Letters

Sacrifice of the Mass

A. Bono

Contents - Oct 2005 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Health of Church and health of family connect - Michael Gilchrist Benedict XVI speaks out on the crisis of faith in Australia - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Books: The Incredible Da Vinci Code falsehoods exposed - Frank Mobbs Juventutem: Young Latin Mass Catholics attend World Youth Day - Fr Glen Tattersall Youth: The lasting impact of World Youth Day - Sannon Donahoo Society: The latest marriage statistics: implications - Zenit News Agency Dies Domini: Armidale Diocese promotes Sunday observance - Bishop Luc Matthys Conference: C.S. Lewis: defender of objective truth - Adam Glyn Cooper Culture: How the Catholic Church built Western civilisation - Thomas E. Woods Jr Priesthood: Christ's call to priestly celibacy - Fr Thaddeus Doyle Letters: Reverence? - P.R. Smith Letters: Blasphemy - Alan Onraet Letters: A sense of sin - Henk Verhoeven Letters: Contraception - Anne Lastman Letters: Watered-down faith - Paula Gartland Letters: A treasured priest: Fr William Ross - Tom King Letters: Anti-Christian media - Frank Bellet Letters: Sacrifice of the Mass - A. Bono Letters: New hymn lyrics for Come As You Are Books: Your Life is Worth Living: The Christian Philosophy of Life, by Fulton J. Sheen - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: What is Opus Dei?, by Dominique le Tourneau - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: A Beautiful Story to be Told: The Legion of Mary in Oceania 1932-2005 - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Events: Who's Afraid of Vatican II? Seminars October-December 2005 Books: More good reading from AD Books Reflection: What the early Church tells us about the celebration of Mass - Fr Sebastian Camilleri OFM

On 25 June, at the invitation of the Festival of Faith, I attended a Latin Mass at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. It was a Missa Cantata which attracted a very large number of traditional Catholics.

A sense of the sacred - so lacking in many Mass celebrations these days - was very much in evidence, with the priest facing east, along with the congregation, towards the altar, Gregorian Chant, kneeling at the altar rails for Communion and receiving on the tongue.

An awareness of the Real Presence was underlined by the reception of the Host only from the consecrated hands of an ordained priest, who in persona Christi utters the words of Consecration and changes the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

The sacrificial nature of the Mass was more overtly underlined in the wordings of many of the prayers as well as of the Roman Canon - uttered sotto voce. And the celebration of the Mass involved only the priest, accompanied by male acolytes. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Certainly, it is the Mass that matters. But traditional Catholics see the Tridentine Mass as a particularly strong expression of our beliefs; the saints loved it, the martyrs died for it and the Church's enemies hated it.

St Leonard of Port Maurice once said: "The just could exist more easily without the sun than without the Mass."

A. BONO
Strawberry Hill, NSW

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 18 No 9 (October 2005), p. 15