by Michael Davies
from
Catholic, October 1996
Mr Davies has been under some attack
since, by means of an interview in these pages, his position on a number of
issues has been made clear. There is no question as to the work that he has
done over the years to achieve the restoration of "the Tridentine
Mass to all the altars of the Church."
It must be remembered however, that there is more to the restoration of the
Church than the Mass, and to be satisfied with that, to the neglect of all
else, is simply not enough. But it also must be remembered that only from the
Old Mass, the Mass that is without question pleasing to God, will the graces
flow to achieve the rest.
And lest we be accused of defending the new Mass, we are not. But this battle
will not be won by making false claims about our adversary, this aberration
that is the Novus Ordo Missae. As Archbishop Lefebvre clearly
put it: "One can fairly say without exaggeration that most of these (new)
Masses are sacrilegious acts which pervert the Faith by diminishing it."
(1979)
The
Catholic Church was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son made
Our Lord assured us:
All power is gven unto Me in heaven and in earth.
Going therefore teach ye all nations: baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of
the world (Mt. 28:18-20).
The Church differs from all
other human societies in that the end to which She
directs Her members is a supernatural one. In order to achieve this
supernatural end, the Church's divine Founder invested or constituted Her with
power to teach us what we must know and do in order to be saved, and to provide
us with the grace necessary to live in accordance with this teaching.
The power of order (holy
orders), makes possible the communication of divine
life through the sacraments, particularly the Sacrifice of the
The Roman Rite, to which
the overwhelming majority of Catholics belong, is considered as equivalent to
the universal Church. It is thus incompatible with the profession of the
Catholic Faith to claim that any liturgical rite of Mass,
could be invalid, contain heresy, or harm souls. It is the unanimous opinion of
all the approved authors that the Church is infallible in her universal laws.
All the necessary documentation to prove this is contained in my booklet I
Am With You Always and I will not take up space by
reproducing it here, but I will be happy to do so if challenged.
It is thus, to put it
mildly, theologically untenable to maintain that "the New Mass is not a
Catholic liturgy...is in itself a danger to the faith and is intrinsically
evil" and is not "an official Mass of the Catholic Church".
The only people who could
logically make such a claim are the schismatic sedevacantists
who deny that Paul VI and John Paul II are true Popes. If a true Pope authorised an intrinsically evil Mass for the universal
Church it would mean that the Church founded by Our Lord had failed, which
would mean that He had made promises He could not keep and that He is therefore
not divine. There is only one person in the Church who can decide what
constitutes amd what does not constitute "an
official Mass of the Catholic Church" - and that person is the Vicar of
Christ in
It would be ludicrous to
claim that one could fulfil the Sunday obligation by
being present at an intrinsically evil rite of Mass! It has been claimed that
if one concedes the Catholic character of the New Mass one no longer has
"a valid reason for demanding the old". This came quite as a surprise
to me as I concede the Catholic character of the New Mass and I am quite
certain that no one in the entire world has devoted more effort to demanding
the old than I have. If there is any valid criticism of the New Mass that
cannot be found in my book Pope Paul's New Mass I would be most
interested in having it brought to my attention.
To deny the Catholic
character of the New Mass constitutes an explicit denial of the divine
authority of the Pope and must therefore be considered a schismatic act. To
state that the New Mass is intrinsically evil is also blasphemous. In the New
Mass God the Son is made present on the altar as our sacrificial victim, and
offers Himself to us in Holy Communion, with as much certainty as He does in
the old, and to state that the countless good orthodox priests who celebrate
the New Mass with great devotion daily are committing an intrinsically evil act
is both outrageous and blasphemous.
The promise of
indefectibility applies only to the Latin version of any sacramental rite
approved by the Pope and known as the typical edition, the edition which all
vernacular versions are supposed to reproduce faithfully. Only the Latin
version is approved for universal use and by definition no vernacular version
can be universal. All the vernacular Missals are indeed approved by the Pope,
but all this means is that he presumes that those who have approved the
translation have done their job properly. I would challenge any reader of Catholic
to point out anything in the Latin typical edition which is harmful to the
Faith, let alone intrinsically evil, or to state any aspect of Catholic
Eucharistic teaching which is not affirmed specifically in that Missal. Please
do not write if you have not examined the Latin Missal.
Those who have read my
books will be aware that I not only do not deny but affirm explicitly that the
Faith can be harmed, and even completely undermined, by assisting at the New
Mass in the vernacular, but this is the result of the deplorable ICEL
translation, the irreverent manner in which the New Mass is often celebrated,
the gimmicks incorporated into its celebration, and not to any intrinsic evil
in the rite itself.
On Easter Sunday this year,
the Easter Bunny distributed chocolate eggs during 'Mass' at St Patrick's
Cathedral at Toowomba in
To avoid any possible
misunderstanding, I am not claiming that Catholics should be satisfied with the
New Mass celebrated strictly acording to the rubrics,
either in Latin or the vernacular. I have devoted twenty-seven years of my life
to the cause of restoring the Tridentine Mass to all
the altars of the Church. This cause is not helped by going beyond the
evidence, by making theological statements that are untenable, and by making ourselves appear ridiculous to theologically literate
priests and laymen who are content to assist at the New Mass. My books are
aimed not at traditional Catholics, but at those who are not, in the hope of
convincing them that they should be. I have lost count of the number of those
who have written to me to say that my books brought them to, or back to
tradition, including a not inconsiderable number of priests in the Society of
St Pius X.
As regards the claim that
if one accepts that the New Mass is an official Catholic Mass there is no
reason for preferring the old, let me provide an analogy. Imagine that I had
the good fortune to own a Rolls Royce and then had the misfortune to have it
stolen. If the insurance company replaced it with a Mini-Minor I would
certainly object. They could state correctly that I had lost a car and I had
been given a car as a replacement, and that the Mini-Minor performed all the
functions of the Rolls Royce. Without denying that the Mini-Minor was a genuine
(valid and licit) car I would have no problem in explaining why I did not
consider it an acceptable substitute for the Rolls Royce. The Tridentine Mass is the most beautiful thing this side of
heaven, and we should be satisfied with only the most beautiful possible rite
of Mass to make present the sacrifice of our redemption.
There
is nothing that does more harm to the cause of the traditional Mass than
intemperate and untenable attacks upon the new one made by those claiming to be
traditionalists. The question as to whether the new Mass is or is not
intrinsically evil must be decided by our acceptance or rejection of the fact
that Paul VI was a true Pope. If he was then the New Mass is an official
Catholic Mass. Those who deny that Paul VI was a true Pope are schismatic and
their opinion is of no relevance to members of the indefectible Church founded
by Our Lord.