(LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in an interview published Wednesday, responded to Pope Leo XIV’s remarks during a general audience last week about the faithful participating in the Mass less “consciously” before the post-conciliar liturgical reforms by noting that the Novus Ordo Missae deviates significantly from the council’s intended reforms.
During an interview with AdVaticanum published September 2 that mainly focused on the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), Bishop Schneider was asked about Pope Leo’s remarks during an August 26 general audience in which the pontiff suggested that those who attended Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) before the post-conciliar reforms participated as “strangers and silent spectators,” seemingly implying this was because the liturgy was in Latin and was marked by silent parts.
Schneider said the pontiff’s remarks did not grasp the “true reality” of how the overwhelming majority of Novus Ordo Masses are celebrated today. Citing the 1965 Roman Missal, the first missal published after the Council, the bishop emphasized that the Council Fathers had never intended for the Mass to be entirely in the vernacular, as is the case for most Masses celebrated according to the Novus Ordo Missae today.
Schneider further noted that the Council Fathers also would not have envisioned the loss of sacred silence during Mass that he stressed makes it more difficult for the faithful to enter into deep interior prayer and contemplation.
“(T)oday, more than 90 percent of Novus Ordo Masses are in the vernacular. And there are even dioceses where, when priests want to celebrate the Novus Ordo in Latin, they are punished and forbidden. This is an absurdity,” Schneider said.
READ: Pope Leo suggests Catholics participated in Latin Mass ‘less consciously’
“There are people who really want to be silent during Mass, to contemplate interiorly. Contemplation is also possible during Mass,” the bishop continued. “Of course, it is not that the entire community is mute and not speaking. This is not the ideal. The ideal is that they answer the priest. But we also have to be open to the possibility of people who prefer to contemplate. There can also be active participation, which is fruitless because there is no interior participation at all.”
Turning specifically to the 1965 Missal, Schneider explained that the Council Fathers were generally pleased with this “careful, organic reform” that largely preserved the traditional Mass, removing only Psalm 42 and the Last Gospel while allowing wider use of the vernacular.
“So, the first part of the Mass, until the Preface, was in the vernacular. And after the Canon, again in the vernacular. So, from the Preface until the end of the Canon, it was all in Latin. It was obligatory that these parts were in Latin,” Schneider said.
“In the Mass of ’65, the Canon was in silence. It was a very careful reform, and the Council Fathers were happy with this,” he added.
READ: Bishop Schneider: ‘Nothing more dangerous for religion’ than liturgical ‘interference’
His Excellency continued:
And then, in ’67, at the first Synod of Bishops, Bugnini presented the draft of the new Mass which would come in ’69. He already had it in ’67, but the majority of the Synod Fathers in ’67 rejected this draft. So you see: a majority of the Synod Fathers in ’67, who had still been Council Fathers two years before, did not approve the ’69 Mass. I would have desired that Pope Leo had studied this before he made his speech on this: to study all these elements of history and facts, to read the debates, and to listen to the witnesses.