A little known fact about the creation of this study [ a study of the Novus Ordo Missae] was that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre chaired the working committee that drafted it. Historical details about this important event can be found in Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography by Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais.[1]

As briefly related by Fr. Ramon Angles in his transcribed conference, “A Short History of the Society of St. Pius X”:[2]

On April 3, 1969, the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum presented a new order of the Mass. Archbishop Lefebvre gathered together a group of 12 theologians who wrote under his direction, "A Short Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae" often called the "Ottaviani Intervention". Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci wrote indeed an introduction and presented the study to Paul VI. Since no response came from the Vatican, the archbishop announces to his small group of seminarians, June 10, 1971, that he refuses to accept this new protestantized liturgy:

'How can I agree to abandon the Mass of All Time or to admit to place it at the same level as the Novus Ordo, created by Annibal Bugnini, with the participation of Protestants to make of it an equivocal supper that eliminates totally the Offertory, and touches the very words of the Consecration.'"