The Saints, the Mass, and the Question We Can No Longer Ignore
There is a question that keeps surfacing in Catholic circles today. It comes up in debates, online arguments, YouTube sermons, and whispered conversations after Mass:
“If the new Mass is invalid, how can the Church still produce saints?”
It is a fair question.
And it is one we can no longer avoid.
Because when we look honestly at the last sixty years of the Church — not through social media commentary, but through the lives of the saints — a contradiction appears between accusation and reality.
And reality always wins.
The Church Does Not Produce Saints by Accident
The Church is not a factory of sentiment.
She is a supernatural organism.
A saint is not someone who simply “felt close to God.”
A saint is someone who:
lived heroic virtue
persevered in obedience
loved the Church
received the sacraments faithfully
died in communion with Rome
Canonization is not a popularity contest.
It is a juridical process.
Miracles are investigated.
Virtue is examined.
Orthodoxy is scrutinized.
Life and writings are weighed.
The Church only canonizes those she is morally certain lived and died in sanctifying grace.
So when the Church canonizes a saint, she is saying something very precise:
“This soul was formed by the sacramental life of the Church.”
Which brings us to the uncomfortable question.
The Saints of the Post-Conciliar Church
Let us look plainly at the facts.
Since Vatican II, the Church has canonized and beatified:
St. John Paul II — formed entirely in the post-conciliar Church
St. Teresa of Calcutta — nourished daily by the Novus Ordo
St. Padre Pio (final years under the reformed liturgy)
St. Maximilian Kolbe (canonized post-conciliar)
St. Faustina Kowalska — whose Divine Mercy devotion spread through the new liturgy
St. José Sánchez del Río
Blessed Carlo Acutis — a daily communicant of the Novus Ordo
St. Charles de Foucauld
St. Pauline Jaricot
Blessed Chiara Badano
All formed by the same Church.
All fed by the same Eucharist.
All obedient to the same Magisterium.
If the Mass were invalid, then these saints were nourished by a lie.
And if they were nourished by a lie, then the Church has canonized false witnesses.
Which would mean Christ failed His promise:
“The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
— Matthew 16:18
That is not a small theological error.
That is ecclesiological collapse.
What the Church Actually Teaches About the Mass
The Catechism is clear:
“The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’”
— CCC 1324
“In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body.”
— CCC 1368
“The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life.”
— CCC 1325
This teaching has not changed.
The form of the liturgy has developed — as it always has — but the substance remains untouched:
Same sacrifice
Same priesthood
Same altar
Same Real Presence
Same offering to the Father
The early Church worshiped in Greek.
Latin itself was once an innovation.
The Tridentine Missal was a disciplinary standardization after the Reformation.
The Novus Ordo is a disciplinary reform after modern secular collapse.
Different forms. Same faith.
St. Vincent of Lerins taught:
“Christian doctrine must progress… but remain the same.”
Growth is not betrayal.
Development is not corruption.
The Real Wound Behind the Anger
The anger among some traditionalists is not born from love of tradition.
It is born from grief.
The collapse of catechesis.
The chaos after the Council.
The loss of reverence.
The moral confusion.
The failure of leadership.
These wounds are real.
But blaming Vatican II for every post-1965 failure is like blaming the doctor for the disease.
The Council did not cause the sexual revolution.
The Council did not invent liturgical abuse.
The Council did not weaken moral teaching.
The Council did not empty seminaries.
Disobedience did.
Confusion did.
Cowardice did.
And when people lose trust in shepherds, they cling to symbols.
Latin becomes safety.
Rubrics become certainty.
The past becomes refuge.
This instinct is human.
But when it turns into rebellion against the Church herself, it stops being Catholic.
The Question That Must Now Be Asked
If the Eucharist has continued to form saints,
If the Church continues to raise heroic witnesses,
If conversions continue,
If vocations continue,
If martyrs continue,
Then what exactly are we fighting?
The Church Christ founded still stands.
The sacraments still sanctify.
The saints still rise.
So at some point the question must be asked:
If God is still working — why are we still angry?
And perhaps even more honestly:
If the Church is still bearing fruit, why do we keep insisting the tree is dead?
Workshop Takeaway
Tradition is not a museum.
It is a living inheritance.
We do not preserve it by freezing it.
We preserve it by obeying the Church that carries it.
A Catholic does not choose between:
reverence and obedience
beauty and authority
tradition and the Magisterium
He receives them together.
Where the bishop is, there is the Church.
Where the Church is, there is Christ.
Where Christ is, there is the Eucharist.
Where the Eucharist is, there are saints.
And the saints are still being made.
Formation is not nostalgia.
Formation is fidelity.
And fidelity means trusting that Christ did not abandon His Church in 1969.
He never has.
He never will.