From the great Fr. John Hunwicke at his elevating blog Mutual Enrichment [emphases and comments mine]:
Popes, Liturgy, and Authority (3): S PIUS V compared with S PAUL VI and PF
We are sometimes told that the imposition of a new rite by S Paul VI is precisely what S Pius V did in 1570.
It is not.
What S Paul VI did is precisely the opposite of what S Pius V did..
People who tell you anything different either have not read Quo primum … or cannot understand Latin … or have a regrettably fugitive grasp upon Truth. [Or they just plain lie.]
S Pius V dealt with the question of churches with a Use of more than 200 years (i.e., going back to before the invention of printing made life so easy for liturgical tinkerers and innovators) in the following way.
He said “nequaquam auferimus” — in no way whatsoever do we take it (their old rite) off them.
It is true that he added a “permittimus” — we permit that, if they like my edition of the Missal better, they can adopt it “de episcopi vel praelati capitulique universi consensu” — provided that the bishop and the unanimous Chapter are in agreement.
If S Paul VI … or PF … had really wished to behave like S Pius V, they would have needed to decree something like this:
“We do not take away the right to use a Missal with more than 200 (or 600? Or 1200?) years of lawful use; but if a Bishop and his entire Chapter really do want to use my Novus Ordo instead, I will permit them to do so.”
As I recall, Fr. H posted this line of entirely accurate thought before, with a witty scenario involving a curmudgeonly canon.
Meanwhile, facts are stubborn.
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Perhaps this can be used as a proper measure of humility. One man forces radical change while the other allows change but doesn’t require it. Which man is more humble?
Has anyone written about how it is that a pope, A POPE! – who was, before that, a cardinal and a bishop and a priest (going in reverse order) – trained under the Vetus Ordo all his life, like Pope Paul VI was, could look at the proposed Novus Ordo and could FAIL to say: “No, that’s not what we are going to issue. It’s not what the Council said to do.” What mechanism could possibly have bamboozled Pope Paul, the man who wrote Humanae Vitae, into thinking that the product of Bugnini’s committee should be accepted?
I can (sort of) twist my mind around a pope – once he had decided to hold his nose and gag down the proposed new mass – that “by golly, if we’re going to institute something THIS bad as the new mass, the only way that will work is if I make it mandatory, so I better.” But that kind of makes it obvious that the pope saying so had already decided to ignore ambulance sirens, air-raid bells, the firemen pounding on the door, and his own stomach flip-flopping around at the smell of the thing. Which begs the question, HOW could he have been brought to the point of agreeing to accept THIS mass as “the reform” to begin with?
Dear TonyO,
he may have liked some parts of the reform, and thought it was the will of the Council etc.; but from what I hear one motive, and probably the main motive, was this: “It is really hard for us to give up the Old Mass which we, and which I, love so dearly. Really really hard. – That’s the sacrifice we’ve got to make for the Protestants to return to the flock.”
[Or they just plain lie.]
They begin by trying to make everything fit a progressive paradigm. When that doesn’t work, the lying begins, which produces another example of Spadaro math: 2 + 2 = 5.
That’s the sacrifice we’ve got to make for the Protestants to return to the flock.”
Imrahil, while I recognize that “return of the Protestants was indeed one of the themes in the Council and among the committee, had anyone (had the Pope) bothered to consider whether Protestants would ACTUALLY be interested / attracted by this new mass? Here’s my main doubt: many, MANY denominations no longer have (or had) a service even remotely like what Catholic services are like (not even the Novus Ordo). Making the mass into something familiar to Lutherans and Anglicans would be pretty much pointless to the Baptists, Quakers, Calvinists, Presbyterians, and a trillion other groups, like those that mainly just like the singing. How was that EVER likely to get them to “return”?
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