Irony Alert: Trads Follow Vatican II on the Liturgy Better Than the Novus Ordo World Follows It, by Peter Kwasniewski 

By Peter Kwasniewski, Rorate Caeli, March 26, 2026

In the recent much-discussed letter from Cardinal Parolin to the French bishops, conveying the sentiments of Leo XIV, a certain phrase sticks out: “May the Holy Spirit suggest to you concrete solutions that would generously include those sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo, while respecting the orientations set forth by the Second Vatican Council regarding the Liturgy.”

Well, we might want to take another look at the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated December 4, 1963. Admitting that there are “wheels within wheels” and that the document’s compiler, Annibale Bugnini, had more than a few tricks up his sleeve, nevertheless, if we were to take the clearest statements and follow them according to the mind of the Council Fathers, here’s what your local liturgical scene would look like

1. The Eucharist would be perceived by all as a “divine sacrifice,” in which, as in the Church herself, action is subordinated to contemplation (cf. SC 2). The Mass would be understood to be, and would be called, a “holy sacrifice” (SC 7, 47, et passim) and the liturgy in general “a sacred action surpassing all others,” whose purpose is “the sanctification of man and the glorification of God” (SC 10; cf. 112). Indeed, the liturgy would seem like a foretaste on earth of the heavenly liturgy of the new Jerusalem (SC 8)….

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