Ten Days of Davies: Michael gets into a debate on William Buckley's Firing Line

Source

I think I have posted a link on this in the past but now I will provide additional things for you to chew on.

The Program was Firing Line, with host William F. Buckley (Founder of the National Review).
Mr. Buckley was a practicing Catholic until he died and one of the shows he invited Mr. Davies, Fr. Malachi Martin and Fr. Joseph Champlin, who worked for the USCCB at the time as a liturgical adviser, to discuss the struggle to maintain Catholic orthodoxy.  The debate was heated to say the least.  Fr. Martin was not a designated debater but an expert questioner brought in by Firing Line to propose questions more formal in nature.

Below I have posted a clip from the program on line as well as the transcript and a link to rent or buy the episode.  the following is an interesting part of the exchange:

Mr. Buckley: Well, lets pursue the question of whether there is a dilution implicit in the new form of the Mass over against the Tridentine Mass. As you know, the Protestants have been arguing very heatedly on the various revisions of the King James Bible with one segment insisting that there is a theological dilution. Do you believe that there is? 

 Fr. Champlin: Do you? 

 Mr. Buckley: In the new order? 

 Fr. Champlin: I don’t think so. Let’s go back to one of the earlier things that Mr. Davies mentioned about the dilution of the sacrifice notion and the priesthood and so on. When the new missal – the Vatican II document, or the new missal of Paul VI – came out, this was one of the criticisms. In the introduction to the ritual – or the introduction to the general instruction of the missal -  very clear notion of how the sacrifice of the Mass is present in the new order of Mass, how the priesthood is very clearly there, how the priesthood the layperson different in essence from the priesthood of the ordained person is still present there. The whole notion of the sense of the sacred is in fact present, and I think the kind of sense that he said at the beginning that the new Mass takes away from that – I don’t think it’s a dilution. I think it tries to bring that notion of the transcendent and then communitarian and bringing together; and the kind of abuses that he was talking about are abuses, but not the teaching of Vatican II.  I don’t see the new Mass as a dilution of what we had. 

 Mr. Bukley: Do you have a comment on that , Mr. Davies? 

 Mr. Davies: I certainly do.  As Father says, correctly, in the new missal there’s an introduction – there’s a thing probably that most people watching wouldn’t know called the “general instruction” to the new Roman missal. Well, when it came out --  First of all, you just had the new order of the Mass --  you didn’t have a complete missal with all the readings – you just had the new order of Mass which had this general instruction with all the articles explaining it. Some of theses articles, they were just totally protestant. For instance, they explained the nature of the Mass, Article 7 – they said it’s the coming together of the people under the presidency of a priest which is a  -- There’s nothing formally heretical in it, but its totally acceptable to Protestants. Article 48 said that during the Mass that the Last Supper was made present. That is heretical, actually. Well, when the missal which Father mentions – with this Forward, that came out in 1970, and the Forward he has mentioned – the premium, in Latin – as he said, it states every doctrine of the Council of Tent absolutely orthodox – ii in an orthodox manner – and says this is what the new Mass is intended to enshrine; but I think this Forward is the most damning indictment of the new Mass ever published – the fact that within a year of its publication, they had to put an introduction to it, saying, “Oh, yes, well, it really is Catholic after all.  It really is meant to show this.” It’s a far more demining indictment than anything traditionalists have written about it… “

Click here for the link to the full video and transcript