October 11, 1962 is a day I well remember. It was the day Pope John XXIII opened the vaunted Second Vatican Council in Rome, but that is not why I remember it. October 11 was my parents’ silver wedding anniversary and our family held a joyous, and for me unforgettable, celebration of that momentous event. I was a ten year old product of a staunchly Catholic family just beginning the fifth grade in parochial school. My world was family, neighborhood, and St. Vincent de Paul parish where I had been baptized and received the sacraments. Though I was only dimly aware of it, in far off Italy the Pope and 3,000 bishops were assembled and talking excitedly about a new “springtime in the Church.”

At the time such a promise seemed plausible enough. After all Masses were packed every Sunday, Catholic schools were bursting at the seams, seminaries couldn’t handle all the new vocations – all attested to by relentless parish building campaigns. Religious communities were flourishing and missionaries around the world were making tremendous strides in bringing the Gospel into remote regions which had never been evangelized. In the United States the first ever Catholic president was bravely standing down the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis. Among Catholics there was every reason for optimism. The Church had never been stronger or more sure of her divine mission, or so it appeared.

Ten years later a far different picture had emerged, that of a Church in crisis. Priests and religious were leaving their vocations in droves. Catechesis had fallen off a cliff along with Mass attendance. Seminaries were closing for lack of vocations even as the Pope himself was under siege by many of his own clergy for daring to restate the Church’s timeless teachings regarding openness to human life in Humanae Vitae. Catholics were struggling to adapt to a new, diluted Liturgy promulgated by that same Pontiff, Paul VI, and which seemed to be enervating Catholicism across the board. The Holy Mass somehow no longer felt as holy as it had been before 1962. The Council’s oft stated goal of a more active lay participation had instead manifested as restless boredom in the pews and indifference towards fulfilling one’s Sunday obligations.

As a Catholic youth I did not need to read survey results about declining Mass attendance to sense what was going on because I could tangibly see for myself that the dynamism of the Catholic Church was perceptibly waning. It had all begun in late 1964 when the first few liturgical changes were implemented. The first things to be jettisoned as ‘non-essential’ accretions were the beautiful prayers at the foot of the altar based on Psalm 42, Judica me, “I will go unto the altar of God, the God who gives joy to my youth,” and the profound Last Gospel – St. John’s prologue which meditates on the deep mystery of the Incarnation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1:1;14) Too, the Leonine prayers for “the liberty and exaltation of Holy Mother Church” including the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel had also been casually dismissed.

Psalm 42 heralded every Mass: “Judge me O God and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. Deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. For Thou, O God, are my strength. Why has Thou cast me down?.. Send forth Thy light and Thy truth; they have led me unto your holy mountain and to your tabernacle.” This passionate plea was immediately followed by the Confiteor, “I confess to almighty God…” first the priest confessed then servers (standing in for the people) in humble preparation before approaching the altar itself. Praying silently, the priest would then ascend the steps, “Take away from us our iniquities, we implore you Lord, that with pure minds we may worthily enter into the Holy of Holies, through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

After 1964 the priest assumed a different posture, now marching proudly up to the altar like some conquering hero or, more aptly, a Protestant reformer. Even in my adolescent mind there was something lacking in decorum and holiness in this parade ground approach. Imperceptibly the celebrant rather than the ‘Holy of Holies’ had somehow become the focus of attention.But these early adaptations were but precursors of what was to come. By 1970 a completely reconstructed liturgical rite called the Novus Ordo (or New Mass) was mandated by the Holy Father. It essentially redirected liturgical attention away from transcendent divinity to a more mundane and earthy familiarity with God; attitudes as disparate as a formal tuxedo is to blue jeans.

Like most other Catholics (i.e., of those who actually stayed) I went along with the changes with little thought, though I did miss the quiet dignity of the older liturgy at times. The cacophonous melodies which edged out sublime Gregorian chants rankled my ears but I learned to tune much of it out mentally. Sure, the altar had been flipped around so that the priest, with his back awkwardly turned to God in the tabernacle, had gone from being the anonymous divine mediator (in persona Christi) and thrust into the role of an entertaining program host. The ‘Holy of Holies’ which the sanctuary had previously represented was thrown wide open and populated with countless lay functionaries ‘doing their thing.’ I did not yet understand how all this busyness and trespassing upon God’s inviolate sanctuary in fact bordered on sacrilege. The altar itself, a solemn precinct for sacrifice, was rendered in the consciousness of the faithful into little more than a convivial banquet table around which to gather (amid ceaseless noise and chatter).

Along with the disappearance of communion railings, respect for the Holy Eucharist diminished in proportion. The faithful no longer received the Body and Blood of Christ kneeling, but standing – and by the mid 1970s were routinely taking the Eucharist in their hands, a trend that quickly became the accepted norm, despite the obvious danger of carelessly dropped or stolen hosts. As an altar server I had been trained that it was a sacrilege for anyone but the priest to handle the consecrated host. Yet after 1970 the clergy’s apparent disregard for protection of, and reverence toward, the Sacred Species unsurprisingly led to corresponding attitudes of entitlement regarding reception of Holy Communion. Confessing one’s sins beforehand became rare and optional accompanied by a general diminishment of respect towards the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist among a poorly catechized laity.

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski points out how the Priest’s Communion, which takes place under both species and prior to the faithful receiving Communion, was intentionally and ceremonially separated from the laity’s. The priest self Communicates standing whereas the people, kneeling, were ‘fed’ the Body of Christ directly on the tongue as young birds are fed by their parents. More importantly, “His Communion is required for the completion of the sacrifice; the people’s is desirable but optional… It expresses the dogmatic truth that the priest acts in persona Christi capitis by virtue of a sacramental character of priesthood that sets him apart from (and hierarchically above) the simple baptized.” * The Mass is both a sacrifice and a sacrament, and the sacrifice can only be completed when the priest offering it consumes the offering. Kwasniewsksi argues that in all the flurry of lay ministers dispensing Communion to the people under both species, and in the hand, the Communion of the priest and the faithful are conflated. The ‘objective redemption’ by Christ on the cross represented by the priest’s Communion is thereby confused with the ‘subjective redemption’ of the people who only receive the Sacrament.

As the many liturgical reforms progressed post Vatican II, any sense of sacredness seemed to get lost in all the new ‘liturgical activities,’ including smarmy background music and armies of lay ministers even as the priest’s function faded towards the inconsequential. All if this seemed to undermine the words of Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei. “The unbloody sacrifice by which Christ is made present upon the altar in the state of a victim through the words of consecration, is performed by the priest and by him alone as bearing the person of Christ, and not as taking the place of the faithful.”

This means that the priest is not just another minister or some delegate from the congregation but acts uniquely in the person of Christ (in persona Christi) offering himself to the Father. For this reason Mass was celebrated ad orientem towards the tabernacle and not facing the people (versus populum) from time immemoriam. Christ’s oblation is being offered to God the Father, not to the people. Turning the altar and the priest away from God to face the people greatly diminishes both the meaning and our understanding of this great sacrificial immolation which is at the very heart and soul of every Mass.

Please do not misinterpret my basic point. I am not arguing that the Novus Ordo Missae is somehow a defective or invalid form of the Mass. It is both a valid and acceptable form of worship because it was promulgated under the authority of Pope Paul VI and the Catholic Church. Thus when one receives the Eucharist at a Novus Ordo Mass, he is truly consuming the precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. It is, in other words, truly the Mass, but it has unfortunately been stripped of much of its ceremonial meaning and teaching content. The main problem lies in its diminished efficacy in terms of instructing and sustaining the faithful when compared with the traditional Roman Latin Rite. The disparate levels of piety and reverence manifested between the two rites are palpable even to the most casual observer. The Novus Ordo is a singularly distinct and novel liturgy which bears but a fleeting resemblance to its predecessor. It is no longer the classic Latin Roman Ritual which was the fruit of well over a thousand years of tradition and minute incremental developments, but a Johhny-come-lately improvisation.

In my view, Pope Benedict XVI mixed up the babies in Summorum Pontificum when he labeled the Traditional Latin Mass as the ‘extraordinary form’ while referring to the Novus Ordo as the ‘ordinary form’ of the Roman Liturgy. In fact just the opposite would be a more accurate appraisal since the TLM was the ‘ordinary form’ of celebration in the West from the 6th century at least. It was the 1970 Novus Ordo Missae which represented an extraordinary and unprecedented development in the Church’s history, namely the cut and paste ‘invention’ of an entirely new Mass ritual by a Vatican committee.

Now the Pope’s and bishop’s mandate is that of custodians of tradition, not the inventors of so-called ‘new traditions,’ itself a somewhat oxymoronic term. In his November 19, 1969 general audience, Pope Paul VI introduced what he explicitly called the “New Rite” (as distinct from the traditional “Roman Rite”) to the Catholic world. In that address he called his new Missal “an act of obedience (and) coherence of the Church with herself. It is a step forward for her authentic tradition. It is a demonstration of fidelity and vitality, to which we must all give prompt assent.”

Dr. Kwasniewski observes multiple ironies therein, “It is left quite unclear how the “coherence of the Church with herself” is to be achieved by breaking with much of what the Church had been doing in her most important actions for centuries. It is quite unclear how exactly a radically revised missal counts as a “step forward” (whatever that means) for the Church’s “authentic tradition” (whatever that means). I do not think it would be unfair to call this doublespeak.” * Any cursory examination of the 1962 Roman Missal with its Paul VI replacement reveals colossal shift away from continuity. And it was not only the new missal but the accompanying wholesale radical revision of the liturgical calendar, displacement of Latin chants in the Divine Office, and re-translation of Biblical texts (along gender neutral lines) that all became a distressing part of that still ongoing process.

The net effect of all of these newly minted ‘traditions’ was to alter Catholic parish culture by communalizing and ‘democratizing’ the hierarchal nature of the liturgy. The focus of the Mass became a “gathering of God’s people” rather than the supreme act of sacrificial worship rightfully offered to our almighty Creator. Soon the busy (and noisy) activities of countless liturgical Marthas preempted the quiet contemplative adoration of Mary (“Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her,” (Lk. 10:42) even as the laity was goaded into ever more “active participation.” Recall that our Lord only dedicated three years of his life to his active public ministry. The first 30 years of his life were spent in contemplative submission. “He went down with them to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” (Lk 2:51)

All this newly mandated ‘participation’ tended to devastate the Catholic behavioral psyche as the parish church became less and less a sacred place reserved for prayer and more like a cozy living room brimming with casual conversation. (Even the architecture began to reflect this lax attitude as newer churches were built ‘bank lobby’ style, replete with padded pews for comfort.) God was now to be found in our neighbor, yet sorely neglected in his tabernacle. (Another nod to Protestantism?) Subconsciously at least, the new liturgical assemblies displayed a greater concern for human affairs than a humble and obedient worship of the omnipotent God. The mystical experience of quiet prayer (God, Mary, angels and saints) had been effectively expunged, replaced by incessant chatter and social flurry (announcements, lay ministries, social work, and endless committees).

Lex orandi, lex credendi, as you pray so will you believe. If the supreme act of prayer, the Mass, is a noisy, shallow, and distracted experience then one’s faith will also remain close to the surface, struggling to sustain one in times of temptation or crisis. The Mass must be a time of deep spiritual reflection and pondering on God’s ineffable love within each person’s soul, something which the Traditional Mass, in its quiet dignity, always greatly encouraged. We need to cultivate a contemplative attitude, not interactions with persons in the next pew, if our prayer is to be most profitable. After a 40 plus year drought I was finally given the grace to rediscover the beauty and spiritual fulfillment which the Latin Mass of the Ages so abundantly showers on the faithful, a pearl of great price given by Christ to his Church, and the source of inestimable graces. As always, the Church’s past is also her future, so embrace this tremendous treasury of graces. It is your rightful Catholic patrimony.

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.

footnotes: * Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite, Tan Books, 2022