Liturgical Time Bombs: The Destruction of the Faith thru Changes in Catholic Worship

[Stone]

Liturgical Time Bombs in Vatican II: Excerpts
The Destruction of Catholic Faith Through Changes in Catholic Worship
by Michael Davies - adapted

"Ridiculum est, et satis abominabile dedecus, ut traditiones, quas antiquitus a patribus suscepimus, infringi patiamur."
"It is absurd, and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old."

-----The Decretals (Dist. xii, 5)
Cited by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, II, I, Q. 97, art. 2.

Contents:
Plans for a Liturgical Revolution?
The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Annibale Bugnini
An Unsuspected Blueprint for Revolution
Detonating the Time Bombs
Omission of the Term "Transubstantiation"
Active Participation
Instruction Overshadows Worship
Protestantism and the Mass
A Ban on Kneeling for Holy Communion
Another Destructive Time Bomb-----"Legitimate Variations"
Legalizing Abuses!
The Abolition of Latin
A Pastoral Disaster
The Mass and Sacraments Reformed by a Freemason?
Destruction of the Roman Rite and Loss of Faith
Appendix I: Participation of Protestants in the Compilation of the New Rites
Appendix II: Fruits of the Liturgical Reforms with Stark Statistics

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LITURGICAL TIME BOMBS IN VATICAN II

Plans for a Liturgical Revolution?

During the first session of the Second Vatican Council, in the debate on the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani asked: "Are these Fathers planning a revolution?" The Cardinal was old and partly blind. He spoke from the heart about a subject that moved him deeply:

Are we seeking to stir up wonder, or perhaps scandal among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a rite, that has been approved for so many centuries and is now so familiar? The rite of Holy Mass should not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be refashioned according to the whim of each generation. [Michael Davies, Pope John's Council (Dickinson, TX: Angelus Press, 1977), p. 93]

So concerned was the elderly Cardinal at the revolutionary potential of the Constitution, and having no prepared text, due to his very poor sight, he exceeded the ten-minute time limit for speeches. At a signal from Cardinal Alfrink, who was presiding at the session, a technician switched off the microphone, and Cardinal Ottaviani stumbled back to his seat in humiliation. The Council Fathers clapped with glee, and the journalists to whose dictatorship Father Louis Bouyer claimed that the Council had surrendered itself were even more gleeful when they wrote their reports that night, and when they wrote their books at the end of the session.

["I do not know whether, as we are told, the Council has freed us from the tyranny of the Roman Curia, but what is sure is that, willy-nilly, it has handed us over (after having first surrendered itself to the dictatorship of the journalists and particularly the most incompetent and irresponsible among them."-----L. Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1970), p. 3.]

While we laugh, we do not think, and had they not been laughing, at least some of the bishops may have wondered whether perhaps Cardinal Ottaviani might have had a point. He did indeed.

A liturgical revolution had been planned, and the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (CSL), was the instrument by which it was to be achieved. Very few of the 3,000 bishops present in St. Peter's would have endorsed the document had they suspected its true nature, but it would have been surprising had they done so. In his book, La Nouvelle Messe, Professor Louis Salleron remarks that far from seeing it as a means of initiating a revolution, the ordinary layman would have considered the CSL as the crowning achievement of the work of liturgical renewal that had been in progress for a hundred years. [Louis Salleron, La Nouvelle Messe (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 197?), p. 17.]



The Liturgical Movement

Let there be no mistake, there was great need and great scope for liturgical renewal within the Roman rite, but a renewal within the correct sense of the term, using the existing liturgy to its fullest potential. This was the aim of the liturgical movement initiated by Dom Prosper Guéranger and endorsed by Pope St. Pius X. It was defined by Dom Oliver Rousseau, O.S.B., as "the renewal of fervour for the liturgy among the clergy and the faithful." In his study of the Liturgical Movement, Father Didier Bonneterre writes:

In 1903 the person who was to give the movement a definite impetus had just ascended to the See of Peter, St. Pius X. Gifted with an immense pastoral experience, this saintly pope suffered terribly from the decadence of liturgical life. But he knew that a trend for renewal was developing, and he decided to do his utmost to ensure that it bring forth good fruits. That is why on November 22, 1903, he published his famous motu proprio "Tra Ie Sollecitudini," restoring Gregorian chant. In this document he inserted the vital sentence which went on to play a determining role in the evolution of the Liturgical Movement: "Our keen desire being that the true Christian spirit may once more flourish, cost what it may, and be maintained among all the faithful. We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for . . . [the purpose] of acquiring this spirit from its primary and indispensable source, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and the public and solemn prayer of the Church." (Tra Ie Sollecitudini, November 22, 1903). [Rev. Fr. Didier Bonneterre, The Liturgical Movement: Guéranger to Beauduin to Bugnini (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 2002), p. 9.]

For St. Pius X, as for Dom Guéranger, writes Father Bonneterre, "the liturgy is essentially theocentric; it is for the worship of God rather than for the teaching of the faithful. Nevertheless, this great pastor underlined an important aspect of the liturgy: it is educative of the true Christian spirit. But let us stress that this function of the liturgy is only secondary." [Bonneterre, p. 10.] The tragedy of the Liturgical Movement was that it would make this secondary aspect of the liturgy the primary aspect, as is made manifest today in any typical parish celebration of the New Mass. Father Bonneterre has nothing but praise for the initial stages of the movement: "Born of Dom Guéranger genius and the indomitable energy of St. Pius X, the movement at this time brought magnificent fruits of spiritual renewal." [Bonneterre, p. 17.]

The Modernist heresy at the beginning of the twentieth century was driven underground by St. Pius X. [The story of the Modernist heresy is told in my book Partisans of Error (Long Prairie, Minnesota: Neumann Press, 1983). www.neumannpress.com] Father Bonneterre claims that Modernist theologians who could no longer propagate their theories in public saw in the Liturgical Movement the ideal Trojan Horse for their revolution and that, from the 1920's onward, it became clear that the Liturgical Movement had been diverted from its original admirable aims. He writes:

It was easy for all the revolutionaries to hide themselves in the belly of such a large carcass. Before Mediator Dei [Pius XII, 1947], who among the Catholic hierarchy was concerned about liturgy? What vigilance was applied to detecting this particularly subtle form of practical Modernism? [Bonneterre, p. 93.]

The early leaders of the movement were, writes Father Bonneterre, "largely overtaken by the generation of the new liturgists of the various preconciliar liturgical commissions." He describes this new generation as the "young wolves." In any revolution it is almost routine for the first moderate revolutionaries to be replaced or even eradicated by more radical revolutionaries, as was the case with the Russian Revolution when the Mensheviks (majority) were ousted by the Bolsheviks (minority). Just as nothing could prevent the rise to power of the Bolsheviks, nothing could prevent the triumph of the young wolves:

After the Second World War the movement became a force that nothing could stop. Protected from on high by eminent prelates, the new liturgists took control little by little of the Commission for Reform of the Liturgy founded by Pius XII, and influenced the reforms devised by this Commission at the end of the pontificate of Pius XII and at the beginning of that of John XXIII. Already masters, thanks to the Pope, of the preconciliar liturgical commission, the new liturgists got the Fathers of the Council to accept a self-contradictory and ambiguous document, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium. Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Lercaro and Fr. Bugnini, themselves very active members of the Italian Liturgical Movement, directed the efforts of the Consilium which culminated in the promulgation of the New Mass. [Bonneterre, p. 94.]

Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, chief architect of the New Rite of Mass which was composed after Vatican Council II (1962-1965) and imposed upon the Church in 1969.

In 1975 Pope Paul VI took action to remove Archbishop Bugnini from his powerful position as Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship: the Holy Father dissolved the Congregation and assigned the Archbishop to Iran. Evidence shows that the Pope did this because he believed Archbishop Bugnini to be a Freemason. Archbishop Bugnini died in Teheran in 1982. Archbishop Bugnini had described the New Rite of Mass (Novus Ordo Missae) as "a major conquest of the Catholic Church." This rite of Mass continues to be celebrated in almost every Catholic church (of the Roman Rite) in the entire world.

The most influential of the young wolves, the great architect of the Vatican II liturgical revolution, was Father Annibale Bugnini. Father Bonneterre recounts a visit by this Italian liturgist to a liturgical convention which was held at Thieulin near Chartres in the late 1940's, at which forty religious superiors and seminary rectors were present, making clear the extent of the influence of the liturgical Bolsheviks on the Church establishment in France. He cites a Father Duploye as stating:

Some days before the reunion at Thieulin, I had a visit from an Italian Lazarist, Fr. Bugnini, who had asked me to obtain an invitation for him. The Father listened very attentively, without saying a word, for four days. During our return journey to Paris, as the train was passing along the Swiss Lake at Versailles, he said to me: "I admire what you are doing, but the greatest service I can render you is never to say a word in Rome about all that I have just heard." [Bonneterre, p. 52.]

Father Bonneterre comments:

"This revealing text shows us one of the first appearances of the 'gravedigger of the Mass,' a revolutionary more clever than the others, he who killed the Catholic liturgy before disappearing from the official scene." [Ibid.]

[Stone]

The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Annibale Bugnini

Before discussing the time bombs in the Council texts, more specifically those in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which would lead to the destruction of the Roman Rite, it is necessary to examine the role of Annibale Bugnini, the individual most responsible for placing them there and detonating them after the Constitution had won the approval of the Council Fathers.

Annibale Bugnini was born in Civitella de Lego [Italy] in 1912. He began his theological studies in the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians) in 1928 and was ordained in this Order in 1936. For ten years he did parish work in a Roman suburb, and then, from 1947 to 1957, was involved in writing and editing the missionary publications of his Order. In 1947, he also began his active involvement in the field of specialized liturgical studies when he began a twenty-year period as the director of Ephemerides liturgicae, one of Italy's best-known liturgical publications. He contributed to numerous scholarly publications, wrote articles on the liturgy for various encyclopaedias and dictionaries, and had a number of books published on both the scholarly and popular level.

Father Bugnini was appointed Secretary to Pope Pius XII's Commission for Liturgical Reform in 1948. In 1949 he was made a Professor of Liturgy in the Pontifical Propaganda Fide (Propagation of the Faith) University; in 1955 he received a similar appointment in the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music; he was appointed a Consultor to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1956; and in 1957 he was appointed Professor of Sacred Liturgy in the Lateran University. In 1960, Father Bugnini was placed in a position which enabled him to exert an important, if not decisive, influence upon the history of the Church: he was appointed Secretary to the Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy for the Second Vatican Council. [Biographical details are provided in Notitiae, No. 70, February 1972, pp. 33-34.] He was the moving spirit behind the drafting of the preparatory schema (plural schemata), the draft document which was to be placed before the Council Fathers for discussion. Carlo Falconi, an "ex-priest" who has left the Church but keeps in close contact with his friends in the Vatican, refers to the preparatory schema as "the Bugnini draft." [Carlo Falconi, Pope John and His Council (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964), p. 244.] It is of the greatest possible importance to bear in mind the fact that, as was stressed in 1972 in Father Bugnini's own journal, Notitiae (official journal of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship), the Liturgy Constitution that the Council Fathers eventually passed was substantially identical to the draft schema which he had steered through the Preparatory Commission. [Notitiae, No. 70, February 1972, pp. 33-34.]

According to Father P. M. Gy, O.P., a French liturgist who was a consultor to the pre-conciliar Commission on the Liturgy, Father Bugnini "was a happy choice as secretary":

He had been secretary of the commission for reform set up by Pius XII. He was a gifted organizer and possessed an open-minded, pastoral spirit. Many people noted how, with Cardinal Cicognani, he was able to imbue the discussion with the liberty of spirit recommended by Pope John XXIII. [A. Flannery, Vatican II: The Liturgy Constitution (Dublin: Sceptre Books, 1964), p. 20.]

The Bugnini schema was accepted by a plenary session of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission in a vote taken on January 13, 1962. But the President of the Commission, the eighty-year old Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, had the foresight to realize the dangers implicit in certain passages. Father Gy writes: "The program of reform was so vast that it caused the president, Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, to hesitate." [Flannery, p. 23.] Unless the Cardinal could be persuaded to sign the schema, it would be blocked. It could not go through without his signature, even though it had been approved by a majority of the Commission. Father Bugnini needed to act. He arranged for immediate approaches to be made to Pope John, who agreed to intervene. He called for Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, his Secretary of State and the younger brother of the President of the Preparatory Commission, and told him to visit his brother and not return until the schema had been signed. The Cardinal complied:

Later a peritus of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission stated that the old Cardinal was almost in tears as he waved the document in the air and said: "They want me to sign this but I don't know if I want to." Then he laid the document on his desk, picked up a pen, and signed it. Four days later he died. [Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, S.V.D., The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II (1967, rpt. Rockford, IL. TAN, 1985), p. 141.]

The First Fall

The Bugnini schema had been saved-----and only just in time. Then, with the approval of Pope John XXIII, Father Bugnini was dismissed from his chair at the Lateran University and from the secretaryship of the Conciliar Liturgical Commission which was to oversee the schema during the conciliar debates. The reasons which prompted Pope John to take this step have not been divulged, but they must have been of a most serious nature to cause this tolerant Pontiff to act in so public and drastic a manner against a priest who had held such an influential position in the preparation for the Council. In his book The Reform of the Liturgy, which to a large extent is an apologia for himself and a denunciation of his critics, Bugnini blames Cardinal Arcadio Larraona for his downfall. He writes of himself in the third person:

Of all the secretaries of the preparatory commissions, Father Bugnini was the only one not appointed secretary to the corresponding conciliar commission . . . This was Father Bugnini's first exile. At the same time that Father Bugnini  was dismissed from the secretariat of the conciliar commission, he was also discharged from his post as teacher of liturgy in the Pontifical Pastoral Institute of the Lateran University, and an attempt was made to take from him the chair of liturgy at the Pontifical Urban University. This repressive activity emanated directly from Cardinal Larraona and was very kindly seconded by some fellow workers who wanted better to serve the Church and the liturgy. The basis for the dismissals was the charge of being a "progressivist," "pushy," and an "iconoclast" (innuendos whispered half-aloud), accusations then echoed in turn by the Congregation of Rites, the Congregation of Seminaries, and the Holy Office. But no proof was offered, no clear justification for such serious measures. [Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1990), p. 30.]

Bugnini's claim that "no proof was offered" is simply a gratuitous assertion on his part. The fact that he saw no proof in no way proves that it did not exist. Falconi condemns the dismissal of Father Bugnini as a retrograde step, but adds:

All the same, Bugnini managed to get his draft through as far as the Council, and now it will be interesting to see if it is passed, and even more so if the draft schema of the proscribed Secretary of the Liturgical Commission should open the way for the success of other drafts of a progressive character. [Falconi, p. 224.]

The dismissal of Father Bugnini was very much a case of locking the stable door after the horse had bolted. It would have helped Father Bugnini's cause had he been appointed Secretary to the Conciliar Commission (the post was given to Father Ferdinand Antonelli, O.F.M.), as he could then have guided his schema through the Council-----but this was not essential. It was the schema that mattered.

Seventy-five preparatory schemata had been prepared for the Council Fathers, the fruits of the most painstaking and meticulous preparation for a Council in the history of the Church. [Wiltgen, p. 22.] The number was eventually reduced to twenty, and seven were selected for discussion at the first session of the Council. [Ibid.] The Bugnini schema was the fifth of these, and it was presumed by most bishops that the schemata would be debated in their numerical sequence. [Ibid.] But the other schemata were so orthodox that the liberals could not accept them-----even as a basis for discussion. At the instigation of Father Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., a Belgian-born Professor of Dogmatics at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, the schemata were rejected with one exception-----the Bugnini schema. This, he said, was "an admirable piece of work." [Ibid., p. 23.] It was announced at the second general congregation of the Council on October 16, 1962, that the sacred liturgy was the first item on the agenda for examination by the Fathers. [Bugnini, p. 29.] Notitiae looked back on this with considerable satisfaction in 1972, remarking that the Bugnini preparatory schema was the only one that was eventually passed without substantial alteration. [Notitiae, No. 70, p. 34.] Father Wiltgen comments:

It should be noted that the liturgical movement had been active in Europe for several decades, and that quite a large number of bishops and periti from the Rhine countries had been appointed by Pope John to the preparatory commission on the liturgy. As a result, they had succeeded in inserting their ideas into the schema and gaining approval for what they considered a very acceptable document. [Wiltgen, p. 23.]

As for the other schemata, one prominent Council Father, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, wrote:

Now you know what happened at the Council. A fortnight after its opening not one of the prepared schemata remained, not one! All had been turned down, all had been condemned to the wastepaper basket. Nothing remained, not a single sentence. All had been thrown out. [Marcel Lefebvre, A Bishop Speaks (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 1987), p. 131.]

Bugnini's allies who had worked with him on preparing the schema now had the task of securing its acceptance by the bishops without any substantial alterations. They did so with a degree of success that certainly exceeded the hopes of their wildest dreams. They seem to have presumed that the bishops would be a bunch of "useful idiots," men who preferred to laugh rather than to think. "It was all good fun," wrote Archbishop R. J. Dwyer, one of the most erudite of the American bishops. "And when the vote came round, like wise Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.M., 'We always voted at our party's call; we never thought of thinking for ourselves at all.' That way you can save yourself a whole world of trouble." [Twin Circle, October 26, 1963, p. 2.] 
The Bugnini schema received the almost unanimous approval of the Council Fathers on December 7, 1962 and became Vatican II's "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy" (CSL). But the Constitution contained no more than general guidelines; therefore, to achieve total victory, Father Bugnini and his cohorts needed to obtain the power to interpret and implement it. [Emphasis added by the Web Master.]


The Second Rise

The Rhine Group [Note 1] pressed for the establishment of post-conciliar commissions with the authority to interpret the CSL. It "feared that the progressive measures adopted by the Council might be blocked by conservative forces near the Pope once the Council Fathers had returned home." [Wiltgen, pp. 287-288.] Cardinal Heenan, of Westminster, England, had warned of the danger if the Council periti were given the power to interpret the Council to the world. "God forbid that this should happen!" he told the others. [Ibid., p. 210.] This was just what did happen. The members of these commissions were "chosen with the Pope's approval, for the most part, from the ranks of the Council periti. The task of the commissions is to put into effect the Council decrees . . . and, when necessary, to interpret the Council institutions, decrees, and declarations." [The Tablet (London), January 22, 1966, p. 114.] On March 5, 1964, L'Osservatore Romano announced the establishment of the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, which became known as the Consilium. The initial membership consisted mainly of members of the Commission that had drafted the Constitution. Father Bugnini was appointed to the position of Secretary of the Consilium on February 29, 1964. What prompted Pope Paul VI to appoint Bugnini to this crucially important position after he had been prevented by Pope John XXIII from becoming Secretary of the Conciliar Commission is probably something that we shall never know.

In theory, the Consilium was an advisory body, and the reforms it devised had to be implemented by either the Sacred Congregation for Rites or the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments. These congregations had been established as part of Pope Paul's reform of the Roman Curia, promulgated on August 15, 1967. Father Bugnini's influence as Secretary of the Consilium was increased when he was appointed Under-Secretary to the Sacred Congregation for Rites. [Notitiae, No. 70, February 1972, p. 34.]  On May 8, 1969, Pope Paul promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Sacra Rituum Congregatio, which ended the existence of the Consilium as a separate body; it was incorporated into the newly established Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship as a special commission which would retain its members and consultors and remain until the reform of the liturgy had been completed. Notitiae, official journal of the Consilium, became the journal of the new Congregation. Father Annibale Bugnini was appointed Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and became more powerful than ever. It is certainly no exaggeration to claim that what in fact had happened was that the Consilium, in other words Father Bugnini, had taken over the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. The April-June 1969 issue of Notitiae announced Father Bugnini's appointment, stating:

This number of Notitiae appears under the direction of the new Congregation for Divine Worship. Pope Paul VI, at the end of the 28 April Consistory, made the announcement and gave it an official character with the Apostolic Constitution "Sacred Congregation of Rites" of 8 May. The new Congregation will continue on a firmer juridical foundation, with more effectiveness and renewed commitment, the work accomplished by the Consilium in the past five years, linking itself with the Council, its preparatory commission, and the entire liturgical movement . . . The Consilium continues as a particular commission of the Congregation until the completion of the reform.

Father Bugnini was now in the most influential position possible to consolidate and extend the revolution behind which he had been the moving spirit and the principle of continuity. Nominal heads of commissions, congregations, and the Consilium came and went-----Cardinal Lercaro, Cardinal Gut, Cardinal Tabera, Cardinal Knox-----but Father Bugnini always remained. He attributed this to the Divine  Will: "The Lord willed that from those early years a whole series of providential circumstances should thrust me fully, and indeed in a privileged way, in medias res, and that I should remain there in charge of the secretariat." [Bugnini, p. xxiii.] His services would be rewarded by his being consecrated a bishop and then being elevated to the rank of Titular Archbishop of Dioclentiana, as announced on January 7, 1972.


The Imposition of the New Rite of Mass

What the experts were planning had already been made clear on October 24, 1967 in the Sistine Chapel, when what was described as the Missa Normativa was celebrated before the Synod of Bishops by Father Annibale Bugnini himself, its chief architect. Since he had been appointed secretary of the post-Vatican II Liturgy Commission, he had the power to orchestrate the composition of the New Rite of Mass which he had envisaged in the schema that he had prepared before his dismissal by John XXIII-----the schema which had been passed virtually unchanged by the Council Fathers. As already remarked, why Pope Paul VI appointed to this key position a man who had been dismissed by his predecessor is a mystery which will probably never be answered.

Fewer than half the bishops present voted in favor of the Missa Normativa, but the far-from-satisfied majority was ignored with the arrogance which was to become the most evident characteristic of the liturgical establishment, to which the Council Fathers had been naive enough to entrust the implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The Missa Normativa would be imposed on CatholIcs of the Roman Rite by Pope Paul VI in 1969, with a few changes, as the Novus Ordo Missae: the New Order of Mass.

In 1974 Archbishop Bugnini explained that his reform had been divided into four stages-----firstly, the transition from Latin to the vernacular; secondly, the reform of the liturgical books; thirdly, the translation of the liturgical books; and fourthly, the adaptation or "incarnation" of the Roman form of the liturgy into the usages and mentality of each individual Church. [Notitiae, No. 92, April 1974, p. 126.] This process (which would mean the complete elimination of any remaining vestiges of the Roman Rite) had already begun, he claimed, and would be "pursued with ever increasing care and preparation." [Ibid.]


The Second Fall

At the very moment when his power had reached its zenith, Archbishop Bugnini was in effect dismissed-----this was his second fall-----to the dismay of liberal Catholics throughout the world. What happened was that the Archbishop's entire Congregation was dissolved and merged with the Congregation for the Sacraments under the terms of Pope Paul's Apostolic Constitution Constans Nobis, published in l'Osservatore Romano (English edition) of July 31, 1975. The new congregation was entitled the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship. The name Bugnini did not appear in the list of appointments. Liberals throughout the world were dismayed. The Tablet, in England, and its extreme liberal counterpart in the United States, the National Catholic Reporter, carried an indignant report by Desmond O'Grady:

Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who, as Secretary of the abolished Congregation for Divine Worship, was the key figure in the Church's liturgical reform, is not a member of the new Congregation. Nor, despite his lengthy experience was he consulted in the planning of it. He heard of its creation while on holiday at Fiuggi . . . the abrupt way in which this was done does not augur well for the Bugnini line of encouragement for reform in collaboration with local hierarchies . . . Msgr. Bugnini conceived the next ten years' work as concerned principally with the incorporation of local usages into the liturgy . . . He represented the continuity of the post-conciliar liturgical reform. [The Tablet, August 30, 1975, p. 828.]

L'Osservatore Romano carried the following announcement in its English edition, on January 15, 1976: "5 January: The Holy Father has appointed Apostolic Pro Nuncio in Iran His Excellency the Most Reverend Annibale Bugnini, C. M., titular Archbishop of Dioclentiana." This was clearly an artificial post created to gloss over the fact that the Archbishop had been banished.

In his book The Devastated Vineyard, published in 1973, Dietrich von Hildebrand rightly observed concerning Bugnini that: "Truly, if one of the devils in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better." [Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Devastated Vineyard (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), p. 71.] This is a statement based on an objective assessment of the reform itself It is beyond dispute that whether or not the Roman Rite has been destroyed deliberately, it has been destroyed. (See later herein.) If this result is simply the consequence of ill-judged decisions by well-meaning men, the objective fact remains unchanged: they could not have destroyed the Roman Rite more effectively had they done so deliberately. But the thoroughness of the destruction caused many to wonder whether it might be more than the result of ill-considered policies. It came as no great surprise when, in April of 1976, Tito Casini, Italy's leading Catholic writer, publicly accused Archbishop Bugnini of being a Freemason. [Tito Casini, Nel Furno di Satana (Florence: Carro di San Giovanni, 1976), p.150.] On October 8, 1976, Le Figaro published a report stating that Archbishop Bugnini denied ever having had any Masonic affiliation.

I have made my own investigation into the affair and can vouch for the authenticity of the following facts. A Roman priest of the very highest reputation came into possession of evidence which he considered proved Archbishop Bugnini to be a Freemason. He had this information placed into the hands of Pope Paul VI with the warning that if action were not taken at once, he would be bound in conscience to make the matter public. Archbishop Bugnini was then removed by means of the dissolution of his entire Congregation. I have verified these facts directly with the priest concerned, and the full facts can be found in Chapter XXIV of my book Pope Paul's New Mass.

An important distinction must be made here. I have not claimed that I can prove Archbishop Bugnini to have been a Mason, but that Pope Paul VI dismissed him and exiled him to Iran because he had been convinced that the Archbishop was a Mason. I made this same point in a letter published in the January 1980 Homiletic and Pastoral Review, which prompted a violent attack upon me by Archbishop Bugnini in the May 1980 issue. He denied that any of the prelates who, since Vatican II, had been accused of Masonic affiliation "ever had anything to do with Freemasonry," and he continued:

And for Michael Davies it would be enough. [sic] But for him and his colleagues, calumniators by profession . . . I repeat what I wrote in 1976: "I do not own anything in this world more precious than the pectoral cross: if one is able to prove honestly, objectively, an iota of truth of what they affirm, I am ready to return back the pectoral cross."

But, as I have already stated, I did not accuse him of being a Mason but simply pointed out that Pope Paul VI had been convinced that this was the case, and the fact that this does not constitute calumny is proved by the fact that Bugnini conceded precisely what I had alleged in his book The Reform of the Liturgy. Referring to his removal from his position by Pope Paul VI and the suppression of the Congregation for Divine Worship, he wrote:

What were the reasons that led the Pope to such a drastic decision, which no one expected and which lay so heavily on the Church? I said in the preface to this book that I myself never knew any of these reasons for sure, even though, understandably in the distress of the moment, I knocked on many doors at all levels . . . There were those who ascribed the change to the "authoritarian," "almost dictatorial" way in which the secretary of the congregation supposedly managed the agency, not allowing freedom of movement to his own co-workers and limiting the role even of the cardinal prefects. [NOTE 2] But when all is said and done, all this seems to be the stuff of ordinary administrative life. There must have been something more earthshaking. Toward the end of the summer a cardinal who was usually no enthusiast for the liturgical reform told me of the existence of a "dossier" which he had seen on (or brought to?) the Pope's desk and which proved that Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason. [Bugnini, p. 91.]

Although one is not supposed to speak ill of the dead-----de mortuis nil nisi bonum [literally, " of the dead, nothing except good"], in an historical study such as this, objectivity demands that it be made clear that truth was not a priority with Archbishop Bugnini. In an attempt to play down the role played by the Protestant observers in his liturgical revolution, he stated: "They never intervened in the discussions and never asked to speak." [Notitiae, July-August 1974.] As is made clear in Appendix I, this is highly misleading. There is not the least doubt that the Second Vatican Council was a cause of great satisfaction to Protestants. In their final message to the Council, read by Archbishop Felici on December 4, 1965, the Observer-delegates enlarged on this theme: "Blessed be God for all that he has given us so far through the Holy Spirit, and for all that he will give us in the future." Oscar Cullmann, the noted Swiss theologian, summed up their thoughts when he declared: "The hopes of Protestants for Vatican II have not only been fulfilled, but the Council's achievements have gone far beyond what was believed possible." [Xavier Rynne, The Fourth Session (London: Herder & Herder, 1966), p.256.]


1. In the Preface to The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (p. 1), Father Wiltgen explains that the "predominant influence" during the Second Vatican Council came from Council Fathers and periti (experts) from the "countries along the Rhine river-----Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands-----and from nearby Belgium. Because this group exerted a predominant influence over the Second Vatican Council, I have titled my book The Rhine Flows into the Tiber:" This is certainly the most informative book written on what really happened at Vatican II, and it should be owned by every Catholic taking a serious interest in events since the Council. The six countries named were those in which the Liturgical Movement had been most active and in which liberal ideas were most manifest.

2. In a footnote commenting on these complaints made by members of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Archbishop Bugnini comments: "Human deficiencies are always possible, of course, but the accusation reflects a mentality that was periodically revived among officials of the Congregation who out of ambition or defects of character, were determined to create difficulties for the secretary." This remark is typical of his insistence throughout the book that no criticism made of him can ever be justified and that those who make these criticisms have bad motives.

[Stone]

An Unsuspected Blueprint for Revolution

The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber was described by Cardinal Ratzinger as "the one scholar who, among the army of pseudo-liturgists, truly represents the liturgical thinking of the center of the Church." [Msgr. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (Harrison, NY: Foundation for Catholic Reform, 1993), p. xiii (Testimonial by Msgr. Nyssen).] As regards the attitude the Council Fathers would have taken to the changes that have been foisted upon us in the name of Vatican II, Monsignor Gamber informs us in his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy that: "One statement we can make with certainty is that the new Ordo of the Mass that has now emerged would not have been endorsed by the majority of the Council Fathers." [Ibid., p. 61.]

Why then did these bishops endorse the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy? Professor Louis Salleron has been cited as stating that the CSL appeared to be the crowning achievement of the work of liturgical renewal which had been in progress for a hundred years. Why could this have appeared to be the case when, in fact, the CSL was a blueprint for revolution? The 1,922 bishops who cast their placet ("Yes") votes for the Constitution on December 7, 1962 would certainly have been reassured by stipulations it contained which gave the impression that there was no possibility of any radical liturgical reform. Article 4 of the CSL certainly gives the impression that there is no danger of any drastic change in any of the existing rites of Mass, among which the Roman Rite was clearly paramount: "This most sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal authority and dignity: that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way." (Emphasis added.) But these reassuring words are qualified by the additional directive of the Council that "where necessary the rites be carefully and thoroughly revised in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances of modern times." No explanation is given as to how it is possible both to preserve and foster these rites and, at the same time, to revise them to meet certain unspecified circumstances and unspecified needs of modern times. Nor is it explained how such a revision could be carried out in the light of sound tradition when it had been the sound and invariable tradition of the Roman Rite never to undertake any drastic revision of its rites, a tradition of well over 1,000 years' standing, which had been breached only during the Protestant Reformation, when every heretical sect devised new rites to correspond with its heretical teachings.

Article 23 of the CSL requires that, in order to maintain "sound tradition," a careful investigation is to be made before revising any part of the liturgy. "This investigation should be theological, historical and pastoral." If this were not reassuring enough, Article 23 also mandates that: "There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them, and care must be taken that any new forms should in some way grow organically from forms already existing."

It is an instructive exercise to go, step by step, through the changes which have been made in the Mass, beginning with the abolition of the Judica me and ending with the abolition of the Last Gospel, or even the Prayers for the Conversion of Russia, and to consider carefully why the good of the Church genuinely and certainly required that each particular change must be made. Has the good of the Church really been enhanced because the faithful have been forbidden to kneel at the Incarnatus est during the Creed? Did the good of the Church genuinely, certainly, require that the doctrinally rich Offertory prayers should be abolished? To illustrate this doctrinal richness, just one of these prayers, the Suscipe, sancte Pater, will be examined within the context of a commentary by Father Pius Parsch, one of the best known figures of the liturgical movement." [NOTE 3]

Having recited the Offertory verse, the priest unveils the chalice, takes the paten with the host of unleavened bread upon it, and, raising it up to about the level of his eyes, offers it to God with the prayer Suscipe, sancte Pater: "Receive, O Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host which I, Thy unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for mine own countless sins, offenses and negligences, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, living or dead, that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life everlasting. Amen."

This prayer-----the richest in content of any of this part of the Mass-----contains a whole world of dogmatic truth. Who is it that offers the sacrifice? It is the priest as representative of Christ: "which I, Thy unworthy servant, offer." To whom? To the Father, all-holy, God Almighty, "the living and true God." What does he offer? "This spotless Victim." He offers the bread, but the expression hostia immaculata shows that the thoughts of the priest in this prayer do not rest there. This bread which he holds in his hands is as yet neither hostia (victim) nor, properly speaking, immaculata. Yet already he has its destiny in mind. It is to become the Eucharist, the Hostia immaculata in very truth, a consummation already anticipated in thought. And for whom is it offered? In atonement for the "innumerable sins, offenses and negligences" of the priest himself. These terms are, of course, synonymous. The liturgy frequently uses such accumulative expressions to deepen the impression upon our minds. It is offered too for "all those present" (circumstantes-----standing around the altar of sacrifice), and beyond them, for all Christians "living or dead." All will benefit by the sacrifice which has as its final purpose "that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life everlasting." The final purpose of the Mass is, therefore, the same as that of the Sacrifice of the Cross: the salvation of all mankind. This prayer, so rich in doctrine, could serve as the basis for an entire treatise on the Mass. [Pius Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1961), pp. 184-5.]

How can it possibly be argued that the good of the Church genuinely and certainly required the abolition of this sublime prayer? Has any Catholic anywhere in the world become more fervent in his faith as a result of its absence? Those in the Church obsessed by false ecumenism would certainly have argued that this prayer, and other prayers removed from the Mass by the sixteenth-century Protestant heretics, must be removed from the Mass to avoid offense to our Protestant brethren. Luther referred to "all that abomination called the offertory. And from this point almost everything stinks of oblation. Therefore casting aside all that savors of oblation with the entire canon, let us keep those things which are pure and holy." [Cited in F. A. Gasquet, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer  (London: John Hodges, 1890), p. 221. Chapter XIII of this book contains a very detailed examination of Luther's liturgical reforms.] The entire Canon was indeed cast aside by Bugnini and his Consilium-----but it was restored, to their regret, on the insistence of Pope Paul VI. [M. Davies, Pope Paul's New Mass (Dickinson, TX: Angelus Press, 1980), p. 329; Bugnini, p. 152, Note 30.]

It would be most enlightening to be told the exact process by which, for example, the new Offertory prayers (based on a Jewish form of grace before meals) grew from "forms already existing." The Consilium presumably interpreted this phrase as meaning already existing in the liturgy of any religion. [Emphasis added by Web Master.]

There is a most bitter irony in another admonition contained in Article 23: "As far as possible, notable differences between the rites used in adjacent regions are to be carefully avoided." Today it is hard to recognize that some adjacent parishes even belong to the same religion, so great is the contrast between their respective modes of celebrating Mass.

Clauses such as Article 4 and Article 23 would certainly have reassured the bishops that there would be no radical changes in the liturgy of the Mass, but there were other clauses which did indeed open the way to radical or even revolutionary change. Archbishop Lefebvre was in no doubt as to the nature of these clauses. He stated: "There were time bombs in the Council." [Lefebvre, p. 135.] These "time bombs" were ambiguous passages inserted in the official documents by the liberal periti or experts-----passages which would be interpreted in an untraditional, progressivist sense after the Council closed. The answer to Cardinal Ottaviani's question as to whether the Council Fathers were planning a revolution (see page 1) is that the majority of the Fathers, the 3,000 bishops, [2,860 Council Fathers attended all or part of the four sessions-----a combined total of 281 days. (Wiltgen, p. 287.)] most certainly were not, but that some of the influential periti, the experts who accompanied the bishops to Rome, definitely had this intention.


The Council of the Periti

It is not exaggerating in any way to claim that the liberal periti hijacked Pope John's Council, a fact I have documented in great detail in my book on Vatican II. [Davies, Pope John's Council, Chapter 5.] Douglas Woodruff, one of England's outstanding Catholic scholars, was editor of The Tablet during the Council. In one of his reports he remarked: "For in a sense this Council has been the Council of the periti, silent in the aula but so effective in the commissions and at bishops' ears." [The Tablet, November 27, 1965, p. 1318.] This is an exceptionally perceptive comment, and it would be hard to improve on "the Council of the periti" as a one-phrase description of Vatican II. Bishop Lucey of Cork and Ross (Ireland) stated that the periti were more powerful than most bishops, even though they had no vote, "because they had the ear of a Cardinal or the head of a national group of bishops, and they were influential in the drafting of Council documents. The expert . . . is the person with power." [[Catholic Standard (Dublin), October 17, 1973.]

The "time bombs" referred to by Archbishop Lefebvre were, as has been explained, the ambiguous passages inserted in the official documents by the liberal periti which could weaken the presentation of traditional Catholic teaching: by abandoning the traditional terminology, by omissions, or by ambiguous phraseology which could be compatible with a non-Catholic interpretation. Cardinal Heenan testifies: "A determined group could wear down opposition and produce a formula patient of both an orthodox and modernistic interpretation." [The Tablet, May 18, 1968.] Archbishop Lefebvre went to the extent of describing the Council documents as "a mass of ambiguities, vagueness and sentimentality, things which now clearly admit all interpretations and have left all doors open." [Lefebvre, pp. 109-110.]  In his book A Crown of Thorns, Cardinal Heenan wrote:

The subject most fully debated was liturgical reform. It might be more accurate to say that the bishops were under the impression that the liturgy had been fully discussed. In retrospect it is clear that they were given the opportunity of discussing only general principles. Subsequent changes were more radical than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the decree on the liturgy. His sermon at the end of the first session shows that Pope John did not suspect what was being planned by the liturgical experts. (Emphasis added). [John Heenan, A Crown of Thorns (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974), p.367.]


3. It is sad to note that at the same time he was writing such an orthodox and even inspiring exposition of the Mass (in the 1950's), Father Parsch was taking part in unauthorized liturgical experiments. (See Bonneterre, pp. 28-29.)

[Stone]

Detonating the Time Bombs

One of the first points made in the preface to the CSL is that the Council intends to "nurture whatever can contribute to the unity of all who believe in Christ: and to strengthen those aspects of the Church which can help to summon all of mankind into her embrace." In drafting the Constitution, Father Bugnini clearly envisaged the liturgy as a means of promoting ecumenism. (See his comment on pp. 58-59 below.) It follows from this that the traditional Roman Mass, which emphasized precisely those aspects of our Faith most unacceptable to Protestants, must be considered as hampering ecumenism. In order to promote ecumenism, radical reform would be necessary.

There had, of course, been liturgical development in the past within the Roman Rite, as in all rites, but this had taken place by a scarcely perceptible process of natural development. In his Introduction to the French edition of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Msgr. Klaus Gamber, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

J. A. Jungmann, one of the truly great liturgists of our time, defined the liturgy of his day, such as it could be understood in the light of historical research, as a "liturgy which is the fruit of development" . . . What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product (produit banal de l'instant). [Introduction by Cardinal Ratzinger to La Reforme Liturgique en question (Le-Barroux: Editions Sainte-Madeleine), 1992, pp. 7-8.]

It is important to note that the predominant characteristic of this natural development was the addition of new prayers and gestures which manifested ever more clearly the mystery enshrined in the Mass. The Protestant Reformers removed prayers which made Catholic doctrine specific, under the guise of an alleged return to primitive simplicity. Pope Pius XII specifically condemned "certain attempts to reintroduce ancient rites and liturgies" on the grounds that they were primitive. In his encyclical Mediator Dei he wrote:

The desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy. It would be wrong, for example, to want the altar restored to its ancient form of a table; to want black eliminated from liturgical colors, and pictures and statues eliminated from our churches; to require crucifixes that do not represent the bitter sufferings of the Divine Redeemer; to condemn polyphonic chants, even though they conform to the regulations of the Apostolic See . . . This attitude is an attempt to revive the "archaeologism" to which the pseudo-synod of Pistoia gave rise; it seeks also to re-introduce the pernicious errors which led to that synod and resulted from it and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her Divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. [53] For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation. [Pars. 66-68]

The liturgical principles of Pistoia, one of which will be explained below, have been imposed throughout the Roman Rite as part of the conciliar reform, even though not specifically ordered by the Council. The CSL provided the door through which they entered.

Since the Second Vatican Council, tabernacles throughout the English-speaking world have been removed from their rightful place of honor in the center of the high altar. There is not one word in the CSL that even hints at this deplorable practice. It was, however, part of the program of the "young wolves" of the Liturgical Movement, and Pope Pius XII was well aware of this. The great Pontiff made his position on the tabernacle clear in an address to a liturgical congress in Assisi in 1956. He insisted that those who clung wholeheartedly to the teaching of the Council of Trent would have "no thought of formulating objections against the presence of the tabernacle on the altar." He had no doubt as to the true motivation of those seeking to change the traditional practice: "There is question, not so much of the material presence of the tabernacle on the altar, as of a tendency to which we would like to call your attention, that of a lessening of esteem for the presence and action of Christ in the tabernacle." This holy Pontiff then summed up the authentic Catholic position in one profound and perceptive sentence: "To separate tabernacle from altar is to separate two things which by their origin and nature should remain united." If this was true in 1956, it is still true today. [A detailed history of the post-Vatican II campaign to remove the tabernacle from the high altar is provided in my booklet The Catholic Sanctuary and the Second Vatican Council (Rockford, IL: TAN, 1997).]

It is worth pointing out that the "circumstances and needs of modern times," which Article 4 of the CSL claims that the liturgy must be adjusted to meet, have occurred with great regularity throughout history. It is of the nature of time to become more modern with the passing of each second, and if the Church had adapted the liturgy to keep up with the constant succession of modern times and new circumstances, there would never have been any liturgical stability at all. If this need for adaptation of the liturgy does exist, it must always have existed. The corpus of papal teaching on the liturgy is readily available, but papal teaching on the need to adapt the liturgy to keep pace with modern times is conspicuous only by its absence-----and this is hardly surprising when this alleged "need" is examined in a dispassionate and rational manner. When do times become modern? How long do they remain modern? What are the criteria by which modernity is assessed? When does one modernity cease and another modernity come into being?

The complete fallacy of this "adaptation-to-modernity" thesis was certainly not lost upon some of the Council Fathers. Bishop (later Cardinal) Dino Staffa pointed out the theological consequences of an "adapted liturgy" on October 24, 1962. He told 2,337 assembled Fathers:

It is said that the Sacred Liturgy must be adapted to times and circumstances which have changed. Here also we ought to look at the consequences. For customs, even the very face of society, change fast and will change even faster. What seems agreeable to the wishes of the multitude today will appear incongruous after thirty or fifty years. We must conclude then that after thirty or fifty years all, or almost all of the liturgy would have to be changed again. This seems to be logical according to the premises, this seems logical to me, but hardly fitting (decorum) for the Sacred Liturgy, hardly useful for the dignity of the Church, hardly safe for the integrity and unity of the faith, hardly favoring the unity of discipline. While the world therefore tends to unity more and more every day, especially in its manner of working or living, are we of the Latin Church going to break the admirable liturgical unity and divide into nations, regions, even provinces? [Kaiser, p. 130.]

The answer, of course, is that this is precisely what the Latin Church was going to do and did-----with the disastrous consequences for the integrity and unity both of faith and discipline which Bishop Staffa had foreseen.

[Stone]

Omission of the Term "Transubstantiation"

Articles 5 to 13 of the CSL, which deal with the nature of the liturgy, contain much admirable doctrinal teachings but also some which seem disturbingly lacking in precision. Christ's substantial presence in the Blessed Sacrament is referred to as if it is simply the highest (maximal) of His many presences in the liturgy, which includes His spiritual presence through the reading of Holy Scripture or through the fact that two or three are gathered together in His name. The CSL states only that Our Lord is present "especially under the Eucharistic species" (Praesens . . . maxime sub speciebus eucharisticis). (Article 7).

"Transubstantiation" is the classic Catholic term which the Church uses in order to express the Catholic teaching [ that in the Eucharist, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine is converted into the substance of His Blood, with only the appearances of bread and wine remaining.

One fact which is made very clear in my book Cranmer's Godly Order is that all the Protestant Reformers agreed that Christ was present in the Eucharist; what they rejected was the dogma of His substantial presence. If there is one word which was and is anathema to Protestants, it is the word "transubstantiation." Protestants will profess belief in Christ's "real presence," in His "eucharistic presence," His "sacramental presence"-----Lutherans even profess belief in His "consubstantial presence"-----but what they will not accept, what is anathema to them, is the one word "transubstantiation." It is, therefore, astonishing to find that this word does not appear anywhere within the text of the CSL. This is a scarcely credible break with the tradition of the Catholic and Roman Church, which has always insisted on absolute precision when writing of the Sacrament which is her greatest treasure, for it is nothing less than God Incarnate Himself.

The contrast between the traditional precision of the Church and the CSL can be made clear with just one example. Compared to the wording of the CSL, the following would seem to be an extremely comprehensive definition of Christ's Eucharistic presence: "Christ is, after the Consecration, truly, really and substantially present under the appearances of bread and wine, and the whole substance of bread and wine has then ceased to exist, only the appearances remaining." Readers will be surprised to learn that this definition was condemned by the Church as "pernicious, derogatory to the expounding of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, favorable to heretics (perniciosa, derogans expositioni veritatis catholicae circa dogma transsubstantiationis, ravens haereticis)." This definition was, in fact, the definition put forward by the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia; it was condemned by Pope Pius VI specifically for its calculated omission of the doctrine of transubstantiation and of the term "transubstantiation," which had been used by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) in defining the manner of Christ's Eucharistic presence and in the solemn profession of faith subscribed to by the Fathers of that Council ("quam velut articulum fidei Tridentinum Concilium definivit [v. n. 877, 884], et quae in solemni fidei professione continetur [v. n. 997]"). [H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum (31" edition). No. 1529.] The failure to utilize the word "transubstantiation" was condemned by Pope Pius VI "inasmuch as, through an unauthorized and suspicious omission of this kind, mention is omitted of an article relating to the faith, and also of a word consecrated by the Church to safeguard the profession of that article against heresy, and because it tends to result in its being forgotten, as if it were merely a scholastic question." [Ibid.]

While discussing this particular point, it is impossible not to note what could be described as the truly supernatural correspondence between what Pope Pius VI wrote in 1794 and what Pope Paul VI wrote in his encyclical Mysterium Fidei in 1965. This encyclical aroused considerable hostility among both Protestants and liberal Catholics, who did not hesitate to stigmatize it as incompatible with the "spirit" of Vatican II!

A Protestant Observer mentioned earlier, Dr. Robert McMee Brown, complained:

On the eve of the fourth session he [Paul VI] issued an encyclical on the Eucharist, Mysterium Fidei, that seemed to most interpreters to be at best a backward looking document and at the worst a repudiation of many of the creative insights of the already promulgated constitution On the Sacred Liturgy. [Robert McMee Brown, Ecumenical Revolution, pp. 171-172.]

The encyclical Mysterium Fidei was, to quote another Protestant Observer, the Anglican Dr. J. Moorman, "disappointing to those who felt that the Council was really trying to break away from medieval scholasticism and Tridentine theology and speak to the modern world in language which it could understand." [J. Moorman, Vatican Observed (London: Darton, Longman & Tod, 1967), p.157.] The ultra-liberal peritus Father Gregory Baum, a convert from Judaism, commented: "Since Pope Paul's terminology is so different from the Constitution on the Liturgy, it is not easy to fit his encyclical harmoniously into the conciliar teaching of Vatican II." [Herder Correspondence, 1965, p. 359.]  A few quotations from Mysterium Fidei will make it clear why the encyclical was considered by liberals to be a terribly retrograde statement of Catholic dogma. Pope Paul condemned certain opinions that were current during the Council:

Such opinions relate to Masses celebrated privately, to the dogma of transubstantiation and to eucharistic worship. They seem to think that although a doctrine has been defined once by the Church, it is open to anyone to ignore it or to give it an interpretation that whittles away the natural meaning of the words or the accepted sense of the concepts.

The Church teaches us, the Pope insists, that our blessed Lord "becomes present in the sacrament precisely by a marvelous change of the bread's whole substance into His Body and of the wine's whole substance into His Blood. This is clearly a remarkable and singular change, and the, Catholic Church gives it the suitable and accurate name of transubstantiation."

Pope John XXIII had stated in his opening speech to the Council: "The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another." Pope Paul VI appears to differ from his predecessor when he writes:

This rule of speech has been introduced by the Church in the long run of centuries with the protection of the Holy Spirit. She has confirmed it with the authority of the Councils. It has become more than once the token and standard of orthodox faith. It must be observed religiously. No one may presume to alter it at will, or on the pretext of new knowledge. For it would be intolerable if the dogmatic formulas which ecumenical Councils have employed in dealing with the mysteries of the most holy Trinity were to be accused of being badly attuned to the men of our day, and other formulas were rashly introduced to replace them. It is equally intolerable that anyone on his own initiative should want to modify the formulas with which the Council of Trent has proposed the Eucharistic mystery for belief. These formulas, and others too, which the Church employs in proposing dogmas of faith, express concepts which are not tied to any specified cultural system. They are not restricted to any fixed development of the sciences nor to one or other of the theological schools.

Not withstanding the deplorable absence of the term transubstantiation from the CSL, Articles 5 to 13 do contain much orthodox teaching, teaching which must have gone a long way toward prompting conservative Fathers to vote for the Constitution and diverting attention from the time bombs in the text. The Council of Trent is quoted to the effect that "The victory and triumph of Christ's death are again made present" whenever the Mass is offered (Art. 6), and it is quoted again in stating that the Mass is offered by Christ: "the same one now offering through the ministry of priests, Who formerly offered Himself on the Cross." (Art. 7). "Rightly then is the liturgy considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ." (Art. 7). It is "the summit toward which all the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the fountain from which all her power flows." (Art. 10).

[Stone]

Active Participation

In Article 11 there appears one of the key themes of the CSL. Pastors of souls are urged to ensure that during the Mass "the faithful take part knowingly, actively, and fruitfully." Similar admonitions are included in Pope Pius XII's Mediator Dei (1947), but in both that encyclical and in the CSL the Latin word which has been translated as "active" is actuosus. There is a Latin word activus which is defined in Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary as active, practical, opposed to contemplativus, but the same dictionary explains actuosus as implying activity with the accessory idea of zeal, subjective impulse. It is not easy to provide an exact English equivalent of actuosus; the word involves a sincere (perhaps intense) interior participation in the Mass-----and it is always to this interior participation that prime consideration must be given. The role of external gestures is to manifest this interior participation, without which they are totally without value. These signs should not only manifest, but aid the interior participation which they symbolize.

No gesture approved by the Church is without meaning and value-----the striking of the breast during the Confiteor, making the Sign of the Cross on the forehead, lips and heart at the beginning of the Gospel, genuflecting at the Incarnatus est during the Creed and at the Verbum caro factum est of the Last Gospel, kneeling for certain parts of the Mass-----the Canon in particular, bowing in adoration at the elevations, joining in the chants and appropriate responses: all these are appropriate external manifestations of the internal participation which the faithful should rightly be taught to make knowingly and fruitfully. But Pope Pius XII points out in Mediator Dei that the importance of this external participation should not be exaggerated and that every Catholic has the right to assist at Mass in the manner which he finds most helpful:

People differ so widely in character, temperament and intelligence that it is impossible for them all to be affected in the same way by the same communal prayers, hymns, and sacred actions. Besides, spiritual needs and dispositions are not the same in all, nor do these remain unchanged in the same individual at different times. Are we therefore to say-----as we should have to say if such an opinion were true-----that all these Christians are unable to take part in the Eucharistic Sacrifice or to enjoy its benefits? Of course they can, and in ways which many find easier: for example, by devoutly meditating on the mysteries of Jesus Christ, or by performing other religious exercises and saying other prayers which, though different in form from the liturgical prayers, are by their nature in keeping with them. (Par. 115). [Emphasis in red above and below added by the Web master.]

As Pope Pius XII explains at great length in his encyclical, what really matters is that the faithful should unite themselves with the priest at the altar in offering Christ and should offer themselves together with the Divine Victim, with and through the great High Priest Himself. This is "participation" of the highest kind in the Mass.

There is a clear change of emphasis between Mediator Dei (1947) and the CSL (1964), which states that "in the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else, for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit." (Art. 14). As is the case in this quotation, actuosus has been translated invariably by the word "active," which is interpreted in its literal sense. The necessity of making, as Article 14 directs, full and active congregational participation the prime consideration in "the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy" has resulted in the congregation rather than the Divine Victim becoming the focus of attention. Since the Council, it is the coming together of the community which matters most, not the reason they come together; and this is in harmony with the most obvious tendency within the post-conciliar Church-----to replace the cult of God with the cult of man. Cardinal Ratzinger remarked with great perceptiveness in 1997:

I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy . . . when the community of faith, the worldwide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. [Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), pp.148-149.]

Once the logic of making the active participation of the congregation the prime consideration of the liturgy is accepted, there can be no restraint upon the self-appointed experts intent upon its total desacralization.

It is important to stress here that at no time during the reform have the wishes of the laity ever been taken into consideration. Just as in the Soviet Union the Communist Party "interpreted the will of the people," so the "experts" interpret the wishes of the laity. When, as early as March 1964, members of the laity in England were making it quite clear that they neither liked nor wanted the liturgical changes being imposed upon them, one of England's most fervent apostles of liturgical innovation, Dom Gregory Murray, O.S.B., put them in their place in the clearest possible terms in a letter to The Tablet: "The plea that the laity as a body do not want liturgical change, whether in rite or in language, is, I submit, quite beside the point." He insists that it is "not a question of what people want; it is a question of what is good for them." [The Tablet, March 14, 1964, p. 303.] The self-appointed liturgical experts treat with complete contempt not only the laity, but also the parish clergy-----whose bishops insist that they submit to the diktat of these experts, to whom, in most cases, they have abdicated their authority in liturgical matters. Monsignor Richard J. Schuler, an experienced parish priest in St. Paul, Minnesota, explained the predicament of the parish clergy very clearly in an article written in 1978 in which he made the very poignant comment that all that the experts require them to do is to raise the money to pay for their own destruction:

But then came the post-conciliar interpreters and implementors who invented the "Spirit of the Council." They introduced practices never dreamed of by the Council Fathers; they did away with Catholic traditions and customs never intended to be disturbed; they changed for the sake of change; they upset the sheep and terrified the shepherds.

The parish priest, who is for most Catholics the shepherd to whom they look for help along the path to salvation, fell upon hard times after the pastoral council. He is the pastor, but he found himself superseded by commissions, committees, experts, consultants, co-ordinators, facilitators, and bureaucrats of every description. A mere parish priest can no longer qualify. He is told that if he was educated prior to 1963, then he is ignorant of needed professional knowledge, he must be updated, retread and indoctrinated by attending meetings, seminars, workshops, retreats, conferences and other brainwashing sessions. But down deep, he really knows that what he is needed for is only to collect the money to support the ever-growing bureaucracy that every diocese has sprouted to serve the "pastoral needs" of the people. While the parishes struggle, the taxation imposed on them all but crushes them. The anomaly of having to pay for one's own destruction becomes the plight of a pastor and his sheep who struggle to adapt to the "freedom" and the options given by the council.

Msgr. Schuler certainly agrees with Msgr. Gamber that the reform as we have it would not have been endorsed by the majority of the Council Fathers. He continues:

Not least among the blows received by a pastor and his flock have been the liturgical innovations imposed by the Washington bureaucracy. Most of the changes we have witnessed since 1965 were never dreamed of by the Conciliar Fathers, and hardly one of them was ever asked for by the Catholic people. But with the new given freedom, we must have options, and we must use options, particularly the options that the liturgists propose. The liberal position means that one is free to agree with the Liberal position and no other. Thus options, as they are introduced, soon become the norm, and any exercise of choice is soon labeled divisive. [The Wanderer, November 2, 1978.]

The demand that the full and active participation of the congregation "be considered before all else" is a time bomb of virtually unlimited destructive power placed in the hands of those invested with the power to implement in practice the details of a reform which the Council authorized, but did not spell out in detail. Thus, although the Council says that "other things being equal," Gregorian chant should be given pride of place in liturgical services (Art. 116), the "experts" can and did argue that this was most certainly not a case of other things being equal, as the use of Gregorian chant impeded the active participation of the people. The music of the people, popular music, pop music, is, say the "experts," clearly what is most pleasing to them and most likely to promote their active participation-----which, in obedience to the Council, must "be considered before all else." This has led to the abomination of the "Folk Mass," which certainly has no more in common with genuine folk music than it does with plainchant. It also illustrates the ignorance of, and contempt for, the ordinary faithful that is manifested by these self-styled "experts." Because the housewife or the manual laborer listens to pop music to relieve the monotony of the day's routine, it does not follow that they are incapable of appreciating anything better, or that they wish to hear the same sort of music in Church on Sunday. The same is equally true of young people: if the liturgy is reduced to the level of imitating what was being heard in the disco last year, then the young will soon see little point in being present. Dietrich von Hildebrand has correctly defined the issue at stake as follows:

The basic error of most of the innovators is to imagine that the new liturgy brings the holy Sacrifice of the Mass nearer to the faithful, that shorn of its old rituals the Mass now enters into the substance of our lives. For the question is whether we better meet Christ in the Mass by soaring up to Him, or by dragging Him down into our own pedestrian, workaday world. The innovators would replace holy intimacy with Christ by an unbecoming familiarity. The new liturgy actually threatens to frustrate the confrontation with Christ, for it discourages reverence in the face of mystery, precludes awe, and all but extinguishes a sense of sacredness.  . . . [Triumph magazine, October 1966.]

. . . The next time bomb is located in Article 21. It states that "the liturgy is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted and elements subject to change." This is perfectly correct-----but it does not follow that, because certain elements could be changed, they ought to be changed. The entire liturgical tradition of the Roman rite contradicts such an assertion. "What we may call the 'archaisms' of the Missal," writes Dom Cabrol, a "father" of the liturgical movement, "are the expressions of the faith of our fathers which it is our duty to watch over and hand on to posterity." [Introduction to the Cabrol edition of The Roman Missal.] Similarly, in their defense of the bull Apostolicae Curae (1898), the Catholic Bishops of the Province of Westminster insisted that:

In adhering rigidly to the rite handed down to us we can always feel secure . . . And this sound method is that which the Catholic Church has always followed . . . to subtract prayers and ceremonies in previous use, and even to remodel the existing rites in the most drastic manner, is a proposition for which we know of no historical foundation, and which appears to us absolutely incredible. Hence Cranmer in taking this unprecedented course acted, in our opinion, with the most inconceivable rashness. [A Vindication of the Bull "Apostolicae Curae" (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), pp. 42-3.]

The CSL takes a different view, so startling and unprecedented a break with tradition that it seems scarcely credible that the Council Fathers voted for it. Article 21 states that elements which are subject to change "not only may but ought to be changed with the passing of time if features have by chance crept in which are less harmonious with the intimate nature of the liturgy, or if existing elements have grown less functional." These norms are so vague that the scope for interpreting them is virtually limitless, and it must be kept in mind continually that those who drafted them would be the men with the power to interpret them. No indication is given of which aspects of the liturgy are referred to here; no indication is given of the meaning of "less functional" (how much less is "less"?), or whether "functional" refers to the original function or a new one which may have been acquired.

Article 21 refers, of course, to the liturgy in general, but specific reference is made to the Mass in Article 50:

The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, can be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful can be more easily accomplished. For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, while due care is taken to preserve their substance. Elements which, with the passage of time, came to be duplicated, or were added with but little advantage are now to be discarded. Where opportunity allows or necessity demands, other elements which have suffered injury through the accidents of history are now to be restored to the earlier norm of the holy Fathers.

Those who have read my book Cranmer's Godly Order will be struck immediately by the fact that Thomas Cranmer himself could have written this passage as the basis for his own "reform" of the Catholic liturgy-----i.e., his creation of the Anglican prayer service. There is not one point here that the apostate Archbishop of Canterbury (1489-1556) did not claim to be implementing. An Anglican observer at Vatican II, Archdeacon Bernard Pawley, praised the manner in which the liturgical reform following Vatican II not only corresponds with, but has even surpassed, the reform of Thomas Cranmer.  [B. Pawley, Rome and Canterbury through Four Centuries (London: Mowbray, 1974), p. 349.]

There is a very close correspondence between the prayers which Cranmer felt had been added to the Mass "with little advantage" (almost invariably prayers which made Catholic teaching explicit) and those which the members of the Consilium, which implemented the norms of Vatican II [with the help of Protestant advisers], also decreed had been added "with little advantage' and "must be discarded." The correspondence between the reform of Thomas Cranmer and those of Father Bugnini's Consilium is made clear in Chapter XXV of my book Pope Paul's New Mass, where the two reforms are set out in parallel columns with the Traditional Latin Rite Mass codified in perpetuity by St. Pius V (1566-1572).

. . . Father Joseph Gelineau was described by Archbishop Bugnini as one of the "great masters of the international liturgical world." [Bugnini, p. 221.] In his book Demain la liturgie, Father Gelineau informs us that:

It would be false to identify this liturgical renewal with the reform of rites decided on by Vatican II. This reform goes back much further and goes forward far beyond the conciliar prescriptions (elle va bien au.-delà). The liturgy is a permanent workshop (la liturgie est un chantier permanent). [J. Gelineau, Demain la liturgie (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1977), pp.9-10.]

This concept of a permanently evolving liturgy-----"the liturgy is a permanent workshop"-----is of crucial importance. St. Pius V's ideal of liturgical uniformity within the Roman Rite has now been cast aside, to be replaced by an ideal of "pluriformity" in which the liturgy must be kept in a state of constant flux, resulting inevitably in what Cardinal Ratzinger described with perfect accuracy as "the disintegration of the liturgy."

[Stone]

Instruction Overshadows Worship

Another time bomb is contained in Article 33: "Although the sacred liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine Majesty, it likewise contains abundant instruction for the faithful." Take careful note of the word "although." The essential nature of the liturgy as a solemn act of worship offered to the Eternal Father seems to be safeguarded, but on a practical level, little more is heard of "the worship of the divine Majesty," but a great deal is heard about the "abundant instruction of the faithful." As was mentioned earlier, the tragedy of the Liturgical Movement was the fact that it would make this secondary aspect of the liturgy the primary aspect.

For the Protestant, it is the written word of the Bible which is of paramount importance in worship; it is to receive this written word in readings and preaching and to respond by praising God in prayers and hymns that Protestants come together. On the other hand, the Catholic assists at Mass primarily by offering, adoring and then receiving the Incarnate Word Himself. Those wishing to change the Mass in the interests of ecumenical convergence have been able to utilize Article 33 to add considerable emphasis to the instructional part of the Mass, while the prominence given to the sacrifice has been considerably diminished. Xavier Rynne, who wrote for the New Yorker, notes with satisfaction that the CSL

establishes the function of the Word of God in liturgical worship, placing the emphasis on Scripture as understood by modern biblical theology, and thereby furnishing a realistic bridge for a dialogue with the Protestant Churches whose worship has always been biblically rather than sacramentally orientated. [X. Rynne, The Second Session (London: Herder & Herder, 1964), p. 305.]

Rynne's conclusion conforms perfectly with what was explained on page 3 of this book: the tragedy of the Liturgical Movement was that it would make the pedagogical, or educative aspect of the liturgy the primary aspect.

Article 34 of the CSL states that the reformed liturgy must be "distinguished by a noble simplicity." There is, needless to say, no attempt to explain precisely what constitutes "a noble simplicity." The liturgy must be "short" but how short? It must be "unencumbered by useless repetitions"-----but when does a repetition become useless? (The very dreary repetitions in the New Mass which have been introduced in the Responsorial Psalm and the Bidding Prayers [Prayer of the Faithful] are therefore presumably useful repetitions.) Article 34 also insists that the new rites must "be within the people's powers of comprehension." What is meant here by the word "people"? University graduates, the illiterate, or those in the middle? Must anything that anyone cannot comprehend be excluded? The latitude which this article gave to the Consilium hardly needs elaborating.

Article 37 claims that "the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity on matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community." It explains that anything in the way of life of various races and peoples that "is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she [the Church] studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes, in fact, she admits such things into the liturgy itself, as long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit." In practical terms this has meant unrestricted pluriformity, with one exception. And in this case the most rigid uniformity prevails in the overwhelming majority of dioceses in the Western world. This is the rigid uniformity of not allowing the Traditional Latin ("Tridentine") Mass codified by St. Pius V ... .