Q397 – Why has the Traditional Latin Mass, treasured in the Church for centuries, recently become an issue for some people?

Interview Organization: Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima
Interviewer Name: Christopher P. Wendt
Date: September 13, 2025
Bishop Schneider compares certain attitudes in the Church to Martin Luther, saying Luther claimed the Church had erred for a thousand years and rejected the sacrificial character of the Mass. He notes Luther sought to abolish offertory prayers, and argues Paul VI partly fulfilled this request. He believes the Church will eventually restore the traditional offertory prayers.
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Yes, this is an attitude of all heretics, because this was exactly the attitude of Martin Luther. He accused the Catholic Church in the 16th century that the Church was living in degradation and in error for one thousand years. He said he accepted only the first four councils until the fifth century, and after the fifth century, he said it had all gone down.

Specifically, Martin Luther first rejected the Holy Mass. He said the manner in which the Holy Mass was celebrated must be radically changed. In his time, he himself celebrated the traditional Latin Mass, the same one we now have, because we have Roman missals from one hundred years before the Council of Trent, the same order of Mass, without any changes. So Martin Luther himself celebrated exactly the order of the traditional Latin Mass with the offertory prayers, the same which we have in the traditional Latin Mass.

At the beginning of his deformation, not reformation, Martin Luther made a request that all elements of the Mass, which have aspects of the sacrificial character, must be urgently changed. He named these concretely. He said, first, we must abolish the offertory prayers because they are too sacrificial. We must change the Mass to make it a meal, simply a communion service, and so on, and abolish especially the canon of the Mass.

Paul the Sixth at least partly accepted the requests of Martin Luther and abolished the traditional offertory prayers. Thanks be to God, Paul the sixth did not abolish the canon of the Mass, so we have to be thankful at least for this. But nevertheless, partly he fulfilled the request of Martin Luther to diminish the sacrificial aspect of the Holy Mass in the offertory. This is a serious issue that the Church cannot simply silence and must face honestly in the future. And it will be done.

I am convinced without any doubt that the Mother Church, the Holy See, will again return to the traditional offertory prayers and will abolish these Protestant style prayers in the Mass.

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