In early February of this year, I was still on a pause as writer of this very blog. I hadn’t written anything in a few months. I was waiting – though I did not know it – for the right impetus to come along and spur me back into my daily writing, something I have loved doing for many years. That moment came in May when I read an article on Canon 212 about Fr. Gerald Murray scoffing at Frank Walker’s headlines and felt compelled to write a piece responding to Murray and defending Walker. And from there I continued to write every night. I think I’m back in the groove now.
I mention February because it was during that month that I, after listening to a Barnhardt Podcast (if you haven’t ever listened to one, please do yourself the tremendous favor), decided to pen a letter to Miss B. To my great surprise, she published the letter in full on her page almost immediately.
The content of that letter was my supposition as to exactly how the anti-Church is going to attempt to suppress the sacrifice of the Mass. Many of us have already theorized that eventually the TLM crowd will be corralled into a tight space. We will find our way into the SSPX (who remain not in schism by the way). We will be declared to be in schism from the Church when it would be the other way around.
But what of the Novus Ordo? Some may disagree with me, I am sure. However, I still contend that the Novus Ordo in se offers a valid consecration. As I wrote a few months ago regarding a literal clown Mass, “Do I believe the sacrifice to have been validly offered? Yes. And that is why I think God is not too happy to have been called down on that altar.”
So below I am both linking to the letter as Ann published it and publishing it in full here. Do click on the link if you have time. Barnhardt has some interesting in-text commentary. And disregard the “T.” at the bottom of the letter. We all know my initials are “HM”. Wouldn’t it be interesting if I drove some traffic to her page? One could only hope.
Dear Ann,
Have I got a doozy of a theory for you (following on your most recent podcast). Like you, I have been hearing rumors that Bergoglio will not only herd all former Ecclesia Dei communities into the SSPX to then “excommunicate” us but that he will also change the form of the canon. You made some good suggestions. “This is our Body”, “This represents My Body”… My nephew, a young man with a wife and son who works night shifts as a cop in a large northeastern city so that he can still attend the TLM without difficulty, proposed this to me so I’m giving him credit here.
“This is the Body of Christ.”
That’s it. If the words of consecration are changed to these six simple words, it is not only glaringly obvious to what depths of heresy we will have sunk but also profoundly subtle. It takes away the complete sacrificial nature of the priest – a man configured to Jesus Christ the High Priest – speaking in the first person the literal same words of the Divine Master. AND, it does this in a way that all previous translations of the canon did not. In the 70’s we had the awful “… for you and for all” but that didn’t change the essential words of institution. Here we would have a priest simply proclaiming what is supposedly in front of him on the paten (though he would have consecrated nothing). Remember how demeaning the sacrificial nature of the Roman mass has been the goal all along. That’s why they gutted the offertory, diced up the collects, and generally dumbed down the entirety of the mass with their pedestrian and, frankly, low-IQ language.
The reason this is subtle is that the average Novus Ordo mass-goer would simply say, “But that’s what it IS. See, the priest tells me that every time he puts the host in my hand. He says ‘the Body of Christ’ so what’s the big deal?” They (the fag-hag modernist hacks) will also claim that this is nothing more than a “restoration” of what the Apostles did – arguing from the standpoint of archeologism in the same way they love to toss around the phrase “the reformed liturgy” in reference to the Bugnini rite. There is no reforming what Christ Himself gave to us and the Church nurtured for 1900 years.
I’ve been hearing talk that one of the forthcoming documents from Rome will be a revision to Liturgiam Authenticam. That 2001 document states at no. 20:
“The original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet.”
A change to that principle would effectively allow a worldwide paraphrase of the canon a la what Bergoglio has already done to the Pater Noster in Italian.
Anyway, Ann, these are just my thoughts on the matter. This might not come to pass and might not even be coherent. We continue to pray and watch. Meanwhile, I’m locking down my connections so that when we do go underground I’ve got a priest in the foxhole with me who will offer the actual mass.
As always in Christ,
HM
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 