Revisited: Why the SSPX Cannot Possibly Defend the Catholic Faith or Catholic Tradition

Bakery and Wine Cellar Consecrations and other SSPX Non-Sense

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, in an interview with Aldo Maria Valli on July 14, 2023 made this comment:

The progressive restrictions on the celebration of the ancient Liturgy serve to confine conservatives to hunting grounds, only to channel them to the St. Pius X Fraternity, as soon as the Synod brings to their tragic consequences the doctrinal, moral and disciplinary changes that are in the pipeline and cause an exodus of Catholics to what, after the suppression or normalization of the Ecclesia Dei Institutes, will become the "monopolist" of Tradition. But at that point-when, that is, traditional Catholics have migrated into the Fraternity and its leaders believe they have achieved a victory over the competition of the suppressed Summorum Pontificuм-a new intolerable provocation will force at least a parade of the St. Pius X Fraternity to distance itself from Bergoglian Rome, sanctioning the "excommunication" of traditionalism, no longer represented within the official Church, assuming it ever was. That is why in my opinion it is important to preserve a certain parcelization, so as to make the malicious maneuver of ousting traditional Catholics from the ecclesial body more complex.

Archbishop Vigano is correct in recognizing the fact that Rome is implementing a long established policy to move conservative and traditional minded Catholics under the control of the SSPX. He is also correct in his recommendation that to "preserve a certain parcelization" of opposition to modernist Rome is not just good, but the only possible structure of an effective defense of the faith against the abuse of a corrupted authority. We differ from Archbishop Vigano as to the motive of Rome in following this policy. The Archbishop believes it is to corral faithful Catholics into an identifiable organization that can be stigmatized and excommunicated. We believe that it is because the SSPX, while traditional in its sentiments, is hopelessly afflicted with Neo-modernists fundamental errors that make the defense of tradition and the faith impossible.

A paper was written thirteen years ago entitled: Why the SSPX Cannot Defend Catholic Tradition. Nothing in that article needs to be changed, qualified or retracted. Still the SSPX has not made any effort at self-reflection to determine if any of these accusations are true and, if so, what should be done about it. This article's purpose is to revisit these problems primarily from a liturgical perspective.

Recently the SSPX posted on their District USA web page an article June 12, 2023 entitled, "United States: Illicit Wine Used for Masses" that discusses the recent problem in the Archdiocese of Kansas City for using invalid wine as matter for Novus Ordo Masses over several years. In this article the author says:

"It should be noted that the faithful still received Communion, since the consecration of the Holy Host was accomplished normally. On the other hand, the Mass did not take place in the case considered, because, to accomplish it, there must be the consecration of the two species."

United States: Illicit Wine Used for Masses | FSSPX News

The SSPX is affirming their theological belief that bread alone can be consecrated independently of the wine, and that transubstantiation occurs independently of the context of the sacrifice of the Mass. This is the standard theological teaching of the SSPX in their seminaries and is the common opinion held by their priests who are willing to publically discuss the question[i]. This opinion regarding the case in Kansas City diocese is a variation of the teaching of Bishop Bernard Fellay regarding Bakery-Wine Cellar Consecrations. In Pittsburgh, PA at Our Lady of Fatima Church on Sunday, June 21, 2009 Bishop Fellay related this anecdote:

"The priest was mad at the bishop. He went into a bakery and consecrates the whole bakery. Another went into the cellar of the bishop and he consecrates all the wine. It's sacrilegious but its valid. The bishop had to buy the bread, that was no longer bread, of this bakery. It's stupid, it's crazy but it is valid." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AshtjLRr6Y8

The sacramental and liturgical theology of Bishop Fellay was justifiably criticized on a CathInfo discussion entitled: Fr. Caldern Refutes Bishop Fellay that began June 3, 2015. This public discussion in turn eventually resulted in an article in SSPX USA District publication entitled: "Is the Consecration of Bread and Wine Outside of Mass Valid?" published August 23, 2019 which features a picture of an impressive wine cellar with massive casks.

SSPX_Is the Consecration of Bread and Wine Outside of Mass Valid District of the USA.htm

The title of this article is misleading. The question proposed in the title is never addressed in the article; it is just taken for granted by the author as an affirmative truthful presupposition and he assumes his like-minded readers do as well. The article shifts gears and actually addresses the question of the volume of bread and/or the volume of wine that may be consecrated in any particular Mass. The SSPX would have been better to have just let the matter drop than offer a defense that looks like a shell game - just one big begging of the question. Bakery and wine cellar consecrations have nothing to do with the question of volume of sacramental matter but with much deeper and important truths.

The SSPX believes, contrary to Catholic dogma, that the sacramental consecration can be effected by a priest either with bread alone or with wine alone and they hold that the sacrament is only accidentally, that is, not necessarily related to the Sacrifice of the Mass. The SSPX believes and teaches that the pope is the "master of the liturgy." They hold that the liturgy is merely a matter of Church discipline and the pope as lawmaker can do with it whatever he pleases with one exception. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre held that the pope could not change anything in the liturgy that lessened his personal faith. Therefore, the SSPX says the pope cannot do anything to the liturgy that damages the faith per se. How was this question to be judged? Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, according to Bishop Richard Williamson Eleison Comments, examined the Bugnini reforms in light of this principle. When Archbishop Lefebvre, who was initially using the 1967 Bugnini transitional Missal at Econe, examined changes according to their subjective effect on his personal faith and found them detrimental, he rejected them. If they were not seen as damaging to his personal faith, he accepted them. This is the principle employed which resulted in the SSPX using the 1962 Bugnini transitional Missal with a few modifications. In brief, Archbishop Lefebvre made himself the "master of the liturgy" for the SSPX based upon his subjective impression of their effects on his personal faith. But if the liturgy is merely accidental to the theology of sacrifice and with no necessary relationship to the sacramental True Presence, what possible difference can it really make to anyone's "personal" faith? What is worse, how can there be an intelligent defense of the immemorial Roman rite of Mass by anyone who says, 'The pope can do whatever he wants to the liturgy as long as he does not damage my faith'. In all fairness to Archbishop Lefebvre, there has been considerable academic research and publication of important material on the liturgical question since the early 1990 from which he would have benefitted and may very well have reconsidered his understanding on the nature of the "received and approved" immemorial Roman rite of Mass and the limitations on the authority of the pope regarding liturgical innovations.

The first problem with this theology is that it is not true. It is a theology unmoored from the certainty of Catholic dogma. What follows from this error leads to a corrupted sense of the Sacrament and its necessary dependence upon the Mass, a corrupted sense of the Mass and its sacrificial character, a corrupted sense of the priestly intention necessary at the Mass, and a corrupted sense of the priesthood itself.

Where did this theological mess come from? It starts with a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Dogma; what Dogma is essentially. And from this misunderstanding, what follows is a rejection of the fundamental Catholic truth that Dogma is the proximate rule of faith for all Catholics. Dogma is divine revelation that is formally defined by the Church and proposed to all the faithful as a formal object of divine and Catholic faith. Faith is believing what God has revealed on the authority of God the revealer. Dogma is the what of what God has revealed with the additional attribute of perfect clarity of expression. The pope is the material and instrumental cause of Dogma; God is the formal and final cause. Dogma is irreformable in both its form, that is, the truth defined, and in its matter, that is, the words used under divine inspiration in the definition. No theological competency is required to understand dogma for it is formulated for all the faithful. What is required is good-will, proper grammar, and correct definition. Dogma is the end of theological speculation. It is the clear voice of God articulating a divinely revealed truth as explicitly and clearly as possible for the mind of men. It is as St. Pius X said, "A truth fallen from heaven."

The first question proposed by St. Thomas in the Summa is with philosophy why do we need theological studies? There are certain doctrines of divine revelation that can be known with certainty by philosophy but still form part of God’s revelation. Why? The reason is that most people do not have the time, inclination, or competency to study philosophy and even if they do may still end in error, so God in His mercy has provided certainty of these philosophical truths through divine revelation.

The precious gift of Dogma is exactly analogous to this very point made by St. Thomas. We know by divine revelation from the remote rule of faith in Scripture and Tradition certain truths but often through lack of time, inclination or competency these remain poorly known. But what is worse, heretics corrupt this divine revelation leading many into error. God in His mercy again provides Dogma as a sure guide to His faithful, typically structured as a categorical proposition, that must be believed by all the faithful on pain of heresy if rejected. Dogma possesses such additional clarity that it is within the competency of every Catholic. There is plenty of evidence for this truth that Dogma is the proximate rule of faith but it can clearly be demonstrated by examining the definition of heresy. Heresy is the denial of dogma. Therefore the faithful are those who keep dogma as their rule of faith. This is an essential definition that provides the proximate genus and the specific difference. It is the best of all definitions because it is the most intelligible of all definitions.

Applying the proximate rule of faith to the SSPX's sacramental theology exposes an immediate problem. An adolescent with basic understanding of Catholic catechesis and faithful to Dogma knows that it is a Dogma of Catholic faith that there are seven sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ. He knows that it is a Dogma that each sacrament has a necessary form and matter. He knows that the form and the matter is the sacrament by definition; it is the outward sign instituted by Jesus Christ. He knows that it is a Dogma of Catholic faith that the matter of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is bread AND wine. The matter is NOT bread OR wine, but bread AND wine. Any defect in the matter of the bread OR any defect in the matter of the wine invalidates the sacrament. Why does not the SSPX know this? Because dogma is not their proximate rule of faith.

Regarding the sacramental form, an early and effective defender of Catholic tradition was Patrick Henry Omlor. His first publication was the 1968 tract entitled: Questioning the Validity of the Masses using the New All English Canon. The primary focus of Mr. Omlor's published writings over the next 45 years until his death in 2013 was the question of sacramental theology. Since Mr. Omlor did not hold dogma as his proximate rule of faith, he consequently held in my opinion erroneous views regarding the nature of indefectibility, the necessity of the Church for salvation, and the problems with sedevacantism, but regarding sacramental theology no one has articulated the subject any better. And yet the SSPX seems to be entirely ignorant of what he had to say about the necessity of the sacramental form to signify both the reality of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ AND signify the union with the Mystical Body of Christ. The SSPX believes in bakery and wine cellar consecrations even when there is evident and undoubted defects of both the form and the matter of the sacrament. But Omlor was concerned about corruption of the sacramental form and matter in the context of the Mass and not in the context of a bakery or wine cellar. The bigger question regards the possibility of a sacramental consecration without the Mass. Is it possible divide what God has united?

The Catholic teaching that the 'law of prayer determines the law of belief' is not a simple axiom but as Pius XI said in Divini cultus, it is a "canon of faith" that is, a dogma of Catholic faith handed down from the time of Celestine I (d 432):

“Since the Church has received from her founder, Christ, the duty of guarding the holiness of divine worship, surely it is part of the same, of course after preserving the substance of the sacrifice and the sacraments, to prescribe the following: ceremonies, rites, formulas, prayers, chant ‑ by which that august and public ministry is best controlled, whose special name is Liturgy, as if an exceedingly sacred action. And the liturgy is an undoubtedly sacred thing; for, through it we are brought to God and are joined with Him; we bear witness to our faith, and we are obligated to it by a most serious duty because of the benefits and helps received, of which we are always in need. Hence a kind of intimate relationship between dogma and sacred liturgy, and likewise between Christian worship and the sanctification of the people. Therefore, Celestine I proposed and expressed a canon of faith in the venerated formulas of the Liturgy: ‘Let the law of supplication establish the law of believing. For when the leaders of holy peoples administer legislation enjoined upon themselves they plead the course of the human race before divine Clemency, and they beg and pray while the entire Church sighs with them’”.

The consecration of bread and wine can only occur in the context of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. In the Quam oblationem, said directly before the consecration, the priest prays[ii]:

Which oblation do Thou, O God, we beseech Thee, vouchsafe to make in all things blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable: that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. (Frs. McHugh and Callan Missal)

Which oblation do Thou, O God, vouchsafe in all things to bless, approve, ratify, make worthy and acceptable: that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Thy most beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ. (St. Andrew Missal)

And do Thou, O God, vouchsafe in all respects to bless, consecrate, and approve this our oblation, to perfect it and to render it well-pleasing to Thyself, so that it may become for us the body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (Fr. Lasance Missal)

The belief determined by this immemorial prayer is that the priest is the efficient and instrumental material cause of the consecration of bread and wine. It is God who is the formal and final cause of the consecration. The priest is an alter Christus and at the consecration he is acting in persona Christi. He is not a sorcerer's apprentice. It is not possible that the four causes of any material object can be working toward different ends. All causes must work to the same end or the end is not accomplished. The intention of the priest must conform to the intention of Jesus Christ. The "worthy and acceptable" "oblation", i.e.: the sacrifice, of the bread and wine, is necessary for it to be "well-pleasing" to God the Father so that He will "approve this oblation," He will "consecrate" it, and it will then "become for us" the "body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord." This is possible only when the priest has the intention to do what the Church does. And what the Church DOES is what Jesus Christ DID at the Last Supper when He offered the first sacrificial Mass, and every Mass offered since then. Furthermore, at the very moment that Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament of His Body and Blood, we know as a Dogma of Catholic faith that He made the Apostles priests when He said, "Do this in commemoration of Me." It is Jesus Christ who bound the sacrament, the sacrifice and the priesthood. Those whose theology drives a wedge between what Christ has bound together are committing a grave error. To believe that a priest can enter a bakery and turn all the bread into the Blessed Sacrament and believe that this can be done while intending to do what Jesus Christ did, displays a profound ignorance of sacramental theology.

Canon law is instructive on this question. Canon 927 (1983 code) [or 817 (1917 code)] states that under no circumstances whatsoever may any priest attempt consecration outside of the sacrifice of the Mass, or consecration of bread alone, or wine alone in a Mass. Canon law is clear that this is not permitted under any circumstances whatsoever, none whatsoever, not even in extreme necessity including danger of death. Why is this so since all laws, precepts, commands, injunctions, etc. do not bind in cases of necessity or impossibility? The exception to this rule is invalidating laws. An invalidating law is a law that concerns a prohibited act that is invalid always and everywhere because of the nature of the act or the nature of the actor and thus, invalidating laws admit no exceptions whatsoever.

It is a Dogma of faith that the matter of the sacrament is bread AND wine, not bread OR wine. Without the necessary matter, the sacrament cannot be confected. Can. 927 (1983) [or Can. 817 (1917)] forbids two different acts. It prohibits the attempt to consecrate only one species of the sacrament. This prohibition by the canon is an invalidating law known as a matter of revealed truth, of divine and Catholic faith. The second prohibition of attempting a consecration outside of Mass is of the same nature, and that can be deduced from these two facts: It is cited in a single canon with a prohibition that is known to be invalidating by Catholic dogma, and secondly, if it were not an invalidating law, it would necessarily admit exceptions in the case of necessity or impossibility.

Let me suggest why this is so. The essence of the sacrifice is the consecration of the bread AND wine but it alone cannot be sufficient to form the proper intention. The reason the faithful do not have to question a priest after he administers a sacrament to determine if he, in fact, had the right intention is because his intention is demonstrated by using the proper form and matter in the context of the proper rite. In all the sacraments except the Holy Eucharist, the priest performs the form and matter in his own person, and in these cases, for a sufficiently grave reason, the Church permits the sacrament without the rite. This is not so in regard to the Holy Eucharist in which no exception is permitted whatsoever to attempt to consecrate the sacrament without the rite. This may be because when the priest consecrates in the Mass he consecrates in persona Christi. The form and matter alone do not demonstrate the intention of the priest but the intention of Christ. The priest’s intention in the Holy Eucharist is demonstrated by both the proper form and matter and by the proper rite but it is only in the rite that the priest speaks in his own person and expresses his own intention.

Furthermore, the rite itself can invalidate a sacrament even if the correct from and matter are used. There were two reasons given, each one sufficient in itself, for the invalidity of Anglican orders. One concerned the form and matter of the sacrament, and the other concerned deficiencies in the Anglican rite itself. The rite did not demonstrate a proper intention in itself and in its historical setting. The valid form and matter are used in many Protestant communion services where the theology of sacrifice is denied. The SSPX would believe that a validly ordained Catholic priest would validly consecrate in an Protestant communion service because the form and matter is all that is necessary with the intent to consecrate. This is not true. The rite itself can invalidate a proper sacramental form and matter by defect of intent.

The Novus Ordo was initially officially defined as a memorial meal[iii]. Fr. James Wathen said many years ago that were the mistranslated form of consecration of the wine in the Novus Ordo ever corrected, as explained by Patrick Henry Omlor, the fact that the Novus Ordo rite itself offers only the “fruit of the earth and the work of human hands” remains a serious argument against validity. It is the rite itself for the Holy Eucharist that determines intent of the minister and that is at least one reason why the rite is necessary for a valid sacrament.

The SSPX sacramental theology is what makes the Novus Ordo possible. If a priest can walk into a bakery and simply say, ‘this is my body’, or into a wine cellar and say, ‘this is my blood’, and thereby validly consecrate all the bread in the bakery or all the wine in a wine cellar, then the necessary matter of the sacrament becomes bread OR wine and the dogmatic canon is wrong. If the same thing can be done without the liturgical rite, then the Mass is reduced to an accidental disciplinary matter that is open to the free and independent will of the legislator to do with as he pleases. The theology expressed in the Mass becomes a matter of indifference unrelated to the sacrament. The dogmatic canons on the ‘received and approved’ immemorial rite of Mass are meaningless and the reason given for the invalidity of Anglican orders is doubtful. This is the Bugnini formula for liturgical and sacramental destruction. It is an utterly false theology that ultimately in a practical sense holds the dogmatic canons of our faith in contempt. When dogma is treated merely as a human axiom that provides guidelines for launching theological daydreams you end up with this nonsense of bakery and wine cellar consecrations.

Remember, it is Jesus Christ who does the consecration through the intermediation of the priest. The intention that the priest must have is to do what the Church does. The Church's intention is the same intention of Christ and since Christ is the person doing the consecration through the ministration of the priest, he must have the same intention of Christ to offer the Body and Blood separate from each other as a victim of propitiation offered to the eternal Father. It is the sacrifice that makes the sacrament possible. The sacrifice is the meritorious cause of the consecration. Dom Gueranger wrote:

The Evangelist, says St. Augustine, “made use of a word which has a special import, when he said: the soldier ‘opened Jesus’ Side’ with a spear. He did not say struck the Side, or wounded the Side, or anything else like that; but he said he opened Jesus’ Side. He opened it; for that Side was like the door of life; and when it was opened, the Sacraments (the Mysteries) of the Church came through it…. This was predicted by that door which Noe was commanded to make in the side of the Ark, through which were to go those living creatures which were not to be destroyed by the deluge; and all these things were a figure of the Church.”

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Such intention is clearly impossible with the bakery and wine cellar nonsense that divides the sacrament and the sacrifice. For those who would have the presence of Jesus Christ sacramentally without the sacrifice are like St. Peter after Jesus foretold His coming passion, death and resurrection, said: “Lord, be it far from thee, this shall not be unto thee.” And Jesus replied: “Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men” (Matt. 16: 21-23). The division is deeper than just the division between the sacrament and the sacrifice. Those who would have the Blessed Sacrament without the Mass divide the necessary elements of the entire redemption. In the offertory prayer, Suscipe, sancta Trinitas, recited after the Lavabo and before the Orate fratres, the priest prays, "Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation, which we offer unto Thee, in memory of the passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Chirst..." In the canon directly after the consecration of the bread and wine the priest says the Unde et memores Domine in which he prays, "We thy servants, and likewise thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son, our Lord, together with his resurrection from the grave and also his glorious ascension into heaven, offer unto thine excellent majesty...." The Mass is not just a memorial of the passion and death of Jesus Christ but also of His resurrection and ascension because the Mass is a memorial of the entire redemptive act of Jesus Christ for the end of uniting the faithful with Himself and through Himself to the Holy Trinity. In the Haec commixtion before the Agnus Dei the priest reunites the "Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ" symbolizing the resurrection which is also symbolized by the altar linen cloth reaching to the floor. The ascension is commemorated repeatedly throughout the Mass with the ending doxology, "Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God forever and ever." Bakery and wine cellar theology fractures first the sacrament and the sacrifice and then drives the wedge deeper to fracture the sacrament from the entire redemptive act and its end, that is, the union with the Blessed Trinity as adopted sons of God.

It is impossible to believe in bakery and wine cellar consecrations and at the same time defend Catholic doctrine or Catholic worship according to the "received and approved" immemorial Roman rite of Mass dogmatized at the Council of Trent and added to the Tridentine Profession of Faith. This theology drives a wedge between the priest and his essence, which is to offer sacrifice, for the sacrifice has been essentially divorced from the sacrament. This is an important question because Rome has already regularized the leadership of the SSPX and implemented a policy to move all conservative and traditional minded Catholics under their jurisdiction. The SSPX is acceptable to Neo-Modernist Rome because the SSPX, while conservative in practice, is Neo-Modernist in principle for the essence of Neo-modernism is the rejection of Dogma as the proximate rule of faith. Rome knows that in the end the principle always drives the practice. That is why the 'slippery slope' metaphor is universally true. Bad ideas in time will always result in bad morals. Rome knows the SSPX cannot defend Catholic truth and therefore can be used as an authoritative vehicle to implement unacceptable compromises in both doctrine and worship.

The first and principle problem with the SSPX is that it does not hold Dogma as the proximate Rule of Faith. The truth that Dogma is the proximate Rule of Faith was demonstrated in detail in the CathInfo thread: Is Father Ringrose dumping the R & R crowd? That discussion was closed and cleaned up by the moderator just over three years ago. Since that time the thread has been read over 120,000 times and is currently over 167,000 viewings.

The simple reason that the Church fathers at Vatican II failed to defend the Catholic faith is because before the council they had accepted the neo-modernist proposition that dogma is open to continual development and reformulation, and thus the pope is necessarily the proximate rule of faith and not dogmatic truth. Fr. Karl Rahner, an important peritus at Vatican II who provided influential input on the four of the Vatican II Constitutions: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et Spes, said:

“It was declared at the Second Vatican Council that atheists too are not excluded from this possibility of salvation… The only necessary condition which is recognized here is the necessity of faithfulness and obedience to the individual’s own personal conscience. This optimism concerning salvation appears to me one of the most noteworthy results of the Second Vatican Council. For when we consider the officially received theology concerning these questions, which was more or less traditional right down to the Second Vatican Council, we can only wonder how few controversies arose during the Council with regard to these assertions of optimism concerning salvation, and wonder too at how little opposition the conservative wing of the Council brought to bear on this point, how all this took place without any setting of the stage or any great stir even though this doctrine marked a far more decisive phase in the development of the Church’s conscious awareness of her Faith than, for instance, the doctrine of collegiality in the Church, the relationship between scripture and tradition, the acceptance of the new exegesis, etc.”

Fr. Karl Rahner, The Anonymous Christian

Fr. Rahner's claim that this is "one of the most noteworthy results of the Second Vatican Council" is modest. It is in fact the most noteworthy presupposition of the Council Fathers. It is this corruption of the Catholic faith regarding what is necessary for salvation upon which all the other errors of Vatican II, such as liturgical worship, religious liberty, and ecumenism, are predicated. Rahner is not straightforward on why the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church was so easily discarded without protest by the Council Fathers.

Fr. Rahner edited the 1962 edition of Denzinger's and in that edition he included the private 1949 Holy Office Letter to Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston censoring Fr. Leonard Feeney for believing and preaching the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Fr. Feeney took all the dogmas regarding what is necessary for salvation literally. The Holy Office Letter threw all these Catholic dogmas aside and taught the novelty of salvation by an implicit desire to belong to the Church inferred by an explicit desire to do the will of a god who rewards and punishes. This letter from the Holy Office to Cardinal Cushing was published by Cushing and was never entered into the Acts of the Apostolic See. It has no greater authority than a private letter from one bishop to another. It was Rahner who gave the letter an authority that it did not deserve by entering into Denzinger's 1962 edition and the Denzinger citation was then footnoted as the authority in Vatican II's Lumen Gentium for the new ecclesiology. The Fathers of Vatican II believed that dogma need not be taken literally and therefore any 'good willed' Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Protestant, etc., etc. could be saved as a Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Protestant, etc., etc. by implicit desire alone without believing a single article of divine revelation, without receiving any sacrament whatsoever, and without being subject to the Roman pontiff.

If the dogmas regarding salvation need not be taken literally then why should the dogmas regarding sacraments or the dogmas regarding the "received and approved" rite of Mass? It is not possible to object to the doctrines of religious liberty and modern ecumenism if you believe that any 'good willed' Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Protestant, etc., etc. can be in the state of grace and a temple of the Holy Ghost while remaining Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Protestant, etc., etc.

It is now evident as Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano observes that the policy of Rome is to heard all traditional and conservative Catholic into the SSPX corral and make the SSPX by default the designated spokesman for Catholic tradition. Whether the reason for this is that Rome knows that the SSPX cannot possibly defend Catholic faith and tradition or, as Archbishop Vigano believes, to drive all faithful Catholics into an identifiable group that can be smeared as a "schismatic" and "heretical" sect, waits to be seen. It may very well be for both reasons. Truth is the only weapon possessed by faithful Catholic against an abusive authority. That truth is Catholic Dogma, the proximate rule of faith. Catholic opposition to the heresies of Rome must be grounded in Dogma and carried out in every individual diocese as Archbishop Vigano recommends when he says, it is "important to preserve a certain parcelization, so as to make the malicious maneuver of ousting traditional Catholics from the ecclesial body more complex." If Rome is to condemn the Catholic faithful, it must be forced to condemn specific doctrinal, moral and liturgical truths that the Catholic faithful will not compromise at any cost, even the cost of their lives. The defense of the true faith and purity of worship cannot be done by anyone who rejects Dogma as the proximate rule of faith and believes in fairy tales like bakery and wine cellar consecrations.

D. M. Drew

Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission

July 22, 2023

ADDENDUM:

Bakery and Wine Cellar consecration theology drives a wedge between the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Eucharist. This theology believes that wine can be consecrated alone without bread, it believes that bread can be consecrated alone without wine, and it believes that either species can be consecrated alone or together without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. As said before, this is the theology of the Novus Ordo. Evidence for this is provided by the Novus Ordites themselves.

Pope Paul VI introducing the Novus Ordo Missal in 1969 said:

"This renewal has also shown clearly that the formulas of the Roman Missal ought to be revised and enriched. The beginning of this renewal was the work of Our predecessor, this same Pius XII, in the restoration of the Paschal Vigil and of the Holy Week Rite, which formed the first stage of updating the Roman Missal for the present-day mentality."

Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae (OHS), published November 16, 1955 and became effective during Holy Week of 1956, eliminated many immemorial liturgical customs. One novelty adopted was the uniting of the readings of Passion and the Gospel that heretofore were distinct readings. In 1956 they were not only combined together but the Passion reading eliminated the institution narrative of Holy Eucharist!

Fr. Stefano Carusi wrote a treatise entitled, "The Reform of Holy Week in the Years 1951-1956 from Liturgy to Theology by Way of the Statements of Certain Leading Thinkers (Annibale Bugnini, Carlo Braga, Ferdinando Antonelli)" that was published in Disputationes Theologicae, translated to English by Fr. Charles W. Johnson, and made available through Rorate Caeli.

OHS 1956, page 11: Elimination of the Gospel passage which connects the institution of the Eucharist with the Passion of Christ (Matthew 26: 1-36).

Fr. Stefano Carusi Commentary: We now come to a pass that to us seems the most disconcerting, above all because it seems, as far as the archives reveal, that the Commission had decided not to change anything in regard to the Passion, since it was of the most ancient origin (Msgr. Nicola Giampietro, op. cit., pp. 304, 305*). Nevertheless, we know neither how nor why the narrative of the Last Supper was expunged. It is hard to believe that for simple motives of saving time thirty verses of the Gospel would be struck out, especially considering the relevance of the passage concerned. Up till then, tradition desired that the narration of the Passion in the Synoptics always include the institution of the Eucharist, which, by virtue of the sacramental separation of the Body and Blood of Christ, is the herald of the Passion. The reform, with a single stroke aimed at a fundamental passage of Sacred Scripture, obscured the vital relation of the Last Supper, the sacrifice of Good Friday, and the Eucharist. The passage on the institution of the Eucharist was eliminated as well from Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday, with the astounding result that it is nowhere to be found in the entire liturgical cycle! This was the result of a climate of hasty change, which disrupted centuries-old traditions yet was incapable of considering the entirety of Scripture read during the year.
(*Msgr. Nicola Giampietro, liturgical historian, kept the notes and minutes of the discussions of the preparatory commission preserved in the archives of the Congregation of Rites.)

There you have it! It was Bugnini and his liturgical commission who drove a deep wedge between the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Eucharist destroying their necessary relationship for benefit of "present-day mentality." Does anyone suppose that Bugnini had the presence of mind to envision Bakery and Wine Cellar consecrations as the end result of his theological-liturgical novelty?

D. M. Drew