Here is how the text at the beginning of the Roman Canon should be read according to Cardinal Schuster:

Te igitur, clementissime Pater, per Iesum Christum Filium tuum Dominum nostrum, supplices rogamus ac petimus uti accepta habeas, et benedicas, haec dona, haec munera, haec sancta sacrificia illibata, in primis, quae tibi offerimus pro Ecclesia tua sancta catholica: quam pacificare, custodire, adunare, et regere digneris toto orbe terrarum: una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro N. et Antistite nostro N., et omnibus orthodoxis, atque catholicae, et apostolicae fidei cultoribus… …communicantes, et memoriam venerantes in primis gloriosae semper Virginis Mariae, Genitricis Dei et Domini nostri Iesu Christi: sed et beatorum Apostolorum ac Martyrum tuorum, Petri et Pauli, Andreae, Iacobi, Ioannis, Thomae, Iacobi, Philippi, Bartholomei, Matthaei, Simonis et Thaddaei, Lini, Cleti, Clementis, Xysti, Cornelii, Cypriani, Laurentii, Chrysogoni, Ioannis et Pauli, Cosmae et Damiani: et omnium Sanctorum tuorum; quorum meritis, precibusque concedas, ut in omnibus protectionis tuae muniamur auxilio. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. 

Here is the part which was read by the deacon while the priest was saying the Te Igitur and which is now inserted between the Te Igitur and the Communicantes: 

(Memento, Domine, famulorum, famularumque tuarum N. et N. et omnium circumstantium, quorum tibi fides cognita est, et nota devotio, pro quibus tibi offerimus: vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis, pro se, suisque omnibus: pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis, et incolumitatis suae: tibique reddunt vota sua aeterno Deo, vivo et vero.)

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In English:

Thou, most merciful Father, through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, we humbly pray to thee and ask thee to accept and bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy sacrifices without blemish. First of all, we offer them to thee for thy holy Catholic Church, which we ask thee to pacify, to keep, to unite and to lead throughout the world. Communicating with your servant, our Pope N. and our Bishop N., and with all those who have the true doctrine and who profess the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, we first of all make the memory of the glorious Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as thy blessed apostles and martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Thaddeus, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Laurent, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, and all thy saints; by whose merits and prayers thou grantest that we may be defended in all things by the aid of thy protection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here is the part which was read by the deacon while the priest was saying the Te Igitur and which is now inserted between the Te Igitur and the Communicantes:

(Remember, Lord, thy servants N. and N. and all those around us, whose faith and devotion thou knowest for which we make this offering to thee, for the hope of their salvation and security: they shall be thee their vows, O eternal, living and true God.)

Far be it from us to condemn the faithful priests for their different positions on the subject. In the present situation of confusion and the lack of authority to decide matters, one must be slow to condemn, slow to break fellowship with one another, and more willing to excuse than to accuse.

But, unless we live in a time when they are no longer possible without passions taking over, we believe that disputationes theologicae (theological debates) are a sign that there is still some life left in a clergy aged by sixty years of Conciliar revolution.

If we think about it sincerely, the priests refusing to join Apostate Rome all have the same desire: to refuse communion with Rome, which has become "the seat of the antichrist" while remaining in communion with eternal Rome. Is this best done by naming or omitting the names of those who are currently seated on the throne of Peter? This is where the mystery of iniquity comes in with all its complexity ...

The Text of Cardinal Schuster

“[The Canon] therefore began, as now, with the Te igitur. - Igitur is here probably an ingenious transitional word, a bit like the vere Sanctus of the Gallicans, used there as if to maintain in some way the traditional continuity of the prex, - and all of its first part ut accepta habeas et benedicas corresponds well to the first distinction noted in the canon by Saint Augustine: Orationes cum benedicitur. Furthermore, the text of Vigil to Justinian ut catholicam fidem adunare, regere Dominus et custodire dignetur toto orbe terrarum reported above, being taken undoubtedly from this first part of the Roman anaphora, confirms the authenticity of its origin. Moreover, there is even a fragment of an ancient preface, quoted by an anonymous Arian, published by Mai and illustrated by Mercati [i], which seems to relate - without interpolation of any trisagion between the preface and the canon - to the first sentences of our Te igitur prayer: “… sacrificium istud quod tibi offerimus… per Iesum Christum Dominum and Deum nostrum, per quem petimus et rogamus etc."

Then comes the mention of the Pope una cum famulo tuo papa… That in his Western patriarchate, the Pope was generally appointed to mass, that is beyond doubt. But the question revolves around the original place assigned to this commemoration in the Roman canon. Note a text from Pelagius I to the schismatic bishops of Tuscany: “How can you believe you are not cut off from the world-wide communion by your omission of my name in the sacred mysteries, though good custom would have you commemorate it?” [ii]

In the acts of the Roman Council celebrated under Symmasc (498-514), there is also mention of the commemoration of the Pope at Mass. In the speech given by Ennodius, he questions the Fathers as follows:

“As then to the question of the venerable bishops Laurence (of Milan) and Peter (of Ravenna) being cut off from the communion of the Pope, you thus reply … for how long, then, in celebrating holy Mass, have they ceased to commemorate his name? Have ever these bishops, upon your wishes, and against Catholic rite and ceremony, offered a half-sacrifice?” [iii] 

Saint Leo I similarly alludes to the rite of remembering, at Mass, the most distinguished bishops with whom they were in communion: “But it is very unjust and inappropriate for them to mingle without discretion the names of Dioscorus, Juvenalis and Eustathius with the names of the saints at the sacred altar.” [iv] This has a counterpart in the letter of the Egyptian bishops to Anatole of Constantinople: “Even in the venerable diptycho, in which are contained the names of those bishops of pious memory who have gone on to heaven, read at the time of the sacred mysteries, according to the holy rules, he (i.e. Timothy of Alexandria) inserts his own name and that of Dioscorus.” [v] We must not omit another text from Saint Gregory the Great on the same custom: “And what is more … you name our brother and fellow bishop John of the church of Ravenna at Solemn Mass, as ancient custom requires of you… Careful inquiry was sought as to whether the same John … be named by you at the altar, if this at least be done. And should you make no memory of My name, by some necessity for you unbeknownst to me, this you ought indeed to do.” [vi]

An examination of these testimonies shows us above all the special significance of the commemoration of the Pope in the Canon of the Mass - which, outside Rome, all things considered, also applies to the names of the other bishops, with whom each prelate had a special relationship. - This pontifical commemoration was quite distinct from the diptychs of the offerors, recited by the deacon, since it was uttered by the celebrant himself, before he recommended to the Lord the oblations of the people. For Pelagius I, to omit it was to declare oneself outside the Church; and for Ennodius of Pavia, it was offering an incomplete sacrifice, a half-sacrifice. All this therefore leads us to conclude that the place currently attributed to the mention of the Pope in the canon is truly original and primitive, since it corresponds exactly to everything that the ancient authors attest. The text would therefore unfold as follows: quam tibi offerimus pro Ecclesia tua etc. toto orbe terrarum, una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro N. without however the words et omnibus orthodoxis etc. which represent a later addition, specific to only one class of manuscripts.

Next comes the Memento, and it brings us straight to the much-debated question of diptychs. These, as we have already seen when analysing the testimony of Pope Innocent I, were preceded by a commendatio from the priest and were part of the Canon: “Therefore the oblations should first be offered, and then mention made of those names to be read, that ought to be named within the sacred mysteries … and this that I may thus commence with them these mysteries.” [vii]

Innocent wants two things here: that the priest's commendatio come first, and that the reading of the diptychs be done after the Consecration, inter sacra mysteria, that is, in the body of the Canon.

It has been assumed that the memento represents the form of diptychs read by the deacon while the priest continued the canon with the communicantes. The hypothesis is plausible since in Alexandria the reading of names also preceded the Consecration, although in all the rest of the East, as in Rome in the time of Innocent I, the prayers of intercession are regularly found after the anamnesis. In the current Roman canon, we have a kind of compromise between the Alexandrian usage and that of the Patriarchate of Antioch, since the diptychs of the living that the deacon reads precede the Consecration while those of the deceased come at the end of the anaphora. However, the two intercessory prayers betray a common oriental origin and retain the traces of the duplication that they were subjected to when, in Rome, they wanted to recite them twice, to complete the double list of commemorations of the living and of the deceased.

But how do we arrive at this duplication? We can only hazard guesses. At the mention of the Catholic Church and of the Pope, in primis quae tibi offerimus, other names and other secondary recommendations should logically follow. We know from the previously cited texts of Saint Leo I, from the letters of the Egyptians to Anatole, and from Saint Gregory the Great, that one of the diptychs contained: “The names of the departed bishops of pious memory, having passed on to heaven, read according to the holy rules.” [viii] Now, it is in the communicantes that we must look for the vestiges of this list of the Roman Canon, especially since in this prayer only appear the names of the first successors of Saint Peter, Linus and Cletus, who, in antiquity, in Rome, enjoyed no other special cult.

The list was also to be arranged with a certain harmony, and for this, in order to give precedence to Peter and Paul, we excluded John the Baptist, who was referred to a second list, that of the Nobis quoque. The same fate befell Mathias, who otherwise would have altered the symbolic duodenal number of the Apostles. Barnabas and Stephen, who should have taken precedence over the first Pontiffs of Rome, also had to resign themselves to being relegated to the Nobis quoque, so that the primitive Roman redaction of the episcopal diptychs must probably have been arranged thus: first the Blessed Virgin; then Peter and Paul with the ten other Apostles; then Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, to which are added other martyrs who ended up altering the primitive character of these entirely episcopal diptychs.

While the priest commemorates the deceased Apostles and Popes, the deacon begins to read his list of lay offerors, and so both end at the same time, when the Hanc igitur prayer is to begin.

In the current Roman missal, because of the insertion of the diaconal diptychs Memento, Domine, the Communicantes remains isolated and somewhat suspended. It is true that this is the law of retaliation, since the Communicantes in the Roman Canon represents an interpolation of Eastern origin; but in any case, between the prayer Te igitur and the Communicantes there is a connection, and the participle communicantes is based on the verb tibi offerimus which precedes it, while after the insertion of the "Memento" the prayer which framed, so to speak, the episcopal diptychs, remain as if in the air and without support. But there is more. The Communicantes, in turn, also undergoes interpolations, thanks to which, according to the tradition of the manuscripts, it early acquired the character of a moving piece, under the proper title of infra actionem; and this because of the famous capitula diebus apta of which Pope Vigilius speaks, which varied at each feast of the year.

After so many centuries, the Communicantes nobly fulfills, even today, the function of which this Pontiff spoke to Bishop Profuturus and on days of great solemnity he announces in a few words the precise object of the feast that is celebrated. Sometimes the formula of this announcement preserves the characteristics of high antiquity, which induce us to seek its origins very long before Vigil; thus it is for the day of the Theophany, where, without seeming to take into account the Roman tradition which assigns to the natal day of the Lord the 25th of December, it is said, in accordance with the primitive concept of the feast in the East: “…celebrating the most holy day, on which thine only-begotten Son coeternal in glory with thee, truly and visibly appeared in a body of flesh as ours”. [ix] The Gelasian Sacramentary saw the anachronism resulting from this primitive formula, and wanted to correct it by simply adapting it to the particular circumstance of the appearance of Jesus to the Magi, but this retouching only weakened the force of the original antithesis, between the pre-existence of the Word in the glory of the Father from all eternity, and his temporal theophany, in the reality of humanity which he took. In the Gelasian Sacramentary, the mention of the Magi represents a special meticulousness of the corrector, and makes one prefer a thousand times the vigorous primitive antithesis, preserved by the Gregorian Sacramentary.

The present missal maintains sufficiently intact the Christological series of these singula capitula diebus apta (i.e. “special clauses suitable to the day”); however, there are missing those relating to the feasts of the martyrs, of which, still according to the text of Vigil, commemorationem… eorum facimus, quorum natalitia celebramus (i.e. “Let us commemorate those whose nativity (to eternal life) we celebrate”). However, the ancient authors have preserved important vestiges of it, as, for example, in this decree of Gregory III at the Roman Council of 732, where he orders the addition to the canon of the special mention: “In communion … also all the saints, also we celebrate the nativity of thy wholly just Saints, Martyrs and Confessors, whose solemnity we celebrate today in thy sight.” [x]

The order of these Capitula diebus apta was as follows: the solemnities of the Lord preceded the mention of the Blessed Virgin, as in the present missal; that of the martyrs was then inserted into the text, or at the end, precisely as in the Communicantes of Gregory III quoted earlier. Pope Vigilius alludes to these different places occupied by the hagiographic insertions, when he tells Profuturus to send him the canon with the additions of the solemnity of Easter, to show him quibus in locis aliqua festivitatibus apta connectes (i.e. “in which order of connection these feasts ought to succeed”).

Sometimes, however, this connection is rather studied and artificial, and thereby the character of interpolation is immediately revealed. The Communicantes sometimes remains strangely suspended from it, and adapts very badly both to the capitula diebus apta and to the theory of the saints which comes next.

The idea of ​​standing in communion with the Pope and with the bishop was very familiar to the elders. This is the usual and legal meaning of the word communicantes; to be in communion with the blessed in heaven, in whose company all, Catholics and heretics, would have liked to find themselves, still passes; but a phrase such as “…in communion with and celebrating the most holy day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost appeared to the Apostles as so many tongues, and venerating firstly the memory of the glorious ever-Virgin…” [xi] is very unnatural, strange, and consequently shows an arrangement of the text. We must therefore conclude that the mention of the solemnities, the capitula diebus apta of Pope Vigilius, which slip between the communicantes and the memoriam venerantes, sometimes confusing the meaning, are either not primitive, or require that we perhaps detach the communicants of the list of saints, to testify to it in the name of the Pope with whom one was in communion; all the more so since the canon adds: sed et memoriam venerantes, precisely to make the two conceptions better noticed, perfectly distinct from each other: tibi offerimus pro Ecclesia tua… una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro communicantes, sed et memoriam venerantes imprimis gloriosae, etc. We should not be surprised that the name of the Pope here precedes that of the Mother of God. The mention of the Pope in the canon is intended to guarantee the orthodoxy of the offeror, and to integrate ex parte subiecti (subjectively), as the scholastics would say, his priestly action, — let us remember the semiplenas hostias of Ennodius, because unaccompanied by the name of the Pope—while ex parte obiecti (objectively), the first after God, in whose honour the divine Sacrifice is offered, is She who is blessed among all creatures. By making the communicantes agree with the Pope and with the name of the diocesan bishop, which it was customary to pronounce, one would also have the advantage of giving this participle, probably translated from a Greek text in which it had the role of subject, the support of a definite modal verb: tibi offerimus… communicantes, sed et memoriam venerantes; now that it no longer has this support, it is, for this reason, as if suspended in the air.

[i] G . MERCATI, Antiche Reliquie liturgiche, Roma 1902.

[ii] PELAGII I Epist., V , ; P. L.t LXIX , col. 398. “Quomodo vos ab universi orbis communione separatos esse non creditis si mei inter sacra mysteria, secundum consuetudinem nominis memoriam reticetis?” 

[iii] LABBE, Sacr. Conc. Nova Collectio, Venetiis 1767, t. VIII, col. 282. “Deinde pro quaestionum tormentis venerabilem Laurentium et Petrum episcopos a communione Papae se suspendisse replicatis… ullone ergo tempore, dum celebrarentur ab his sacra Missarum, a nominis eius commemoratione cessatum est? Unquam pro desideriis vestris, sine ritu catholico et cano more, semiplenas nominatim antistites hostias obtulerunt?”

[iv] LEONIS I Epist., LXXX; P. L.t LIV, col. 914-915- It is interesting to note that as Dioscore, Juvenus et Eustathus were not orthodox, St Leo I says:  “De nominibus autem Dioscori, Iuvenalis et Eustathii ad sacrum altare recitandis… iniquum nimis est atque incongruum eos… sanctorum nominibus sine discretione misceri.”

[v] Cf. P. L., LIV, col. 1397- “Etiam in venerabili diptycho, in quo piae memoriae transitum ad caelos abeuntium episcoporum vocabula continentur, quae tempore sanctorum Mysteriorum, secundum sanctus régulas releguntur, suum posuit et Dioscori nomen.”

[vi] GREGORII I Epist. 1. IV, ep. XXXIX ad Constantium Episc; P. L.t LXXVII, col. 714. “Quod autem… fratrem et coepiscopum nostrum Iohannem Ravennatis Ecclesiae inter missarum solemnia nominetis, requirenda vobis consuetudo antiqua est… Sollicite perquirere studui si idem Iohannes… vos ad altare nominet, quod minime dicunt fieri. Et si Me vestri nominis memoriam non facit, quae necessitas cogat ignoro, ut vos illius faciatis.”  

[vii] “…prius ergo oblationes sunt commendandae, ac tunc eorum nomina quorum sunt edicenda, ut inter sacra mysteria nominentur…, ut ipsis mysteriis viam futuris precibus aperiam.” 

[viii] “…piae memoriae transitum ad coelos abeuntium episcoporum vocabula continentur, quae tempore Sanctorum Mysteriorum, secundum sanctas regulas, releguntur.”

[ix] “…diem sacratissimum celebrantes, quo Unigenitus tuus in tua tecum gloria coaeternus, in veritate carnis nostrae visibiliter corporalis apparuit…”

[x] “Communicantes… et Omnium Sanctorum, sed et natalicium celebrantes Sanctorum tuorum Martyrum ac Confessorum perfectorum iustorum, quorum solemnitas hodie in conspectu tuo celebrator…”

[xi] “Communicantes et diem sacratissimum Pentecostes celebrantes, quo Spiritus Sanctus Apostolis innumeris linguis apparuit, sed memoriam venerantes imprimis gloriosae semper Virginis…”