The Ottaviani Intervention at Fifty

On the 25th of September 1969 Cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Antonio Bacci published what is known today as the Ottaviani Intervention in order to persuade Pope Paul VI not to promulgate the Novus Ordo Missae, or new order of mass. The infamously 'fabricated' liturgy was assembled as a technical production by a committee of liturgists in order to provide a form of worship for Catholic faithful to experience "full and active participation" as recommended by the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium. 

These two princes of the Church acted in good conscience and out of loyalty to the Pope and to the Catholic Church. The summary of their scholarship prepared by a team of pastors and theologians under the direction of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was ominous:

"...the Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent. The canons of the rite definitively fixed at that time provided an insurmountable barrier to any heresy directed against the integrity of the Mystery."

 Pope Paul referred the study to his Confraternity for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by Cardinal Ottaviani as the Holy Office, which concluded that "the document contained many affirmations that were "superficial, exaggerated, inexact, emotional and false."

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani

The intervention thus dismissed quickly disappeared from the limited public view it enjoyed (it was published by Jean Madiran's magazine Itineraires with permission of the authors). The French publication La Documentation catholique ran an article in February of 1970 (vol. 67, pp. 215–216 and 343) featuring an interview with Cardinal Ottaviani in which he seemed to do an abrupt about face regarding the new Mass. The Cardinal, now in his eighties and blind allegedly signed a statement affirming enthusiastic approval of it, which Madiran publicly disputed as fraudulent. In any event, neither Cardinal Bacci, Archbishop Lefebvre, nor any of the other signatories ever distanced themselves from the study.

On the occasion of a reprint on it's 25th anniversary, Cardinal Alphons Stickler declared

"The analysis of the Novus Ordo made by these two Cardinals has lost nothing of its value, nor, unfortunately, of its timeliness . ... The results of the reform are deemed by many today to have been devastating. It was the merit of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to discover very quickly that the modification of the rites resulted in a fundamental change of doctrine.” (November 27, 2004)

Which brings us to today. What of the Ottaviani Intervention's warnings has not come to pass?
Chapter VIII concludes

Today, division and schism are officially acknowledged to exist not only outside of but within the Church. Her unity is not only threatened but already tragically compromised. Errors against the Faith are not so much insinuated but rather an inevitable consequence of liturgical abuses and aberrations which have been given equal recognition.

To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries was both the sign and pledge of unity of worship (and to replace it with another which cannot but be a sign of division by virtue of the countless liberties implicitly authorised, and which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic religion) is, we feel in conscience bound to proclaim, an incalculable error.

In June 1971 via the new missal's Notification Instructione de Constitutione Pope Paul VI suppressed the Missal of St. Pius V which John XXIII had renewed on the eve of Vatican II. The instruction forbade the public offering of the Traditional Latin Mass except in the case of elderly or infirm priests unable to learn the new rite and only then in solitude - without so much as an altar boy assisting. Pope John Paul II sustained this policy until an indult was permitted in 1984 which required the approval of the local bishop. Very few granted it.

Cardinal Antonio Bacci

The sad state of affairs in the Catholic Church today is an undeniable fact. Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) very candidly attributed the source of the crisis to the collapse of the sacred liturgy:

"I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy, which at times is actually being conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: as though in the liturgy it did not matter any more whether God exists and whether He speaks to us and listens to us.

But if in the liturgy the communion of faith no longer appears, nor the universal unity of the Church and of her history, nor the mystery of the living Christ, where is it that the Church still appears in her spiritual substance?"

I was dismayed by the banning of the old Missal," he [Cardinal Ratzinger] wrote, "seeing that a similar thing had never happened in the entire history of the liturgy...."

The occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Ottaviani Intervention should give us pause for sober reflection. We are yet in the thrall of 'experts' who tell us what is best for us dismissing 1900 years of Catholic Tradition to "discern the signs of the times." They tell us that all things are in perpetual evolution (condemned by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis in 1950) and that we must evolve with them. Yet this path has been tried and proven to be demonstrably deleterious to Catholic faith.

The Traditional form of the Roman Rite has enjoyed a breathtaking resurgence of vitality and popularity in the past few decades largely due to the persistent efforts of Lefebvre's Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX). While relentlessly condemned and vehemently opposed with all the weight of canonical approbation, the priests of the society patiently rebuilt the edifice of Catholic Tradition. Today, while still a tiny minority, the Traditional Mass is being juxtaposed with the new Mass of Paul VI by both theologians and children. The contrasts are stark, leaving some to wonder if the Novus Ordo is in fact the vehicle of a different religion.

Whatever one decides for their own life of piety and devotion, it is abundantly clear that the authors of the Ottaviani Intervention foresaw our time with startling alacrity. Fifty years hence with all the proofs one could desire as evidence, it is difficult to sustain the utility of the Pauline reforms.  The "canons of the rite definitively fixed at that time [which] provided an insurmountable barrier to any heresy directed against the integrity of the Mystery" have been removed for half a century. The result is what Dietrich Von Hildebrand dubbed The Devastated Vineyard.