By Subverting Traditional Ceremonies, a Pope Falls into Schism

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne, in her in-depth analysis of the changes that led up to the New Mass, had this to say about the abolition of Minor Orders by Pope Paul VI in 1972:

The Roots of Schism

Let us keep in mind that when Paul VI abolished the Minor Orders and the Sub-Diaconate, he not only contradicted the truth of their status as clerical orders, but also rejected the anathemas issued by the Council of Trent on this subject. He inflicted on the Church a sudden and violent change that would prove to be severely damaging to the Faith.

A death blow to the cursus honorum

Ministeria quaedam was a blow aimed directly at the traditional understanding of the hierarchical priesthood for which a gradation of clerical orders by way of preparation and probation – the so-called cursus honorum – had been understood to have existed from the very beginnings of the Church (ad ipso Ecclesiae initio, as the Council of Trent stated).

When this long-standing tradition was abruptly ended in 1972, clergy and laity alike were left with the impression that what they believed about the greatness of the ordained priesthood was a monumental delusion that came crashing down at the stroke of a papal pen.

It is true that the sequence of Minor Orders had a varied and complex history before becoming standardized in the 11th century in the Western Church. (5) But what remained unchanged over all the centuries up to 1972 was the vital principle of stability and continuity insofar as they were recognized as clerical in nature. This was the unbroken Latin tradition as it was actually understood in the first two millennia of the Church. And as no Pope has the authority to subvert Tradition, we can draw the only reasonable conclusion that Ministeria quaedam – like many other of Pope Paul’s innovations, including his Novus Ordo Missae – was a schismatic act. (here, here and here)

This conclusion is strengthened by the open derision and contempt with which the Consilium members treated the Minor Orders and the slurs they cast on their truthfulness. It is scarcely credible that they could speak in those terms against an ancient and venerable institution that had supported their own priesthood.

How can Catholic priests so despise their own sacred tradition of Minor Orders as to recommend their abolition? How can a Pope accede to their demands, suddenly declare them to be outdated categories, and sever their intrinsic connection with the clerical state?

It is unconscionable that the Church was providing a platform for the dissemination of lies about the liturgy and that it was providing support for those who were hostile towards Tradition and anyone who followed it faithfully.

Pope Paul VI famously lamented that the Church was undergoing a process of self-demolition. But in a Church where the revolutionaries’ desires are more important than Tradition, and where the ordained ministers have been induced to hate what they had been taught to love before Vatican II, what other outcome could be expected?