Another Diocesan Priest Rejects Novus Ordo

Father Paul Sretenovic, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, who was ordained to the priesthood in 2002, has abandoned the Novus Ordo in order to embrace Catholic Tradition without compromise. Father Sretenovic (pronounced Stre-ten-o-vich) informed his ordinary, the Most Reverend John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, of his decision in a letter mailed to his Excellency’s home address on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Wednesday, December 28, 2004:

“Your Excellency: I am writing to inform you of my decision to leave the Archdiocese of Newark. It is a decision that is eighteen months in the making, and it has finally come to a head. This archdiocese, while retaining some very good priests, is, like every other diocese in the Catholic Church today, plagued by the heresy of modernism in many different forms. I recently attended a Monday afternoon of Reflection at Southmont with the Opus Dei priests and listened as one of them said that we are not looking to return to Christendom. To me, that said it all. It is not just about the Latin Mass. It is something much, much deeper, and it is the basis of my decision. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Primas, said that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of every individual, but also of every human society. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, #77, in particular, exposes the error of separation of Church and State, a doctrine now upheld by the Vatican as the ideal, using both the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, which could very easily have been called the Declaration of Religious Liberty (reference to our Declaration of Independence intended), as well as individual decisions from the Vatican to accelerate such a separation in what were otherwise thoroughly Catholic countries, such as, among others, Colombia, 98% Catholic. The orientation of the Church is now very much in line with the principles of the French Revolution, namely liberty, fraternity, and equality. Hence, the mainstay catchwords from the Council—religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. That is not a coincidence, and it is evil. The Liturgy is just one of the many lambs to be slaughtered along the way towards a Christian Democracy, which, to the dismay and shock of many in the Church, will lead directly to the worldwide takeover of Atheistic Communism, warned of indirectly by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and communicated by Sr. Lucia to the Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in 1946. Russia has still not been consecrated, and she continues to spread her errors until one day, it will be too late. In the meantime, I choose to exercise my priesthood in the way intended by Almighty God, teaching sound doctrine and leading the flock by holiness of life, as St. Paul exhorted St. Timothy in his pastoral epistle.

“In the situation in which I am now, and basically in any Novus Ordo parish anywhere in the world, let alone this particular Archdiocese, I always have to watch my back and I always, at each and every Mass that I offer, have to compromise. Whether it is in the bad wording or bland prayers of the Sacramentary, or in the distribution of Communion in the hand, or in the virtually mandatory use of Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, there is always something there to remind me, as the song goes, and it stops now. I pray to God and to Our Blessed Mother that you obtain the grace necessary to perceive the gravity of the present situation and to act accordingly. I include my email address below for further correspondence. I know this is a shock, but for me, even the FSSP would be a compromise. Haven’t we all done enough of that?! As people were looking East this Advent season, Our Lady was leading me to, go West. In Christ the King, Fr. Paul Branko Sretenovic.”

In an e-mail to this writer sent on January 9, 2005, Father Sretenovic explained the sequence of events after this point:

“To give you the backdrop of my correspondence with the Archbishop, he said that parts of what I wrote, without specifying, were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I responded through the Vicar General for the time-being that what I wrote was not ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I then asked the question as to whether the Archbishop would say that Cardinal Ratzinger was either of the two, specifying the terms, when he wrote that through the Council, the Church had ‘come to terms with the principles of 1789.’ I left it at that and will write the Archbishop directly within the week.”

Father Sretenovic had determined quite clearly that he could no longer make any further compromises with a Mass that did not give God the full honor and glory that are His due and a pastoral approach to the problems of the world that was premised upon a rejection of a defined teaching of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, and an actual embrace of the errors of Modernity and Modernism.

Father Sretenovic did indeed head west, leaving Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in Maywood, New Jersey, on Thursday, December 29, 2004, the Feast of Saint Thomas a Becket, to drive out to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, joining Father Patrick J. Perez and Father Lawrence C. Smith in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass and the totality of the Catholic Faith in all of its integrity to Catholics in one of the most liturgically revolutionary places in the whole Church, the Metropolitan Province of Los Angeles, California. Father Sretenovic distributed Holy Communion to the faithful at Our Lady Help of Christians on the Feast of the Holy Family on Sunday, January 9, 2005, saying, “I have never before felt like I did in my first Traditional giving of the Eucharist, or however you want to put it. It was awesome and I felt like a priest in a way that I haven't before. The formula is much better, not to mention the signing of the Cross, and the use of the paten for the Sacred Particles, AND the posture of the people with open mouths, heads tilted upwards like chicks eagerly welcoming their mother with the food that she is providing for them.” [He offered his first Traditional Latin Mass there on Sunday, January 16, 2005.]

Father Sretenovic, who was born on January 8, 1974, found his way to Our Lady Help of Christians within three months of meeting Father Perez at Father Nicholas Gruner’s Fatima conference in Glendale, California, at the end of September, 2004. Father Perez’s mother, Mrs. Margaret Perez, saw Father Sretenovic and told him that he had to meet her son, making sure that the two of them sat down for dinner after Father Perez’s talk at the conference. Father Sretenovic was impressed with Father Perez’s knowledge of the Faith and of the development of the Mass. Mr. John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News, also spoke to Father Sretenovic about the crisis in the Church and of the necessity of fleeing from the Novus Ordo structures. Seeds were being planted.

Father Sretenovic contacted this writer in early December of 2004, and a luncheon meeting was arranged in Wayne, New Jersey, following a First Friday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel in Pequannock, New Jersey, on December 3, 2004. This writer and his wife, to put it charitably, pummeled Father Sretenovic, asking him bluntly as to how long he could continue to give out Communion in the hand and continue to offer a Mass that less fully communicates the truths of the Catholic Faith and does not render God the full honor and glory that are His due. Father Sretenovic listened, particularly to Mrs. Droleskey’s heartfelt plea to give Our Lord and His flock unfettered access to the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Father Sretenovic promised to contact Fathers Perez and Smith. He also wrote fairly immediately to Father Stephen P. Zigrang, whose association with the Society of Saint Pius X prompted the soon-to-be promoted Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, the Most Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, a protégé of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, to suspend him for an association with a “schismatic” group that, among other things, denied the “enduring validity of the Old Covenant God made with the people of Israel.”

Father Sretenovic carefully weighed his options, keeping in close contact with Father Lawrence C. Smith, who left the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, on September 8, 2003. Father Sretenovic also had contact with priests in the Society of Saint Pius X, determining ultimately that it would be best for him to be with Fathers Perez and Smith in California. Father was most intent on placing himself in a situation where the gaps in his preparation for priestly ordination could be closed and he could concentrate on his own personal sanctification while offering Catholics the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. He arrived at his decision after a great deal of reflection and a bit of indecision, coming to the conclusion in the final analysis that he needed to make a clean break from the diocesan structure sooner rather than later, understanding that the faithful have a right in perpetuity to the Traditional Latin Mass, which can never be subject justly to any limitations or conditions by any bishop, including the Pope himself. Father Smith was most instrumental in helping Father Sretenovic to come to this decision, saying that “it was his call that put me over the edge. Within 20 minutes after my conversation with him, I was writing my letter” to Archbishop Myers.

Father Sretenovic was not heedless of the fact that his own ordinary, Archbishop Myers, though not a traditionalist himself, has been sympathetic to priests desirous of offering the Traditional Latin Mass. Father Sretenovic also understood, however, that the embrace of Tradition, while it starts with the Mass, involves quite fundamentally an embrace of the totality of the Catholic Faith without any taint of corruption by the novelties and errors of the past forty to forty-seven years. Father Sretenovic also knows that ordinaries come and go, a point demonstrated quite graphically when Bishop John Myers of Peoria, Illinois, was elevated to the archbishopric of Newark. Although Bishop Myers had granted permission to Father Michael Driscoll, the pastor of Saint Mary’s Church in Rock Island, Illinois, to offer the Traditional Latin Mass on a daily basis, that permission was revoked by Myers’s successor, Bishop Michael Jenky, who demoted Father Driscoll to the post of an assistant hospital chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital in Peoria. Father Sretenovic, understanding, as eight cardinals noted in a finding sent to Pope John Paul II in 1986, the binding nature of the Traditional Latin Mass can never be abrogated, did not want to subject himself to the vagaries of episcopal arbitrariness. He realized that he needed the stability offered by the Traditional Latin Mass for his own sanctification–and that the people have the absolute right to safe harbor found therein.

The story of Father Paul Sretenovic continues, therefore, a remarkable display of courage on the part of diocesan priests who have been willing to forsake all of their canonical safety and human respect in order to embrace Tradition without compromise. Men such as Fathers Sretenovic and Zigrang and Smith were ordained after the implementation of the liturgical revolution had begun. Father Zigrang was ordained in 1977. Father Smith was ordained in 1997. Father Sretenovic was ordained in 2002. Although there have been priests (such as Father Stephen Somerville) who were ordained in the Traditional rite and have returned thereto, the embrace of Tradition by priests who are relatively young (in the case of Father Zigrang) or very young (in the case of Fathers Smith and Sretenovic) is particularly galling to the liturgical revolutionaries, men and women who brook no opposition and who protest with great vehemence the glories of the “liturgical renewal.” How can it be, they ask themselves, that men who have been immersed in their handiwork all of their lives can become counter-revolutionaries and reject all of their “enlightened” schemes and programs?

The revolutionaries can protest all they want. The plain fact of the matter is that there are a number of priests across the nation who may be following the examples of Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic. More than a handful of priests are on the fence as this is being written. Some are waiting for Rome to come to their “rescue” by means of an Apostolic Administration. Some are afraid of what will happen to their sheep should they simply leave their diocesan assignments. Others are simply afraid to pray for the graces to muster up the courage to stop participating in sacrileges such as the distribution of Communion in the hand. From the vantage point of one who travels great distances across the nation to get his family to the daily offering of the Traditional Latin Mass, it is time for our shepherds to give us our due, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, understanding that Our Lady will take care of their temporal needs and that the rectitude of their actions will be understood fully only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.

Indeed, the witness given by Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic, as well as the witness given by the bishops and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, to the necessity of proclaiming the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without any dilution serves as an inspiration to the sheep who are seeking safety and security in the midst of doctrinal and liturgical instability and turmoil within the diocesan structures. They are willing to be calumniated, even by fellow traditionalists who have anointed themselves to be in the august and pristine "mainstream," in order to bear a witness to the authentic Tradition of the Church without any compromise at all. No loss of human respect and no amount of name-calling or sloganeering will ever deter them from giving their sheep the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

At least some of the sheep will respond when their shepherds put themselves on the line to give them what is their due, namely, the Traditional Latin Mass. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, for example, have found their way to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California. Most of these people have never heard of The Remnant, Catholic Family News, or Christ or Chaos. They've never heard of Christ the King College and most of them probably think that GIRM Warfare has something to do with bacteriology. They're just Catholics who understand that the first law of the Church is the salvation of souls and that they do not have to sit idly by and be subjected to the rot of conciliar novelties in the context of what pretends to pass for the Church's liturgy and catechesis. These good souls are fed up with what is going on in their local dioceses and parishes and they simply want the fullness of the Catholic Faith to be made manifest to them during Holy Mass and in the life of their parish. The same is true of the fifteen families who have found their way from Saint Andrew's Church in Channelview, Texas, to Queen of Angels Church in Dickinson, Texas (and Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel in Spring, Texas), following after their inimitable pastor, Father Zigrang. The sheep want Christ and His truth to be made manifest to them without novelty or dilution. This is nothing other than one of their baptismal birthrights as Catholics.

Father Paul Sretenovic finds himself some 3,000 miles away from his parents, who are residents of New Jersey. He has gone this distance to serve sheep without compromise. He is in need of our prayers. More of his brother priests need to follow his example of humility and fidelity, to say nothing of his courage. As a son of Our Lady, Father Sretenovic has entrusted himself entirely to her Immaculate Heart. He knows that she will take good care of him as he acts in the person of her Divine Son as a sacerdos. Father Sretenovic delivered his first sermon at Our Lady Help of Christians on Sunday, January 16, 2004, stating that he had come to realize that the devil has essentially used the hierarchy of the Church to communicate the belief that one can eat from all of the trees in the "garden" today (Judaism, Islam, the New Age Movement, Wicca, Modernism) except the tree of Tradition, from which it is forbidden to eat. He said that the Novus Ordo Missae breeds lukewarmness, crediting Father Paul Kramer’s The Devil’s Final Battle and this writer’s G.I.R.M. Warfare with helping him to see how he was stuck in this lukewarmness himself. His sermon resonated with the 700 parishioners in attendance at the three Masses offered at Our Lady Help of Christians.

Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for Father Sretenovic. Pray for all traditionally-minded priests to follow his example of pure love for Tradition without fear of the canonical and/or temporal consequences. Pray for us sheep, that we might make the sacrifices necessary to help our shepherds feed us with the pure milk of Tradition.

There is good reason for doubting the validity of priestly ordinations in the new rite. Here is Michael Davies in "The Order of Melchisadech" (1993) on the subject:

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The Rite of Ordination of a Priest follows the order of Mass up to the Collect, after which the candidates for ordination (ordinands) are called by name and presented to the Bishop by the Archdeacon, who declares that as far as human frailty may judge he considers them worthy of ordination.

The Bishop then "charges" the people to declare any possible objection to any of the ordinands, reminding them that:

"Not for nothing did the Fathers ordain that even the people should be consulted in the choice of those who are to minister at the altar. For sometimes what is unknown to the many of the life and conduct of a candidate may be known to the few, and a more ready obedience is given to a priest when assent has been given to his ordination."

There is no provision for the people to give a sign of formal consent to the ordination; this is manifested simply by silence.

In the new rite the reference to "the choice of those who are to minister at the altar" has been eliminated. It has been replaced by a statement that the candidates are to be ordained "for the office of presbyter". The people give a formal consent by saying: "Thanks be to God" or "give their consent according to local custom".

The Bishop then addresses the ordinands and his "charge" to them includes the following:

"For it is a priest's duty to offer sacrifice, to bless, to lead, to preach and to Baptise."

This admonition has been abolished.

The Litany of the Saints then follows. It has been left in the new rite in a drastically curtailed form, omitting such unecumenical petitions as the following:

"That Thou wouldst recall all who have wandered from the unity of the Church, and lead all unbelievers to the light of the Gospel."

After the Litany comes the silent imposition of hands by the Bishop and then by all the priests present. The imposition of the Bishop's hands constitutes the matter of the Sacrament.

Then a number of prayers follow, including a lengthy Preface which incorporates the form of the Sacrament:

"We pray Thee, Almighty Father, confer the dignity of the Priesthood on these Thy servants; renew in their hearts the spirit of holiness, that they may obtain the office of the second rank received from Thee, O God, and may, by the example of their lives, inculcate the pattern of holy living."

It is clear that neither the matter nor the form is in the least incompatible with Protestant teaching. As is made clear in Appendix I, this is a case where the signification of the rite must be deduced from other prayers and ceremonies surrounding the matter and form, what is referred to by theologians as determinatio ex adiunctis. (See Appendix I for the meaning of this term.)

The newly ordained priests are then vested with a stole and chasuble, in each case to the accompaniment of an extremely beautiful prayer. The vesting remains in the new rite but the prayers have been abolished. The Bishop then says another long prayer which includes the following:

"Theirs be the task to change with blessing undefiled, for the service of thy people, bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Thy Son."

This prayer has been abolished. The Veni Creator Spiritus is then intoned while the Bishop anoints the hands of the new priests. Dipping his right thumb into the oil of the Catechumens he anoints the opened hands of each one in the form of a cross by tracing two lines, one from the thumb of the right hand to the index finger of the left, the other from the thumb of the left hand to the corresponding finger of the right. He then anoints the palms all over. While anointing each priest he says:

"Be pleased, Lord, to consecrate and sanctify these hands by this anointing, and our blessing."

Then he makes the sign of the cross over the hands of each priest and continues:

"That whatsoever they bless may be blessed, and whatsoever they consecrate may be consecrated and sanctified in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

This prayer has been abolished and replaced by one which will be examined in the next section. The palms are still anointed, but no specific directions are given in the rubric which simply states that the Bishop "anoints with holy chrism the palms of each new priest who kneels before him". Pope Pius XII clearly set considerable significance upon this prayer, which he cites in Mediator Dei:

". . . the Sacrament of Order sets priests in a class apart from all other Christians who are not endowed with this supernatural power. They alone have entered this august ministry by a special Divine vocation, a ministry by which they are appointed to the sacred altar and made, as it were, Divine instruments to communicate the heavenly and supernatural life in the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. Moreover, as We have said, they alone are marked by the indelible character that likens them to Christ the Priest; they alone have their hands consecrated so that 'whatsoever they may bless shall be blessed, and whatsoever they may hallow shall be hallowed and consecrated in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ' (para. 46)."

...The Bishop now closes the hands of each in succession, so that both palms meet, and one of the attendants binds them together with a white fillet; each priest then returns to his place. When this anointing and consecration of hands are finished, the Bishop cleanses his hands: and then delivers to each priest the chalice containing wine and water, with a paten and host upon it, which each takes between the fore and middle finger, so as to touch both the paten and the cup of the chalice, while the Bishop says to each:

"Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Mass, both for the living and the dead, in the name of the Lord".

This beautiful ceremony and the exceptionally important prayer have both been abolished. In their place, the paten with the altar-breads, and the chalice with the wine and water to be used in the Mass, are placed in the hands of each new priest by the Bishop accompanied by a brief exhortation which will be discussed in the next section.

The new priests then concelebrate Mass with the Bishop. At the end of Mass, before the Post Communion, each new priest kneels before the Bishop who lays both hands upon the head of each in turn and says:

"Receive the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."

This ceremony and prayer have been abolished. The new priests then promise obedience to their bishop who "charges" them to bear in mind that offering Holy Mass is not free from risk (satis periculosa est) and that they should learn everything necessary from diligent priests before undertaking so fearful a responsibility. This admonition has been abolished.

Finally, before completing the Mass, he imparts a most moving blessing.

"The blessing of God Almighty, the Father the Son , and the Holy Ghost come down upon you, and make you blessed in the priestly Order, enabling you to offer propitiatory sacrifices for the sins of the people to Almighty God."

This blessing has been abolished.

As the previous section made clear, every prayer in the traditional rite which stated specifically the essential role of a priest as a man ordained to offer propitiatory sacrifice for the living and dead has been removed. In most cases these were the precise prayers removed by the Protestant Reformers, or if not precisely the same there are clear parallels. At this point some of the prayers introduced into the new Ordinal will be examined to assess the extent to which they make explicit the doctrine of the prayers which have been abolished. It must be remembered that this doctrine, as was made clear earlier, is not simply the doctrine of Trent but the doctrine of Vatican II.

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