[Question:]{.underline} Is it a sin to attend the Novus Ordo Mass?
[Answer:]{.underline} Our immediate reaction to such a question is an emotional one: either one of anger and frustration, according to which the assistance at the New Mass is incomprehensible and sinful, or one of compassion, according to which it seems impossible for those millions and millions of Catholics who assist at the New Mass every Sunday to be all committing sins each time that they do so. In both cases one considers primarily the subjective morality, the intention of the person, before considering the objective morality of the deed, which is determined by the purpose of the act itself.
If you open a traditional catechism, you will find a definition of the Mass, such as this one found in Father Connell’s Baltimore Catechism #3: “The Mass is the sacrifice of the New Law in which Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to God in an unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and wine”. It is not just the highest possible act of worship, being the act of Christ Himself, but a sacrifice in the true and full sense of the term, and consequently has in itself four purposes: adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation and impetration. Note that of these four ends, propitation is the one that is proper to the Mass as a sacrifice, not being able to be effectively accomplished in any other way.
Now the question is quite simply this. Does the New Mass attain the end for which it exists? If it does, it is good, and one ought to assist at it; if it does not, then it is evil, and it is objectively, materially, a sin to offer it or to assist at it, even when this is done to satisfy one’s Sunday obligation.
You will object, by saying that the term “evil” cannot be applied to an act of worship, for every act of worship has at least some truth and some good things about it. It cannot possibly be all bad, as the word evil seems to indicate. Here lies a very common misunderstanding. The concept of evil is an analogical notion. This means that there is something common to all things that are evil, but that there is a world of difference between different kinds of evils, such as between physical or moral evil. There is something in common, but the dissimilitude is greater than the likeness. Sickness is an evil, but not in the same way as telling lies; pollution is an evil, but not in the same way as murder or abortion.
What is common to all evil? The definition of evil given by the moral theologians is very simple: evil is the privation of the good that is due. It is not just an absence, but the absence of a good that ought to be there. Sickness is a physical evil, since the body ought to be healthy. Sin is a moral evil, since the soul ought to be pure and pleasing to God.
When the term “evil” is applied to the New Mass, it refers to the Mass as a liturgical act, namely as an assemblage of ceremonies and prayers molded into one whole. As such, it has as its goal to express in its liturgical prayers and ceremonies the reality of the Mass as defined by Catholic doctrine, namely the unbloody reactualization of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross for the four purposes of adoration, thanksgiving, expiation, and petition, for the greater glory of the Most Holy Trinity. For the ceremonies of the Mass are of their very nature symbolic. They are symbols of the underlying reality they represent, and are a solemn, public, complete profession of our Catholic Faith.
A Mass that fails to express fully Catholic teaching concerning the sacrifice, as it ought, is lacking an essential element. It manifestly suffers from a privation of the good that is due to it. It is not what the Mass ought to be, and cannot attain the purpose of the Mass. It is quite simply evil, and that privation of the due good is to be found in the assembly of ceremonies and prayers of the Mass itself. This does not mean that all is bad about it, neither does it mean that it is invalid. Neither is it a judgment on the intention of the priest or of the assistants, nor does it mean that graces cannot be received by both. The affirmation that the New Mass is evil is an objective statement that this liturgical act as such does not adequately profess the Faith, nor does it attain its end, or as Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci put it: “The Novus Ordo Missae … represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of the Council of Trent. The ‘canons’ of the rite definitely fixed at that time erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the Mystery” (Ottaviani Intervention, September 25, 1969).
The fact that the New Mass was framed in such a way as to be acceptable to the Protestant theologians who participated in it does not mean that it is necessarily heretical. It is simply ambiguous. However, the absence of a clear profession of the Catholic Faith, which is due, makes it evil. Likewise for the validity. The fact that it is evil does not mean that it is necessarily invalid. A priest can have the intention of doing what the Church does and still celebrate validly, even if the prayers of the New Mass do not adequately express that intention, as the prayers of the New Mass certainly do not.
Having established that the New Mass is objectively evil, it necessarily follows that the celebration of or assistance at it is a disorder, opposed to God’s will, and a sin. It is, moreover, a sin against the virtue of religion, namely the sin of sacrilege, to attempt to give glory to God by a ceremony that is not truly, in itself, to His glory. This sounds shocking because we associate sacrilege with the deliberate, voluntary, mortal sin of a bad communion, for example. However, the mistreating of sacred things has degrees to it, and there can be venial sins of sacrilege, in which the disorder is not so great as in a sacrilegious communion. A New Mass that is invalid, due to defect of form or intention or matter, is certainly objectively a grave sacrilege and a mortal sin. However, a New Mass that is celebrated with some reverence, and with certain validity, is not such a grave sacrilege as to be a mortal sin. There is still disorder and contempt of the Almighty, in the very ceremonies themselves, but not in such a grave way. Such is the case of the relatively reverent and conservative new Masses, in which such abuses as “for all men” and communion in the hand, are excluded. To assist at such Masses is a venial sin of sacrilege. We have no right to do so, just as we have no right to commit any venial sin, not even to satisfy a precept of the Church.
Now we can resolve the question of the subjective morality in a less emotional way. It is not just because the New Masses are irritating and annoying that we refuse to attend them, but because we know that they are wrong because they destroy the Faith, and having that understanding of the objective morality, we are bound in conscience to follow it. Yet at the same time, we will make no judgment as to the subjective or personal culpability of priests or faithful who still celebrate or assist at the New Mass. They may not be aware of the disorder and of the evil, or at least not sufficiently. Their conscience is not well enough formed. This may not be their own fault, and it is for this reason that we cannot even affirm that all those who celebrate or assist at the New Mass commit venial sins in so doing.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.