Liturgy expert: Worldwide spread of Novus Ordo has diminished belief in Real Presence
'I'm afraid it's impossible to deny the connection.'
Tue Oct 20, 2020 - 9:15 am EST
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October 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Sparked by the reading of LifeSite author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s most recent book, Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2020), German musicologist and journalist Dr. Barbara Stühlmeyer conducted the following interview, asking the author about his first encounter with the traditional Latin Mass (TLM), whether there’s a connection between the liturgical reform and loss of faith in the Real Presence, the importance of Latin-rite priests everywhere learning the usus antiquior, the difference between the old Divine Office and the new Liturgy of the Hours, the place of the saints and angels in Catholic life, and advice for those who cannot find a TLM near them. A German translation of this interview will appear in the German newspaper Die Tagespost.
Dr. Stühlmeyer: When did you take part in the celebration of a TLM for the first time?
PAK: When I was in high school, maybe 17 years old, I was told that such a thing as a “Latin Mass” existed. Of course I had no idea whatsoever what this would have meant, as I’d only ever seen the English Novus Ordo, and my Catholic education had been sorely lacking in history or theology. Thanks to a “tip” from a teacher, I found out there was a Latin Mass and made an attempt to figure out where I could find it. That led me one Sunday to a hotel conference room somewhere in New Jersey near where I lived, so I went to it. I remember nothing except confusion, lots of people kneeling in a businesslike space with a low ceiling, and not hearing anything. It was not an edifying experience.
The first “real” experience, I would say, came a couple of years later in college, where one of the two chaplains secretly celebrated low Masses in a beautiful Spanish-style chapel at an altar surmounted by a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. That’s where I first fell in love, though as yet I had little clue how this love would dominate my life.
Would you say there is a connection between the postconciliar liturgy and the dwindling belief in transubstantiation?
Yes, I’m afraid it’s impossible to deny the connection. The classical Roman rite as it developed over so many centuries acquired numerous and very expressive gestures of adoration and care toward the Holy Sacrament, precisely because it is not a mere “thing,” but under the signs of bread and wine a divine Person is really present. How we treat Him is how we show our faith in Him and our love for Him. The liturgical reform cruelly diminished these gestures and introduced other practices, now habitual to the point of being immovable, that suggest we are dealing with common food and drink that, in the context of Mass, are given a new symbolic meaning (the technical term for this heresy is “transsignification”). The reformed rite is redolent of a Lutheran or Calvinist conception of the Eucharist. That is the “faith,” if one can call it that, of the vast majority of Catholics in the Western world.
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When they learn the true teaching of the Church, they start to see the jarring cognitive dissonance between what we believe (or say we believe) and how we act in the Novus Ordo. And when they see how the traditional Mass works, they realize that it itself is a grand tabernacle for the holy Mystery of Faith, a dominating reminder, a protective enclosure, a gold shining house of God that beckons us while saying “fall on your knees and adore.”
Would you encourage that prospective priests study both rites?
Absolutely. If the usus antiquior is the Roman Rite — as it unquestionably is, both historically and (thanks to Summorum Pontificum) legally — then any priest ordained in the Latin Church to offer the Roman Rite should be able to do so in full, not in a partial and, as it were, handicapped manner. It would be like running with one leg, or boxing with one arm. (I’m thinking that this metaphor doesn’t work so well, because there would be no similar defect in a priest’s only celebrating the old form, which is all that existed for most of the Church’s history and is sufficient unto itself.)
Beyond that, every priest I know who offers the usus antiquior has found it to be a tremendous enrichment to his life of prayer, his sense of priestly identity, and his pastoral ministry. It brings forth new possibilities of evangelization, even if that is not its primary purpose.
