Now, today’s talk is not about the new Mass at all. We have discussed that abomination already twice over, and you will find it on other tapes, and you will find it in Father Paul Kramer’s excellent book on The Theological Vindication of Roman Catholic Tradition, and you will find it in Father Trincher’s excellent book on the same topic. And, we have to discuss a great confusion that has taken place in this country with people who say that whoever says the Mass of 1962 does not say the Mass of Pius V. This is a wrong statement. It is coming from self-appointed theologians. Mind you, I have been called a self-appointed theologian, too, by some priests in this country, and by some self-appointed experts. Well, I don’t think that a doctorate in theology coming from a Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, therefore given in the name of the pope, is self-appointment, but whoever wants to stay believing this, okay. He’s not a man or a woman close to the truth. I am not a self-appointed theologian, I was appointed by the pope indirectly, and I was appointed by the dean of theology of the faculty of Thomistic Theology at the Angelicum in Rome, which is the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a pontifical university. The doctorate I hold is enough to get the title of professor without having to write another paper.

Now, first of all, you have to understand that, principally, the Mass of 1962 is not new. I explained, talking about the Mass of Saint Pius V, that Quo Primum is a document binding forever. It binds forever for the simple reason that the legal formula used, the legal formula that says this document cannot be changed and it cannot be abolished ever, it holds forever, is not dealing with disciplinary matters. As the Fraternity of Saint Peter and other groups like to point out, the Jesuit order was abolished by Pope Benedict XIV using the same formula. Pope Benedict XIV, in his decree abolishing the Jesuit order says, „This decree is in itself unchangeable, and it has to stay forever.‟ And they say if this was binding successors, then Pius VII gravely sinned when he reinstituted the society of Jesus, the Jesuits. These people forget that abolishing a religious order is a matter of discipline. It is not a matter of faith. It is certainly not a matter of faith if the Jesuits exist or not. Today, it might be better for the faith if they did not exist, but it’s not a matter of faith if they exist or not. The Mass, however, due to the oldest principle of Mass, lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of what has to be prayed will determine the law of what has to be believed. Therefore, the Mass is not just a matter of faith, it’s the basis of our faith. We do not believe what is not celebrated in Mass, and we believe what is celebrated in Mass. A decree, therefore, ruling over the entire structure of Mass, and not just little details, will certainly bind the successor of the pope who’s issued the decree.

How come, then, that some popes after Pius V did some changes? Well, they did not really change the Mass. They modified rubrics, most of the time for the purpose of restoring Mass to what it was. I’ll give you an example with what Pius X did. Pius X, in 1907, promoted the rank of Sunday. Before John XXIII invented a new hierarchy of feasts, the rank of Sunday was semi-duplex. That had something to do with the rules of choir in a monastery. It’s not the topic of today, and I have no intention to explain it. Semi-duplex was, the hierarchy was duplex prima classis, something like Easter or Assumption, duplex secunda classis, duplex maius, duplex, semi-duplex, and simplex. He promoted the Sunday from semi-duplex to an actual practical duplex prima classis. That meant, before Pius X did that, many saints would outrank Sundays during the year. Let’s just for simplicity’s sake talk about the Sundays with the green chasuble, per annum. Sundays after Pentecost and Sundays after Epiphany. When Pius X elevated the rank of Sunday, he did this because when in 1570, Pius V published his missal, which is not his and it’s not new, as you will see, there were very few saints in the calendar in comparison to today. There was no parish priest of ours. There was no Saint Theresa of the Little Flowers, because they didn’t live then. There was no Saint Thomas More, who was canonized only in 1935. And so, during the summer, very often you would have the Sunday anyway. By the time Saint Pius X became pope, there were summers in which you didn’t see the green chasuble once. You always had a feast of a saint outranking Sunday. That’s not the purpose. There have to be liturgical times. You cannot have all the saints outranking a Sunday of Lent. You wouldn’t see the violet chasuble throughout Lent. You’d always have some white or red chasuble for celebrating a saint or a martyr. So, what Saint Pius X did was nothing else but restoring the situation that he would have found in 1570. Matter of fact, he improved it in a certain sense, because nowadays it is very difficult to outrank a Sunday during the summertime. Only the Feast of the Assumption will be able to do that.

And Pius X knew how a pope should behave. He did not just take the missal and change things, but he wrote up a document which he inserted after the documents of his predecessors who had changed some rubrics. And in this document, he explains exactly what I just explained to you. He says that with all the feasts coming, with all the saints, the number of saints growing, Sundays were not what they used to be and therefore he elevates them now to a practical duplex prima classis. However, Saint Pius X respect for the missal was such that he did not change, he did not dare to change the name of Sunday. It is still called semi-duplex, even though it has the rank of duplex prima classis. So, his respect went to the point of not changing the name even. And this is the way popes have, if they want or not, to deal with the Roman Missal.

Now, there’s one thing that has to be understood very clearly. When Pius V published his missal, he did not publish anything new. The Roman Missal of 1570 is nothing else but the mass that was celebrated by the Roman Curia 100 years before. And the missal of 1473 does not contain many changes from the missal of Gregory the Great. And I have to remind you that the church sense of tradition, in the old days, was much, much infinitely stronger than it was in this century. When in 590-something, Saint Gregory the Great, Pope Gregory the Great inserted the words, diesque nostros in pace disponas at the Hanc Igitur, the people in Rome were outraged. The clergy was outraged. They confronted the pope, said, „How dare you touch the canon?‟ Now, this was in 590-something. Saint Gregory the Great reigned from 590 to 604. Most of the time he was in bed, sick and disease-ridden. And the sense of tradition in the old days was such that Saint Chrysostom said, „Is it tradition? Ask no more.‟ If it wasn’t tradition, they refused it. If it was tradition, they respected it. So, Pope Pius V did not proclaim anything or publish anything new. He canonized what he found. When Pope Pius V became pope, he just canonized what he found. There was nothing new in the missal of Saint Pius V of 1570. He canonized the mass because he did not give his successors the right to change the mass ever again. Now, I’ve explained that, and it’s on one of my other tapes, too.

However, the most important points to remember in this context is that Canon 13 of the seventh session of the Council of Trent, on the sacraments in general, says that whosoever says that the accustomed rites handed down in the practice of the sacraments may be held in disdain, or something may be omitted or added to them, or they may be changed into new rites by whomsoever pastor of the church. Mind you, not every pastor. Whomsoever pastor of the church, let him be accursed, whosoever says so. Per quemcumque pastorem ecclesiae. Per quemcumque. Per quemcumque means everybody included. Otherwise, we don’t need the Council of Trent to tell us that it’s not allowed to every single priest to change the mass. That was understood all the time. We don’t need the Council of Trent for that. I don’t need the Council of Trent to know that I’m not allowed to write off my own missal. So, what the Council of Trent was saying here, nobody may change the mass into a new rite. Nobody. Per quemcumque pastorem. And he condemned the opinion, the Council of Trent condemned the opinion that any one of the pastors may do that. The pope is Bishop of Rome, is a pastor of the churches. His Archbishop of Latium, that’s a pastor of the churches. He’s primate of Italy, that’s a pastor of the churches. And he’s the patriarch of the West, that’s again a pastor of the churches. And he’s also the servant of the servants of God. That makes him a pastor again. He cannot change the old rite into a new one. And until Paul VI of most infelicitous memory, nobody dared to do so.

There are several aspects to be understood. When Archbishop Lefebvre decided to use the 1962 rite, he decided so because, to him, it was the last acceptable form of all the changes. And I will come back to that later. That’s part of the problem of self-defense. There are rules for legitimate self-defense.

Let me first point out the changes. Now, Pius XII started… And I do not want you to get hooked with the name of Bugnini. To us, it is of mere historical importance if it was really the same Annibale Bugnini who changed the Holy Week and who wrote up the new Mass. This is academic. It’s an academic problem because the responsibility is always with the pope and not the monsignor, father, archbishop, or whatever creep he chooses for that. The responsibility is not with Bugnini. The responsibility is with the pope. We are not concerned about historical questions here. It is sad to see that Pius XII was tricked into doing what he did by Bugnini, but it’s his fault, not mine. So, do not get stuck with the name of Bugnini. Bugnini is certainly one of the sorriest names in church history, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that Pius XII gave his signature to something which I cannot consider legal. I repeat, I cannot consider legal.

He did not only change a few little things in Holy Week, he made a radical change in Good Friday. Now let me explain just day-by-day what he did. In the Mass of all times, on Palm Sunday, this is something going back to the old days when you had a bishop’s cathedral and many filial churches, or an important parish church and an unimportant filial church in the same parish. On Palm Sunday, the priest would dress in violet, as should be for Passion, and not in red as now. The priest would bless the palm leaves. He would bless them in what is a relic of a Mass. So he would start out just like at Mass, he would start out with a reading, with a Kyrie, with a reading, with the Gospel, with a preface, and after the preface, instead of saying the canon and consecrating the host, he would bless the palm leaves with five prayers. And then a procession would form and proceed towards the main church, in the old days, the Episcopal church, the cathedral of the bishop. Knock at the cathedral’s door, or at the main church’s door, and request entrance into Heavenly Jerusalem. Well, that made sense. That is a representation of what happened on Palm Sunday with our Lord Jesus Christ. When they received Him as a king to come, and they received Him with palm leaves, and then they let Him enter the city of Jerusalem. And then, of course, the first sacrifice of mass took place in Jerusalem. So the Palm Sunday is nothing else but a visible representation of what happened on that very day with Christ. Pope Pius XII abolished most of the prayers of consecration for the palm leaves, and he abolished the preface. Now, abolishing the preface means he took away one of the few consecratory prefaces left in the Latin church. In the old days, an important blessing was not just done with a few Oremus, et cetera, et cetera, and a few signs of the cross. An important benediction was done with a preface. I will come back to that on Easter vigil. He did away with the consecratory preface. The consecratory preface of the palm leaves is going back to the early centuries. So he did away with a millennial tradition. Saint Chrysostomus would have rejected that. So would Saint Pius V, and so do I, because they would have. But I say again, I’m not the pope. I reject it. I cannot pronounce judgment over the priests who don’t. I can only judge priests quoting popes and councils. If the present pope wants to utter heresy and I can prove to him that what he says is heresy, I can charge him with heresy. But I cannot do so just because he contradicts me or another theologian. No theologian may ever dare to put the pope in his place as such. Only when you quote councils and popes, we can put the pope in his place.

On Holy Thursday, Pope Pius XII did not change much. On Good Friday, he did in fact destroy the only Mass of the Presanctified left in the Latin church. A Missa Praesanctificatorum is a symbolic representation, not of the sacrifice of Christ, but it is a symbolic representation of the Old Testament, of the just in the Old Testament. Praesanctificatorum, the mass of those who are presanctified. Presanctified means the saints of the Old Testament, Moses, Elias, and so on. The Mass of the Presanctified does not have a consecration. It does not have communion for the people. It only has communion of the priest with a host that was consecrated the day before. In the eastern rite, they still have Masses of the Presanctified on the ember days. In the Latin church, we don’t have one left. None. What Pius XII did is he changed the Mass of the Presanctified into a liturgy of the word, which is something we find now in the new church, in the church of the new advent, as John Paul II dares to call his own church. What Pius XII did was, first of all, he abolished the mass vestment for the priest. He made the priest take off the black chasuble. Now, you have to remember that the very two vestments of the mass are the maniple and the chasuble. Nothing else. A priest may, must wear a stole for all the other sacraments. He must wear a stole for all blessings, but he must never wear a chasuble and a maniple outside mass. On Good Friday, he did wear a chasuble and a maniple, even though he did not consecrate. This is why it is called Missa Praesanctificatorum, Mass of the Presanctified. And he was celebrating a mass in black chasuble all through the rite, because he was celebrating the Requiem for Christ. That’s exactly what Good Friday is, the Requiem for Christ. The Requiem for Christ, ‚cause on Good Friday, He did not resurrect. On Good Friday, He died. And when somebody dies, you celebrate a requiem for him. Most of all, our Lord. Pope Pius XII made the priest wear a black cope for the first part of the rite. And for the second part of the rite, he made him wear a violet chasuble. The argument for doing this was somewhat false. When I asked somebody who knew the discussions of the time, why did they change the black into the violet? He said, „Because you never have black connected with the Holy Eucharist,‟ which is true to the point that on a tabernacle, even a requiem mass, the tabernacle curtain must never be black. It must be violet, even in a requiem mass, out of respect for the blessed sacrament, which is alive and not dead. However, why then, if they pretend to have changed the liturgical colors from black to violet for the communion rite, why then did they abolish the incense? So this is highly contradictory and doesn’t make sense, apart from the question that changing the oldest rite in the Catholic Church is a crime. He also, as I just mentioned, did away with the incense. Now, the important thing about Good Friday is, even when our Lord died, He was still our Lord. He always is. He never ceased to be God. Even the dead Christ on the cross was still God, and always will be, and always is. There is no yesterday, today, and tomorrow with God. So on that very day, you have to have a very special reverence for the one consecrated host that will be very soon consumed by the priest, which is a symbolic representation of what happened on Good Friday. When God himself carried his own instrument of death, and when the people accompanied Christ to the cross, they accompanied God, not a man, God first, then a man. Full God, full man, that is what Christ incarnation means. They accompanied God. They had to genuflect in front of God. They had to revere God. And this is exactly what happens on Good Friday in the old days. Two altar servers, two thurifers, with two incenses, walk backwards, face towards the Eucharist, and incense the Blessed Sacrament until it arrives at the altar. Then the priest prostrates down to earth. This was the old way to genuflect at consecration. And when the priest communicates Christ, at that very moment, the sacrifice of 2000 years ago is completed. Every year, again, in the way that we might understand once we are in heaven, hopefully making it there, but we will never understand on earth because we do not understand the contradiction between time and eternity yet. When the priest communicates the host, and he alone, no blessed sacrament is supposed to be in the church. Because when Christ died on the cross, for three days, he was not there. Remember, he descended to hell, the hell of the paradise of the pre-sanctified just, you see, descended to hell with his soul. Not, as John Paul II said on the 11th of January, 1988, with his body, symbolically, because his body was in the grave. The Fourth Lateran Council defined as a dogma, Christ descended with his soul, and he consoled the just in the paradise that was prepared for them to wait for the beatific vision in heaven. When Pius XII introduced the communion of the faithful on Good Friday, and when he made the priests change into the violet chasuble, and when he abolished the incense for the host, and when he decreed the cope to be used in the first part of Good Friday, he turned the first part into a liturgy of the word and the second part into a rite of communion, rite of communion for everybody. This is not the Mass of the presanctified anymore. And that’s probably the most grievous of all the changes. And it’s probably the one that will indeed be refused by a future pope. I hope so.

On Holy Saturday, he destroyed the consecratory preface of the Easter candle. In the old days, the priest would light a candle from the fire that is blessed outside the church. He would light a candle, sing the Lumen Christi dressed as a deacon if there’s no deacon available. Then he would light the second candle, sing Lumen Christi again, light the third candle, sing Lumen Christi again, and thus, with the light of three candles only, he will arrive at the hopefully totally dark sanctuary, and there, the Easter candle is waiting for him. No incense in the Easter candle, no light. Then he starts the Exsultet. Remember this. This is the consecratory preface for the Easter candle. At a certain point during this preface, the incense, the five grains of incense that have been blessed outside the church would be mounted on the Easter candle in the sign of a cross. And a few paragraphs, one paragraph after that, finally, the Easter candle will be lit. This means the preface the deacon is singing is the consecratory preface of the Easter candle. Pius XII changed that round by having the priest consecrate, by having the priest bless, not consecrate, bless the Easter candle outside the church with a ridiculous new script on it, instead of the old consecration. So, by the time the deacon arrives at the altar, the Easter candle has been blessed. The Easter candle has been decorated with incense. The Easter candle is ready. The Easter candle will be put up on the stand and light for what is now, not anymore, a consecratory preface, but a rather boring narration of some parts of the history of salvation. He has turned a consecratory preface into a gospel-like narration. That is changing the nature of Easter vigil.

In the old days, after that, the priest and lector and a few lectors available, if available, would sing twelve readings from the Old Testament. They would sing all the important parts of the history of salvation before Christ in the Old Testament. I perfectly well understand that some people are entirely bored with that, because the priest rattles down in Latin chant something that nobody understands anyway. And very few priests are as fast in doing this as I am. So sometimes this is a part of Easter vigil that will need more than an hour. For more than an hour, the people, in the old days had to stand or kneel. Now, they’re all seated, watch the priest rattling through the 12 readings. Pius XII thought this was not good and he abbreviated those 12… He shortened those 12 readings down to four. And he missed the point, again, because those 12 readings in the old days was the instruction for the catechumens, for the people to be baptized in Easter Vigil. While the priest was singing, while the priests and the readers, the deacons, sub-deacon and the readers were singing those readings in a cathedral of a bishop, priests who had nothing to do at the same time would teach catechism to the people. So up on the altar you had the priest singing, rattling down his 12 readings and at the same time, which was more than an hour, priests who worked for the cathedral or were called for this job would teach the faithful present in their pews about the Catholic faith. Needless to say that this was found a little bit disturbing in the ceremony, and a few centuries ago they abolished this custom because it was disturbing and because those sermons were not always acceptable. And Easter Vigil is the most holy night of all nights during the year, and you certainly shouldn’t give some priests who don’t know anything in theology the chance to teach what is wrong right during a sacred ceremony. However, the readings remained. And here’s something that shows you that the people today have lost any sense of sacrifice, penance and preparation. I always tell the people before we celebrate Easter Vigil. Okay, the ones of you who think they have to suffer through 12 readings in Latin they don’t understand, do not understand what Easter is about. Use the one hour that the priest needs at least to sing those 12 readings, use that hour to say your rosary in preparation for Easter. Use the time you have to wait and suffer through this as the last penance before you finally celebrate Easter. Use the time to examine your conscience and see if you’re ready for Easter. And if you really have to understand what the priest says then in God’s name, use the missal. It will be difficult at my mass because I don’t allow the lights switched on before the glory of mass. It’s your last chance to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament before Easter and you’ve got an hour to do so. Remember what Christ said on the mountain when the Apostles fell asleep three times? „Can’t you even stay awake this little time with me?‟ Well, it seems that in Easter Vigil people are not supposed to, so Pope Pius XII abolished eight of the 12 readings and left us with four. It doesn’t make sense.

And then he introduced something both on Holy Thursday and on Easter Vigil which is certainly an introduction to the new Mass. For the first time in very many centuries, something like 1500 centuries, 1400 centuries, the priest did not need to say the Judica Me. Now, he doesn’t say that in Passion Time, but for all the rest of the year he had to say the Judica Me always. He does not say the Judica Me on Holy Thursday wearing a white chasuble. He does not say the Judica Me at the beginning of Mass on Easter Vigil wearing a white chasuble. On both occasions he does not say the Last Gospel anymore. This was certainly new. This was not restoring, this was new.

John XXIII then went further. First of all he inserted Saint Joseph to the Canon. What do we say about that? Again, I’m giving you the opinion of a theologian, not papal teaching. So you have no right to condemn me for what I say and you have no right to quote me as if I was the Pope. Neither one nor the other. I have never left Saint Joseph out of the canon even though I don’t say the mass of 1962, and there’s a reason. Historically speaking, Saint Joseph does not belong in the canon because historically speaking, the only people who belong in the canon is the old martyrs on whom, on whose blood the church was built. The Twelve Apostles and Lini, Cleti, Clementis, Xysti, Cornelii, Cypriani, Laurentii, Chrysogoni, Ioannis et Pauli, Cosmae et Damiani, not Saint Joseph. However, as it is a recent title of Saint Joseph, I’m sorry I forgot which pope introduced the title of patron of the church for Saint Joseph. Certainly a rite of the Pope to give him the title of patron of the church. But as Saint Joseph recently has become the patron of the church we might as well have him in the canon. I can’t see anything wrong with it, I’m sorry. But again, this is my personal opinion. John XXIII did something else which is a lot more important than Saint Joseph in the canon. He did indeed restore, again, restore the importance of the liturgical seasons and that was right. That was right. He gave the old importance back to Lent and he gave the old importance back to the Sundays throughout the year. However, he went too far I think when he decided to have saints of rather outstanding importance such as Saint Benedict, Saint Gregory the Great. Saint Benedict, the founder of the Occident as we call him, the founder of Europe, the founder of the monastic system. Saint Gregory the Great, the one who codified Gregorian Chant, which sounded horrible before he did codify it, believe me. Important saints like Saint Benedict and Saint Gregory the Great, after John XXIII, are commemorated in lent. Now that is going too far. That is definitely going too far. They, even in the old days, Saint Gregory and Saint Benedict could not outrank a Sunday anyway. But that a ferial day, a weekday, would outrank the patron of Europe, Saint Benedict? That is something that I can, sorry, I cannot accept. John XXIII changed round another little rubrics. Among them, he abolished the three prayers on low ranking feast days. I think that was wrong, because in a time when we need more prayer than ever, he shouldn’t have shortened the church prayer, but he should rather have added to it. We desperately need the prayer against those who persecute the church, Contra Persecutores Ecclesiae, a prayer that has practically disappeared in the 1962 rite because you say it once a year. In the old days, you had to say it every day that was not duplex or higher. You had to say it on Sundays, even though Saint Pius X promoted Sundays to be duplex prima classes, he left the title of semi-duplex with Sundays for the very sake of leaving the three prayers on Sunday, A Cunctis, and the Contra Persecutoris, or For the Holy Father. John XXIII did not do a favor to himself when he abolished the frequent prayer for the Pope and replaced it with nothing, because now, in the 1962 rite, you hardly ever say that prayer. I have to say it every time I celebrate a mass lower than the rank of duplex. So, I’ve just given you a selection of changes. There’s more to the changes of 1962, but the 1962 mass, to a certain extent, could be interpreted as a transitory thing towards the new mass. However, I do not see it that way. That’s a malignant interpretation. Unless we have proof to the contrary, we always have to give the benefit of doubt to the Pope and to the church. I must remind you of the fact that what is in Latin called the onus probandi, the duty to prove, always stays with us. It hardly ever stays with the Pope. The Pope does not have to justify his decisions before us. Only when we can prove him wrong, we may resist. This has always been understood in the church. When Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about obedience in the second part of the second part of the Summa Theologiae, he says, „If you can prove your prelate wrong, then you may and must resist him. If you can prove that what he orders is wrong, then you may and must resist him. Not before that.‟ So if John XXIII wanted it that way, he wanted it that way. A future Pope will judge if it was good or not.

Why did Archbishop Lefebvre accept all the rest of the 1962 mass? Well, as I said before, the law of self-defense is very strict. I do not operate under the law of self-defense. I just say the mass of all times. I do not defend it. I attack if anybody doesn’t like it. I do not defend myself. I don’t have to. I would have to defend myself in front of the Pope, nobody else, and my bishop. Nobody else. I reject the new mass entirely. I put it where it belongs, the trashcan. And I reject the 1962 rite for the simple reasons that I just explained. But I do not put it in the trashcan and I do not judge priests or societies and groups who use the 1962 rite, because they are, as a group, not as individuals, as a group, they are under the law of self-defense. When in 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre decided to consecrate bishops, I’ve said this on my other tape, he did so because if he had not consecrated bishops, there would be no bishop available nowadays to make, to turn young people who reject Vatican II, as you must, and who reject the new mass, as you must, there would be no priest left to ordain them. And that is unacceptable as a situation. That is exactly the situation of emergency in which a bishop has to react. He did not appoint four ordinaries of a diocese. That would have been schism. He did not give jurisdiction to them. He did not appoint Bishop Williamson as the bishop of the United States or as the new Archbishop of New York. He consecrated, he did not appoint him at all. He just consecrated him so that he would be able to ordain priests, period. Period. This is the old term of auxiliary bishop. In German, the auxiliary bishop is called Weihbischof. The bishop who ordains. The bishop who helps the actual bishop of the place to ordain priests. In the old days, you had many vocations, not like now. The former cardinal archbishop, Vicar of Rome, because the Bishop of Rome is the Pope, Vicar of Rome, Cardinal Traglia, who was a saint, ordained 4,000 priests in his life. He had 4,000 children generated with his hands. He ordained 4,000 priests. Now you can imagine that the bishop in the old days needed people to help him with confirmation and ordination. And that’s all Archbishop Lefebvre wanted. And even if he had wanted more, he would not have been allowed to do it, and he would have never done it the way I know him. He operated under the law of self-defense. Now the law of self-defense is very strict in Catholic moral theology. You are not allowed to go beyond the necessary means. You’re not allowed to go beyond the means that are necessary to get rid of the actual situation against which you have to defend yourself. If a bum in the street threatens me with words, I’m not allowed to shoot him. Of course not. I talk back. I do. But I’m not allowed to shoot him. The law of self-defense does not allow me to shoot him yet. If he draws a knife, I’ll shoot him. But not before that. And there’s another law of self-defense. In self-defense, you have to act right now. If I see that a girl is going to be raped on the other side of the street, I cannot say, „Sorry, honey. Gotta hit the supermarket first. I’ll be back.‟ I have to help right now. When Archbishop Lefebvre realized that he had to consecrate bishops because he might die at any moment, he had to act right now, immediately. He obeyed that law of self-defense. And very much to my sorrow, but necessarily, he obeyed the law of self-defense by saying the 1962 missal is the last edition of the Roman missal. As a matter of fact, it was. It’s the last edition of the Roman missal that is somewhat acceptable. He didn’t say, „I like it.‟ He didn’t say, „I’m happy with the changes of John XXIII and Pius XII.‟ Maybe he was, I don’t care. He didn’t say it. He didn’t say, „I celebrate and you will‟ to his priests. „And you will celebrate according to the 1962 missal, because I like it so much.‟ That’s no point of view for a priest. Of course I love the Roman missal. But the reason why I celebrate the 1949 missal is not because I like it, but because I think that is what I have to do. And Archbishop Lefebvre, he did not say the 1962 rite was good. He did not say it was nice of John XXIII to have done this. He didn’t say that he fully approved of Pius XII’s changes. He never commented on that, except in private, which I won’t quote. He decided to use it because it was the last acceptable version. Why? In the 1962 rite, the 1962 missal is the last missal with the following characteristics. First of all, it’s the last one where you find all the documents, starting with Quo Primum. Quo Primum by Pius V, and I never memorized these documents. Document from Urban, Pope Urban VIII, then there was one from Clement VIII. And, of course, there was the document of Saint Pius X, and there was the document of John XXIII. So, in all these documents, they show you the continuity of the missal. The popes would have never dared to leave Quo Primum out because, contrary to what the fraternity of Saint Peter teaches, the popes knew they were bound to Quo Primum. If they had not felt bound to Quo Primum, why bother and leave Quo Primum in the missal? You replace Quo Primum with a new decree. The popes did that everywhere else in canon law. If the pope comes up with a new code of canon law, he doesn’t quote his predecessor. He may mention him, but you will not find in the code of canon law that has been issued under Benedict XV, and that was ordered to be written by Pius X, you will not find the introductions by the popes, predecessors to Saint Pius X in the old Corpus Juris Canonici. You will not find them. You will only find the decree of Benedict XV publishing this in the name of Saint Pius X. That’s all, period. No more needed. It’s canon law. It’s positive law. It’s a law which does not bind the successors, except in things that are unchangeable. But with mass, it is the popes who interpret Quo Primum as something binding, just by the fact that no pope until Paul VI dared to leave out Quo Primum or any one of the documents of his predecessors, which is the most unusual thing in church history. It’s the only example, as a matter of fact, in all of church history that all of the documents of all the popes touching the book would be found in the very same book. It’s the only example in church history. So the popes until John XXIII included thought they could not abolish Quo Primum and could not go against it. Now, John XXIII was not exactly what you call an overly scrupulous person, right? Why would he leave Quo Primum and all the other decrees of his predecessors in the missal if he thought that Quo Primum was not binding for him? Well, of course, he thought Quo Primum bound him too. He just stepped a little bit too far, like Pius XII did in his changes. But again, I think that. I am not the pope. The final judgment on the missal of 1962 will be pronounced by a future pope, not by Dr. Hesse or anybody else, as a matter of fact.

Archbishop Lefebvre, this is one of them. Excuse me, I’ll come back to the characteristic. This is one of the characteristics of the old missal. There’s another one. Until 1962, generally speaking, with the exception of Holy Week changed round, the priest had to say the Judica Me at the beginning of mass and the last Gospel at the end of mass. In 1965, Paul VI issued a new Roman missal without the Judica Me and without the last Gospel. In 1967, he reissued another one, and now you had almost everything in the vernacular. And then in 1969, he came up with the crime of the century, the new missal. So you can see that 1962 is certainly, despite all the changes that I don’t like and don’t accept, in continuity with the mass of Pius V. It is borderline, if you ask me. It is borderline, and I think it went too far. But Archbishop Lefebvre had no right for that decision. He had to act according to the law of self-defense. Do not go beyond what is necessary to remedy the situation. That’s the whole point. Archbishop Lefebvre did not think that he had the authority to judge which version of the missal to use. Now, you see, when I reject the reforms of Pius XII, I submit myself to a certain risk. And I admit this publicly, because I pronounce a judgment, even though I do not extend the judgment to anybody else. I pronounce a judgment on something that will eventually have to be judged by the Pope. Now, generally speaking, when I discuss this question with members of the Society of Saint Pius X, generally speaking, they acknowledge my right in rejecting the reforms of Holy Week and 62 because I am not bound to the law of self-defense. I may indeed say, „Hey, hey, wait a second. You went too far,‟ and God will judge me for what I do, not man, and at the moment, no pope. But if you are strictly under the law of self-defense, you cannot do that, because then you open the doors to new judgments, to further modifications, to further modifications, to further modifications, to the point that now we have people running around talking about the Mass of Pius V and saying Saint Pius X was not Saint Pius X, but Antipope Pius X, because Antipope Pius X changed the Breviary round, which was against the will of Pius V. Well, soon they’ll be back at Saint Peter. And this is what happens if you’re not very, very, very circumspect and very, very careful with your judgments. First you will say, „Okay, the reform of Pius XII, unacceptable.‟ Then you go further in your studies and you see Saint Pius X change things. (gasps) Unacceptable. Pius X was an antipope. Then you go back and you will find that Urban VIII changed something. Oh, he was an antipope too. Then you go back to Pius V and you say, (gasps) „Oh, where’s the old sequence of Saint Augustine?‟ It was beautiful sequence on the feast day of Saint Augustine. God forgive me. I still use it. But there was a beautiful sequence on that day. Where’s the old preface of Saint Augustine? Where’s the beautiful preface of Saint Dominic? So many things lost over the centuries. Yeah, by the time they’re back at Saint Peter’s, they won’t have anything. See, this is the point. Archbishop Lefebvre did not accept the 1962 rite because it was beautiful, but because the next one after that was definitely unacceptable. That’s the whole point. And I reject people and I resist people who think that they are the judges of all these things. You think Archbishop Lefebvre was an idiot? A man who didn’t know what he was doing? A man who had never studied theology or liturgy? He pondered over his decision. He was not the man. He proved this as the only bishop so far, except for Bishop Castro Meyer, God bless him. He proved that he was thinking before he decided. He has given ample proof of that. He was a very learned theologian. He was a very holy bishop. And as much as I dislike the 1962 rite, I have no right whatsoever to criticize priests who use it. They are just doing what Archbishop Lefebvre said. And it’s no good that we have so many priests running around in this country who decide everything on their own and who say Archbishop Lefebvre was wrong. That’s not good. Without Archbishop Lefebvre, we would not have the old Mass anymore. Without Archbishop Lefebvre, we would not have priests anymore who celebrate the old Mass. They would die out or they would be among those very, very curious characters who celebrate the old Mass, who celebrate the old breviary, but get themselves ordained secretly from modern bishops.

Now, anybody who says that you can accept Vatican II and to a point you can accept the new rite, he does not reject the new mass for reasons of faith. He rejects the new mass because he doesn’t like it or because he has what they call theological reasons. They’re running a museum. That’s all. If you run a museum, it doesn’t matter who ordains you. But if you don’t, if you say the new mass is part of another church, which is the only answer to the indefectibility of the church and the infallibility of the church, you say that Vatican II is not Catholic, you say the new mass is not Catholic, then you have to celebrate the old mass for reasons of faith. It is impossible to believe in the indefectibility of the church and the infallibility of the church and at the same time reject the new mass, which the Pope celebrates every day. Impossible. There’s only one solution to this problem, and this is not a solution in the sense of finding a way out. It is a solution in the way of finding what is true. Now, the new mass is not part of the Latin rite. It is not part of the Catholic Church. It does not belong to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is still indefectible. The Catholic Church is still infallible. But the priests who say the new mass are not part of the Catholic Church, objectively, mind you. The great vast majority, I think, I have no way to, I have no insight in souls. Only God knows souls. The great vast majority of priests who celebrate the new mass celebrate the new mass because they think this is what they have to do, and that does not put them subjectively outside the church. Oh, no. Many priests today pronounce heresy and they believe that this is in accordance with the faith. They do not commit the sin of heresy. They are not subjectively in the sin. They are not in the sin of heresy objectively, and they are not subjectively heretics. Objectively, however, if I say something that’s against the doctrine of the church, I’m immediately in error. If I want to be in error, then I’m a heretic. But if I just make a mistake, it doesn’t make me a heretic. But I might have pronounced a heresy. I might by mistake have pronounced a heresy. Happened to me once on the pulpit in Austria. Thank God. A pious lady came to the sacristy and said, „Father, did you realize what you were saying?‟ I said, „No. What?‟ She told me. I said, „Oh.‟ Thank God. I celebrated mass the next day in the same parish and I explained everything from the pulpit. So I did not stay a heretic, so to speak. I never was, because I never rejected the truth. But objectively speaking, now, independent of the state of the soul of a person, this is one of the major distinctions. You will find it in the tape recorded in LA. And please, listen to these distinctions. Make sure you’re able to operate with those distinctions. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to understand or judge in theology. Somebody may be free of sin and yet objectively outside the church because he doesn’t know better. I don’t think that a Russian Orthodox pope, they are called popes there, a Russian Orthodox pope somewhere in Siberia, I don’t think that he was told about the differences of the creed of the Latin and the creed in the Orthodox Church. I don’t think that anybody ever explained the papal infallibility to him. I don’t think that anybody ever explained the papal primacy to him. As a Russian Orthodox priest, he rejects the papal primacy. As a Russian Orthodox priest, he rejects the papal infallibility, and thus is both a schismatic and heretic. But if he doesn’t know that he’s a heretic and a schismatic, then he does not commit the sin of heresy and schism. However, objectively speaking, he is. And this is the whole point. The infallibility of the church is still there because the priests who celebrate the new mass, and especially the priests who foster the new mass and defend it, they are outside the church, objectively. How God will judge them, I don’t know, and it’s none of my business. Judge ye not that you not be judged. Anybody says that Father Hess said they’re all in heresy, will all go to hell, is committing a grave sin against the eighth commandment. I never said that. I just said that objectively, they’re outside the church. Subjectively, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. God only can judge.

And this is the reason why, when Archbishop Lefebvre and I and other priests reject the new mass because of reasons of faith, we stay in the Catholic Church, no matter what the official pronouncements are. We are the ones who stay in the Catholic Church. Now, some people say the Society of Saint Pius X always behaves and speaks as if they were the Catholic Church. That is slander. You ask any of their priests, if he follows the directions of his superiors, he will tell you, „No, it is not us who is the Catholic Church. We just belong to it.‟ And anybody who does not contradict tradition belongs to the Catholic Church. And anybody who contradicts tradition does not belong to the Catholic Church. So the infallibility and the indefectibility always remains with the church. Christ’s promise, (Latin), „The gates of hell shall not prevail against them,‟ is still a prophecy. It is still true. It always will be true. It is people like the bishops who say the new mass who put themself outside the church. It is the bishops who say that homosexuality is just a defect, and it may be a defect by birth, who put themself outside the church. It is the priests who say, and the great vast majority of priests in this country say that now, who say that the blessed sacrament is only symbolically present, who put themselves outside the church. It’s not Archbishop Lefebvre or I. And priests who celebrate the old mass, not for reasons of faith, but because they just prefer it, they put themselves objectively outside the church. Anybody who signs Vatican II puts himself objectively outside the church. You cannot sign heresy. You must not. You cannot defend Vatican II. I’ve tried for 10 years, I’ve tried to interpret Vatican II in a Catholic way. It’s not possible. It’s in direct contradiction to tradition. It’s in direct contradiction to the Magisterium, as I have proven on the tape that will be soon available to you. The only way to celebrate the old mass is because of reasons of faith. The only way you are allowed to reject the new mass as such is because of reasons of faith. If there are no reasons of faith against the new mass, well, the Pope just came up with a new thing. The Pope is the Pope is the Pope all the time, and you better follow him, right? The only way to contradict the Pope is when you prove him wrong in matters of faith and morals. Teaching, I mean. I don’t care about the Pope’s private morals. Alexander VI had children while he was Pope, but he never touched the faith or the liturgy. I prefer him over Paul VI for that reason. There were heretics before. You’ll find also this on another tape, but Pope Liberius was in heresy. Pope Honorius was in heresy. Pope John XXII was in heresy. All the three popes were rejected. All the three popes were judged by the church. The present pope will be judged by the church. The new liturgy will be judged and discarded by the church, by the infallible and indefectible church.

The Society of Saint Pius X still yet has to prove that it is outside the church in any point whatsoever. I’ve never heard heresy from them. I’ve never heard anything from them. I’m not talking about the individuals. Individual priests are fallible, absolutely, and how. I’ve never heard anything coming from the Society of Saint Pius X as such that would have to be rejected. So if you are confronted with difficulties in this point, don’t be ungrateful. Or do you think in the 1930s when the church was so beautifully all right, or in the 19th century when the church was so beautifully all right you never had bad parish priests? Of course you had. Sometimes you’d be in a bad situation because of that. Imagine, I don’t know if it happened, imagine you living in the 1930s in Oklahoma or in the 1930s somewhere out in Wyoming. Your parish priest is lousy and the next priest is 60 miles away. You were stuck. So if it happens nowadays, for the fact that not all the members of the Society of Saint Pius X can possibly be saints, pray for them. Don’t judge. As Cardinal Siri said on another occasion, „Leave the judgment of priests to the clergy.‟ Pray for them if you think them wrong. Pray for them anyway because they desperately need it. Priests are subject to 10,000 times more temptations than you are in any of the commandments, no matter what. And if you find yourself, which is, of course, regrettable, if you find yourself stuck with a priest you cannot possibly like because he does things you don’t like, then pray for him. In the old days, it wasn’t better. And I can tell you one thing, I’ve met many priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, and the great vast majority of them is the dream of a bishop of the old days. In the old days, a bishop of a diocese would have jumped for joy if the average of his priests would have been like the average of the priests of Saint Pius X. Do not expect every member of that group to be an outstanding saint. That is impossible. Thank the Lord on your knees that you haven’t found a heretic there yet. Thank you. (clapping)