Tradition or Bust

Why no Amount of Reverence Can Fix the New Mass

Early this week I had the honor to serve the Funeral Mass of a departed soul. I was not familiar with this man, but nonetheless, it is always a particular honor for any Christian to participate in the sending off of a fellow Christian's soul to the judgment of Almighty God.

This Funeral Mass was, however, a Novus Ordo Mass. It was the first time I had attended the New Mass in quite some time, and an even longer time since I had served it. It had also been a particularly long time since most of the serving crew, schola, and even the priest had attended or assisted at a New Mass as well. And so, we had, in a certain way, to "relearn" how to do so. This relearning was a particular experience because of the lack of guidance in the rubrics of the Missal and other liturgical resources, but that is an issue we will get into later on.

What I would like to focus on first is something truly remarkable—and, I think, very true—which the priest celebrating the Mass said to me before the liturgy began. This priest now says almost exclusively the Old Rite of Mass, but was previously and exclusively a New Mass priest. He said to me:

"You know, when saying this Mass (the Novus Ordo), I feel like I am practicing a different religion."

What a stark remark to make. A remark that would probably offend a great deal of Catholics who attend the New Mass. Perhaps it should disgruntle those Catholics. I am not even suggesting that would be wrong of them. After all, this is the Mass which most Catholics have attended for their entire lives.

However, I could not help but agree with what the good priest said. It truly does feel like two different religions between the Novus Ordo and the Tridentine Mass. Much more than this, I believe it to be genuinely true. When you follow the different lines of theology of both Masses, you end up with what is seemingly two different religions. One could even say contrary religions.

This ultimately brings me to the content of this essay:

Why the Tridentine Mass is the only answer for the Church in the modern age, and why, no matter how hard well-meaning Catholics try to make the Novus Ordo "reverent," it will always miss the mark.

Disclaimer: This article represents my opinion and is offered for the consideration of others with the deepest charity. I would like to clarify that I am not stating that Catholics who attend the New Mass are not Catholic, or that they are somehow inherently less Catholic than those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass. I am also not stating that the New Mass is not a valid Mass, in that the Sacrament is truly confected under normal circumstances. I am not saying that those who go to the TLM have a "better chance at getting into Heaven." I am offering something that has been on my heart and on my soul for a long time, and that I believe is pertinent for the defense of the faith.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

You can, after all, make the New Mass look like the Old. But the more you do, the more it begs the question: Why not just offer the Old?

I will make this clear: I was once a part of this group. I firmly believed in what Pope Benedict XVI called "The Reform of the Reform." I truly thought the answer was to keep the New Mass, rid it of its abuses, and return to the reverence that most observed in the Old Rite. I now know, like many others who once held this position, that this is (1) naive, and (2) impossible.

It is naive because most Catholics do not desire a reverent liturgy. They simply like what has been spoon-fed to them since the 1960s. They like the way the liturgy makes them feel—because, after all, the new liturgy was designed with them in mind, not with God in mind.

It is also naive because the original question is the most simple and true question to ask oneself when it comes to finding "reverence" in the liturgy: Why would I try to make the Novus Ordo look as much like the Tridentine Mass instead of just going to the Tridentine Mass?

This experimentation of making the Novus Ordo "reverent" is, frankly, exhausting. And for the sane mind, the easiest and clearest solution is to go to a liturgy that you don't have to try to make reverent—it simply is reverent. It is also exhausting because the Novus Ordo liturgy does not want to be reverent. It was not designed with reverence in mind.

I know what some well-meaning Novus Ordo-attending Catholics would like to say: "But the General Instruction has the priest facing the altar, not the people, so the NO Mass is inherently ad orientem." Or, "What about Sacrosanctum Concilium? What the Council asked for is not what we got."

I can appreciate these defenses. I used to use them all the time. But the simple and true answer is: No. I'm sorry to tell you this, but the General Instruction of the New Roman Missal does not support ad orientem worship, and it does not call for the priest to face away from the people. I'm sorry to tell you, but we got precisely the liturgy that many devious minds at the Council desired. We did not get a liturgy in line with the "spirit of the Council." We got the liturgy called for by Vatican II. Which leads into the larger point.

Novus Ordo Non Est

There is no such thing as "the Novus Ordo"—there are hundreds of Novus Ordos (Novi Ordines) depending on the preferences of the celebrant.

I understand those well-meaning Catholics who bring the smells and the bells back to the Novus Ordo Mass, or say, "If only we brought back altar rails," or, "If only people stopped receiving in the hand," or, "If only more parts of the Mass were in Latin."

Therein lies precisely the problem: you have to bring these practices back. They were taken out when the liturgy switched from the Old to the New. They were taken out purposefully.

Do you want to know why the incense went away? Why the bells, the genuflections, the altar rails, the reception of Communion on the tongue, the Latin disappeared?

Because the New Mass deliberately calls for their removal. Because these ornamentations—these signs of reverence—were simply part of a larger issue.

That is why the argument of traditionalists has never been about the reverence or the beauty of the Mass. The true problem has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the new liturgy. It is the very theology of the Mass that is bad. All those various things mentioned above are good and certainly part of liturgical tradition that should be maintained—but the New Mass calls for their removal. And the New Mass calls for a different faith, a different theology.

Cult of Man vs. Cult of God

It is because the liturgy of the New Mass presents a theology that is born of the Cult of Man, not the Cult of God. In the Traditional Liturgy, the emphasis and the goal are clearly presented: Man is offering the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross to His Eternal Father for the forgiveness of our sins, the sake of our eternal souls, and the praise and worship of God's infinite majesty. You cannot present this in the New Mass, because the New Mass does not believe it.

The New Mass is firmly rooted in the Cult of Man. The emphasis of the liturgy is not vertical—toward God—but horizontal—man to man. The parts that speak of the propitiatory nature of Christ's sacrifice, of man's infinite debt of sin, and of our desperate need for a Savior were intentionally removed. The nature of the New Mass is that of a communal meal, with some vague references and gestures toward sacrifice. The very nature and definition of what the Mass is, as it has been understood by Christians for two thousand years, is fundamentally opposed. The makers of the New Mass—as they themselves freely admitted—sided with Martin Luther over the Council of Trent.

"The Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent." — Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, The Ottaviani Intervention, 1969

Reverence is Not the Root

The nature and theology of the New Mass is fundamentally modernist and Protestant. It does not matter how many smells and bells one adds—you cannot undo the thesis of the New Mass.

You cannot decorate your way to doctrinal purity. Catholic piety and reverence at the Mass did not disappear because people simply stopped being reverent in the 1960s. It disappeared because the Mass no longer demanded reverence from them.

Reverence is not imposed on a liturgy. It flows from it. The Traditional Liturgy demands reverence by its very structure—and, more importantly, because of its theology. It produces a very different faith than that of the New Mass. It produces the Cult of God, not the Cult of Man.

The New Mass requires effort and exceptions to approximate the reverence found in the Traditional Rites. You quite literally have to break the rubrics of the New Mass in order to even barely mirror the reverence found in the Traditional Mass.

Tradition or Bust

I no longer believe that we can—or should—reform something that was meant to be a rupture. I can no longer believe that reverence can be manufactured out of theological compromise. I can no longer believe that the New and the Old Rite are just two parts of the same Roman spirit.

The Novus Ordo is the product of rupture. Its creators admitted as much. Its fruits have shown as much. And it does not matter how much incense, how many bells, or how many altar rails you install—it cannot erase the fact that it is a clear departure from the traditions of the Church. We cannot continue to decorate ruins or dress up discrepancies.

At this moment in the Church, I believe there can be no ambiguity. We must take a firm stand for tradition. Enough compromise. This is not nostalgia—it is fidelity. We owe it to the saints of the past, and we owe it to future generations, who will either inherit the Catholic faith whole and entire—or something far less.

For me, the choice is clear: the Mass of the Ages, or no Mass at all.

I do not write any of this with anger or with hate, nor with an attitude of grandstanding. I write it out of clarity. I simply cannot pretend anymore. And I invite others to ask the same question I have:

Why settle for something you must fix, when you could simply return to what was never broken?

For me, it is Tradition or Bust.

Tradidi quod et accepi — “I have handed on what I also have received.” (1 Cor. 11:23)

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Post Scriptum

Post Scriptum: Further Reading

For readers who wish to better understand the theological rupture behind the Novus Ordo and the traditional liturgical patrimony of the Church, the following are essential:

• The Ottaviani Intervention (1969) — A short but devastating theological critique of the New Mass by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci.

• Session XXII of the Council of Trent (especially the canons) — The Church's dogmatic teaching on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

• Mediator Dei by Pope Pius XII — On the liturgy and its divine origin, countering early liturgical modernism.

• The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Msgr. Klaus Gamber — A thorough and balanced critique endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger.

• Work of Human Hands by Fr. Anthony Cekada — A detailed traditionalist analysis of the New Mass’s origins and consequences. I myself have not read this one, but it carries the highest praise from some well respected theologians I know.

These texts reveal not just what changed—but why it matters.