A Protestant Fable

Even today there are very many Catholics who still do not, cannot or (worse) will not comprehend the
profoundly ecumenical-protestant nature of the Novus Ordo rite, or why this is a problem. Just as many are
now wholly ignorant of the Catholic theology of the Mass it deliberately replaced. For these people this article
seeks to explain what I judge to be the anti-Catholic nature of the Novus Ordo, while for those readers who do
already have a grasp of these matters, reviewing again the differences between the main Traditional Rite of the
Latin Church and the Novus Ordo may help to a correct understanding of the entire current crisis faced by the
Catholic Church, especially as it gathers pace towards its inexorable conclusion in these days of doctrinal
anarchy and nihilism from Pope Francis.
Let us begin with Father Adrian Fortescue in ‘The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy’ (1912) which offers
eloquent testimony to the verifiable ancientry of the Traditional Latin Mass:
“Our Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest liturgy of
all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out
the faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to God. The final
result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in
Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.“ (p. 213) Father Fortescue was right. Even Patriarch Alexei II of
the Russian Orthodox Church, no friend to Catholics, welcomed the motu proprio ‘Summorum Pontificum’ by
congratulating Benedict XVI for having recaptured for Catholic use what Alexei termed “ ... the oldest rite in
Christendom, East or West”.

War on Catholic Doctrine

The same cannot be said about a man-centred, desacralised, protestantised liturgy fabricated by a shadowy
committee with revolutionary intentions, a liturgy characterised, almost line by line, by its hostility to the
Traditional Mass’ unambiguous presentation of Catholic dogma. The fabricators knew exactly what they were
doing. No one can creditably say that the alarming replication of the liturgical changes wrought by heretics in
the sixteenth century which has engulfed unsuspecting Catholics since 1970 was due to some strange
coincidence.
How the Mass gives glory to God and sanctifies Catholics, and teaches and reinforces Catholic dogma is at
issue here. The ancient Mass canonised by Pope Saint Pius V is unequivocal when it comes to Catholic doctrine
on the Real Presence, the Mass as a propitiatory Sacrifice, and the unique, irreplaceable role of the
consecrated priesthood. The Novus Ordo, the creation of a committee aided by six Protestants, and inspired by
a well-documented spirit of false ecumenism, demonstrably fails to guard and protect the faith of Catholics.
There is a virtually unlimited amount of evidence to rove it.
Dr Smith, one of the Lutheran representatives on the commission which was responsible for fabricating the
new liturgy publicly boasted that “we have finished the work that Martin Luther began”.
Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a Traditionalist, wrote his ‘The Reform of the Roman Liturgy’ (with an
approving preface written by Cardinal Ratzinger), in which he described the Novus Ordo as an unprecedented
break with the Church’s entire liturgical tradition: “There has never actually been an actual break with Church
tradition, as has happened now, and in such a frightening way, where almost everything the Church represents
is being questioned.” (p. 109)
He also wrote that “The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman Rite ... is the
wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source of our piety and
our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church, the inspiration of countless Catholics over many
centuries. Will someone, some day, be able to say the same thing about the Novus Ordo? Many Catholics
agonize over the question: what can be done about the loss of our faith and of our liturgy?” (p. 102)
On November 26 1969, Pope Paul VI uttered some of the strangest words ever spoken by a reigning Pope,
arguably on a par at least with the same Pontiff’s “smoke of satan” remarks:
“We ask you to turn your minds once more to the liturgical innovation of the new Rite of Mass … a change in a
venerable tradition that has gone on for centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious
patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled … It is the kind of upset
caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits … This novelty is no small thing … We have reason indeed
for regret, reason almost for bewilderment.”

Aims of the Novus Ordo

“It is not simply a question of restoring a valuable masterpiece, in some cases it will be necessary to provide
new structures for entire rites … it will truly be a new creation.” – Annibale Bugnini, May 7 1967, La
Documentation Catholique, no. 1493
“An ecumenically-oriented sacramental theology for the celebration of the Mass emerged … it leads us … out
of the dead end of the post-Tridentine theories of sacrifice, and corresponds to the agreements signalled by
many of last year’s interfaith documents.” - Fr. Lengeling, Consilium member.
Evidence of the intended doctrinal changes comes from an irrefutable witness, Bugnini’s assistant, Father Carlo
Braga (‘Proprium de Sanctis’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 84 (1970), 419):
“Revising the pre-existing text becomes more delicate when faced with a need to update content or language,
and when all this affects not only form, but also doctrinal reality. This (revision) is called for in light of the
new view of human values, considered in relation to and as a way to supernatural goods … In other cases,
ecumenical requirements dictated appropriate revisions in language. Expressions recalling positions or
struggles of the past are no longer in harmony with the Church’s new positions. An entirely new foundation of
Eucharistic theology has superseded devotional points of view or a particular way of venerating and invoking
the Saints. Retouching the text, moreover, was deemed necessary to bring to light new values and new
perspectives.”
(Not entirely new, Father Braga! The “foundation” of which you speak was known to the Church ever since its
creators – Luther, Cranmer, Bucer et al – invented it.)
If anyone is inclined to dismiss the importance of the changes to the prayers in the Mass and their effect, they
need to read the words of Monsignor A.G. Martimort, another of Consilium’s experts:
“The content of these prayers is the most important of the liturgical loci theologici (theological sources). The
reason is that they interpret the shared faith of the assembly.” (‘The Church at Prayer’, vol. 1).
Compare the words of Father Braga when he said in 1970 that the New Missal will indeed “have a transforming
effect on catechesis” (Il Nuovo Messale Romano, Ephemerides Liturgicae 84) with those of Pope Pius XII who
wrote in his encyclical, Mediator Dei, that the entire liturgy “bears public witness to the faith of the Church.”
I think anyone who claims that “triumphalist” or “restorationist” Catholics who want the True Mass, the Mass
which sanctified and sustained so many Saints and Martyrs, are motivated by aesthetics (“bells and smells”) or
nostalgia, really do need to revise their extremely shallow opinion. It is about doctrine and about who owns
the Church – Christ and His (growing) army of true Catholic faithful; or a bunch of revolutionary heretics?
The undeniable truth is that, from the time Bugnini’s Mass was foisted upon the Catholic faithful, the
objections were doctrinal. The expression ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ (the law of prayer is the law of belief) was
at the heart of the many critiques that followed. This issue wasn’t a novelty either. The doctrinal importance of
the liturgy has been keenly felt by the Church and Her enemies since the time of Cranmer and Luther.
Novus Ordo Theology
So exactly what is the theology behind the Novus Ordo? The best place to start is the General Instruction (GI)
which accompanied Pope Paul’s New Missal in 1969. The Instruction was meant to be the theological blueprint
of the Novus Ordo. On 30 August 1968, Bugnini had stated that “the General Instruction is a full theological,
pastoral, catechetical, and rubrical exposition, that it is an introduction to the understanding and celebration of
the (New) Mass.”
Such was the uproar caused by doctrinal objections to the New Missal and General Instruction, notably those
objections included in the ‘Ottaviani Intervention’, that publication of the Missal was delayed for five months.
To save the project, a bit of nifty footwork was required with the wording of the General Instruction. An altered
Instruction was produced with the intention of putting a “Tridentine” gloss on things.
Hardly surprisingly, the language used in the revised General Instruction’s definition of the Mass glows with the
ambiguity and double speak, the familiar stamp of the Modernists. The Catholic terms Mass and Eucharistic
Sacrifice are presented alongside the Protestant terms Lord’s Supper and memorial of the Lord respectively.
Christ’s substantial, corporeal presence is equated with His presence in the congregation and in the Scripture
readings. And just for good measure, it’s the “people of God” who celebrate, having been called together. The
revised Instruction does not clearly state that the Mass is a sacrifice of propitiation, offered to God for the sins
of the living and the dead. Also, wherever the word sacrifice appears in the Instruction, the word meal is never
far away. So Catholics are now left to choose to believe that the Mass is either:
• A propitiatory sacrifice, the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, offered by an ordained priest, in
which Our Lord is made present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity through
transubstantiation; or
• An assembly of the people, with a presider, celebrating the memorial of the Lord’s Supper, during which
Our Lord is present in the congregation, and the readings, as well as in the bread and wine (sic).

Realistically, no amount of ‘reform of the reform’is going to protect Catholics from random spectacles of
sacrilege. Of course there are good priests with the very best of intentions, but does anyone believe that true
reverence at Mass and in Church can ever become the universal norm with the Novus Ordo? The Novus Ordo
reforms are programmed to facilitate a laissez faire policy, precisely because of a lack of rubrics.
Before Children’s Masses, Clown Masses, Beer Tent Masses, Beach Masses, Rugby World Cup Masses, Heavy
Rock masses, Hindu masses, Voodoo Masses, Masonic masses or Sodomite Masses were ever known, the
doctrinal threat to Catholics’ faith was highlighted by those who refused to go along with the revolution. The
evidence was available, written down for all to see, or least for those who cared to look. Problems with the
Novus Ordo don’t begin with clowns or with balloons. They begin with the General Instruction presented in
1969.
In a 1975 statement, Father Emil Joseph Lengeling, a member of the Consilium’s Study Group 18, gave the
following rather revealing commentary on the 1970 Instruction:
“In the 1969 General Instruction for the (new) Missal, an ecumenically-oriented sacramental theology of the
celebration of Mass emerged – a theology already self-evident in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and in
Pope Paul VI’s instruction on the Eucharist. Despite the new 1970 edition forced by reactionary attacks – but
which voided the worst, thanks to the cleverness of the revisers – it takes us out of the dead end of the post-
Tridentine theories of sacrifice and corresponds to the agreement marked out in many of last year’s inter-
confessional documents.” (Tradition und Fortschritt in der Liturgie (1975), 218-219).
The following words of Pope Leo XIII could have been written with the twentieth century destroyers of the true
Catholic Mass in mind. “They knew only too well the intimate bond which unites faith with worship, ‘the law of
belief with the law of prayer,’ and so, under the pretext of restoring it to its primitive form, they corrupted the
order of the liturgy in many respects to adapt it to the errors of the Innovators.” (Apostolicae Curae, 13
September 1896).
That the Novus Ordo is imbued with a protestant and ecumenical spirit is undeniable. Both were condemned
time after time by Pope after Pope up to Vatican II. Were they all wrong? For those who support the Novus
Ordo, the only honest answer has to be “yes”.
Novus Ordo and Vatican II
It is widely accepted that the Novus Ordo is a gross abuse even according to the vague Vatican II constitution
‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’ which promulgated it, a document itself replete with what Michael Davies and
others have termed “liturgical time-bombs”.
The Second Vatican Council said this regarding the reform of the liturgy:
1. "...no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own
authority." (22.3)
2. "...care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms
already existing." (23)
3. "...the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites." (36.1)
4. "The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other
things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services." (116)
5. "The texts intended to be sung must always be in conformity with Catholic doctrine; indeed they should be
drawn chiefly from Holy Scripture and from liturgical sources." (121)
From which it can be seen that the present liturgical life of the vast majority of parishes in the Catholic world
as well as the Mass of Paul VI itself, is in blatant defiance of even the Second Vatican Council.
Who amongst the laity was asking for the Novus Ordo in the first place, before in was introduced? No-one. It
was simply imposed; and millions were squandered on printing endless paperwork, the vandalization of
churches, on the brainwashing of young seminarians, on the subversive work of confidentially-organized
pressure groups, on the organization of “refreshment courses”. Are not the new church buildings monuments
of ugliness and even temples of uncharity, “As ugly as sins” as one architect called them in his book? Where
are the works of art which our ancestors left us as a precious heritage and our liturgical gurus took liberty to
demolish in order to satisfy their monstrous appetites? Many books have been written and many more could
be written about the scandal to which we were and still are exposed.
The bishops and the priests have forgotten Latin if they ever knew what it was, people are used to the street
vernacular “translations”, to the lazy, mechanical “active” repetition of phrases with their minds elsewhere, to
sit comfortably most of the time, “feel well”; and the priests are “pleased” for being so "pastorally relevant”.
All that activity!
Well, the Traditional Rite too requires an active involvement, whether in a silent prayer of one’s own choice or
in following the priest’s prayers from their Missals - all that requires a substantial effort, whether one can read
Latin or chooses to follow the text in a vernacular. It will obviously require much time, resources, active
involvement of the clergy, instructions by the Hierarchy, to rebuild what was easy to vandalize in such a short
period of time by those who had no sense of duty, no sense of responsibility, no charity, no faith:- only their
own barbaric instincts.
You don’t need a degree in theology to understand that the effect the Mass has on those present does not
depend on its validity alone. The ritual itself (where is found what is essential for validity), can make the Mass’
impact on an individual the opposite of what the Sacrifice of Calvary upon the altar offers us: it can, and
regrettably with the Novus Ordo does, empty Christ’s Sacrifice of all meaning, as we all know from YouTube,
endless reports from around the world, and all the tragic experience of the last fifty years.
We have even had a public apology of the Pope John Paul, an apology unprecedented in the entire history of
the Church: “I would like to ask forgiveness - in my name and in the name of all of you in the Episcopate - for
everything which … may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of doctrine and
the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray.. that… we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this
Sacred Mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that
exists in our faithful people” (Dominicae Cenae 1980).
Nothing changed. He complained again in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia 2003 (9/6, 52/1), then Rome
issued “Redemptionis Sacramentum” in 2004, listing the pages of abuses, and all in vain. It is now for decades
that we have been enjoying the “benefits” of these abuses; there is no improvement in sight, and we must
accept the fact that these so called “abuses” are what the Novus Ordo is all about, and that the Mass of the
kind celebrated in the London Oratory is itself a gross abuse. It should be now clear that the term “Inferior
Form” reflects the reality of the ‘Ordinary Form’.
"...no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own
authority."
This is routinely ignored by many, perhaps most, priests.
"...care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already
existing."
The new liturgy did not grow organically from the old, but arose from a wholesale revision of the ancient Mass
by a commission made up of six protestants and one Archbishop later exiled to Iran which was not
representative of either the College of Bishops or the laity. Even Paul VI argued much with this commission,
whom he frequently chastised for going too far.
"...the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites."
Obviously the Council, though wanting to provide limited space for the vernacular, did NOT mandate that the
WHOLE liturgy should be celebrated in it.
"The Church acknowledges Gregorian Chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things
being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services."
Though Gregorian Chant is prescribed in the new Missal, it is in reality totally replaced by vernacular songs
(even the word “hymn” seems to have disappeared). And the “Chant” we do get is not the timeless beauty of
Gregorian Chant but the dirge-like intonations of self-appointed musically-bereft “liturgical composers”.
"The texts intended to be sung must always be in conformity with Catholic doctrine; indeed they should be
drawn chiefly from Holy Scripture and from liturgical sources."
These aforesaid songs are most frequently NOT drawn from either Scripture or liturgical sources, at least not
primarily. I have personally witnessed “Let it Be” by the Beatles being proffered as a recessional hymn. This is
not religion. It’s a mad house, a bedlam.
“To conclude, innovation should not be made unless when real and definite advantage will accrue to the
Church” (SC 23).
Well, what exactly are these advantages which were the condition for an allowance for innovations? The
numerous documents complaining against abuses confirm that there are no advantages. Admittedly, the
complaints are usually preceded by a glorification of “benefits”, but we are never told what these benefits are.
The body of “experts” chosen to tailor the liturgy did not seem to have been competent in matters of sociology
and psychology (Fr. A. Nichols, OP, Looking at the Liturgy 1996). They seem to have had some DIY idea as to
what is ... “better for the people”, and chose to carry the matter through without any preliminary sociological
or psychological studies. Can one imagine such a reconstruction, without preliminary studies of its possible
impact, in any serious business? But obviously, our “experts” did not have to put at risk their own or
shareholders’ pockets: their experiment has to be paid by their experimental rabbits - “the people of God.”
Let us always keep to the front of our minds the fact that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is crucial; it’s
paramount; it’s intrinsic to everything, like all Sacraments which are portals to eternity, as sacramentals are
whispers and ‘brushings’ with it. The Sacrifice of the Mass is the Church’s heartbeat; it’s the Church’s breath.
All of reality returns to Calvary to the source of our Redemption to be nourished, re-invigorated, revitalised.
We cannot live without Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Body and Blood. We must worship Him in the most beautiful
and gravest manner possible, using the Rite of Mass developed since the earliest days by so many generations
of our ancestors, who loved and revered it.

Challenges to the Novus Ordo

The greatest challenge to the Novus Ordo came from a previous Prefect of the Holy Office (later, the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Cardinal Ottaviani, and his colleague Cardinal Bacci (‘The Ottaviani
Intervention’, 1969). They and a team of theologians examined the new rite and wrote to Pope Paul: “The
Novus Ordo Missae, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules… is impregnated with the
spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the faith.”
“We have limited ourselves to a summary evaluation of the Novus Ordo where it deviates most seriously from
the theology of the Catholic Mass and our observations touch only those deviations that are typical. A
complete evaluation of all the pitfalls, the dangers, the spiritually and psychologically destructive elements
contained in the document—whether in text, rubrics or instructions – would be a vast undertaking.”
Cardinal Alfons Stickler, November 27, 2004: “The analysis of the Novus Ordo made by these two cardinals has
lost none of its value nor, unfortunately, of its relevance …. the results of the reform are considered by many
today to be devastating. It was to the credit of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci that they discovered very quickly
that the change of the rites led to a fundamental change of doctrine.”
Pope Paul VI, October 13, 1977: “The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world.
The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy,
the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.”
“I sometimes read the Gospel passage of the end times, and I attest that, at this time, some signs of this end
are emerging.”
(One must ask if Paul VI recognised all this, why didn’t he do something about it? Perhaps his Novus Ordo had
something to do with it? Then why did he impose it on us? The mystery of iniquity is a mystery indeed.)
Pope John Paul II, visit to the USA in 1979: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical
confrontation humanity has gone through. … We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church
and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine
Providence; it is a trial which the whole Church … must take up.”
A healthy Church (at the level of the laity at least) has collapsed. Indeed, the collapse was more or less
complete by the mid-1970’s: all since then has been a series of stases before further lurches downwards.
We have seen everything changed, but as noted nothing has affected us so much as the changes in the Mass. It
is my contention that the Novus Ordo is, even in the hands of an orthodox priest, a lethal weapon against the
Catholic Faith. One does not need to discuss here whether the Novus Ordo is a valid Sacrament per se or not:
this article assumes that it is (although many hundreds of thousands of individual Novus Ordo Masses have
undoubtedly been invalid for want of valid matter or form over the last decades). But valid is the very, very
least it should be. There should be so much more.

What is the Catholic Mass?

The Mass, as the centre of our Holy Faith, should:
1. Reinforce the entire Catholic Faith in every aspect. The way in which we worship contains within itself not
only what we believe but also the spirit , or tone, of that belief;
2. It should reverently point the individual Heavenwards to the majesty and glory of God;
3. It should present to the individual (sic) soul the starkness and finality of the moral choices we have to make
as Catholics in order to inherit Eternal Life;
4. It should keep us in safe continuity with the two thousand years of organic (and in fact miniscule)
development of the Church’s main western liturgy, so that we can be Catholics hearing the same words and
seeing the same gestures as an Italian of the 4th century, a Portuguese of the 9th century, a Swede of the 14th
century, an Englishman hearing a recusant Mass in the 17th century; as any Catholic at all until the late 1960’s.
Communion in worship is also communion in belief not only with one’s fellow Catholics throughout the world,
but with all Catholics throughout the centuries back to the time of Christ Himself.
The Novus Ordo does not fulfill any of these functions of worship. It is a terrible charge to lay on the Novus
Ordo that it represents a non-Catholic religion, but I believe that fundamentally the charge is justified. It
represents a speculative, liberal, protestant- ecumenical religion, not Catholicism.
A personal word: I was born in 1963 so came to self-consciousness with the changes already made. I count
myself extremely lucky to be the child of parents whose whole lives and characters were formed by and
steeped in the Catholic Faith of their parents, people of the First World War generation. So prayers were said,
our home was full of Catholic pictures, statues, music, books and conversation, going to Mass was a serious
event and the whole world of Catholicism was in our home constantly (but increasingly challenged by the
secular storm of wind blowing over the entire world at that time). I remember that when my mother reached
the door at the rear of the church, she would turn to the altar, cross herself and bow to Our Lord in the
Tabernacle. She never spoke until she had physically left the building altogether. I have never forgotten it. The
next time I saw someone do the same was thirty-five years later, in Moscow, and it was a Russian Orthodox
believer leaving an Orthodox church. What we have lost! The entire Catholic intimacy with the divine has
more or less disappeared. Two thousand years gone in a decade!

Novus Ordo Failure

The rupture we know has caused conflict within countless families, civil war in the Church, and apostasy on a
scale not seen since the 16th century and before that, in the time of Arius. Countless souls must have been
lost. If people stop going to Confession and to Mass, how can they receive the Grace necessary to conquer
concupiscence and stay free of mortal sin? And they did stop going to the Novus Ordo, in their millions. Yes, it
is plain that at the heart of the rupture is the Novus Ordo.
Can we say wherein lies the heart of the rupture?
At its bottom-most level, it must be the Hierarchy’s loss of faith in the existence of God and the invisible world,
which for any authentic Catholic should be the world that has most pull on his mentality, thoughts, conduct,
and whole life.
It also represents - as the citations above prove - the fruit of a significant number of people within the Church
who were seeking ways of robbing the Mass of its Catholic nature in order to appeal to German, Dutch,
American, English and other protestants, to whom they already felt closer than they did to their fellow
Catholics. I think we also have to accept that yet others, how many one cannot say, actively wished to do the
Church harm. These people comprised a broad section of the revolutionary range. Some were Modernists who
had kept a low profile since the time of Pope St. Pius X but who were still very much around, having found
ready homes in the Benedictine Order and in the Society of Jesus. Their world-view was shaped by the
seeming triumph of “historicity”, by the (coming, they thought) triumph of Marxism and its “truths”, and by
the onward march of science and technology, particularly the steamroller of the concept of evolution in all
things.
A Novus Ordo was needed, these said, for the Modern Man formed by all these things, one which gives Man
greater “dignity”. A Mass was needed for the “community” (the (Marxist Collective) where the individual soul
was no longer called to say in his heart “I believe” but, along with the Collective, had to say “We believe”. The
mind-set produced by this emphasis is wholly communal: thus the Mass as a “meal” (as Bergoglio has said, for
the Catholic Church now, Salvation is a communal undertaking). Let us say it directly: the Novus Ordo is the
Marxist Collective at prayer (and all too often it is the Collective praying to itself, or simply the Collective
meeting qua Collective with a prayer or two just to make it “actuate” itself).
What these people were effecting was the second round of the Protestant Rebellion - this time from the
inside. Hence the destruction of the Priesthood via a loud emphasis on the idea of the “priesthood of all
believers”; while the elimination of specifically Catholic doctrine about Sacrifice was determined by an
ecumaniacal obsession whereby Lutherans and Anglicans, to whom we had apparently been so nasty for so
long, would at last be appeased.
With its centre of gravity not Christ above the individual soul (a vertical relationship) but the Collective (a
horizontal relationship), there was needed a new physical orientation: priest and people face each other; the
Tabernacle to which I knelt and prayed as a small boy had to be thrust out of sight into some alcove chapel. All
barriers (altar rails) that “denied” the Collective its rightful dignity were removed so that the Sanctuary became
the whole Church. New churches were built which appeared to be modelled not only on ancient Greek or
Roman theatres where the Collective could gather round itself in the horizontal dimension, but directly on the
model of the synagogue or the Masonic temple. The churches of all our forefathers had been built in another
dimension entirely, vertically, in a line from the faithful to the deacon to the priest to Christ on His Cross to the
Father Almighty in Heaven, an arrangement reflecting the nature of the Catholic Church itself and the proper
worship of God.
Culturally, the Novus Ordo has been a catastrophe of world historical proportions. That the Church, repository
of the greatest fruits of human endeavour in history, should have effectively turned its back on its cultural
greatness is like the Irish monks of the 9th Century saying, “What the hell, the transmission of all that Greek
and Roman knowledge is boring, let’s chuck all that parchment into the Atlantic and get drunk”.

Novus Ordo and Condemned Heresies

The Novus Ordo sleeps with many nefarious bedfellows. Iconoclasm (of an order not seen since the
Iconoclastic Heresy of the Eastern Church or the so-called “Reformation”) is one of them: it has made our
worship and our churches culturally utterly impoverished, and all of us are as a result greatly diminished. It is a
real catastrophe.
• it is a Mass specifically created (the first time this has been done in history) to meet an imagined
sociological need of a supposed “Modern Man” (who theologically does not exist);
• as the creation of a committee, it cannot possibly have any organic link with the venerable rite of at least
1,600 years which it replaced;
• it was, without question, deliberately designed to protestantise the Catholic Church;
• it has led to Christ and His Death on the Cross for us sinners being thrust out from the centre to the
periphery, both literally and figuratively;
• it is proud, trumpeting a “dignity” of Mankind that we sinners do not deserve;
• it is a cultural non-entity, a disaster;
• it banishes the soul’s private communion with God through noise and distraction, making such communion
well-nigh impossible;
• it cries out on every side its sheer infantility;
• it is the deliberate collectivisation of the Church’s worship in Marxist and/or Masonic form;
• practically, there are as many forms as there are Masses. This has been admitted by the liturgical experts
who, together with then Cardinal Ratzinger, participated at the Fongombault Liturgical Conference 2001
(whose proceedings were edited by A. Reid OSB in ‘Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy’ 2003).
There is another charge, of real importance in these days of the rejection of even biological reality by the
gender ideology supporters. The Novus Ordo is not manly but effeminate. As Cardinal Heenan of England said
in 1967 after witnessing the ‘Novus Ordo Missa Normativa’ for the first time in Rome, “At home, it is not only
women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to Mass. If we were to
offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday we would soon be left with a congregation of women and
children.”
And another thought. How the modern Church witters on about the “signs of the times”! Yet it dumped the
True Mass, which bound all Catholics of every race and language together, just as globalisation, world tourism
and the intermingling of nations was taking off. Some reading of the signs of the times that was! You just
couldn’t make it up, it’s so pathetic.
In the end, some few years ago, I had to stop attending the Novus Ordo. If I had continued, I felt I would have
simply lost my faith. Certainly I would have been bored to death by the sheer banality of it all, or moved to
anger: the sight of laymen and women traipsing about the Sanctuary as if they owned it enrages me. As an
altar boy, the Sanctuary for me was a holy place, not to be defiled by anything or anyone profane. It was a
great honour for me to be on the Sanctuary at all.
We have to get the Traditional Mass back if we ever want the Church to triumph in this world. You can’t abuse
it. Indeed, it is impossible to assist at it and NOT be a Catholic.
A bad priest can turn the Novus Ordo into straight-forward sacrilege (Buenos Aires Tango Masses, etc.) whilst a
good priest has one arm permanently tied behind his back by it, which is why I believe that it cannot be
reformed. By its very nature it’s not Catholic. The truth is that it is only because the sad figure of Pope Paul VI
couldn’t stomach what Bugnini really wanted to do that we have a valid Mass now at all. And even so he had to
be shamed into some kind of stand by the “Ottaviani Intervention” of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci.
And in what does the difference fundamentally lie? It lies in a wholly different theology, about the Church
(what it is, who is a member), about Our Lord Jesus Christ, about sin and Redemption, about one’s relationship
with God, about Salvation. The Traditional Mass places me where the Faith says I belong, on my knees before
God, knowing that only through His Grace can I be saved. The Novus Ordo puts me in the centre, in the place
of God Himself - or at the very least, alongside Him. It assumes my deification has already been achieved. But
the whole mood of the post-conciliar Church is one of presumption about our Salvation, isn’t it?
A few more quotations:
Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, main author of the Novus Ordo, L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965: “We
must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a
stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.” (ie, we must stop being Catholics and
change our religion!).
And again, in 1974, he said, “ … the reform of the liturgy has been a major conquest of the Catholic Church”.
(These words of Bugnini should be pondered on in silence). Now would follow “The adaptation or ‘incarnation’
of the Roman form of the liturgy into the usages and mentality of each individual Church.”
Father Kenneth Baker, SJ, editorial February 1979 “Homiletic and Pastoral Review”: “We have been
overwhelmed with changes in the Church at all levels, but it is the liturgical revolution which touches all of us
intimately and immediately.”
Professor Peter L. Berger, a Lutheran sociologist: If a thoroughly malicious sociologist, bent on injuring the
Catholic community as much as possible had been an adviser to the Church, he could hardly have done a
better job.”
Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand: “Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters had been
entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better.”
Cardinal Heenan of Westminster, autobiography “A Crown of Thorns”: “Subsequent changes were more radical
than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the decree on the Liturgy. His sermon at the
end of the first session shows that Pope John did not suspect what was being planned by the liturgical
experts.”
Cardinal Heenan warned the Council Fathers of the manner in which the periti could draft texts capable “of
both an orthodox and modernistic interpretation.” He told them that he feared the periti, and dreaded the
possibility of their obtaining the power to interpret the Council to the world. On 26 June 1966 The Tablet
reported the creation of five commissions to interpret and implement the Council’s decrees. The members of
these commissions were, the report stated, chosen “for the most part from the ranks the Council periti”.
Father Joseph Gelineau SJ, Council peritus, enthusiastic proponent of the post-conciliar revolution, wrote in
“Demain la liturgie”: “To tell the truth it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without
ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.”
Cardinal Sarah, April 2017: The Church has experienced “devastation, destruction and wars” not only in the
liturgy, but also in doctrine, morals and Church discipline. “More and more voices of high-ranking prelates
stubbornly affirm obvious doctrinal, moral and liturgical errors that have been condemned a hundred times,
and work to demolish the little faith remaining in the people of God”. (Catholic Herald).
Poor Cardinal Sarah! It is almost funny that half a century’s patient work by true Catholics who love the Church
have eventually won the day and put our Hierarchy to such a shame that they no longer have any idea how to
get out of the swamp they jumped into on their own initiative.
Final Word
In calling the Novus Ordo and the Old Mass “two versions of the same Rite”, Benedict XVI was engaged in naive
hopefulness at the very least. His “reform of the reform” was always doomed. Lovable as he was, he was trying
to sell us a bottle of snake oil. You can’t put go-faster stripes on a Zhiguli and expect people to think it’s a
Bentley. In comparison with the True Mass, the Novus Ordo is a child’s scribble alongside a Caravaggio; it is a
Damian Hirst dead cow in formaldehyde alongside Michaelangelo’s Pieta. They are different and mutually
antagonistic things. The one is Catholic to the last syllable. The other is a cuckoo planted deliberately in the
Catholic nest, to the latter’s almost mortal injury.
How to sum it all up? For myself, I believe that one can only conclude by saying that the revolutionaries who
gave us the Novus Ordo hated the Church, hated Catholicism and hated Catholics; and after fifty years of the
Novus Ordo, in the hatred for the Traditional Mass of their Episcopal and lay descendants is discernible the
hatred of the demons for God, and for us, His creation.