The New Mass & "Paschal Mystery"

So what is the deal with traditionalists, the new liturgy, and the "Paschal mystery?" Fr. Zed has recently posted several things that indicate Cardinal Muller and Bishop Bernard Fellay are still talking with some regularity and that hopes for "reconciliation"—whatever that would mean—are not necessarily dashed with Francis' papacy. One commenting reader said on several of these posts that the FSSPX must accept something called "the Paschal mystery" in order to be reconciled. What is the Paschal mystery? 

To the best of my knowledge, Lefebvre's Fraternity does observe the Resurrection on the Sunday after Holy Week. No internet search yields clear results as to what the Paschal mystery is, but it does reveal a few articles from the Fraternity's website and another elsewhere by Fr Peter Scott about the problems of "Paschal mystery" theology in the Pauline Mass. The objection seems to be that the "Paschal mystery" is too focused on God's love and kindness, too little how offended He is by sin and demanding of propitiatory sacrifice to placate Him. The last part of this is a very sore spot for traditionalists whose view of tradition narrowly corresponds 19th and early 20th century Catholicism. Session 22 of Trent was crystal clear that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. People do seem to forget why. If the Mass is an anamnesis of Calvary, the same sacrifice of the Cross is the sacrifice of the Mass. It was a sacrifice for our sins which is made present again on numerous altars throughout the world daily. Calvary was an act of love. We are not Puritans who are aroused by the likes of Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, a God so offended by sin that He dangles over the fires of hell as a spider dangles from his thread. The reduction of God's hatred of sin to a debt repayment alone, ignoring the proactive love of God the Father, gives one the impression that God is infinitely offended, that we have an enormous debt to pay, and that Jesus was the only one who could pay it. Why is the need to make reparation to the Father and to do penance in contradiction to God's love? Why are the two exclusive to each other? While certain prayers of the Mass do emphasize propitiation (the Roman offertory, the Placeat tibi at the end of Mass), a greater number of the orations emphasize love, teaching, and forgiveness. Liturgically, the Church's mind is that the two are inseparable, neither contradictory nor separate things.

The Eastern rites are far more Paschal than the Latin rites. In the Byzantine tradition, the troparion and kantikon on most Sundays is about the Resurrection. During the equivalent of the Preface, the celebrant says "You brought us from nothingness into being, and when we had fallen raised us up again, and left nothing undone until You brought us to heaven and granted us Your future kingdom." The nearest thing to propitiation in the Greek tradition might be "We offer You Your own from what is Your own, from all and for the sake of all." If we are to apply St. Vincent of Lerins' test that for something to be a teaching of the Church it must be believed always, everywhere, and by everyone, the idea of the Eucharist as an exclusively, or even primarily, act of propitiatory satisfaction fails. Canons I and III of Trent, session 22, condemn the idea that the Mass is a human act of praise that does not have sacrificial value to God, which is absolutely heresy. To limit our understanding to a condemnation though is narrow if not dangerous.

Again, not knowing much about the "New Theology" in vogue during the Pius XII and Paul VI years, I cannot comment of the "Paschal mystery," but as a Catholic I can say something about the exclusion of love from the focus of the liturgy. Perhaps this "Paschal mystery" idea was a Trojan horse to water down the sacrificial aspects of the Roman Mass and the inconvenient difficulties of judgment, sin, and hell. If so, commentators should write with more perspective.

Summorum Pontificum & the Rite of Econe

Today much of the Tradosphere celebrates the issuance of then-Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum, which largely deregulated use of the 1962 Roman rite. What is really used is not 1962, I do not think anyone uses 1962 by the book, but what I call the "Rite of Econe," the result of tinkering during the formative years of the FSSPX.

Early on, outside of France, most everyone in the traditionalist movement used pre-Pius XII. Even in France St. Nicolas du Chardonnet used pre-Pacelli until 1984 when the priest in charge of that church died. For some reason 1962 caught on in France. Why? Perhaps during the 1960s priests became gradually more agitated and stopped accepting changes at a certain point. Rather than turning back the clock they refused to go forward. This was the case of Fr. Quintin Montgomery-Wright, who then Sarum-ized the Roman liturgy and recovered the Norman liturgical heritage of northern France. It may also have appealed because of its very sparse and simple Divine Office.*

A man who was a postulant with the FSSPX in Econe "back in the day" once told me that they did 1965—essentially 1962 with the popular parts in vernacular and options for lay people to do readings—with some modifications, among them the Ordinary of Mass in Latin and the Confiteor prior to Communion. At some point they switched to 1962 outright at Econe, meaning all Latin, no lay readers, and recovering the hour of prime. They continued to make alterations—such as the epistle in French, bows to the Cross, and no genuflection for the Jews on Good Friday—until arriving at their current praxis. Do any readers, particularly older ones, know additional details about this development? After all the rite of Econe is the Extraordinary Form.

* = for example yesterday would have been Sunday and the Octave day of Ss. Peter & Paul, warranting nine readings at Mattins (including three from the superseded octave day being read as one long ninth lesson), commemorations at Lauds, Mass, and Vespers. This Wednesday would see Vespers of St. Elizabeth of Portugal followed by Vespers of the Dead, as the Officium Defunctorum is prayed on the first free day of the month in addition to the Office of the season/sanctoral cycle. Lent and Advent are especially involved in the old Office, with the Officium Defunctorum and Requiem Masses in additional to the Lent and Advent liturgy on Mondays. In 1962 Sundays usually have three lessons as opposed to the traditional nine. The difference could be up to 30 minutes of time in private recitation during violet seasons.

Quo Vadis, FSSPX?

Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre, archbishop of Dakar, superior of the Holy Ghost
Fathers, Apostolic Delegate for French speaking Africa, participant
in Vatican II, and founder of the FSSPX.
source: dici.org

In 1970 a retired missionary Archbishop named Marcel Lefebvre founded a pious brotherhood in Econe, Switzerland under the jurisdiction of the local ordinary. Lefebvre reacted to the requests of French seminarians ostracized by the national seminary in Rome for wearing the cassock and praying the Rosary. Lefebvre eventually broke his silence in 1974, beginning a circuit of old rite Masses throughout Europe which eventually included St. Mary Major in Rome. During a Mass at Lille he attracted the attention of Rome for calling the 1969 Ordo Missae and other new rituals "sacrements bâtards" ("illegitimate Sacraments"). In 1975 the Seminary of St. Pius X, run by his brotherhood, ordained its first class of priests and gave them to dioceses for incardination, as was the original purpose of the Econe seminary.

Seminary of St. Pius X in Econe
source: sspx.org

All this changed in 1976 when Pope Paul VI, declining in age and increasingly isolated by the Vatican bureaucracy, upheld the dissolution of the brotherhood and seminary by the local ordinary. As the brotherhood, or FSSPX, had established canonical priories outside of Econe they protested that the local bishop could only remove their faculties within his diocese and had no authority over the organization as a whole. They may have been right, but Paul VI, as one can see in the correspondence recorded in Michael Davies' near hagiography of Lefebvre, really did not care. An interesting article on the matter can be found in the Catholic Herald's archives.

Consequently, Lefebvre found himself, canonically, a man without a diocese, religious order, honorary see, or place in another kind of fraternity. A cleric without an assignment is de facto suspended a divinis. Lefebvre pressed on and ordained a new set of priests in 1976 without permission, suspending the new priests as well. Every ordination class since then incurred canonical suspension at the laying of hands. The FSSPX makes the case that the suspension was unjust—and it may have been—and that the current state of the Church warrants their arrangement. All that is fine, but this post will not weigh their arguments.

Msgr. Lefebvre celebrates Mass in
the presence of Cardinal Gagnon
source: fsspx.org

Lefebvre quieted down and, although he continued ordaining priests, more or less accepted the wider results of his suspension. Many these days forget that numerous priests scattered throughout the world's dioceses initially resisted the liturgical changes and kept with conventional catechism. These men sometimes worked in unison with the FSSPX for the sake of networking, resource sharing, and keeping up moral, but they were still diocesan clergy. When Fr. Peter Morgan came to England from Econe most of his collaborators were diocesan priests still in good standing with their bishops, even if their bishops did not like it. In continental Europe, particularly in France, many practicing Catholics attended Lefebvre's "rally Masses" by the thousands—many with five digit attendance figures. Lefebvre could have been the visible figure who could lead the then-nascent traditionalist movement to keep traditional liturgical and catechetical practice within the Church's legal system and diocesan structure. When he withdrew from public sight to his seminary in Econe, Lefebvre let the traditionalist movement—which had the potential to attract a significant fraction of the Catholic world—whither and decay. A few odd cases in Evreux, Campos, and Gabon can be found where diocesan clergy continued the old liturgy, but generally any conservative tendencies died after losing their lifelines. From then on the FSSPX, as an organization, became almost exclusively identified with Catholic tradition.

At this point I would like to end the history, now that the familiar narrative begins: the three Roman visitors to Econe, the 1979 audience with John Paul II, the visit of Cardinal Gagnon, the Ratzingerian protocol, and the Econe consecrations. My private opinion is that, as pope, Benedict XVI de-restricted the 1962 rite and lifted the 1988 decree Ecclesia Dei because he felt the liturgical changes, although justified, happened too quickly and because he thought he played some role in the melt down of relations between Msgr. Lefebvre and the Vatican in 1987/1988.

Bishop Bernard Fellay after an ordination Mass

What concerns the Rad Trad about the FSSPX is not their past (far too young to care), but their future. The year is 2014. In another year the FSSPX will arrive at the 40th anniversary of its first and last canonically sanctioned ordination—which included bishop Tissier de Mallerais, the most radical of the four men Lefebvre consecrated to the episcopacy. The next class of seminarians to begin ordination studies with the FSSPX will commence the third generation of clergy within that organization that never knew a normal relationship with a bishop, either the bishop of Rome or the bishop of Rhode Island. Instead of tangible relations with other priests and with Rome or a canonical administration of the Sacraments (save the few cases when the Roman Penitentiary grants them absolution jurisdiction) forty years of priests will have known nothing but the "true Sacraments," "eternal Rome," and assumptions about Modernism. Amid their Platonic formation, would these men know the opportunity for a regularization if it came to them?

The former superior claimed forces within the Vatican derailed the regularization while the current superior, bishop Bernard Fellay, reported the Pope himself added new and more stringent criteria for reconciliation. More mainstream commentators suggested that the FSSPX missed the last boat to normality. Why did that ship sail in 2012? Could it not have sailed before then?

Bishop Fellay is a spry 55, but in a decade or so he will have to think concrete thoughts about the future of Msgr. Lefebvre's brotherhood. How could he normalize three generations of priests who have rarely had a positive thought about their local bishop or the neighboring parish in the last half century? Would the situation in 2024 justify consecrating another bishop or four? Will 2028 be like 1988 or will the situation have changed?

June 30, 1988 at Econe

Most problematic for a reconciliation is that time has accustomed the FSSPX to independence from canonical structures. Lefebvre expelled nine priests in 1983 for, among other things, rejecting diocesan tribunals' decisions on the nullity of certain marriages. Somehow the FSSPX now exercises, and has for some time, its own judgment on the validity of marriages done in the mainstream of the Church. Their bishops, who Lefebvre wished to function as auxiliaries, routinely substitute for the local bishop in signing the necessary paper to found monasteries and the like. For all practical purposes the FSSPX is an autocephalous body.

We cannot doubt Msgr. Lefebvre's intentions, but we can certainly doubt his wisdom. He rightly found the state of the Church in the 1970s appalling and, in his missionary instinct, sought to do something about it. Sadly he made many mistakes in decisions that required prudence and landed his pious brotherhood with its current debacle. They ignore the Pope, but do not deny him; hence one can call them disobedient, but they are not schismatic. They ignore a general council, but do not reject its legality; they are not heretical. They say that they were maltreated in 1976; but regardless of what was right then, they do not enjoy legal status. They are not outside the fold, nor are they exactly within it. Anyone interested in pre-1969 liturgy has them to thank, in part, for preserving older liturgical use. Cardinal Ratzinger among others have admitted that the FSSPX has forced Rome to re-evaluate the post-Conciliar period. And still does this warrant their current situation? Benedict XVI had "unfinished business" with the FSSPX after 1988 and still hoped to heal the wounds that opened after the Council which launched his ecclesiastical track. The Roman authorities circa 2009 saw the growth in the traditional seminaries and perhaps hoped to put all the traddy eggs in one basket. And bishop Fellay can remember, as a student, the days when the old Mass was the norm. With a new pope who has no demonstrable connection to the "Mass of the Ages" or the Second Vatican Council and a new generation of clergy with really no connection to him, bishop Fellay must ask himself "Quo vado?"