Way to Pachamama paved by John Paul II

Long before the Amazon Synod and the Pachamama, this canonized Pope made the synod possible:

"If you see me traveling the length and breadth of the whole world in my efforts to meet with people of all civilizations and religions, it is because I have faith in the seeds of wisdom which the Spirit has planted in the conscience of all these various peoples, tribes and clans; from these hidden grains will come the true resource for the future of mankind in this world of ours." 

(John Paul II's speech to youth in Ravenna, May 11, 1986, quoted in Tutte le encicliche dei Sommi Pontefici, ed. dall'Oglio, p.1821). 

Cardinal Muller's Manifesto of Faith

While I sincerely applaud both Cardinal Muller and Arcadia Films for this short but potent video, I can only recommend it to those who are outside the Church and are perhaps in doubt about the basics (what the video calls the fundamentals) of Catholic faith.

I know this will sound super negative and hyper critical, but you simply cannot utilize the sources of the conciliar religion to successfully defend the faith of all ages. No amount of appeals to the CCC, Vatican II, or "Saint John Paul II" can provide the required separation from this generation's submersion into the cesspool of errors ushered in by the Copernican Revolution and sealed at Vatican II.

This video is head and shoulders above Bishop Robert Barron's glossy, airbrushed travel brochure "Catholicism" but unfortunately draws from the same reference points and will not persuade many other than the already persuaded. It is bound to please conservative Catholics but does not rise to level of divine, apostolic, nor ecclesiastical tradition.

Cardinal Muller's manifesto reads much like Paul VI's Credo of the People of God: it seems to be saying all the right things but without the supernatural power that ought to accompany such proclamation.

In summary: using Vatican II to defend the Catholic faith on a polemical level is a fool's errand. It's elastic, amorphous 'pastoral language' is easy to manipulate and even use against divine and Catholic faith. We will follow Cardinals Muller, Burke, Sarah, and their conservative confreres as far as they will take us. Unfortunately that will be short of the distance required to conquer what we are now facing.

Full video here.

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.

A mini-history of orthodox worship

The first sacrifice was by the LORD God in the garden of Eden to clothe Adam and Eve. They received the ritual of sacrifice directly from Him. Abel continues the Tradition, as did Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The Pasch is divinely revealed to Moses in Egypt and the blood of the Lamb spares the firstborn in Israel from the angel of death - yet only if they carefully and devoutly follow the instructions God gives through Moses.

Then God reveals to Moses the entire divine liturgy on Mt. Sinai leaving nothing to man's imagination. Every last detail - the dimensions of the tabernacle, its building material, its colors and thread, the way it is to be deployed, carried, sanctified; the altars, tables, furnishings, washings, rituals, ceremonies, priestly garments, step-by-step instructions were all revealed to Moses and received from God directly through the mediation of angels. Yet even so, the penchant for novelty and innovation was so strong in Israel that deviations from the Law of worship inevitably led them to syncretism and finally apostasy. The Old Testament Prophets were sent to call the people of Israel back to the conditions of the covenant God made with them. Through His Prophets He promised a New Covenant different from the old (Jeremias 31,31-35).

A sacrifice taking place in the tabernacle in the wilderness; 

the encampments of the Jewish tribes spread out to the horizon. 

(Colored lithograph)

Christ instituted the Mass of the New and Eternal Covenant at Passover and offered Himself on the Cross during the Passover. The veil in the temple was torn in two when He defeated sin and death by His priestly sacrifice. Thus, St. Paul teaches in his letter to the Hebrews, a "new and living way was made for us through His death" (Hebrews 10,20).

St. Paul goes on to teach explicitly that the temple ritual is a prefigurement and copy of the heavenly sanctuary. This is pure Catholic theology; it identifies the Mass on earth as but a reflection of the perfect worship the Son offers the Father in heaven (Pius XII, Mediator Dei). The sacrifice offered at the heavenly altar by our great High Priest can never be reformed, altered, or changed.

The Latin (Roman Rite) Mass was already standardized during the time of St. Gregory the Great (+604) to the point that the innovation of a single word in the Canon - one word! - inflamed Rome in riots. And it is St. Gregory's Missal that Pope Paul VI admits is essentially unchanged until his own fabricated, man-made liturgy appears in 1969.

We can never say that the Novus Ordo is a received rite. If you try, you will disagree even with Paul VI who admits it is not. It is approved, but not received, at least not through organic development.

The history of the worship of God is one of that which is revealed by God, received by chosen men, distilled through centuries of ecclesiastical Tradition, and devoutly preserved by His faithful servants. The Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum promulgated by Pope St. Pius V is a part of this Sacred Tradition. Strictly speaking, the Novus Ordo Missae is not.

The Myth of the Chaste Homosexual

An untold number of Catholic priests contend that they are homosexual but chaste. Taking St. Thomas Aquinas as our guide, we will see the futility of such a claim and the peril of succumbing to such a premise.

This claim is primarily an assault on the virtue of chastity. According to the Angelic Doctor

1. The word chastity derives from the chastening or rebuking of concupiscence. By such chastening, chastising or curbing, passion is held in control, and is kept in alignment with right reason. Chastity, therefore, is a virtue inasmuch as it steadily tends to keep human conduct under the control of reason.

2. And chastity is a special virtue for it concerns a special aspect of good, that is, the controlling, the keeping reasonable, of the tendencies of sex. (Summa Theologica 2.B.151)

 St. Paul writing to the Romans condemns sodomy as changing the natural use of sex into that which is against nature (cf. Romans 1,26-27). Therefore, the offense of sodomy is against reason. The person who self-identifies as homosexual has decisively rejected the natural law, and his own ability to reason. Chastity keeps the tendencies of sex in alignment with right reason. It is de fide that there are only two sexes:

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

There is no third category.

Following St. Paul's analysis of the Fall and its consequences explained in Romans 1,24-32 it is evident that prior to the decision to self-identify as homosexual, there is a deliberate decision to reject the God of nature and exchange the truth for lies (1,25). This occurs in the will informed by an intellect darkened by the rejection of right reason (1,21). The heresy professed by very many today that they are 'born gay' is soundly refuted by Apostolic teaching:

Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no man. [14] But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured. [15] Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death.[16] Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren. (St. James 1,13-16)

So we see clearly that the decision to self-identify as homosexual is not a simple acceptance of nature nor an agreement with the design of the Creator; it is a willful choice to reject the natural law and the faculties of reason.

Father Krysztof Olaf Charamsa (L), with his partner
Edouard. Photo: AFP

It is also important to acknowledge the term homosexual is itself a neologism of late advent (19th century) without roots in Catholic Tradition.  Catholic Tradition does not admit to any anthropological categories besides male and female. When treating this perversion, it is simply referred to as the sin against nature or the unnatural vice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II employs the novel and troublesome terminology of homosexual persons and teaches that they are called to chastity (2359).  In it's discussion on chastity, the CCC teaches

Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift. (2337)

How then can a "homosexual person" live chastely without integration of his sexuality according the natural order established by the Creator? The answer is that he cannot.

Abstinence from unnatural sexual acts is not chastity.

 3. Chastity is not the same as the virtue of abstinence. For chastity is concerned with the control of sex pleasures, whereas abstinence is directly concerned with the control of the pleasures of the palate. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.B.151)

The disordered sexual desire of sodomy can never be an object of chastity. And the mere abstinence from sodomitical acts is not chastity. For a person to practice chastity he must agree with the Creator's order established in nature, witnessed to by the natural law, and follow the truth in his intellect. Man must submit his intellect to the faculty of reason as clearly taught by the witness of nature (Romans 1,20). To self-identify as "homosexual" is a clear and unambiguous rejection of reason.

By now it should be evident that sodomy is primarily a disease of the mind and the intellect.

"No sin has greater power over the soul than the one of cursed sodomy, which was always detested by all those who lived according to God… Such passion for undue forms borders on madness. This vice disturbs the intellect, breaks an elevated and generous state of soul, drags great thoughts to petty ones, makes [men] pusillanimous and irascible, obstinate and hardened, servilely soft and incapable of anything.  Furthermore, the will, being agitated by the insatiable drive for pleasure, no longer follows reason, but furor…. Someone who lived practicing the vice of sodomy will suffer more pains in Hell than any one else, because this is the worst sin that there is.” (St. Bernardine of Siena, Predica XXXIX, in Le prediche) 

What then is the real reason for maintaining the pretense of 'gay but chaste'? It is presented as a justification for men with no supernatural faith to continue in their careers as professional clerics. They argue that they are chaste and therefore present no imminent threat to the faithful; however, the primary menace to the Church comes not from their acts of sodomy alone but from minds that have rejected reason and the natural law.

Chastity is required for sanctifying grace to remain in the soul. Chastity requires sexual integrity under the control of right reason. Anyone who has adopted the lie of homosexualist ideology has manifestly rejected right reason and therefore cannot be chaste.

How many faithful Catholics have succumbed to this lie! And their ignorance is not a justification for sustaining this blight on chastity; Saint Paul writes

Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1,32)

The danger is not only in the acts of sodomy, nor is it restricted to agreement with them. The danger to the soul is in consenting to sodomy as being a real sexual 'orientation' that as long as not acted on is safe. There is no chastity for the person who self-identifies as homosexual, even if he or she never practices sodomy.

Is there any hope then for the person who self-identifies as homosexual? The answer is yes as long as the conscience has not been fatally wounded. If the soul is willing to hear the truth and submit to right reason, then the mind can be renewed and the soul saved. Sadly, we know that such conversions are rare and the road of repentance arduous and exceedingly difficult. This is primarily because the intellect has been reordered to follow an entire architecture of falsehood that rejects nature, and in so doing, rejects the God of nature who planted reason in the conscience of men.

The ugly reality is that the myth of the chaste homosexual is a clever subterfuge employed by wicked clergymen who submitted themselves for holy orders fraudulently. They assert this claim to maintain their status as pastors and priests. But they have no supernatural faith and have rejected nature, reason, and conscience in order to maintain their identity as homosexuals, which in the final analysis is their true priority, even above obedience to God.

Approved but not received

“... recalling it (the liturgy) to greater simplicity of rites, by expressing it in the vernacular language or by uttering it in a loud voice’ as if the present order of the liturgy received and approved by the Church, had emanated in some part from the forgetfulness of the principles by which it should be regulated ... (is) rash, offensive to pious ears, insulting to the Church, favourable to the charges of heretics”

...Auctorem Fidei, Pope Pius VI, 28 August 1794 (D.S. 2633)

Below is an exchange I had with a Novus Ordo priest in social media five years ago.

Father Xxxx: Johnny, here's something I was thinking about today, when you speak of the Novus Ordo as "it is approved but not received*." The argument you seem to be making is that the Latin Mass was received from Jesus or the apostles but not the Novus Ordo. This presumes the Latin Mass exactly as we have it today was celebrated by Jesus, exactly in the same way we have it now. But if this Latin Mass was not celebrated by Jesus exactly as it is structured today, then even this form of the Mass was not exactly "received" from the Jesus and the apostles. A few things or rituals, or symbols, or prayers have been added down the ages. What do you think?

Me:
1. Approved and received: meaning it is licit (authorized) and passed down in a stable form (received) from antiquity. The Missal of St. Pius V is both, and it is also canonized by the Council of Trent and the Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum (1570). It was NOT a new form of liturgy when St. Pius V canonized it; it was at least as old as Pope St. Gregory the Great (+ 604) and even Pope Paul VI admits this in his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (1970) that promulgates the Novus Ordo (new order) Missal.
2. No one has made the claim that the Novus Ordo is received from tradition. It was in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, "...fabricated liturgy, a banal, technical on-the-spot production... not organically developed from previous forms..." THIS is the difference between the two liturgies. One is handed down in a stable form from antiquity; the other was invented by liturgical scientists in Fr. Bugnini's Consilium.
3. St. Paul says in 1: Cor. 11,23 that

"For I have RECEIVED of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread..."

This tells us in the very early days of the Church the form of the liturgy was already contained in a form received from Christ. It sets the precedent that men do not invent forms of sacred liturgy. If you recall the entire sacrificial system used in Israel, it was all 100% received by Moses from God by direct revelation - nothing was left to the imagination of men. It was a replica of the heavenly rite. Likewise, we are not permitted to invent our own forms of liturgy as though what has been handed down to us from the Apostles is some how deficient.
4. As the Church organically developed the Mass with minor accretions and modifications, it retained its basic structure and character down through the centuries. We are told by Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei that it is wrong to try to recapture what we imagine the primitive form of the liturgy may have looked like:

"62. Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device."

5. The above is the error of antiquinarianism, AKA archeologism. It is condemned in the same encyclical.

A priest distributes holy communion during a Papal Mass, 2013.

6. Lastly, for me, the final straw was the testimony of the Vatican's top exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who concluded that the Novus Ordo Rite of Exorcism was useless against the demon. This for me brings the efficacy of the entire NO liturgy into question.
7. The fruits do not lie. In 1960 when all liturgy was in Latin, 3 out of 4 American Catholics assisted at Mass at least weekly. Since the new Mass was implemented and the Latin Mass was suppressed in 1970, the percentage has plunged to a mere 25%. Certainly you as a pastor can appreciate this.
I would add that the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy (CSL) Sacrosanctum concilium from Vatican II never mentions abolition of Latin, tearing out altar rails, removal of tabernacles, spinning altars around to face the people, tossing away of chapel veils for women and girls, communion standing and in the hand, EMHCs, altar girls or the introduction of popular music. It calls for Latin Masses with Gregorian Chant having pride of place in liturgy, which we both know has all but disappeared. So please do not insist that all this liturgical revolution is required by Vatican II. Vatican II was extremely imprecise in its verbiage and essay-style texts, and its elasticity has been stretched to bizarre extremes due to passages like the one below from the CSL:

"In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered BEFORE ALL ELSE; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work."

It is very easy to lift this very poorly worded clause out of the CSL to justify just about any liturgical abuse one can imagine, and indeed, that is exactly what has happened.

"We ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director."
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1988

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the development of liturgy out there...

* CANON XIII.-If any one saith, that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, may be contemned, or without sin be omitted at pleasure by the ministers, or be changed, by every pastor of the churches, into other new ones; let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 7)

The Hidden History of the New Mass

Few laymen are acquainted with the development of the Novus Ordo Mass they pray and which many – to include this author – for years mistakenly assumed was the same liturgy prayed in antiquity. It isn’t.

A few facts from history.

1. In 1960, Pope John XXIII named Fr. Annibale Bugnini Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for Vatican II's document on sacred liturgy. Fr. Bugnini had served in similar roles under Pius XII’s Congregation of Rites and led the reform of the Holy Week liturgy promulgated in 1955 with the decree Maximus Redemptionis.

2. In 1962 John XXIII removed Bugnini from his position as Consulter to the Sacred Congregation of Rites and Professor of Sacred Liturgy in the Lateran University.

3. In the same year Pope John XXIII promulgated the 1962 edition of the Missale Romanum. In February of the same year, he promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia (on the wisdom of Latin as the universal tongue of the Church). These two promulgations give no indication that radical change of the sacred liturgy was in the mind of Pope John; tragically, Veterum sapientia was overcome by events just a few short months after it’s issuance.

4. During the 2nd week of the Second Vatican Council, the Rhine Fathers (German and French episcopal conferences) rejected the Pope's prepared schemata and demanded that the reform of the liturgy be considered as the first item of business. Pope John yielded to their demands and threw away three years worth of prepared schemata. The only prepared schema not rejected by the Rhine Fathers was Bugnini’s draft of Sacrosanctum concilium. It was introduced as the first document for discussion at Vatican II.

5. According to eyewitness Jean Guitton, Pope John XXIII cried out on his death bed, "stop the council!"  The Pope was laid to rest (and with him, the Council) in June 1963; he had not signed a single document.  Pope Paul VI reconvened it in the fall of 1963 and named Bugnini Secretary for the Council's document on sacred liturgy.

6. The president of the Council’s Preparatory Commission on the on the Liturgy was Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani. In order for the draft to be presented to the full council, his signature was required. Knowing what it would do to the liturgy, Cardinal Cicognani did not want to sign it.  According to Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, “an expert of the preconciliar Commission on the liturgy stated that the old Cardinal was on the verge of tears and waved the document saying, ‘They want me to sign this and I don’t know what to do!’ Then he put the text on his desk, took a pen and signed. Four days later he was dead.” (Wiltgen, Rhine Flows into the Tiber)

7. Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) was signed by Pope Paul VI on 4 December 1963. Following its promulgation, a period of wild liturgical experimentation immediately took off in the West. The wide variety of experimentation with the 1962 Missal eventually resulted in a 1965 interim version that allowed the omission of the prayers at the foot of the altar, the last gospel, and the entire Mass to be prayed in the vernacular – contrary to the Council of Trent’s condemnation in Session 22, Canon IX. While nothing in the CSL addressed or even mentioned turning altars around and celebrants facing the people, this experiment spread like wildfire and soon signified the primary emblem of the reforms. Pope Paul VI himself offered Mass in Italian and facing the people in 1965. Soon there were Masses on coffee tables, “folk masses” with guitars and tambourines, and in the US a new hymnal styled “Peoples Mass Book” was published in 1966 featuring pop-folk songs as liturgical accompaniment. All these things occurred well before Pope Paul’s Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated in 1969.

Pope Paul VI celebrates Mass in Italian facing the people, 1965.

8. The CSL’s orientation can best be summed up in article 14: "In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work." (emphasis mine) The phrase “active participation” became the rallying cry of the reformers who were less concerned about pure doctrine than religious experience. The Latin is rendered participatio actuosa which means “actual participation” and not “active participation.” This played directly into the hands of the subjectivist philosophers who rejected St. Thomas’ scholastic philosophy and sought to locate the divine in man (immanentism) and not in the Traditional method of gospel preaching and through the administration of the sacramental economy.

The 1965 interim Missal graphics show the priest behind a table
altar 4 years before the Novus Ordo was promulgated. The
terminology 'liturgy of the Word' and 'liturgy of the Eucharist'
are already in usage.

9. Bugnini's Commission developed the prototype for a new Mass called the Missa forma normativa.  The prototype was shown to a synod of Roman bishops in 1967 which voted to reject it. Bugnini’s reforms were temporarily halted by the unwillingness of the Synod Fathers to accept it’s radical retooling of the 1965 interim missal. Years later, Cardinal Ratzinger would comment,

"What happened after the Council was totally different: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We left the living process of growth and development to enter the realm of fabrication. There was no longer a desire to continue developing and maturing, as the centuries passed and so this was replaced—as if it were a technical production—with a construction, a banal on-the-spot product." (preface to the French edition of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Klaus Gamber, 1992)

10. Fr. Louis Bouyer upon his resignation from the liturgical commission chronicled the following account of his intercourse with Pope Paul VI:

Father Louis Bouyer: I wrote to the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, to tender my resignation as member of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform. The Holy Father sent for me at once (and the following conversation ensued):

Paul VI: Father, you are an unquestionable and unquestioned authority by your deep knowledge of the Church’s liturgy and Tradition, and a specialist in this field. I do not understand why you have sent me your resignation, whilst your presence, is more than precious, it is indispensable!

Father Bouyer: Most Holy Father, if I am a specialist in this field, I tell you very simply that I resign because I do not agree with the reforms you are imposing! Why do you take no notice of the remarks we send you, and why do you do the opposite?

Paul VI: But I don’t understand: I’m not imposing anything. I have never imposed anything in this field. I have complete trust in your competence and your propositions. It is you who are sending me proposals. When Fr. Bugnini comes to see me, he says: "Here is what the experts are asking for." And as you are an expert in this matter, I accept your judgement.

Father Bouyer: And meanwhile, when we have studied a question, and have chosen what we can propose to you, in conscience, Father Bugnini took our text, and, then said to us that, having consulted you: "The Holy Father wants you to introduce these changes into the liturgy." And since I don’t agree with your propositions, because they break with the Tradition of the Church, then I tender my resignation.

Paul VI: But not at all, Father, believe me, Father Bugnini tells me exactly the contrary: I have never refused a single one of your proposals. Father Bugnini came to find me and said: "The experts of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform asked for this and that". And since I am not a liturgical specialist, I tell you again, I have always accepted your judgement. I never said that to Monsignor Bugnini. I was deceived. Father Bugnini deceived me and deceived you.

Father Bouyer: That is, my dear friends, how the liturgical reform was done!

(Mémoires, posthumous, published 2014 by the Éditions du Cerf)

11. Pope Paul VI disregarded the decision of the 1967 Roman Synod and promulgated the Novus Ordo Missae in April 1969. In the notification Instructione de Constitutione (14 June 1971) Pope Paul VI ordered the practical suppression of the 1962 Missal with one exception: an elderly or infirm priest could continue to offer it in private with no one else present – not even an altar server. In a bizarre and confused address given on 26 November 1969 he calls his new liturgy a novelty, an inconvenience, an innovation, a cause of upset to the faithful and annoyance to priests, and yet justifies all on the basis of the utilitarian value of vernacular liturgy.

12. In 1974 Paul VI would remove [then] Archbishop Annibale Bugnini from all positions dealing with liturgy and appointed him as an auxiliary bishop to a diocese in Iran.

Archbishop Annibale Bugnini

So we may see that the five and a half years between December 1963 and April 1969 were a period of tumult and often gratuitous experimentation with the Roman Rite. Some commentators believe that the Novus Ordo was necessary to stem the abuses of the more extravagant forms of experimentation that were rampant during this period. The desacralization and destruction of the Roman Rite occurred much earlier than April 1969 and it is useful for laymen to understand the hidden history of the new Mass which did not spring up ready made at the time of its promulgation. Pope John XXIII dismissed Annibale Bugnini from having anything to do with liturgical reform for the Church and the Second Vatican Council. Pope Paul VI brought Bugnini back and put him in charge of the reform of the liturgy. Twelve years later, he too would remove Bugnini from having anything to do with the liturgy, but by then the damage was done.

Fifty years hence, we may conclude that the reform of the liturgy was not something clamored for by the laity, but something devised by an influential minority within the hierarchy. The theological impetus driving reform was identified by St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi gregis: modern man would no longer accept God as the direct object of science and history, and therefore men must locate Him in their own subjective experiences. The ancient liturgy with its reliance on the supernatural order, external authority, and objective reality would no longer suffice; modern man would need a liturgy that would facilitate the attainment of religious experiences through “active participation.”

Thus, as St. Pius X teaches,

"How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already seen in the decree of the [first] Vatican Council. We shall see later how, with such theories, added to the other errors already mentioned, the way is opened wide for atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found is asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit, some confusedly, others in the most open manner, that all religions are true." (Pascendi gregis #14)