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Rev. Rama Coomaraswamy

CREED AND CULT IN THE POST-CONCILIAR CHURCH
A STUDY IN AGGIORNAMENTO (part 6)

THE LEX ORANDI REFLECTS THE LEX CREDENDI

(It is a principle of the Church that the lex orandi or rule of prayer must reflect the lex credendi or the rule of belief.)

It the Novus Ordo Missae was to reflect the beliefs of the post-Conciliar Church and at the same time remain acceptable to Catholics brought up in the ancient faith, it had to:
1) avoid openly promulgating it's new doctrines while removing from its content anything that contradicted them. At the same time it could not openly deny a Catholic principle, it could only expurgate it;
2) It had to introduce changes slowly and retain enough of the outer trappings of a true sacrifice so as to give the impression that nothing significant was changed;
3) for ecumenical reasons, in had to create a rite that was acceptable to Protestants of every shade of persuasion, but who all consistently denied that the Mass was a true immolation and a propitiatory sacrifice.

The only way it could achieve all this was by the use of equivocation. As the Anglican theologian T. M. Parker said, it is 'an ingenious essay in ambiguity, purposely worded in such a manner that the more conservative could place their own construction on it, while Reformers would interpret it in their own sense and would recognize it as an instrument for furthering the next stage of the religious revolution.'

There was nothing ambiguous about the traditional rites of the Church, and indeed, they are, as the theologians any, a primary locus of her teachings. Despite the laxity of modern language, we should not forget that the ambiguous statement is fundamentally dishonest. Every father knows that when his child resorts to this method he is attempting to hide something. And every priest is familiar with the use of this technique in the confessional. It is even more dishonest when a person has once clearly spoken on an issue and then equivocates to disguise his change of mind.

Add to this the numerous 'deletions' from the traditional rite from which, depending upon which Eucharistic Prayer is used, between 60 to 80 percent has been 'liquidated'. It is of interest that the very first item to be deleted was the Last Gospel with its clear-cut statement 'all things were made By Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made...' and 'He came unto His own [the Jews] and His own received Him not.'

The second requirement was the need for the Novus Ordo Missae to retain the outer trappings of a Catholic rite. One is reminded of Luther's service. As the Jesuit Hartmann Grisar tells us:

'One who entered the parish church at Wittenberg after Luther's victory, discovered that the same vestments were used for divine service as of yore, and heard the same old Latin hymns. The Host was elevated and exhibited at the Consecration. In the eyes of the people it was the same Mass as before, despite the fact that Luther omitted all prayers which represented the sacred function of the Sacrifice. The people were intentionally kept in the dark on this point. ‘We cannot draw the common people away from the Sacrament, and it will probably be thus until the gospel is well understood', said Luther. The rite of celebration of the Mass he explained as a 'purely external thing', and said further that 'the damnable words referring to the Sacrifice could be omitted all the more readily, since the ordinary Christian would not notice the omission and hence there was no danger of scandals.'

The so-called 'Ottaviani Intervention' - the study of the Novus Ordo Missae by a group of Roman theologians and liturgists under the leadership or cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci - made the following comment with regard to the new rite: 'Having removed the keystone, the reformers had to put up a scaffolding.'

And in a similar manner, the changes were introduced slowly. Those who look back on the early days of Aggiorniamento will remember the almost weekly changes mandated. Cardinal Heenan bears witness to this feature, telling us we would have been 'shocked it all the changes had been introduced at once'. Changes came however, and one on top of another, and if we are to believe the hierarchy, still more are in the offing. (There is much talk today or 'Institutional Violence'. I can think of no better example of this than the manner in which the new 'mass' was forced down the throats of the laity.) Not everything went smoothly however. Paul VI bears witness to this. While on the one hand telling us that the New Order of the Mass was changed in 'an amazing and extraordinary way'; that it was 'singularly new', and that the greatest innovation - he used the theological term 'mutation' - was in the Eucharistic Prayer, he at one and the same time found it necessary to repeatedly assure us that 'nothing had changed in the essence of the traditional Mass'. Others witnesses are more sanguine. Father Galineau, another of the Conciliar Periti bluntly stated that the result was 'a different liturgy of the Mass. Cardinal Benelli stated that it reflected a 'new ecclesiology', and Father Bouyer stated that 'The Catholic liturgy has been overthrown under the pretext of rendering it more compatible with the contemporary outlook'. Finally, Archbishop Bugnini, Paul VI's executive officer and known Freemason, describes the result as 'a new song'and as 'la conquista della Chiesa'.