Pro multis

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Pro multis is a Latin phrase which means for many. It is part of the Rite of Consecration of the wine in the Western Christian tradition, as part of the Mass.

St. Thomas Aquinas, among many other Catholic scholars, had outlined the reasons why the words pro multis in the Mass should not be substituted by the words pro omnibus, for all, as desired by the Universalist heretics. The Church has officially adopted St. Thomas as the pre-eminent Catholic Theologian, and his system of Scholastic theology, Thomism, as the most perfect form of Catholic theology, binding on all Catholics for all times in the future.

Subsequent to Vatican II, in the New Mass of Paul IV, the words pro multis have been rendered pro omnibus with the deliberate intention of signifying the Universalist heresy, and based on the claims of a German Protestant scholar, Joachim Jeremias.

The claims of Joachim Jeremias, that Christ used for many to signify for all because there was no word in the Aramaic language for all were debunked by the Catholic Traditionalist scholar and apologist Patrick Henry Omlor.

Francis Arinze, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, has now, for the Vatican II sect, officially announced a reversion to the form for many ([1]). This is not, however, a complete return to Catholic theology, as Arinze's statement makes clear.