The Recusant: SSPX Moves Closer to Accepting the New Mass

[Stone]

The SSPX Moves Closer to Accepting the New Mass

PART 4 - The SSPX and the “Hybrid Mass”


Ugly architecture aside, let us return to the question “Why?” Why does it have to be a freestanding altar which could be approached from the other side and one day used to say Mass facing the people? Doubtless the SSPX is not about to start offering the New Mass or even the Traditional Mass facing the people any time soon. But could they do so one day? Might there not be those within the hierarchy of the SSPX who have one eye on preparing for that day? Is that really so paranoid and far-fetched? Do we perhaps need a little more than some “coincidences” of architecture as evidence for such a suspicion?

Exhibit A is an excerpt from an interview given ten years ago by the then- District Superior of the USA, Fr. Arnaud Rostand:

“Angelus Press: Father, you also mentioned the maintenance of the 1962 Missal as one of the essential conditions of the Society's future. There are some reports that in the near future Rome may come out with an updated or hybrid version of the 1962 Missal. Would the Society ever consider adopting this?

Fr. Rostand: First of all, the reports of the hybrid Mass are uncertain and conflicting. It is difficult to base any position on theoretical or hypothetical things that may happen. Now, the General Chapter has made a clear statement of having the right to use the 1962 Missal and has always been in the mind of the Archbishop a prudential way of dealing with the disaster we find ourselves in today.”
(http://archives.sspx.org/District_Superiors_Ltrs/2013_ds_ltrs/fr_rostand_12-19
-2012_ap_interview/fr_rostand_12-19-2012_ap_interview-part_2.htm)

Supposedly “conflicting” reports aside, Benedict XVI had long been a big supporter and promoter of the idea of mixing and mashing the New Mass together with the Traditional Mass to create a “hybrid” missal (the French call it the “PiPaul Mass” - Pius V, Paul VI - as though there could ever be any comparison between those two Popes!) The question was clear and simple: “Would the SSPX ever consider adopting” the hybrid Novus-Traditional Missal?

Notice what Fr. Rostand pointedly didn’t say: he didn’t say “No!” He said that it’s still at the hypothetical stage and what’s important is that we have the right to use the 1962 missal. That means, in effect, yes. We would consider the hybrid Mass.

Might such a Mass conceivably be celebrated facing the people on a freestanding altar, the way the New Mass usual is usually  celebrated? Take a look at the horrors which took place in the years 1965-70, after the Council but before the New Mass came out, and one will see that such a thing is far from impossible. The traditional Mass, but translated into the vernacular, facing the people, in “dialogue Mass” form and shorn of the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel. And yet, if such a thing were one day to make a come-back, there would be no shortage of people out there willing and ready to defend it as being perfectly
“Traditional,” the SSPX amongst them, one suspects.

Is this too great a stretch, are we exaggerating when we say that the SSPX would be more willing to accept a hybrid Novus/Traditional Mass? We have just quoted the response of one SSPX grandee to that very question. Here is another piece of evidence.


Exhibit B is the book Benoit XVI et les Traditionalistes (‘Benedict XVI and the Traditionalists’) by SSPX priest Fr Gregoire Celier, which appeared some sixteen or more years ago and has since been promoted by the SSPX within the French district and further afield.

A fair and thorough critique can be found in French here: http://benj.barrer.free.fr/Biblioth%
E9que/Crise/CritiquedePaulChauss%E9e-BENOITXVIetlesTRADIS.pdf

Suffice it to say that Fr. Celier favours the idea of a hybrid Novus-Traditional Mass, to the point of promoting it as the answer to all the Church’s woes. He names this concept the “PiPaul Mass” (“Pius-Paul”, after Pius V and Paul VI):

“He [i.e. Fr Celier] imagines that a hybrid rite could be born, which he calls the ‘PiPaul Mass,’ a mixture of the rite of ‘Pius’ and the rite of ‘Paul,’ of the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, which could be used by young priests to ‘take the new liturgy which they are celebrating in public and re-root it in Tradition’ (p.196), but also that it could be used ‘to improve through interbreeding’ the rite which they prefer, according to what Benedict XVI disturbingly calls ‘mutual enrichment.’

[Il imagine que pourrait naître un rite hybride qu’il appelle « messe pipaule », mélange du rite « Pie » et du rite « Paul », de la messe saint Pie V et de la messe Paul VI, qui pourrait être utilisé par les jeunes prêtres pour « réenraciner dans la tradition la liturgie nouvelle qu’ils célèbrent en public » (p. 196). Mais aussi pour “améliorer par métissage” le rite qu’ils préfèrent selon l’inquiétante option que Benoît XVI appelle « enrichissement réciproque ».]

We could quote more - there is more where that came from. The point is that the idea of a mish-mash hybrid Novus-Traditional Mass is not quite so anathema to the SSPX as some might think. Bear in mind also that this was back in 2007 or so, before the SSPX had ever put into writing its belief that the New Mass had been “legitimately promulgated by Pope Paul VI…” - in the infamous Doctrinal Declaration of April 2012.


Exhibit C - in 2014 a conciliar bishop claimed that Bishop Fellay had expressed to him his support for the idea of mixing together the New Mass and the Traditional Mass. In his article for the website newliturgicalmovement.org, after talking about the need for a “liturgical reform” to make the Traditional Mass more like the New Mass (so that modern people don’t feel too alienated at it), Bishop Peter J Elliot, who was at that point auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia, wrote:

“We know what that reform would look like. We already have it at our fingertips. It would be a Latin dialogue Mass, said or sung ad orientem, with the readings in the vernacular. Then questions arise about some other changes set out in Sacrosanctum Concilium. In the context of the wider Church another issue inevitably emerges: could the Extraordinary Form be said or sung in the vernacular?

Several years ago I was surprised to hear this proposed during dialogue over lunch with Bishop Fellay and Australian priests of the Society of St Pius X.”  (https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/20...sible.html)

Bishop Fellay and/or “his priests” proposed the Tridentine Mass but all in English (the vernacular), is that so? I can already hear the SSPX apologist trying to spin his way out of this one: Elliott never said that it was Bishop Fellay himself who proposed it! Very well, but if this wasn’t Bishop Fellay himself, merely one of “his priests”, then at the very least Bishop Fellay must not have intervened, meaning that he tacitly approved, or at any rate, allowed Bishop Elliott to think that he approved. Or perhaps Bishop Elliott is one of those diabolically inspired calumniators and rumour-mongers about whom the SSPX back in 2014 was  continually warning us? Perhaps Bishop Elliott made the whole thing up and there isn’t an ounce of truth to any of it? That doesn’t seem at all probable, why would he tell straight up lies like that, and why would the ‘New Liturgical Movement’ open themselves up to a lawsuit by publishing something which was totally untrue?

And in any case, that is not the only example of this sort of thing leaking out into the conciliar media. Here is another example.


Exhibit D - In January 2013, Cardinal Canizares told Catholic News Agency how Bishop Fellay had made remarks to him of a similar tenor:

“According to a Spanish cardinal, the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X once said that if the group's leader had seen the [New] Mass celebrated properly, he may not have broken off from the Church.

Cardinal Antonio Canizares, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made this statement on Jan. 15 in response to questions from reporters after he delivered an address on Vatican II at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See.

‘On one occasion,’ Cardinal Canizares recalled, ‘Bishop Bernard Fellay, who is the leader of the Society of St. Pius X, came to see me and said, “We just came from an abbey that is near Florence. If Archbishop (Marcel) Lefebvre had seen how they celebrated there, he would not have taken the step that he did.” The missal used at that celebration was the Paul VI Missal in its strictest form,’ the cardinal added.”
(https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/...have-split)

Ah. Well, maybe Cardinal Canizares is also lying, calumniating and inventing things which never really happened, just like Bishop Elliot? Maybe they’re both lying or twisting things? Does that sound the least bit probable? To be sure, Bishop Fellay tried to backpedal from this one, and issued a “clarification” (here) which leaves things looking as clear as mud. But taken together as a whole, isn’t the evidence pointing in one direction?

How about an interview with Bishop Fellay, published by the SSPX itself, where one can read Bishop Fellay’s own words touching on the question of “liturgical reform” and the so-called “hybrid Mass”?


Exhibit E is an interview with Bishop Fellay which appeared in late June 2015. Right at the end of the interview, the question of mixing together the Traditional and Novus Ordo liturgies comes up. See for yourself:

“Interviewer: What do you think of Cardinal Sarah’s suggestion of introducing the traditional offertory into the New Mass?

“Bishop Fellay: It is not a new idea; it has been around in Rome for ten years. I am glad it has been taken up again. Some criticize the idea, saying it is a way of mixing the profane with the sacred. On the contrary, in the perspective of bringing health back to the Church, I think it would be a great step forward. …”

Curiously enough, the link to this interview has since been removed, although it was there and its full text can still be found reproduced on various other websites. Who knows what’s going on there. Anyway, Cardinal Sarah must be one of those good guys in Rome about whom Bishop Fellay was always talking so enthusiastically, so optimistically. And notice, he’s “glad” at the idea of mixing the Traditional and Novus Ordo rites. It’s “a great step forward” and a means of “bringing health back to the Church.” Doubtless there will be some who will defend these words by claiming that Bishop Fellay was talking about what they do, not what we do. And doubtless that is the case. But it is also true that from approving something in principle is only a short step from doing it oneself.


Summary

Let us review the evidence so far. Fr. Paul Robinson is not only a priest of the SSPX, he has just been appointed in charge of the SSPX’s biggest printing house, Angelus Press, by his superiors. His words can therefore be taken to be representative of the SSPX as a whole. Quo Primum, we are told, does not bind any of the Popes who came after St. Pius V and was written for the benefit of the printers, parish priests and the like. Despite the text itself, Quo Primum does not “forever have the force of law,” and Paul VI was thus free to do whatever he wanted to the Mass. Traditionalist of an earlier generation, men such as the late Fr. Gregory Hesse, are to be buried  and forgotten, whilst men such as Pius Parsch are to be gently  rehabilitated with a wink and a nudge.

The SSPX has shown a worrying tendency in recent years towards favouring the so-called hybrid Mass where Mass would be celebrated with a mixture of Traditional and Novus Ordo liturgy, and at the same time the same SSPX seems now to be exhibiting a predilection for freestanding altars with steps going all the way around on both sides whenever they have the opportunity to build a sanctuary from scratch.

Put all the evidence together and what do we have? We may not witness a priest of the SSPX celebrate the so-called “hybrid” Mass, vernacular Mass or Mass facing the people for another decade or more. Or it might happen sooner than many think. Either way, in the opinion of this author it is a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if.’ Watch out!




“Yn lle allol; trestyl trist” [In place of an altar, there is a miserable table!]

- St. Richard Gwynn

“We will have the Mass in Latin as it was before, and celebrated by the priest without any man or woman communicating with him. We will not receive this New Service which is like a Christmas game, but we will have our old service of Matins, Mass, Evensong and Procession in Latin as it was before. … We utterly refuse this new English.”

- From a letter containing a list of demands sent to the English government by the Catholic ‘rebels’ 

of the Western Rising of 1549, aka the “Prayer Book Rebellion”.

“The language proper to the Roman Church is Latin. Hence it is forbidden to sing anything whatever in the vernacular in solemn liturgical functions - much more to sing in the vernacular the variable or common parts of the Mass and Office.”

-Pope Saint Pius X, ‘Tra le Sollecitudini,’ 22nd November, 1903