After 55 years of Vatican II…

Novus Ordo Jesuit: “When I repeat the Words of Consecration, I sometimes wonder what Christ meant”

Children say the darndest things. So do Jesuits.

Take the Rev. Dominique Degoul, for example. He’s a Jesuit presbyter for the Vatican II Sect, works as a university chaplain in Paris, and has been assigned the future director of the Teilhard de Chardin Centre. How’s that for advance warning?

Degoul recently gave an interview to the French Novus Ordo publication La Croix “about what the Mass means in the life of a believer”, specifically in the context of the recent Coronavirus restrictions. To say that the Jesuit’s answers are revealing would be an understatement.

First, he asserts that “what saves us and in what we put our faith is not the Mass, but Christ.” Depending on how it’s meant, this statement can be understood in an orthodox or an unorthodox sense. Considering what he says next, however, an orthodox intent may be doubted:

The celebration of the Eucharist is not something in itself, it is oriented towards Christ: the usual means of meeting him and receiving him.

It is the place where each one of us communicates with the person of Christ and where, at the same time, the Church is constituted as a body by receiving him in assembly.

…The Mass responds to a human need for gathering.

The sacraments have an incarnate character, with the physical presence of brothers and sisters, whose absence we particularly feel when we are deprived of them.

(“Fr.” Dominique Degoul, in Arnaud Bevilacqua, “What saves us is not faith in the Mass, but faith in Christ”, La Croix, May 30, 2020.)

One does not know where to begin with such a load of misleading, erroneous, or outright heretical piffle.

The “celebration of the Eucharist”, as “Fr.” Degoul calls the Holy Mass, is very much something in itself; namely, the Sacrifice of Calvary. Thus it is not merely “oriented” towards our Lord, as any simple prayer service might be. Rather, it is Christ’s very Sacrifice offered by Him on Calvary 2,000 years ago, offered here and now, in an unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and wine, by a priest who acts in persona Christi.

This is basic Catholic dogma:

…[S]ince in this divine sacrifice, which is celebrated in the Mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, who on the altar of the Cross “once offered Himself” in a bloody manner [Heb. 9:27], the holy Synod teaches that this is truly propitiatory, and has this effect, that if contrite and penitent we approach God with a sincere heart and right faith, with fear and reverence, “we obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid” [Heb. 4:16]. For, appeased by this oblation, the Lord, granting the grace and gift of penitence, pardons crimes and even great sins. For, it is one and the same Victim, the same one now offering by the ministry of the priests as He who then offered Himself on the Cross, the manner of offering alone being different….

If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God, or that the act of offering is nothing else than Christ being given to us to eat: let him be anathema.

(Council of Trent, Session 22, Chapter 2, Canon 1; Denz. 940, 948.)

It is very important to understand that it does not suffice to merely affirm belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist through Transubstantiation. There are many conservative Novus Ordos in our day who believe in Transubstantiation but think that the only purpose of the Mass is to make Christ present for us so we can receive Him. That is false and, as shown above, condemned as heretical by the Council of Trent!

The Holy Mass is a true and proper Sacrifice, and quite specifically — which Protestants and Modernists deny — a Sacrifice not merely of adoration, thanksgiving, or petition but also of propitiation. In other words, the Mass is a sin-atoning Sacrifice — precisely because it is identical to the Sacrifice of the Cross. If you didn’t get that from Mr. Degoul’s words above, there is a reason for it: He doesn’t believe it.

The idea that the Mass “responds to a human need for gathering”, as the university chaplain maintains, is thoroughly Modernist:

Concerning worship there would not be much to be said, were it not that under this head are comprised the sacraments, concerning which the Modernist errors are of the most serious character. For them the sacraments are the resultant of a double impulse or need — for, as we have seen, everything in ttheir system is explained by inner impulses or necessities. The first need is that of giving some sensible manifestation to religion; the second is that of expressing it, which could not be done without some sensible form and consecrating acts, and these are called sacraments.

(Pope Saint Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi Dominici, n. 21; underlining added.)

In fact, the Holy Mass has nothing to do with gathering per se. Mass can be offered by a priest alone, even, if need be, without a server — that makes it no less of a Mass. Since Vatican II, however, this truth has been all but eclipsed. Protestant-inspired “assembly theology” rules the day now, and of course that runs into serious problems during times when there is no assembly. Oops!

In a way, the Rev. Degoul is not to blame — he is merely repeating that which his Novus Ordo religion teaches him; for the Mass being essentially an assembly is an idea straight from “Pope Saint” Paul VI:

The Lord’s Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, Christ’s promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst” (Mt. 18:20).

(“General Instruction of the Roman Missal”Missale Romanum: Ordo Missae Editio Typica [Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1969], n. 7)

This is pure Lutheranism! But then, as we know from his own mouth, Degoul’s “Pope” doesn’t have a problem with that!

Some time ago, Fr. Anthony Cekada released a video about this assembly theology nonsense. It is a summary presentation of Chapter 5 of his book Work of Human Hands (“The Mass as Assembly”):

Lastly, Degoul’s comment about the keenly-felt physical absence of brothers and sisters for the celebration of the sacraments is just the toxic icing on his Modernist cake. It reflects the man-centered (anthropocentric) nature of the Vatican II religion.

But wait, there is more! We are talking about a Jesuit, after all. Asked about “the profound meaning of the Mass”, the Modernist university chaplain answers:

The Eucharist remains a mystery, a kind of blind repetition of what Jesus told us.

When I repeat the words of consecration, I sometimes wonder what Christ meant.

Of course, they are the basis for the institution of a sacrament, but they are hard words. “Eat, this is my body”, “Drink, this is my blood”, is both incomprehensible and unimaginable.

We can only approach their meaning through the circumstances in which they are said: shortly before his body and blood are physically delivered, Jesus relays the fundamental hope that his death and then resurrection will become true food for all.

(“Fr.” Dominique Degoul, in Arnaud Bevilacqua, “What saves us is not faith in the Mass, but faith in Christ”, La Croix, May 30, 2020.)

Here our friendly Jesuit demonstrates once more his utter lack of Faith. He acts as though we had no knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries at all. Yes, of course the Holy Eucharist is a mystery, but it is one God has revealed and allowed us to understand, to an extent, by Faith. That is why He sent the Holy Ghost, why He gave us a Church, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), and why His grace is so necessary. A “blind repetition” of the words of consecration? Only a man with no Faith could speak like that.

The dogma of Transubstantiation provides a real and true understanding of the Eucharistic mystery. Not that it could exhaust it — for God’s mysteries are certainly inexhaustible –, but it is nevertheless true, providing genuine access to the reality (cf. Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, nn. 14-17).

So Mr. Degoul tells us, “I sometimes wonder what Christ meant” when He said, “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood.” Novus Ordo Watch is happy to help out. Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ meant… exactly what He said! He had foretold that He would give us His Flesh to eat and His Blood to drink (see Jn 6:48-59), and at the Last Supper He fulfilled His prophecy.

In this regard, as well as in general, we invite Mr. Degoul to study some basic Catholic catechisms as well as have a look at the clear teaching of the Council of Trent:

First of all the holy Synod teaches and openly and simply professes that in the nourishing sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For these things are not mutually contradictory, that our Savior Himself is always seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to the natural mode of existing, and yet that in many other places sacramentally He is present to us in His own substance by that manner of existence which, although we can scarcely express it in words, yet we can, however, by our understanding illuminated by faith, conceive to be possible to God, and which we ought most steadfastly to believe. For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have discussed this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this so wonderful a sacrament at the Last Supper, when after the blessing of the bread and wine He testified in clear and definite words that He gave them His own body and His own blood; and those words which are recorded [Matt. 26:26ff.; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19 ff.] by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by St. Paul [1 Cor. 11:23 ff.], since they contain within themselves that proper and very clear meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, it is a most disgraceful thing for some contentious and wicked men to distort into fictitious and imaginary figures of speech, by which the real nature of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, recognizing with an ever grateful and recollecting mind this most excellent benefit of Christ, as the pillar and ground of truth [1 Tim. 3:15], has detested these falsehoods, devised by impious men, as satanical.

(Council of Trent, Session 13, Chapter 1; Denz. 874; underlining added.)

The mystery of the Holy Eucharist is “incomprehensible and unimaginable” only to someone without the light of Faith and without understanding, which is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.

To make up for his lack of both, the Jesuit appeals to “the circumstances” to explain the meaning of Christ’s Words, revealing that he rejects the dogmatic teaching of the Council of Trent. His claim that “Jesus relays the fundamental hope that his death and then resurrection will become true food for all” is heretical, because that ascribes a figurative sense to the words “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” and locates their fulfilment not at that precise moment when they were spoken but at a future point:

If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema.

(Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon 1; Denz. 883.)

The Jesuit then tops it off with: “To receive the body of Christ is to express our desire to live in the movement of giving himself to the end that was his, and in the same movement, to give ourselves for others.”

Not exactly. To receive the Body of Christ is to receive truly and substantially the whole and entire glorified Christ — Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — under the appearance of bread in Holy Communion. Which is pretty much what any Catholic needs to know before he can even make his First Holy Communion.

“Fr.” Degoul is clearly not ready for that yet.

Image source: centreteilharddechardin.fr (cropped; mirrored)
License: fair use

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