Replies

August 1978, Volume I, Number 8

by Reverend Brian Buckley

Courtesy of "The Courier-Mail", Queensland (Australia)

As the "dissident Priest" referred to in your article "Latin Masses held secretly in home" (C-M, September 1), I wish to state briefly why I say only the supposedly banned Latin Tridentine Mass and not the New Mass in English.

The language, English or Latin, really has little do with it!

Before I was ordained a Priest in 1948, I took an oath, as did all Priests up till 1967, to be loyal to "all the doctrines handed down, defined and explained by the sacred canons and ecumenical councils, and especially those of the most holy Council of Trent." The Tridentine Mass was the Mass ordered by the Council of Trent. It was guaranteed valid by Pope St. Pius V. And every priest of the Latin Rite in perpetuity was ordered by the Bull Quo Primum "by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority," never to use a different rite of Mass-precisely to keep out of the Mass for all time any heresy or error in doctrine such as had been condemned by the Council of Trent.

"At no time in the future can a Priest, whether secular or religious, ever be coerced into using any other way of saying Mass. And so as to preclude once and for all any scruples of conscience and fear of ecclesiastical penalties and censures, we hereby declare that it is in virtue of Our Apostolic Authority that we decree and enjoin that this our present order and decree is to last in perpetuity, and can never be legally revoked or amended at some future date." (From the Bull Quo Primum, July 14, 1570.)

What stronger language could the Church use to make certain that I remain loyal to the Mass for which I was ordained, and which I am directed and privileged to say. If I could honestly evade that direction, to which as I've said I bound myself by oath, I would still have several reasons why I could not say the New Mass in English-not, that is, in conscience.

The New Mass or Novus Ordo was examined in detail by a group of Catholic theologians in Rome in 1969. On their behalf Cardinal Ottaviani wrote to Pope Paul VI condemning it on 27 counts as being simply not a Catholic Mass: "It teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic religion. It has no intention of presenting the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent, to which nonetheless the Catholic conscience is bound forever. It will thoroughly please all those groups on the verge of apostasy, who have been at work ravaging the Church, corrupting its organism, and assaulting its doctrinal, liturgical, moral and disciplinary unity, in a period of spiritual crisis that is without precedent."

In spite of this condemnation, Pope Paul allowed the New Mass to replace the certainly valid Catholic age-old Sacrifice of the Mass! Are we to believe that the approval of a Pope can change heresy into orthodoxy? This has never been Catholic teaching.

Non-Catholic theologians in their turn satisfied themselves that it (the New Mass) is no longer the Mass of former times. Dr. Max Thurian of Taize Lutheran Center in France, as quoted in "LaCroix" of May 30, 1969, said: "It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics." It is a fact that Protestants in England do use the New Mass as their own service. As reported in the English "Catholic Herald" of December 15,1972, the then Anglican Bishop of Southwark (Dr. M. Stock-wood) stated on several occasions that he greatly admired the New Mass and used it himself. He has also con-celebrated Mass with Catholic Priests when travelling on the continent.

So non-Catholics are satisfied there has been an essential change in the Mass. They have good reason for so thinking. When the New Mass was being composed in Rome in 1967, six Protestant clergymen, by invitation of Pope Paul, took an active part in it. One of them was the above-mentioned Dr. Max Thurian.

So we can see why he made the statement he did! He knew at first-hand!

Even if I could somehow get a-round those objections to saying the New Mass, I would be in trouble when I

actually came to say it. Because I know that I would deliberately have to go along with falsifying Christ's words in the Consecration of the Mass. In the New Mass in English, Christ is made to say that His Blood would be shed "for you and for all men."

Any Bible, Catholic or Protestant, will tell you that His words were "for you and for many." It may seem only a small thing, the change of just one word. Actually, it changes Christ's whole meaning, as theologians have proved and as the Council of Trent (again!) stated!

Anyway, it's a forgery, to be found nowhere but in the New Mass in the vernacular. So again I'm stopped from using the New Mass, if I've any sort of conscience at all.

Of course, like most Priests, I was "conned" for years into accepting the New Mass-until I got the above information which has been carefully not brought to general notice. Such secrecy surely has something to hide, but why, if it's really the Church acting? It's just not the Catholic way.

Anyway, has the "old Latin Mass" the Tridentine Mass, be banned? Certainly not by Pope Paul. In the offical document promulgating the New Mass, there is not one legal phrase making the new Rite compulsory or forbidding the old Latin Mass.

And in December, 1971, writing to the late Cardinal Heenan, the Pope said he would not forbid the use of the Tridentine Roman Missal. So if the bishops have banned it, they have apparently gone over the head of the Pope.

Finally, if I am a dissident Priest, a "rebel", then I am only rebelling against those who are, in fact if not in intention, themselves rebels. Rebels against the oath they took to protect the Catholic Faith whose center is the Mass which they have now put out of their lives.

I am not ashamed to be my kind of rebel!

Father Buckley left his parish after refusing to give a statement to his Bishop that he would not say the Mass in Latin.