Expert: Fr. Michael - 12/5/2009

Question
Father: I attended my first traditional Mass celebrated by a FSSP priest about 6 months ago after 40 years of the New Mass and to tell you the truth I nearly cried.  It brought me back to my youth and how important the Mass was to us and our family.  Now out of 12 kids 4 of us call ourselves practicing Catholics. My question is, I have a very hard time attending the New Mass and actually feel as if I am in a protestant service. I do not receive Communion when I go.  Am I sinning?  

Answer
Your conscience is exactly right on this.  The New "Mass" is clearly a Protestant service.  It was composed by a Freemason presbyter and six Protestant ministers after Vatican II specifically to be acceptable to the Protestants.  It fails to meet the Leonine criteria for a valid Catholic Mass, so you have a positive duty to absent yourself from it.

Actually, the FSSP does not use the Traditional Latin Mass, but a sort of intermediate stage as of 1962, which was engineered substantially by that same Freemason presbyter.  You should seek out the True Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass.  There is a geographical listing at www.traditio.com/nat.htm.  Note carefully the chapter, "Warning against chapter on "Pseudo-traditional Services."

It is too bad that you did not do this forty years ago.  There were many courageous priests who refused to have anything to do with the invalid New "Mass" and made the Traditional Latin Mass continuously available.