A recent article by Chris Jackson, titled "Loreto Hosts a Protestant Priestess," documents a series of contemporary events—a Protestant cleric actively participating in a Catholic Mass at the Holy House of Loreto, a hagiography of Paul VI in the National Catholic Reporter, ecumenical proposals from Cardinal Koch, and homilies from a fictional "Pope Leo XIV"—concluding that such episodes are not anomalies, but rather "the fruit of the same poisoned tree... the logic of Vatican II, fully grown" (Jackson, 2025). Jackson's analysis, though insightful, points to the symptoms. A deeper theological critique, however, reveals that the root cause is not just an abstract "logic" of the Council, but the concrete and revolutionary principles embedded in the very structure of the Mass of Paul VI.
🤝 The Theology of the Assembly in ActionThe incident in Loreto, where a Protestant "pastor" extends her hand during the consecration, mimicking an act of concelebration, is often dismissed by conservatives as a liturgical "abuse." However, such an event is the visible manifestation of the fundamental theology that animates the New Mass. The General Instruction accompanying the new rite defines the Mass not as the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary, but as "the sacred assembly or congregation of the people of God gathering together, with a priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord" (Cekada, 2010, p. 143).
When the essence of the Mass is shifted from sacrifice to assembly, the role of the priest transforms from offerer to presider, and the central action becomes the act of gathering. In this context, the participation of a non-Catholic minister, while canonically illicit, becomes theologically coherent with the ecumenical aim of the rite. The very structure of the New Mass was designed to remove doctrinal barriers, eliminating gestures and prayers that emphasized the propitiatory sacrifice, the Real Presence, and the Catholic priesthood as exclusive realities (Cekada, 2010, p. 478-482). The shared gesture at the consecration is the natural corollary of a liturgy that systematically dismantled the distinction between the ministerial priesthood and the "common priesthood" of the faithful.
📜 The Architect and Institutional Amnesia
The National Catholic Reporter's commemoration of Paul VI as "the great pope of the 20th century," while ignoring his liturgical reform, is an exercise in deliberate amnesia. The New Mass was not a historical accident but the result of a long process driven by a specific theological agenda, of which the then-Archbishop Montini was a fervent supporter. Long before his election, he was already promoting the ideas of the modernist Liturgical Movement, including Louis Bouyer's "theology of the assembly" and Josef Jungmann's "corruption theory," which viewed liturgical tradition as a decay from a primitive ideal (Cekada, 2010, p. 66-68).
The reform was not an attempt to "tame" centrifugal forces, as the article suggests, but to institutionalize those forces. The destruction of the Catholic Offertory and its replacement with a Jewish table prayer; the introduction of multiple Eucharistic Prayers filled with ambiguity; and the systematic removal of references to God's wrath, judgment, hell, and sin were deliberate acts to create a rite acceptable to Protestants and aligned with modernist theology (Cekada, 2010, p. 345, 481). To praise Paul VI for "dialogue" while omitting the demolition of the Roman Rite is like praising an architect for his pleasant demeanor while ignoring that the building he designed has collapsed.
🎲 The False Dilemma: Liturgical Submission or Doctrinal Purity
Cardinal Koch's statements, offering possible tolerance for the Traditional Mass while advancing an agenda of ecumenical convergence, illustrate the post-conciliar strategy of treating faith as a negotiable commodity. The proposal of a coexistence of two rites—the "Ordinary Form" and the "Extraordinary Form"—ignores the fundamental principle of lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief).
It is theologically impossible for two rites, one that expresses the Catholic faith on the sacrifice and the priesthood and another that systematically destroys it, to be legitimate manifestations of the same faith (Cekada, 2010, p. 490). The suggestion that the Tridentine Mass might be "permitted" in exchange for silence on doctrinal matters is a trap that demands the implicit recognition of the New Mass's orthodoxy and legitimacy. Koch's ecumenism, which questions the very reality of the 1054 schism, reveals the ultimate goal: unity not through conversion to Catholic truth, but through the dissolution of truth itself into a humanistic consensus.
The events described by Jackson are, therefore, not deviations or excesses. They are the coherent expression of the theology that underpins the Mass of Paul VI: a theology of the assembly, of ecumenism, and of modernism, which by its nature produces fruits of irreverence, doctrinal confusion, and, ultimately, the destruction of the faith.
📚 References
Cekada, Anthony. Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI. West Chester: Philothea Press, 2010.
Jackson, Chris. Loreto hosts a protestant priestess. But don’t worry, Koch might let you have the latin mass. The Remnant. Accessed: Aug 8, 2025.