Reviewed by Toby Terrar

 

The New Mass Explained in Dialogues by the Red Priest: Communist Liturgy by Fr. Jean Boulier. (Edited by Toby Terrar) (CWPublisher, 2024. 171 pp. ISBN 979-8334012332)

 

The New Mass Explained in Dialogues by the Red Priest: Communist Liturgy was first published in French in 1975. Fifty-years later the Fr. Jean Boulier Society has re-published it in English because it believes the book is still relevant and helps to advance the society’s aim to popularize the priest’s works.

The book’s author, Fr. Jean Boulier (1895-1980) was a diocesan priest, political activist and scholar in Paris, where he was known as the “Red Priest”. This was because he took the communist side in the Cold War. He believed Church reform was needed and he was active in contributing to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Members of the French hierarchy protected him.

As the “Red Priest” Fr. Boulier appreciated the proletariat’s participation in the vernacular (non-Latin) Mass and this was the purpose of his writing The New Mass. More specifically, the intended audience was Catholic youth who were about to leave secondary school. It sought to give them a foundation for their life based on their Catholic faith, the Mass being the greatest act of their religion.

In Fr. Boulier’s view, the Mass was always the same, but it also had to be continuously adapted to carry out its world-redeeming purpose. Conservatives complained about the changes wrought by Vatican II, but for Fr. Boulier the scandal was that for more than a thousand years the traditional Mass had, in effect, excommunicated the working people. They were subjected to the doctrine of unworthiness since the 300s AD by slaveholders who gained control of the Church leadership and collaborated with conservative ruling classes and used the liturgy to humiliate and control the worshippers.

The liturgy which was adopted at that time was based on imperial court ceremonies. Everything that had any relation to the person of the emperor was called “sacred”. Bright red colors, silk and precious stones were insignia of the emperor and the court. At the court there was bowing and the kissing of hands and feet. Emperors were praised in solemn hymns. Eulogies were delivered  in honor of complete subservience. Subjects fell to their knees, covered their faces and uttered praise.

Fr. Boulier maintained that the loss of the peoples’ participation in the mysteries and the vocabulary of awe, fear and unworthiness that was attached to them was a denial of what the Eucharist was all about. From his view the Eucharist was about the redemption of the working class – its empowerment and liberation, not its enslavement. Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for their bourgeois ways. (Acts 5:1-11). Jesus and the early Christians were communists and it was time to return the Mass to its revolutionary purpose. Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI who wrote the social encyclicals that developed Catholic social teaching took steps to reconnect with the proletariat. Vatican II and collaboration with the communist movement was another step.

Fr. Boulier liked to quote Thomas More’s Utopia where the inhabitants were “natural Christians,” like the Marxists, who rose to the level of the faith but had never heard of Christ. More recently, Pope Francis stated the same idea, “It is the communists who think like Christians.” Fr. Boulier took the long view and quoted François Mauriac, “If the world lasts twenty thousand years, we are still the first Christians.” In the face of all the contrary evidence, the world for Fr. Boulier was the arena where God’s loving will was brought forward.

Fr. Boulier was positive about the Vatican Council and its leader, Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli). When Monsignor Roncalli had been papal nuncio in France, he and the Red Priest had been friends. For the monsignor, as he explained to Fr. Boulier, there was an “official” Church and a “real” Church. The Council was to help the real Church free itself from the official Church.

Fr. Boulier originally had doubts about the new liturgy, but he came to appreciate many of the changes which he discusses in five chapters arranged in the chronological order of the Mass. In his analysis he follows the historical-critical manner that he did in all his scholarship. Among the improvements for him, as noted, was celebrating the Mass in the vernacular and having the priest face the people. It helped both priest and people to understand that they were all participants in and not mere observers of the Eucharist. The New Mass points out that the mystique of the priesthood with its accompanying status and privilege appears nowhere in the New Testament. Presbyters and bishops were not called priests; that development came for bishops in the second century, and later for presbyters.

Another improvement was the elimination of the mandatory Penitential Act (the Confiteor prayer) at the beginning of Mass. The Confiteor reflected the negative politics of awe and fear, and it broke the logical sequence of the Mass. The Mass was meant to be a joyful event! The earliest records of the Roman Rite described the Mass as beginning with the Introit (entrance). The earliest Eucharists were probably home Masses. St. Luke stated, “Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart.” (Acts 2:46).

Another change for the better was the addition of numerous and diverse Sunday readings. In a three-year cycle, the faithful will have heard the four Gospels read almost in their entirety, as well as the most important Epistles. Other topics that Fr. Boulier takes up include the history and rationale for new Prefaces, the changed Offertory, the three new Eucharistic Prayers, the modified words of consecration, the Lord’s Prayer said by the whole congregation (no longer by the priest alone), and the suppression of many genuflections, signs of the cross, and bows.

To sum up, in the thinking of the Red Priest, each Mass is our continuation and participation with Christ in the very same Death, Resurrection and Redemption of humanity in Heaven and on earth that was accomplished on Calvary. Through the eyes of faith, the Devil was defeated on Calvary. The early Church identified the Devil with Roman imperialism. Fr. Boulier identified NATO and anti-communism with the Devil. Participating at the Mass was a world-redeeming mystery.