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| Pope Pius XII |
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| Pope John XXIII |
The article “Liturgical
Revolution: The New Mass just was the final stage of a long process” was
supposed to have been published here last year but was later suspended.
Yesterday, however, after reading one nonsense piece written by a certain
Sedevacantist against the Society of Saint Pius X, and being aware of many
simple-minded Catholics such a write-up will certainly deceive, I began to
think of publishing the article here. Amazingly, on the same day Father Paul
Kramer wrote the following on his facebook page: “Catholics would weep tears of grief if they would ever examine the
sublime liturgy Pius XII suppressed in order for it to be replaced by his May
Day Mass of St. Joseph the Worker”. I really marvelled to read this because
it is partly what the article is all about and I was just thinking about the
same issue on the same day—hence I decided that the piece must appear in Traditional Catholicism in Nigeria, right
away!
Now the problem with most Catholics who claim to be
“responding to the errors of our days” is that they always take the issues
before us personally, hence instead of attacking the errors they attack
individuals! For instance, one Sedevacantist-minded Caro Beshwat, responding to
Father Kramer, said: “You speak and attack pope Pius 12? Wow. You know who you
should really speak and point his errors—this pseudo Pope Benedict the pedophile
who you follow”. Has Father Kramer not written articles and BIG BOOKS against the
errors of Pope Benedict XVI? Plenty times! Compare that to his present comment—a mere comment and not a book or an article—in fact, the first
time I’ve heard him commenting on Pope Pius XII’s errors!
After analysing all the accusations
the other Sedevacantist brought against the SSPX, I considered them absolute
rubbish—none of them in fact deserves any refutation except his objection that
“they use the 1962 Missal”. And let me sharply respond to that here: What was
Archbishop Lefebvre's position on the "1962 Missal"? Why did Archbishop Lefebvre consent to use the
1962 Missal although he admitted that the Missal prior to 1955 was a superior
expression of the Catholic Faith?
Here is the answer: First of all, we
should remember that the society Archbishop Lefebvre founded was named “Society
of St. Pius X”. Why St. Pius X? Well study the role Pope Pius X played with
respect to all the modern errors, including liturgical errors, then you may
rightly guess what Archbishop Lefebvre had in mind when he named the Society
after such a great pope.
Now the answers to the questions: At first
Archbishop Lefebvre accepted the "1962 Missal" as the last missal
bearing any resemblance to the Traditional Latin Mass, but he did consider it
severely compromised. However, he was at that time fighting a number of
doctrinal issues with Newchurch and wanted to focus on what he believed were
those more important issues. Nevertheless, he ordered SSPX priests to retain
several pre-1962 practices which of course were retained. The Archbishop
ordered that SSPX priests retain the Confiteor before the Communion of the
people, which had been eliminated by the 1960 modernization of the Freemason
presbyter Hannibal Bugnini. He ordered that SSPX priests retain the phrase perfidis Iudaeis in the Litanical Prayer of Good Friday, which had been
eliminated by John XXIII in 1959. He ordered that SSPX priests retain the
ceremonial re-entry into the Church on Palm Sunday, which had been eliminated
by Bugnini in 1956.
Over the past forty years, many
traditional Catholic priests who originally went along with the "1962
Missal" have rethought their position, as its enshrining of Modernistic
principles has been further exposed. At first it seemed merely inferior to the
Traditional Latin Missal, but not a major stumbling block. Forty years of study
and research since then by traditional scholars has demonstrated how "1962
Missal" was intended by Bugnini as a ramp-up to the full-out Novus Ordo of
1969, to "soften up" laypeople for an all-out assault upon the
Catholic Mass.
One thing about the Archbishop, he kept up an active analysis of what was going on in Newchurch. What may not have seemed to him like an important issue in 1970 had certainly become one by 1990, after the perspective of twenty years. According to an SSPX priest who was said to have known the Archbishop quite well, the Archbishop just before his death was seriously considering ordering SSPX priests to completely return to the pre-1955 Missal. That he didn’t eventually do that before his death and that this hasn’t been done till date, however, shouldn’t be a cause for any worry—the Society, purely Catholic, carefully considers that it is under a Higher Authority before undertaking any action, unlike the Sedevacantist lay popes who recklessly take laws into their own hands.
In his April 28, 1983 Letter to American Friends & Benefactors
(Ridgefield, Connecticut), Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, commenting on the
unfortunate attitudes of the Sedevacantist-minded priests, writes:
“Dear Friends and Benefactors,
“What was latent for many years in the relations between most of the
priests of the North-East District and the Society of St. Pius X, and was the
object of continual difficulties, has just come out into the open by the
support given by these priests to the refusal of the Society’s liturgy by one
of the three young priests I ordained at Oyster Bay Cove on November 3, 1982.
“Thus, their long-standing disagreement with myself and the Society has
now become public rebellion. It is the result of an extremist way of thinking
and a tendency to schism in the domain of the liturgy, the papacy, and the
sacraments of the reform.
“They reject the liturgy which has always been used in the Society and
consider it evil, the liturgy of Pope Pius XII, signed by Pope John XXIII, and
so, the liturgy preceding the Council. They think and behave as if there is no
Pope, suppressing all prayers for the Pope. In practice, they tend to hold
almost all the sacraments of the new rites to be invalid.
“This radicalism is not the attitude of the Society.
“The basic principle of the Society’s thinking and action in the painful
crisis the Church is going through is the principle taught by St. Thomas
Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (II,
II, q. 33, a.4). That one may not oppose the authority of the Church except in
the case of imminent danger to the Faith. Now, there is no danger for the Faith
in the liturgy of Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII, whereas there is great
danger for the Faith in the liturgy of Pope Paul VI, which is unacceptable.
“The Society acts on the assumption that Pope John Paul II is Pope and
so prays for him and strives to bring him back to Tradition by praying for him,
by meeting with those around him, and by writing to him.
“The Society does not say that all the sacraments according to the new
post-conciliar rites are invalid, but that due to bad translations, the lack of
proper intention, and the changes introduced in the matter and form, the number
of invalid and doubtful sacraments is increasing. In order, then, to reach a
decision in the practical order concerning the doubtfulness or invalidity of
sacraments given by priests imbued with the ideas of the Council, a serious
study of the various circumstances is necessary...”
Even heaven has also responded to the crisis before us in
numerous ways but the same Sedevacantists reject all that completely! Responding
to the errors of our time, both Our Lord and Our Lady have given so many
messages around the world about the errors of the twentieth century which
eventually culminated to the terrible errors and heresies we’re witnessing in
the Church right now. Surprisingly, in none of these numerous messages have
they ever endorsed the Sedevacantists’positions, that
is, that there is no pope, that all the masses are completely invalid, etc. Rather, the messages are just warnings to the faithful to wake up from their slumber
and fight against the errors. For Our Lord and Our Lady, there is nothing like
Novus Ordites or SSPXers or Sedevacantists, rather there are just two groups of
Catholics—the faithful and serious ones
that are responding to the errors and the unfaithful and unserious ones that
are not. I started studying these messages long ago and was greatly struck by how all of them are saying the same thing—all of them except the
false ones which of course are greater than the true ones—and last year I decided
to publish one of such messages even though it hasn’t been approved by the
Church—below:
Let the Sedevacantists read it and tell us who is speaking
here! The Devil? We need a simple YES or NO answer!
Now in the said “private revelation”, Our Lord said the
following on how ecumenism started: “The devil confused my sons (i.e. the priests, bishops,
cardinals and popes) because my sons were not at alert, they did not pray, they
forgot to pray and were not at alert in their faith. The devil continued
seducing them little by little until he gave a mortal blow to the Church and to
my sons, and today; my sons are preaching the unity of churches saying that
they are all the same, that they all save—but this is not true. This has to be
made very clear to your hearts and to your minds because the true Christ, the
true Doctrine, the true Church cannot be the same as a church invented by man
and his false gods”. Note: Our Lord
gives messages on different topics including the liturgy, but here He is
talking about ecumenism. Our interest here is on the statement “The Devil continued seducing them little by
little until he gave a mortal blow to the Church”. That is perfectly true.
The errors that have simply engulfed the Church currently did not suddenly
explode just after 1958, which is the false impression Sedevacantists often give.
No! They are simply the errors of the twentieth century which influenced almost
all the popes of that period (and those of our time) except Popes Pius X and Pius XI. The Devil has
over the years—even before Vatican II—been seducing church leaders little by
little until finally he gave “a mortal blow to the Church” at Vatican II. That
is what the article below is all about. However, contrary to the
Sedevacantists’ false position, the popes involved—and with the exception of
Bergoglio whose case is quite different—were/are not really sworn
enemies who entered the priesthood with premeditated intention to destroy the
Church. As Father Kramer puts it:
“They were/are
not cold blooded infiltrators who entered the priesthood with the premeditated
intention to destroy the Church. They were men of God who fell into the most
ancient and original temptation, to eat the forbidden fruit of error in the
vain and illusory pursuit of illicit knowledge. What they gained by their
disordered intellectual pursuits was not superior knowledge; but the darkening
of the intellect that made them become slaves to error; and allowed the demons
to enter and possess them. This accounts for their duality of spirit which is
in one moment Catholic, and then becomes heretical, gnostic, and even pagan.
That is how we have ended up with the Church reduced to God's "Devastated
Vineyard", presided over by the " Deux papes vermoulu" -- the "two worm eaten
popes" foretold by Our Lady of La Salette.”
The article below really needs to be
studied carefully and seriously. It does not promote any group; it is not pro-SSPX, but the
writer (a good Sedevacantist!) certainly recognises the legitimacy of the Society’s struggles, hence
only the Society is slightly
criticised here, and by so doing Rev. Ricossa’s intention is certainly to urge the priests and
bishops of the Society who seem to be underestimating the magnitude of the
problems to be very serious. However, I have already quoted Archbishop
Lefebvre’s response to objections like Rev. Ricossa’s:
“The basic principle of the Society’s thinking and action in the painful
crisis the Church is going through is the principle taught by St. Thomas
Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (II,
II, q. 33, a.4). That one may not oppose the authority of the Church except in
the case of imminent danger to the Faith. Now, there is no danger for the Faith
in the liturgy of Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII, whereas there is great
danger for the Faith in the liturgy of Pope Paul VI, which is unacceptable.
In Christ,
J E I.
Liturgical Revolution: The New Mass just was the final
stage of a long process.
By Rev. Francesco Ricossa
"The Liturgy, considered as a whole, is the collection
of symbols, chants and acts by means of which the Church expresses and
manifests its religion towards God."
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, God Himself, so to speak, is the
liturgist: He specifies the most minute details of the worship which the
faithful had to render to Him. The importance attached to a form of worship
which was but the shadow of that sublime worship in the New Testament which
Christ the High Priest wanted His Church to continue until the end of the
world. In the Liturgy of the Catholic Church, everything is important,
everything is sublime, down to the tiniest details, a truth which moved St.
Teresa of Avila to say: "I would give my life for the smallest ceremony of
Holy Church."
The reader, therefore, should not be surprised at the
importance we will attach to the rubrics of the Liturgy, and the close
attention we will pay to the "reforms" which preceded the Second
Vatican Council.
In any case, the Church's enemies were all too well aware of
the importance of the Liturgy — heretics corrupted the Liturgy in order to
attack the Faith itself. Such was the case with the ancient Christological
heresies, then with Lutheranism and Anglicanism in the 16th century, then with
the Illuminist and Jansenist reforms in the 18th century, and finally with
Vatican II, beginning with its Constitution on the Liturgy and culminating in
the Novus Ordo Missae.
The liturgical "reform" desired by Vatican II and
realized in the post-Conciliar period is nothing short of a revolution. No
revolution has ever come about spontaneously. It always results from prolonged
attacks, slow concessions, and a gradual giving way. The purpose of this
article is to show the reader how the liturgical revolution came about, with
special reference to the pre-Conciliar changes in 1955 and 1960.
Msgr. Klaus Gamber, a German liturgist, pointed out that the
liturgical debacle pre-dates Vatican II. If, he said, "a radical break
with tradition has been completed in our days with the introduction of the Novus Ordo and the new liturgical books, it is
our duty to ask ourselves where its roots are. It should be obvious to anyone
with common sense that these roots are not to be looked for exclusively in the
Second Vatican Council. The Constitution on the Liturgy of December 4, 1963
represents the temporal conclusion of an evolution whose multiple and not all
homogenous causes go back into the distant past."
Illuminism
According to Mgr Gamber. "The flowering of church life
in the Baroque era (the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent) was
stricken towards the end of the eighteenth century, with the blight of
Illuminism. People were dissatisfied with the traditional liturgy, because they
felt it did not correspond with the concrete problems of the times."
Rationalist Illuminism found the ground already prepared by the Jansenist
heresy, which, like Protestantism, opposed the traditional Roman Liturgy.
Emperor Joseph II, the Gallican bishops of France, and of
Tuscany in Italy, meeting together for the Synod of Pistoia, carried out
reforms and liturgical experiments "which resemble to an amazing extent
the present reforms; they are just as strongly orientated towards Man and
social problems."..."We can say, therefore, that the deepest roots of
the present liturgical desolation are grounded in Illuminism."
The aversion for tradition, the frenzy for novelty and
reforms, the gradual replacement of Latin by the vernacular, and of
ecclesiastical and patristic texts by Scripture alone, the diminution of the
cult of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, the suppression of liturgical
symbolism and mystery, and finally the shortening of the Liturgy, it judged to
be excessively and uselessly long and repetitive — we find all these elements
of the Jansenist liturgical reforms in the present reforms, and see them
reflected especially in the reforms of John XXIII. In the most serious cases
the Church condemned the innovators: thus, Clement IX condemned the Ritual of
the Diocese of Alet in 1668, Clement XI condemned the Oratorian Pasquier
Quesnel (1634-1719) in 1713, Pius VI condemned the Synod of Pistoia and Bishop
Scipio de' Ricci in his bull Auctorem Fidei in 1794.
The Liturgical Movement
"A reaction to the llluminist plague," says Mgr.
Gamber. "is represented by the restoration of the nineteenth century.
There arose at this time the great French Benedictine abbey of Solesmes, and
the German Congregation of Beuron." Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875),
Abbot of Solesmes, restored the old Latin liturgy in France.
His work led to a movement, later called the "Liturgical
Movement," which sought to defend the traditional liturgy of the Church,
and to make it loved. This movement greatly benefited the Church up to and
throughout the reign of St. Pius X, who restored Gregorian Chant to its
position of honour and created an admirable balance between the Temporal Cycle
(feasts of Our Lord, Sundays, and ferias) and the Sanctoral Cycle (feasts of
the saints).
The Movement’s
Deviations
After St. Pius X, little by little, the so called
"Liturgical Movement" strayed from its original path, and came full
circle to embrace the theories which it had been founded to combat. All the
ideas of the anti-liturgical heresy — as Dom Gueranger called the liturgical
theories of the 18th century — were now taken up again in the 1920s and 30s by
liturgists like Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960) in Belgium and France, and by
Dom Pius Parsch and Romano Guardini in Austria and Germany.
The "reformers" of the 1930s and 1940s introduced
the "Dialogue Mass," because of their "excessive emphasis on the
active participation of the faithful in the liturgical functions." In some
cases — in scout camps, and other youth and student organizations — the
innovators succeeded in introducing Mass in the vernacular, the celebration of
Mass on a table facing the people, and even concelebration. Among the young
priests who took a delight in liturgical experiments in Rome in 1933 was the
chaplain of the Catholic youth movement, a certain Father Giovanni Battista
Montini.
In Belgium, Dom Beauduin gave the Liturgical Movement an
ecumenical purpose, theorizing that the Anglican Church could be "united
[to the Catholic Church] but not absorbed." He also founded a
"Monastery for Union" with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which
resulted in many of his monks "converting" to the eastern schism.
Rome intervened: the Encyclical against the Ecumenical Movement, Mortalium Animos (1928) resulted in Dom Beauduin being
discreetly recalled, a temporary diversion. The great protector of Beauduin was
Cardinal Mercier, founder of "Catholic" ecumenism, and described by
the anti-modernists of the time as the "friend of all the betrayers of the
Church."
In the 1940s liturgical saboteurs had already obtained the
support of a large part of the hierarchy, especially in France (through the CPL
— Center for Pastoral Liturgy) and in Germany.
A Warning from Germany
On January 18, 1943, the most serious attack against the
Liturgical Movement was launched by an eloquent and outspoken member of the
German hierarchy, the Archbishop of Freiburg, Conrad Grober. In a long letter
addressed to his fellow bishops, Grober gathered together seventeen points
expressing his criticisms of the Liturgical Movement. He criticized the
theology of the charismatics, the Schoenstatt movement, but above all the
Liturgical Movement, involving implicitly also Theodor Cardinal Innitzer of
Vienna.
Few people know that Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ, who then lived in
Vienna, wrote a response to Grober. We shall meet Karl Rahner again as the
German hierarchy's conciliar “expert” at the Second Vatican Council, together
with Hans Kung and Schillebeeckx.
Mediator Dei
The dispute ended up in Rome. In 1947 Pius Xll's Encyclical
on the liturgy, Mediator Dei, ratified the condemnation of the
deviating Liturgical Movement.
Pius XII "strongly espoused Catholic doctrine, but the
sense of this encyclical was distorted in the commentaries made on it by the
innovators and Pius XII, even though he remembered the principles, did not have
the courage to take effective measures against those responsible; he should
have suppressed the French CPL and prohibited a good number of publications.
But these measures would have resulted in an open conflict with the French
hierarchy".
Having seen the weakness of Rome, the reformers saw that they
could move forward: from experiments they now passed to official Roman reforms.
Underestimating the
Enemy
Pius XII underestimated the seriousness of the liturgical
problem: "It produces in us a strange impression," he wrote to Bishop
Grober, "if, almost from outside the world and time, the liturgical
question has been presented as the problem of the moment."
The reformers thus hoped to bring their Trojan Horse into the
Church, through the almost unguarded gate of the Liturgy, profiting from the
scant attention Pope Pius XII paid to the matter, and helped by persons very
close to the Pontiff, such as his own confessor Agostino Bea, future cardinal
and "super-ecumenist."
The following testimony of Annibale Bugnini is enlightening:
"The Commission (for the reform of the Liturgy
instituted in 1948) enjoyed the full confidence of the Pope, who was kept
informed by Mgr. Montini, and even more so, weekly, by Fr. Bea, the confessor
of Pius Xll. Thanks to this intermediary, we could arrive at remarkable
results, even during the periods when the Pope's illness prevented anyone else from
getting near him."
The Revolution Begins
Fr. Bea was involved with Pius XII's first liturgical reform,
the new liturgical translation of the Psalms, which replaced that of St.
Jerome's Vulgate, so disliked by the Protestants, since it was the official
translation of the Holy Scripture in the Church, and declared to be authentic
by the Council of Trent. (Motu proprio, In cotidianis precibus, of March 24, 1945.) The use of the
New Psalter was optional, and enjoyed little success.
After this reform, came others which would last longer and be
more serious:
- May 18, 1948: establishment of a Pontifical Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy, with Annibale Bugnini as its secretary January 6, 1953: the Apostolic Constitution Christus Dominus on the reform of the Eucharistic fast.
- March 23, 1955: the decree Cum hac nostra aetate, not published in the Acta Apostolica Sedis and not printed in the liturgical books, on the reform of the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary.
- November 19, 1955: the decree Maxima Redemptionis, new rite of Holy Week, already introduced experimentally for Holy Saturday in 1951.
The following section will discuss the reform of Holy Week.
Meanwhile, what of the rubrical reforms made in 1956 by Pius XII ? They were an
important stage in the liturgical reforms, as we will see when we examine the
reforms of John XXIII. For now it is enough to say that the reforms tended to
shorten the Divine Office and diminish the cult of the saints. All the feasts
of semi-double and simple ranks became simple commemorations; in Lent and
Passiontide one could choose between the office of a saint and that of the
feria; the number of vigils was diminished and octaves were reduced to three.
The Pater, Ave and Credo recited at the beginning of each liturgical hour were
suppressed; even the final antiphon to Our Lady was taken away, except at
Compline. The Creed of St. Athanasius was suppressed except for once a year.
In his book, Father Bonneterre admits that the reforms at the
end of the pontificate of Pius XII are "the first stages of the
self-destruction of the Roman Liturgy." Nevertheless, he defends them
because of the "holiness" of the pope who promulgated them.
"Pius XII," he writes, "undertook these
reforms with complete purity of intention, reforms which were rendered
necessary by the need of souls. He did not realize — he could not realize —
that he was shaking discipline and the liturgy in one of the most crucial
periods of the Church's history; above all, he did not realize that he was
putting into practice the programme of the straying liturgical movement."
Jean Crete comments on this:
"Fr. Bonneterre recognizes that this decree signaled the
beginning of the subversion of the liturgy, and yet seeks to excuse Pius XIl on
the grounds that at the time no one, except those who were party to the
subversion, was able to realize what was going on. I can, on the contrary, give
a categorical testimony on this point. I realized very well that this decree
was just the beginning of a total subversion of the liturgy, and I was not the
only one. All the true liturgists, all the priests who were attached to
tradition, were dismayed.
"The Sacred Congregation of Rites was not favorable
toward this decree, the work of a special commission. When, five weeks later,
Pius XII announced the feast of St. Joseph the Worker (which caused the ancient
feast of Ss. Philip and James to be transferred, and which replaced the Solemnity
of St Joseph, Patron of the Church), there was open opposition to it.
“For more than a year the Sacred Congregation of Rites
refused to compose the office and Mass for the new feast. Many interventions of
the pope were necessary before the Congregation of Rites agreed, against their
will, to publish the office in 1956 — an office so badly composed that one
might suspect it had been deliberately sabotaged. And it was only in 1960 that
the melodies of the Mass and office were composed — melodies based on models of
the worst taste.
"We relate this little-known episode to give an idea of
the violence of the reaction to the first liturgical reforms of Pius XII".
The 1955 Holy Week:
Anticipating the New Mass
"The liturgical renewal has clearly demonstrated that
the formulae of the Roman Missal have to be revised and enriched. The renewal
was begun by the same Pius XII with the restoration of the Easter Vigil and the
Order of Holy Week, which constituted the first stage of the adaptation of the
Roman Missal to the needs of our times."
These are the very words of Paul VI when he promulgated the
New Mass on April 3, 1969. This clearly demonstrates how the pre-Conciliar and
post-Conciliar changes are related. Likewise, Msgr. Gamber wrote that
"The first Pontiff to bring a real and proper change to
the traditional missal was Pius XII, with the introduction of the new liturgy
of Holy Week. To move the ceremony of Holy Saturday to the night before Easter
would have been possible without any great modification. But then along came
John XXIII with the new ordering of the rubrics. "Even on these occasions,
however, the Canon of the Mass remained intact. [Also John XXIII introduced the
name of St. Joseph into the Canon during the council, violating the tradition
that only the names of martyrs be mentioned in the Canon.] It was not even
slightly altered. But after these precedents, it is true, the doors were opened
to a radically new ordering of the Roman Liturgy."
The decree, Maxima Redemptionis, which introduced the
new rite in 1955, speaks exclusively of changing the times of the ceremonies of
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, to make it easier for the
faithful to assist at the sacred rites, now transferred after centuries to the
evenings those days.
But no passage in the decree makes the slightest
mention of the drastic changes in the texts and ceremonies themselves. In fact,
the new rite of Holy Week was a nothing but a trial balloon for post-Conciliar
reform which would follow. The modernist Dominican Fr. Chenu testifies to this:
"Fr. Duploye followed all this with
passionate lucidity. I remember that he said to me one day, much later on. 'If
we succeed in restoring the Easter Vigil to its original value, the liturgical
movement will have won; I give myself ten years to achieve this.' Ten years
later it was a fait accompli."
In fact, the new rite of Holy Week, is an alien
body introduced into the heart of the Traditional Missal. It is based on
principles which occur in Paul VI's 1965 reforms.
Here are some examples:
- Paul VI suppressed the Last Gospel in 1965; in 1955 it was suppressed for the Masses of Holy Week.
- Paul VI suppressed the psalm Judica me for the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar; the same had been anticipated by the 1955 Holy Week.
- Paul VI (following the example of Luther) wanted Mass celebrated facing the people; the 1955 Holy Week initiated this practice by introducing it wherever possible (especially on Palm Sunday).
- Paul VI wanted the role of the priest to be diminished, replaced at every turn by ministers; in 1955 already, the celebrant no longer read the Lessons, Epistles, or Gospels (Passion) which were sung by the ministers—even though they form part of the Mass. The priest sat down, forgotten, in a corner.
- In his New Mass, Paul VI suppresses from the Mass all the elements of the "Gallican liturgy (dating from before Charlemagne), following the wicked doctrine of "archaeologism" condemned by Pius Xll. Thus, the offertory disappeared (to the great joy of Protestants), to be replaced by a Jewish grace before meals. Following the same principle, the New Rite of Holy Week had suppressed all the prayers in the ceremony of blessing the palms (except one), the Epistle, Offertory and Preface which came first, and the Mass of the Pre-sanctified on Good Friday.
- Paul VI, challenging the anathemas of the Council of Trent, suppressed the sacred order of the subdiaconate; the new rite of Holy Week, suppressed many of the subdeacon's functions. The deacon replaced the subdeacon for some of the prayers (the Levate on Good Friday) the choir and celebrant replaced him for others (at the Adoration of the Cross).
The 1955
Holy Week: Other Innovations
Here is a partial list of other innovations introduced
by the new Holy Week:
- The Prayer for the Conversion of Heretics became the "Prayer for Church Unity"
- The genuflection at the Prayer for the Jews, a practice the Church spurned for centuries in horror at the crime they committed on the first Good Friday.
- The new rite suppressed much medieval symbolism (the opening of the door of the church at the Gloria Laus for example).
- The new rite introduced the vernacular in some places (renewal of baptismal promises).
- The Pater Noster was recited by all present (Good Friday).
- The prayers for the emperor were replaced by a prayer for those governing the republic, all with a very modern flavour.
- In the Breviary, the very moving psalm Miserere, repeated at all of the Office, was suppressed.
- For Holy Saturday the Exultet was changed and much of the symbolism of its words suppressed.
- Also on Holy Saturday, eight of the twelve prophecies were suppressed.
- Sections of the Passion were suppressed, even the Last Supper disappeared, in which Our Lord, already betrayed, celebrated for the first time in history the Sacrifice of the Mass.
- On Good Friday, communion was now distributed, contrary to the tradition of the Church, and condemned by St. Pius X when people had wanted to initiate this practice.
- All the rubrics of the 1955 Holy Week rite, then, insisted continually on the "participation" of the faithful, and they scorned as abuses many of the popular devotions (so dear to the faithful) connected with Holy Week.
This brief examination of the reform of Holy Week
should allow the reader to realise how the "experts" who would come
up with the New Mass fourteen years later had used and taken advantage of the
1955 Holy Week rites to test their revolutionary experiments before applying
them to the whole liturgy.
Roncalli:
Modernist Connections.
Pius XII was succeeded by John XXIII. Angelo
Roncalli. Throughout his ecclesiastical career, Roncalli was involved in
affairs that place his orthodoxy under a cloud. Here are a few facts:
As professor at the seminary of Bergamo, Roncalli
was investigated for following the theories of Msgr. Duchesne, which were
forbidden under Saint Pius X in all Italian seminaries. Msgr Duchesne's work, Histoire Ancienne de
l'Eglise,
ended up on the Index.
While papal nuncio to Paris, Roncalli revealed his adhesion
to the teachings of Sillon, a movement condemned by St. Pius X. In a letter to
the widow of Marc Sagnier, the founder of the condemned movement, he wrote: “The
powerful fascination of his [Sagnier's] words, his spirit, had enchanted me;
and from my early years as a priest, I maintained a vivid memory of his
personality, his political and social activity."
Named as Patriarch of Venice, Msgr.Roncalli gave a public
blessing to the socialists meeting there for their party convention. As John
XXIII, he made Msgr. Montini a cardinal and called the Second Vatican Council.
He also wrote the Encyclical Pacem in Terris. The Encyclical uses a deliberately ambiguous phrase, which foreshadows
the same false religious liberty the Council would later proclaim.
The Revolution Advances
John XXIII's attitude in matters liturgical, then, comes as
no surprise. Dom Lambert Beauduin, quasi-founder of the modernist Liturgical
Movement, was a friend of Roncalli from 1924 onwards. At the death of Pius XII,
Beauduin remarked: "If they elect Roncalli, everything will be saved; he
would be capable of calling a council and consecrating ecumenism..."'
On July 25, 1960, John XXIII published the Motu Proprio Rubricarum Instructum. He had already decided to call
Vatican II and to proceed with changing Canon Law. John XXIII incorporates the
rubrical innovations of 1955–1956 into this Motu Proprio and makes them still
worse. "We have reached the decision," he writes, "that the
fundamental principles concerning the liturgical reform must be presented to
the Fathers of the future Council, but that the reform of the rubrics of the
Breviary and Roman Missal must not be delayed any longer."
In this framework, so far from being orthodox, with such
dubious authors, in a climate which was already "Conciliar," the
Breviary and Missal of John XXIII were born. They formed a "Liturgy of
transition" destined to last — as it in fact did last — for three or four
years. It is a transition between the Catholic liturgy consecrated at the
Council of Trent and that heterodox liturgy begun at Vatican II.
The
"Anti-liturgical Heresy" in the John XXIII Reform
We have already seen how the great Dom Gueranger defined as
"liturgical heresy" the collection of false liturgical principles of
the 18th century inspired by Illuminism and Jansenism. I should like to
demonstrate in this section the resemblance between these innovations and those
of John XXIII.
Since John XXIII's innovations touched the Breviary as well
as the Missal, I will provide some information on his changes in the Breviary
also. Lay readers may be unfamiliar with some of the terms concerning the
Breviary, but I have included as much as possible to provide the
"flavour" and scope of the innovations.
1. Reduction of Matins to three lessons. Archbishop Vintimille of Paris, a
Jansenist sympathizer, in his reform of the Breviary in 1736, "reduced the
Office for most days to three lessons, to make it shorter." In 1960 John
XXIII also reduced the Office of Matins to only three lessons on most days.
This meant the suppression of a third of Holy Scripture, two-thirds of the
lives of the saints, and the whole of the commentaries of the Church Fathers on
Holy Scripture. Matins, of course, forms a considerable part of the Breviary.
2. Replacing ecclesiastical formulas style with Scripture. "The second principle of the
anti-liturgical sect," said Dom Gueranger, "is to replace the
formulae in ecclesiastical style with readings from Holy Scripture." While
the Breviary of St. Pius X had the commentaries on Holy Scripture by the
Fathers of the Church, John XXIII's Breviary suppressed most commentaries
written by the Fathers of the Church. On Sundays, only five or six lines from
the Fathers remains.
3. Removal of saints' feasts from Sunday. Dom Gueranger gives the Jansenists'
position: "It is their [the Jansenists'] great principle of the sanctity
of Sunday which will not permit this day to be 'degraded' by consecrating it to
the veneration of a saint, not even the Blessed Virgin Mary. A fortiori, the feasts with a rank of double or
double major which make such an agreeable change for the faithful from the
monotony of the Sundays, reminding them of the friends of God, their virtues
and their protection — shouldn't they be deferred always to weekdays, when
their feasts would pass by silently and unnoticed?"
John XXIII, going well beyond the well-balanced reform of St.
Pius X, fulfils almost to the letter the ideal of the Janenist heretics: only
nine feasts of the saints can take precedence over the Sunday (two feasts of
St. Joseph, three feasts of Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, Saints Peter and
Paul, St. Michael, and All Saints). By contrast, the calendar of St. Pius X
included 32 feasts which took precedence, many of which were former holydays of
obligation. What is worse, John XXIII abolished even the commemoration of the
saints on Sunday.
4. Preferring the ferial office over the saint’s feast. Dom Gueranger goes on to describe the
moves of the Jansenists as follows: "The calendar would then be purged,
and the aim, acknowledged by Grancolas (1727) and his accomplices, would be to
make the clergy prefer the ferial office to that of the saints. What a pitiful
spectacle! To see the putrid principles of Calvinism, so vulgarly opposed to
those of the Holy See, which for two centuries has not ceased fortifying the
Church's calendar with the inclusion' of new protectors, penetrate into our
churches!"
John XXIII totally suppressed ten feasts from the calendar
(eleven in Italy with the feast of Our Lady of Loreto), reduced 29 feasts of
simple rank and nine of more elevated rank to mere commemorations, thus causing
the ferial office to take precedence. He suppressed almost all the octaves and
vigils, and replaced another 24 saints' days with the ferial office. Finally,
with the new rules for Lent, the feasts of another nine saints, officially in
the calendar, are never celebrated. In sum, the reform of John XXIII purged
about 81 or 82 feasts of saints, sacrificing them to "Calvinist principles."
Dom Gueranger also notes that the Jansenists suppressed the
feasts of the saints in Lent. John XXIII did the same, keeping only the feasts
of first and second class. Since they always fall during Lent, the feasts of
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gregory the Great, St. Benedict, St. Patrick, and St.
Gabriel the Archangel would never be celebrated.
5. Excising miracles from the lives of the Saints. Speaking of the principle of the
Illuminist liturgists, Dom Gueranger notes: "the lives of the saints were
stripped of their miracles on the one hand, and of their pious stories on the
other."
We have seen that the reform of 1960 suppresses two out of
three lessons of the Second Nocturn of Matins, in which the lives of the saints
are read. But this was not enough. As we mentioned, eleven feasts were totally
suppressed by the preconciliar rationalists. For example, St. Vitus, the
Invention of the Holy Cross, St. John before the Latin Gate, the Apparition of
St. Michael on Mt. Gargano, St. Anacletus, St. Peter in Chains, the Finding of
St. Stephen, Our Lady of Loreto ("A flying house! How can we believe that
in the twentieth century!"); among the votive feasts, St. Philomena (the
Cure of Ars was so "stupid" to have believed in her).
Other saints were eliminated more discreetly: Our Lady of
Mount Carmel, Our Lady of Ransom, St. George, St. Alexis, St. Eustace, the
Stigmata of St. Francis — these all remain, but only as a commemoration on a
ferial day.
Two popes are also removed, seemingly without reason: St.
Sylvester (was he too triumphalistic?) and St. Leo II (the latter, perhaps,
because he condemned Pope Honorius.)
We note finally a "masterwork" which touches us
closely. From the prayer to Our Lady of Good Counsel, the 1960 reform removed
the words which speak of the miraculous apparition of her image, if the House
of Nazareth cannot fly to Loreto, how can we imagine that a picture which was
in Albania can fly to Genzzano?
6. Anti-Roman Spirit. The Jansenists suppressed one of the
two feasts of the Chair of St. Peter (January 18), and also the Octave of St.
Peter. Identical measures were taken by John XXIII.
7. Suppression of the Confiteor before Communion. The suspect Missal of Trojes
suppressed the Confiteor. John XXIII did the same thing in 1960.
8. Reform of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. This happened in 1736, with the
suspect Breviary of Vintimille ("a very grave action, and what is more,
most grievous for the piety of the faithful," said Dom Gueranger.) John
XXIII had his precedent here, as we have seen!
9. Suppression of Octaves. The same thing goes for the
suppression of nearly all the octaves (a usage we find already in the Old
Testament, to solemnize the great feasts over eight days), anticipated by the
Jansenists in 1736 and repeated in 1955-1960.
10. Make the Breviary as short as possible and without any
repetition. This was the dream of the renaissance
liturgists (the Breviary of the Holy Cross, for example, abolished by St. Pius
V), and then of the illuminists. Dom Gueranger said that the innovators wanted
a Breviary "without those complicated rubrics which oblige the priest to
make a serious study of the Divine Office; moreover, the rubrics themselves are
traditions, and it is only right they should disappear. Without
repetitions...and as short as possible... They want a short Breviary. They
will, have it; and it will be up to the Jansenists to write it."
These three principles will be the public boast of the reform
of 1955 and 1960: the long petitions in the Office called Preces disappear; so
too, the commemorations, the suffrages, the Pater, Ave, and Credo, the
antiphons to Our Lady, the Athanasian Creed, two-thirds of Matins, and so on.
11. Ecumenism in the Reform of John XXIII. The Jansenists hadn't thought of this
one. The reform of 1960 suppresses from the prayers of Good Friday the Latin
adjective perfidis (faithless)
with reference to the Jews, and the noun perfidiam (impiety)
with reference to Judaism. It left the door open for John Paul II's visit to
the synagogue.
Number 181 of the 1960 Rubrics states: "The Mass against
the Pagans shall be called the Mass for the Defence of the Church. The Mass to
Take Away Schism shall be called the Mass for the Unity of the Church."
These changes reveal the liberalism, pacifism, and false
ecumenism of those who conceived and promulgated them.
12. The Office becomes “private devotional reading.” One last point, but one of the most
serious: The Ottaviani Intervention rightly declared that "when the
priest celebrates without a server the suppression of all the salutations
(i.e., Dominus Vobiscum, etc.) and of the final blessing is a
clear attack on the dogma of the communion of the saints." The priest,
even if he is alone, when celebrating Mass or saying his Breviary, is praying
in the name of the whole Church, and with the whole Church. This truth was
denied by Luther.
Now this attack on dogma was already included in the Breviary
of John XXIII it obliged the priest when reciting it alone to say Domine exaudi orationem meam (O Lord, hear my prayer) instead of Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you). The idea,
"a profession of purely rational faith." was that the Breviary was
not the public prayer of the Church any more, but merely private devotional
reading.
A Practical Conclusion
Theory is of no use to anyone, unless it is applied in
practice. This article cannot conclude without a warm invitation, above all to
priests, to return to the liturgy "canonized" by the Council of
Trent, and to the rubrics promulgated by St. Pius X.
Msgr Gamber writes: "Many of the innovations promulgated
in the last twenty-five years — beginning with the decree on the renewal of the
liturgy Holy Week of February 9, 1951 [still under Pius XII] and with the new
Code of rubrics of July 25, 1960, by continuous small modifications, right up
to the reform of the Ordo Missae of April 3. 1969 — have been shown to be useless and dangerous to their
spiritual life."
Unfortunately, in the "traditionalist" camp,
confusion reigns: one stops at 1955; another at 1965 or 1967. Archbishop
Lefebvre's followers, having first adopted the reform of 1965, returned to the
1960 rubrics of John XXIII even while permitting the introduction of earlier or
later uses! There, in Germany, England, and the United States, where the
Breviary of St. Pius X had been, recited, the Archbishop attempted to impose
the changes of John XXIII. This was not only for legal motives, but as a matter
of principle; meanwhile, the Archbishop's followers barely tolerated the private
recitation of the Breviary of St. Pius X.
We hope that this and other studies will help people
understand that these changes are part of the same reform and that all of it
must be rejected if all is not accepted. Only with the help of God — and clear
thinking — will a true restoration of Catholic worship be possible.
(The
Roman Catholic, February–April 1987).
