The John-Henry Westen Show - July 20, 2021


What is the difference between the Novus Ordo and Latin Mass？ Watch this


Summary

A brief overview of the differences between the Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo, and why Pope Francis has overturned the universal permission for the traditional Latin Mass given by Pope Benedict XVI. (A special thanks to our sponsor, Life Site News for sponsoring this episode.)


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Dear friends, Friday was the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the principal feast of the Brown Scapular.
00:00:06.360 What a day to have to receive very disturbing news from Pope Francis regarding his overturning of the universal permission for the traditional Latin Mass given by Pope Benedict XVI.
00:00:16.320 But since God can do all things or work all things for the good of those who love him, we know that even in this the Lord will bring good.
00:00:26.320 So let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:28.440 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:00:34.200 What I'm going to provide you here is not an in-depth theological analysis, which you can find at LifeSiteNews.com.
00:00:40.060 I encourage you to go there and do that.
00:00:41.640 But I'm going to give you a very basic take on what's happening, especially for those who are largely unfamiliar with the traditional Latin Mass and what exactly all this means.
00:00:51.520 I must preface this by saying that I go to a Novus Ordo parish, where we do not have the traditional Latin Mass.
00:01:00.060 Ours is what you might call a reverend Novus Ordo.
00:01:03.740 When I have traveled, I've had access to the traditional Latin Mass and have been moved by it and longed for it.
00:01:10.900 So, from my simple and outsider perspective, here's what I see is going on.
00:01:16.600 Basically, the Catholic Church formalized the form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass over 1,500 years ago.
00:01:27.280 And that is why the traditional Mass is called the Ancient Mass or the Usus Antiquor, the Ancient Use.
00:01:34.600 It's also called the Mass of the Ages or the Old Rite.
00:01:38.360 It was used in most of the world already in the 6th century, that's the 500s, and everywhere by 1570.
00:01:47.660 Now, that all changed in 1964.
00:01:52.220 That's 1964, when after the Second Vatican Council, the new Mass, or what's called the Novus Ordo, was born.
00:02:00.540 Now, some of the major changes were these.
00:02:02.840 So, instead of the priest facing God in the tabernacle with the people, the priest was made to face the people,
00:02:11.540 which is seen by some as distracting for the priest, and it actually alters the focus of the people,
00:02:17.480 from one of witnessing the mystery to sort of watching the show put on by the priest.
00:02:23.140 There's debate over just how much the rubrics of the new Mass actually call for the priest to be facing the people,
00:02:29.640 but the widespread effect or the way that it's done has obviously been that it is extremely rare to find any Ad Orientem Novus Ordo celebration.
00:02:40.840 That means priest facing east or facing the tabernacle with the people.
00:02:45.000 Now, the readings at the Mass, apart from the Gospel, were permitted with the Novus Ordo to be read by lay people,
00:02:52.420 which was never done before.
00:02:53.380 Moreover, girls were permitted to serve at the altar rather than boys only.
00:02:59.340 The boys only service at the altar, by the way, was fertile ground for the inspiration to the priesthood for thousands and thousands of young men.
00:03:07.760 The Church had Latin as its common language from its earliest days.
00:03:13.380 This tradition was carried on even into modern times into the 1900s,
00:03:18.120 where it became a most unique feature such that all those who had traveled to different lands
00:03:23.740 could always worship together with other Catholics despite not knowing their local language
00:03:28.740 because every Catholic could pray in common in Latin.
00:03:33.060 I actually remember my dad, he was a visa officer for Canada, and he was stationed all over the world,
00:03:38.120 and he used to tell me that he was always at home at Mass with his missal for the readings
00:03:43.100 because he could pray with those people, even though he didn't know their languages.
00:03:48.700 But it's not only just the loss of Latin.
00:03:53.020 Because the prayers of the Mass themselves were altered to eliminate some of them,
00:03:57.560 which came from apostolic times.
00:04:00.740 And what was inserted instead at times was kind of mundane, banal phraseology,
00:04:06.140 which was formulated with a view to obscuring Catholic distinctiveness
00:04:10.440 in an apparent attempt to make the liturgy more appealing to other faiths.
00:04:15.260 Also, there was a distinct de-emphasis on hell and judgment
00:04:20.300 and the need for God's forgiveness of our sinfulness.
00:04:22.740 Using their missals, the books of prayers, the faithful used to silently follow along
00:04:29.440 with the prayers of the priest at the traditional Latin Mass,
00:04:33.080 some of which the priest whispers silently, and some of which he chants or says out loud.
00:04:41.000 All of the prayers and actions of the priest point toward the Mass being a sacrifice, not a meal.
00:04:49.360 However, with the Novus Ordo, it tends to emphasize a more sort of horizontal,
00:04:56.260 we are all together, communing, that sort of a thing,
00:04:58.940 rather than the vertical, which is praying to Almighty God
00:05:02.880 and preparing to receive Him in Holy Communion
00:05:05.420 after a representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.
00:05:11.940 So one of the other major differences in the Novus Ordo versus the traditional Mass
00:05:15.940 is that at the Old Mass, the faithful receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue
00:05:21.960 rather than standing and in the hand.
00:05:25.260 And at the traditional Latin Mass, every one of the priest's actions at the altar
00:05:29.820 has a sort of theological significance.
00:05:33.760 The faithful following along in their missals
00:05:36.640 see easy, simple explanations of this right in the missal.
00:05:41.680 The very fact that the Old Mass was celebrated by saints throughout the ages
00:05:47.760 for more than a thousand years
00:05:49.900 and then was changed in the 1960s,
00:05:53.660 which is the time period that actually spearheaded the revolt
00:05:57.500 against all things Orthodox
00:05:59.180 and has resulted in the greatest abandonment of the Catholic faith
00:06:03.240 ever seen in the whole of human history,
00:06:06.220 is at least for me enough to know
00:06:08.820 that this change to diminish the traditional Latin Mass
00:06:12.800 is a tragedy for the Church.
00:06:16.440 After the Second Vatican Council,
00:06:18.580 it was very hard to find a traditional Mass.
00:06:22.320 Some groups, like the Society of St. Pius X,
00:06:25.180 preserved the ancient liturgy,
00:06:27.700 and some bishops granted special permission
00:06:30.100 to priests to offer it in certain places.
00:06:32.520 Over the years, and with the establishment of more traditional orders
00:06:36.680 and the institution of more Latin-friendly bishops,
00:06:40.840 the availability of the traditional Latin Mass grew around the world.
00:06:45.400 On July 7, 2007,
00:06:48.440 Pope Benedict XVI issued a special document called
00:06:51.860 Summorum Pontificum,
00:06:54.180 which clarified that the Old Mass was never supposed to be abolished
00:06:57.820 and that every priest in the entire world
00:07:01.080 has the right to say it
00:07:02.480 and does not need his bishops' permission to do so.
00:07:06.680 Pope Benedict essentially said
00:07:08.200 the Old Mass had been unjustly suppressed
00:07:10.900 and the people who are attached to it unjustly treated.
00:07:16.820 What Pope Francis did,
00:07:18.820 with his new document now,
00:07:21.500 amounts to revoking the universal permission
00:07:23.560 to celebrate the Old Mass given by Pope Benedict XVI.
00:07:26.140 It is a slap in the face to Pope Benedict
00:07:28.980 while he is still living,
00:07:30.860 since Benedict wanted so much
00:07:32.980 to allow for and preserve the traditional Latin Mass.
00:07:36.920 And in case you had any doubts about Pope Benedict's wishes,
00:07:40.820 here are some pertinent quotes from his own books
00:07:44.500 to show you where he was coming from.
00:07:47.120 Pope Benedict XVI said in Salt of the Earth,
00:07:50.720 that's the name of the book,
00:07:52.180 I quote,
00:07:52.700 I am of the opinion, to be sure,
00:07:56.540 that the old right should be granted
00:07:59.180 much more generously
00:08:01.240 to all those who desire it.
00:08:04.220 It's impossible to see
00:08:06.520 what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that,
00:08:10.300 said Benedict.
00:08:11.320 He continued saying,
00:08:12.360 and I quote again,
00:08:12.920 A community is calling its very being into question
00:08:17.720 when it suddenly declares
00:08:19.480 that what until now
00:08:21.260 was its holiest and highest possession
00:08:24.500 is strictly forbidden,
00:08:25.840 and when it makes the longing for it
00:08:28.480 seem downright indecent.
00:08:31.260 End quote.
00:08:32.480 In another book called Spirit of the Liturgy,
00:08:35.540 Pope Benedict XVI said,
00:08:37.160 and I quote again,
00:08:37.820 For fostering a true consciousness
00:08:41.140 in liturgical matters,
00:08:42.700 it is also important
00:08:44.020 that the proscription,
00:08:45.620 that means the doing away with
00:08:47.140 or the suppressing,
00:08:48.660 the proscription against
00:08:50.100 the form of liturgy
00:08:51.340 in valid use up to 1970,
00:08:54.800 talking about the older Latin Mass,
00:08:56.920 of course,
00:08:57.700 should be lifted.
00:08:59.420 So in other words,
00:08:59.980 lifting any proscription
00:09:00.960 of the old Mass.
00:09:02.520 He continued,
00:09:03.780 and quote,
00:09:04.500 Anyone who nowadays advocates
00:09:07.040 the continuing existence
00:09:08.700 of this liturgy
00:09:09.560 or takes part in it
00:09:10.800 is treated like a leper.
00:09:12.840 All tolerance ends here.
00:09:16.080 There has never been anything
00:09:17.920 like this in history.
00:09:19.880 In doing this,
00:09:21.220 we are despising and proscribing
00:09:23.260 the Church's whole past.
00:09:26.900 How can one trust her at present
00:09:29.720 if things are that way?
00:09:32.180 End quote.
00:09:32.620 Those are again quotes
00:09:33.940 from Pope Benedict XVI.
00:09:36.480 So I'd like you all
00:09:39.600 to please join us at LifeSite
00:09:41.480 and sign and share our petition
00:09:43.780 to Pope Francis,
00:09:45.180 urging him to reconsider
00:09:46.900 this unjust and scandalous decision.
00:09:51.620 And finally, please pray fast
00:09:54.760 and do penance
00:09:55.400 for the salvation of souls,
00:09:56.680 including that of our shepherds
00:09:58.800 during this turbulent time
00:10:01.200 in Church history.
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