This important and revealing study is commonly known as the Ottaviani Intervention and is often cited by many who promote the Tridentine Rite of Mass.  What is not well known, is the fact that this study was actually commissioned by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who assembled a group of theologians from Rome and wrote it under his direction.  Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci then wrote the introduction and presented the study to Pope Paul VI [cf. A Short History of the SSPX].

SHORT CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NEW ORDER OF MASS
By a Group of Roman Theologians

June 5, 1969

In October 1967, the Synod of Bishops which met in Rome was asked to pass judgment on an experimental celebration of what was then called a "standard" or "normative" Mass.

This Mass, composed by the Committee for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Consilium), aroused very serious misgivings among the bishops present. With 187 members voting, the results revealed considerable opposition (43 Negative), many substantial reservations (62 affirmative with reservations) and four abstentions.

The international press spoke of the Synod's "rejection" of the proposed Mass, while the progressive wing of the religious press passed over the event in silence. A well-known periodical, aimed at bishops and expressing their teaching, summed up the new rite in these terms:

They wanted to make a clean slate of the whole theology of the Mass. It ended up in substance quite close to the Protestant theology which destroyed the sacrifice of the Mass.

Unfortunately, we now find that the same "standard Mass," identical in substance, has reappeared as the New Order of Mass (Novus Ordo Missae) recently promulgated by the apostolic constitution, Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969). In the two years that have passed since the synod, moreover, it appears that the national bishops' conferences (at least as such) have not been consulted on the matter.

The apostolic constitution states that the old missal which St. Pius V promulgated on July 19, 1570, its greater part, in fact, goes back to St. Gregory the Great and even remoter antiquity¹, was the standard for four centuries whenever priests of the Latin Rite celebrated the Holy Sacrifice. The constitution adds that this missal, taken to every corner of the earth, "has been an abundant source of spiritual nourishment to so many people in their devotion to God." Yet this same constitution, which would definitively end the use of the old missal, claims that the present reform is necessary because "a deep interest in fostering the liturgy has become widespread and strong among the Christian people."

It seems obvious that the last claim contains a serious equivocation. If the Christian people expressed anything at all, it was the desire (thanks to the great St. Pius X) to discover the true and immortal treasures of the liturgy. They never, absolutely never, asked that the liturgy be changed or mutilated to make it easier to understand. What the faithful did want was a better understanding of a unique and unchangeable liturgy, a liturgy they had no desire to see changed.

Catholics everywhere, priests and laymen alike, loved and venerated the Roman Missal of St. Pius V. It is impossible to understand how using this Missal, along with proper religious instruction, could prevent the faithful from participating in the liturgy more fully or understanding it more profoundly. It is likewise impossible to understand why the old missal, when its many outstanding merits are recognized, should now be deemed unworthy to continue to nourish the liturgical piety of the faithful.

Since the "standard Mass" now reintroduced and re-imposed as the New Order of Mass was already rejected in substance at the synod, since it was never submitted to the collegial judgment of the national bishop's conferences, and since the faithful (least of all in mission lands) never asked for any reform of the Mass whatsoever, it is impossible to understand the reasons for the new legislation, legislation which overthrows a tradition unchanged in the Church since the 4th and 5th centuries. Since there are no reasons, therefore, for undertaking this reform, it appears devoid of any rational grounds to justify it and make it acceptable to the Catholic people.

The Second Vatican Council did indeed ask that the Order of Mass "be revised in a way that will bring out more clearly the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them." ² We shall now see to what extent the recently promulgated Ordo responds to the Council's wishes, wishes now no more than a faint memory.

A point-by-point examination of the Novus Ordo reveals changes so great that they confirm the judgment already made on the "standard Mass", for on many points it has much to gladden the heart of even the most modernist Protestant.

Let us begin with the definition of the Mass. In Article 7 of the General Instruction which precedes the New Order of Mass, we discover the following definition:

The Lord's Supper or Mass is the sacred assembly or congregation of the people of God gathering together, with a priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. ³ For this reason Christ's promise applies supremely to a local gathering together of the Church: "Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst." (Mt. 18:20).⁴

The definition of the Mass is thus reduced to a "supper," a term which the General Instruction constantly repeats.⁵

The Instruction further characterizes this "supper" as an assembly, presided over by a priest and held as a memorial of the Lord to recall what He did on Holy Thursday. None of this in the very least implies:

• The Real Presence.

• The reality of the Sacrifice.

• The sacramental function of the priest who consecrates.

• The intrinsic value of the Eucharistic Sacrifice independent of the presence of the "assembly." ⁶

In a word, the Instruction's definition implies none of the dogmatic values which are essential to the Mass and which, taken together, provide its true definition. Here, deliberately omitting these dogmatic values by "going beyond them" amounts, at least in practice, to denying them.⁷

The second part of Article 7 makes this already serious equivocation even worse. It states that Christ's promise, ("Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst") applies to this assembly supremely.

Thus, the Instruction puts Christ's promise (which refers only to His spiritual presence through grace) on the same qualitative level (save for greater intensity) as the substantial and physical reality of the sacramental Eucharistic Presence.

The next article of the Instruction divides the Mass into a "Liturgy of the Word" and a "Liturgy of the Eucharist," and adds that the "table of God's Word" and the "table of Christ's Body" are prepared at Mass so that the faithful may receive "instruction and food."

As we will see later, this statement improperly joins the two parts of the Mass, as thought they possessed equal symbolic value.

The Instruction uses many different names for the Mass, such as:

• Action of Christ and the People of God.

• Lord's Supper or Mass.

• Paschal Banquet.

• Common participation in the Table of the Lord.

• Eucharistic Prayer.

• Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist.

All these expressions are acceptable when used relatively, but when used separately and absolutely, as they are here, they must be completely rejected.

It is obvious that the Novus Ordo obsessively emphasizes "supper" and "memorial," instead of the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross.

Even the phrase in the Instruction describing the Mass as a "memorial of the Passion and Resurrection" is inexact. The Mass is the memorial of the unique Sacrifice, redemptive in itself; whereas the Resurrection is the fruit which follows from that sacrifice.⁸ We shall see later how such equivocations are repeated and reiterated both in the formula for the Consecration and throughout the Novus Ordo as a whole.

We now turn to the ends or purposes of the Mass, what it accomplishes in the supernatural order.

The ultimate purpose of the Mass is the sacrifice of praise rendered to the Most Holy Trinity. This end conforms to the primary purpose of the Incarnation, explicitly enunciated by Christ Himself: "Coming into the world he saith: sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, but a body thou hast fitted me." ⁹

In the Novus Ordo, this purpose has disappeared:

• From the Offertory, where the prayer "Receive, Holy Trinity, this oblation" has been removed.

• From the conclusion of Mass, where the prayer honoring the Trinity, "May the tribute of my homage, Most Holy Trinity" has been eliminated.

• From the Preface, since the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity, formerly used on all ordinary Sundays, will henceforth be used only on the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.

The ordinary purpose of the Mass is propitiatory sacrifice, making satisfaction to God for sin.

This end, too, has been compromised. Instead of emphasizing remission for sins for the living and the dead, the new rite stresses the nourishment and sanctification of those present.¹⁰

At the Last Supper, Christ instituted the Blessed Sacrament and thus placed Himself in It as Victim, in order to unite Himself to us as Victim. But this act of sacrificial immolation occurs before the Blessed Sacrament is consumed and possesses beforehand full redemptive value in relation to the bloody Sacrifice on Calvary. The proof for this is that people who assist are not bound to receive Communion sacramentally.¹¹

The immanent purpose of the Mass is fundamentally that of sacrifice.

It is essential that the Sacrifice, whatever its nature, be pleasing to God and accepted by Him. Because of original sin, however, no sacrifice other than the Christ's Sacrifice can claim to be acceptable and pleasing to God in its own right.

The Novus Ordo alters the nature of the sacrificial offering by turning it into a type of exchange of gifts between God and man. Man brings the bread, and God turns it into "the bread of life"; man brings the wine, and God turns it into "spiritual drink":

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have this bread (or wine) to offer, fruit of the earth (vine) and work of human hands. It will become for us the bread of life (spiritual drink). ¹²

The expressions "bread of life" and "spiritual drink," of course, are utterly vague and could mean anything. Once again, we come up against the same basic equivocation: According to the new definition of the Mass, Christ is only spiritually present among His own; here, bread and wine are only spiritually, and not substantially, changed.¹³

In the Preparation of the Gifts, a similar equivocal game was played. The old Offertory contained two magnificent prayers, the Deus qui humanae and the Offerimus tibi:

• The first prayer, recited at the preparation of the chalice, begins: "O God, by whom the dignity of human nature was wondrously established and yet more wondrously restored." It recalled man's innocence before the Fall of Adam and his ransom by the blood of Christ, and it summed up the whole economy of the Sacrifice from Adam to the present day.

• The second prayer, which accompanies the offering of the chalice, embodies the idea of propitiation for sin: it implores God for His mercy as it asks that the offering "… may ascend with a sweet fragrance in the presence of Thy divine majesty." Like the first prayer, it admirably stresses the economy of the Sacrifice.

In the Novus Ordo, both these prayers have been eliminated.

In the Eucharistic Prayers, moreover, the repeated petitions to God that He accept the Sacrifice have also been suppressed; thus, there is no longer any clear distinction between divine and human sacrifice.

Having removed the keystone, the reformers had to put up scaffolding. Having suppressed the real purposes of the Mass, they had to substitute fictitious purposes of their own. This forced them to introduce actions stressing the union between priest and faithful, or among the faithful themselves, and led to the ridiculous attempt to superimpose offerings for the poor and for the Church on the offering of the host to be immolated.

The fundamental uniqueness of the Victim to be sacrificed will thus be completely obliterated. Participation in the immolation of Christ the Victim will turn into a philanthropists' meeting or a charity banquet.

We now consider the essence of the Sacrifice. The New Order of Mass no longer explicitly expresses the mystery of the Cross. It is obscured, veiled, imperceptible to the faithful.¹⁴ Here are some of the main reasons:

The meaning the Novus Ordo assigns to the so-called "Eucharistic Prayer" is as follows:

The entire congregation joins itself to Christ in acknowledging the great things God has done and in offering the sacrifice.¹⁵

Which sacrifice does this refer to? Who offers the sacrifice? No answer is given to these questions.

The definition the Instruction provides for the "Eucharistic Prayer" reduces it to the following:

The center and summit of the entire celebration begins: the Eucharistic Prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving and sanctification.¹⁶

The effects of the prayer thus replace the causes.

And of the causes, moreover, not a single word is said. The explicit mention of the purpose of the sacrificial offering, made in the old rite with the prayer Receive, Most Holy Trinity, This Oblation, has been suppressed, and replaced with nothing. The change in the formula reveals the change in doctrine.

The reason why the Sacrifice is no longer explicitly mentioned is simple: the central role of the Real Presence has been suppressed. It has been removed from the place it so resplendently occupied in the old liturgy.

In the General Instruction, the Real Presence is mentioned just once, and that in a footnote which is the only reference to the Council of Trent. Here again, the context is that of nourishment.¹⁷ The real and permanent presence of Christ in the transubstantiated Species —Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity —is never alluded to. The very word transubstantiation is completely ignored.

The invocation of the Holy Ghost in the Offertory, the prayer, Come, Thou Sanctifier, has likewise been suppressed, with its petition that He descend upon the offering to accomplish the miracle of the Divine Presence again, just as he once descended into the Virgin's womb. This suppression is one more in a series of denials and degradations of the Real Presence, both tacit and systematic.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore how ritual gestures and usages expressing faith in the Real Presence have been abolished or changed. The Novus Ordo eliminates:

• Genuflections. No more than three remain for the priest, and (with certain exceptions) one of the faithful at the moment of the Consecration.

• Purification of the priest's fingers over the chalice.

• Preserving the priest's fingers from all profane contact after the Consecration.

• Purification of sacred vessels, which need not be done immediately nor made on the corporal.

• Protecting the contents of the chalice with the pall.

• Gilding for the interior of sacred vessels.

• Solemn consecration for movable altars.

• Consecrated stones and relics of the saints in the movable altar or on the "table" when Mass is celebrated outside a sacred place. (The latter leads straight to "eucharistic dinners" in private houses.)

• Three cloths on the altar, reduced to one.

• Thanksgiving for the Eucharist made kneeling, now replaced by the grotesque practice of the priest and people sitting to make their thanksgiving, a logical enough accompaniment to receiving Communion standing.

• All the ancient prescriptions observed in the case of a host which fell, which are now reduced to a single, nearly sarcastic direction: "It is to be picked up reverently." ¹⁸

All these suppressions only emphasize how outrageously faith in the dogma of the Real Presence is implicitly repudiated.

The altar is nearly always called the table:¹⁹ "...the altar or Lord's table, which is the center of the whole Eucharistic liturgy..." ²⁰ The altar must now be detached from the back wall so that the priest can walk around it and celebrate Mass facing the people.²¹ The Instruction states that the altar should be at the center of the assembled faithful, so that their attention is spontaneously drawn to it. Comparing this article with another, however, seems to exclude outright the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament on the altar where Mass is celebrated.²² This will signal an irreparable dichotomy between the presence of Christ the High Priest in the priest celebrating the Mass and Christ's sacramental Presence. Before, they were one and the same Presence.²³

The Instruction recommends that the Blessed Sacrament now be kept in a place apart for private devotion, as though It were some sort of relic. Thus, on entering a church, one's attention will be drawn not to a tabernacle, but to a table stripped bare. Once again, private piety is set up against liturgical piety, and altar is set up against altar.

The Instruction urges that hosts distributed for Communion be ones consecrated at the same Mass. It also recommends consecrating a large wafer,²⁴ so that the priest can share a part of it with the faithful.

It is always the same disparaging attitude towards both the tabernacle and every form of Eucharistic piety outside of Mass. This constitutes a new and violent blow to faith that the Real Presence continues as long as the consecrated Species remain.²⁵

The old formula for the Consecration was a sacramental formula, properly speaking, and not merely a narrative. This was shown above by three things:

The Scripture text was not used word-for-word as the formula for the Consecration in the old missal. St. Paul's expression, the Mystery of Faith, was inserted into the text as an immediate expression of the priest's faith in the mystery which the Church makes real through the hierarchical priesthood.

In the old missal, a period and a new paragraph separated the words, "Take ye all of this and eat" from the words of the sacramental form, "This is My Body." The period and the new paragraph marked the passage from a merely narrative mode to a sacramental and affirmative mode which is proper to a true sacramental action.

The words of Consecration in the Roman Missal, moreover, were printed in larger type in the center of the page. Often a different color ink was used.

All these things clearly detached the words from a merely historical context, and combined to give the formula of Consecration a proper and autonomous value.

The Roman Missal added the words "As often as ye shall do these things, ye shall do them in memory of Me" after the formula of Consecration.

This formula referred not merely to remembering Christ or a past event, but to Christ acting in the here and now. It was an invitation to recall not merely His Person or the Last Supper, but to do what He did in the way that He did it.

In the Novus Ordo, the words of St. Paul, "Do this in memory of Me," will now replace the old formula and be daily proclaimed in the vernacular everywhere. This will inevitably cause hearers to concentrate on the remembrance of Christ as the end of the Eucharistic action, rather than as its beginning. The idea of commemoration will thus soon replace the idea of the Mass as a sacramental action.²⁶

The General Instruction emphasizes the narrative mode further when it describes the Consecration as the Institution Narrative²⁷ and when it adds that, "in fulfillment of the command received from Christ... the Church keeps his memorial." ²⁸

All this, in short, changes the modus significandi of the words of Consecration, how they show forth the sacramental action taking place. The priest now pronounces the formulas for Consecration as part of an historical narrative, rather than as Christ's representative issuing the affirmative judgment "This is My Body." ²⁹

Furthermore, the people's Memorial Acclamation which immediately follows the Consecration, "Your holy death, we proclaim, O Lord...until you come" introduces the same ambiguity about the Real Presence under the guise of an allusion to the Last Judgment. Without so much as a pause, the people proclaim their expectation of Christ at the end of time, just at the moment when He is substantially present on the altar, as if Christ's real coming will occur only at the end of time, rather than there on the altar itself.

The second optional Memorial Acclamation brings this out even more strongly:

The juxtaposition of entirely different realities, immolation and eating, the Real Presence and Christ's Second Coming, brings ambiguity to a new height.³⁰

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