Chapter 4. The Mass of All Time versus the Mass of Our Time.

In preparation for the 1981 Eucharistic Congress, a questionnaire was distributed.

The first question of which was, of these two definitions, the Holy Sacrifice the Mass, and Eucharistic Meal,

which one do you adopt spontaneously?

There is a great deal that could be said about this way of questioning Catholics,

giving them to some extent the choice and appealing to their private judgment on a subject where

spontaneity has no place. The definition of the mass is not chosen in the same way that one

chooses a political party. Alas, the insinuation does not result from a blunder on the part of the person who drew up the questionnaire.

One has to accept that the liturgical reform tends to replace the idea and the reality of the sacrifice by the reality of a meal.

That is how one comes to speak of Eucharistic celebration, or of a quote-unquote supper.

But the expression's sacrifice is much less used. It has almost totally disappeared from

catechism handbooks, just as it has from sermons. It is absent from Canon 2, attributed to St. Hippolytus.

This tendency is connected with what we have discovered concerning the real presence.

If there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer any need for a victim. The victim is present in view of the sacrifice.

To make of the Mass a memorial or fraternal meal is the Protestant error.

What happened in the 16th century? Precisely what is taking place today. Right from the start they replaced

the altar by a table, remove the crucifix from it, and made the president of the assembly

turn around to face the congregation. The setting of the Protestant Lord's Supper is found in Pierre Vivant, the prayer book prepared by the bishops in France, which all children attending catechism are obliged to use. It states, Christians meet together to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Mass. They proclaim the faith of the church.

They pray for the whole world. They offer the bread and the wine. The priest who presides at the

assembly says the great prayer of Thanksgiving. Now in the Catholic religion, it is the priest who celebrates Mass.

It is he who offers the bread and wine. The notion of president has been borrowed directly

from Protestantism. The vocabulary follows the change of ideas. Formerly, we would say, Monsignor Lustige will celebrate a pontifical mass.

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