The Problem of the Liturgical Reform
3^rd part of Father Francois Laisney's study on the theology of the New Mass, compared to Tradition

Part II: The Redeeming Sacrifice

"We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world!"

In the last issue we saw the three ends of a sacrifice, which would have been the only ones if man had not sinned. But such is not the plan of God: "For God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all" (Rom. 11:32).² God had not positively willed the sin Himself, but He willed to not prevent the sin, in order to be merciful, for "mercy is the summit of charity" according to a most beautiful phrase of Archbishop Lefebvre.

Adam, the very first man, had sinned, and through it had vitiated the human nature that he had transmitted to his descendants. And each descendant, from the age of reason, has added his own portion of sins, some more, others less, but all have them.

Now sin has a triple consequence: 1) the stain on the soul, the darkness of a soul turned against God; 2) the wound of the soul, for sin causes in the human soul an inclination to fall again, the inclination which is called vice, just as good acts little by little cause an inclination to do good, which is called virtue; 3) the punishment due to sin. For the sinner is not alone in the world, he has been created in an admirable order, which he has disrupted through sin. The permission for the sin would not be wise, if the sinner was not restored to the divine order through the punishment inflicted. That which comes from God must return to God; man, being created by God, must live for the glory of God. Through sin he fails in his duty; his debt of punishment has a double aspect: he must repair the injury that he has caused, by offering something over and above for the honor of God, and he must expiate his fault by suffering something against his will. The first aspect is realized through the sacrifice, as being the act of supreme honor; the second aspect is also realized through the sacrifice when one offers something that is difficult, costly, the greatest sacrifice being the sacrifice of one's own life.

The sinner, far from meriting the favor of God, on the contrary, merits to experience the chastisements of God. Thus, we see how Father Emmanuel, O.S.B. (from the monastery of Le Barroux, France), is mistaken when he claims in La Nef: "Man, severed from his first splendor by original sin, is inevitably a sinner, and consequently it was infinitely just that God be infinitely merciful to him."³ Justice consists in rendering a debt; that which is due to the sinner is chastisement, not mercy. Though under pretext of not opposing the divine attributes, even so we must not confuse everything! Would he then say that God pardons in His justice and chastises in His mercy?!

Man was able to destroy, but could not pay back by himself. God could have simply remitted the debt with man having nothing to pay, which would have been a work of Mercy but would have left Justice in a certain manner unsatisfied. He has chosen to redeem us "in a more marvelous manner" by "giving his Only-begotten Son" as victim of propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world"⁴According to the teachings of the Church, based on Scripture and the Fathers, it is through the Sacrifice of the Cross that Our Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed the world. Through this sacrifice, Christ has merited all the graces superabundantly for all men.

St. Peter teaches us: "You were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver, from the vain conduct of the traditions of your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled" (I Pet. 1:18-19). St. Paul tells us: "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:7). And St. John hears the canticle that the elect sing to the Lamb: "thou hast redeemed us to God, in thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation" (Apoc. 5:9). It would be necessary to cite almost the entire epistle to the Hebrews, which magnificently develops the Sacrifice of the Cross and the redemptive property of His blood. "According to the law, almost all things are cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission" (Heb. 9:22).

St. Thomas of Aquinas lucidly explains the causes of the Redemption: the Primary Cause is the Blessed Trinity, the source of all good. The Father out of Love sends His Son into the most pure womb of Our Lady, in order to save us; in Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Charity causes the virtue of charity in his human Heart, a virtue which, on the level of the created, is the first source of movement towards the Redemption; this charity of the Heart of Jesus inspired His obedience to the command of the Father (Jn. 10:18) and His humility (Phil. 2:8). But the saving act itself is the supreme act of the virtue of religion, the sacrifice, inspired by these virtues of obedience, humility and charity. This perfect sacrifice pleased the Blessed Trinity more than all the sins of the world displeased Him. Thus, it repaired fully, satisfying the Divine Justice and becoming a source of superabundant mercy for all men: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself (Jn. 12:32). However, not all allow themselves to be drawn towards the Cross! "He became to all that obey him the cause of eternal salvation" (Heb. 5:9).

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of the Cross made present on all the altars of the world, so that in all nations and for all time the disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ may receive at the foot of the altar the same graces that they would have received had they been with the Blessed Virgin, St. John and the holy women at the foot of the Cross. In uniting themselves to the Sacrifice of Christ at the Mass, the faithful receive the graces that are derived from this sacrifice, graces of healing and of sanctification. By these graces they may and they must, in their turn, merit eternal salvation, in such a way that this salvation is both a work of Mercy that gave numerous preventive graces, and a work of Justice that recompenses the merits acquired through good works done under the influence of grace.

The Sacrifice of the Cross is therefore the summit towards which all human history leads; even the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ led towards this summit, and the glorification of Our Lord is the consequence of it, as St. Paul says: "He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross! That is why God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a Name which is above all names" (Phil. 2:8-9). Likewise, for all the faithful, the Christian life is a configuration to Christ crucified here on earth in order to arrive at the glory of Heaven: "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him" (Rom. 8:17).

New theology of the Paschal Mystery

In the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the holy Church sings of Our Lord Jesus Christ "who has paid on our behalf to His Heavenly Father the debt of Adam: who has likewise effaced with His own blood the guilt of original sin. For this is the Paschal festival on which that true Lamb was slain, with whose blood the faithful are marked with a sacred sign." This is the true sense, the traditional sense of the paschal mystery. But, describing this ancient expression, the new theology gives it a completely new meaning, which radically changes the Mystery of the Redemption, rejecting or distorting each and every point presented above.

For the new theology, sin becomes almost incidental to the plan of God, which is essentially a plan of love, "that God intends to pursue ... despite the obstacles"⁵. For the traditional theology, God wishes to manifest His merciful love precisely by atoning for sinners.

The new theology explicitly rejects any "legalistic"⁶ or "juridical"⁷ presentation of the mystery of the Redemption, whereas the Scriptures and the Fathers speak extensively of "ransom, redemption".

Offertory of the Mass; Jn. 3:16; 1 Jn. 2:2.

Consequently, the new theology keeps quiet about the debt of man towards God: it simply does not speak about it! It occasionally even avoids the word Redemption, replacing it with the expression paschal mystery, because the word Redemption includes the idea of atonement, of paying a debt. If it mentions sin it is as a source of suffering for man, or at the very most as an attack on the alliance with God, but "God shows that He is faithful to Himself despite the infidelity of man, His partner (sic)"⁸

This theology rejects the vicarial satisfaction, that is, the fact that Christ took upon Himself the debt of our sins: "Without being personally culpable and without the need to be chastised by God for the sins of others, Jesus identified himself through love to sinful humanity... This obedience does not amount to appeasing a God of anger but of freely offering himself..."⁹ On the contrary, the Scriptures themselves say: "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all... He hath borne himself their iniquities" (Is. 53:6-11).

The Redemption becomes a work of love WITHOUT being also a work of Justice. Well then, one no longer understands the paschal canticle: "O inestimable tenderness of Thy charity: to free the slave Thou didst deliver up Thy Son!"

Some texts have certain phrases which make one ask if the authors believe in the divinity of Christ: "Because Christ obeyed the will of the Father and gave his life for the multitude, his person and his work of redemption in the world acquire a signification and a dignity that are unique and incomparable."¹⁰ That the person of Christ could acquire a dignity, this implies that it was not from the beginning the same Person as the Word. "The tendencies of Jesus of Nazareth indicate that the gratuitous gift of himself to the ways of God, whatever be the price, renders glory to ourselves (?) as well as to God. The death of Jesus is not the occasion of a pitiless God overjoyed at the supreme sacrifice; it is not the 'price of ransom' to some alienating power that enslaves. It is the time and the space where a God who is love and who loves us is rendered visible. Jesus crucified says how much God loves us and proclaims that in this gesture of love a man consents unconditionally to the ways ofGod."¹¹ One sees here the technique of the new theology that deforms the doctrine of ransoming in order to reject it. The truth is that the debt of the sin is due to God, for the sinner has failed in his duty towards God: but because of the sin, God "delivers him to the torturers" (Mt. 18:34), that is, the demons; Christ paid to His Father the debt due because of our sins, thus meriting our deliverance. By His victory over the demon, not having yielded to the temptation to avoid the Cross, Christ "snatched" us from the power of the demon. We can also see how much this text fails to profess the faith in the divinity of the Redeemer.

But if Christ is not God, then the Redeemer is the Father; "The Father has made us His children in the sense that He has redeemed us thanks to the human will of Christ".¹²

One can glimpse here a very grave heresy, which some only allude to, while others speak more openly: Christ has BECOME the Son of God in his death/resurrection. Father Durrwell writes: "The resuscitating action is a real begetting. The man who dies is nobody, unless God seizes him in the instant of his annihilation, lifts him up by drawing him to Himself. Jesus accepted to die, he consented to be nothing except to God to whom he abandoned himself... The resurrection is the divine begetting of the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit... in his death Jesus is born divinely... Begotten in the death, Jesus lives there where he is eternally engendered: the filial life and the death form the unique paschal mystery... Through the death and the resurrection, Jesus passes from the flesh to the filial life in the Spirit..." (op. cit. p. 31, 37, 49, 53, 71)

Some say that here we have an avant-garde theologian. But the bishops write the same thing. Bishop Koch, bishop of Bale, writes: "Jesus Christ is the primordial sacrament of God... Jesus Christ is the 'place' where it is possible to have the experience of God... According to this original expression (Rom. 1: 3-4), it is at the moment of the resurrection that Christ was established Son of God... (and later on) Christ may be assimilated to a pre-existent divine being... In resuscitating the crucified, in making him live again close to Him, God recognizes Himself in the message and the person of this Jesus, who passed as a blasphemer... The death of Jesus in itself is not endowed with any redemptive force. This death cannot have a redemptive effect except in as much as where the last word does not belong to him, where Easter adds something else, where therefore the death of Jesus is vanquished by God Himself..."¹³

One better understands then the importance that these theologians give to the Resurrection: if it is "the divine begetting of the Son", then it is truly the most important moment of history. Furthermore, if salvation consists in becoming children of God, in the image of His Son, then the salvation comes through the Resurrection.¹⁴"This salvation takes the form of a filiation in the Spirit of Christ, Jesus the Son."¹⁵The Cross of Christ is put aside!

All this new theology of the paschal mystery, Father Emmanuel of Le Barroux¹⁶ totally ignores. So then, how can he allow himself to judge the analysis made through the book The Problem of the Liturgical Reform as being "but little convincing"?

Next issue: the Memorial Mass? (continuation and conclusion).

Our Lady, Guardian of the Faith, pray for us!

2. The most Blessed Virgin Mary is preserved from original sin through a very special privilege in virtue of the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ. She also had need of the preventive mercy of God.

3. That which is of truth in the phrase of St. Theresa - of which we would like to see the original sentence, as the Father does not give his reference — is that if God did not want to be merciful, He would not have given some time to sinful humanity, but He would have chastised them immediately, as He did to the bad Angels, with perfect justice and wisdom. God has given some time to humanity in order to be able to be merciful to it: "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and longsuffering? Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance?" (Rom. 2:4). Once this time is accorded, He must pour forth this mercy, though without it being due to each sinner.

4. Offertory of the Mass; Jn. 3:16; 1 Jn. 2:2.

5. The Redeeming God, chosen questions, document of the International Commission of Theology (CTI) IV 42, Documentation Catholique no. 2143 of August 4 and 18 1996 p. 726.

6. CTI, loc.cit. Ill 38 p. 721.

7. Franfois Xavier Durrwell, Christ noire Pdque, Editions Nouvelle Cite march 2001, p. 61 and following. The book has the imprimatur of the bishop of Strasbourg of Oct. 18 2000.

8. CTI, loc. cit. IV 33 p. 726.

9. CTI, loc. cit. Ill 39 p. 722; II 12 p. 714.

10. CTI, loc. cit. IV 11 p. 723.

11. CTI, loc. cit. II 10 p. 714.

12. CTI, loc. cit. IV 11 p. 723.

13. The Credo of the Christians, p. 53, 49, 64.

14. See Durrwell, op. cit. p. 166-167.

15. CTI, loc. cit. IV 22 p. 725: do not forget that this International Theological Commission is presided by Cardinal Ratzinger!

16. La Nefno. 117, June 2001, p. 19-23; see D.I.C.I. no. 14.