Dr. Peter Kwasniewski - The Once and Future Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile

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The Once and
Future Roman Rite

Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after
Seventy Years of Exile

Peter A. Kwasniewski

Foreword by Martin Mosebach

TAN Books
Gastonia, North Carolina

The Once and Future Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile 2022 Peter A. Kwasniewski. All rights reserved.

With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Creation, exploitation and distribution of any unauthorized editions of this work, in any format in existence now or in the futureincluding but not limited to text, audio, and videois prohibited without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Douay Rheims Bible, in the public domain, as well as the American Literary Version of the Bible (based on the American Standard Version), copyright 2016 Writ Press, Inc. in the United States of America. Used with permission.

Cover design by Michael Schrauzer

Cover image: Frontispiece to a 1629 edition of the Missale Romanum, published by Cornelius ab Egmondt in Cologne; print by Simon van de Passe, after design of the Monogrammist DVB; public domain image from the Rijksstudio of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939270

ISBN: 978-1-5051-2662-4
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-5051-2663-1
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-5051-2664-8

Published in the United States by
TAN Books
PO Box 269
Gastonia, NC 28053
www.TANBooks.com

Dedicated to all priests who offer the Holy Sacrifice
in communion with the Church of all times
adhering to the Tradition of all ages
yesterday, today, and forever
sacerdotes in aeternum
pro ecclesia et
pro Deo

Quoniam quae perfecisti destruxerunt: iustus autem quid fecit?

For that which Thou hast perfected, they have destroyed; but what has the just man done?

Psalm 10:4

The pope is not an absolute monarch whose will is law; rather, he is the guardian of the authentic Tradition and, thereby, the premier guarantor of obedience . His rule is not that of arbitrary power, but that of obedience in faith. That is why, with respect to the Liturgy, he has the task of a gardener, not that of a technician who builds new machines and throws the old ones on the junk-pile.

Joseph Ratzinger

Contents

S ince our founding in 1967, TAN Books has published works that preserve and promote the spiritual, theological, and liturgical traditions of Holy Mother Church. Our uncompromising mission is to be the publisher you can trust with your faith and to help people become saints. We have published over one thousand titles on traditional devotions, Church doctrine, Church history, the lives of the saints, catechesis, Sacred Scripture, Thomistic theology, and much more. Yet, of them all, our works on the Holy Sacrifice of the Massour greatest treasureare at the heart of TAN Books.

Everything flows from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, most especially the Holy Eucharist, the font and apex of our faith, as defined by the Second Vatican Council itself. In an age of secularism, relativism, ecclesiastical confusion, and growing disbelief in the Real Presence, Catholics must better grasp the roots of our present liturgical crisis. The following work by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Ritehis magnum opus and the fruit of over twenty-five years of researchsheds light on the beauty of the traditional Latin liturgy as practiced by the Church in an unbroken line from early centuries through Pope Pius V and down to our own time, and shows how distinctly it differs from the new liturgy Pope Paul VI promulgated in 1969.

The aim throughout this work has been to articulate a position that is of maximum consistency with Catholic tradition, history, and teaching and which is intellectually honest, even when it leads to conclusions that run against the grain of current thought. TAN Books, in its loyalty to the Church, only publishes books consistent with Church teaching, and has taken measures to ensure that what is opinion and what is dogma are clearly distinguished and stated as such for the readers ease. The author herein published is, and intends to be, in all of his works, acts, and writings, a loyal son of the Church, and writes as such. The author holds, as do all Catholics, that the Novus Ordo is a valid Mass, in which the Body and Blood of Christ are confected. The opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and should not be equated with the views of TAN Books.

It is our sincere prayer that those who read this book will find their understanding of the Roman Rite deepened, will fall ever more in love with Christ and His Church through a greater love for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and will grow in holiness and love of God in their daily pursuit of what the Mass points to: union with God forever in heaven.

F ew things are total and absolute failures. On this earth, what is right and wrong, good and evil, ugly and beautiful rarely tends to appear unalloyed. Usually, contradictions are mixed up with each other; the discussion revolves around an endless on the one handon the other. Therefore, it makes me uneasy that, for the past fifty years, try as I may, there is nothing that I can find to be praised in Paul VIs reform of the Roman rites Mass as engineered by Archbishop Bugnini, that master of the tabula rasa, not to forget the innumerable unauthorized inventors of liturgy throughout the world. To be fully, intellectually honest, I cant think of anything, even though I distrust myself and in principle can accept as possible that in a matter so personally painful, others may be proven right against me.

At the same time, in a certain way, I am also grateful for Paul VIs gigantic disaster. During the grand enterprise of demolition after 1968, which ruined the structure of the Church that had been preserved up till then through so many dangersas churches and convents emptied, as altars were turned around and guitars made their appearance in the Mass, and as priests, to the extent that they hadnt abandoned their office, wallowed in liturgical inventionsI had distanced myself greatly from any practice of religion. When, a few years later, I had returned, I was astonished, confronted with the work of destruction accomplished in the meantime.

My membership in the Catholic Church derives from my mother, a native of Cologne. Cologne was once quintessentially Catholic and was called Holy Cologne because of its twelve Romanesque churches, all of which have the status of a cathedral and which many connoisseurs view as more important than Cologne Cathedral itself. But as usual in the case of such closed milieus, there was no escaping the Church, especially its temporal authority. Everything belonged to the Church, the Church was involved in all affairs of the citythat wasnt always pleasant. Many people kept a skeptical distance from the Church, above all, the men. In this respect, the Church in Cologne had something in common with Latin culture: church was a womans affair. If they went to Mass at all, many men came at the consecration and left after the Pater Noster. Too much involvement in church matters was perceived as unmanly. The oldish bachelors who rummaged around in the sacristy were called holy water frogs.