J.M.J.
On the feast of Corpus Christi, June 7, Holy Cross Seminary rejoiced to profess publicly for the second time the Catholic Faith in the Real Presence of our Divine Savior in the Blessed Sacrament by an outdoor Mass in Goulburn, followed by an hour long procession through the streets to the Old Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, outside the front portal of which Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was celebrated. It is symbolic of the threat that we pose to the modernists that we were refused permission not only to use the Cathedral for Benediction, but even to set up an altar before the beautiful statue on church grounds, as we did last year.
Father
Dominique Bourmaud celebrates the final Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament
Father Bourmaud, Professor at Holy Cross Seminary, pronounces the
words of consecration of the Precious Blood
This last week of the first term, the Major Seminarians completed tests and assignments, preparing for term break, but the Seminarians were preoccupied preparing and sitting the semester examinations that mark the end of the second quarter. We are happy that our community is stable, having lost none of the 35 seminarians that started the year. Now that the cold weather has set in, the heaters have been stoked up, and our workers have turned to the remodeling of four rooms in the Sacred Heart wing, until now in a deplorable condition, ceilings falling in, doors broken, carpets in shreds, paint peeling, electrical outlets non-functional. The seminarians will greatly appreciate these improvements. I would like to take this opportunity of informing you of two fundamental statements made by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, and responsible for the traditional Masses celebrated under the Indult. During a conference given in Brazil on May 16, on the occasion of the General Assembly of South American bishops for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, he announced: “the Holy Father has the intention of extending to the entire Latin Church the possibility of celebrating Holy Mass and the Sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962”. He also stated the reason, namely that it is not for the defense of the Faith, for “it is not a turning back of the clock, nor a return to the time before the 1970 reform”, but rather because “there is today a new and renewed interest for this liturgy”. It is considered simply a response to the grassroots demand of faithful Catholics, explicitly excluding any admission of defect in the “present day liturgy, whose wealth is no less precious” than the traditional Mass.
A close up of the Blessed Sacrament, carried by Father Bourmaud,
They have the churches. We have the Blessed Sacrament, the Mystery
of Faith.
The non-abrogation
of the traditional Mass is in fact clearly established. The Tridentine
Mass is solidly founded upon ecclesiastical tradition, that cannot
be overturned without incurring the condemnation of the Second Council
of Nicea. Moreover, it also has an irrefragable legal foundation
in the Papal Bull Quo Primum. Although a successor of St. Pius V
has the authority to abrogate this right guaranteed by St. Pius
X in perpetuity, he would have to explicitly state so, use equally
solemn language as was used to guarantee it, invoke his full Papal
authority and that of the apostles Saint Peter & Paul, threaten
with anathema those who might refuse to accept it, and demonstrate
that this abrogation is a just law for the good of the Church. None
of the above apply in the slightest. Paul VI simply explained that
it was his wish that the new Missal be used. As such he could at
the most have given permission for the new rite (that is a derogation
from the traditional law), but not at all have abrogated the traditional
rite. The second admission concerns an event that took place 21 years ago, and which since then has been shrouded in the greatest secrecy. It was a Commission of 9 Cardinals called by John Paul II in 1986 to determine whether Paul VI had really forbidden the traditional Mass and whether a bishop had the right to forbid one of his priests from celebrating the traditional Latin Mass. Previously the only knowledge we had of this Commission had been by an unofficial statement made by the traditionally minded and then retired Cardinal Stickler in 1995. Cardinal Hoyos, as the present head of the Ecclesia Dei Commission which succeeded this Commission of Cardinals, calls it the “first” Commission and had this to say: “The Holy Father believes that the time has come to ease, as the first Cardinalatial commission of 1986 had wished to do, the access to this liturgy”. Finally the 21 year silence has been broken, and Cardinal Hoyos has confirmed what Cardinal Stickler leaked 12 years ago, namely that 8 of the 9 Cardinals had determined that the traditional Mass had not been abolished, and that all nine were unanimous in stating that no bishop could forbid a Catholic priest from celebrating Mass in the traditional rite. It is to be hoped that now the secret is out of the bag, the official documents of that “first” Commission will be published, and that many more priests will return to or discover the true Mass, ignoring any conditions that the Pope, the episcopal conferences or the bishops might attempt to attach to the forthcoming Motu proprio. The publishing of these documents would seem to be the minimum act of good faith that we could expect from Rome if we are to believe that it really is concerned with the progress of Tradition.
The Catholic Cathedral of Goulburn, goal of the Blessed Sacrament procession, looms in the distance.
Volunteer
carpenter, Mr. Liam Cadigan, builds the portable altar that can
easily be folded and transported
Cardinal Castrillon made one further revealing and fundamental assertion, namely that the Holy Father’s intention is to make the traditional Mass and sacraments “an extraordinary form of the one Roman rite”. It defies all common sense to see how it could possibly be said that such disparate sets of ceremonies could be called “one” rite. What kind of unity can one possible speak of? On the one hand we have the unchanging, traditional ceremonies that perfectly contain the three qualities of Catholic liturgy, as laid down by Saint Pius X (Tra le sollecitudini, §2, 1903), and on the other hand the ever-changing novelties of the new rites that directly contradict them. The first of these conditions is “sacredness” or “holiness, which consequently must exclude everything that could render it profane”; that which has purity, which speaks only of heavenly and eternal truths, in which there is no stain of the world, nothing secular. Is this the silence of the mystery of the traditional mass or the constant noise of the humanism of the new? The second is “nobility”, the beauty and proportion that expresses the highest ideals, that makes is “true art”. Is this the measured movements, genuflections, graceful Gregorian chant, sublime Latin prayers, or is it altar girls, offertory processions, communion in the hand and guitars? The third is “universality”, “which reveals the Catholic unity of the Church” (Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §188), that excludes change and novelty and is a reflection of the constancy of eternity. Is this the unchanging Latin Canon received from the Fathers of the Church and last changed by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century, or is it the constant novelties of inculturation, of charismatic experience, of lay interference with the altar and the sacraments? Many other illustrations could be given, but it is perfectly clear that the new rite and the traditional rite are NOT one rite, nor could anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear deny it. Which then is the ordinary rite? An ordinary rite is one which follows order, which is prescribed, which is determined, which is constant and regular. The extraordinary is a departure from this rule. Surely the new rite, which is of its very nature open to novelty and experimentation, which is by definition constantly changing, in which no rules are followed, could never be considered as “ordinary”? Surely the new rite, a deliberate compromise with protestant and modernist teaching, obscuring on purpose the essentially propitiatory character of the sacrifice of the Mass, could never ever be considered a Catholic rule? If the new rite were the ordinary rite, there would then no longer be any order, nor any rule, nor any authority. The Church would be destroyed. If the New Mass is ordinary, it is ordinary for modernism and most assuredly not for Catholicism. Let us not for one instant, then, accept the preposterous offer that the traditional Mass become the extraordinary form of the one rite. The Tridentine Mass is the only Roman rite; it is the only Canon, the only rule for the celebration of Mass; it alone is ordinary, it alone is the rule for the Latin rite, always has been and always will be. It is with the assurance of our prayers for you, our friends and benefactors, upon whom our continued existence depends, that the Sacred Heart, Burning Furnace of Charity, might enkindle in all our hearts the fire of His divine Love, that by transforming our hearts He might transform this cold, indifferent world in which we live. Yours faithfully in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father Peter R. Scott
COME & BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
FAMILY WEEKEND: Saturday September 15, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, and Sunday September 16, Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. All our friends are invited to attend. The schedule is:
seminarians playing volleyball with Father Pfluger during
their lunch recreation.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Holy
Cross Seminary, Goulburn, Australia
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
