Worship and Belief in the Conciliar Church: A Study in Heterodoxy

By: Dr. J. P. Hubert

A.) Worship: The Novus Ordo Missae

The Novus Ordo Missae is presented almost exclusively as a celebration or “memorial” of the Last Supper and as such a communion (common meal or supper) service of believers in which Christ is presumably made present not in substance but in spirit. This is consistent with sociological data which establish that roughly 70% of self-professed “Catholics” do not believe in the “Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist” but instead view it as a symbolic one only; as do Lutherans. Moreover, the Traditional Offertory (in which Christ--the spotless victim--is offered as a propitiatory sacrifice to God the Father) is replaced by the offering of the “goods of the earth” the "work of human hands" and the people themselves in an “exchange of gifts.” As such, it simply is not the case that Jesus Christ is presented clearly and unabashedly as the sacrificial victim offered to God the Father in the Novus Ordo Missae. The new rite of "mass" is fundamentally a Cramnerian derived Protestant supper service which was designed to appeal to the largest number of religious sects and was purposely constructed to have something of interest to everyone. The overarching philosophical concept which the second Vatican Council seems to have been concerned with was forced "unity" or false ecumenism. The Novus Ordo Missae clearly reflects that bias as does the Conciliar document entitled UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO the decree on Ecumenism. HERE...

The traditional consecratory formula has been altered and has become a “narrative of institution” that is, a verbalizing only of what Christ said at the Last Supper, not an actual doing of what Christ did and said where the Priest acts (in persona-Christi) in the person of Christ. The Novus Ordo Missae is desacralized, “man-centered”, and performed in the vernacular language despite the fact that the Conciliar documents clearly established that the Latin language should be retained in the new liturgy. The vernacular usage has removed one of the most apparent ways in which the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church was “One.”

The majestic alter of sacrifice was replaced by a common table at which the communion meal is prepared without a proper immolation--the only one which is acceptable to God the Father, that of His Son Jesus Christ. Magnificent alters throughout the world were demolished and replaced by plain tables. The Priest was allowed to face the people making himself the center of attention rather than Christ present upon the alter. The Priest became a kind of “showman” or director rather than a reverent Priest of God who acts humbly in persona Christi. Instead of the Priest and the people facing the alter of God, they face each other in a totally “man-centered” liturgy.

The tabernacle was frequently moved from its prominent place at the center of the alter to an inauspicious location either at the side of the Church or in a separate chapel. The symbolism could not be more clear in deprecating the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the pius practice of Eucharistic devotion which has almost completely disappeared. The conciliar mentality views such Holy activity as nothing more than anachronistic piety.

The music in the Novus Ordo Missae is profane. Gregorian Chant has been totally replaced by percussion instruments and popular songs/hymns of dubious liturgical message and appropriateness which lack due reverence and sacrality despite the fact that the Vatican II documents specifically state that Gregorian Chant must retain pride of place. Why then the drastic post-conciliar change from sacred music to guitar masses, percussion instruments and popular music? The only logical reason is to serve the more base desires of man the object of the Novus Ordo Missae.

At the time of communion, virtually the entire assembly comes forward to receive the host (most receive the Eucharist in the hand), followed by drinking of the wine as might be expected if the Novus Ordo is nothing but a communal meal. Myriads of lay persons appear about the Priest to assist in preparing communion. After receiving the bread and wine from the Priest, they all become “Eucharistic Ministers” participating in touching the sacred vessels and distributing communion. Despite the fact that the conciliar Church terms these individuals “Extraordinary” Eucharistic Ministers, they are routine and commonplace even in small parishes in which the Priest would have no difficulty providing the entire distribution of communion in a timely fashion alone. This gives the impression that the laity is virtually equivalent to the Priest in the ability to consecrate as is taught in the Protestant doctrine known as the “Priesthood of all believers.” In some parishes the Eucharistic Ministers appear at the time of consecration and incredibly some even raise there hands and recite the narrative of institution along with the Priest. This practice has even been seen to involve the members of the congregation out in the pews without any attempt being made to sanction their behavior.

The communion rail has been removed and genuflecting or kneeling to receive is usually forbidden or at least strongly discouraged. A faint bow of the head before partaking of the host and the wine is all that is recommended or allowed by the conciliar church--completely in-keeping with the idea that Jesus Christ is not truly and substantially present body, blood, soul and divinity. Why else would a deep genuflection be frowned upon? It is as if the hierarchy knows full well that to do so would be idolatrous since the host and wine are not really the body and blood of our Lord. Why then has the conciliar Church retained the “The body of Christ”, “the blood of Christ” language which for the same reason is idolatrous as is the response of “Amen” by each communicant? These contradictions are not only troubling but would seem irreconcilable.

“It is evident that the Novus Ordo has no intention of presenting the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent, to which, nonetheless, the Catholic conscience is bound forever. With the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, the loyal Catholic is thus faced with a most tragic alternative.”[1]

B.) Belief:

One of the main hallmarks of the conciliar church from the perspective of what pre-Vatican II termed “Creed” and “Code” (the doctrinal precepts and the moral theological precepts) is that the focus has been taken away from God as the object of worship/concern to instead man as the object of main interest. Rather than what man’s responsibility is to God the conciliar church is concerned with man’s responsibility to man. That is to say the conciliar church is almost entirely horizontally oriented, all in the direction of immanence and not transcendence or verticality if you will. The conciliar church has become anthropocentric. It evinces little if any regard for man’s responsibility to properly worship God.

Secondly, ecumenism has assumed an almost over-riding concern which takes precedence over all others. Traditional Roman Catholic teaching has been altered all in the direction of what would appear to make it the least objectionable to the various religious sects, as has the Traditional Mass. Conciliar innovation has meant in practical terms the Protestantization of the “Catholic” Church. Non-Catholic sects which originally split off from the Roman Catholic Church have retained their heterodox beliefs and practices while the conciliar church has progressively accommodated them. A kind of pan-ecumenical generic Christianity or even non-Christian mono-theism appears to have been the goal. The latter has been spawned by the bogus theory of "anonymous Christianity." What is apparently desired by the hierarchy is a kind of “least common denominator” natural religiosity based entirely on "experience" and "becoming" rather than doctrinal truth. In any case, the fact that virtually any and all religious sects are part of the conciliar "people of God" means that there is no longer any need for Missionary activity, the seeking of converts or the teaching of Catholic apologetics. If all religious sects are acceptable as they currently exist, why convert to one which--even by today's lax standards--is more stringent?

Third, consistent with the conciliar concern for “man and the modern world” is the use of completely ambiguous language in formal documents in contradistinction to the very precise and non-ambiguous language of pre-Vatican II documents. This has made it virtually impossible to either determine or maintain a consistent interpretation with respect to conciliar doctrine, catechesis and ecclesial pronouncements.

In stark contrast, Jesus Christ spoke in crystal clear words about doctrinal issues as did the pre-Vatican II Church. The conciliar church in contradistinction utilizes ambiguity which has always been recognized as a tool of the devil. Recall the serpent’s perfidy in the Garden of Eden.[2] It is not accidental that the commonly heard statement “the devil is in the details” is one which most people recognize. Double-speak and ambiguous formulations serve the purpose of removing doctrinal and moral clarity. They are techniques which serve the devil not the Church of Jesus Christ.

Fourth, the post-conciliar period has been characterized by complete doctrinal and moral confusion. There now are as many opinions on all things “Catholic” as there are “Catholics.” Prior to 1958 this was not the case. Professing Catholics knew what the Church taught with respect to doctrinal belief/praxis and morals. Moreover Catholics knew what was expected of them. Today, people have no concrete idea about what the Church “still” teaches and what is expected or for that matter what the Church is and who is part of it. This is due in large part to the ambiguity of conciliar and post-conciliar documents/publications as well as now 3 full generations of improperly catechized persons. The conciliar church teaches in complete contradiction to the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church[3] that the Catholic Church subsists in (is found in) the larger “church of Christ” in which are found various Protestant sects and even non-Christian religions. This means that the conciliar church is but one of many which make up the "church of Christ" a concept which has no antecedent in 19 centuries of recorded Roman Catholic Church history.

What has not been altered explicitly such as formal Church teaching on contraception, fornication, abortion, adultery, sodomy etc. has been changed implicitly by neglect. That is to say, these issues have been ignored from the pulpit and in catechesis. They are simply not mentioned in polite post-Vatican II discourse. It is as if these topics by mutual agreement are simply not to be discussed in public and that if neglected long enough they will no longer be included in the deposit of the faith. Anyone who seriously raises them for discussion is quickly ostracized.

Fifth, the new Theology is characterized by the kind of neo-modernist philosophical bent in which everything is subject to skepticism (Pyrrhonism) and doubt where truth does not exist in the traditional ontological sense but rather is something one "experiences" personally not something which exists independent of the “knower.” In the conciliar church one does not discover the immutable truth that exists but rather one develops their individual “truth” through experience. This is the basis of the new “feelings” based catechesis which no longer recognizes the need to acquire knowledge of what has been revealed by God through revelation. The result is a situation where each person is allowed to develop their own version of religious truth (my truth is different than your truth) and it logically predisposes to contradictory beliefs within and between persons of “faith.” The term “cafeteria catholic” aptly describes this phenomenon in which people simply select those doctrines and religious practices that appeal to them and reject those that do not.

Sixth, integral to the new theology is the rejection of ecclesial authority and with it a failure to provide proper discipline[4] for members of the Church who either publicly profess heretical doctrines or who become total apostates from the faith. This includes the Pope, Cardinalate, the Episcopacy and Priesthood. Since 1958 there have been virtually no excommunication(s) for heresy despite the literally hundreds of examples of theologians, priests, bishops, cardinals etc who have publicly and repeatedly dissented from traditional Roman Catholic teaching. In fact in the conciliar church there is really no such thing as heresy per-se with the possible exception of those traditional Catholics who wish only to believe and practice the faith as it existed for almost 2000 years up until the convening of the second Vatican Council. The hierarchy has ignored and punished such individuals simply for maintaining time-honored traditional Roman Catholicism. Traditional Catholics are considered schismatics for continuing to believe what Roman Catholics always and everywhere believed up until Vatican II. Logic dictates that it is the conciliar church which should defend itself against the charge of schism since it has departed from the perennial Roman Catholic faith. The fact that a universal apostasy was specifically predicted in Sacred Scripture[5] should be more than enough to establish that the conciliar church must defend itself against the charge that it has broken with the Roman Catholic Church of the Apostles, the martyrs and all the faithfully departed.

Seventh, in his book Iota Unum Romano Amerio teaches that the fundamental underlying concept which distinguishes the conciliar church is its desire to accommodate itself to the spirit of the modern world rather than serving as a witness to the divinely revealed truth of Jesus Christ. In so doing it embraces virtually all of those ideas which were specifically repudiated by multiple prior popes and councils as constituting heresy.[6] Some of these include rejection of: the Blessed Trinity, the Virgin birth of Christ, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the actual crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, the literal bodily resurrection of and literal glorified bodily appearance of Jesus Christ to a multitude of believers on multiple occasions, the literal bodily ascension into heaven of Jesus Christ, the literal appearance of anti-Christ in the form of an actual person, the literal physical return of Christ in glory[7] at the end of time etc. Every one of these has been denied by more than one so-called “Catholic” theologian many of whom are/were prominent in the conciliar church and some of whom served as Periti for the second Vatican Council. It is simply astounding that such heterodox prelates and neo-modernist theologians[8] were specifically invited by John XXIII to participate in preparing the council. Some of these include: Hans Kung, Dominic Marie Chenu, Ives Congar, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Anabelle Bugnini and others.

An eight criterion is the conciliar notion that the nature or essence of man rather than being fixed is in a state of constant evolution (a false philosophical contention) and that man’s natural religious orientation is toward change—referred to as Mobilism by Romano Amerio.

All of these heterodox beliefs originate from a radical alteration of Traditional Roman Catholic Church philosophy specifically; its epistemology which until Vatican II was that of St. Thomas Aquinas' "Middle Road" (between Materialism and Spiritualism). Tragically, the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas was denounced at the Second Vatican Council and has been replaced with a hodge-podge or amalgam of contradictory modern philosophies. The once magnificent philosophically and logically consistent teaching of the Catholic Church has been destroyed and replaced with an internally inconsistent and mutually contradictory set of assertions which defy all logic. This disparate set of heterodox teachings simply must be the work of the adversary. Even people who have no interest in Roman Catholic Church history or any knowledge or experience of the Tridentine Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church teaching know that something is horribly wrong. Conciliar church teaching is simply incoherent and ultimately does not provide the spiritual benefit which the Traditional Roman Catholic Church did and for which it existed. All of the sociological and demographic data support what is viscerally obvious.

To be continued...


NOTES:


[1] “Ottaviani Intervention”, Letter from Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to Pope Paul VI September 25th, 1969.

[2] Gen 3: 1-5.

[3] Pre-Vatican II it was clearly taught that the Roman Catholic Church is the Church of Christ period.

[4] Beginning with John XXIII, the Papacy has refused to protect the flock from the apostate teaching of dissident theologians, Bishops, Priests etc. Rather than apply the required discipline to those guilty of heretical statements, the Popes have depended solely on persuasion which has been totally ineffective for the enforcement of orthodoxy. A syncretistic theological pluralism has been the result.

[5] See for example 2 Thess. 2: 2-4, 11-12, 15; Luke 18: 7-8; 1 Tim. 4:1-2; Matt. 24: 4-5, 10-12.

[6] See for example Lamentabile sane, Pascendi Dominici gregis, Humani generis.

[7] In his glorified resurrected body.

[8] Some were previously censored for various heretical teachings e.g Hans Kung who denies the divinity of Christ.