Yes as far as I understand some theologians may disagree on this. That is why in my initial post I said some theologians, not all. If memory serves, it was popular in the middle ages that to "do what the church does" simply meant to say the correct words. That's all. I would be very happy if that were the case. From what I have read though is that in the past thousand years the main view has deepened so that to "do what the Church does" means the priest must also have an inner intention to perform the sacrament in the way the Church means it. This may not be as bad as it sounds because even a defective general intention is sufficient (hence protestant baptisms are acceptable, etc.) But what if the priest does not really believe in the Real Presence at all? Can he have the proper inner intention? Here is an excerpt from New Advent: The Church teaches very unequivocally that for the valid conferring of the sacraments, the minister must have the intention of doing at least what the Church does. This is laid down with great emphasis by the Council of Trent (sess. VII). The opinion once defended by such theologians as Catharinus and Salmeron that there need only be the intention to perform deliberately the external rite proper to each sacrament, and that, as long as this was true, the interior dissent of the minister from the mind of the Church would not invalidate the sacrament, no longer finds adherents. The common doctrine now is that a real internal intention to act as a minister of Christ, or to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect, in other words, to truly baptize, absolve, etc., is required. This intention need not necessarily be of the sort called actual. That would often be practically impossible. It is enough that it be virtual. Neither habitual nor interpretative intention in the minister will suffice for the validity of the sacrament. The truth is that here and now, when the sacrament is being conferred, neither of these intentions exists, and they can therefore exercise no determining influence upon what is done. To administer the sacraments with a conditional intention, which makes their effect contingent upon a future event, is to confer them invalidly. This holds good for all the sacraments except matrimony, which, being a contract, is susceptible of such a limitation. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08069b.htm
Archbishop Fulton Sheen favoured the introduction of some vernacular, though not the mile that was taken rather than the inch he proposed.
I've posted this elsewhere on the forum before, and I'm posting it again because of its relevance. What I Didn’t Know about Bugnini and the Liturgy Julia Meloni April 25, 2019 https://onepeterfive.com/bugnini-liturgy/#_edn1 As a Millennial who was weaned on the Novus Ordo Missae, I have been inescapably molded by its main architect, Abp. Annibale Bugnini. Yet there is so much that I didn’t know about Bugnini and his revolution of the liturgy. I didn’t know, growing up, that a man infamously alleged to have been a Freemason or “something far worse” was behind the freewheeling liturgy of my youth. I didn’t know that the Roman Canon was supposed to be shrouded in the silence of the Cross — or that my pastor’s altar theatrics were but the logical extension of abandoning ad orientem worship. I lacked a context to process the various haywire liturgies before me. I didn’t know that Bugnini allegedly used “subterfuge” to obtain what his “handlers” passed through him, to quote Fr. Louis Bouyer’s Memoirs. Notably, as secretary of Vatican II’s preparatory commission on the liturgy, Bugnini explained to some peers that they needed to strategically say things “in embryo” to foment postconciliar changes. As he put it: It would be most inconvenient for the articles of our Constitution to be rejected by the Central Commission or by the Council itself. That is why we must tread carefully and discreetly. Carefully, so that proposals be…formulated in such a way that much is said without seeming to say anything: let many things be said in embryo and in this way let the door remain open to legitimate and possible postconciliar deductions and applications: let nothing be said that suggests excessive novelty and might invalidate all the rest … It was a bald admission of a plan to load council texts with “liturgical time bombs” — ambiguous passages later subversively interpreted by Bugnini’s implementation committee. I didn’t grasp that I had been caught in the explosions, left with the rubble and ruin. I didn’t know that, in March 1965, Pope Paul VI celebrated a Mass almost exclusively in Italian, facing the people, to help validate the escalating liturgical upheaval. Two years later, Bugnini was pushing the Holy Mass to morph, Proteus-like, into increasingly unrecognizable forms. At a 1967 synod, he celebrated a “normative Mass” in Italian, ad populum, with three readings, reduced genuflections, more hymns, an altered Offertory, and a new Eucharistic Prayer III. I had no idea that Eucharistic Prayer II was brainstormed on a café terrace — on a twenty-four-hour deadline. I didn’t know that the bishops voted against unreservedly embracing this revolutionary Mass, in what Yves Chiron calls a “public disavowal” of Bugnini’s work. Pope Paul VI still assured Bugnini of his “complete confidence,” and two years later — exactly fifty years ago this month — the rejected 1967 “normative Mass” was “reintroduced and imposed” as the Novus Ordo Missae. I didn’t know that Paul VI’s apologias for this new Mass “calmly noted that Latin and Gregorian chant would disappear,” as Dr. Peter Kwasniewski puts it. No, I didn’t know just how much had been burned in the fires of aggiornamento. Bugnini’s writings patronize the “mute and inert” assembly of the past; his slogan is “active participation” via incinerated mystery. In the 1940s, Bugnini was already experimenting with a “paraphrased” Mass, in which a reader made the people say aloud Italian paraphrases of the Latin liturgy. I didn’t grasp that Latin was the great obstacle to the revolution’s time bombs — a veritable “arsenal of orthodoxy,” as Dom Prosper Guéranger puts it.[ii] I didn’t grasp that this sacred language was an inviolable “veil over the whole sacrifice” and liturgical silence was “a single great canticle” to God — to quote the marvelous Nothing Superfluous. I didn’t truly grasp the transcendence of Gregorian chant—its preternatural ability to awaken the soul’s deepest aches for God. Growing up, I loved hymns like “Gather Us In”; now I cringe at the narcissistic kitschiness of lyrics such as “We have been sung throughout all of history.” I never realized that this new cult of man was the logical consequence of turning away from facing God—or that Bugnini’s team loaded the new Mass with an Enlightenment aggrandizement of the people [iii]. Now I ache at all the liturgy’s discarded sublimity, cast off like so much meaningless detritus. (cont'd) (emphasis in red is mine - SgC) +
I didn’t know that, against Bugnini’s iconoclastic impulse to “simplify” the Holy Mass, the Council of Trent taught that the Church’s rites “contain nothing unnecessary or superfluous.” For instance, the Tridentine Mass’s nine Kyries evoke the nine choirs of angels and nine kinds of sin; its prolific signs of the cross symbolize everything from the selling of Our Lord to His physical and mental sufferings.[iv] Nonchalantly, Bugnini suppressed — among other things — numerous genuflections, kisses of the altar, and signs of the cross because they allegedly caused “incomprehension and weariness.” I had no idea that he once said we must “strip” from the liturgy all that can be a “stumbling block” for Protestants — and called his revolution a “major conquest of the Roman Catholic Church.” But above all, I didn’t know how impoverished my understanding of the Holy Mass truly was. I still have a lingering image of my childhood priest, surrounded by extraordinary ministers, holding up the Eucharist and theatrically inviting us to the “Supper of the Lamb,” like a showman; I more or less deduced, from this dramatic climax, that we were at a celebratory communal “meal.” I had no idea that the Ottaviani Intervention had strongly criticized the new Mass for “obsessively” defining itself as a “supper” instead of emphasizing “the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary.” The definition of the Mass in the Institutio Generalis was soon amended, yet the intervention’s underlying criticism still rings true. “The mystery of the Cross is no longer explicitly expressed. It is only there obscurely, veiled, imperceptible for the people,” the intervention lamented. Then I assisted at an unforgettable Tridentine Mass after reading Nothing Superfluous. The priest faced East, alone — save for the presence of a server — and I suddenly saw the embodiment of a line from Ven. Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ: “The high priest must offer the sacrifice alone.” The priest solemnly said the Offertory, bowed at the altar, and turned and said, “Orate, fratres” (“Pray, brethren”) — and we were somehow present at Gethsemane, watching the high priest bend from sin’s heaviness and beckon us to prayer. Then a profound, mysterious silence enveloped the chapel, broken by speech exactly seven times from the “Orate, fratres” to the priest’s Communion. The eternal high priest was offering the sacrifice — Himself — alone. Then I knew that Calvary’s mystery had irrupted into that place; this was the silence of the Cross, pierced intermittently by Our Lord’s Seven Last Words.[v] Then I knew how to adore the sacrificial Victim spontaneously, unhindered by priestly histrionics, liturgical verbosity, or the chatty sign of peace. Then I knew, dimly, why the blessed ceaselessly fall down and worship the Lamb in the ethereal heavenly liturgy (cf. Rev. 7:11). Then I knew just how much I had lost in the Bugninian coup. Quoted in Ives Chiron’s Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy. Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent facts about Bugnini, Pope Paul VI, and the Novus Ordo Missae come from this work. [ii] See Michael Davies’s Liturgical Time Bombs for this quotation and point. [iii] See Peter Kwasniewski’s Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis. [iv] See Fr. James Jackson’s Nothing Superfluous. [v] Nothing Superfluous points out that medieval commentators saw Christ’s Seven Last Words “expressed liturgically” in the seven times the priest speaks distinctly from the “Orate, fratres” to his Communion. Julia Meloni writes from the Pacific Northwest. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale and a master’s degree in English from Harvard. +
In the case of Holy Matrimony, if one or both of the parties contracted the marriage with the intention of it being conditional, it is an invalid marriage. In other words, to approach the sacrament with the intention of divorcing if it doesn't work out, invalidates the marriage.
The Bugnini schema was accepted by a plenary session of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission in a vote taken on January 13, 1962. But the President of the Commission, the eighty-year old Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, had the foresight to realize the dangers implicit in certain passages. Father Gy writes: "The program of reform was so vast that it caused the president, Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, to hesitate." [Flannery, p. 23.] Unless the Cardinal could be persuaded to sign the schema, it would be blocked. It could not go through without his signature, even though it had been approved by a majority of the Commission. Father Bugnini needed to act. He arranged for immediate approaches to be made to Pope John, who agreed to intervene. He called for Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, his Secretary of State and the younger brother of the President of the Preparatory Commission, and told him to visit his brother and not return until the schema had been signed. The Cardinal complied: "Later a peritus of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission stated that the old Cardinal was almost in tears as he waved the document in the air and said: ‘They want me to sign this but I don't know if I want to.’ Then he laid the document on his desk, picked up a pen, and signed it. Four days later he died." [Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, S.V.D., The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II (1967, rpt. TAN, 1985), p. 141." +
Excerpts from "Liturgical Time Bombs in Vatican II" by Michael Davies: On March 5, 1964, l'Osservatore Romano announced the establishment of the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, which became known as the Consilium. (The task of the commissions is to put into effect the Council decrees (...) and, when necessary, to interpret the Council institutions, decrees, and declarations.) The initial membership consisted mainly of members of the Commission that had drafted the Constitution. Father Bugnini was appointed to the position of Secretary of the Consilium on February 29, 1964. What prompted Pope Paul VI to appoint Bugnini to this crucially important position after he had been prevented by Pope John XXIII from becoming Secretary of the Conciliar Commission is probably something that we shall never know. [....] The Imposition of the New Rite of Mass What the experts (periti) were planning had already been made clear on October 24, 1967 in the Sistine Chapel, when what was described as the Missa Normativa was celebrated before the Synod of Bishops by Father Annibale Bugnini himself, its chief architect. Since he had been appointed secretary of the post-Vatican II Liturgy Commission, he had the power to orchestrate the composition of the New Rite of Mass which he had envisaged in the schema that he had prepared before his dismissal by John XXIII – the schema which had been passed virtually unchanged by the Council Fathers. As already remarked, why Pope Paul VI appointed to this key position a man who had been dismissed by his predecessor is a mystery which will probably never be answered. Fewer than half the bishops present voted in favor of the Missa Normativa, but the far- from-satisfied majority was ignored with the arrogance which was to become the most evident characteristic of the liturgical establishment, to which the Council Fathers had been naive enough to entrust the implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The Missa Normativa would be imposed on Catholics of the Roman Rite by Pope Paul VI in 1969, with a few changes, as the Novus Ordo Missae: the New Order of Mass. In 1974 Archbishop Bugnini explained that his reform had been divided into four stages – firstly, the transition from Latin to the vernacular; secondly, the reform of the liturgical books; thirdly, the translation of the liturgical books; and fourthly, the adaptation or "incarnation" of the Roman form of the liturgy into the usages and mentality of each individual Church. [Notitiae, No. 92, April 1974, p. 126.] This process (which would mean the complete elimination of any remaining vestiges of the Roman Rite) had already begun, he claimed, and would be "pursued with ever increasing care and preparation." [Ibid.] [.....] "In 1974 he (Bugnini) felt able to make his celebrated boast that the reform of the liturgy had been a "major conquest of the Catholic Church". He also announced in the same year that his reform was about to enter into its final stage: "The adaptation or 'incarnation' of the Roman form of the liturgy into the, usages and mentality of each individual Church." In India this "incarnation" has reached the extent of making the Mass in some centres appear more reminiscent of Hindu rites than the Christian Sacrifice. [.....] In his book The Devastated Vineyard, published in 1973, Dietrich von Hildebrand rightly observed concerning Bugnini that: "Truly, if one of the devils in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better." (emphases in red and underlined are mine -SgC) +
I think (I may be wrong on this) that there may have been some "pilot programs" before the Novus Ordo was fully released upon the world. These may have included some local indults to do various parts of the Mass in the local language. I have a vague memory of reading that somewhere.
I think that garabandal may have been correct in saying that parts of the Mass were in the vernacular at first. I am kinda sorta relying on my memory about the dates in my parish. So I think both of you are correct in that. I converted during the Interregnum between Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. June, 1963, fifty seven years ago. In hindsight, 1964 or 1965 seem almost too early to have many changes to the Mass but I may be wrong. I have had to eat crow before and will likely have the opportunity again before too long
If a majority of the Fathers voted against these changes, they cannot be licit. Certainly, they lack the backing of the Council whose pastoral changes depend procedurally on a voting system, just as in the election of a pope. It is also noteworthy how much of the damage was done behind closed doors by commitees. Are such decisions part of the Council proper? While I must accept that the Church has decreed Pope Paul VI a saint, I'll never be praying to him.
There was a 1964/1965 hybrid missal that bridged the gap between the Missal of 1962 and the Novus Ordo of 1969/1970. It was half in vernacular but maintained most of the prayers of the 1962 Missal. It is what the vast majority of the bishops had in mind regarding serious adaptation of the liturgy to the modern world. What Bugnini replaced it with in the Novus Ordo was “a fabrication, a banal, on the spot liturgy” according to Joseph Ratzinger. It’s seems clear to me that he was implying the Novus Ordo itself, in comparison to what came before it, was indeed a “bad mass” in its human element.
Pardon my stupidity, but can you explain in the language of Catholicism for Dummies what that paragraph from New Advent actually means? Is it saying that if the priest is a secret non-believer all the Sacraments conferred by him are actually invalid even if he says all the right words and acts as though he's a very devout pastor? If so, that's very worrying, not because I believe there are a lot of secret atheists in the priesthood but because I believe we have a fair share who would be staunch supporters of Martin Luther were he around today.
Another excerpt from Michael Davies book: "……..Father Joseph Gelineau SJ, a Council peritus, and an enthusiastic proponent of the postconciliar revolution. In his book Demain la liturgie, he stated with commendable honesty, concerning the (Novus Ordo) Mass as most Catholics know it today: "To tell the truth it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed." +
I note that I am no expert. This is merely my understanding in layman's terms: All sacraments require proper matter, form, and intention. Dealing just with the Mass that would be: Matter: Wheat bread Form: Grape Wine Intention: To do what the Church does. The first two are external and can be seen, so we will deal only with the third. It used to be thought the third was external too, meaning if the priest just said the correct words in the correct order one could be assured of validity. The common theological thought on that has changed over the past several centuries. Now it is believed by most theologians that the intention must also be an interior one. It need not be perfect, but it must be there and cannot be actively against what the Church does. So a couple of examples: 1. A perfect Intention: A good Catholic priest says a proper Mass and at the moment of consecration he truly believes the Transubstantiation takes place and it does. 2. An imperfect Intention: A Russian Orthodox priest says a Mass. He is a valid priest and if he is using a proper consecration, and believes in the Real Presence then Transubstantiation takes place. He is considered to be "doing what the Church does" even though he has an erroneous idea of what the true Church is. He thinks it is the Orthodox church(es) and not the Catholic Church. He is trying to do what is right, but he is misinformed. The Church does not hold his errors against him as long as it is his true intention to confer a sacrament. So even a Catholic priest who is a heretic or schismatic can confer true sacraments if he is truly trying to. 3. A bad intention: This could be considered an anti-intention. An example might be a bad or faithless priest who actively withholds his interior intention to "do what the Church does" because he doesn't wish to confer the sacrament or possibly because he doesn't believe in it, etc. In this case, the sacrament is not conferred even if to all outward signs the priest looks pious and says all of the correct words with the correct matter. So then a valid priest who is in a hurry and only paying minimal attention could confer a valid sacrament, despite minimal thought about it as long as it is his intention to confer the sacrament. Even a heretic or schismatic could do this because he has some faith even if it is improperly formed. The worthiness of the minister also has no effect upon the sacrament. He may have just committed mortal sin, but if he has faith, even if improperly formed he can confer valid sacraments. However, there must be an inner intent of the will to confer the sacrament otherwise nothing happens. So what of an apostate priest who has no faith? If he does not believe sacraments actually do anything then how can he confer a sacrament? He can't. The lesson here is pick your priest wisely. From EWTN: Question from Lisa on 06-24-2002: Dear Fr. Levis, [...] I have heard about some priests that practice satanic rituals. Now, maybe these are rumors, but what if it were true? Could a priest who worships Satan still dispense the sacraments? Personally, I feel that if I were dying and the only priest around was an evil man with no love for God, I would not want to receive last rites from him. I hope you can clear this up for me as it is very hard to understand. Thank you for your time! Lisa Answer by Fr. Robert J. Levis on 06-25-2002: Dear Lisa, As long as any priest, even the sinful and unworthy priest, as long as he wants to effect and do what his Catholic Church desires to be done, his work is efficacious and grace flows from God thru him to the faithful. E.g. A sinful priest baptizes a baby. He wants to confer the Sacrament, to do what the Church wants done, and it always happens. The baby is baptized. Now, if a sinful priest loses his faith and doesn't want to do what the Church intends, then nothing happens, no grace is given. He puts up an obstacle. This of course is extremely rare. God bless. Fr. bob Levis COPYRIGHT 2002 by EWTN
Hmm... I suppose this explains why the communist infiltrators who became 'priests' never received God's graces even when they apparently celebrated the TLM devoutly. +
The scariest thing is not actually faithless priests at Masses that confect no sacrament. The scariest thing is bishops with no faith performing the sacrament of Holy Orders and not validly ordaining priests. This is one of the reasons they used to have 3 bishops ordain each priest.
Mmm - all it would take is one break in the chain hundreds of years ago for thousands of invalid ordinations because if a particular bishop had no faith and some of the priests he ordained became bishops -- they were not validly ordained priests and therefore not valid bishops whose ordination of other priests would be invalid and the vicious chain would continue.
