The introduction to this page, “Contra Novus Ordo Missae”, was written by Silvester Donald McLean for Pax Orbis. Mr. McLean was founder and editor of the traditionalist newspaper, “Catholic”, which ran from 1982 to 2000.
The Mass as we knew it, up until the 1950s, had not changed in any substantial way since the time of Pope Gregory the Great who died in the year 604.
To illustrate the stability of that form, an anecdote is in order. The great Catholic writer Michael Davies once acquired an Altar Missal which had been hand-written in the 11th Century, 300 years before printing was invented. He gave this Missal to a priest-friend, who had no trouble using it to celebrate Holy Mass.
Then came the decade of the 1960s which was one of change, culminating in the imposition of the Novus Ordo Missae, the New Order of the Mass, on the First Sunday of Advent, 1969.
The changes in the Mass had gained impetus with the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. The first really substantial change had been in 1964, when the Mass had become almost unrecognisable and to many, not a Catholic Mass at all.
Contrast that with the state of the Mass today: not only is the language different, as it is said in the language of each country, but also the form has diversified so much that it varies from country to country, and even from parish to parish.
Where once we knew that anywhere in the world, the Mass would be the same, now, the form of worship in the Church is akin to the Tower of Babel.
Although many use the terms ‘Latin Mass’ and ‘Tridentine Mass’, those are confusing and dangerously ambiguous. For example, they are often used to describe the 1962 Mass, which is not traditional, but is a corrupted form, and was admitted by its author, the suspect Freemason Archbishop Hannibal Bugnini, to be a stepping-stone to the full-blown New Mass.
Even the term Tridentine Mass is a misnomer and it should not be used. The Council of Trent simply codified or standardised the Catholic and Apostolic Traditional Latin Mass as the preferred rite of the Roman Catholic Church. By the Bull Quo Primum Pope Pius V in 1570, directed that the Mass as celebrated in Rome, was to be adopted by the whole church. (The entire text of the Bull Quo Primum of Pope Saint Pius V can be accessed here.)
We Catholics should not have to qualify ‘Mass’ with any more than say ‘Low Mass’; ‘High Mass’ or ‘Pontifical High Mass’.
So why this introduction, Contra Novus Ordo Missae? Because Australia was blessed to have a small number of priests who rejected the imposition of the New Order of the Mass, or they returned to it.
Father James Opie penned the first of these articles. He was a Parish Priest in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He hosted the first visit to Australia of the greatest Archbishop of the last century, Msgr Marcel Lefebvre, in 1973. The account of that visit was recorded by the traditional journal World Trends and appears on this website.
Without the work of this truly great Archbishop, the Mass as it had substantially been since the year 604, would surely have died. That is why we have placed the work of Fr Opie, written sometime in the early 1970s, first. It is clear, concise and easily understood. Articles on the work of other heroic Australian and New Zealand priests follow.
Thus the purpose of this introduction is to provide a simple and easily understood explanation of the changes in the most important form of Catholic worship. This is most easily achieved in the writings of the Priests that are featured in this section. We invite you to read all of them.
