sovereign pontiff. Are you a sede vacantist by chance? That you are a schismatic at the least is no longer in doubt. That you are a heretic is something I strongly suspect but am not yet certain of. In any case your bizarre diatribe is also moot to the issue of the right of the pontiff to regulate the liturgy of the church. I can not believe you deny the authority of the Pope to regulate the liturgical norms of the church. I am in awe. Do you in fact claim that QP is a dogmatic document which has infallible standing? If so then all doubt regarding your being a heretic is removed.

"The missal that Pope Saint Pius V came out with in response to Trent is essentially no different than the missals that were in use before Trent."

This is true only back as far as the 4th century. Perhaps even as late as the sixth. I would refer you to the Catholic Encyclopedia (pre Vatican II edition) for an exhaustive discussion on the history of the Mass. The rubrics of the Mass of the early Christians bore little if any resemblance to the elaborate liturgical formalities of the Tridentine Missal. They did not even use Latin in those days. If you believe otherwise please cite your sources.

"That Mass, the Roman Rite, was in its essential elements the same Mass that St. Peter said in Rome 1500 years before that time"

In its most BASIC elements this is true. Those elements being the minimal necessary to confect a valid sacrament. That would also be true of the Mass as said today since it confects a valid sacrament though I dislike its form. It is also true of the Byzantine Liturgies. It was also true of the Ambrosian Liturgy and the Missals of Sarum and York. (Or do you also reject those liturgies as well?) It is certainly NOT true however if you are referring to the elaborate rubrics of the Tridentine Missal.

"The Traditional Roman Rite found in the missal of St. Pius V cannot be compared to the Novus Ordo on several grounds, one of which is that the N.O. was entirely drawn up out of whole cloth, a new concoction, not based on tradition, but with the intention of making a "liturgy" tolerable for Protestants."

I have already addressed my distaste for the NO. Unless you are claiming that it is invalid then your points are yet again, moot to the issue at hand. The issue of whether the liturgy was drawn up from scratch (which I agree it was) has no bearing on whether the Pope can authorize a new rite. Indeed it may even weaken your argument. For if the NO is NOT a mere revision of the previous liturgy but rather as we both agree... an entirely new rite, then you can not claim the old liturgy was altered. It was not. It was merely superseded.


"You can believe what you like, but that does not change the fact of history."

I have three degrees in history. I have seen little evidence from a historiogrpahic point of view in your arguments. You have made a lot of claims but I have seen no citations.

"Phenomenologically refusing to acknowlege what has taken place does not change the fact of what has taken place. It is a bit like saying that there was no sound when a tree fell in the forest because there was no one there to hear it."

Psuedo-philisophical babbling does not impress me. Please confine yourself to the point at hand. Your weird off track ramblings are highly distracting. I am dealing with facts. You are making claims which do not square with historical fact.

Do you accept the validity of the Byzantine Rite? What of the Coptic or Armenian Rites? Please give me a reference to a pre-4th century missal that you can point to that resembles the Tridentine in its rubrics. I have looked and found none. How many rites beyond the NO do you reject? Do you claim that QP is an infallible document proclaiming a dogma of faith? If so please cite specific evidence that it has ever been so regarded by Holy Mother Church. Please also cite some authoritative sources that confirm that it was acknowledged that the Holy See has no authority over the liturgies of the church. I am not referring to the twisted interpretation of QP by the lunatic fringe of Catholicism. I am referring to any documents which would confirm that the Popes renounced any power over the liturgy and that this was accepted at least pre-Vatican II. A casual reading of the Apostolic Decrees in the old missal right after QP will unfortunately demolish that idea right off the bat. You can find them in the front of every edition of the MISSALE ROMANUM up to 1962.

Finally, the issue here is the authority of the Pope to regulate the liturgical norms of the church. Please confine yourself to that. All of your off beat ramblings have no baring on that issue. Your presumption to pass judgment upon the person of the sovereign pontiff in clear violation of the code of canon law is truly breathtaking, but ultimately not relevant to this issue.

[donbosco74]

Well, it certainly appears that we will not be making much progress any time soon. It seems to me that you are huddled in a corner hurling invectives out of fear or something.

Please take a breath and calm down for a minute.

Here is what your first post said: "But no Pontiff can bind any successor on matters involving the discipline of the church."

I don't think I need to repeat my response to that. It was the very first thing I said. Now you are asking where you said that. You are falsely under the impression, by your very words, that the Mass "changed dramatically just from 1570 to the last edition of the pre Vatican II MISSALE ROMANUM (1962)." Wrong.

"Anyone who would suggest otherwise had best be prepared to produce evidence to support their position. I am quite prepared to do so."

Really? Are you prepared to produce a physical missal dated 1570? I am. I have a friend who recently acqired one. I know a priest who used it at Mass recently. I was in attendance at the Mass. I followed in my Fr. Lasance Missal, dated 1945, and all the words were identical. I spoke to the priest after Mass and my friend who owns the rare book (there are only a few known to exist in the world), and they assured me that every word was precisely the same as the Traditional Latin Mass we know today -- not the 1962 version, which is corrupted -- except for one thing. Do you know what that one thing is? If you are such an expert in missals, as you appear to think you are, then you should be able to answer this question:

What prayer in some copies of the missal of 1570 is sometimes not found in its usual place, but is found elsewhere in the missal; and is the content of that prayer any different in that missal than it is in the Roman Rite missals dated just before changes began in the late 1940's?

Your curious claim that one need only "...have a glance at the various Apostolic Decrees and papal bulls printed in the front of all the pre Vatican II Missals. They all lost [list?] changes ordered by the various popes," bears some correcting, even if you do assert your personal authority in education. If your three degrees in history serve you well, you would recognize the fact that those "various Apostolic Decrees and papal bulls" are merely attempts by subsequent, well-meaning popes to correct typographical and editorial errors that had gradually crept into missals after the innovation of the printing press. These popes were acting in harmony with the highly authoritative Quo Primum from a sainted pope, whom they highly revered and respected. In fact, Pope St. Pius V was the last pope to be canonized a saint for 400 years until the next one, Pope St. Pius X, who was not made a saint until just moments before the Mass they both protected to the hilt was on the verge of being altered. There were no changes in the Mass as you claim. No, you claim there were "fairly dramatic" changes.

What in the world are you talking about? Is this an example of the "bizzare diatribe" and the "weird off track ramblings" of which you accuse me so liberally? Notice, who it is that hurls the ad hominem attacks. Get a clue: if you are attempting to upset me while you claim you are not, it isn't working, my friend.

Perhaps you can name two or three of the "fairly dramatic changes" to which you refer. I'm all ears.

Regarding the Pope's power to authorize a new rite, history will be the judge. I don't claim to be an expert on Canon Law or what the Pope can and can't do. But it seems to me that everyone pretty much sat back and watched Paul VI do just that. Was he acting within his proper limits? This is a sticky question. Just because a pope does something that he can do does not mean it was morally proper. In the wake of the Novus Ordo revolution, we have so many new problems directly related to the loss of the old Mass that one would have to be insane to believe that institution of this new rite, as you and I agree was done, was the morally proper thing for Paul VI to do. Some future pope and/or some future council will have to deal with this mess.

B16 could deal with it. But I highly doubt that he will. If he does, I'll be elated to see it, but the ball is in his court.

To this theme, I have put together an Open Letter to the Pope, which I plan to post as a vanity soon, and providing the Religion Moderator does not pull it immediately, you will be able to consider joining our movement to request the wide and generous application of the Traditional Roman Rite (Latin) Mass all over the world.

I do not consider myself schismatic, sedevacantist or any other patent label. I have been to the Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic rites, the Maronite rite, the Coptic Orthodox, Syrian, Greek, Russian and Byzantine, to name a few. I have to admit, that the pageantry and music is sometimes rather overwhelming, even though I don't follow the nuances very well. It has been explained to me that these non-Roman rites, which are normally rather resistant to change, are gradually finding themselves influenced toward modernization by the leadership of modern Rome.

Is this rambling again? I don't think so. We are talking about how liturgy has been changing, whether it should change, and the authority of the pope to make such changes.

[donbosco74]

Forgive me for having overlooked one item:

//"What we have today is a pope who is actively countenancing the public distribution of Holy Communion to public heretics. Such an offense against the Faith of Catholics would have been sufficient for public outcry in ages past. Why not today?"

//That is an opinion. It is also totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.//

That might appear to you as my "opinion," but I am doing nothing other than reading the news.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/international/europe/24france.html?ex=1130126400&en=ea10e497c30c78a6&ei=5070)

"...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, give communion to Brother Roger, even though he was not Catholic."

In this article, the Times reports that "At a Eucharistic service celebrated Tuesday by a Roman Catholic cardinal for Brother Roger, a Swiss Protestant, communion wafers were given to the faithful indiscriminately, regardless of denomination." Walter Cardinal Kasper was the Catholic cardinal celebrant.

Here is what B16 is quoted as saying when Bro. Roger died recently (http://www.cathnews.com/news/508/106.php):

"Brother Roger is in the hands of eternal goodness and eternal love and has arrived at eternal joy," he [B16] said.

You might be inclined to quote the liberal spin, claiming that it was all a mistake. I'll save you the trouble. Here's the link:

http://www.cathnews.com/news/508/167.php

Notice how the Vatican deals with such an issue that "would not go away" (this infers that the Vatican WISHES that it would just go away): "the Vatican made available in July an informal, unsigned statement of explanation." Note: find both quotes in the same Cathnews paragraph.

A big issue is met with an INFORMAL, UNSIGNED statement of explanation.

Please recall that in 1960, when the Catholic world anticipated the formal release of the 3rd secret of Fatima, an informal, unsigned statement appeared in an obscure Roman periodical explaining that it would not be released, nor would it ever likely be released. Don't tell me this didn't happen, because I saw it happen in real time. I am a witness. I am also a witness of this latest repeat of the same tactic. And please don't bother to tell me I'm rambling. These two events are very closely related, and I'm showing them to you together so you might be able to see the pattern, if you have any desire to know what the pattern is. Some people prefer to pretend there is no pattern, because they see that recognizing the pattern demands that a reasoning process begin, and the process might take them where they simply don't want to go.

By the way, while you abhor the thought of analogy, let me point out that this desire to take a left turn 6 blocks ahead, simply because the present road takes one to a point of commitment up ahead, is a result of our fallen nature.

As for your claim that this is "also totally irrelevant to the issue at hand," allow me to point out that this is regarding the pope's longstanding duty to uphold Sacred Tradition, and this question of distributing Holy Communion in public "indiscriminately" and "regardless of denomination" (NY Times quote), is precisely the same topic as his duty to uphold the Sacred Tradition of Holy Mass.

The point is, if it's okay for the pope to create a new rite and call it "normative," then why would it not be okay for the pope to establish a new rule for the distribution of Holy Communion to non-Catholics in public indiscriminately? If he has the power, why can't he choose to exercise it?