WHAT TO DO! WHAT TO DO! WHAT TO DO? PART TWO!!!

Okay, let’s get real and let’s be honest. The majority of Catholics who still practice their faith, between 2% to 30% of the Catholic population in various regions of the USA attend the Bugnini Mass. 

Many of these active Catholics, not all, experience very beautiful celebrations of the Bugnini Mass even while experiencing the active/actual participation of the laity in the various ministries of the Mass, from male and female participation as servers, lectors, communion ministers, ushers, cantors, choir members and sacristans. 

In many parishes that celebrate the Bugnini Mass exclusively, the orthodox doctrines of the Mass are upheld in the teachings of the Mass as both Sacrifice and Banquet and the Real Presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord in the Consecrated Bread and Wine, transubstantiation.

The Bugnini Mass has also made good Catholics, who express their faith and morals in positive ways and in good works, especially the concern for the poor, the environment and the unborn and born. 

But taking a critical eye, we know that forgoing ad orientem for the Liturgy of the Eucharist and receiving Holy Communion in the hand reduces the clergy and laity’s embrace of the Mass as sacrifice and lessens the orthodox embrace of Transubstantiation. 

As far as the Ancient Order and expression of the Roman Mass, there is more orthodoxy concerning not only the Mass but Catholic life and living a sacramental life. A greater majority of regular participants in the TLM are orthodox except when they become heterodox by rejecting certain aspects of Vatican II which are a part of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church.

Thus, TLM participants are prone to heterodoxy by becoming elitists and gnostics, by rejecting parts of or entirely Vatican II. This type of heterodoxy can lead to schism. We see this in those who attend the TLM having no problem with attending also the FSSPX even though they are in a canonically irregular situation and may well become schismatic when new bishops are ordained. 

I still say that the pope should deal with the flaws in the Bugnini Mass, especially how it is celebrated by various bishops and priests and how the laity act during these celebrations. Music is all over the place and a disaster in many parishes. Even if no changes are made to the current Bugnini Missal, making explicit that the Bugnini Mass may be celebrated ad orientem and by receiving Holy Communion kneeling at a kneeler or altar railing would be a great reform and have a beneficial impact on the orthodoxy of Bugnini congregations. 

Returning to Summorum Pontificum even with the use of the 1962 Roman Missal and/or the 1964 Roman Missal, is the way to go. Some say that having various missals for the one Roman Rite, and keep in mind that the Ordinariate’s missal is also another missal of the one Roman Rite, creates division in the Church.

I say, along with Pope Leo, that diversity in unity is possible and in fact is defacto already in exclusively Bugnini parishes where there is a multiplicity of languages from different language Bugnini Missals. 

Many Bugnini parishes are divided by language and seldom if never come together due to the division that various languages bring to parish communities. Some parishes have not only English Masses, but also, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese and Vietnamese and more and in the same parish!

Allow the 1962 Missal and celebrate diversity in unity, orthodox diversity, orthodox unity, though!