Editor's NOTE:
Subsequent to the promulgation of Aeterni Patris of Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X recognized that Modernist philosophical and theological errors continued to plague the Roman Catholic Church. He responded agressively and forcefully against the errors of the Modernists in both Lamentablili Sane and Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Both of these are essential reading for all Traditional (genuine) Roman Catholics of good will.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
SYLLABUS CONDEMNING THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
Pius X July 3, 1907
With truly lamentable results, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.
These errors are being daily spread among the faithful. Lest they captivate the faithful's minds and corrupt the purity of their faith, His Holiness, Pius X, by Divine Providence, Pope, has decided that the chief errors should be noted and condemned by the Office of this Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition.
Therefore, after a very diligent investigation and consultation with the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters of faith and morals have judged the following propositions to be condemned and proscribed. In fact, by this general decree, they are condemned and proscribed.
1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament.
2. The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion.
4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church's magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.
6. The "Church learning" and the "Church teaching" collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the "Church teaching" to sanction the opinions of the "Church learning."
7. In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced.
8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.
9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures. 10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not at all known to the Gentiles.
11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.
12. If he wishes to apply himself usefully to Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived opinions about the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture and interpret it the same as any other merely human document.
13. The Evangelists themselves, as well as the Christians of the second and third generation, artificially arranged the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers.
15. Until the time the canon was defined and constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections. Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ.
16. The narrations of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical truth concerning the mystery of salvation.
17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth the work and glory of the Word lncarnate.
18. John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the Church at the close of the first century.
19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
20. Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.
23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church's dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
24. The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves .
25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities .
26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.
27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. It is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the notion of the Messias.
28. While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias, nor did His miracles tend to prove it.
29. It is permissible to grant that the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith.
30 In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God'' is equivalent only to that of "Messias." It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God.
31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John, and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience conceived concerning Jesus.
32. It is impossible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
33 Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things to His disciples and posterity.
35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts.
37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is Pauline and not evangelical.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity .
40. The Sacraments have their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The Sacraments are intended merely to recall to man's mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the obligation of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism and Penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (I Cor. 11:23-25) is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained'' (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say.
48. In his Epistle (Ch. 5:14-15) James did not intend to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the Sacraments.
49. When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character.
50. The elders who fulfilled the office of watching over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide for the necessary ordering of the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation of the Apostolic mission and power.
51. It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony should be held as a Sacrament.
52. It was far from the mind of Christ to found a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long course
of centuries. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come immediately.
53. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution.
54. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.
55. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him.
56. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
61. It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic and the theologian.
62. The chief articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first ages as they have for the Christians of our time.
63. The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.
The following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month and year, all these matters were accurately reported to our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius X. His Holiness approved and confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers and ordered that each and every one of the above-listed propositions be held by all as condemned and proscribed.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS X
ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops
and other Local Ordinaries in Peace
and Communion with the Apostolic See.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock has especially this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body; for, owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking "men speaking perverse things" (Acts xx. 30), "vain talkers and seducers" (Tit. i. 10), "erring and driving into error" (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be confessed that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ's kingdom itself. Wherefore We may no longer be silent, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be attributed to forgetfulness of Our office. MORE...
NOTE:
I strongly encourage everyone to read the entire encyclical. It is simply amazing how applicable it is to our own time in which neo-modernist progressives (read heretics) have taken over the Roman Catholic Church and in its stead have placed the heterodox conciliar church with the Protestantized Novus Ordo Misae.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops
and other Local Ordinaries in Peace
and Communion with the Apostolic See.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock has especially this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body; for, owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking "men speaking perverse things" (Acts xx. 30), "vain talkers and seducers" (Tit. i. 10), "erring and driving into error" (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be confessed that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ's kingdom itself. Wherefore We may no longer be silent, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be attributed to forgetfulness of Our office. MORE...
NOTE:
I strongly encourage everyone to read the entire encyclical. It is simply amazing how applicable it is to our own time in which neo-modernist progressives (read heretics) have taken over the Roman Catholic Church and in its stead have placed the heterodox conciliar church with the Protestantized Novus Ordo Misae.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Monday, August 3, 2009
Fifty years on: time to revisit and reform the Second Vatican Catastrophe
By Gerald Warner
UK Telegraph, original HERE...
Jan. 2009
Benedict XVI grows in stature as his reign progresses. To the momentous achievement of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, freeing the Tridentine Mass, he has now added the sagacious and just lifting of the excommunications imposed on the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X.
Although there was widespread scepticism about the validity of those censures, their lifting removes a roadblock to the restoration of the Church after the damage wrought by the Second Vatican Catastrophe. Not everyone is happy about the pardoning of the bishops. The staff of The Tablet are rumoured to be on suicide watch, while the malign spirit of those who, without any conscious irony, denominate themselves “liberals” was well illustrated by Gianni Gennari, an Italian journalist.
Gennari is a laicized priest, now married. Fighting back tears, he responded to news of the lifting of the excommunications: “It is a tragedy, the complete debacle of the Church!… I am disappointed, stunned, scandalised… In this case there is no place for the mercy of Christ”… Of course not. The Modernists have always excluded from any kind of mercy those faithful Catholics who adhere unreservedly to the Deposit of Faith. Anything that reduces the likes of Gennari to tears has to be good news.
Over the past few days, some blinkeredly optimistic souls have been trying - without much real hope - to persuade Catholics to “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of the announcement of the Second Vatican Council. This was the great “renewal”, when the Holy Ghost inspired the Church to aggiornamento, or modernisation. What form has that Renewal taken?
In England and Wales in 1964, at the end of the Council, there were 137,673 Catholic baptisms; in 2003 the figure was 56,180. In 1964 there were 45,592 Catholic marriages, in 2003 there were 11,013. Mass attendance has fallen by 40 per cent. In “Holy” Ireland, only 48 per cent of so-called Catholics go to Mass. In France, there were 35,000 priests in 1980; today there are fewer than 19,000. Renewal?
In the United States, in 1965, there were 1,575 priestly ordinations; in 2002 there were 450 - a 350 per cent decline. In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians, in 2002 just 4,700. Today 15 per cent of US parishes are without priests. Only 25 per cent of America’s nominal Catholics attend Mass. Worse still is the erosion of faith among those who ludicrously describe themselves as Catholics. Among US Catholics aged 18-44 (the children of Vatican II) as many as 70 per cent say they believe the Eucharist is merely a “symbolic reminder” of Christ.
To describe this unprecedented collapse of the Church as “renewal” is insane; to attribute it to the operation of the Holy Ghost is blasphemous. The Catholic Church is in the same position as an alcoholic: until it admits to the problem, no cure is possible. The problem is Vatican II.
Pope Benedict himself has expressed reservations about at least one Council document. The only remotely celebratory response to the Council’s 50th anniversary would be to appoint a commission of orthodox theologians to scrutinise all of Vatican II’s documents and correct their errors. It is time to revisit and reform this council that has brought forth such poisonous fruits.
NOTE:
This piece is included primarily for the demographic/sociological data it contains on the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly agree with the author that to describe the collapse of the Church as a "renewal" is absurd. It remains to be seen if the Second Vatican Council can be radically corrected or totally abandoned.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
UK Telegraph, original HERE...
Jan. 2009
Benedict XVI grows in stature as his reign progresses. To the momentous achievement of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, freeing the Tridentine Mass, he has now added the sagacious and just lifting of the excommunications imposed on the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X.
Although there was widespread scepticism about the validity of those censures, their lifting removes a roadblock to the restoration of the Church after the damage wrought by the Second Vatican Catastrophe. Not everyone is happy about the pardoning of the bishops. The staff of The Tablet are rumoured to be on suicide watch, while the malign spirit of those who, without any conscious irony, denominate themselves “liberals” was well illustrated by Gianni Gennari, an Italian journalist.
Gennari is a laicized priest, now married. Fighting back tears, he responded to news of the lifting of the excommunications: “It is a tragedy, the complete debacle of the Church!… I am disappointed, stunned, scandalised… In this case there is no place for the mercy of Christ”… Of course not. The Modernists have always excluded from any kind of mercy those faithful Catholics who adhere unreservedly to the Deposit of Faith. Anything that reduces the likes of Gennari to tears has to be good news.
Over the past few days, some blinkeredly optimistic souls have been trying - without much real hope - to persuade Catholics to “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of the announcement of the Second Vatican Council. This was the great “renewal”, when the Holy Ghost inspired the Church to aggiornamento, or modernisation. What form has that Renewal taken?
In England and Wales in 1964, at the end of the Council, there were 137,673 Catholic baptisms; in 2003 the figure was 56,180. In 1964 there were 45,592 Catholic marriages, in 2003 there were 11,013. Mass attendance has fallen by 40 per cent. In “Holy” Ireland, only 48 per cent of so-called Catholics go to Mass. In France, there were 35,000 priests in 1980; today there are fewer than 19,000. Renewal?
In the United States, in 1965, there were 1,575 priestly ordinations; in 2002 there were 450 - a 350 per cent decline. In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians, in 2002 just 4,700. Today 15 per cent of US parishes are without priests. Only 25 per cent of America’s nominal Catholics attend Mass. Worse still is the erosion of faith among those who ludicrously describe themselves as Catholics. Among US Catholics aged 18-44 (the children of Vatican II) as many as 70 per cent say they believe the Eucharist is merely a “symbolic reminder” of Christ.
To describe this unprecedented collapse of the Church as “renewal” is insane; to attribute it to the operation of the Holy Ghost is blasphemous. The Catholic Church is in the same position as an alcoholic: until it admits to the problem, no cure is possible. The problem is Vatican II.
Pope Benedict himself has expressed reservations about at least one Council document. The only remotely celebratory response to the Council’s 50th anniversary would be to appoint a commission of orthodox theologians to scrutinise all of Vatican II’s documents and correct their errors. It is time to revisit and reform this council that has brought forth such poisonous fruits.
NOTE:
This piece is included primarily for the demographic/sociological data it contains on the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly agree with the author that to describe the collapse of the Church as a "renewal" is absurd. It remains to be seen if the Second Vatican Council can be radically corrected or totally abandoned.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Sedevacantist Logic and the SSPX Resistance
By: Stephen Hand
We all know a revolt from sacred tradition when we see it---and we decry it, calling on Rome to act, as Catholics have a right to expect from true shepherds. It is only over the implications that men differ, as they will in an unprecedented fog. In the interests of fostering an ongoing 'conversation' among traditional Catholics about the crisis in the Church since the Second Vatican Council, I highlight roughly the informative major points of convergence and divergence among traditional Catholics, believing that ultimately it will be only a restored Church which can and will judge between these positions one day. Until then, charity for, and between, us all.
MORE...
NOTE:
In an attempt to provide a more complete airing of the issues, the above piece by Stephen Hand has been added to the blog. Others, for example Hutton Gibson come to different conclusions about the implications. Interested readers may find further details of Mr. Gibson's views HERE...
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Six Marks of the Novus Ordo Mass
Fr. Stephen Somerville
Tradition in Action, original HERE...
At the Good Friday trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" To this day, people are still wondering about truth, and where to find it. When St. John the Apostle wrote the introduction to this Gospel, he said to us, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word of God ... and (this) Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we (Apostles) saw his glory ... full of grace and truth. Jesus, the Word of God, is full of truth. We must constantly refer to Jesus to know the Truth.
In the very first prayer of the traditional Roman Canon of the Mass, we pray God the Father to bless our sacrifice which is offered for the whole Church, including all right-thinking believers and teachers of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
Thus in every Mass, we recall that Jesus is full of truth, and has given us a faith that makes us right-thinking believers. Let me remind you of one article of our Catholic Faith. This article or truth is spelled out in the Secret Prayer of a Sunday Mass after Pentecost. This truth is that God has enacted one perfect sacrifice, that of Jesus His Son, in place of all the victims that were sacrificed under the Old Testament before Christ. We pray God to receive this one perfect sacrifice and to sanctify it in order to help us all to attain salvation.
So, briefly: Jesus, full of truth, has given us a right-thinking Faith that says the Mass is a perfect sacrifice of Jesus' very Body and Blood, that replaces all the Old Testament sacrifices.
It is sad that the Protestants do not accept this notion that the Mass is a true, though bloodless, sacrifice of the real Body and Blood of Christ. For Protestants, the Eucharist is merely a religious meal that is a symbol and memorial of the Last Supper of Jesus. It is not a true victim-sacrifice offered by an actual priest. This contradiction of our Catholic faith means that we cannot expect Protestants to be right-thinking believers, even though we may pray for their conversion. What is more, you know that there are other notions or articles of the Catholic Faith that Protestants do not accept. Examples are the Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Holy Mary, and the Infallibility of the Pope.
But let us return to the Mass. In 1969, Max Thurian, an important protestant theologian, who helped found the ecumenical Taizé community in France, made this statement: "It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics." (1) Protestants offering the same Mass as Catholics? How is this possible? How can we all be right-thinking believers?
To answer these questions, remember that the Liturgy Commission set up by the Paul VI in early 1964 was mandated to prepare a reform of the Mass and all the other liturgy services of the Catholic Church. This commission, called Consilium, did in fact reform the Mass, quite promptly, and the Pope did approve and promulgate this new order or novus ordo of Mass on April 3, 1969. We have the English version of this new Mass that is used in Catholic churches thenceforth around the world. It is quite different in many respects from the Tridentine Latin Mass. How should right-thinking Catholic believers evaluate this new Mass of Vatican II? What should we, as Catholics, think of the novus ordo Mass?
To answer this serious question, let us briefly describe the new Mass in the language of expert theologians and liturgists.
First, they describe it as ecumenical. This means designed to foster unity and agreement with non-Catholic beliefs. Thus it becomes important to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative." One must emphasize what we believe in common, and tone down the beliefs we do not share. The new Mass has changed many prayers, especially the Collects, to speak less of Hell, less of eternal punishment, less of the world as the enemy of God, less of the need to fast, and so on.
The novus ordo Mass is next described as antiquarian. This means emphasizing the alleged early, original features of the Mass in the time of the Fathers, that is, the first four to six centuries of the History of the Church. It means recovering supposed early simplicity of worship, and other primitive qualities. It means diminishing or removing the enrichments of the Catholic Mass that were developed in medieval, baroque, and post-reformation times. It means a more austere, more bare-bones and elemental kind of worship.
Some of these simplifications include less bows or genuflections by the priest, shorter prayers, less use of bells and incense, less feasts of saints, less statues and holy water, and so forth. This then is the antiquarian aspect of the new liturgy.
The third quality is to be community-based. Now the community is the horizontal dimension, that is, around us. The alternative is the vertical dimension, that is, above us. It means pointing to God, to heaven, to the angels. The novus ordo tends to emphasize the community more than God, here more than hereafter, goodness in human society rather than in the mystical body of Christ. Notice that new churches, that is, mass buildings, are wider and lower, with little or no tower that points up. Notice the big entrance lobby for people to meet and chat, horizontally, rather than to pray to Heaven, vertically. Notice the new sign of peace, when the congregation has a surge of hand-shaking. The new Mass, then, is community-based.
The next quality is that of a democratic church. This means literally government by the people, rather than by priests and Bishops and Pope, which is hierarchic, not democratic. It means that the Mass should be led not just by the priest, but by many lectors or readers taking turns, by many communion ministers, including women and even teenagers, by many ushers or so-called ministers of hospitality, and above all by a parish liturgy committee that decides the style and structure of the various Masses. The cantor or song leader is another player on the team of the democratic liturgy.
A fifth trait of novus ordo is to be desacralized. This means rendered less sacred. It means signs of reverence or mystery, of transcendence or heaven should be reduced to a minimum or removed. Some of these eliminations in the Mass were mentioned earlier, under the antiquarian quality of keeping the gestures of only the early age of the Church.
Other trimmings of the sacred: we see in no more communion railing, no more Latin language, simpler less ornate vestments, and in priests who do not even wear some of the proper vestments, but remain more casual. Many priests no longer wear clerical attire even outside the Mass. They celebrate Mass facing the people, not God. They act more as a chairman or president of a meeting, rather than as a sacred minister before God. This is the desacralized liturgy.
The sixth and last adjective to describe the Vatican II Mass is Protestantized, that is, harmonized more with Protestant views and practices. This is a theological area, that is, it touches on what we are taught and do believe about God, the Sacraments, the Church and so forth. Because of the ecumenical urge, and also the urge of the Modernist heresy, the designers of the new liturgy have certainly made Catholic worship more Protestant in tone and content. We could call this quality deviance, because liturgists are deviating from traditional Catholic belief. Here are some specific examples:
A doctrine that is toned down is that of the real presence, the reality of Our Lord’s Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine. Thus the Tabernacle is off in a corner or even in a separate room out of sight. One receives Communion not kneeling and on the tongue, but standing and in the hand. One must fast not three hours or from midnight, but only one hour. The word transubstantiation is omitted from documents on the Mass.
The practice and doctrine of Confession, almost unknown among Protestants, is surviving less and less among Catholics, and the risk of sacrilegious communions is now chronic, that is, Holy Communions received in the state of mortal sin or without prior absolution by the priest.
The ministerial role of the priest is much diminished as mentioned in the democratic emphasis in the new Mass. The priest is actually a man chosen apart and made sacred for a holy task of offering worship and sacrifice, even if only few faithful are present.
But the new concept of priest is more that of a functionary, an elected or appointed official, a president or master of ceremonies, even sometimes an entertainer. No wonder there are few young men today answering the call to such an uninspiring, humanist kind of priest.
We already noted that the sacrificial character of the Mass has been largely lost. The Mass is merely a "sacrifice of praise" now, an offering of holy words to God. One quality of true sacrifice is to be propitiatory, that is, appeasing God's anger over our sins. If we believe that God is too kind and loving to demand atonement for sin, or if we believe that God is too magnificent to be offended by our puny sins, then we have lost the Catholic Faith, and, in this case, a propitiatory sacrifice would make no sense.
These are the six qualities of the new order of the Mass: ecumenical, antiquarian, community-based, democratic, desacralized, and Protestantized. By contrast with Catholic tradition up to Vatican II, it features numerous changes, reversals, and opposites, and it is hardly a Mass for right-thinking believers. It makes us understand why a strong and holy movement to preserve and restore the traditional Latin Catholic Mass sprang up after Vatican Council II.
I hope the reader will follow up this short meditation by prayer and study, so that we all become or remain right-thinking believers, and faithful disciples of traditional, Catholic Truth.
Notes:
1. D. Bonneterre, The Liturgical Movement, p.100. To this writer the present article also owes the schema of six marks of the new Mass.
Tradition in Action, original HERE...
At the Good Friday trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" To this day, people are still wondering about truth, and where to find it. When St. John the Apostle wrote the introduction to this Gospel, he said to us, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word of God ... and (this) Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we (Apostles) saw his glory ... full of grace and truth. Jesus, the Word of God, is full of truth. We must constantly refer to Jesus to know the Truth.
In the very first prayer of the traditional Roman Canon of the Mass, we pray God the Father to bless our sacrifice which is offered for the whole Church, including all right-thinking believers and teachers of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
Thus in every Mass, we recall that Jesus is full of truth, and has given us a faith that makes us right-thinking believers. Let me remind you of one article of our Catholic Faith. This article or truth is spelled out in the Secret Prayer of a Sunday Mass after Pentecost. This truth is that God has enacted one perfect sacrifice, that of Jesus His Son, in place of all the victims that were sacrificed under the Old Testament before Christ. We pray God to receive this one perfect sacrifice and to sanctify it in order to help us all to attain salvation.
So, briefly: Jesus, full of truth, has given us a right-thinking Faith that says the Mass is a perfect sacrifice of Jesus' very Body and Blood, that replaces all the Old Testament sacrifices.
It is sad that the Protestants do not accept this notion that the Mass is a true, though bloodless, sacrifice of the real Body and Blood of Christ. For Protestants, the Eucharist is merely a religious meal that is a symbol and memorial of the Last Supper of Jesus. It is not a true victim-sacrifice offered by an actual priest. This contradiction of our Catholic faith means that we cannot expect Protestants to be right-thinking believers, even though we may pray for their conversion. What is more, you know that there are other notions or articles of the Catholic Faith that Protestants do not accept. Examples are the Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Holy Mary, and the Infallibility of the Pope.
But let us return to the Mass. In 1969, Max Thurian, an important protestant theologian, who helped found the ecumenical Taizé community in France, made this statement: "It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics." (1) Protestants offering the same Mass as Catholics? How is this possible? How can we all be right-thinking believers?
To answer these questions, remember that the Liturgy Commission set up by the Paul VI in early 1964 was mandated to prepare a reform of the Mass and all the other liturgy services of the Catholic Church. This commission, called Consilium, did in fact reform the Mass, quite promptly, and the Pope did approve and promulgate this new order or novus ordo of Mass on April 3, 1969. We have the English version of this new Mass that is used in Catholic churches thenceforth around the world. It is quite different in many respects from the Tridentine Latin Mass. How should right-thinking Catholic believers evaluate this new Mass of Vatican II? What should we, as Catholics, think of the novus ordo Mass?
To answer this serious question, let us briefly describe the new Mass in the language of expert theologians and liturgists.
First, they describe it as ecumenical. This means designed to foster unity and agreement with non-Catholic beliefs. Thus it becomes important to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative." One must emphasize what we believe in common, and tone down the beliefs we do not share. The new Mass has changed many prayers, especially the Collects, to speak less of Hell, less of eternal punishment, less of the world as the enemy of God, less of the need to fast, and so on.
The novus ordo Mass is next described as antiquarian. This means emphasizing the alleged early, original features of the Mass in the time of the Fathers, that is, the first four to six centuries of the History of the Church. It means recovering supposed early simplicity of worship, and other primitive qualities. It means diminishing or removing the enrichments of the Catholic Mass that were developed in medieval, baroque, and post-reformation times. It means a more austere, more bare-bones and elemental kind of worship.
Some of these simplifications include less bows or genuflections by the priest, shorter prayers, less use of bells and incense, less feasts of saints, less statues and holy water, and so forth. This then is the antiquarian aspect of the new liturgy.
The third quality is to be community-based. Now the community is the horizontal dimension, that is, around us. The alternative is the vertical dimension, that is, above us. It means pointing to God, to heaven, to the angels. The novus ordo tends to emphasize the community more than God, here more than hereafter, goodness in human society rather than in the mystical body of Christ. Notice that new churches, that is, mass buildings, are wider and lower, with little or no tower that points up. Notice the big entrance lobby for people to meet and chat, horizontally, rather than to pray to Heaven, vertically. Notice the new sign of peace, when the congregation has a surge of hand-shaking. The new Mass, then, is community-based.
The next quality is that of a democratic church. This means literally government by the people, rather than by priests and Bishops and Pope, which is hierarchic, not democratic. It means that the Mass should be led not just by the priest, but by many lectors or readers taking turns, by many communion ministers, including women and even teenagers, by many ushers or so-called ministers of hospitality, and above all by a parish liturgy committee that decides the style and structure of the various Masses. The cantor or song leader is another player on the team of the democratic liturgy.
A fifth trait of novus ordo is to be desacralized. This means rendered less sacred. It means signs of reverence or mystery, of transcendence or heaven should be reduced to a minimum or removed. Some of these eliminations in the Mass were mentioned earlier, under the antiquarian quality of keeping the gestures of only the early age of the Church.
Other trimmings of the sacred: we see in no more communion railing, no more Latin language, simpler less ornate vestments, and in priests who do not even wear some of the proper vestments, but remain more casual. Many priests no longer wear clerical attire even outside the Mass. They celebrate Mass facing the people, not God. They act more as a chairman or president of a meeting, rather than as a sacred minister before God. This is the desacralized liturgy.
The sixth and last adjective to describe the Vatican II Mass is Protestantized, that is, harmonized more with Protestant views and practices. This is a theological area, that is, it touches on what we are taught and do believe about God, the Sacraments, the Church and so forth. Because of the ecumenical urge, and also the urge of the Modernist heresy, the designers of the new liturgy have certainly made Catholic worship more Protestant in tone and content. We could call this quality deviance, because liturgists are deviating from traditional Catholic belief. Here are some specific examples:
A doctrine that is toned down is that of the real presence, the reality of Our Lord’s Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine. Thus the Tabernacle is off in a corner or even in a separate room out of sight. One receives Communion not kneeling and on the tongue, but standing and in the hand. One must fast not three hours or from midnight, but only one hour. The word transubstantiation is omitted from documents on the Mass.
The practice and doctrine of Confession, almost unknown among Protestants, is surviving less and less among Catholics, and the risk of sacrilegious communions is now chronic, that is, Holy Communions received in the state of mortal sin or without prior absolution by the priest.
The ministerial role of the priest is much diminished as mentioned in the democratic emphasis in the new Mass. The priest is actually a man chosen apart and made sacred for a holy task of offering worship and sacrifice, even if only few faithful are present.
But the new concept of priest is more that of a functionary, an elected or appointed official, a president or master of ceremonies, even sometimes an entertainer. No wonder there are few young men today answering the call to such an uninspiring, humanist kind of priest.
We already noted that the sacrificial character of the Mass has been largely lost. The Mass is merely a "sacrifice of praise" now, an offering of holy words to God. One quality of true sacrifice is to be propitiatory, that is, appeasing God's anger over our sins. If we believe that God is too kind and loving to demand atonement for sin, or if we believe that God is too magnificent to be offended by our puny sins, then we have lost the Catholic Faith, and, in this case, a propitiatory sacrifice would make no sense.
These are the six qualities of the new order of the Mass: ecumenical, antiquarian, community-based, democratic, desacralized, and Protestantized. By contrast with Catholic tradition up to Vatican II, it features numerous changes, reversals, and opposites, and it is hardly a Mass for right-thinking believers. It makes us understand why a strong and holy movement to preserve and restore the traditional Latin Catholic Mass sprang up after Vatican Council II.
I hope the reader will follow up this short meditation by prayer and study, so that we all become or remain right-thinking believers, and faithful disciples of traditional, Catholic Truth.
Notes:
1. D. Bonneterre, The Liturgical Movement, p.100. To this writer the present article also owes the schema of six marks of the new Mass.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Catechism of the Council of Trent on Sexual Sins
NOTE:
For those of us who came of age in the Conciliar church this section on the sixth commandment from the Catechism of the Council of Trent is simply flabergasting. Yet, it represents the 2000 year old teaching of the Catholic Church. Our shock is the result of a virtual Conciliar abandonment of Traditional Roman Catholic moral teaching.
Contemporary immorality in this area amply demonstrates just how prescient was the Roman Catholic Catechism of the Council of Trent and how in need we are of conforming ourselves to its teaching. Empirical evidence abounds on how disastrous are the individual and social/communal consequences of breaking the letter and spirit of the sixth commandment. The positive steps outlined below to be taken in avoidance of violating the strictures of the sixth commandment of the Decalogue are extremely practical and of great help.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT: "Thou shalt not commit adultery"
The Position Of This Commandment In The Decalogue Is Most Suitable
The bond between man and wife is one of the closest, and nothing can be more gratifying to both than to know that they are objects of mutual and special affection. On the other hand, nothing inflicts deeper anguish than to feel that the legitimate love which one owes the other has been transferred elsewhere. Rightly, then, and in its natural order, is the Commandment which protects human life against the hand of the murderer, followed by that which forbids adultery and which aims to prevent anyone from injuring or destroying by such a crime the holy and honourable union of marriage a union which is generally the source of ardent affection and love.
Importance Of Careful Instruction On This Commandment
In the explanation of this Commandment, however, the pastor has need of great caution and prudence, and should treat with great delicacy a subject which requires brevity rather than copiousness of exposition. For it is to be feared that if he explained in too great detail or at length the ways in which this Commandment is violated, he might unintentionally speak of subjects which, instead of extinguishing, usually serve rather to inflame corrupt passion.
As, however, the precept contains many things which cannot be passed over in silence, the pastor should explain them in their proper order and place.
Two Parts Of This Commandment
This Commandment, then, resolves itself into two heads; the one expressed, which prohibits adultery; the other implied, which inculcates purity of mind and body.
What this Commandment Prohibits
Adultery Forbidden
To begin with the prohibitory part (of the Commandment), adultery is the defilement of the marriage bed, whether it be one's own or another's. If a married man have intercourse with an unmarried woman, he violates the integrity of his marriage bed; and if an unmarried man have intercourse with a married woman, he defiles the sanctity of the marriage bed of another.
Other Sins Against Chastity Are Forbidden
But that every species of immodesty and impurity are included in this prohibition of adultery, is proved by the testimonies of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose; and that such is the meaning of the Commandment is borne out by the Old, as well as the New Testament. In the writings of Moses, besides adultery, other sins against chastity are said to have been punished. Thus the book of Genesis records the judgment of Judah against his daughter-in-law. In Deuteronomy is found the excellent law of Moses, that there should be no harlot amongst the daughters of Israel. Take heed to keep thyself, my son, from all fornication, is the exhortation of Tobias to his son; and in Ecclesiasticus we read: Be ashamed of looking upon a harlot.
In the Gospel, too, Christ the Lord says: From the heart come forth adulteries and fornications, which defile a man. The Apostle Paul expresses his detestation of this crime frequently, and in the strongest terms: This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication; Fly fornication; Keep not company with fornicators; Fornication, and an uncleanness and covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you; " Neither fornicators nor adulterers, nor the effeminate nor sodomites shall possess the kingdom of God.
Why Adultery Is Expressly Mentioned
But the reason why adultery is expressly forbidden is because in addition to the turpitude which it shares with other kinds of incontinence, it adds the sin of injustice, not only against our neighbour, but also against civil society.
Again it is certain that he who abstains not from other sins against chastity, will easily fall into the crime of adultery. By the prohibition of adultery, therefore, we at once see that every sort of immodesty and impurity by which the body is defiled is prohibited. Nay, that every inward thought against chastity is forbidden by this Commandment is clear, as well from the very force of the law, which is evidently spiritual, as also from these words of Christ the Lord: You have heard that it was said to them of old: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.
These are the points which we have deemed proper matter for public instruction of the faithful. The pastor, however, should add the decrees of the Council of Trent against adulterers, and those who keep harlots and concubines, omitting many other species of immodesty and lust, of which each individual is to be admonished privately, as circumstances of time and person may require.
What this Commandment Prescribes
Purity Enjoined
We now come to explain the positive part of the precept. The faithful are to be taught and earnestly exhorted to cultivate continence and chastity with all care, to cleanse themselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.
First of all they should be taught that although the virtue of chastity shines with a brighter lustre in those who make the holy and religious vow of virginity, nevertheless it is a virtue which belongs also to those who lead a life of celibacy; or who, in the married state, preserve themselves pure and undefiled from unlawful desire.
Reflections which Help one to Practice Purity
The holy Fathers have taught us many means whereby to subdue the passions and to restrain sinful pleasure. The pastor, therefore, should make it his study to explain these accurately to the faithful, and should use the utmost diligence in their exposition. Of these means some are reflections, others are active measures.
Impurity Excludes From Heaven
The first kind consists chiefly in our forming a just conception of the filthiness and evil of this sin; for such knowledge will lead one more easily to detest it. Now the evil of this crime we may learn from the fact that, on account of it, man is banished and excluded from the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all evils.
Impurity Is A Filthy Sin
The abovementioned calamity is indeed common to every mortal sin. But what is peculiar to this sin is that fornicators are said to sin against their own bodies, according to the words of the Apostle: Fly fornication. Everysin that a man doth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body. The reason is that such a one does an injury to his own body violating its sanctity. Hence St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says: This is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God.
Furthermore, what is still more criminal, the Christian who shamefully sins with a harlot makes the members of Christ the members of an harlot, according to these words of St. Paul: Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. Or know you not, that he who is joined to a harlot is made one body? Moreover, a Christian, as St. Paul testifies is the temple of the Holy Ghost ; and to violate this temple is nothing else than to expel the Holy Ghost.
Adultery Is A Grave Injustice
But the crime of adultery involves that of grievous injustice. If, as the Apostle says, they who are joined in wedlock are so subject to each other that neither has power or right over his or her body, but both are bound, as it were, by a mutual bond of subjection, the husband to accommodate himself to the will of the wife, the wife to the will of the husband; most certainly if either dissociate his or her person, which is the right of the other, from him or her to whom it is bound, the offender is guilty of an act of great injustice and wickedness.
Adultery Is Disgraceful
As dread of disgrace strongly stimulates to the performance of duty and deters from the commission of crime, the pastor should also teach that adultery brands its guilty perpetrators with an unusual stigma. He that is an adulterer, says Scripture, for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul: he gathereth to himself shame and dishonour, and his reproach shall not be blotted out.
Impurity Severely Punished
The grievousness of the sin of adultery may be easily inferred from the severity of its punishment. According to the law promulgated by God in the Old Testament, the adulterer was stoned to death. Nay more, because of the criminal passion of one man, not only the perpetrator of the crime, but a whole city was destroyed, as we read with regard to the Sichemites. The Sacred Scriptures abound with examples of the divine vengeance, such as the destruction of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities,' the punishment of the Israelites who committed fornication in the wilderness with the daughters of Moab, and the slaughter of the Benjamites. These examples the pastor can easily make use of to deter men from shameful lust.
Impurity Blinds The Mind And Hardens The Heart
But even though the adulterer may escape the punishment of death, he does not escape the great pains and torments that often overtake such sins as his. He becomes afflicted with blindness of mind a most severe punishment; he is lost to all regard for God, for reputation, for honour, for family, and even for life; and thus, utterly abandoned and worthless, he is undeserving of confidence in any matter of moment, and becomes unfitted to discharge any kind of duty.
Of this we find examples in the persons of David and of Solomon. David had no sooner fallen into the crime of adultery than he degenerated into a character the very reverse of what he had been before; from the mildest of men he became so cruel as to consign to death Urias, one of his most deserving subjects. Solomon, having abandoned himself to the lust of women, gave up the true religion to follow strange gods. This sin, therefore, as Osee observes, takes away man's heart and often blinds his understanding.
Means of practicing purity
Avoidance Of Idleness
We now come to the remedies which consist in action. The first is studiously to avoid idleness; for, according to Ezechiel, it was by yielding to the enervating influence of idleness that the Sodomites plunged into the most shameful crime of criminal lust.
Temperance
In the next place, intemperance is carefully to be avoided. I fed them to the full, says the Prophet, and they committed adultery. An overloaded stomach begets impurity. This our Lord intimates in these words: Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness. Be not drunk with wine, says the Apostle, wherein is luxury.
Custody Of The Eyes
But the eyes, in particular, are the inlets to criminal passion, and to this refer these words of our Lord: If thine eye scandalise thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. The Prophets, also, frequently speak to the same effect. I made a covenant with mine eyes, says Job, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin. Finally, there are on record innumerable examples of the evils which have their origin in the indulgence of the eyes. It was thus that David sinned, thus that the king of Sichem fell, and thus also that the elders sinned who calumniated Susanna.
Avoidance Of Immodest Dress
Too much display in dress, which especially attracts the eye, is but too frequently an occasion of sin. Hence the admonition of Ecclesiasticus: Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up. As women are given to excessive fondness for dress, it will not be unseasonable in the pastor to give some attention to the subject, and sometimes to admonish and reprove them in the impressive words of the Apostle Peter: Whose adorning let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel. St. Paul likewise says: Not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire. Many women adorned with gold and precious stones, have lost the only true ornament of their soul and body.
Avoidance Of Impure Conversation, Reading, Pictures
Next to the sexual excitement, usually provoked by too studied an elegance of dress, follows another, which is indecent and obscene conversation. Obscene language is a torch which lights up the worst passions of the young mind; and the Apostle has said, that evil communications corrupt good manners. Immodest and passionate songs and dances are most productive of this same effect and are, therefore, cautiously to be avoided.
In the same class are to be numbered soft and obscene books which must be avoided no less than indecent pictures. All such things possess a fatal influence in exciting to unlawful attractions, and in inflaming the mind of youth. In these matters the pastor should take special pains to see that the faithful most carefully observe the pious and prudent regulations of the Council of Trent.
Frequentation Of The Sacraments
If the occasions of sin which we have just enumerated be carefully avoided, almost every excitement to lust will be removed. But the most efficacious means for subduing its violence are frequent use of confession and Communion, as also unceasing and devout prayer to God, accompanied by fasting and almsdeeds. Chastity is a gift of God. To those who ask it aright He does not deny it; nor does He suffer us to be tempted beyond our strength.
Mortification
But the body is to be mortified and the sensual appetites to be repressed not only by fasting, and particularly, by the fasts instituted by the Church, but also by watching, pious pilgrimages, and other works of austerity. By these and similar observances is the virtue of temperance chiefly manifested. In connection with this subject, St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: Every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. A little after he says: I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. And in another place he says: Make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscence.
For those of us who came of age in the Conciliar church this section on the sixth commandment from the Catechism of the Council of Trent is simply flabergasting. Yet, it represents the 2000 year old teaching of the Catholic Church. Our shock is the result of a virtual Conciliar abandonment of Traditional Roman Catholic moral teaching.
Contemporary immorality in this area amply demonstrates just how prescient was the Roman Catholic Catechism of the Council of Trent and how in need we are of conforming ourselves to its teaching. Empirical evidence abounds on how disastrous are the individual and social/communal consequences of breaking the letter and spirit of the sixth commandment. The positive steps outlined below to be taken in avoidance of violating the strictures of the sixth commandment of the Decalogue are extremely practical and of great help.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT: "Thou shalt not commit adultery"
The Position Of This Commandment In The Decalogue Is Most Suitable
The bond between man and wife is one of the closest, and nothing can be more gratifying to both than to know that they are objects of mutual and special affection. On the other hand, nothing inflicts deeper anguish than to feel that the legitimate love which one owes the other has been transferred elsewhere. Rightly, then, and in its natural order, is the Commandment which protects human life against the hand of the murderer, followed by that which forbids adultery and which aims to prevent anyone from injuring or destroying by such a crime the holy and honourable union of marriage a union which is generally the source of ardent affection and love.
Importance Of Careful Instruction On This Commandment
In the explanation of this Commandment, however, the pastor has need of great caution and prudence, and should treat with great delicacy a subject which requires brevity rather than copiousness of exposition. For it is to be feared that if he explained in too great detail or at length the ways in which this Commandment is violated, he might unintentionally speak of subjects which, instead of extinguishing, usually serve rather to inflame corrupt passion.
As, however, the precept contains many things which cannot be passed over in silence, the pastor should explain them in their proper order and place.
Two Parts Of This Commandment
This Commandment, then, resolves itself into two heads; the one expressed, which prohibits adultery; the other implied, which inculcates purity of mind and body.
What this Commandment Prohibits
Adultery Forbidden
To begin with the prohibitory part (of the Commandment), adultery is the defilement of the marriage bed, whether it be one's own or another's. If a married man have intercourse with an unmarried woman, he violates the integrity of his marriage bed; and if an unmarried man have intercourse with a married woman, he defiles the sanctity of the marriage bed of another.
Other Sins Against Chastity Are Forbidden
But that every species of immodesty and impurity are included in this prohibition of adultery, is proved by the testimonies of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose; and that such is the meaning of the Commandment is borne out by the Old, as well as the New Testament. In the writings of Moses, besides adultery, other sins against chastity are said to have been punished. Thus the book of Genesis records the judgment of Judah against his daughter-in-law. In Deuteronomy is found the excellent law of Moses, that there should be no harlot amongst the daughters of Israel. Take heed to keep thyself, my son, from all fornication, is the exhortation of Tobias to his son; and in Ecclesiasticus we read: Be ashamed of looking upon a harlot.
In the Gospel, too, Christ the Lord says: From the heart come forth adulteries and fornications, which defile a man. The Apostle Paul expresses his detestation of this crime frequently, and in the strongest terms: This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication; Fly fornication; Keep not company with fornicators; Fornication, and an uncleanness and covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you; " Neither fornicators nor adulterers, nor the effeminate nor sodomites shall possess the kingdom of God.
Why Adultery Is Expressly Mentioned
But the reason why adultery is expressly forbidden is because in addition to the turpitude which it shares with other kinds of incontinence, it adds the sin of injustice, not only against our neighbour, but also against civil society.
Again it is certain that he who abstains not from other sins against chastity, will easily fall into the crime of adultery. By the prohibition of adultery, therefore, we at once see that every sort of immodesty and impurity by which the body is defiled is prohibited. Nay, that every inward thought against chastity is forbidden by this Commandment is clear, as well from the very force of the law, which is evidently spiritual, as also from these words of Christ the Lord: You have heard that it was said to them of old: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.
These are the points which we have deemed proper matter for public instruction of the faithful. The pastor, however, should add the decrees of the Council of Trent against adulterers, and those who keep harlots and concubines, omitting many other species of immodesty and lust, of which each individual is to be admonished privately, as circumstances of time and person may require.
What this Commandment Prescribes
Purity Enjoined
We now come to explain the positive part of the precept. The faithful are to be taught and earnestly exhorted to cultivate continence and chastity with all care, to cleanse themselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.
First of all they should be taught that although the virtue of chastity shines with a brighter lustre in those who make the holy and religious vow of virginity, nevertheless it is a virtue which belongs also to those who lead a life of celibacy; or who, in the married state, preserve themselves pure and undefiled from unlawful desire.
Reflections which Help one to Practice Purity
The holy Fathers have taught us many means whereby to subdue the passions and to restrain sinful pleasure. The pastor, therefore, should make it his study to explain these accurately to the faithful, and should use the utmost diligence in their exposition. Of these means some are reflections, others are active measures.
Impurity Excludes From Heaven
The first kind consists chiefly in our forming a just conception of the filthiness and evil of this sin; for such knowledge will lead one more easily to detest it. Now the evil of this crime we may learn from the fact that, on account of it, man is banished and excluded from the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all evils.
Impurity Is A Filthy Sin
The abovementioned calamity is indeed common to every mortal sin. But what is peculiar to this sin is that fornicators are said to sin against their own bodies, according to the words of the Apostle: Fly fornication. Everysin that a man doth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body. The reason is that such a one does an injury to his own body violating its sanctity. Hence St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says: This is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God.
Furthermore, what is still more criminal, the Christian who shamefully sins with a harlot makes the members of Christ the members of an harlot, according to these words of St. Paul: Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. Or know you not, that he who is joined to a harlot is made one body? Moreover, a Christian, as St. Paul testifies is the temple of the Holy Ghost ; and to violate this temple is nothing else than to expel the Holy Ghost.
Adultery Is A Grave Injustice
But the crime of adultery involves that of grievous injustice. If, as the Apostle says, they who are joined in wedlock are so subject to each other that neither has power or right over his or her body, but both are bound, as it were, by a mutual bond of subjection, the husband to accommodate himself to the will of the wife, the wife to the will of the husband; most certainly if either dissociate his or her person, which is the right of the other, from him or her to whom it is bound, the offender is guilty of an act of great injustice and wickedness.
Adultery Is Disgraceful
As dread of disgrace strongly stimulates to the performance of duty and deters from the commission of crime, the pastor should also teach that adultery brands its guilty perpetrators with an unusual stigma. He that is an adulterer, says Scripture, for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul: he gathereth to himself shame and dishonour, and his reproach shall not be blotted out.
Impurity Severely Punished
The grievousness of the sin of adultery may be easily inferred from the severity of its punishment. According to the law promulgated by God in the Old Testament, the adulterer was stoned to death. Nay more, because of the criminal passion of one man, not only the perpetrator of the crime, but a whole city was destroyed, as we read with regard to the Sichemites. The Sacred Scriptures abound with examples of the divine vengeance, such as the destruction of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities,' the punishment of the Israelites who committed fornication in the wilderness with the daughters of Moab, and the slaughter of the Benjamites. These examples the pastor can easily make use of to deter men from shameful lust.
Impurity Blinds The Mind And Hardens The Heart
But even though the adulterer may escape the punishment of death, he does not escape the great pains and torments that often overtake such sins as his. He becomes afflicted with blindness of mind a most severe punishment; he is lost to all regard for God, for reputation, for honour, for family, and even for life; and thus, utterly abandoned and worthless, he is undeserving of confidence in any matter of moment, and becomes unfitted to discharge any kind of duty.
Of this we find examples in the persons of David and of Solomon. David had no sooner fallen into the crime of adultery than he degenerated into a character the very reverse of what he had been before; from the mildest of men he became so cruel as to consign to death Urias, one of his most deserving subjects. Solomon, having abandoned himself to the lust of women, gave up the true religion to follow strange gods. This sin, therefore, as Osee observes, takes away man's heart and often blinds his understanding.
Means of practicing purity
Avoidance Of Idleness
We now come to the remedies which consist in action. The first is studiously to avoid idleness; for, according to Ezechiel, it was by yielding to the enervating influence of idleness that the Sodomites plunged into the most shameful crime of criminal lust.
Temperance
In the next place, intemperance is carefully to be avoided. I fed them to the full, says the Prophet, and they committed adultery. An overloaded stomach begets impurity. This our Lord intimates in these words: Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness. Be not drunk with wine, says the Apostle, wherein is luxury.
Custody Of The Eyes
But the eyes, in particular, are the inlets to criminal passion, and to this refer these words of our Lord: If thine eye scandalise thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. The Prophets, also, frequently speak to the same effect. I made a covenant with mine eyes, says Job, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin. Finally, there are on record innumerable examples of the evils which have their origin in the indulgence of the eyes. It was thus that David sinned, thus that the king of Sichem fell, and thus also that the elders sinned who calumniated Susanna.
Avoidance Of Immodest Dress
Too much display in dress, which especially attracts the eye, is but too frequently an occasion of sin. Hence the admonition of Ecclesiasticus: Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up. As women are given to excessive fondness for dress, it will not be unseasonable in the pastor to give some attention to the subject, and sometimes to admonish and reprove them in the impressive words of the Apostle Peter: Whose adorning let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel. St. Paul likewise says: Not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire. Many women adorned with gold and precious stones, have lost the only true ornament of their soul and body.
Avoidance Of Impure Conversation, Reading, Pictures
Next to the sexual excitement, usually provoked by too studied an elegance of dress, follows another, which is indecent and obscene conversation. Obscene language is a torch which lights up the worst passions of the young mind; and the Apostle has said, that evil communications corrupt good manners. Immodest and passionate songs and dances are most productive of this same effect and are, therefore, cautiously to be avoided.
In the same class are to be numbered soft and obscene books which must be avoided no less than indecent pictures. All such things possess a fatal influence in exciting to unlawful attractions, and in inflaming the mind of youth. In these matters the pastor should take special pains to see that the faithful most carefully observe the pious and prudent regulations of the Council of Trent.
Frequentation Of The Sacraments
If the occasions of sin which we have just enumerated be carefully avoided, almost every excitement to lust will be removed. But the most efficacious means for subduing its violence are frequent use of confession and Communion, as also unceasing and devout prayer to God, accompanied by fasting and almsdeeds. Chastity is a gift of God. To those who ask it aright He does not deny it; nor does He suffer us to be tempted beyond our strength.
Mortification
But the body is to be mortified and the sensual appetites to be repressed not only by fasting, and particularly, by the fasts instituted by the Church, but also by watching, pious pilgrimages, and other works of austerity. By these and similar observances is the virtue of temperance chiefly manifested. In connection with this subject, St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: Every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. A little after he says: I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. And in another place he says: Make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscence.
Conciliar "Church" Bears Responsibility for Growing Immorality
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
The ever increasing tendency among the states to normalize gay "marriage" represents a progressively deepening downward spiral in which traditional morality has been all but extinguished in the United States.
Over the course of the last four decades--which interestingly coincides perfectly with the end of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council that ended in 1965, the "golden rule" ethic as perennially taught in the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis has been effectively replaced by rank utilitarianism where virtually anything in the realm of human behavior can be justified. There no longer exist any moral absolutes (immutable moral norms) only temporary "values" reflected in choices which can be exercised by making use of sheer political/judicial power.
Regrettably it is now accurate to say that there is virtually no limit to what our society could eventually codify into law. In the past decade we have legitimized aggressive (preventive) war (a war crime by international agreement), torture of prisoners (another war crime), arbitrarily altered the time-honored definition of marriage in a way which is totally incompatible with the natural law and human anthropology and rendered increasingly larger segments of our population "expendable" because they are thought to possess lives which are unworthy of living.
In many respects it is the failure of the Catholic Church universal but particularly in the United States which is to blame for the despicable state we now find ourselves in. Had the Traditional faith and morals of the Catholic Church not been so radically altered in the wake of Vatican II, it would no doubt have been much more difficult for the entire moral fabric to have unwoven so readily in the US.
For example, no-fault divorce laws would have been much harder to pass and no doubt far fewer divorces would have been requested. Heterosexual pre and extra-marital sexual relations would likely have been much less frequent as well. Prior to Vatican II, homosexuality was greatly frowned upon among Catholics as being gravely sinful and incompatible with the natural law. It was considered a perverse disorder which was inherently anti-life; to be avoided in the interest of complying with God's will and the common good of society.
Pre-Vatican II, the Catholic Church openly and proudly taught that artificial contraception by a married man and woman was immoral because it separated the generative from the unitive parts of human sexuality--of course, non-married persons were not to be sexually active at all. The generative and unitive functions of marriage according to Catholic teaching were never to be artificially disjoined/separated meaning; that the couple was not to purposely impede the possibility of generating a child in the process of having sexual intercourse. Since there can never be any anatomic, physiologic or behavioral complimentarity between two individuals of the same sex, it is readily apparent that sexual activity of any kind between such persons cannot result naturally in the generation of a child. Therefore, according to Catholic teaching, it is morally wrong and always will be to engage in homosexual relations. While this may seem completely unbelievable to some, it is morally and rationally sound upon deeper reflection. This is in fact what well catechized Roman Catholics were taught and believed prior to Vatican II.
Prior to 1965 it would have been inconceivable for a Roman Catholic to imagine two persons of the same sex "marrying." It would have been recognized immediately as a non-starter. Their sexual incompatibility would have made such a thing preposterous--by definition. The fact that so many so-called "Catholics" now have no problem with same sex "marriage" is a testament to just how radically altered the post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church really is.
While the teaching against artificial contraception-- which was affirmed in Humani vitae as recently as 1968 has never been formally rescinded it is completely ignored by the vast majority of Catholics (practicing and lapsed). This is the truth and has been well documented by multiple sociological studies. As a result it is very difficult to object to homosexuality. Once the need to keep sexual intercourse (which should involve marriage partners only) open to the generation of life is abandoned, there is no logical basis on which to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Virtually any other combination of persons or even cross-species relations/"marriages" then become tenable and are simply a matter of taste!
The fact that close to 50% of Roman Catholic priests among those less than 60 years of age in the US are reported to be homosexual is of great interest given the views of many "Catholics" on sexuality and same-sex "marriage" and the greater public at-large. The Catholic Church has ceased to restrain the aberrant sexual proclivities of people due in large part to the fact that its clergy engage in many of them. If and until this horrendous problem is resolved in the Catholic priesthood, it is unlikely that the constant movement toward more and more bizarre sexual practices and living arrangements in this country will be halted or reversed. Since Traditional Roman Catholicism is essentially dead in the United States, that eventuality appears highly improbable.
The ever increasing tendency among the states to normalize gay "marriage" represents a progressively deepening downward spiral in which traditional morality has been all but extinguished in the United States.
Over the course of the last four decades--which interestingly coincides perfectly with the end of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council that ended in 1965, the "golden rule" ethic as perennially taught in the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis has been effectively replaced by rank utilitarianism where virtually anything in the realm of human behavior can be justified. There no longer exist any moral absolutes (immutable moral norms) only temporary "values" reflected in choices which can be exercised by making use of sheer political/judicial power.
Regrettably it is now accurate to say that there is virtually no limit to what our society could eventually codify into law. In the past decade we have legitimized aggressive (preventive) war (a war crime by international agreement), torture of prisoners (another war crime), arbitrarily altered the time-honored definition of marriage in a way which is totally incompatible with the natural law and human anthropology and rendered increasingly larger segments of our population "expendable" because they are thought to possess lives which are unworthy of living.
In many respects it is the failure of the Catholic Church universal but particularly in the United States which is to blame for the despicable state we now find ourselves in. Had the Traditional faith and morals of the Catholic Church not been so radically altered in the wake of Vatican II, it would no doubt have been much more difficult for the entire moral fabric to have unwoven so readily in the US.
For example, no-fault divorce laws would have been much harder to pass and no doubt far fewer divorces would have been requested. Heterosexual pre and extra-marital sexual relations would likely have been much less frequent as well. Prior to Vatican II, homosexuality was greatly frowned upon among Catholics as being gravely sinful and incompatible with the natural law. It was considered a perverse disorder which was inherently anti-life; to be avoided in the interest of complying with God's will and the common good of society.
Pre-Vatican II, the Catholic Church openly and proudly taught that artificial contraception by a married man and woman was immoral because it separated the generative from the unitive parts of human sexuality--of course, non-married persons were not to be sexually active at all. The generative and unitive functions of marriage according to Catholic teaching were never to be artificially disjoined/separated meaning; that the couple was not to purposely impede the possibility of generating a child in the process of having sexual intercourse. Since there can never be any anatomic, physiologic or behavioral complimentarity between two individuals of the same sex, it is readily apparent that sexual activity of any kind between such persons cannot result naturally in the generation of a child. Therefore, according to Catholic teaching, it is morally wrong and always will be to engage in homosexual relations. While this may seem completely unbelievable to some, it is morally and rationally sound upon deeper reflection. This is in fact what well catechized Roman Catholics were taught and believed prior to Vatican II.
Prior to 1965 it would have been inconceivable for a Roman Catholic to imagine two persons of the same sex "marrying." It would have been recognized immediately as a non-starter. Their sexual incompatibility would have made such a thing preposterous--by definition. The fact that so many so-called "Catholics" now have no problem with same sex "marriage" is a testament to just how radically altered the post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church really is.
While the teaching against artificial contraception-- which was affirmed in Humani vitae as recently as 1968 has never been formally rescinded it is completely ignored by the vast majority of Catholics (practicing and lapsed). This is the truth and has been well documented by multiple sociological studies. As a result it is very difficult to object to homosexuality. Once the need to keep sexual intercourse (which should involve marriage partners only) open to the generation of life is abandoned, there is no logical basis on which to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Virtually any other combination of persons or even cross-species relations/"marriages" then become tenable and are simply a matter of taste!
The fact that close to 50% of Roman Catholic priests among those less than 60 years of age in the US are reported to be homosexual is of great interest given the views of many "Catholics" on sexuality and same-sex "marriage" and the greater public at-large. The Catholic Church has ceased to restrain the aberrant sexual proclivities of people due in large part to the fact that its clergy engage in many of them. If and until this horrendous problem is resolved in the Catholic priesthood, it is unlikely that the constant movement toward more and more bizarre sexual practices and living arrangements in this country will be halted or reversed. Since Traditional Roman Catholicism is essentially dead in the United States, that eventuality appears highly improbable.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Should Traditionalists Use the 1962 Roman Missal?
NOTE:
I include the piece below by Dr. Pamela Dettman because I am uncertain about whether the 1962 Latin Mass can be validly used instead of the Novus Ordo Missae. I would prefer that the St. Pius V Mass be used instead--based on what seems to be unequivocal language in Quo Primum Tempore--that it remain forever the official Latin Rite Mass.
I hope the arguments provided here are helpful in way of providing an opportunity to air this issue in more detail. There are apparently not an insignificant number of Catholic Traditionalists who see nothing wrong with the 1962 Latin Mass of John XXIII. Unfortunately, to date I have been unable to obtain a copy of the Roman Missal of Pope St. Pius V in order to compare the two. My understanding is that there are some significant differences between it and that of John XXIII's 1962 Roman Missal. It would be important I think to do a side by side comparison/analysis in order to evaluate the significance of the changes.
Ideally of course, it would be nice to eliminate all the confusion and guess-work by simply reverting to the Roman Missal of St. Pius V since it was established in perpetuity by Quo Primum. Unfortunately, we do not live in anything near an ideal world and the current situation in which we find ourselves is extremely disturbing and difficult to understand.
If anyone has a copy of the St. Pius V Roman Missal or anything prior to roughly 1950 I would be appreciative of knowing about it. I would be more than willing to buy it.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Traditionalists Should Not Use the 1962 Missal
Dr. Pamela Dettman,
Tradition in Action, original HERE...
It was very fortunate for TIA to provide its readers with the review of the 1962 Missal. I would like to remind those who might have difficulty with that review of a powerful yet often overlooked aspect of St. Pius V's Quo primum. In it he irrevocably denied the use of any other missal for anyone, save those who have had in place the "custom followed continuously for a period of not less than 200 years." How can anyone who claims to be traditionalist be irreparably attached to anything taking root in the '60s? For reorientation, St. Pius V has already provided this lesson for us.
I would like to focus on some important points concerning this 200-year corruption-buffer:
1. The 200-year safety period acknowledges the many troubles that beset the Church long before their culmination as clerical corruption and Luther's grand plan: Tolle Missam, tolle Ecclesiam (destroy the Mass, destroy the Church). Looking at the 200 years preceding Pope Pius V's decree, we can note that none of the Popes in that period have been canonized. The Holy See had abandoned Rome and the Renaissance was planting its seeds of vanity and lust for pleasure. The Church had been weakened and symptoms of this corruption surfaced in the Mass. St. Pius V certainly recognized the gradual development of Church troubles and their long-standing impact on liturgical function.
2. Clearly, St. Pius V also shows us that the liturgical corruptions themselves did not appear overnight. He demonstrates not only that corrections were needed, but also that they may have been present or developing for some two centuries. He not only removed the full expression of the deviations in existence during his pontificate, but eliminated them at their very source, two centuries earlier.
A question for the 1962 Missal proponents: How is it that we Catholics today must feel compelled to acknowledge a liturgical revolution taking over nearly the entire Catholic Hierarchy in the latter 1960s, yet at the same time believe that no evidence of what was just about to surface existed less than one decade prior? This is inconceivable! Perhaps very few can be blamed for not seeing in advance exactly what was coming. Now, however, is different. Certainly we cannot be excused after the facts have been clearly demonstrated and we have realized what could only have been a terrible nightmare less than 50 years ago.
3. Concerning all those Catholics who had been following a liturgical rite in place for more than 200 years, St. Pius V also makes the important statement that he would "in no wise rescind" their prerogatives. This concisely implements several important Catholic truths. First, it does acknowledge papal authority to rescind a prior papal pronouncement. Second, it draws a distinction between a law that can be repealed and this at hand, the immutable traditions in Divine Worship. Third, it establishes his intention to require this decree to be obeyed for all time to come, to prevent forever any future troubles in the Church from corrupting Divine Worship.
4. Lastly, let me note St. Pius V's inclusion of the word "continuously" when applying to the legitimate claim to use a particular rite. He excluded broken usage. As pointed out by Fr. Patrick Perez in his review of the 1962 Missal, the first modernist change to Catholic worship was this "broken usage" made via the error of archeologism, returning (as was claimed) to a "primitive usage." I am referring to the change in the Holy Week liturgy that was approved by Pius XII in the 1950s. This, of course, missed the “continuous” designation by about 13 centuries. As explained by Fr. Perez, this claim to a primitive usage was false anyway, and it was the same Pius XII who practiced archeologism after having condemned it.
The counterfeit argument of being a valid Missal
Again, I question the proponents of the 1962 Missal: If the 1962 Missal (or God forbid the Novus Ordo) is valid, does this validity guarantee us spiritual benefit? May we all consider the following:
The only sacrifice that is acceptable to God is that which is provided by God. God is under no obligation to accept anything else we humans may offer. But will He? Will God be pleased with a valid sacrifice, made by a valid priest, but offered outside the confines of His proscriptions? We have some reason to doubt. How can this be? Let me propose the "Orthodox" as an example, to use as a template for assessing similar circumstances.
The schismatic Eastern churches, who like many clergy and laity of our day, reject the true Catholic papacy as defined at Vatican Council I. Yet thus far, the Catholic Church recognizes as valid the apostolic succession and sacraments offered in this separated and heretical "Orthodox" church (in as much as they have not altered their rites as did the Anglicans).
Their actual condition, though illicit, may still be "valid." Would not, then, the followers of this false church benefit spiritually from these valid orders and sacraments? The answer is: no. Let us listen to Abbot Gueranger describe the state of the "Orthodox" schismatic church:
"She is motionless and sterile as a branch severed from the trunk. She retains, like so many withered leaves, the ancient forms of her liturgy ... the lifeless schism of the East, so scrupulously keeping up the ancient forms which are its condemnation, and making a parade of vestments which sits so awkwardly on rebels. What life can the members of such a Church derive from these dead forms of worship?"
Let us Catholics all remember with fear and humility what preceded the first murder: God's rejection of Cain's deficient sacrifice. It is far better to be the prodigal son, who admits the error of abandoning his father's house and returns home to his brother's side than to be Cain, who hates his brother and in a jealous rage displays the murder in his heart.
I include the piece below by Dr. Pamela Dettman because I am uncertain about whether the 1962 Latin Mass can be validly used instead of the Novus Ordo Missae. I would prefer that the St. Pius V Mass be used instead--based on what seems to be unequivocal language in Quo Primum Tempore--that it remain forever the official Latin Rite Mass.
I hope the arguments provided here are helpful in way of providing an opportunity to air this issue in more detail. There are apparently not an insignificant number of Catholic Traditionalists who see nothing wrong with the 1962 Latin Mass of John XXIII. Unfortunately, to date I have been unable to obtain a copy of the Roman Missal of Pope St. Pius V in order to compare the two. My understanding is that there are some significant differences between it and that of John XXIII's 1962 Roman Missal. It would be important I think to do a side by side comparison/analysis in order to evaluate the significance of the changes.
Ideally of course, it would be nice to eliminate all the confusion and guess-work by simply reverting to the Roman Missal of St. Pius V since it was established in perpetuity by Quo Primum. Unfortunately, we do not live in anything near an ideal world and the current situation in which we find ourselves is extremely disturbing and difficult to understand.
If anyone has a copy of the St. Pius V Roman Missal or anything prior to roughly 1950 I would be appreciative of knowing about it. I would be more than willing to buy it.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Traditionalists Should Not Use the 1962 Missal
Dr. Pamela Dettman,
Tradition in Action, original HERE...
It was very fortunate for TIA to provide its readers with the review of the 1962 Missal. I would like to remind those who might have difficulty with that review of a powerful yet often overlooked aspect of St. Pius V's Quo primum. In it he irrevocably denied the use of any other missal for anyone, save those who have had in place the "custom followed continuously for a period of not less than 200 years." How can anyone who claims to be traditionalist be irreparably attached to anything taking root in the '60s? For reorientation, St. Pius V has already provided this lesson for us.
I would like to focus on some important points concerning this 200-year corruption-buffer:
1. The 200-year safety period acknowledges the many troubles that beset the Church long before their culmination as clerical corruption and Luther's grand plan: Tolle Missam, tolle Ecclesiam (destroy the Mass, destroy the Church). Looking at the 200 years preceding Pope Pius V's decree, we can note that none of the Popes in that period have been canonized. The Holy See had abandoned Rome and the Renaissance was planting its seeds of vanity and lust for pleasure. The Church had been weakened and symptoms of this corruption surfaced in the Mass. St. Pius V certainly recognized the gradual development of Church troubles and their long-standing impact on liturgical function.
2. Clearly, St. Pius V also shows us that the liturgical corruptions themselves did not appear overnight. He demonstrates not only that corrections were needed, but also that they may have been present or developing for some two centuries. He not only removed the full expression of the deviations in existence during his pontificate, but eliminated them at their very source, two centuries earlier.
A question for the 1962 Missal proponents: How is it that we Catholics today must feel compelled to acknowledge a liturgical revolution taking over nearly the entire Catholic Hierarchy in the latter 1960s, yet at the same time believe that no evidence of what was just about to surface existed less than one decade prior? This is inconceivable! Perhaps very few can be blamed for not seeing in advance exactly what was coming. Now, however, is different. Certainly we cannot be excused after the facts have been clearly demonstrated and we have realized what could only have been a terrible nightmare less than 50 years ago.
3. Concerning all those Catholics who had been following a liturgical rite in place for more than 200 years, St. Pius V also makes the important statement that he would "in no wise rescind" their prerogatives. This concisely implements several important Catholic truths. First, it does acknowledge papal authority to rescind a prior papal pronouncement. Second, it draws a distinction between a law that can be repealed and this at hand, the immutable traditions in Divine Worship. Third, it establishes his intention to require this decree to be obeyed for all time to come, to prevent forever any future troubles in the Church from corrupting Divine Worship.
4. Lastly, let me note St. Pius V's inclusion of the word "continuously" when applying to the legitimate claim to use a particular rite. He excluded broken usage. As pointed out by Fr. Patrick Perez in his review of the 1962 Missal, the first modernist change to Catholic worship was this "broken usage" made via the error of archeologism, returning (as was claimed) to a "primitive usage." I am referring to the change in the Holy Week liturgy that was approved by Pius XII in the 1950s. This, of course, missed the “continuous” designation by about 13 centuries. As explained by Fr. Perez, this claim to a primitive usage was false anyway, and it was the same Pius XII who practiced archeologism after having condemned it.
The counterfeit argument of being a valid Missal
Again, I question the proponents of the 1962 Missal: If the 1962 Missal (or God forbid the Novus Ordo) is valid, does this validity guarantee us spiritual benefit? May we all consider the following:
The only sacrifice that is acceptable to God is that which is provided by God. God is under no obligation to accept anything else we humans may offer. But will He? Will God be pleased with a valid sacrifice, made by a valid priest, but offered outside the confines of His proscriptions? We have some reason to doubt. How can this be? Let me propose the "Orthodox" as an example, to use as a template for assessing similar circumstances.
The schismatic Eastern churches, who like many clergy and laity of our day, reject the true Catholic papacy as defined at Vatican Council I. Yet thus far, the Catholic Church recognizes as valid the apostolic succession and sacraments offered in this separated and heretical "Orthodox" church (in as much as they have not altered their rites as did the Anglicans).
Their actual condition, though illicit, may still be "valid." Would not, then, the followers of this false church benefit spiritually from these valid orders and sacraments? The answer is: no. Let us listen to Abbot Gueranger describe the state of the "Orthodox" schismatic church:
"She is motionless and sterile as a branch severed from the trunk. She retains, like so many withered leaves, the ancient forms of her liturgy ... the lifeless schism of the East, so scrupulously keeping up the ancient forms which are its condemnation, and making a parade of vestments which sits so awkwardly on rebels. What life can the members of such a Church derive from these dead forms of worship?"
Let us Catholics all remember with fear and humility what preceded the first murder: God's rejection of Cain's deficient sacrifice. It is far better to be the prodigal son, who admits the error of abandoning his father's house and returns home to his brother's side than to be Cain, who hates his brother and in a jealous rage displays the murder in his heart.
Iota Unum and the Conciliar Church by Romano Amerio
I am currently reading a fascinating book entitled Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century by Roman Amerio a Roman Catholic scholar who participated in the preparations for the Second Vatican Council. His perspective is unique in that he directly witnessed the events as they happened. Amerio is amazingly forthright in his appraisal of the uncharacteristic way in which the Council was called, the inexplicable abandonment of over 3 years of preparatory work by the Commission, the paradoxical outcome of the Council compared with what had been promised and the bizarre innovations which followed the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Iota Unum is a treasure trove of information for all Catholics who wish to come to a better understanding of what happened to the Roman Catholic Church of record which existed for almost 2000 years prior to 1962.
Some short quotations from Iota Unum are provided for the interest of readers who wish to experience a flavor of the book:
“A distinctive feature of Vatican II is its paradoxical outcome.” P. 82
“Fr, Congar repeatedly states that the Church of Pius IX and Pius XII is finished.” P. 114
“The change (Conciliar teaching) can be described as more or less all-embracing in its extent…Faith has been changed from an act of the intellect into an act of the person…Hope lowers its object, becoming an aspiration and a belief about a purely earthly liberation and transformation. Charity, which like faith and hope has a formally supernatural object, similarly lowers its object and turns toward man…” P. 108
“The primary characteristic of the post-conciliar period is an all-embracing change affecting every aspect of the Church whether internal or external.” “…The question arises as to whether a change from one kind of religion to another is not underway, as many in both lay and clerical circles do not hesitate to assert.” P. 107
"It is impossible to deny that the shift from a still largely Christian culture to an entirely anthropocentric one happened during Pope Paul's reign and immediately thereafter." P. 738
"Vatican II represents a massive series of innovations that have marked every aspect of ecclesial life, whether theoretical or practical..." P. 751
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Some short quotations from Iota Unum are provided for the interest of readers who wish to experience a flavor of the book:
“A distinctive feature of Vatican II is its paradoxical outcome.” P. 82
“Fr, Congar repeatedly states that the Church of Pius IX and Pius XII is finished.” P. 114
“The change (Conciliar teaching) can be described as more or less all-embracing in its extent…Faith has been changed from an act of the intellect into an act of the person…Hope lowers its object, becoming an aspiration and a belief about a purely earthly liberation and transformation. Charity, which like faith and hope has a formally supernatural object, similarly lowers its object and turns toward man…” P. 108
“The primary characteristic of the post-conciliar period is an all-embracing change affecting every aspect of the Church whether internal or external.” “…The question arises as to whether a change from one kind of religion to another is not underway, as many in both lay and clerical circles do not hesitate to assert.” P. 107
"It is impossible to deny that the shift from a still largely Christian culture to an entirely anthropocentric one happened during Pope Paul's reign and immediately thereafter." P. 738
"Vatican II represents a massive series of innovations that have marked every aspect of ecclesial life, whether theoretical or practical..." P. 751
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Thursday, July 30, 2009
CANONS ON THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS
Session 22 of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, held on Monday, September 17, 1562, A.D
CANON I If any one saith, that in the Mass a true and real Sacrifice is not offered to God; or, that to be offered is nothing else but that Christ is given us to eat; let him be anathema.
CANON II If any one saith, that by those words, Do this for the commemoration of me (Luke xxii. 19), Christ did not institute the Apostles Priests; or, did not ordain that they, and other Priests should offer His own Body and Blood; let him be anathema.
CANON III If any one saith, that the Sacrifice of the Mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving; or, that it is a bare commemoration of the Sacrifice consummated on the Cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits him only who receives; and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities; let him be anathema.
CANON IV If any one saith, that, by the Sacrifice of the Mass, a blasphemy is cast upon the most Holy Sacrifice of Christ consummated on the Cross; or, that it is thereby derogated from; let him be anathema.
CANON V If any one saith, that it is an imposture to celebrate Masses in honour of the saints, and for obtaining their intercession with God, as the Church intends; let him be anathema.
CANON VI If any one saith, that the Canon of the Mass contains errors, and is therefore to be abrogated [abolished]; let him be anathema.
CANON VII If any one saith, that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs, which the Catholic Church makes use of in the celebration of Masses, are incentives to impiety, rather than offices of piety; let him be anathema.
CANON VIII If any one saith, that Masses, wherein the Priest alone communicates Sacramentally, are unlawful, and are, therefore, to be abrogated [abolished; let him be anathema.
CANON IX If any one saith, that the Rite of the Roman Church, according to which a part of the Canon and the words of Consecration are pronounced in a low tone, is to be condemned; or, that the Mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue only; or, that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice, for that it is contrary to the institution of Christ; let him be anathema.
CANON I If any one saith, that in the Mass a true and real Sacrifice is not offered to God; or, that to be offered is nothing else but that Christ is given us to eat; let him be anathema.
CANON II If any one saith, that by those words, Do this for the commemoration of me (Luke xxii. 19), Christ did not institute the Apostles Priests; or, did not ordain that they, and other Priests should offer His own Body and Blood; let him be anathema.
CANON III If any one saith, that the Sacrifice of the Mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving; or, that it is a bare commemoration of the Sacrifice consummated on the Cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits him only who receives; and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities; let him be anathema.
CANON IV If any one saith, that, by the Sacrifice of the Mass, a blasphemy is cast upon the most Holy Sacrifice of Christ consummated on the Cross; or, that it is thereby derogated from; let him be anathema.
CANON V If any one saith, that it is an imposture to celebrate Masses in honour of the saints, and for obtaining their intercession with God, as the Church intends; let him be anathema.
CANON VI If any one saith, that the Canon of the Mass contains errors, and is therefore to be abrogated [abolished]; let him be anathema.
CANON VII If any one saith, that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs, which the Catholic Church makes use of in the celebration of Masses, are incentives to impiety, rather than offices of piety; let him be anathema.
CANON VIII If any one saith, that Masses, wherein the Priest alone communicates Sacramentally, are unlawful, and are, therefore, to be abrogated [abolished; let him be anathema.
CANON IX If any one saith, that the Rite of the Roman Church, according to which a part of the Canon and the words of Consecration are pronounced in a low tone, is to be condemned; or, that the Mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue only; or, that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice, for that it is contrary to the institution of Christ; let him be anathema.
QUO PRIMUM TEMPORE: Never Abrogated
Saint Pius V, Antonio-Michele Ghislieri
[Friday, January 7, 1566 - Monday, May 1, 1572]
AN INFALLIBLE DOCUMENT OF SAINT PIUS V
For ALL ROMAN Catholics!
PIUS EPISCOPUS
Pius Bishop
SERVUS SERVORUM DEI
Servant of the Servants of God
AD PERPETUAM REI MEMORIAM
For a Perpetual Memorial of the Matter
Where the first, upon Our elevation to the Apostolic throne, We gladly turned Our mind and energies, and directed all Our thoughts, to the matter of preserving incorrupt the public worship of the Church; and We have striven, with God's help, by every means in Our power to achieve that purpose.
Whereas amongst other decrees of the holy Council of Trent, We were charged with revision and re-issue of the sacred books, to wit, the Catechism, the Missal and the Breviary; and whereas We have with God's consent published a Catechism for the instruction of the faithful and thoroughly revised the Breviary for the due performance of the Divine Office, We next, in order that the Missal and Breviary might be in perfect harmony, as is right and proper (considering that it is altogether fitting that there should be in the Church only one appropriate manner of Psalmody and one sole rite of celebrating Mass), deemed it necessary to give Our immediate attention to what still remained to be done, namely the re-editing of the Missal with the least possible delay.
We resolved accordingly to delegate this task to a select committee of scholars; and they, having at every stage of their work and with the utmost care collated the ancient codices in Our Vatican Library and reliable, original or amended, codices from elsewhere, and having also consulted the writing of ancient and approved authors who have bequeathed to us records relating to the said sacred rites, thus restored the Missal [of the Ancient Roman Rite] itself to the pristine form and rite of the holy Fathers.
When this production had been subjected to close scrutiny and further amended We, after mature consideration, ordered that the final result be forthwith printed and published in Rome, so that all may enjoy the fruit of this labor; that priests may know what prayers to use, and what rites and ceremonies they are to observe henceforward in the celebration of Masses.
Now therefore, in order that all everywhere may adopt and observe what has been delivered to them by the Holy Roman Church, Mother and Mistress of the other churches, it shall be unlawful henceforth and forever throughout the Christian world to sing or to read Masses according to any formula other than that of this Missal published by Us.
This ordinance to apply to all churches and chapels, with or without care of souls, patriarchal, collegiate, and parochial, be they secular or belonging to any religious Order, whether of men, including the military Orders, or of women, in which conventual Masses are or ought to be sung aloud in choir or read privately according to the rites and customs of the Roman Church.
To apply, moreover, even if the said churches have been in any way exempted, whether by indult of the Apostolic See, by custom, by privilege, or even by oath or Apostolic confirmation, or have their rights and faculties guaranteed to them in any other way whatsoever, saving only those in which the practice of saying Mass differently was granted over 200 years ago simultaneously with the Apostolic See's institution and confirmation of the church, and those in which there has prevailed a similar custom followed continuously for a period of not less than 200 years; in which cases We in no wise rescind their prerogatives or customs aforesaid.
Nevertheless, if this Missal which We have seen fit to publish be more agreeable to these last, We hereby permit them to celebrate Mass according to its rite, subject to the consent of their bishop or prelate, and of their whole Chapter, all else to the contrary notwithstanding.
All other churches aforesaid are hereby denied the use of other missals, which are to be wholly and entirely rejected; and by this present Constitution, which shall have the force of law in perpetuity, We order and enjoin under pain of Our displeasure that nothing be added to Our newly published Missal, nothing omitted therefrom, and nothing whatsoever altered therein.
We specifically command each and every Patriarch, administrator and all other persons of whatsoever ecclesiastical dignity, be they even Cardinals of the Holy ROMAN Church or possessed of any other rank or preeminence, and We order them by virtue of holy obedience to sing or to read the Mass according to the rite and manner and norm herein laid down by Us, and henceforward to discontinue and utterly discard all other rubrics and rites of other missals, howsoever ancient, which they have been accustomed to follow, and not to presume in celebrating Mass to introduce any ceremonies or recite any prayers other than those contained in this Missal.
Furthermore, by these presents and by virtue of Our Apostolic authority We give and grant in perpetuity that for the singing or reading of Mass in any church whatsoever, this Missal must be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may be freely and lawfully used.
Nor shall bishops, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious of whatsoever Order or by whatsoever title designated, be obliged to celebrate Mass otherwise than enjoined by Us.
We likewise order and declare that no one whosoever shall be forced or coerced into altering this Missal and that this present Constitution can never be revoked or modified, but shall forever remain valid and have the force of law, notwithstanding previous constitutions or edicts of provincial or synodal councils, and notwithstanding the usage of the churches aforesaid, established by very long and even immemorial prescription, saving only usage of more than 200 years.
Consequently it is Our will, and by the same authority We decree, that one month after publication of this Our constitution and Missal, priests of the Roman Curia shall be obliged to sing or to read the Mass in accordance therewith; others south of the Alps, after three months; those who live beyond the Alps, after six months or as soon as the Missal becomes available for purchase.
Furthermore, in order that the said Missal may be preserved incorrupt and kept free from defects and errors, the penalty for non-observance in the case of all printers resident in territory directly or indirectly subject to Ourselves and the Holy Roman Church shall be forfeiture of their books and a fine of 100 gold ducats payable by that very fact to the Apostolic Treasury.
In the case of those resident in other parts of the world, it shall be automatic excommunication and other penalties at Our discretion; and by Our Apostolic authority and the tenor of these presents, We also decree that they must not dare or presume either to print or to publish or to sell, or in any way to take delivery of such books without Our approval and consent, or without express permission of the Apostolic Commissary in the said parts appointed by Us for that purpose. Each of the said printers must receive from the aforementioned Commissary a standard Missal to serve as an exemplar and agree faithfully therewith, varying in no wise from the first impression printed in Rome.
But, since it would be difficult for this present Constitution to be transmitted to all parts of the world and to come to the notice of all concerned simultaneously, We direct that it be, as usual, posted and published at the doors of the Basilica of the Prince of Apostles, at those of the Apostolic Chancery, and at the end of the Campo dei Fiori.
Moreover, We direct that printed copies of the same, signed by a notary public and authenticated with the seal of an ecclesiastical dignitary, shall possess the same unqualified and indubitable validity everywhere and in every country that would attend the display there of Our present text.
Accordingly, no one whosoever is permitted to infringe or rashly contravene this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, direction, grant, indult, declaration, will, decree and prohibition.
Should any person venture to do so, let him understand that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. (Editor's emphasis throughout)
Given at St. Peter's, Rome, in the year of Our Lord's Incarnation one thousand five hundred and seventy, on the fourteenth day of July in the fifth year of Our Pontificate.
Caesar Glorierus
H. Cumin.
Anno a Nativitate Domini 1570, Indict. 13, die vero 19 mensis Julii, Pontificatus sanctissimi in Christo Patris et D. N. Pii divina providentia Papae V anno ejus quinto, retroscriptae litterae Principis Apostolorum, ac Cancellariae Apostolicae, et in acie Campi Flore, ut moris est, per nos Joannem Andream Rogerium et Philibertum Cappuis Cursores.
Scipio De Octavianis, Magister Cursorum
NOTE:
This papal bull is characteristic of the kind of documents which were promulgated by the Holy See prior to Vatican II. There is absolutely no obfuscation, no prevarication, no attempt to allow more than one and only one interpretation to be made. The Conciliar documents unfortunately are filled with "doublespeak" and have been constructed in such a way as to provide for maximum variation of interpretation.
It is inconceivable after reading Quo Primum Tempore that anyone would think that the Roman Catholic Mass of Pope St. Pius V could be changed. The penalty for doing so is as serious as can be imagined.
Dr. J. P. Hubert
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
No-Fault Divorce Laws: Bad for Everyone, What Role the Conciliar Church
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
Numerous credible studies now document the tragedy that follows divorce. The sociological data confirm what already is known from the Natural (moral) Law and Divine Revelation that life-long marriage is in the interest of the marital partners, the children thereof and society in general. Please
see THIS... THIS... and THIS…for example.
No-fault divorce is contrary to the Natural Law, right reason individual/social justice as well as being incompatible with charity. It would be better if people never married and did not have children than to do so and then divorce. If this means maintaining a single life of sexual continence and chastity instead (as taught in Traditional Roman Catholicism), the individual and common good of society would be appreciably enhanced. In the secular neo-pagan West this would no doubt mean instead that single adults would continue to engage in contraceptive sex in order to avoid a more rigorous form of marital union in which morally licit sexual expression is part of a life-long total commitment on the part of the spouses.
Ultimately, it is not in society's interest to allow civil contract marriage which is subject to divorce, whether on the basis of no-fault laws or for just-cause. The former (no-fault divorce) virtually guarantees that over half of all marriages will end in divorce--a situation which is extremely destructive of and costly to society. The latter (divorce for just-cause or grounds only) while historically associated with a much lower overall rate of divorce (at least in the West) is inherently defective because it preserves the fiction that divorce is a reasonable (personal and societal) option if only one of the partners wishes to end the marriage and is able to demonstrate just-cause. It almost never is salutary (e.g. severe abuse perhaps being the only exception) when all of the costs--personal, economic, health and societal) are tabulated.
Covenant or life-long marriage as is characteristic of sacramental marriage (in which the marriage itself is recognized as a metaphysical reality) is the ideal (as well as statistically most successful long-term) and would be far easier to normalize and codify into law in Roman Catholic nation-states or other more traditional forms of government where Natural law and Divine Revelation serve as models for the civil law. Unfortunately, the world is almost totally bereft of any remaining Roman Catholic countries--perhaps Lichtenstein being the only example. I leave it to others to provide further potential examples.
In this day of almost deification of "science", the scientistic mentality and the "worship of empirical evidence, it would be logically consistent for all governments to reform their marriage and divorce laws by making them compatible with the now indisputable evidence that no-fault divorce and civil contract marriage are harmful. Given that the requisite empirical data is now available, logic dictates that this should mandate a return to or institution of legally binding covenant/sacramental marriage in which divorce is allowed only for serious "just-cause" (if allowed by mutual consent of the partners in the case where there are no children involved, the adverse health effects for the individuals and society including the cost to the health care system persist).
Under a system of covenant/sacramental marriage, permission would be granted by the appropriate civil authorities only after couples were properly educated about the benefits and responsibilities of the marital state. It should be made impossible to argue after the fact that the couple was 1) not given adequate warning as to their obligations or 2) not supplied with proper and legally binding informed consent. To do otherwise is to engage in a suicidal form of social engineering in the name of a rabid form of individual freedom/liberty absent the required personal and societal responsibility commensurate with the seriousness of the marital state.
The Traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on Sacramental marriage and the proper use of the sexual faculty is born out by the sociological data on divorce including its negative impact on the former marital partners, the children involved and society in general. This further proves that the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church taught the immutable truth which Our Lord desired man to have. In His transcendent position beyond the confines of the space/time dimensions of the known universe, God being omnipotent is/was well aware of what we mortal human beings are only now beginning to document through experience and empirical/retrospective analysis.
Unfortunately, the Conciliar Church has undermined the 2000 year old teaching on marriage, divorce/remarriage and the meaning of human sexuality through a variety of destructive innovations including the plethora of annulments being granted. A list of some of the negative effects include: the homosexualization of the Catholic clergy, the practice of artificial contraception among professed “Catholics” which now equals the non-Catholic population as does the overall incidence of divorce and abortion. There has been a total denial (e.g. through a failure to preach) of sexually related sin including sodomy, fornication, masturbation, abortion and the normalization of sins against chastity--in behavior, language and provocative dress. These are only some of the areas in which the Conciliar Church has contributed to the moral depravity of contemporary society.
Credible estimates suggest that almost half of the living Roman Catholic clergy is homosexual in proclivity and or practice. Absolutely nothing has been done by the Conciliar Church to rectify this abhorrent situation, one which is well-known to the Holy See and the world-wide Episcopal Conferences. Some so-called seminaries are known to be nothing but homosexual palaces of debauchery and yet they are allowed to remain in existence. For example see Good Bye Good Men by Michael Rose.
Empirical evidence clearly establishes quite apart from other available evidence (e.g gross incompatibilities between Traditional and Conciliar Church teaching on faith and morals including the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass) that the post-Vatican II Church is the cause of a marked decrease in morality among Catholics in particular and Western society in general through its rejection of Traditional Roman Catholic teaching and the adoption of heterodox innovations. Retrospective empirical Social Science data now support the conclusion as well.
For these and numerous other reasons too extensive to catalogue, Rome should reinstitute the Tridentine Mass of Pope St. Pius V establishing that it is henceforth the only valid and licit Catholic Mass to be offered throughout the world, declare the Novus Ordo Missae to be a tragic experiment which will be placed on the trash-heap of history never again to reappear and either completely repudiate or radically correct the documents of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms so as to be harmonious with the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church--before it is too late. Perhaps only in this way (barring Divine intervention) will a faithful remnant survive through which the authentic Gospel of Christ can continue to be preached throughout the world. “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
Numerous credible studies now document the tragedy that follows divorce. The sociological data confirm what already is known from the Natural (moral) Law and Divine Revelation that life-long marriage is in the interest of the marital partners, the children thereof and society in general. Please
see THIS... THIS... and THIS…for example.
No-fault divorce is contrary to the Natural Law, right reason individual/social justice as well as being incompatible with charity. It would be better if people never married and did not have children than to do so and then divorce. If this means maintaining a single life of sexual continence and chastity instead (as taught in Traditional Roman Catholicism), the individual and common good of society would be appreciably enhanced. In the secular neo-pagan West this would no doubt mean instead that single adults would continue to engage in contraceptive sex in order to avoid a more rigorous form of marital union in which morally licit sexual expression is part of a life-long total commitment on the part of the spouses.
Ultimately, it is not in society's interest to allow civil contract marriage which is subject to divorce, whether on the basis of no-fault laws or for just-cause. The former (no-fault divorce) virtually guarantees that over half of all marriages will end in divorce--a situation which is extremely destructive of and costly to society. The latter (divorce for just-cause or grounds only) while historically associated with a much lower overall rate of divorce (at least in the West) is inherently defective because it preserves the fiction that divorce is a reasonable (personal and societal) option if only one of the partners wishes to end the marriage and is able to demonstrate just-cause. It almost never is salutary (e.g. severe abuse perhaps being the only exception) when all of the costs--personal, economic, health and societal) are tabulated.
Covenant or life-long marriage as is characteristic of sacramental marriage (in which the marriage itself is recognized as a metaphysical reality) is the ideal (as well as statistically most successful long-term) and would be far easier to normalize and codify into law in Roman Catholic nation-states or other more traditional forms of government where Natural law and Divine Revelation serve as models for the civil law. Unfortunately, the world is almost totally bereft of any remaining Roman Catholic countries--perhaps Lichtenstein being the only example. I leave it to others to provide further potential examples.
In this day of almost deification of "science", the scientistic mentality and the "worship of empirical evidence, it would be logically consistent for all governments to reform their marriage and divorce laws by making them compatible with the now indisputable evidence that no-fault divorce and civil contract marriage are harmful. Given that the requisite empirical data is now available, logic dictates that this should mandate a return to or institution of legally binding covenant/sacramental marriage in which divorce is allowed only for serious "just-cause" (if allowed by mutual consent of the partners in the case where there are no children involved, the adverse health effects for the individuals and society including the cost to the health care system persist).
Under a system of covenant/sacramental marriage, permission would be granted by the appropriate civil authorities only after couples were properly educated about the benefits and responsibilities of the marital state. It should be made impossible to argue after the fact that the couple was 1) not given adequate warning as to their obligations or 2) not supplied with proper and legally binding informed consent. To do otherwise is to engage in a suicidal form of social engineering in the name of a rabid form of individual freedom/liberty absent the required personal and societal responsibility commensurate with the seriousness of the marital state.
The Traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on Sacramental marriage and the proper use of the sexual faculty is born out by the sociological data on divorce including its negative impact on the former marital partners, the children involved and society in general. This further proves that the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church taught the immutable truth which Our Lord desired man to have. In His transcendent position beyond the confines of the space/time dimensions of the known universe, God being omnipotent is/was well aware of what we mortal human beings are only now beginning to document through experience and empirical/retrospective analysis.
Unfortunately, the Conciliar Church has undermined the 2000 year old teaching on marriage, divorce/remarriage and the meaning of human sexuality through a variety of destructive innovations including the plethora of annulments being granted. A list of some of the negative effects include: the homosexualization of the Catholic clergy, the practice of artificial contraception among professed “Catholics” which now equals the non-Catholic population as does the overall incidence of divorce and abortion. There has been a total denial (e.g. through a failure to preach) of sexually related sin including sodomy, fornication, masturbation, abortion and the normalization of sins against chastity--in behavior, language and provocative dress. These are only some of the areas in which the Conciliar Church has contributed to the moral depravity of contemporary society.
Credible estimates suggest that almost half of the living Roman Catholic clergy is homosexual in proclivity and or practice. Absolutely nothing has been done by the Conciliar Church to rectify this abhorrent situation, one which is well-known to the Holy See and the world-wide Episcopal Conferences. Some so-called seminaries are known to be nothing but homosexual palaces of debauchery and yet they are allowed to remain in existence. For example see Good Bye Good Men by Michael Rose.
Empirical evidence clearly establishes quite apart from other available evidence (e.g gross incompatibilities between Traditional and Conciliar Church teaching on faith and morals including the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass) that the post-Vatican II Church is the cause of a marked decrease in morality among Catholics in particular and Western society in general through its rejection of Traditional Roman Catholic teaching and the adoption of heterodox innovations. Retrospective empirical Social Science data now support the conclusion as well.
For these and numerous other reasons too extensive to catalogue, Rome should reinstitute the Tridentine Mass of Pope St. Pius V establishing that it is henceforth the only valid and licit Catholic Mass to be offered throughout the world, declare the Novus Ordo Missae to be a tragic experiment which will be placed on the trash-heap of history never again to reappear and either completely repudiate or radically correct the documents of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms so as to be harmonious with the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church--before it is too late. Perhaps only in this way (barring Divine intervention) will a faithful remnant survive through which the authentic Gospel of Christ can continue to be preached throughout the world. “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Missal Crisis of '62
Fr. Patrick Perez
Tradition in Action original HERE...
Whatever else may be said about modern Rome, at least one thing hasn’t changed: In its official documents, Rome chooses its language carefully and deliberately, and what is not stated can often be as important as what is. Bearing in mind this fact, and the fact that those writing Roman documents these days are thoroughly imbued with the post-conciliar mentality, one condition of all the recent indults granted for the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass should arouse immediate suspicions on the part of any Catholic who still retains his ability to reason.
The Roman Missal (in Latin, Missale Romanum) is the liturgical book that contains the texts and rubrics for the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Rite
Beginning with Quattuor Abhinc Annos (1984) and Ecclesia Dei (1988) of John Paul II, and culminating with the recent motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Benedict XVI, in which permission is so graciously granted by the respective Holy Fathers for a Mass that no priest needs anyone’s permission, including the pope’s, to offer any time he so chooses, the authors of these documents specify that these permissions are to celebrate Mass using the 1962 Missal, and only the 1962 Missal. Considering that between those documents, and the letter to the bishops which accompanies the latest motu proprio, this requirement is specified no fewer than 15 times.
“Methinks”, as Shakespeare says through the mouth of Hamlet, “she doth protest too much”. If permission is being given for the use of the liturgy promulgated by the Council of Trent, then why should it matter if the Missal were from 1962 or 1662? The stated reason is that the 1962 Missal was the last “typical edition”, the implication being that it is, therefore, the most “authentic”, as if the Missale Romanum were a sort of encyclopedia, the most reliable edition of which naturally being the one that is most current.
I contend that there is more to this condition than most Catholics suspect, which is a polite way of repeating what I immediately said to myself upon first reading Quattuor Abhinc Annos in 1984: “There‘s something fishy going on here”. When I began to compare the 1962 typical edition with previous editions of the Missale, the nature of the “fish” soon became evident. I will explain as briefly as I am able without doing violence to the subject matter.
First signs of a Reform
Doing a comparison of the various editions of the Missale from my own collection, including even one pre-Tridentine edition (1558), the first thing I concluded is that they are substantially identical, save for a few small details (the first post-Tridentine edition of 1570 adds a few rubrical specifications that its predecessors lacked) and for the addition of some feast propers, which is to be expected. This holds true until the typical editions of 1955-56, issued under Pius XII. Beginning in 1955 there were unprecedented changes made to the Missale, the first of many to come. These changes resulted in the Missale of 1962, but culminated in the Missale Romanum of Paul VI in 1969, the Novus Ordo Missae.
Pope Pius XII appointed Bugnini secretary of the Liturgical Reform Commission. Above, with his successor Angelo Roncali
The changes to the Missal decreed on November 16th, 1955, and becoming obligatory on March 25th, 1956, had their immediate origins several years previous. Shortly after commenting (on the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima in 1917) “This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith in Her liturgy…”
This same Pacelli, now Pope Pius XII, established in 1948 the Commission for Liturgical Reform, appointing one Fr. Annibale Bugnini as its secretary. Remember that name, for Father, later Archbishop Bugnini, would eventually be revealed as a Freemason and denounced to Paul VI, who immediately removed him from his positions of authority on Vatican commissions and sent him away, eventually to die in exile in Iran. All this, unfortunately, not before he had authored and instigated alteration after alteration of the Church’s liturgy, even finally the Novus Ordo Missae itself.
How the reform of Holy Week in 1955 was made
Shortly after the Commission for Liturgical Reform was founded there came a request from the bishops of France through their spokesperson Cardinal Lienart for permission to restore the Paschal Vigil to the evening rather than its morning celebration. Fair enough. It does seem a bit out-of-place to light a new fire and carry in the triple candle to chants of Lumen Christi in broad daylight. This permission was granted in 1951.
Bugnini and company, though, had only just begun. The magnitude of what came next can hardly be overstated. They went far beyond simply changing the hour of the Paschal Vigil. They had somehow convinced the pope that the whole of Holy Week needed to be restored to a more primitive usage, and so they had basically scrapped the traditional Holy Week (unchanged from the earliest pre-Tridentine Missale I could find, but, more importantly, re-promulgated in the Tridentine Missale of 1570 as well by order of the Council of Trent and Pope Saint Pius V) in favor of what they told Pius XII was the form of Holy Week in use around the time of Saints Wilfred (b. 634) and Bede (b. 672).
The first changes by Bugnini were introduced in Holy Week ceremonies in 1955
Now how the pope accepted this after issuing warnings specifically against this practice of returning to primitive liturgical uses in his encyclical Mediator Dei (1947), and calling those who desired to do so “wicked” in that same document is astounding. Furthermore, the claim that their “restored” Holy Week rites existed at the time of Saints Wilfred and Bede, or at any other time in history seems to have been an utter, complete, and blatant fabrication. They rightly reasoned that neither Pius XII nor anyone else for that matter was capable of verifying the veracity of this claim, and the pope seems to have trusted Bugnini et al implicitly.
Thus in 1955 this fabricated Holy Week was officially promulgated by Pius XII with the document Maxima Redemptionis under the ironic title “The Order of Holy Week Restored”. It is interesting to note that the document Maxima Redemptionis of November 16th, 1955, speaks mainly of restoring the Paschal Vigil to its proper time, with only a footnote at the end mentioning that the ceremonies had been modified a little to restore them to “what was known in the days of St. Wilfred and St. Bede”. Also interesting to note is the fact that, save for some very minor modifications, these new rites of Holy Week “qualified” to be placed into the new Missal of Paul VI virtually intact.
In reality the introduction of new rites was a test to see if anyone would react negatively; whether or not Bugnini and the Commission would be caught in their lies, or whether it would just be accepted on the weight of the enormously popular Pius XII without question. If there were no objections raised, and if the bait were taken, Bugnini knew that there would be little serious opposition to altering the Mass itself.
From there on, one change after another ...
In spite of being a glaring violation of Quo Primum of Pope St. Pius V, the bull promulgating the Tridentine Missale as the only acceptable one in the Latin Rite and forbidding the changing of the rites therein, or addition of new rites into said Missale “in perpetuity”, the consequence for doing so being no less than incurring the “wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, this new Order of Holy Week was everywhere published and accepted without any hesitation whatsoever. The green light had been given to “Brother Buan” (Bugnini’s Masonic codename) to continue implementing their plan of destroying the Faith by destroying the liturgy.
Bugnini continued with the changes after the Council
From that time one change followed another so quickly that the clergy could scarcely keep abreast of them. As Gertrude says in Hamlet, “One woe doth tread upon another’s heels, so fast they follow”. The additional Collects said at Mass were abolished, along with most of the vigils of feast days. Twelve of fifteen octaves (some dating to the time of Saints Wilfred and Bede!), as well as the proper Last Gospels were also abolished, and so was the Feast of the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, this being replaced with the feast of “Saint Joseph the Worker”, a kind of Catholic May Day. All this (and more) in 1955!
1958 saw the resuscitation of the “dialogue Mass” with Pius XII’s “Instruction on Sacred Music”, issued on September 3rd, just one month before his death. One is entitled to imagine that Pius XII was little aware of what was going on at that time as he had been gravely ill for some time.
Though this “dialogue Mass”, in which the congregation makes the responses formerly reserved to the altar boys, and even reciting some parts of the Mass formerly reserved to the priest had been allowed on at least one occasion that we know of, and under duress, by Pope Benedict XV in 1922, it nonetheless represented a significant violation of the traditional practice of the Church and theology of the Mass which holds that the right to make the Mass responses and serve at the altar is technically one enjoyed by clerics alone. Hence altar boys are to wear cassocks and surplices which are clerical dress, to indicate that although lay males could serve Mass when required to do so, this was by way of exception and they are substituting by indult for clerics when such could not be had. One of the obvious implications of allowing all of the faithful, females included, to make those responses traditionally reserved to men in Orders, is that females could, in fact, receive Orders as well, even the Priesthood!
Following the death of Pius XII and the election of John XXIII in 1958, the changes continued unabated. In 1960 Pope John named Fr. Bugnini secretary of the Preparatory Liturgical Commission for the upcoming council that he had invoked. From then until 1962 more feasts were abolished, the unchangeable Canon of the Mass (the word “canon” means “unchangeable”), was changed by the insertion of the name of St. Joseph, as if to redress some oversight committed by the early Church, which apparently had insufficient devotion to St. Joseph as they failed to place his name in the Canon. Other rubrical changes were made as well, including the elimination of the Confiteor prior to the reception of Holy Communion by the Faithful during Mass. These changes had the effect of numbing the sensibilities of Catholics, clergy and laity alike, and to habituate them to the novel idea that nothing was exempt from change. They were, of course, designed to pave the way for the eventual introduction and acceptance of the Novus Ordo Missae.
One example of those baseless changes, the abolition of the Confiteor
Just as one example, let us consider the already-mentioned elimination of the 2nd Confiteor, as it is commonly referred to. This was done with the excuse that the Confiteor had already been said at the beginning of Mass, so to recite it again in the middle of Mass would qualify as a “useless repetition”. Not so, however. You see, the Communion of the Faithful is neither necessary, nor, properly speaking, a part of the Mass at all. When there are faithful who are to communicate at a Mass, this is accomplished by the insertion of a Communion rite, if you will, into the Mass, similar to that which one would use when bringing Holy Communion to the sick. This rite of receiving Holy Communion necessarily begins with a Confiteor. Such is the proper order of things. The priest doesn’t just go in and jump straight to giving the person or people the Eucharist without some sort of penitential rite preceding it.
The recitation of the Confiteor during the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar is only for the priest and the other sacred ministers, or altar boys as the case may be. To eliminate the “2nd Confiteor” would imply either that the faithful had no need of it, or that the Communion of the faithful were actually a part of Mass rather than being what it is, something outside of Mass but done within the context of Mass, as are the readings in the vernacular and the sermon. There were other changes made during this period, but I believe that these examples suffice to illustrate my point.
The right not to accept the 1962 Missal
In conclusion I wish to note that, with the possible exception of the new rites of Holy Week, none of these changes are heretical or contrary to the powers of the papacy to accomplish. Pius XII and John XXIII undoubtedly possessed the juridical, if not the moral, right to make them. (Editor's note: the preceding statement does not appear to be consistent with what follows) This being so, would it not, then, be an act of disobedience to reject the 1962 Missale for the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass as its advocates claim? I claim that not only is it not an act of disobedience to reject this Missal and, indeed, every version of the Missale going back to when the new rite of Holy Week was first introduced into it, but that it is, in fact, what reason would dictate that one must do if one is indeed serious about returning to and/or upholding the liturgical tradition of the Church.
A 1962 Roman Catholic Missal compiled from the Missale Romanum for the use of the faithful
Look at it this way: All of these changes were masterminded by Annibale Bugnini, a proven Freemason, whose intention as a member of that secret society planted within the very highest echelons of the Vatican was to do as much damage as possible to the Church, Her Faith, and the faith of Her members. Although he would accomplish this most effectively later on with the advent of the Novus Ordo Missae, the changes already introduced into the 1962 Missale were nonetheless intended for that same purpose. The 1962 Missale is corrupted, and substantially discordant with the Missale Romanum as promulgated in fulfillment of the commands of the Council of Trent by Pope Saint Pius V. Neither can the claim that none of these changes is heretical in content be used as an argument in favor of its use, for neither is the employment of hula girls, fireworks, and mariachis strictly speaking heretical in itself, but they belong to that class of novel and profane things that do not belong in the Mass.
I might add that the fact that the 1962 Missale was either accepted and/or used by one or another prelate or priest who were in themselves good men of virtue does not excuse its use now in light of the facts I have just presented.
When it comes down to it, if one can justify the use of the 1962 Missal to oneself in spite of all this, then one has no good and valid reason left to proffer for not accepting and using the Missale Romanum of Paul VI, which, it is claimed, likewise contains no specific heresy (since the original introduction, which did in fact contain an heretical definition of the Mass, was corrected), and was introduced by a validly reigning pope. (Editor's note: The Novus Ordo Missae is fundamentally a Protestant communion [meal] service which implicitly denies the "Real Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist. It was specifically designed that way).
This, I believe, is the reasoning behind the recent Roman documents insisting on the use of the 1962 Missale and no other. Celebration of the immemorial Liturgy of Rome as codified by the Council of Trent ought properly to be done using an edition of the Missale which does not vary substantially from that codified on the orders of that same council. The Missale Romanum of 1962 contains not only changes, but important and substantial ones which violate the injunctions of Quo Primum and the whole of the Church’s liturgical tradition.
One further difficulty is presented by the fact that at the time of the writing of this article, nobody has had the funding, or perhaps even the interest, to reprint an editon of the Missale which antedates the inclusion of these changes. Reproductions of the 1962 version are, on the other hand, relatively cheap and plentiful. Should this plea reach a benefactor with the means to undertake the costly task of reprinting one of the later but incorrupt editions, I would gladly offer one of my older Missals, some of which are still in the box, for the project.(editor's emphasis throughout)
NOTE:
The implications of Fr. Perez's article is that the Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI which now allows the Latin Mass of 1962 to be used is unfortunately not the Mass which should be restored. Rather, the Tridentine Latin Mass of Pope St. Pius V should be brought back as Quo Primum directed; the Mass which in virtue of Pope St. Pius V's Ex-Cathedra directive could never be licitly eliminated.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Tradition in Action original HERE...
Whatever else may be said about modern Rome, at least one thing hasn’t changed: In its official documents, Rome chooses its language carefully and deliberately, and what is not stated can often be as important as what is. Bearing in mind this fact, and the fact that those writing Roman documents these days are thoroughly imbued with the post-conciliar mentality, one condition of all the recent indults granted for the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass should arouse immediate suspicions on the part of any Catholic who still retains his ability to reason.
The Roman Missal (in Latin, Missale Romanum) is the liturgical book that contains the texts and rubrics for the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Rite
Beginning with Quattuor Abhinc Annos (1984) and Ecclesia Dei (1988) of John Paul II, and culminating with the recent motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Benedict XVI, in which permission is so graciously granted by the respective Holy Fathers for a Mass that no priest needs anyone’s permission, including the pope’s, to offer any time he so chooses, the authors of these documents specify that these permissions are to celebrate Mass using the 1962 Missal, and only the 1962 Missal. Considering that between those documents, and the letter to the bishops which accompanies the latest motu proprio, this requirement is specified no fewer than 15 times.
“Methinks”, as Shakespeare says through the mouth of Hamlet, “she doth protest too much”. If permission is being given for the use of the liturgy promulgated by the Council of Trent, then why should it matter if the Missal were from 1962 or 1662? The stated reason is that the 1962 Missal was the last “typical edition”, the implication being that it is, therefore, the most “authentic”, as if the Missale Romanum were a sort of encyclopedia, the most reliable edition of which naturally being the one that is most current.
I contend that there is more to this condition than most Catholics suspect, which is a polite way of repeating what I immediately said to myself upon first reading Quattuor Abhinc Annos in 1984: “There‘s something fishy going on here”. When I began to compare the 1962 typical edition with previous editions of the Missale, the nature of the “fish” soon became evident. I will explain as briefly as I am able without doing violence to the subject matter.
First signs of a Reform
Doing a comparison of the various editions of the Missale from my own collection, including even one pre-Tridentine edition (1558), the first thing I concluded is that they are substantially identical, save for a few small details (the first post-Tridentine edition of 1570 adds a few rubrical specifications that its predecessors lacked) and for the addition of some feast propers, which is to be expected. This holds true until the typical editions of 1955-56, issued under Pius XII. Beginning in 1955 there were unprecedented changes made to the Missale, the first of many to come. These changes resulted in the Missale of 1962, but culminated in the Missale Romanum of Paul VI in 1969, the Novus Ordo Missae.
Pope Pius XII appointed Bugnini secretary of the Liturgical Reform Commission. Above, with his successor Angelo Roncali
The changes to the Missal decreed on November 16th, 1955, and becoming obligatory on March 25th, 1956, had their immediate origins several years previous. Shortly after commenting (on the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima in 1917) “This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith in Her liturgy…”
This same Pacelli, now Pope Pius XII, established in 1948 the Commission for Liturgical Reform, appointing one Fr. Annibale Bugnini as its secretary. Remember that name, for Father, later Archbishop Bugnini, would eventually be revealed as a Freemason and denounced to Paul VI, who immediately removed him from his positions of authority on Vatican commissions and sent him away, eventually to die in exile in Iran. All this, unfortunately, not before he had authored and instigated alteration after alteration of the Church’s liturgy, even finally the Novus Ordo Missae itself.
How the reform of Holy Week in 1955 was made
Shortly after the Commission for Liturgical Reform was founded there came a request from the bishops of France through their spokesperson Cardinal Lienart for permission to restore the Paschal Vigil to the evening rather than its morning celebration. Fair enough. It does seem a bit out-of-place to light a new fire and carry in the triple candle to chants of Lumen Christi in broad daylight. This permission was granted in 1951.
Bugnini and company, though, had only just begun. The magnitude of what came next can hardly be overstated. They went far beyond simply changing the hour of the Paschal Vigil. They had somehow convinced the pope that the whole of Holy Week needed to be restored to a more primitive usage, and so they had basically scrapped the traditional Holy Week (unchanged from the earliest pre-Tridentine Missale I could find, but, more importantly, re-promulgated in the Tridentine Missale of 1570 as well by order of the Council of Trent and Pope Saint Pius V) in favor of what they told Pius XII was the form of Holy Week in use around the time of Saints Wilfred (b. 634) and Bede (b. 672).
The first changes by Bugnini were introduced in Holy Week ceremonies in 1955
Now how the pope accepted this after issuing warnings specifically against this practice of returning to primitive liturgical uses in his encyclical Mediator Dei (1947), and calling those who desired to do so “wicked” in that same document is astounding. Furthermore, the claim that their “restored” Holy Week rites existed at the time of Saints Wilfred and Bede, or at any other time in history seems to have been an utter, complete, and blatant fabrication. They rightly reasoned that neither Pius XII nor anyone else for that matter was capable of verifying the veracity of this claim, and the pope seems to have trusted Bugnini et al implicitly.
Thus in 1955 this fabricated Holy Week was officially promulgated by Pius XII with the document Maxima Redemptionis under the ironic title “The Order of Holy Week Restored”. It is interesting to note that the document Maxima Redemptionis of November 16th, 1955, speaks mainly of restoring the Paschal Vigil to its proper time, with only a footnote at the end mentioning that the ceremonies had been modified a little to restore them to “what was known in the days of St. Wilfred and St. Bede”. Also interesting to note is the fact that, save for some very minor modifications, these new rites of Holy Week “qualified” to be placed into the new Missal of Paul VI virtually intact.
In reality the introduction of new rites was a test to see if anyone would react negatively; whether or not Bugnini and the Commission would be caught in their lies, or whether it would just be accepted on the weight of the enormously popular Pius XII without question. If there were no objections raised, and if the bait were taken, Bugnini knew that there would be little serious opposition to altering the Mass itself.
From there on, one change after another ...
In spite of being a glaring violation of Quo Primum of Pope St. Pius V, the bull promulgating the Tridentine Missale as the only acceptable one in the Latin Rite and forbidding the changing of the rites therein, or addition of new rites into said Missale “in perpetuity”, the consequence for doing so being no less than incurring the “wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, this new Order of Holy Week was everywhere published and accepted without any hesitation whatsoever. The green light had been given to “Brother Buan” (Bugnini’s Masonic codename) to continue implementing their plan of destroying the Faith by destroying the liturgy.
Bugnini continued with the changes after the Council
From that time one change followed another so quickly that the clergy could scarcely keep abreast of them. As Gertrude says in Hamlet, “One woe doth tread upon another’s heels, so fast they follow”. The additional Collects said at Mass were abolished, along with most of the vigils of feast days. Twelve of fifteen octaves (some dating to the time of Saints Wilfred and Bede!), as well as the proper Last Gospels were also abolished, and so was the Feast of the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, this being replaced with the feast of “Saint Joseph the Worker”, a kind of Catholic May Day. All this (and more) in 1955!
1958 saw the resuscitation of the “dialogue Mass” with Pius XII’s “Instruction on Sacred Music”, issued on September 3rd, just one month before his death. One is entitled to imagine that Pius XII was little aware of what was going on at that time as he had been gravely ill for some time.
Though this “dialogue Mass”, in which the congregation makes the responses formerly reserved to the altar boys, and even reciting some parts of the Mass formerly reserved to the priest had been allowed on at least one occasion that we know of, and under duress, by Pope Benedict XV in 1922, it nonetheless represented a significant violation of the traditional practice of the Church and theology of the Mass which holds that the right to make the Mass responses and serve at the altar is technically one enjoyed by clerics alone. Hence altar boys are to wear cassocks and surplices which are clerical dress, to indicate that although lay males could serve Mass when required to do so, this was by way of exception and they are substituting by indult for clerics when such could not be had. One of the obvious implications of allowing all of the faithful, females included, to make those responses traditionally reserved to men in Orders, is that females could, in fact, receive Orders as well, even the Priesthood!
Following the death of Pius XII and the election of John XXIII in 1958, the changes continued unabated. In 1960 Pope John named Fr. Bugnini secretary of the Preparatory Liturgical Commission for the upcoming council that he had invoked. From then until 1962 more feasts were abolished, the unchangeable Canon of the Mass (the word “canon” means “unchangeable”), was changed by the insertion of the name of St. Joseph, as if to redress some oversight committed by the early Church, which apparently had insufficient devotion to St. Joseph as they failed to place his name in the Canon. Other rubrical changes were made as well, including the elimination of the Confiteor prior to the reception of Holy Communion by the Faithful during Mass. These changes had the effect of numbing the sensibilities of Catholics, clergy and laity alike, and to habituate them to the novel idea that nothing was exempt from change. They were, of course, designed to pave the way for the eventual introduction and acceptance of the Novus Ordo Missae.
One example of those baseless changes, the abolition of the Confiteor
Just as one example, let us consider the already-mentioned elimination of the 2nd Confiteor, as it is commonly referred to. This was done with the excuse that the Confiteor had already been said at the beginning of Mass, so to recite it again in the middle of Mass would qualify as a “useless repetition”. Not so, however. You see, the Communion of the Faithful is neither necessary, nor, properly speaking, a part of the Mass at all. When there are faithful who are to communicate at a Mass, this is accomplished by the insertion of a Communion rite, if you will, into the Mass, similar to that which one would use when bringing Holy Communion to the sick. This rite of receiving Holy Communion necessarily begins with a Confiteor. Such is the proper order of things. The priest doesn’t just go in and jump straight to giving the person or people the Eucharist without some sort of penitential rite preceding it.
The recitation of the Confiteor during the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar is only for the priest and the other sacred ministers, or altar boys as the case may be. To eliminate the “2nd Confiteor” would imply either that the faithful had no need of it, or that the Communion of the faithful were actually a part of Mass rather than being what it is, something outside of Mass but done within the context of Mass, as are the readings in the vernacular and the sermon. There were other changes made during this period, but I believe that these examples suffice to illustrate my point.
The right not to accept the 1962 Missal
In conclusion I wish to note that, with the possible exception of the new rites of Holy Week, none of these changes are heretical or contrary to the powers of the papacy to accomplish. Pius XII and John XXIII undoubtedly possessed the juridical, if not the moral, right to make them. (Editor's note: the preceding statement does not appear to be consistent with what follows) This being so, would it not, then, be an act of disobedience to reject the 1962 Missale for the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass as its advocates claim? I claim that not only is it not an act of disobedience to reject this Missal and, indeed, every version of the Missale going back to when the new rite of Holy Week was first introduced into it, but that it is, in fact, what reason would dictate that one must do if one is indeed serious about returning to and/or upholding the liturgical tradition of the Church.
A 1962 Roman Catholic Missal compiled from the Missale Romanum for the use of the faithful
Look at it this way: All of these changes were masterminded by Annibale Bugnini, a proven Freemason, whose intention as a member of that secret society planted within the very highest echelons of the Vatican was to do as much damage as possible to the Church, Her Faith, and the faith of Her members. Although he would accomplish this most effectively later on with the advent of the Novus Ordo Missae, the changes already introduced into the 1962 Missale were nonetheless intended for that same purpose. The 1962 Missale is corrupted, and substantially discordant with the Missale Romanum as promulgated in fulfillment of the commands of the Council of Trent by Pope Saint Pius V. Neither can the claim that none of these changes is heretical in content be used as an argument in favor of its use, for neither is the employment of hula girls, fireworks, and mariachis strictly speaking heretical in itself, but they belong to that class of novel and profane things that do not belong in the Mass.
I might add that the fact that the 1962 Missale was either accepted and/or used by one or another prelate or priest who were in themselves good men of virtue does not excuse its use now in light of the facts I have just presented.
When it comes down to it, if one can justify the use of the 1962 Missal to oneself in spite of all this, then one has no good and valid reason left to proffer for not accepting and using the Missale Romanum of Paul VI, which, it is claimed, likewise contains no specific heresy (since the original introduction, which did in fact contain an heretical definition of the Mass, was corrected), and was introduced by a validly reigning pope. (Editor's note: The Novus Ordo Missae is fundamentally a Protestant communion [meal] service which implicitly denies the "Real Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist. It was specifically designed that way).
This, I believe, is the reasoning behind the recent Roman documents insisting on the use of the 1962 Missale and no other. Celebration of the immemorial Liturgy of Rome as codified by the Council of Trent ought properly to be done using an edition of the Missale which does not vary substantially from that codified on the orders of that same council. The Missale Romanum of 1962 contains not only changes, but important and substantial ones which violate the injunctions of Quo Primum and the whole of the Church’s liturgical tradition.
One further difficulty is presented by the fact that at the time of the writing of this article, nobody has had the funding, or perhaps even the interest, to reprint an editon of the Missale which antedates the inclusion of these changes. Reproductions of the 1962 version are, on the other hand, relatively cheap and plentiful. Should this plea reach a benefactor with the means to undertake the costly task of reprinting one of the later but incorrupt editions, I would gladly offer one of my older Missals, some of which are still in the box, for the project.(editor's emphasis throughout)
NOTE:
The implications of Fr. Perez's article is that the Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI which now allows the Latin Mass of 1962 to be used is unfortunately not the Mass which should be restored. Rather, the Tridentine Latin Mass of Pope St. Pius V should be brought back as Quo Primum directed; the Mass which in virtue of Pope St. Pius V's Ex-Cathedra directive could never be licitly eliminated.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
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What/Where is the Roman Catholic Church?
In light of Traditional Catholic dogma/doctrine, how should the Second Vatican Council be viewed ? Is it consistent with Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and prior Magisterial teaching?What explains the tremendous amount of "bad fruit" which has been forthcoming since the close of the Council in 1965? “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16)
This site explores these questions and more in an attempt to place the Second Vatican Council in proper perspective.