ONE OF POPE LEO’S FIRST SPEECHES WAS TO THE EASTERN RITE CATHOLICS, WHO BY GOD’S GRACE, HAPPENED TO BE CELEBRATING THIER JUBILEE IN ROME AT THE TIME OF POPE LEO’S ELECTION AND THIS GAVE THE BRAND NEW POPE A WAY TO SIGNAL HIS CONCERN ABOUT HOW THE MASS OF BISHOP BUGNINI HAD “ATTENUATED” THE HISTORIC AND ORGANICALLY DEVELOPED MASS OF TRENT,, AKA, THE TLM

In one of his first speeches as Pope, Pope Leo explicitly implied that the Mass of Bishop Bugnini, which St. Pope Paul VI approved and promulgated and thus is also known as the “Paul VI Mass”, had “attenuated” the Tridentine Mass. In case you don’t know, “attenuated” means, “having been reduced in force, effect and value.”  In other words, Pope Leo explicitly implied that the Modern Mass of Bugnini/Paul VI is the Novus Disordered Mass”. 

While Pope Leo was using the Eastern Rite liturgies as a corrective to the Bugnini Mass having “reduced the force, effect and value” of the Tridentine Mass, the Holy Father could have said the very same thing to a gathering of Summorum Pontificum Catholics, or those parishes, religious orders and communities that have kept the TLM alive and well and thus contribute to the “great need”, as Pope Leo says, “to recover the sense of mystery (in the Bugnini Mass) that remains alive in the TLM liturgies…”

With what Pope Leo explicitly implies about recovering what is lost in the Bugnini Mass in His Holiness’ elocution to Eastern Rite Catholics celebrating their Jubilee, let me take the liberty to adjust His Holiness’ words but certainly not their meaning or what these words explicitly imply. My adjustments are in red:

(Pope Leo XIV to TLM Catholics) The Church needs you. The contribution that the TLM can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover in the Bugnini Mass the sense of mystery that remains alive in the TLM liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty! It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Novus Disorder, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of TLM spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)! It is vital, then, that you preserve our traditions without attenuating them (meaning: having been reduced in force, effect and value) as the Bugnini Mass as done, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism.