Newsletter #52 – Our Lady of Mount Carmel USA

Dear Friends and Benefactors, 04/21/2020

“The true priest loves souls, gives himself to them, sacrifices himself for them for the love of God. He gives himself to souls as he gives them the Eucharist. He gives them Jesus by teaching and by Holy Communion. All of his priestly life thereby becomes a Mass. The holy priest lives his Mass and brings all those around him to live it, as well. He leads them to understand that all of our lives ought to be a Mass, a total oblation, a continual sacrifice of ourselves, out of love of God and out of love of neighbor. That is the ideal of the true priest, an ideal which brings him a lasting joy and peace of soul.” (Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre)

As priestly ordinations are approaching in a couple of months at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Seminary, Boston, Kentucky, let us understand better what a priest should be and its current crisis using the wisdom of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

THE TRUE PRIEST AND THE TRUE MASS (Conference, October 29, 1984, Stuttgart, Germany)

There comes to mind an objection made by a certain Benedictine abbot at the conference which Archbishop Bugnini gave before 24 superiors of religious orders – I myself was present at this conference – at Rome, before the publication of the New Mass. When he introduced to us his “Normative Mass,” Archbishop Bugnini spoke to us precisely about this participation of the faithful, active participation, as if before Vatican II the faithful had never participated in the Mass. And so, an abbot got up and said, “Father, if I understand correctly, we should not say private Masses anymore, since there is no congregation, and thus no participation by the people in our Masses.” The response was, “Quite truthfully, we have not envisioned that.” Incredible! As he himself said, this idea has inspired the liturgical reform, an idea which reverses the roles, giving the greater role to the assembly, and no longer to the priest and the sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Our Lord.

I have been asked to give you a few reflections on the spirituality of the priest. I cannot very well separate the spirituality of the priest from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

To my mind there are not two different kinds of priestly spirituality, there is only one: that of his Mass, that of the Sacrifice of Our Lord, because the priest is essentially the man of sacrifice. I would say there is a transcendental relation between the priest and the sacrifice, and between the sacrifice and the priest. One cannot imagine sacrifice without a priest, and the priesthood without sacrifice. And so, there is a relation there that is more than essential, transcendental really, a relation that goes beyond even the essence of the priest. So, we must go back to the idea of the Sacrifice. One can say that our sacrifice, the sacrifice which Our Lord has put into our hands, the sacrifice which Our Lord has left us, is a thing without limit, inexpressible, so divine and mysterious is it, that it surpasses everything we can imagine.
To think that we are really “other Christs,” and that it is His words, His words that produce His presence, that we recite these words each morning, that it is not simply a narrative but also an action, and that we say, “This is My Body,” we do not say, “This is the Body of Jesus Christ.” But we say, “This is My Body,” “This is the chalice of My Blood” it is we ourselves who pronounce it! Consequently, we are truly in the Person of Christ, it is truly Christ that we represent. It is no longer we who speak; it is Our Lord Who makes use of our lips, Who makes use of us to pronounce these words anew. There it is, I truly believe, the great program of the priest, the program of priestly life: his Mass. That is why the Mass is so important. And this program, it is not really complicated, it is very simple.

The first part of the Mass consists in teaching: “to teach all nations,” that is our role. We have to teach precisely because we have the Teaching Office. Our Lord said to us, to priests, “Teach all nations.” He did not say that to just anybody, He said that to His Apostles, and so we have this role and we must teach. That is what we do in the first part of the Mass, more especially than in the other parts. May we be solicitous that our teaching truly be the teaching of the faith, that our teaching truly be the teaching of the Church! And may I point out that the faith is essentially connected with Revelation, and Revelation is essentially connected with Tradition: Faith, Revelation, Tradition! And that is why, when we say we are traditionalists, we are right. We must be traditionalists; there can be no Catholics who are not traditionalists. Tradition is part of our faith. We should not forget that there was a time of prophecy, as St. Thomas says. There was a prophetical epoch which began with the first prophets, continuing right up to the Prophet Who is Our Lord Jesus Christ: He is the Prophet, there is none greater, none holier, none more perfect, than this Prophet.

Thus, the prophetical epoch continued right up to Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostles were joined with Our Lord Jesus Christ to announce the Gospel. After the death of the last Apostle, the prophetical epoch came to a close, was finished; there is no other prophet, there can be no other prophet after Our Lord. Who could surpass Our Lord? Who could say: “I come after Our Lord to complete what Our Lord said”? Who could say such a thing? God Himself has come, who can make himself greater than God? There are no more prophets; the time of prophecy is finished, terminated.
St. Thomas goes on to say: “Then followed the dogmatic epoch,” the time of definitions, that is, the time in which the contents of Revelation were defined, that which was revealed, that which is in the deposit of faith. And the popes have no other role than to define what is in the deposit of Revelation—not to add a single truth, but simply to say: “This is in the deposit of revelation.” That is where Tradition comes in: Tradition, from generation to generation, from pope to pope, from council to council, the tradition of the Faith, of what has been defined, and to the extent to which it is defined it is untouchable, one can no longer touch this truth, it is defined for all times.
When a pope uses his infallibility, it is the deposit of faith, the treasure of our faith, there is thus a tradition, which we cannot avoid, which we must keep, hence the importance for us to always refer to the past, to refer back to what the Church had always taught. Now, this is the great error of Cardinal Ratzinger, the great error of those who are in the Church today, who say to us: “The Church is a living body and so it evolves, always changing, always in evolution, the Church is not a corpse.” Truth is always the same. When I said to Cardinal Ratzinger, “Look, religious liberty and Quanta Cura are incompatible,” “Oh,” he said, “we are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura.” We are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura, then tomorrow we will no longer be in the times of their own new truths – this is not possible!
Now in this first part of the Mass, which, I would say, is the model for our own teaching, we must refer back to that, to Tradition. The essence of what St. Paul said is: “Tradidi vos quod et accepi – I have passed on to you what I have myself received.” Already in his time he said that, and he said: “If an angel himself says the contrary of what I have handed on to you, or if I say the contrary of what I have passed on to you, may I be anathema!” And that is serious! And so, neither do we have the right to deny what was handed down to us.

There are two other parts of Holy Mass, the part with the consecration, the Sacrifice, and then the part where the priest communicates, which are united because we are united to our Victim, Our Lord.
First, the Sacrifice. I now make a distinction between gratia sanans (grace healing) and gratia elevans (grace elevating), the grace which Our Lord gives us in Baptism, which He also gives us in the Sacrifice of the Mass. The augmentation of this grace has the aspect of “healing” and “elevating.” – Grace healing that is the sacrificial, penitential aspect, of compunction for our faults, of everything that heals us. It is the Blood of Our Lord, it is in the Sacraments, in the Sacrament of Penance… then, there is “grace elevating” which lifts us up, the Holy Ghost Who elevates us with Our Lord Jesus Christ in contemplation, in the love of the Father, in the love of the Holy Trinity. In the Sacrifice of the Mass, we find ourselves as it were on the Cross again with Our Lord. That is the sacrificial and penitential aspect, the healing aspect, but also the aspect of love, of charity, of the contemplation of Our Lord.

Next comes the third part: the communion of the faithful. Fundamentally we cannot give them more than Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we must prepare them, precisely by teaching, and then we are the doctors of their souls by the Sacrament of Penance, by the advice we can give. We must do this in such a way that souls receive Our Lord Jesus Christ under the best conditions, so that they can receive this gratia sanans and gratia elevans, and unite themselves with Our Lord the Victim, Our Lord Who praises His Father for eternity.

These are, in summary, the different aspects of the Most Holy Sacrifice, which are very important, essential, and which are an entire program of life, this is practically our entire program of priestly life. I wish that we could always gain a deeper understanding of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There you can see the change on the perspective on the Mass: if one insists only on the meal, as the progressives do now, on the meat the table, the table of the eucharistic banquet the sharing of bread, the sharing of the word – they leave aside the aspect of the Cross, the sacrificial aspect which lifts us up to heaven. Let us not separate the aspect of Our Lord which lifts us right up to the bosom of the Trinity, in the midst of praise, the propitiatory aspect of sacrifice which covers us with the Blood of Our Lord, which heals us of our maladies, precisely this “healing grace.” We ought not to forget that there is “healing grace” and “elevating grace”—there are these two aspects of grace.

NEW (NOVUS ORDO) PRIESTS (‘Open Letter To Confused Catholics’)

To the man in the street, even the most indifferent to religious questions, it is obvious that there are fewer and fewer priests, and the newspapers regularly remind him of the fact. It is over fifteen years ago since the book appeared with the title “Tomorrow a Church without Priests?”.
Yet the situation is even more serious than it appears. The question has also to be asked, how many priests still have the faith? And even a further question, regarding some of the priests ordained in recent years: are they true priests at all? Put it another way, are their ordinations valid? The same doubt overhangs other sacraments. It applies to certain ordinations of bishops such as that which took place in Brussels in the summer of 1982 when the consecrating bishop said to the ordinand “Be an apostle like Gandhi, Helder Camara, and Mahomet!” Can we reconcile these references, at least as regards Gandhi and Mahomet, with the evident intention of doing what the Church intends?
Here is the order of service for a priestly ordination which took place at Toulouse a few years ago. A commentator starts off, introducing the ordinand by his Christian-name C., with the words “He has decided to live more thoroughly his self-dedication to God and to man by consecrating himself entirely to the service of the Church in the working-class”. C. has worked out his “pathway”, that is to say, his seminary training, in a team. It is this team who present him to the bishop: “We request you to recognize and authenticate his application and ordain him priest.” The bishop then asks him several questions purporting to be a definition of the priesthood: Do you wish to be ordained a priest “to be, with the believers, a Sign and a Witness of what Mankind is seeking, in its striving for Justice, for Brotherhood and for Peace”, “to serve the people of God”, “to recognize, in men’s lives, the action of God in the ways they take, in their cultural patterns, in the choices open to them”, “to celebrate the action of Christ and perform this service”: do you wish “to share with me and with the body of bishops the responsibility that has been entrusted to us for the service of the Gospel?”
The “matter” of the sacrament has been preserved in the laying on of hands which takes place next, and likewise the “form”, namely the words of ordination. But we are obliged to point out that the intention is far from clear. Has the priest been ordained for the exclusive service of one social class and, first and foremost, to establish justice, fellowship and peace at a level which appears to be limited to the natural order only? The eucharistic celebration which follows, “the first mass” in effect, of the new priest was, in fact, on these lines. The offertory has been specially composed for the circumstances. “We welcome you, Lord, by receiving on your behalf this bread and wine which you offer us; we wish to show by this all our work and our efforts to build a more just and more humane world, all that we are trying to bring about so that better living conditions may follow …”. The prayer over the offerings is even more dubious. “Look, Lord we offer you this bread and this wine, that they may become for us one of the ways in which you are present”. No! People who celebrate in this manner do not believe in the Real Presence!
One thing is certain; the first victim of this scandalous ordination is the young man who had just pledged himself for ever without exactly knowing to what, or thinking that he knows. How can he not fail, sooner or later, to ask himself certain questions? Because the ideal that has been proposed to him cannot satisfy him for long; the ambiguity of his mission will become evident. It is what is called “the priest’s identity crisis”. The priest is essentially a man of faith. If he no longer knows what he is, he loses faith in himself, and in his priesthood.
The definition of the priesthood given by Saint Paul and by the Council of Trent has been radically altered. The priest is no longer one who goes up to the altar and offers up to God a sacrifice of praise, for the remission of sins. The relative order of purposes has been inverted. The priesthood has a first aim, which is to offer the sacrifice; that of evangelization is secondary.
The case of C, which is far from being unique, as we know of many examples, shows to what extent evangelization has taken precedence over the sacrifice and the sacraments. It has become an end in itself. This grave error has had serious consequences.
Evangelization, deprived of its aim, loses direction and seeks purposes that are pleasing to the world, such as a false “social justice” and a false “liberty”. These acquire new names: development, progress, building up the world, improving living-conditions, pacifism … Here is the sort of language which has led to all the revolutions.
The sacrifice of the altar being no longer the first purpose of the priesthood, it is the whole of the sacraments which are at stake and for which the “person responsible for the parish sector” and his “team” will call upon the laity, who are themselves overburdened with trades-union or political tasks, often more political than trades-union. In fact, the priests who engage in social struggles choose almost exclusively the most politicized organizations. Within these they fight against political, ecclesiastical, family and social structures. Nothing can remain. Communism has found no agents more effective that these priests.
I was explaining one day to a Cardinal what I was doing in my seminaries, with their spirituality directed above all to the deepening of the theology of the Sacrifice of the Mass and towards liturgical prayer. He said to me, “But Monsignor, that is exactly the opposite of what our young priests now want. We now define the priest only in terms of evangelization.” I replied, “What evangelization? If it does not have a fundamental and essential relationship with the Holy Sacrifice, how do you understand it? A political evangelization, or social, or humanitarian?”
If he no longer announces Jesus Christ, the apostle becomes a militant and Marxist trades-unionist. That is very natural. We quite understand it. He needs a new mystique and he finds it this way; but loses that of the altar. We must not be surprised that, completely bewildered, he gets married and abandons the priesthood. In France, in 1970, 285 ordinations; in 1980, 111. And how many of them have returned or will return to civil life? Even the startling figures we have quoted do not correspond to the actual decline in numbers of the clergy. What is offered to young men and what it is said they “now desire” evidently does not satisfy their aspirations.
The proof is easy to demonstrate. There are no more vocations because they no longer know what is the Sacrifice of the Mass. In consequence, one can no longer define what the priest is. On the other hand, where the Sacrifice is known and respected as the Church has always taught, vocations are plentiful.
I have witnessed this in my own seminaries. All we do is to affirm the everlasting truths. Vocations have come to us of their own accord, without publicizing. The only advertising has been done by the modernists. I have ordained 187 priests in thirteen years. Since 1983 the regular numbers are from 35 to 40 ordinations per year. The young men who apply to enter Econe, Ridgefield (USA), Zaitkofen (West Germany), Francisco Alvarez (Argentina) and Alaban (Italy) are drawn by the Sacrifice of the Mass.
What an extraordinary grace for a young man to go up to the altar as the minister of Our Lord, to be another Christ! Nothing is finer or greater here on earth. It is worth the cost of leaving one’s family, of giving up having a family, or renouncing the world and accepting poverty.
But if there is no longer that attraction, then I say frankly, it is not worthwhile, and that is why the seminaries are empty.
Let them continue on the lines adopted by the Church for the last 20 years, and to the question “Will there still be priests in the year 2000?” The answer must be, No. But if there is a return to the true notions of the faith, there will be vocations, both for seminaries and for the religious orders.
For what is it that makes the greatness and the beauty of a priest or a nun? It is the offering up of oneself as a victim at the altar with Our Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, the religious life is meaningless. The young men are just as generous in our times as they were in former times. They long to make an offering of themselves. It is our times that are defective.
Everything is bound up together. By attacking the base of the building, it is destroyed entirely. No more Mass, no more priests. The ritual, before it was altered, had the bishop say, “Receive the power to offer to God the Holy Sacrifice and to celebrate Holy Mass both for the living and for the dead, in the name of the Lord.” He had previously blessed the hands of the ordinand by pronouncing these words “So that all that they bless may be blessed and all that they consecrate may be consecrated and sanctified.” The power conferred is expressed without ambiguity: “That for the salvation of Thy people and by their holy blessing, they may effect the Transubstantiation of the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood of thy Divine Son.”
Nowadays the bishop says, “Receive the offering of the holy people to present it to God.” He makes the new priest an intermediary rather than the holder of the ministerial priesthood and the offerer of a sacrifice. The conception is wholly different. The priest has always been considered in Holy Church as someone having a character conferred by the Sacrament of Order. Yet we have seen a bishop, not “suspended”, write, “The priest is not somebody who does things that the ordinary faithful don’t do; he is not ‘another Christ’, any more than any other baptized person.” This bishop was merely drawing the conclusions from the teaching that has prevailed since the Council and the liturgy.
A confusion has been made with regard to the relation of the priesthood of the faithful and that of priests. Now, as the cardinals said who were appointed to make their observations on the infamous Dutch catechism, “the greatness of the ministerial priesthood (that of priests) in its participation in the priesthood of Christ, differs from the common priesthood of the faithful in a manner that is not only of degree but also of essence.” To maintain the contrary, on this point alone, is to align oneself with Protestantism.
The unchanging doctrine of the Church is that the priest is invested with a sacred and indelible character. “Tu es sacerdos in aeternum”. Whatever he may do, before the angels, before God, in all eternity, he will remain a priest. Even if he throws away his cassock, wears a red pullover or any other color or commits the most awful crimes, it will not alter things. The Sacrament of Orders has made a change in his nature.
We are far from the priest “chosen by the assembly to fulfil a function in the Church” and still more so from the priest for a limited period, suggested by some, at the end of which the official for worship – for I can think of no other term to describe him – would take his place again amongst the faithful.
This de-sacralized view of the priestly ministry leads quite naturally to querying priestly celibacy. There are noisy pressure groups calling for its abolition in spite of the repeated warnings of the Roman magisterium. We have seen in Holland, seminarists go on strike against ordinations to obtain ‘guarantees’ in this matter. I shall not quote the names of those bishops who have got up to urge the Holy See to reconsider the subject.
The subject would not even arise if the clergy had kept the right understanding of the Mass and of the priesthood. For the true reason appears of itself when we fully understand these two realities. It is the same reason for which Our Blessed Lady remained a virgin; having borne Our Lord within her womb it was perfectly right and fitting that she should remain so. Likewise, the priest by the words he pronounces at the Consecration, brings God down upon earth. He has such a closeness with God, a spiritual being, spirit above all, that it is right, just and eminently fitting that he also should be a virgin and remain celibate.
But, some object, there are married priests in the East. However, let us not deceive ourselves: it is only a toleration. The eastern bishops may not marry, not those holding important positions. This clergy respects priestly celibacy, which forms part of the most ancient Tradition of the Church and which the apostles had observed from the moment of Pentecost. Those who like Saint Peter were already married continued to live with their wives, but “knew” them no longer.
It is noticeable that the priests who succumb to the mirage of a so-called social or political mission almost automatically get married. The two things go together.
People would have us believe that the present times justify all sorts of licence, that it is impossible under present day conditions to live a chaste life, that the vows of virginity for religious people are an anachronism. The experience of the last twenty years shows that the attacks made on the priesthood under the pretext of adapting it to the present time are fatal to it. Yet a “Church without priests” is not to be envisaged because the Church is essentially sacerdotal.
In these sad times they want free-love for the laity and marriage for the clergy. If you perceive in this apparent illogicality an implacable logic having as its objective the ruin of Christian society, you are seeing things as they are, and your assessment is correct.

WEARING OF THE CASSOCK (‘Open Letter To Confused Catholics’)

Another external sign against which opinion has solidified is the wearing of the cassock – not so much in church or in visits to the Vatican as in everyday life. The question is not of the most fundamental importance, yet it has great symbolic value…I read in a Paris newspaper this statement from an avant-garde priest: “This is childishness … in France, wearing a recognizable uniform is meaningless, because there is no need to recognize a priest on the street. Quite the contrary: the cassock or Roman collar creates a barrier … the priest is a man like anyone else. Of course, he is president of the Eucharistic assembly!”
This “president of the Eucharistic assembly” is here expressing ideas that are contrary to the Gospel and to clearly recognized social realities. In all religions, leaders wear distinctive signs. Anthropology, which is now all the rage, is there to prove it. Among Muslims you see differences in dress: collars and rings. Buddhist monks wear saffron-colored robes and shave their heads. Young people associated with this religion can be seen on the streets of Paris and other large cities, and their appearance evokes no criticism.
The habit identifies the cleric or the religious, as a uniform identifies a soldier or a policeman. But with a difference: these latter, in representing the civil order, remain citizens like other people, whereas the priest is supposed to keep his distinctive habit in all phases of life. In fact, the sacred mark he received at ordination means that he is in the world but not of the world. We know this from St. John: “You are not of the world; I chose you out of the world” (15.19). His habit should be distinctive and at the same time reflect the spirit of modesty, discretion and poverty.
Secondly, the priest has the duty to bear witness to Our Lord. “You are my witness … Men do not put a lamp under a bushel.” Religion should not be confined to the sacristy – as the powers in the Eastern European countries have long since declared it should be. Christ commanded us to spread our faith, to make it visible by a witness which should be seen and understood by all. The witness of the word, which is certainly more essential to the priest than the witness of the cassock, is nevertheless greatly facilitated by the unmistakable clear sign of the priesthood implicit in the wearing of the soutane.
Separation of Church and State, which is accepted and sometimes considered preferable, has helped the spirit of atheism to penetrate little by little into all the realms of activity, and we must admit that many Catholics and even priests no longer have a very clear idea of the place of the Catholic religion in civil society. Secularism is everywhere.
The priest who lives in a society of this type gets the ever-increasing impression of being a stranger in this society, an embarrassment, and finally a symbol of a past age, doomed to disappear. His presence is barely tolerated. At least that is the way he sees it. Hence his wish to identify with the secular world, to lose himself in the crowd. What is lacking in priests of this type is experience of less de-christianized countries than theirs. What is especially lacking in them is a profound sense of their priesthood…
In communist countries the first act of the dictators is to forbid the cassock; this is part of a program to stamp out religion. And we must believe the reverse to be true too. The priest who declares his identity by his exterior appearance is a living sermon. The absence of recognizable priests in a large city is a serious step backward in the preaching of the Gospel. It is a continuation of the wicked work of the Revolution and the Laws of Separation.
It should be added that the soutane (cassock) keeps the priest out of trouble for it imposes an attitude on him, it reminds him at every minute of his mission on earth, it protects him from temptations. A priest in a cassock has no identity crisis. As for the faithful, they know what they are dealing with; the cassock is a guarantee of the authenticity of the priesthood. Catholics have told me of the difficulty they feel in going to confession to a priest in a business suit; it gives them the impression they are confiding the secrets of their conscience to some sort of nobody. Confession is a judicial act; hence the civil law feels the need to put robes on its magistrates.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE NEW MASS AND LUTHER’S MASS (Conference, February 15, 1975, Florence, Italy).

I wish to speak to you this evening about the evangelical Mass of Martin Luther, and of the striking resemblance between his Liturgical innovations of more than four centuries ago, and the recently promulgated new order of the Mass, the Novus Ordo Missae.
Why are such considerations of significance? Because of the prominent role, according to the President of the Liturgical Commission himself, accorded to the concept of ecumenism in bringing about these reforms. Because, further, if we are able to ascertain that a close relationship does indeed exist between Luther’s innovations and the Novus Ordo, then the theological question, that is the question of the faith, must be asked in terms of the well known adage, “lex orandi, lex credendi”; the law of prayer cannot be profoundly changed without changing the law of belief.
It is well, in order to assist our understanding of the present liturgical reforms, to examine carefully actual historical documents on Luther’s reforms.
To grasp Luther’s goal in bringing forward his reforms we must briefly recall the Church’s doctrine with respect to the Priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The 22nd session of the Council of Trent (1562) teaches that Our Lord Jesus Christ, wishing His Priesthood to continue after His death on the Cross, instituted at the Last Supper a visible Sacrifice destined to apply the salutary effect of His Redemption to the sins of mankind. Christ therefore, instituted Holy Orders, and choosing His Apostles and their successors to be the priests of the New Testament, marked them as such with a sacred and indelible character.
This Sacrifice instituted by Christ is performed on our altars by the sacrificial action of the Redeemer Himself, truly present under the species of bread and wine, offering Himself as a victim to His Father. And by partaking at Communion of this Victim, we unite ourselves to the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and offer ourselves also in union with Him.
Thus, the Church teaches, first, that the Priesthood of the priest is essentially different from that of the faithful, who do not have the Priesthood but who belong to a Church which essentially requires a Priesthood. It is deeply fitting that this Priesthood be celibate, and that its members be differentiated from the faithful by clerical dress.
Secondly, the essential liturgical act performed by this Priesthood is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, different from the Sacrifice of the Cross only in that the latter was a bloody sacrifice, and the former is an unbloody sacrifice. The Sacrifice of the Mass is accomplished by the sacrificial action of reciting the words of the Consecration, and not simply by reciting a narrative, or by a remembrance of the Passion or of the Last Supper.
Thirdly, it is by virtue of this sublime and mysterious act that the effects of the Redemption are applied to the souls of both the faithful on Earth and the souls in Purgatory. This doctrine is most admirably expressed at the Offertory of the Mass.
Fourthly, the Real Presence of the Victim is thus required, and comes to pass through the change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Accordingly, we are required to adore the Eucharist and reserve for it the very highest respect, whence comes the tradition that priests alone distribute the Holy Eucharist and see to Its custody.
It follows, finally, that although a priest celebrates the Mass and takes Communion alone, yet he performs a public act, a sacrifice equal in value to any other Mass, and of infinite value to both the celebrant and the entire Church. Privately celebrated Masses, accordingly, are highly encouraged by the Church.
The above principles are the basis of the prayers, the music and the ceremonies which have made the Latin Mass of the Council of Trent a veritable liturgical jewel. The Council of Trent’s deeply moving doctrine on the Canon, the most precious element of the Mass, states:
“As it is becoming that holy things he administered in a holy manner and of all things this Sacrifice is the most holy, the Catholic Church, to the end that it might be worthily and reverently offered and received, instituted many centuries ago the Holy Canon, which is so free from error that it contains nothing that does not in the highest degree savor of a certain holiness and piety and raise up to God the minds of those who offer. For it consists partly of the very words of the Lord, partly of the traditions of the Apostles, and also of pious regulations of holy Pontiffs.” (Acts of the Council of Trent, session 22, chapter IV).
Let us examine the manner in which Luther achieved his reform of the liturgy, that is implemented the “evangelical Mass”, as he himself called it. Of particular interest in this effort are the actual words of Luther himself, or of his disciples, with respect to the reforms. It is enlightening to note the liberal tendencies which inspire Luther:
“In first place”, he writes “I would kindly and for God’s sake request all those who see this order of service or desire to follow it: do not make it a rigid law to bind or entangle anyone’s conscience, but use it in Christian liberty as long, when, where, and how you find it to be practical and useful.”(T,C. Tappert, ed., Selected Writings of Martin Luther, vol. 3,p. 397). “The cult”, he continues, “was formerly meant to render homage to God; henceforth it shall he directed to man in order to console him and enlighten him, Whereas the sacrifice formerly held pride of place, henceforth the most important will be the sermon”. (from Léon Christiani, Du luthéranisme au protestantisme (1910), p. 312)

Luther’s Thoughts on the Priesthood
In his work on privately celebrated Masses, Luther seeks to demonstrate that the Catholic Priesthood is a creation of Satan. He bases this assertion on the principle, henceforth fundamental to his thinking, that what is not in Holy Scripture is an addition of Satan. Accordingly, for Luther, since Scripture makes no mention of the visible Priesthood, there can be but one priest and one Pontiff, Christ. With Christ we are all called to the Priesthood, thus making the Priesthood at once unique and universal. What folly to seek to limit it to the few. Similarly, all hierarchical distinctions between Christians are worthy of the Antichrist; “Woe therefore, to those who call themselves priests”. (Christiani, Ibid., p. 269)
In 1520, Luther wrote “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian State”, in which he attacks the Romanists and urges the convocation of a free council:
“The first wall built by the Romanists is the distinction between the clergy and the laity. It is pure invention that pope, bishop, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate while prince’, lords, artisans and peasants are called the temporal estate. This is indeed a piece of deceit and hypocrisy. All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office… The pope or bishop anoints, confers the tonsure, ordains, consecrates, and prescribes garb different from that of the laity. He might well make a man into a hypocrite in so doing, but never a Christian or a spiritual man… Whoever comes out of the water of baptism can boast that he is already a consecrated priest, bishop, and pope, although of course it is not seemly that just anybody should exercise such office”. (Tappert, Ibid., vol. 1, 23-65)
It was from this doctrine that Luther concluded against both clerical garb and celibacy. He and his disciples, in fact, showed the way by marrying.
How many of the reforms of Vatican II reflect Luther’s own conclusions? The abandonment of clerical and religious dress, widespread marriages of the religious sanctioned even by the Holy See, the suppression of distinctions between priest and layman. This egalitarianism is further manifested in the sharing of liturgical functions formerly reserved to the Priesthood.
The abolition of the minor orders and the sub-diaconate, and the creation of a married diaconate, have also contributed to the purely administrative conception of the priest, to the detriment of his essentially priestly character. Thus, one is ordained primarily to serve the community and no longer for the purpose of offering Christ’s Sacrifice which alone is the justification for the Catholic concept of the Priesthood.
Worker priests, priests in labor unions, or in positions remunerated by the State similarly contribute to the blurring of distinctions between Priesthood and laity. In fact, the innovations go much further than those of Luther.
Luther’s second grave doctrinal error flows from the first and is founded upon its guiding principle: salvation comes from faith and confidence in God alone, and not from good works, thus negating the value of the sacrificial act which is the Catholic Mass.
For Luther, the Mass is a sacrifice of praise, that is an act of praise, of thanksgiving, but most certainly not an expiatory sacrifice which recreates the Sacrifice of Calvary and applies its merits.
Describing the liturgical “perversions” he observed in some monasteries, he wrote: “The Principal expression of their cult, the Mass, surpasses all impiety and abomination in that they make of it a sacrifice and a good work. Were this the only reason to leave habit and convent and abandon the vows, it would be amply sufficient”. (Christiani, p. 258)
For Luther, the Mass, which is meant simply to be a communion, has been subjected to a triple bondage: the laity has been deprived of the use of the chalice, they have been bound as to a dogma to the Thomistic opinion on transubstantiation, and the Mass has been made into a sacrifice.
“It is, therefore, clearly erroneous and impious”, he declared, “to offer or apply the merits of the Mass for sins, or the reparation thereof, or for the deceased. Mass is offered by God to man, and not by man to God”. (Christiani)
“With respect in the Eucharist, since it ought first and foremost to move one to the Faith, it is fitting that it be celebrated in the vernacular in order that all may comprehend the grandeur of God’s promise to man”. (Christiani, p. 176)
The logical consequence of this heresy was for Luther to abolish the Offertory of the Mass, which expresses unequivocally the propitiatory and expiatory aims of the Sacrifice. Similarly, he abolished a major part of the Canon, retaining only the essential passages as a narrative of Christ’s Last Supper. In order better to emphasize the latter event, he added to the formula of the Consecration of the bread the words “quod pro vobis tradetur” (“which will be given up for you”), and deleted both “mysterium fidei” (“the mystery of faith”) and “pro multis” (“for many”). He considered that the passages which both immediately precede and follow the actual Consecration of the bread and Wine were essential.
For Luther, the Mass is firstly the Liturgy of the Word, and secondly a Communion. For us that fact that the current liturgical Reforms have adopted precisely these same modifications is nothing short of astounding. Indeed, as we well know, the texts in use by the faithful today no longer make reference to the Sacrifice, but rather to the Liturgy of the Word, to the Lord’s Supper and to the breaking of bread, or to the Eucharist. Article VII of the instruction which introduced the new Liturgy reflected a clear Protestant orientation. A corrected version which followed in the wake of the outraged protests of the faithful remains sadly deficient.
It goes without saying that, added to these substantial alterations, the large number of lesser liturgical modifications have contributed further to the inculcation of Protestant attitudes which seriously threaten Catholic doctrine: the suppression of the altar stone, the use of a single altar cloth, the priest facing the people, the Host remaining on the paten rather than on the corporal, the introduction of ordinary bread, sacred vessels of less noble substances, and numerous other details.
There is nothing more essential to the survival of the Catholic Church than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. To play it down is to threaten the very foundation of Christ’s Church. The whole of Christian life, and the Priesthood, is founded upon the Cross, and upon the re-enactment of the Sacrifice of the Cross, upon the altar.
LUTHER DENIES TRANSUBSTANTIATION AND THE REAL PRESENCE AS TAUGHT BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. For Luther, the substance of bread remains. Consequently, in the words of his disciple Melanchton, who strongly opposed the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, “Christ instituted the Eucharist as a memorial of His Passion. To adore It is therefore idolatry”.
It follows that Communion is to be taken in the hand and under both species, which reinforces the denial of the presence of Our Lord’s Body and Blood; it is thus normal to consider the Eucharist as incomplete under a single species.
Once again, we note the strange resemblance between the present renewal and Luther’s Reform. Every recent promulgation on the Eucharist tends towards a lessening of respect, a retreat from adoration: Communion in the hand and its distribution by lay men and lay women; the reduced number of genuflections, which many priests have discontinued altogether; the use of ordinary vessels and ordinary bread, all of these innovations have diminished belief in the Real Presence as taught by the Catholic Church.
One cannot but conclude that, principles being inseparable from practice (“lex orandi, lex credendi”), the fact that the Liturgy of the present day imitates Luther’s reforms leads inevitably towards the adoption of the very principles propounded by Luther. The experience of the six years which have followed the promulgation of the Novus Ordo is sufficient proof. The consequences, of this so-called ecumenical effort, have been nothing short of catastrophic, primarily in the area of faith, and especially in terms of the perversion of the Priesthood and the serious decline in vocations, in the scandalous divisions created among Catholics the world over, and indeed in the Church’s relations with Protestants and Orthodox Christians.
Protestant concepts on the essential questions of the Church, the Priesthood, the Sacrifice and the Eucharist are irrevocably opposed to those of the Catholic Church. It was for no idle purpose that the Council of Trent was convened, and that the Church’s Magisterium has spoken so frequently on these very questions for more than four centuries since Trent.
It is impossible in psychological, pastoral and theological terms for Catholics to abandon a Liturgy which has always been the true expression and sustenance of their Faith, and to adopt in its place new rites conceived by heretics without exposing this Faith to the most serious peril. One cannot imitate Protestantism indefinitely without becoming Protestant.
How many of the faithful, how many young priests, how many bishops even have lost their Faith since the adoption of the new liturgical Reforms? One cannot expect to offend both Faith and nature and not expect that these in turn should reap their own vengeance.

AVE MARIA!
Father Joseph Poisson

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