ATHER PAUL BUSSARD founded the Leaflet Missal Company in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1951, he claimed to own 50% of it. From what I can tell through online research, it began in 1929 and resembled the “disposable missalettes” still being sold by companies like OCP PUBLICATIONS (a company originally named The Oregon Catholic Truth Society, if you can believe it).
This 1951 article by Father Bussard was recently unearthed:
How many rookie errors
can you find in his article?
I’ll start:
(a) Father Bussard says Adolf Hitler’s rise was a direct result (!) of the Catholic Church’s immemorial tradition of a lingua sacra during Mass.
(b) Father Bussard says Roman Catholics before Vatican II “never learned to pray properly” because the Mass used a lingua sacra. Is he ignorant of the fact that the Church’s tradition of a lingua sacra goes back at least 1,500 years? By Father Bussard’s logic, no Catholic ever prayed “properly” (his word) for 1,500 years. What an absurd and repugnant notion.
(c) Father Bussard—in his paragraph talking about the cardinal of Cologne—seems unaware that major cathedrals with a “people’s altar” was nothing new. This is an ancient tradition. Indeed, Mass for the people was often offered on an altar in front of (or even on top of) the Rood Screen.
(d) Father Bussard attempts to mock what he calls the “non-parish altar.” In his ignorance, he doesn’t realize that’s exactly what it was. The elaborate altars in the SANCTUARY were sometimes a “result” or “outgrowth” or “development” of ceremonies undertaken by the cathedral canons while the people were at work. Father Bussard’s statement is truly imbecilic.
(e) Father Bussard claims that no catholic (!) has ever been able to pray “properly” (his word) in the Cologne Cathedral. By making such statements, Bussard comes across as an arrogant lunatic.
(f) Father Bussard refers to the altar as “Christ.” He carefully avoids mentioning the SANCTISSIMUM. For a priest, this is quite reprehensible. Not one word acknowledging the Eucharist, which is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divity of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
(g) Father Bussard has the impudence to call all of the holy saints—Saint John Bosco, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John Mary Vianney, Saint Andrew Bobola, Saint Isaac Jogues, Saint John de Brébeuf, and so forth—“foolish” (his word) for adopting and embracing the immemorial traditions of the Church’s worship vis-à-vis ad orientem worship.
(h) Father Bussard makes false statements about the “original” position of the altar. The altar in the early church did not face the people. Whether the ambo ever faced the people is a different question. (I’ve read conflicting views on that.) I’d be interested to learn whether there’s evidence showing the lectors in the synagogue—prior to the birth of Our Lord—faced towards the people for the readings.
(i) Father Bussard pretends that the entire liturgy was “barred” from the congregation. He fails to realize that in Germany, even before Vatican II, many priests read the Epistle and Gospel in German (not Latin). In America and Australia, priests used Latin but repeated the readings in the vernacular. That is still done at the Extraordinary Form. Therefore, Bussard greatly errs.
(j) Father Bussard says the priest “has his back to the congregation.” This is a lie. For 1,960 years everyone at Mass faced the same direction. When you go to church, the person sitting in the pew in front of you doesn’t “have his back toward you”—you’re both facing the same direction. Would Father Bussard want an airplane pilot to face the folks in the plan? Would Father Bussard want his bus driver to face the people in the bus? Such a view is disordered.
(k) Father Bussard attempts to mock somebody who reads from a book at Mass to better follow the sacred ceremonies. He claims such a need would disappear completely were Mass to be offered in the vernacular.1 But we’ve had Mass exclusively in the vernacular for 60 years—yet the vast majority of people over the age of sixty still follow the Mass from a book or missalette. Once again, in an attempt to mock others, Father Bussard comes across as dunce-like.
I could add more, but that’s enough for now. Father Bussard will go down in history as “that nincompoop who said the Church’s lingua sacra caused World War II and also the holocaust.”
I apologize if I seem overly sensitive about this subject, but I’m Polish. I know what Hitler did to Polish Christians and Polish Jews. The Church’s immemorial use of a lingua sacra at Mass did not lead to the Holocaust. Indeed, our Redeemer Himself didn’t use the vernacular at the Last Supper. He used a lingua sacra.
1 Father Bussard seems not to realize that in many places there is no “vernacular.” In Belgium, for instance, the people speak all manner of different languages. The same is true of Africa. The same is true of certain cities in the United States.
