Accidentally Defective Rites Revisited
August 21st, 2006
A few days ago the following
e-mail (my reply follows):
Your
Excellency,
I
have recently discovered your website and read with much interest the articles
posted there. Of particular interest is the one where you demonstrate that a
Pope can issue defective rites and remain Pope. In light of the ongoing
controversy over the Missal of Pope Paul VI, and an increasing number of older
priests concluding that the new rite of the Mass is invalid, I have the
following questions:
1.
Which
of the current revised rites would be defective?
2.
Do
these defects invalidate the rite, and thus the sacrament?
Thank
you.
Thanks for your message.
Let's define our terms:
The following "silly"gism is used by many Trads:
One who promulgates an invalid Mass
is not a Pope
But Paul VI promulgated an invalid Mass
Therefore Paul VI is not a Pope
The problem I identified was the major:
"One who promulgates an invalid Mass is not a Pope" - he cannot
promulgate an invalid Mass but he can promulgate a defective
Mass which does not affect his papacy (his possession of the office or the
exercise of infallibility).
Next "defective rite"
I distinguish:
essentially defective = wrong words used
/ invalid matter used (e.g. Nacho chips and orange juice) / invalidly ordained
priest / non-Catholic intention = invalid sacrament
accidentally defective = other problems
with ceremony / text of ceremony not emphasizing all points of Catholic
theology = valid but defective sacrament
Which rites are invalid ? - I hold none,
but some are accidentally defective since they fail to highlight the full
Catholic understanding of each Sacrament and by definition lack (by defect)
Catholic elements. Viz. the Mass, the Novus Ordo offertory highlights the
"meal" aspect of the Mass to the detriment of the sacrificial
element. Cardinal Medina has admitted this:
I must say that there are certain
prayers of the old Rite, notably the offertory prayers, which seem to me to
possess a truly extraordinary richness, which ought at least, in my opinion,
to have been kept as an alternative. I tried in the publication of the third
edition of the Roman Missal but was blocked by quite strong opposition...and
I had to give it up. Without backtracking, of course, on my impression that
there are some beautiful things that it would have been necessary to keep
for the richness of the spiritual life and above all because they greatly
highlight the sacrificial character of the Holy Mass
Because the three aspects of the Eucharist:
the sacrifice, the Real Presence and the Communion are interlinked, and the
primary one of them is the sacrificial aspect. Communion flows from the
sacrificial aspect; and it is the Real Presence that gives the deeper meaning
to the sacrificial offering. I have always been very aware of this aspect
since my youth. I recall that the first theological article that I wrote after
my priestly ordination was on the Mass as a sacrifice more than 50 years ago.
That's why I enormously appreciated the last encyclical of John Paul II on the
Mass as a sacrifice Ecclesia de Eucharistia, where the word
"sacrifice" appears at least 42 times.
(Interview Nov 22, 2005)
The Mass is a meal as well as
a sacrifice, to skirt the sacrificial element by emphasizing the meal element is
to lack (by defect) essential Catholic teaching which does not invalidate the
Sacrament but it does detract from it. Hence I call the new rite accidentally
defective, but not invalid.
+TF
