Editor’s note: The following is the first part of a series. Read Part II, Part III, and Part IV at the links.
I. Introduction
What is going on in the Church these days? How to understand the origin of our present dilemmas, and what to do about them?
Like many of you, I’ve wrestled with these questions for years. As a recent convert, I started to ask questions after becoming aware of liturgical abuse in my parish. I have gone through an agonizing, years-long process of trying to figure out why irregularities were so common at the Novus Ordo Masses I attended. Some seemed minor, and others were appalling, but abuses were characteristic of virtually every liturgy I attended in different parishes, cities and countries. Over time, mainly through self-education, I learned about the problems of Vatican II and discovered the existence of the Tridentine Mass, which gave me some answers about why there is a crisis in the Church and what to do about it.
This is a personal statement, not a theological treatise, about my spiritual journey, which is still a work in progress.
I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in 2009. Early on, as I was still learning the basics of the faith, I turned to Catholics I trusted to explain the variations in teachings and practices I was experiencing. When I mentioned problems in the Church or expressed skepticism about an utterance of the pope, or described my own troubling experiences with the liturgy and priests, I was urged to calm down and not to fret over such issues, but to focus rather on my own salvation. That is good advice, and yet I don’t think Catholics are called to be ignorant of Church affairs or to blindly follow error.
The Novus Ordo Mass is valid, I was told; offer up the liturgical abuses. Altar girls and Communion in the hand are no problem because they are permitted – don’t worry about it. But I have learned that beliefs and practices that are common and widespread in the Church today were unheard of and even condemned just 50 years ago. What happened?
Has the Roman Catholic Church changed so much that it may be called a new church, a new religion whose adherents are new Catholics – “Neo-Catholics”? The term may be an apt description of faithful Catholics, those often described as “conservative,” who refuse to acknowledge that the Catholicism of today is in many respects different from that of the past; who swallow the Vatican II reforms hook, line and sinker; for whom John Paul II and Benedict XVI are the ultimate authorities and conservative champions; for whom EWTN is the lodestone of orthodoxy; and who defend any and all innovations as long as they are “approved.”
What follows is not a definite statement of opinion or belief, but rather an open letter from a confused Catholic trying to make sense of the modern Church and my place in it. I will organize my thoughts into separate parts to keep things clear.
II. Some Observations of Changes in the Church
The Roman Catholic Church has changed a lot since Vatican II. Consider: a new Mass, new breviary, new liturgical calendar, new code of canon law, new Bible translation, new mysteries of the rosary. New vestments, church decor, architecture, and art. New language (vernacular), new prayers, new wordings of rites (e.g., ordination, baptism, marriage, funerals, exorcism), new catechism, new Rules of religious life, new liturgical readings. Dropped Septuagesima, Ember Days, and Rogation Days; loss of minor orders; loss of feasts. Revived permanent diaconate. Communion while standing. Communion in the hand. Altar girls. Relaxed disciplines (e.g., Friday abstinence, Eucharistic fast); new canonization procedures; new annulment procedures; obscuring of the meaning of extra ecclesiam nulla salus; new theology of Christ’s kingship and the Church’s social teaching; new teachings on ecumenism and religious freedom.
For years after my catechesis and baptism, I was ignorant of these issues. But when you read the saints and study Church history, you start to get a sense of how the Faith used to be preached and practiced, which stands in stark contrast to the lived experience of the Faith today.
Cardinal Newman is famous for saying, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” If you get deep into the pre-Vatican II history of the Roman Catholic Church, you risk ceasing to be Neo-Catholic and becoming “traditionalist.”
Whether or not the changes listed above are good or bad, I slowly started to discover, when they are taken together, how drastically the Church has transformed (and continues to transform), and in a short period of time. It is overwhelming. No matter how valid or even beneficial any given change (or “reform”) may be, such a profound remaking of a long established religion – a religion charged with the fundamentally conservative mission of preserving Tradition and passing on the Deposit of Faith – is an earthquake. And if “lex orandi, lex credendi” is true – if how we pray and worship affects what we believe and profess – this is a total makeover of the Church, not just in “externals” or “non-essentials,” but in people’s understanding of faith and morals, as well.
Just the idea that the Church and its practices can change so much and so quickly is a departure from the concept of a Faith that is unchanging and unchangeable. The problem is not just the novelties, and their great quantity and sweeping scope, but also the way in which such changes are taking place. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI noted with regard to the liturgy:
The liturgical reform, in its concrete realization, has distanced itself even more from its origin. The result has not been a reanimation, but devastation. In place of the liturgy, fruit of a continual development, they have placed a fabricated liturgy. They have deserted a vital process of growth and becoming in order to substitute a fabrication. They did not want to continue the development, the organic maturing of something living through the centuries, and they replaced it, in the manner of technical production, by a fabrication, a banal product of the moment.1 Cdl. Ratzinger in Revue Theologisches, Vol. 20, Feb. 1990, pp. 103-104; Source
This is the new church of today. The “conciliar church.” The new Mass – a valid Mass authorized by the pope – has led, in Benedict XVI’s words, to “devastation.” It explains why tens of millions are leaving the faith, and why vast majorities of Catholics in the USA, Europe, Latin America, and everywhere, if you ask them specific questions about the Faith, either do not know the faith or openly disagree with it. Very small numbers of Catholics go to Mass every Sunday, or even once a month. This represents a collapse of faith and morals. Some warn of widespread apostasy (such as Our Lady of Akita). Benedict XVI also said, “I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is, to a large extent, due to the disintegration of the liturgy.”
Paul VI and John Paul II confirm the post-conciliar crisis.
In 1968, Paul VI said,
The church finds herself in an hour of anxiety, a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what would even better be called self-destruction. It is an interior upheaval, acute and complicated, which nobody expected after the Council. It is almost as if the church were attacking herself. We looked forward to a flowering, a serene expansion of conceptions which matured in the great sessions of the Council. But …. one must notice above all the sorrowful aspect. It is as if the Church were destroying herself.2 Pope Paul VI, December 7, 1968, Address to the Lombard Seminary at Rome; Source
In 1972, Paul VI said,
We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation[.] … We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned, instead, was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties.3 Pope Paul VI, June 29, 1972, Sermon during the Mass for Sts. Peter & Paul, on the occasion of the 9th anniversary of his coronation; Source
In 1981, John Paul II stated,
We must admit realistically and with feelings of deep pain, that Christians today in large measure feel lost, confused, perplexed and even disappointed; ideas opposed to the truth which has been revealed and always taught are being scattered abroad in abundance; heresies, in the full and proper sense of the word, have been spread in the area of dogma and morals, creating doubts, confusions and rebellion; the liturgy has been tampered with; immersed in an intellectual and moral relativism and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism, vaguely moral enlightenment and by a sociological Christianity devoid of defined dogmas or an objective morality.4 L’Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981; Source
In this era of novelty and confusion, I am inspired by St. Paul: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle” (2 Thes. 2:14). And “Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, and the same for ever. Be not led away with various and strange doctrines” (Heb. 13:8-9).
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Cdl. Ratzinger in Revue Theologisches, Vol. 20, Feb. 1990, pp. 103-104; Source |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Pope Paul VI, December 7, 1968, Address to the Lombard Seminary at Rome; Source |
| ↑3 | Pope Paul VI, June 29, 1972, Sermon during the Mass for Sts. Peter & Paul, on the occasion of the 9th anniversary of his coronation; Source |
| ↑4 | L’Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981; Source |
I entered the Church in 2010 after living for 27 years as a Protestant. It wasn’t until Pope Francis in 2013 that I really woke up that there was something deeply wrong going on. Pope Francis made me a traditionalist Catholic (i.e. a regular Catholic just like the way every Catholic was for the entire history of Catholicism until Vatican II).
And perhaps that is why Almighty God is permitting him to reign as pontiff: To help us realize that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with so-called “conservative Novus Ordoism”.
I was a “conservative Novus Ordoist” until Sexagesima 2015, when, by happenstance, I happened to find the FSSP online apostolate in Sarasota and was flabbergasted to realize just how radically different the NO is compared to the Mass of the Ages. I had read from all the conservative NO experts that the Latin Mass was all well and good, but it simply had to be changed and that what we received in 1970 may not have been exactly what Vatican II called for, but it was necessary and that any abuses are just that, not problems with the NO. It took literally less than 5 minutes of me watching the Mass of the Ages online to discover that that argument is absolute garbage.
You are extremely fortunate to have an FSSP close by. I listen to homilies from FSSP priests online and recognize practically an entirely different Catholicism that I long to be a part of. In Oregon where I live, Archbishop Sample is extremely friendly to the Latin Mass. Should the FSSP or ICK be invited to open up shop within my diocese, I will make the switch in a heartbeat. We are enduring with a reasonably good N.O. parish in the meantime with very solid priests. The N.O. mass itself is what is difficult to bear and the irreverence it seems to engender among parishioners. And this is with priests who offer the mass reverently. I agree that this is a blessing of Pope Francis’s pontificate: more of us are waking up.
Matt, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I’m in the same boat as you: no Latin Mass within reasonable proximity. I have to stream the LiveMass.net Masses over the Internet. I don’t know if you are aware of their apsotolate, but it is one of the greatest blessings the Lord has given to me that I found it.
Oh I gotcha, thank you for that link. It looks like a great resource.
You guys:
Beg, plead and do whatever to get the FSSP there. I’m in North Idaho and tho I have to drive 1 1/2 hours to get there, it’s worth it. And not JUST for the Mass; just being a part of a Catholic parish that is unafraid to stand for the teaching of the Church and priests who preach the word is better than good for the spiritual morale. It’s GREAT!!
I’m working on a letter to my Archbishop requesting just such a thing. We are extremely blessed and fortunate to have him, and I really trust his wisdom on this point. If anyone is interested, there is going to be a Sacred Liturgy conference in Medford, Oregon from June 12th to 15th where Archbishop Sample and Cardinal Burke (!) will be in attendance and Cardinal Burke will be offering a Pontifical Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form. My family and I are planning to attend.
We have a parish in Portland, as do the Maronites. There is a Ukrainian Rite parish near Eugene. Don’t know if any of those are near you, but, if so, you may want to try them out.
It is a sign that we are in a most disturbing time of history when one has to write to the Bishop of a Diocese and ask him to provide Catholicism for the Faithful.
It is. I will do whatever I have to do at this point.
I had a good look at the SSPX a while back. I understand the reservations some people have about them, having held the same for about a decade.
I think the ascendancy of Francis made me go back and look a little more deeply at the crisis in the Church.
The SSPX are a wonderful blessing to the Church. We attend a Society chapel exclusively now. My only regret is that it took me so long to properly understand their position in the context of this crisis. I wish I had made the move years earlier.
I’m in Spokane, WA. What church do you attend?
You can view true liturgy, from an Eastern perspective, at the link immediately above. Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Thank God for the gift of more than one ancient rite. Such beautiful variety. The Eastern Catholics are blessed that the wreck of the liturgy seems to not have touched their rites. Thanks for the video.
There have been a few minor changes here and there, but they’re of little consequence. Nothing at all in comparison to the Roman Rite. For instance, we used to sing, “Through the prayers of the Mother of God, oh, Savior, save us.” Now we say, “Through the prayers of the Theotokos, oh, Savior, save us.” You can hear that in the video. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Also, if you would like to get an eastern perspective, you can watch here. Holy and Divine Liturgy offered by Metropolitan Skurla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4cTjJ80hNI
http://www.saintstephenpdx.com/
Fr. Eric was the parochial vicar at Sacred Heart in Medford when my wife and I were first married and living in Medford. You’re lucky to have him, Father. We will happily stop by St. Stephen next we’re in the area.
We look forward to your visit.
Inspiring Father!
Archbishop Sample is our Metropolitan, and he comes to our parish for Confirmation (and celebrate the Tridentine Mass).
The FSSP are sold, compromised men; they cannot object to the “new stuff.”
If they do, they are kicked out or moved. I’ve seen it happen.
Get the Faith with no compromises, then, you will get the Mass with no compromises because to take or detract one would do the same with the other.
No, I’m not doing it. We can’t keep that up, savaging our own because they don’t meet our standard of the perfect Traditionalist Catholic.
That’s not the point; the point is to be holy and lead others to holiness by example, prayer, and mortification. However, remember what St. Augustine once said: “One can have honor, one can have the sacraments, one can sing alleluia, one can answer amen, one can have faith in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and preach it too, but never can one find salvation except in the Catholic Church.”
Note well he did not Conciliar “church” or dancing with it would make one a saint. We have to be holy if we are to change the world.
” St. Augustine once said: “One can have honor, one can have the sacraments, one can sing alleluia, one can answer amen, one can have faith in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and preach it too, but never can one find salvation except in the Catholic Church.”
Do you have a citation for that quote?
Scratch that, CT. I found it.
The standard is that of the Church Herself, not someone’s preference or taste.
The author pretty closely sticks to the liturgical alterations, but along with them various teachings have simply changed in the way they are presented to the “faithful”.
Not all-inclusive, but here’s a short list:
Hell, Islam, Marriage/Divorce/Remarriage, Communion, Other religions/Religious indifferentism, Universalism, Freemasonry, Socialism/Communism, EENS, Capital Punishment, Just War, the status of homosexuals and the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture.
I am a convert of 4 years. I do have a {Protestant} theology and history background and I also have a pretty extensive experience with the collapse of doctrine in various Protestant “denominations”. I was 49 years old when I converted.
The CC is merely parroting what has happened in the Protestant groups.
Praise God I saw this mess pretty quickly, and with my wife have found a good FSSP parish. But as we worship at the FSSP parish and sometimes with our adult kids {who I pointed to the Catholic faith} at a couple different Ordinary Form parishes, she puts it slightly more pointedly than the author does; she simply says there are two religions in the Catholic Church. One is Catholic and the other is virtually indistinguishable from the Lutheranism we left.
And the pope is virtually indistinguishable from a Lutheran.
Insult to Lutherans. 😉
As an ex-Lutheran, I concur.
But not just any “Lutheran”.
To those Catholics who think “Lutheranism” is a monolithic thing, well, it is not, there are a sea of sects, and from that sea {swamp} the Pope cast his vote with the most debased, perverted, rank, sexually degenerate deviants of them all the stand shoulder-to-shoulder with in Lund, Sweden. While his spokesman Koch calls for “full communion” with them.
And remember…full communion with that association includes the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, a group that has cross-ordination agreements with Presbyterian Church USA, Reformed Church USA and Episcopal Church in the USA, all dying mainline Protestant groups that couldn’t be less Catholic if they tried…and they try.
Outwardly, the FSSP looks like this:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3464abbec1d9f9e0639854898361a0fc7b64aa5e0c8f2134742c9ebf60bbc69.jpg
Inwardly, it’s still this:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9c70a9ffecdecad5de6489fc8643e2aa97be891718c4680236cf37007592d51f.jpg
Ouch.
Convert since 2008. It is indeed a parroting of Protestant groups. What finally drove me to learning about the Church before Vatican II was the incessant (and I mean incessant) proselytizing of Protestant ideas, doctrines, programs, resources and so on in a supposedly Catholic parish. When I began learning about the TLM I was astounded. When I began attending the traditional Mass, I was even more astounded. The power of it overwhelms any Novus Ordo Mass. As your wife says, there are virtually two religions. One is full of power and Presence, the other is trite and cold and dead. And I can hardly bear to listen to someone tell me to attend a reverent NO Mass. Have done so countless times. Still. Dead.
I too am a convert of 4 years, having been confirmed in a Novus Ordo parish that is much more orthodox than most. In 2015 I found a new job to be in an FSSP parish. Having gotten accustomed to the TLM, I feel very out of place when visiting family and attending my old parish.
On a side note, our organist used to play in a Lutheran church and they used the Pauline missal in its entirety.
Many years ago, a friend of mine, who had left the Catholic Church prior to the changes, came back to the Church after the changes had been implemented.
During the process of returning, out of curiosity, she went to a Lutheran church to watch the worship service. At the end of the service, the congregation sang Amazing Grace.
Then she went down the street and attended a modern Mass at a Catholic parish.
She told me she was in complete shock, as the Mass was nearly identical to the Lutheran worship service except for the fact that, at the Lutheran church, the people knelt for communion, while at the Catholic church they stood.
At the end of the Catholic Mass, the final hymn was Amazing Grace.
She almost died on the spot.
Once upon a time, I was in Rome, at St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Crypt of St. Peter. We had Mass there. With my university. On the feast day of that crypt.
And lo, there we stood, surrounded by the tombs of popes, and these people in whose company I found myself pulled out guitars and sang Amazing Grace.
If spontaneous combustion were possible, it would have happened to me at that moment. And I wasn’t even a “trad” yet.
I don’t recall ever hearing Amazing Grace until I was an adult. Linda Ronstadt had a rendition of it in the 70s.
I have a Roman Rite missal that was issued after the initial changes were introduced to the Latin Rite. It reflects basically the old Mass, with some minor changes.
The missal contains hymns in the back. Page 497 has the hymn Faith of Our Fathers.
On the opposite page is A Mighty Fortress is Our God.
This is half a decade before the new Mass ever showed up. Things have been messed up for quite awhile.
Basically, this: once the mass was changed (which was very likely the result of a diabolical coup) everything else was up for grabs.
https://onepeterfive.wpengine.com/revolution-in-tiara-and-cope-a-history-of-church-infiltration/
The imposition of a new mass, in effect, told Catholics everywhere that nothing is so sacred it cannot be changed. And so everything did. But this was further compounded by the endless options afforded by the new mass. When there is one way of doing things people respect and revere it, but when there are 78 ways of doing things people naturally ask, “why not 79 or 80 or 800?”
I think this is an interesting point, because I always fumble when I use the terms Extraordinary Form and Ordinary Form. Now I GET the EF, but in referring to the OF I am actually referring to whatever iteration Father So-and-so decides is appropriate this week.
I never really gave liturgy much thought when I was a protestant, and even when I was in RCIA I kind of felt Catholics made too much of it.
Now?
Well, “too much” can’t be made of liturgy. Truly all else flows from the worship of the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
Agnes Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi…Dona nobis pacem!!
I never cared for the terms “Extraordinary Form” and “Ordinary Form.” They sound a little too technical for me, like calling an elbow an olecranon. I prefer to call it the Tridentine Mass when in public. Privately, I just call it the Latin Mass. Publicly, to avoid the problem of an obtuse, Catholic Answers Forums type of person saying that the Novus Ordo is also written in Latin, I call it the Tridentine Mass. Sometimes I use the phrase “Traditional Latin Mass,” but it’s a bit long and awkward to say, so I only use it with people who are unlikely to understand what I mean by Tridentine Mass.
I have never bought into the EF/OF designation. It seemed to be a politicians way of building a bridge where one should not be. Honestly I think the late Fr Gregory Hesse was right in classifying the Novus Ordo as a schismatic rite, since it violates both the Council of Trent and Quo Primum. Not to mention that Paul VI broke the liturgical unity of the Church. The Novus Ordo is the building block of another religion. It does not matter if the sacrement is confected or not – after all the Russian and Greek schismatics have a valid but ilicit consecration.
In the old days, after the changes, we used to just say “the old Mass” and “the new Mass.” Everyone knew what was meant by the term “old Mass,” at least during that era.
I guess that wouldn’t suffice nowadays.
Even the phrase “Traditional Latin Mass” isn’t accurate, as that could cover the Mass as it existed in 1967, but few Traditionalists would like that form of the Mass.
maybe its time to start calling it the real mass. Real mass for real catholics.
In my experience, “Traditional Mass” is the tidiest term. I have found it is the most workable.
It’s not just about the use of Latin (Latin Mass); it was not invented at the Council of Trent (Tridentine Mass); and it cannot possibly be referred to in relative terminology to the Novus Ordo (Extraordinary Form/Ordinary Form).
It is the Mass that comes to us from Tradition, i.e, that which has been handed on, which countless generations of Catholics knew, including thousands of Saints.
Strange though it may seem – NOT! – in addition to the four Eucharistic prayers within the N.O. Missal, the French bishops have sought and been granted permission by the CDW to produce over 300 (THREE HUNDRED) additional Eucharistic prayers for use in their country. If you ever suffer the trauma of having to assist at a N.O. Mass in France, you will notice that the priests seldom use a Missal, but have to use a loose-leaf binder to incorporate all the options and variations which they intend to use on that particular day.
One of the positive fruits of corruptions likw this, however, is that priestly vocations to the N.O. in France continue to plummet while the Traditional orders are booming. God can write straight with crooked lines and I pray that He will apply this ability to Rome quickly.
I remember reading years ago that some Cathedral in some Diocese of France struggles to get 70 people into the new Mass on Sundays, and just one block away there is an SSPX chapel where there is standing room only for more than the 700 or so Faithful at the traditional Mass. I remember reading this years ago when I thought the SSPX were the boogeymen, but I still couldn’t help being impressed.
That seems to have been the intention all along. The deliberate deregulaion of the liturgy leads to the eventual deregulation of the Divine Law in the minds of the faithful. A tree is known by its fruit. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Man, sir! Spot on! Cheers.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad1fc8bd25c15bf6165f702124ade69ecbef8ed02949f44921672953ec48cf8b.jpg
A
CHILD
OF THE
SIXTIES
(or “fool me once, shame on you”)
Daily Mass
In uniformed plaid
Then suddenly
Adults went mad
Priests danced round
Nuns turned hip
Fathers, mothers
All jumped ship
Michael rowed
His boat ashore
Through the Sanctuary
Door
Simoned-sermons
Garfunked too
Jesus loves you
Coo-ka-choo
Jesus Christ
Superstar
God is dead
So who You are?
Morning pills
Eat the Bread
Grace Slicked-souls
Will feed your head
All were Virgins
Female Ghost
Solitary
Feminist boast
Tell what’s happening
What’s the buzz
Bishops do
What never was
But one Bishop
Stood up straight
Great man-Mitred
Gainst Hell’s gate
Great man-Mitred
Took the Cross
Plugged the hole
To stop Priest loss
And to this day
Green fields, no dream
From Catholic families
Vocations stream
And along the
River banks they line
Rosaries in hand
For both Tiber and Rhine
We believe in God
The Virgin…the Creed
If this flow continues
Your waters will bleed
But not with Christ’s
Most Precious Blood…
A mitred-muck
Of sin-scabbed mud!
Marcel Lefebvre, pray for us!
The problem far too many have is that they have become inured to the radical changes which tends to prepare them to accept further changes with alacrity but with such a rapidly changing church there can be no shared Catholic Culture amongst the generations living.
Was the destruction of Catholic Culture intended or just a sad consequence of the new theology?
Hate to say it, but V2 was a result, not a cause.
The Catholic Church has been under attack since the collapse of Christendom and the Protestant Deformation and then internally was under attack for many years; Communist and Freemason infiltrated and especially damaged, deeply traumatized by 50 years of the most horrific series of wars in human history. In my opinion we are still experiencing the effects of what Pope Benedict XV {15, not 16} called the “Suicide of Europe” in 1916 and the subsequent wars to follow World War 1 which included of course world War 2.
After V2 the avalanche came off the mountain fast and furious.
The Catholic Church has been under attack since…
PENTECOST
but it was only relatively recently that it surrendered to the zeitgeist and sloughed-off Tradition and Theocentrism and revealed that, in its praxis, it is a susurrant serpent hissing endlessly in favor of its anthropocentric orientation as our Inertia Into Indifferentism increases in intensity and velocity.
I recommend reading the Alta Vendita. This should help to explain the origins of so many of problems we are experiencing.
Let the Novus Ordo Missae answer the following:
Canons on the Sacrifice of the Mass (September 17, 1562)
Canon 1.If anyone says that in the mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God; or that to be offered is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema.
Canon 2.If anyone says that by those words, Do this for a commemoration of me, Christ did not institute the Apostles priests; or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer His body and blood, let him be anathema.
Canon 3.If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass is only of praise and thanksgiving; or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one; or that it profits him only who receives, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema.
Canon 5.If anyone says that it is a deception to celebrate masses in honor of the saints and in order to obtain their intercession with God, as the Church intends, let him be anathema.
Canon 6.If anyone says that the canon of the mass contains errors and is therefore to be abrogated, let him be anathema.
Canon 8.If anyone says that masses in which the priest alone communicates sacramentally are illicit and are therefore to be abrogated, let him be anathema.
Canon 9.If anyone says 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 vernacular tongue only; or that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice because it is contrary to the institution of Christ, let him be anathema.
*sigh* The new mass skirts the boundaries of some of these but violates none. People who prefer the NO definitely end up violating these canons (particularly about the vernacular) but the rubrics themselves don’t. I wish it did because it would make our case so much easier.
You can see how the changes push things as far as possible to the brink, and technically they can’t be accused absolutely, but in effect, they achieve their goal. It is deception par excellence.
I cannot accept that such underhanded tactics and clever scheming crafted to to lead the faithful astray can come from the Church. She is not some conniving harlot, involved in as much compromise as she can get away with, but the radiant, spotless bride of Christ.
so what about the vernacular? Its in the vernacular now? How did that boundry not get violated?
Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II document on the liturgy, was deliberately vague, which left the door open to practically any interpretation at all.
The draft of SC was put together by Annibale Bugnini, who was soon afterward sacked by John XXIII. Then, as fate would have it, he was reinstated by Paul VI to be the Secretary of Consilium – the committee tasked with making up the new mass. Bugnini got to implement his very own baby! As you probably know, he was the great architect of the Novus Ordo Missae.
And that’s how it got through…
I didn’t know that! my question is that if it’s an anathama in the 16th century how, magically, can it be holy in the 20th?
Well, in case no has one told you, we are “Modern Man”.
Modern Man is more intelligent, more sophisticated, better informed, more enlightened and more duly proud of his modern achievements.
He sneers at previous generations for their ignorance – not in an intolerant way, because that would be intolerance, and that’s bad. No, not intolerance, but pity.
Such a modern man needs a modern Mass, because although the things from the past might have helped the poor uneducated, unintelligent saps from previous generations, modern man is just too smart to go along with Latin etc.
So whatever was said in the past about the Faith no longer applies, because modernism.
Amen!
Have you seen this over at akacatholic? So funny:
V. Positive thoughts be with you.
R. Likewise with you.
V. Lift up your hands.
R. We lift them up to the sky.
V. Let us give thanks to creation.
R. It is good and green.
I just saw it and it made me laugh out loud. The funniest thing I have seen this year.
The Council of Trent:
Canon 7.If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of masses, are incentives to impiety rather than stimulants to piety, let him be anathema.
Lex orandi, lex credendi. The Novus Ordo was created in the 60’s to deliberately suppress essential elements of the Deposit of Faith. These eternal truths were entrusted to the Church by Our Lord, who shed His Blood for Her. (Acts 20:28)
Suppose it were continually taught that the Father and the Son are the eternal God, (which is perfectly true) but the mention of the Holy Ghost was supressed. One would end up with a distorted, non-Catholic faith, because the suppressed element of the Deposit of Faith would distort the understanding of the element that remained.
By suppressing certain essential truths in the Novus Ordo, the things that remain become unqualified and unbalanced. Thus the Novus Ordo proposes a new and different mode of prayer to the Faithful, which causes a different mode of belief.
So, either the Novus Ordo does not lead the Faithful into error, or according to the Council of Trent, the Novus Ordo is not Catholic.
There is no other choice.
Great article!
10 minute video worth watching below.
It intercuts between a typical parish Novus Ordo and the traditional Mass.
It is a fascinating visual effect. Note that the clips from the traditional Masses are in different countries but are nonetheless identical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAcmODuUz44
I have a “few” people to show this too. Thank you!
This is nothing in comparison to the video at the link below. There, you can see the modern Mass in all its glory.
The canon begins around minute 36. It captures the essence. South Melbourne, Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWVcddWb2tY
I saw this a couple of years ago! I really don’t know why people bother…
He was ordained in about 1960 for the traditional Mass, and became a minor celebrity in the liberal media, and he got to like the limelight. How did he end up in this nonsense? He used the “for you and for all” at the institution narrative.
What a pity he was put out to pasture before the advent of Bergoglio. He might have been a cardinal by now.
Well this is the great tragedy of older men who have lost the plot and who should have been retired. This is an effect of the shortage of priests where men are encouraged to stay on, and this is the result. A tragic situation.
I couldn’t watch the whole thing; it was simply too painful. I just watched the consecration. I “love” (not!) Father’s “improvements” on the rubrics (and his . . . “chasuble” [or lack thereof. Seriously, what the hell is he wearing?]). Aren’t they wonderful? I think all priests should elevate the Host and the Chalice before they have even been consecrated, just like all priests should also sloppily dry their hands with a towel like they just finished a tennis match during the Preface, and all priests should fiddle with their lapel mics after consecrating the Host (That whole thing about keeping the thumb and forefinger together? Bah! So Tridentine, so medieval!”). ‘Cause that’s the most important part: making sure the congregation hears Father’s idiosyncrasies (not!).
“Now there’ll be a fight over these words. These are the old words and these are the new words, aren’t they?”
What a pompous, self-absorbed, narcissistic twit!
I watched from the beginning of the canon to the end. Hard to believe how awful that was, but it’s logical from a reading of the new missal. How many souls will not see heaven because of that man’s leadership? Lord help us.
We can never judge the interior intention, but going from what he manifests externally, Fr Maguire does not appear to have the intention to do what the Church does at the Institution Narrative/Consecration.
The use of “dramatic”, ie secular, music (including a kettle drum 2:36) for the low Mass clips was fantastically ironic.
That poor priest and his poor congregation. What a turnoff! I could never have kept attending that Church.
https://youtu.be/YAcmODuUz44?t=8m22s
The unintentional hilarity of this. I shouldn’t laugh, but the way the priests reverently consume the host followed by the N.O. priest treating like a potato chip. It’s so true.
The Novus Ordo is based upon the paradigm of perfunctorialicacionacitarianism. Very difficult to cure.
I attended a Novus Ordo Mass a couple days ago, 4 out of 5 altar boys were girls, there were 6 “extraordinary ministers” 5 woman with their stupid prideful smirks while slapping Jesus into the hands of morons, all the music has been radically stripped of anything resembling Catholic tradition and changed to resemble Protestant screeds, not a word about sin just mercy, mercy, mercy ad absurdum. I lived before Vatican 2 and know the difference, these people who think they are Bishops should be fired en masse for the destruction of beauty and tradition they have caused and turning the Church syncretist. I can hardly stomach setting foot in one of their architectural monstrosities anymore.
Sounds like our former parish. I am so sorry its happening there too. My family is blessed with several options for TLM within an hour radius; if we did not have that…..well, we’d have to take monthly weekends away, we can’t do without TLM now that we know what was robbed from us. However we must occasionally attend Mass at our old parish. The only way I get through it is to pray to Our Lady and St John the beloved disciple, and ask for the love and courage they had to stay with Jesus at Calvary while the High Priests, the Romans and His own people mock His agonizing sacrifice for their sins. I remember the words of the Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary, and draw my veil forward to shield my eyes from the nightmares unfolding to my right and left and focus on Him in the tabernacle or on high in Father’s hands. No matter how badly the priest and people behave, it is still His Adorable Heart up there, and I am still not worthy He should enter under my roof. Hope these thoughts help you as much as they did me. They’re not mine but gifts from G8d via accounts of the Sacred Heart and old catechisms.
Sounds a little like my parish. On Sunday we have 3 servers, boys and girls, 7 EMHC plus the priest distributing the Body and Blood of Jesus to less that 440; we are a small parish. During Communion the piano plays some semi-Catholic song to the accompaniment of 2 to 4 guitars and a flute. When receiving Communion I have observed EMHC “blessing” children by making the Sign of the Cross on their little heads. Since I receive the Eucharist on my tongue I never know if it will be placed on my tongue or shoved into my mouth. Yet, I have not had the courage to inform the priest of this abuse. Just saying…
“….. a sociological Christianity devoid of defined dogmas or an objective morality.” (Pope St. John Paul II). The deliberate setting aside of sound catechesis; of sound “indoctrination” was essential in order to bring about the universal acceptance of “Novus Ordo-ism” in all its ugliness. This has brought about the greatest crisis in the entire history of the Church. A crisis which has seen priests and religious abandoning their vows by the tens, and even hundreds of thousands in the last fifty years. It has reduced Mass attendance to single digit percentages of the baptised in many erstwhile Catholic or otherwise generically Christian societies. Instead of feeding us the “red meat” of transcendent Catholic truth, we have, for half-a-century, been fed a mind-stultifying diet of pseudo-christian fairy floss that has all-but relegated the essential articles of faith to the trash can of history. Add to this a seriously defective “socialised” liturgy that has seen the sanctuaries invaded by posses of lay people, predominantly female, performing functions that are proper only to the ordained priesthood.
How do the bishops respond to this crisis which they are only now, with great reluctance, actually admitting exists? How do they hope to fill the pews and replenish the fast dwindling coffers of once thriving parishes? With airy-fairy protestant “evangelisation” techniques such as ……. Alpha! It is this kind of garbage that has contributed enormously in bringing us to the point of a complete collapse of the Faith. To propose more of the same as a remedy is nothing short of complete insanity.
Which tells me these bishops have an agenda to destroy the church. Bella Dodd was telling the truth
why didnt she name names…
fairy floss
hehe
Yes, yes, and yes, thousands of people know that all of this true. But now what? All the institutions are owned and operated by the Novus Ordo establishment.
Don’t worry if Michael Vorus is right, these parishes are emptying in droves due to Baby Boomers dying off and younger generations fleeing to TLM chapels, and to the few reverent Novus Ordo and Anglican Use parishes. What we should be doing is fundraising to buy up the beautiful old churches to give to the three types of congregations I listed above, so these gems don’t suffer the fate of St Vibiana’s in LA
Im one of them. im sick of n.o.
As a convert who is now familiar (and absolutely in love with) the Extraordinary form, I constantly wonder why on earth anyone would have willingly given this exquisite form of worship up for the banality of what can never replace it? How can there not be thousands not up in arms because they realize they were robbed 50 years ago?
Mom, I often wonder the same. I’m a cradle Catholic I was very very young when the new Mass started but I have strong memories of either Tridentine Mass or the New Mass properly celebrated, with incense and chanting and altar boys with patens. My mother’s church was built in 1928 and had little changed; the wreckovating began when I started school, as did the folk Masses and communion in hand. I can’t understand the change either.
However, in a FB chat with Fr Heilman and other posters, some remarked that in their childhood parishes, the Latin Mass was performed in a routine perfunctory way, not like we see it now, with full hearts.
Then I came across this video of JFK funeral – holy cow, sure sounds to me like the Cardinal is plain just skipping words altogether!
https://youtu.be/E6frnUl7X0A
Also, as I talk to my mom b. 1935 and others of her age down to my generation, catchesis just was not there and it only got worse with the 60s 70s 80s 90s.
Lastly, owing to the wound of original sin, many latched on to the New Mass because it’s easy – no language to learn, it flatters them with attention and appeals to their pride (via the priest celebrating versus populum, less kneeling, skipped confiteors, opportunities to get attention and a piece of the action as lectors, “altar girls” and so called “Eucharistic Ministers” – another bit of laziness, why learn and use proper term?)
Whereas Latin Mass requires a lot of that icky kneeling, genuflecting, quiet, humility, obedience, listening respectfully and learning rubrics. And, oh the humanity! The TLM has LATIN!
Yes, indeed. The changes came around the same time that people were beginning truly to revel in disobedience and intellectual laziness. Imagine if the Church had catechized instead of encouraging that attitude! What a difference it would have made to this world.
wonderful points. I have heard too that the mass did get routine and heartless before V2 BUT it gets routine and heartless now. I think the main point is the form. Is is proper worship. Its not our fault if the priest doesn’t have it in him that day. But it is someones fault if there are girls up there, and people treating the eucharist like a chip
Completely agree (I am an ex-Lutheran). We were very blessed to have it available while living in Berlin only few blocks away. The more I have studied it, I am coming to conclusion that it is the ”new church” that started with this reform as per Anne Catherine Emmerich (who was by the way a German religious sister). It has been said that when Vatican II changes came to place it was then that ”Rhein flowed to Tiber”, ie. German Bishops have been notoriously rebellious for long time, with few exceptions only. Now we would have traditional mass about 1.5hours drive away on Sunday mornings in a different State but I am seriously considering visiting it with our kids in tow especially when the roads melt from ice again in Spring. It was also partly the Gregorian chanting and old Church art with icons like Our Lady of Perpetual Help that led me out of protestantism. Those made me want to study the history of Church from the very beginnings, and ten years ago in Easter vigil I finally came home. Some refer to extraordinary form as the ”Mass of the Saints” and come to think of it, many of our most beloved Saints lived at the time when the extraordinary form of the Mass was the only form. Coincidence?
I had not thought of Anne Catherine’s visions as in that light, but it certainly makes sense! We are fortunate to have the TLM in our own city. It is only twice a month, but it is *here* and all the priests who rotate celebrating it are in nearby parishes. 🙂 We are very blessed.
There is a complex history as to why anyone willingly, or in reality, unwillingly, gave up the true Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
If you have the time, read this excellent on-going expose of how this happened and who was most responsible for it:
http://traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f000TradIssuesIndex.html#trad
Until someone in authority resists the advance of fornication and sacrilege in the Church, I have to assume that, generally speaking, all are in agreement that the revolution is good; fornication is good. Token resistance; Overwhelming support for the revolution. That is simply the truth.
I can not, will not, ever agree to those terms; be they advanced by the Pope himself.
I am back where I started. Just me. And my Bible. And my Bible tells me that those who commit or countenance sin will not end well.
Nowadays most Catholics are Catholic in name only. They are really Protestants with open minded sex oriented moral values inculcated by the clergy through benign neglect. The Catholic Church is headed in the direction that Free Masonry wishes it to go particularly since the revolution of Vatican II. There is now a fast diminishing number of Catholics who are totally orthodox in the beliefs. Unless this changes the Church will become a remnant within 50 years. Prayer, penance and divine intervention is the way forward.
i think there will be more orthodox as rome and bishops get crazier…
I may be mistaken but the article seems to reveal a lack of historical perspective, rather than too much of it.
For example, it is common for the Catholic Church to publish a new catechism after an ecumenical council, the Catholic liturgy and canon law has never been unchanging, and more. Yes, there are liturgical abuses, but they’re not universal by any means, and I’ve been to Catholic Churches across the U.S. continent as well as internationally. The rosary is a popular devotion that developed over time, and has had many variations. Even the additions of the Glory Be, the second half of the Hail Mary, division of the prayer into decades, mysteries for each decade, etc. were innovations that arose through the years. The rosary didn’t drop down fully formed from Heaven.
The structure and conclusion of the essay make it clear what perspective is being taken on the crisis it speaks about and casts a shadow for me on the future direction of the series and of this convert
The key point you are missing is that what happened in the 1960s regarding the liturgy was unprecedented. Never before had a committee assembled to build a liturgy from scratch; rather, the Mass, the Rosary, etc. developed organically over long periods of time, to the point that they were fixed in their forms as we know them precisely because they had the weight of centuries of tradition behind them. Additionally, as has been well documented, the committee that created the Novus Ordo relied on faulty scholarship (e.g., the assumption that trying to mimic the earliest forms of Christian worship was more authentic liturgically than allowing for the developments of the Middle Ages, the now-debunked claim that Eucharistic Prayer II was based on the work of Hippolytus) and deception to sneak their work past the more conservative cardinals.
Do a simple search on YouTube or Google Images. They are far more common than you apparently realize.
The post-Conciliar liturgical deformation is an abuse “in se.” The wholesale alteration of the Mass (yes, alteration: read Bugnini himself) is heretical. Period. You seem to be in the camp of Darwinian Catholicism. Everything is in flux. You can change externals without any effect on essence.
You sound as if you grew up in the 60s — or should have.
I wasn’t alive in the 1960s and the first pope I can personally recall is Pope John Paul II, whose theology and philosophy I’ve read and loved. I love the Mass, which is celebrated with great reverence in my parish. There is deep beauty and truth in it, and I don’t feel deprived for having been born after the second Vatican Council. I feel blessed. For I likely would not otherwise have knowledge of the third secret of Fatima or the thoughts of Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, and more. Though many of them lived before and through Vatican II, their words were not as accessible in the days prior to Internet. Furthermore, I’m blessed to have the Catechism of the Catholic Church, such a rich resource for the soul and mind. Nor would I have had in the past such a chance to witness in this more deeply troubled age to the truths of the Catholic faith. I’m grateful to God for His providence and will 🙂
Strip away the psychobabble, the drama and the focus on self rather than Christ and you will find the Church Jesus established. The Sacramental Church exists, and will exist until Jesus returns. If the Sacraments weren’t effective and necessary they would not be under attack from outside the Church and inside the Church. All those who abandon the Sacramental Church will face eternal damnation, because the only “unforgivable sin” is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and those who abandon the Sacramental Church are doing just that. Satan knows this, and that is why he has from the beginning tried to separate souls from the Sacraments. The Sacraments are valid, and to turn your back on them is an act of spiritual suicide. No pope, nor priest can invalidate the sacraments, they can only undermine them, which discredits themselves, not the Sacraments. There will always be faithful priests and faithful parishioners, and thus valid Sacraments. As to EWTN, there is still some good programming to be found there, but, one must be very cautious as to how trustworthy its programming is as a whole, since Mother Angelica is no longer in charge. It is the same old story, once the BVM(Blessed Virgin Mary) is replaced by the VBM(Viable Business Model) compromise to accommodate the widest possible market occurs when decisions are made as to what content is acceptable for promoting.
No Pope or Priest can invalidate the Sacraments?
While true on the theological level, that is not true on the practical level. When a couple is told they can (perhaps should) receive the sacraments while fornicating, their Sacraments may still be valid in God’s eyes, but they are damning to the soul by their validity. So, how does that statement help me at the local Parish, since there is no TLM nearby? The new moral infrastructure is in place and insisted upon for me and my family (or should be, to be in full union with the Pope).
There is a Brazilian Priest now declared a heretic by his Bishop, anathema, for insisting on pre-revolutionary, Magisterial Truths on behalf of his poor, suffering Faithful. He is wandering alone.
And maybe we should consider what will happen to us, when these revolutionary directives are insisted upon by the Pope to our common refuge from the theological storm, FSSP and ICC. How will THEY respond when told they must admit fornicators to the rail, and confess them accordingly?
Practically speaking, what am I supposed to do, when mortal error is insisted upon?
Hi Aqua – Do you believe in the Power of the Holy Spirit? Do you think It is submissive to any man? To blaspheme the Holy Spirit, is to make that very claim. Any priest that takes his orders from the unholy spirit will be exposed, those who are aligned with the Holy Spirit, you can be assured will shine like a light in the darkness for those who seek the Grace which flows from the Sacraments. No pope, nor priest no matter how evil, can override the Grace flowing from the sacraments, to those who seek that Grace. The Holy Spirit is our assurance that such conduits of Grace are dependent upon Him, not man.
No question. Agreed 100%. But this Papacy is not fighting that battle, the truths you describe. They can probably even phrase it better than you. They are in a more intimate, practical, personal struggle, (truth with a small twist).
Pope Francis to Bp Forte: “If we speak explicitly about Communion for the divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
Just because this theological tsunami hasn’t hit your particular Parish doesn’t minimize what it means to those it has; nor that it might not soon reach you as well, perhaps, even to the FSSP and ICC, as a requirement of loyalty (if you are one of the lucky few who attend). One Body, One Spirit?
My question is, what do you do when it does approach you personally, not just someone else. This “spirit” is in your own Confessional. Perhaps your wife’s Confessional (struggling with infidelity perhaps?) or child’s (porn, abortion, drugs?); they just went in. Perhaps you yourself are struggling with mortal temptations. You attend FSSP? Lucky you. But their Charism is in submission to the Pope as well. It is coming to them, personally. Note well what happened to the Knights of Malta. Yes, even them. Even they MUST now distribute condoms!
We are not fighting over theology. They grant all of what you say, above. But they empty it of meaning. That is the game.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/2016-the-year-pope-francis-finally-showed-his-hand
Hi Aqua – That we see Francis for who he is means that our theology has not been emptied of its meaning. Don’t be overwhelmed, try not to despair, for it is in times such as these that great saints arise in the Church. And never forget Jesus returns for a reason, be ready, persevere, in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph. Never turn away from the Sacraments for any reason, for I guarantee you that a close examination of any such reason will never hold up to spiritual scrutiny or justify turning away from these conduits of Grace.
Despair? That is the mortal sin of Judas. I will not do that.
Concern? What would you do if your wife left you, with your children, for another man and your Parish Priest allowed your wife to continue publically receiving the Sacraments with her new “spouse”; her new married life without you in good standing “before God” and the Church? Or perhaps your daughter is considering aborting her baby, and her Confessor assures her that God will not abandon her if she does; to discern in good conscience the best path for herself and to never stop receiving the Eucharist no matter what. A life and an immortal soul is at stake in that Confessional. It may be personal. It may not. But this is played out in countless actual lives; fellow suffering members of the Body of Christ.
Are you not concerned that this theological revolution is reaching deeper, and deeper; approaching you and yours? So I merely suggest you consider what you would do, as others now currently must do, when faced with a demand for obedience in the practical application of theological error: obey the Pope’s clear intention for you specifically? Or what should the local FSSP Priest do when told specifically, under obedience, that they shall not prevent objectively mortal sin from receiving Eucharist?
Yes. I am concerned. In truth, you and I and many orthodox Catholics are compelled to believe, under obedience, something that we do not believe. We just haven’t had to personally make the actual, practical sacrificial choice yet: the clear words of Jesus or the clear words of Pope Francis. But that is the cold hard truth of it. The paradigm is clear. It is forcefully spreading throughout the Church.
Hi Aqua – The Truth makes a counter argument against all of the potential contradictions against It you have highlighted. No one can force someone to align themselves with the Truth, but, we all have a conscience, which is in fact your Guardian Angel, and even though we might refuse to listen to our conscience, we all have one. This pope has discredited himself and established that he is not the Vicar of Christ, and we know that because the Teachings of the Church and the Words spoken by Christ expose him for the rebellious soul that he is, just like his true master Lucifer. Those Words and teachings were preserved and proclaimed unchanged through the Centuries, for times such as these. Those who chose to seek a path away from these pillars of our Faith do not do so naively, nor as an expression of supportable errors. That is why they will face eternal damnation. The Word or the world the choice faces us all for we can not choose both, as do the consequences for the choice we make. That the world makes us pay a price when we refuse to choose it, should not surprise us.
Words of Pope Francis during an in-flight interview in February 2016:
“This (receiving Communion) is the last thing (for divorced and remarried Catholics who wish to re-integrate with the Church). Integrating in the Church doesn’t mean receiving Communion. I know married Catholics in a second union who go to church, who go to church once or twice a year and say I want Communion, as if joining in Communion were an award. It’s a work towards integration; all doors are open. But we cannot say from here on they can have Communion. This would be an injury also to marriage, to the couple, because it wouldn’t allow them to proceed on this path of integration.”
As I said: “Truth with a twist”.
Do you not see what he does in this quote? The underlying presumption is that this “second union” is a “marriage”. It requires much “accompaniment” and “discernment”, no doubt, but integration of this “union” into the Church Body is the target aimed for.
It sounds as if he is speaking orthodox language and assumptions. It is easy and understandable to casually assent if not on your guard for the fatal twelve word theological shift in the middle of an otherwise orthodox statement. But ultimately there is the fatal “twist” added to the Truth: integrating the “second union” into the Body of Christ through eventual Eucharistic communion, via the “path of integration”.
The “injury to marriage” is the “second union”. Full stop. Period.
“Integrating into the Church” DOES “mean receiving communion with our Lord”. Period.
I’ve been disappointed with EWTN too. Look up the debate with Michael matt and (sadly) Dale Alquist on Remnant tv. Dale alquist, who I though was a catholic, is stunning in his contempt for the church.
Hi honeybadger – I am afraid what Mother Angelica feared most is exactly what is happening at EWTN. It will be interesting to see who stays and who goes when it becomes clear that they can’t play both sides of the street anymore. The cracks are already starting to show.
They are all afraid. I keep hearing hosts on different shows, after all this heretical, dangerous stuff happening, still quoting the pope from a homily. The man has no credibility, why arnt they at least ignoring him….
WHat do I know. Honey badger sad…..
Hi honey badger – It is very sad, perhaps this is our Garden of Gethsemane moment. Luke21:-25-28 25 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, 26 men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
And Luke22:41-44
41 And he was withdrawn away from them a stone’s cast; and kneeling down, he prayed,
42 Saying: Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.
43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer.
44 And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.
Amen! Boy Luke sounds more apocalyptical than I remember! I need to read my bible more! Thank you
“The liturgical reform, in its concrete realization, has distanced itself even more from its origin. The result has not been a reanimation, but devastation. In place of the liturgy, fruit of a continual development, they have placed a fabricated liturgy. They have deserted a vital process of growth and becoming in order to substitute a fabrication. They did not want to continue the development, the organic maturing of something living through the centuries, and they replaced it, in the manner of technical production, by a fabrication, a banal product of the moment.1 Cdl. Ratzinger in Revue Theologisches, Vol. 20, Feb. 1990, pp. 103-104.”
So, I want to know exactly WHY, Your Holiness Pope Emeritus Benedict, did you allow all of this to continue under your reign??? And for that matter, why have ALL the post-Vatican II popes allowed all of this to continue???
The common narrative about JPII floating about the Internet, even in conservative Novus Ordoist circles, is that he really didn’t care a great deal about liturgy, nor, apparently, did most of the so-called orthodox bishops he appointed. Perhaps part of his indifference was due to a fear that to try to roll back the insanity of the post-Conciliar era would imply a repudiation of the Council itself, as he spent most of his papacy trying to put an orthodox spin on even the most progressive statements in the Conciliar documents.
As for Benedict, by the time he was elected pope, he clearly was not physically/emotionally/spiritually up to the task of fighting back against the entrenched Novus Ordo machine. As we’ve discussed at 1P5 before, Benedict, for all the good he did by issuing Summorum, was still the same Ratzinger who was a modernist-influenced peritus at the Council. He may have had an attachment to the Mass of the Ages, but he did not see the inherent contradiction between the theology of the Tridentine Mass and the anthrocentric theology of the NO.
This has been my experience too, as a convert who “read” his way in. Yesterday my wife and I were discussing a similar topic, wondering how so many Catholics in name could be so utterly wrong or ignorant about what truly matters in this life, as well as the pressing moral issues of our day. I don’t think the answer is as simple as invoking the “law of gradualness.” In my view, it must ultimately come down to faith itself: which “faith” are so many Catholics today putting their hope in? Is it the same faith to which St. Paul converted, or something else?
Based on my own experience (including RCIA), I truly believe that your average Catholic essentially “believes” in what amounts to a venerable political institution with, at best, a quasi-spiritual character—and not simply out of ignorance or a lack of interest. Such is the “New Catholic” of today, a person who can feel comfortable knowing he’s in the most “popular” church due to its sheer size, but who, I am sorry to say, has neither living nor lifeless faith, as St. Thomas teaches (II-II:5:3), but rather a mere private opinion, however sincere or true it may be. In other words, they are basically Protestant.
Above all, faith is the virtue which the Church lacks in the vast majority of her dead members. Without faith there can be no spiritual progress, no gradual attainment of holiness. I think the #1 reason for this crisis of faith is precisely because of the scandal of “change,” as the author has pointed out, of a Church not content with her identity and mission, as a mother with itching feet who cannot stand to be at home with her children, and who desperately wishes to leave her cloistered existence to mingle with the prostitutes—but not to convert them, but to become one of them.
Well said!
This February will be two years since I came back to the Catholic Church — the faith of my childhood. Long story, but suffice it to say, the Church I have come back to is not something recognizable to me. I have converted to a Church/ faith that may no longer exist. Many times I have asked, “What have I come home to?”
I believe the majority of Catholics have their heart’s desire in Francis as Pope. Mercy and forgiveness requires no repentance and no reformation. Believe what you like; leave the rest. Just be discrete about it. Attend mass each week on Saturday or Sunday and sign up for simplicity giving through your checking account. That’s all!
The Church has been and is being conformed to the culture. How many actually know what the Catholic Church teaches and believes (I’m not talking about Francis’ version)? If they do know, how many follow Her teachings? Do as you wish, remain silent and all is well. It has been a joint complicity between clergy and laity.
What AL does is takes things from “don’t ask, don’t tell, wink and look away” to “go, follow your heart, continue in your sin; there is no need for guilt or remedy; mercy is all that matters.” If it is all about individual conscience and peace with God, then there is no longer any difference between Protestants and Catholics.
We are all Protestant now. Thank you Francis. Not! When the Lord comes back, will he find faith on earth?
Doubtful they even know what Francis endorses. His ambiguity, while I know it to be stealth, doesn’t allow for the nominally Catholic to put their finger on him.
The Catholic Faith is the pearl of great price, the treasure that we all hoped we would one day find, which would explain everything that we ever wanted to know about life, how to live well, and how to die well. Now you’ve found it, dive in and dont give it up. For those returning, God has blessed us through the internet because so many good Priests have posted teaching material to help us understand more and go deeper. And we can speak to one another and support one another in this crisis. God bless!
We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned, instead, was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties.3
Idiots. I saw an interview with Jerry Garcia talking about the hope of the 60s and the dissapointment that it didn’t come to pass.
The church fell for the 60s nonsense too. Good gravy
God brought the jews out of egypt not in an act of stupid social justice, but so they can properly worship him.
Thank you for the great article – will the sequels be posted to this website too (onepeterfive.com)?
Bingo.
As a convert myself, this pretty much summarizes my experience.
Everything flows from how we worship. When the liturgy becomes a circus…….
This era is not unlike many eras of the past. This may be one of the most profound challenges the Church has faced in Her long history. But such eras rarely continue for more than 100 to 200 years. The issue here is that the Church will recover, but the people who are her responsibility during such periods will suffer, some the fires of Hell because of the actions of the (and I choke on this term) “reformers”. Due to their selfish intransigence the “reformers” condemn not only themselves but many who will follow their examples to a long time in Purgatory and possibly Perdition itself.
May the Most Merciful God have mercy on all of us!
The article infers that Pope John Paul ll was aware of the post-conciliar problems in the Church. However, as far as I know, Pope John Paul ll never equated or tied the problems in the Church with the Vll Council. In fact, the Pope was a huge proponent of the Council. As was Paul Vl, even though Paul Vl at least realized eventually that the Council wasn’t the New Springtime that he had been hoping for. That’s what happens when the Church as founded by God Himself reconciles with the world, and becomes man-centered instead of God-centered.
The Catholic Church can’t do that. It must be another church you are referring to, not protected by God.
We have a very bad pope and we should pray for him and the apostate “prelates” he surrounds himself with.
They’re apostates all around him, but he remains wide-eyed, innocent and squeaky-clean, even though he could expel and excommunicate them all as heretics with a click of his papal fingers. Right.
The pope is bad, pray for him.
As he continually appoints heretics, how does this not continue to degenerate. Indeed “to be Deep in History is to cease to be Protestant”. But at the same time it enlightens you to the new church that officially appeared over 50 years ago. With the complete takeover of the modernist, how and what means a restoration to the old Faith.
God has used the few and the ordinary to do gray things. I pray to be among those faithful who seek His holy will through the sanctity of the mass
Great things