On LifeSite News, Mr. John-Henry Westin and I discuss which is actually older: The so-called "Tridentine Mass" or the Novus Ordo Missae. We also consider overlap in the seven ancient sacraments when considering the old Latin Rite in light of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church.
The featured image above is a picture of the last scheduled TLM in the Melbourne, Australia Cathedral (which just took place this June of 2024.) Although there are serious theological and historical errors in it, the liturgical letter Desiderio Desideravi (henceforth DD) is correct in at least one sentence, in that it identifies the liturgical debates between traditionalists and modernists as primarily ecclesiological, not liturgical. It reads, "The problematic is primarily ecclesiological." (I first noticed the importance of that sentence when it was recently mentioned on Return to Tradition.) The second half of that paragraph including that sentence reads: "The problematic is primarily ecclesiological. I do not see how it [...]
Last week in Florida, a woman demanded Holy Communion from a 66 year old priest named Fr. Rodriguez. When he quietly informed her in that Communion line that she had to be a practicing Catholic, she grabbed numerous hosts (the body of Jesus Christ) in his ciborium. As she crushed them in her hand, he had no arms to push her away, so he lunged at her and bit her forearm to defend the Holy Eucharist. I do not believe he broke the skin, but it appears he was still charged by police. The question of a priest physically repelling a lay-assailant upon a ciborium or chalice is essentially [...]
p/c Notre-Dame De Fontgombault Several years ago, as I was switching from the new sacraments to the ancient Roman sacraments, I stopped at a parish in Tampa one afternoon. I asked the parish secretary if I could offer Holy Mass there. She asked who was going to attend my Mass. I said I was alone. She looked bewildered. No youth group? No family of origin traveling with you? The parish secretary only thought of the Mass in anthropocentric terms: If no one was there to receive Holy Communion, why would this priest show up at her parish and try to offer Mass alone? It was as crazy to this lady [...]
The most common question I receive from my readers is: "Do I have to attend a Novus Ordo Mass on a Sunday when there is no Traditional Latin Mass nearby?" I was going to title this article that very question, but then I realized that question is only sixty years old. Then I thought to title this article: "Is it a mortal sin to skip an irreverent Mass on Sunday if I can't get to a reverent Mass?" but that was too long. I then realized the entire topic of the Third Commandment was at stake. What does Church history tell us before 1960? Dr. Peter Kwasniewski emailed me the [...]
I only ski every three years, and this week was one of those years. I did two days in a row up in Summit Co., CO. My brother in law's parents were kind enough to let me use their home. The above is a picture of my travel Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) kit set up in their home. I was alone in that home most of the time there. (One buddy who joined me one day for skiing attended one Mass in there, and did well in attending it even though he goes normally to both Masses.) I mention he "did well" because that is not something that just goes [...]
The three grades (so to speak) of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) are listed in order of ascending solemnity: Low Mass: In this Mass, a lay person will probably just hear the priest whisper the Roman Canon without a choir or any chanting. The above featured-image is me offering Holy Mass at a side altar in Portugal. Notice that I have a server in that picture, but I never have a server in my hermitage for my daily low Mass. Only two candles are lit upon the altar, whether the priest has a server or not. Of course, in a low Mass it is still God the Son offering Himself [...]
Thirty years ago this month, I attended World Youth Day (WYD) in Denver, CO with Pope John Paul II. It took place days before my 15th birthday. Some estimates believe one million people showed up to the events at the old Mile High Stadium (see above photo) and the final Mass at Cherry Creek Reservoir (see below photo.) My own mother was one of the chaperones for WYD '93 and my little brother (12 years old at the time) was one of thousands treated by Denver General Paramedics for dehydration at the final reservoir Mass. This was a special event for my family since Denver is where we were born [...]
Really, the better title of this blog should be "The Roman Canon is the Oldest Eucharistic Prayer and those of the Eastern Liturgies." What is excluded from this? Obviously, the Novus Ordo's Eucharistic Prayer II, III and IV are all very new man-made prayers. They are not of Apostolic Origin. But for some reason, that isn't so "obvious" to most Catholic educators today. One of the strangest modern-myths pushed in my mainstream-seminary years ago (and probably still today) was that "Eucharistic Prayer II is older than Eucharistic Prayer I." (That sounds as silly as saying, "The New Mass is older than the Old Mass.") As most of you know, what [...]
When I first started finding all the corruption in the Catholic Church hierarchy, I actually bent-over backwards to blame everything except Vatican II. (Yes, you read that correctly.) I really didn't want to admit the entire Catholic Church on seven continents got overturned in the 1960s, so I started telling myself that the US bishops were bad... ah, but the rest of the world had implemented Vatican II in a much more conservative way! Of course, I soon found out in my travels that I was wrong. The heresy of modernism came part-in-parcel with all the new sacraments and the new doctrine of ecumenism (read: religious indifferentism) in every country [...]
