Mass of Paul VI - Names Used For The Mass of Paul VI

Names Used For The Mass of Paul VI

In its official documents, the Church identifies the forms of the Roman-Rite 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 referred to this form of the Roman-Rite Mass by linking it with "the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970".

The names "Mass of Paul VI" and "Pauline Mass" are equivalent to this.

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 (Order of Mass), 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 Order of the Mass", "novus" being the Latin for "new" by Pope Paul VI). "Novus Ordo Missae", or simply "Novus Ordo", later became 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"). "Novus Ordo", as a term for the revised form of the Roman Rite Mass, appears in no official Church document.

In his letter to bishops which accompanied his 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI wrote 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." Since then, the term "ordinary form" is often used to distinguish this form of the Roman Rite of Mass from the Tridentine Mass, the 1962 edition of which Pope Benedict declared in his motu proprio to be an authorized "extraordinary form".