(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV suggested that those who attended Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) before the liturgical changes after the Second Vatican Council participated as “strangers and silent spectators.”
In a general audience on Wednesday morning, Leo XIV concluded a catechesis series on Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, by discussing alleged reasons for the so-called liturgical “reform.”
“When the Church carries out a reform of the liturgy – a constant process of development across the centuries – there is an important distinction to be made between the divine, immutable elements, and the human elements, which may undergo various modifications,” the pontiff said while reading a summary of his catechesis installment.
“The need arose for the faithful to celebrate the liturgies more consciously and actively, not ‘as strangers and silent spectators,’ but participating fully in the salvific mystery. In this way, the Christian people learn to recognize sacred realities, offer themselves with and through the hands of the priest, and become more open to receiving God’s grace,” said Leo XIV, as if the faithful did not “participate fully” in the Mass before the Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated.
Leo XIV borrowed the terms “strangers and silent spectators” from Sacrosanctum Concilium, which states, “The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ’s faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration.”
Liturgist and author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has pointed out that the idea articulated in Sacrosanctum Concilium that “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else” is backward.
“It cannot escape our notice that this text turns things on their head,” Kwasniewski remarked in 2019. “Where Pius X had said that what should be ‘provided for before everything else’ is the ‘sanctity and dignity of the temple,’ Vatican II says that ‘the aim to be considered before all else’ is ‘full and active participation by all the people.’ In doing so, it inverts the hierarchy of goods. Now the worship of God and its right condition becomes secondary to the people’s involvement.”
The Mass is ordered primarily toward God as the unbloody Sacrifice and Offering of Christ to God the Father.
In addition, as Kwasniewski has previously pointed out, the idea that the faithful are merely “passive” during the Mass if they are silent is false, since one does not need to speak to pray, lifting the mind and heart to God.
Pope Leo XIV announced early this year that he would be beginning a catechesis series dedicated to “closely” studying the Second Vatican Council, which many priests and scholars have said is in need of correction.