Damian Keller at The Traditional Catholic Commentaries has a new video on the late Fr. Stephen Sommerville, a priest who renounced his role in creating the Novus Ordo Missae.
From Damian Keller:
Fr Stephen Somerville was a young priest at the time who translated the Latin into the English Novus Ordo for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. The consequences are evident.
Fr. Somerville’s letter begins:
Dear Fellow Catholics in the Roman Rite, I am a priest who for over ten years collaborated in a work that became a notable harm to the Catholic Faith. I wish now to apologize before God and the Church and to renounce decisively my personal sharing in that damaging project. I am speaking of the official work of translating the new post-Vatican II Latin liturgy into the English language, when I was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Commission on English Liturgy (I.C.E.L.). 1
Fr. Somerville’s defence of tradition
This article, written by Fr. Somerville in the early 2000’s, describes six characteristics of the New Mass. In it, he wrote:
We already noted that the sacrificial character of the Mass has been largely lost. The Mass is merely a “sacrifice of praise” now, an offering of holy words to God. One quality of true sacrifice is to be propitiatory, that is, appeasing God’s anger over our sins. If we believe that God is too kind and loving to demand atonement for sin, or if we believe that God is too magnificent to be offended by our puny sins, then we have lost the Catholic Faith, and, in this case, a propitiatory sacrifice would make no sense.
Another article from 2004 follows the fallout – including suspension – received by Fr. Somerville after he gave public support to Archbishop Lefebvre’s decision to consecrate bishops without papal authority.
His death in 2015 was marked as a great loss by many who valued Fr. Somerville’s contribution to the defence of tradition.
Judge by the fruits
Some fruit of the Novus Ordo can be gleaned from the table below.
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