Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Well, I've decided this morning when I woke up that I
wanted to make some more friends. So I'm going to tell you why I think the nova
sordo will disappear necessarily and why ultimately it's not the will of God. So
buckle up for that if you're somebody who has a problem with that. And we're going
to get into not just my surface superficial rad rad opinions, but we're
going to look at I think some pretty important theological concepts and
hopefully it makes sense. Now, also, it should be noted that this is not an
indictment on any person. The lay faithful are not responsible for the
liturgical actions of hierarchs and the Pope. It's not your fault. We're in a
crisis in the church. If anyone takes this as a personal insult, then
that's just their own problem. It has nothing to do with what I'm saying.
That's just sort of stop being so sensitive, if I could say it that way.
And before we get to the meat of the argument, though, I'd like to say thank
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Calor. Okay, let's get into the heart of the show. So why am I saying this, you
know, the new mass doesn't really fit, isn't up to snuff? Why am I
saying that this liturgy itself, not just egregious demonstrations of it, but why
the liturgy itself isn't actually going to last and why it ought to disappear?
Well, before we even understand that, we've got to understand the purpose of
the mass in and of itself. And here is just a quick overview of the four ends
of mass. The first is adoration. Through the mass we give God solemn worship,
praise and honor. The second is thanksgiving. Through the mass we thank
God for all he has bestowed. The third is propitiation. Through the mass the
representation of the sacrifice of Christ upon Calvary, re-presentation, not
representation, God's justice for the sins of mankind is satisfied. Petition.
The fourth is petition. Through the mass we present God with our needs and ask for
graces. So number one, we adore God. Number two, we give
thanksgiving. Number three, we ask for the propitiation for the sins of
mankind. And number four, we ask for our needs. So Catholics understand this. Mass
is offered for the forgiveness of sins. We go to mass and we
bring things to the Lord. When we go to mass we worship God in mass and we adore
him and we give him thanksgiving. This is why, for example, Eucharistic
adoration is an amazing thing, but it doesn't satisfy all the different ends of
mass. It's adoration. And we give thanksgiving and stuff, but it can't
that actual, we could probably fulfill three. We could give thanksgiving, we
could give adoration, and we could have our petitionary prayers, but we wouldn't
be able to offer the sacrifice. This is why Protestantism is unable to
actually, is unable to worship God properly. It's impossible. And in fact, in
a book that I have here, which I did a three-hour podcast on Outside the Church
There's No Salvation, I recommend you listen to it there. This is really just a
long essay put together by a friend of mine named Mr. James Hanisch. It's not in
print. It's sort of a, you gotta be in the know to get the copy of this.
And all non-Catholic worship, all heretical schismatic worship, is actually
hateful to God. It is displeasing to God. It is impossible for, it is impossible
for a Protestant worship service to be pleasing to God. It offends God every
single time it happens. The individual person, you know, they may find their way
to the truth through the imperfect nature of their Protestant sect, which is a
heretical sect, in which no one can be saved. And that may happen, but the
actual worship itself, the act of worship, is detestable and is an abomination. All
non-Catholic worship, all schismatic, heretical, and non-Christian worship is
an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. This is what the Church has taught for
many, many centuries. Sadly, many Catholics don't understand this today
because it makes them squeamish, because we're all about ecumenism and the spirit
of Vatican too, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, so the forens of mass
must be reached. Must give adoration, thanksgiving, perpetuation, and petition.
So you have to ask yourself, is it possible that you could ever put together
a liturgy that would fulfill those ends more or less than another liturgy? Of
course it is. And even those who are fans of the nobis ordo, you must admit to
yourself that the impetus for a massive reformation of the mass, or restructuring
let's call it, the idea is that the mass that preceded it didn't meet the needs
of the people. Ultimately, the idea is that there was a deficiency. And this is
where sometimes I'll get accused of things by Pope's-plainer types and they'll
say things like, well look, Kennedy, the Council of Trent says that the Church
will never, the Council of Trent says that, I think whatever Canada is, 23,
something like that, the Council of Trent says that the Church will never produce
a mass that is a cause for impiety. I'm paraphrasing. And they'll say, you're
saying the new mass causes impiety. You're a heretic. Let you be an Athaman.
I'm the YouTube Magisterium. Look at me. Well, that's interesting. For one, piety
is a technical religious term. It talks about whether or not the mass will
be offered as a valid sacrifice or not. But secondly, if you believe that the
mass needed to change, then you believe that there was something that was not
being fulfilled, objectively speaking, by the old mass, which means it was
deficient. You can't escape this. Now there's a big difference between massive
restructuring and let's say organic development of the liturgy, the
refinement over time. Those are different things. Of course, there's
always been very, very, let's say minute and precise refinements to the liturgy
over thousands of years. But this wholesale change is completely unheard
of that happened with the new mass. So you've got to keep these things in mind
before we even talk about the liturgy. Does it meet the forens? Is it part of
the church's tradition? Well, ultimately, I will argue here. And again, please
read Dr. Krasniewski's book and Father Modzley's book if you can. A host of
other books by Michael Davies are great to read as well. But I will argue here
that the new mass isn't actually part of the sacred tradition. And it's also not
really even the Roman rite. And that's because if it's not apostolic through
the apostolic Roman tradition, if it's not part of that, then it can't be
naturally speaking the Roman rite. At best, what we have is we have a mass
that's sort of been grafted onto a tree. And if you know anything about horticulture,
you can do that the right way, or it causes the host to die. And you can make
your decision about what's happened with the new mass over the last 50 or 60
years. But I want to just bring up here real quickly, something from Dr.
Krasniewski speaking of his book. And here is a selection from oopsie daisy is
a selection from his book, the once and future Roman rite. This is a PDF copy. In
any case, so this is on a chapter, we talked about sort of the laws that
pertain to liturgy. And we're not going to go through all of those. But just real
quickly, we're going to get to law number three, which pertains to what I'm trying
to say here. So you can see here law number three, I think that's big enough
on the screen for everyone to read. And it says, law number three, the truth into
which the Holy Spirit guides the church includes the development of her liturgy.
So let's just pause there for a second. The claim here is the truth into which
the Holy Spirit guides the church includes the development of her liturgy.
Good ask yourself, do you believe that? If you believe that that's going to have
consequences. And let's just think about that for a second. If the Holy Ghost is
guiding the church, by the way, trads, you can say Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost. If
you look in the Angelus press missile and some of the old prayers, it does say
Holy Spirit. It's not it's not a it's not a trad non trad thing. Although Holy
Ghost is more common. I say it but it's not like it's not like your modernist
you say Holy Spirit anyway. So what was I saying? Okay, so if you believe that the
Holy Ghost guides the church, then that must necessarily include the liturgy.
Because where we have contact with the doctrine of the church laid out where
all Catholics have interaction with the essence of what the church is here for,
which is the salvation of our souls, which again think of those four ends of
mass, including the propitiation of our sins.
If that's the case, then that means the Holy Ghost must guide the liturgy. It's
not as if the Holy Ghost guides the church and says make it up as you go
along. So then you got to ask yourself and Dr. Krasniewski will illuminate this
bit for us. How can we know if something is of the Holy Ghost when it comes to
liturgy and something is not of the Holy Ghost when it comes to liturgy? Well,
because here's the problem. Many Catholics who are sympathetic towards
tradition but ultimately fall into these neo-modernist traps, and I've heard this
many times, they'll say things like, well I get it, I prefer the traditional mass,
but you know look at the mass of, I think St. Justin Martyr is one of them, you
know look at the masses that were celebrated by some of these church
fathers and they seem to fit in some ways with the Nova Sorda. So how can you
say the Nova Sorda was bad? Well let's look about it this way.
The Holy Ghost did not preserve those liturgies. The Holy Ghost did not
preserve those liturgies. It's not that God's will changed, but let's just think
for a moment here about the Old Testament because you could go even
further. You could say, well why don't we just do what they all did in the Old
Testament? Why doesn't the mass look like it did in the temple? You
know we could keep going with this and say, well if tradition just means
something that's ancient, why don't we decide to do what's the oldest thing?
Wouldn't that be more traditional? There are many reasons why we don't do the Old
Testament anymore. That's another conversation for another day. I'm just
using it to illuminate a point. One of those reasons is because the Holy Ghost
did not preserve the Old Testament traditions. In fact, Christ came to
fulfill the law not to abolish it and there was a new covenant and the
prefigurement of the Old Testament had filled its purpose. There's a way to
understand this. If you want to explain this to your kids, if they ask, well why
was that something a rule they had to follow back then and a rule I don't have
to follow now? None of the divine laws, none of the divine commands, none of the
moral laws, natural laws, etc. None of that ever change. What you do have is
positive laws, even divine positive laws, but none of those positive laws that
change either through the guidance of the Apostles, through the bishops and the
pulp and so on and so forth in the New Testament, or you have direct revelations
to God through his prophets during the prefiguring time of the Old Testament
leading up to the New Testament. This is how this happens. Ultimately, this
is a matter of revelation. If you believe in God and you believe in the Creator and
Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, if you believe in the Trinity, you're gonna have
to accept some of these things based on revelation and faith. That's kind of as
far as we can go with it, but there's a direct revelation to Moses, for example,
where things are revealed that weren't revealed before. Christ comes to
bring this ultimately into fulfillment for us, into its fullness.
Here's a way to explain how this is possible with your kids. You say,
listen, and I got this example from Gavin Ashenden. If you're watching this
Gavin Ashenden, thank you for this wonderful example. I saw you talk about
it on one of your shows. If you have children, you will give your children
rules that they must follow when they're young, but not when they're older, and
rules that they must always follow. This is the example that Gavin Ashenden gave.
He would tell his kids, when daddy says, you must always hold my
hand when we cross the street, and you must never drink what is under the sink.
Now, when you get older, you don't have to hold daddy's hand when you cross the
street, but you must never drink what's under the sink. Some things are never
permissible. Some things serve a purpose for the maturation or protection of a
child. Something similar happens with the liturgical development in the
church. Let's keep that in mind as we now look back to what Dr. Kwasniewski has
to say regarding the development and the preservation of the liturgy by the Holy
Ghost. Think to yourself, if it's not preserved, then it's not the will of the
Holy Ghost. Otherwise, it would be preserved. Because also the word
tradition means, definitionally, especially in the religious sense, to pass something
on, to guard something for safekeeping. That's what the word ultimately means. So
the Holy Ghost will guard what is necessary. This is why Pope Francis's
encyclical, Guardians of Tradition, is such a mockery. It's the opposite.
The Novus Ordo is not the Guardian of Tradition, and Pope Francis is using
this. He's showing us his hand by using the opposite of the truth to sort of
flip the argument on its head. But anyway, let's look at Dr. K. Dr. K goes on
and he says the following, hence any significant or wholesale rejection of
elements that have come to be practiced and accepted over a long period of time,
long period of time is important, in the church is in a certain sense a sin
against the Holy Spirit. Big words. And any attempt to recast a right from the
ground up cannot but reflect the false theology of the church and the Trinity.
And he has a footnote here. Let's read this. And this is, he's talking about an
objection that will arise. He says, to the objection, how can you say this
about work endorsed by the popes? Question. He replies, we are not privy to
what certain popes were thinking or intending when they overthrew centuries
of tradition. But we know very well what they did and the harm it has caused in
ever widening waves. Were they aware that they were resisting the work of God the
opus Dei, the outward signs of the inward dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the
church? How could they not have been aware? And if they were emboldened by
the ambiance of ultramontanism, the pope can do no wrong, his will is
divine law, exempt from error, exempted from imprudence, etc. Or by the swaggering
of aggiornamento, that's sort of, let's get with the times, that's what that
means. Can we not say that they should have known better? The pope is not after
all Johnny from the local parish, who may not know and perhaps has no duty to
know much about theology, scripture, canon law, or liturgy. And he continues,
as part of this law, father the extension, whoopsie daisy, oh, this is all the more
apparent if we recall that the liturgy is the locus of divine revelation given
by the father, the extension through time and space of the incarnation of the Son,
the outpouring of the Spirit in the prayer of the Bride of Christ. So let's
summarize that here. What he's saying is, the Holy Ghost preserving the liturgy,
the Holy Ghost preserving the liturgy, this is clear when something is
established as part of the life of Catholic liturgical life of the church
for a long, long time. So yes, do you find in the early centuries of the church, do
you find different types of liturgies? Of course you do, but you find only
preserved those which become part of the sacred apostolic tradition of the church.
That's what you find. The ones that were left aside, they weren't evil and they
served a purpose just like the laws you give your children when they're young.
You have to hold their hand when you cross the street, but you can mature
beyond that. And I want to just go back to something that Dr. K said here which
I think is important. Law number four, as the liturgy develops it becomes fuller
and more perfect both as an expression of the mysteries of faith and as a
vehicle for inculcating appropriate virtues in the faithful and for
eliciting from them the acts of faith, hope and charity that are demanded by
the mysteries. If you might allow me here to sort of philosophize for a moment.
You know, I recommend everybody should read the book Confessions by St. Augustine
and in fact if you do like audiobooks it is available. I just recorded Anthony
Esalen's recent translation for Tan. You can find that on Audible, Scribd or I
could just call it Everin now, but in those places maybe Spotify, I don't know.
All the places that have audiobooks. And one of the things you realize when you
understand the church's philosophical and theological direction especially as
illuminated by Augustine and then perfected by Aquinas is that there are
degrees of being. What does that mean? Well you could say it like this, God
exists more than we exist. You might think to yourself, how does that work? Well,
God's existence is not dependent on anyone. His self exists, self-sustaining.
Therefore, he's immutable, which means unchanging, which means there is no, there
can be no corruption in God. His existence in its full surest sense. We
however, exist in relation to the sustainer who keeps us in existence and
therefore we actually don't possess in ourselves the perfection of full
existence. We understand this concept when we look at the traditional sacred
architecture in the church. Although it is true that historically in places like
mission territory there would be wooden churches that would be built, over time
you will find that if those places last they will build a stone church on the
same property or they'll bolster that church with stones or cement or concrete
over time to make sure it lasts forever. In fact, you can't actually consecrate an
altar in a Catholic church unless that altar is essentially made of stone and
attached to the ground. Why is that? Because something that is the house of God and
is consecrated in a very special way must be permanent. Literature is the same. We
understand, well actually let me add one more thing. Also within the Latin and
Eastern traditions we have two different ways of talking about the beatific vision
union with God. In the East they'll use this term theosis. Essentially, if I'm
getting that wrong, please don't, but I believe that's term. Sorry I'm speaking
off the cuff here. But essentially it's a type of becoming God. Now not becoming
God in the pantheistic sense, but when you talk to Eastern Catholic priests and
things like that they'll actually say things like we become God in the beatific
vision. Doesn't mean we go and become one with God in the pantheistic Hindu
sense where Atman becomes part of Brahman, but we become God insofar as our
nature unites itself to God's nature to the point where there is a unified
relationship where it's as if we actually are divinized ourselves. Okay.
And this is why pantheistic religions are so dangerous is because they can
play on this and bring us into some weird places which are heretical. In the
West we wouldn't necessarily talk about that in the same way. Instead we would
use a term we would say we possess God. And what does it mean to possess God?
How can we possess God if God sustains us and possesses us? How can we possess
him? Well this is only possible through the incarnation. God condescends himself.
St. Augustine goes over this again. I recommend his confessions and he goes
over how can it be that God can dwell in my soul when the world is
not big enough for God to dwell in it? Or how is it that I dwell in
God and he dwells in me? This is a mystery and that's too much for us to go
into here, but these are the terms that we use. So if we become God, become like
God, if we possess God where we have this sharing, this fraternity, this
relationship with God, this union with God which is fulfilled in the beatific
vision, then the things that are on earth that are divine and remember what did
they call the mass in the East? They call it the divine liturgy. Okay the things
that are on earth that are divine must in the best way possible in order to be
pleasing to God, they must present and possess the attributes that are divine.
They must be beautiful. They must be unchanging. They must be clear. There is
no ambiguity in God. They must be represent, they must be a representation
of the divine power and what is that divine power with regards to liturgy?
Well of course there's the Holy Sacrament, but also Christ who is God
says to the Apostles, I give you, I'm paraphrasing, I give you my power. The
Apostles possess this power to bind and loose and so on and so
forth. They are the, the Pope is the Prime Minister if that makes sense and
the Apostles possess the power of the office that is only
possible through Apostolic succession.
For liturgy to be apostolic and to be part of the divine apostolic tradition,
it must contain those characteristics otherwise it falls short. We can't avoid
this. So when we look to the Nova Sordo we get to a position where we realize it
just doesn't possess these characteristics and the only way that you can argue
against that really is to fall into certain errors and one of the errors, and
this plays off of the idea what's true and false tradition, one of the errors is
that well if you really want tradition go back to the early church. Well again
we've kind of been over this. It's not, tradition is not about a certain place
in time. Tradition does not mean old. Tradition means preserved. Pope St.
Pius, or not Pope St. Pope Pius XII, he's not canonized, Pope Pius XII in his
encyclicals, Mediator Dei, Humanae Generis, etc. he actually talks about this
false antiquarianism and what is this false antiquarianism? It means going
back to the beginning to justify the changes you're doing now. If we believe
that the church has been guided by the Holy Ghost for centuries, millennia, then
we must believe that the Holy Ghost has guided the church well and this is what's
so fascinating about these arguments by these sort of neo-modernist commentators
of our day who try to do apologetics for the Nova Sordo. They're implicitly, not
explicitly always, implicitly indicting the church of 20 centuries and basically
saying, you know, well we needed this change. Well why do we need this change?
Well because that liturgy wasn't up to snuff or whatever. Well if that's the
case, that's a pretty strong indictment against the Holy Ghost that he sort of
was on vacation for 20 centuries. Or you have to believe that what is the
long-standing will of God in the church somehow magically changes overnight,
which doesn't really fit the attributes of God, does it? Because we know
that God's will is unchanging. If there is any change in what's expected of us,
again these are little things like you don't have to hold my hand when we cross
the street, but you still must never drink what's under the sink. And we have,
we found that already fulfilled. We find by the fourth, fifth, sixth century that
these sort of liturgies of the infancy of the church, these are refined and
those which are to be preserved are preserved and those which are to be
cast away are cast aside. We see this played out. So ultimately the novasorto,
the novasorto cannot fit. It cannot be part of sacred tradition because it's
not preserved as part of sacred tradition. It cannot be apostolic because
you can't trace the novasorto to any apostle and it therefore can't
really even be the Roman rite. It can't be of the Roman rite. It's the
use, it's a missile promulgated by the Pope. That's all other conversation, yes.
But it can't really be the Roman rite because it's not actually Roman, if you
understand what I mean by that. So what is it? Well, Archbishop Lefebvre, he would
use a term that makes everybody upset when they don't speak French and he
would call a bastard rite. Whoa, that sounds very offensive, but bastard in
French is not used the same way as an insult as in English, maybe here and
there, but it's not like if you call somebody a bastard in English, it's like
you know, it's like offending their mother, you know. It's a technical
term. It means a child who is an orphan. It means a child who doesn't
have a father. That's what it means. And this word was used much more frequently
in the past. It wasn't as politically correct. The novasorto is a bastard
rite. It doesn't have a fatherly origin because it doesn't find itself in the
Apostles and it doesn't find itself preserved by the Holy Trinity over 20
centuries. It just comes out of nowhere. For all these reasons, the novasorto, it
can't last because it's not the positive will of God. And we also know that it
just simply can't last based on numbers. There's not a single place on earth
where the novasorto is the predominant liturgy, where they are thriving. And
people will point to Africa. Africa is starting to have signs of decay and you
have to look beyond. So you have to understand in Africa, it is a place that
is extremely conservative in its religiosity. Everyone is either a
Protestant or a Muslim or a Catholic in Sub-Saharan Africa especially. And in
those places, no one's an atheist. Everyone goes to church. Also, Christians
are heavily persecuted. So even if you have a deficient liturgy, when you're
persecuted, you hold fast to the faith. Although in places that were
predominantly Catholic, that were sort of French and Belgian colonies for
example, many of those places, the novasorto, the Catholic Church has
actually been taken over and usurped by the Protestants. And you have to look at
Latin America as well. Latin America is the Protestant Church, especially in
places like Brazil, historically Catholic havens. The Protestant
churches are exploding and people are leaving the novasorto. Why? Well, because
the novasorto imbibes in them a Protestant spirit, but it doesn't do
Protestantism as well as the Protestants. And you also, if people are going to say,
well, because there are certain places in Africa where the novasorto is doing
well, therefore it must be God's will. Well, there are many places where the
Islam and the Protestant churches are doing well. So is that also God's will?
You've got to be a little bit more sophisticated than that when you're
talking about these things. And for all the reasons I've talked about, whether or
not there's a blip on the radar here and there, this is the exception that proves
the rule. Take a look at Europe, take a look at Latin America, take a look at
Quebec, which was the strongest Catholic culture in the world until 60 years ago
basically. And the mass changes and everybody leaves. And it's not the only
reason, but it's a major reason. So for these and all the reasons I've
described, we must admit that the novasorto, it must disappear, it must
disappear, and it must go away and it will. Demographically it will be gone and
it is not something that is part of the sacred tradition given to us by the
Apostles and preserved by the Holy Ghost. Again, this is not indictment on any
single person, but these are the facts as they say. All right, as
always, let me know what you think in the comments. This has been the Kennedy
Report. Until next time, God bless.