Expert: Tom Schott - 10/3/2009

Question
What is a Norvus Ordo presbyter priest?

Answer
Gene,

A Novus Ordo presbyter is a priest who celebrates mass and the sacraments according to the rites revised by the Vatican II council.

Here's some explanation from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_of_Paul_VI#The_term_Novus_Ordo)

The term Novus Ordo

In advance of the 1969 decision on the form of the revision of the liturgy, a preliminary draft of two sections of the Roman Missal was published. The section containing the unvarying part of the Mass had the Latin title Ordo Missae (Ordinary of the Mass),[31] the same title that the equivalent section had in previous editions of the Missal. It was unremarkably referred to as the "novus Ordo Missae" — "the new Ordinary of the Mass", "novus" being the Latin for "new" (see, for example, this speech by Pope Paul VI).

Novus Ordo Missae, or simply Novus Ordo, has since become a specific composite term used to refer to the revised rite of Mass in its entirety. Traditionalist Catholics often use it in a pejorative manner, and sometimes employ it as a blanket condemnatory term for the present-day Church ("the Novus Ordo Church"). For this reason, some mainstream Catholics reject the term, though others are content to use it.

The term "Novus Ordo" is not used in official Church documents or by academic liturgists. In its official documents, the Church identifies the forms of the Mass by the editions of the Roman Missal used in celebrating them. Thus, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 7 July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of "the Roman Missal published by Pope Blessed John XXIII in 1962" and "the Roman Missal promulgated by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI in 1970".[32]

Equivalent to the latter of these two terms are the names "Mass of Paul VI" and "Pauline Mass".

In the letter to bishops with which he accompanied Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI said that "the Missal published by Paul VI and then republished in two subsequent editions by John Paul II, obviously is and continues to be the normal Form – the Forma ordinaria – of the Eucharistic Liturgy." The Mass of Paul VI is now the ordinary or normal form of Mass of the Roman Rite, while Mass in accordance with the 1962 Missal, which was once the normal form, has now become, as the Pope said, "an extraordinary form of the Liturgy of the Church".[33]