A Truly Quiet Revolution
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Defaming The English Martyrs noted the fact that the Faith was lost in England in a flash in the Sixteenth Century. True, there were pockets of resistance to the revolt begun by King Henry VIII and institutionalized later by Queen Elizabeth I and her successors. However, most Catholics in England lost the Faith in a flash.
Similarly, the Faith of our fathers was lost in a flash by most Catholics around the world in the wake of the events of the "Second" Vatican Council. Those who hold to the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church and who worship in the manner that had been, in most of its essential elements, taught by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the Apostles themselves are considered to be crazy, schismatic, disloyal and, well, simply un-Catholic. How one can be called un-Catholic for adhering to everything that had been taught and done by the Church until the advent of conciliarism is mystifying. However, there are cottage industries that have sprung up in the past four decades to denounce anyone who thinks and speaks and acts as Catholics have always thought and spoken and acted. Blessed Edmund Campion, call your office.
The path to the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service did not begin overnight. Fathers Annibale Bugnini, C.M., and Ferdinando Antonelli, O.F.M., ploughed their ground in the 1950s. Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII built on their early work and produced a "modernized" version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition in the Missal he promulgated in 1961, the basis of all Motu offerings/simulations of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.
That 1961 Missal, amended by Roncalli/John XXIII with the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph into the Roman Canon, however, was only in use for just three years before it was, if the conciliarists out there will pardon the expression, superseded by the 1964-1965 Ordo Missae, which went into effect on the First Sunday in Advent, November 29, 1964, that is, my friends, forty-five years ago this very day. That "transitional" Mass was but a bridge between the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the first Sunday of Advent in 1969, November 30, when the the Novus Ordo service went into effect, meaning that tomorrow is the fortieth anniversary of the first public offerings of that which is so offensive to God, the Novus Ordo.
The implementation of the Ordo Missae of 1964-1965 was carefully taught at the time to seminarians, who then served as "instructors" at parishes as Catholic Tradition was replaced with open conciliarist novelty.
Consider, for example, this announcement in the parish bulletin of Saint Matthew's Church, Norwood, Ohio, for the First Sunday of Advent, November 29, 1964:
Today is the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of the Church's new liturgical year. Today we begin our "New Liturgy". Beginning today many parts of Holy Mass will be said in English. We ask each of you to do your very best to join the priest in the prayers of the Mass. Leaflets with the official text of these prayers were given most of your last Sunday. (For those of you who were unable to obtain your copies last Sunday, you may obtain one at the bulletin stands today.) For the Masses with singing (including the 9:45 a.m. High Mass), you are asked to use the cards found in the pews. Kindly stand, sit and kneel, according to the directions on your leaflet or the card. At the Masses today, seminarians will be on hand to help and guide you in this new participation. We wish to thank Msgr. Schneider, Rector of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary, for his kindness in sending us his students; and also the young men themselves for their generosity in helping us. We know that it will take a while (perhaps even months) before we have this new method of participating in Holy Mass perfected; we earnestly ask each one to cooperate loyally and faithfully to the best of his or her ability to make the public worship of God in St. Matthew Parish a true and worthy "sacrifice of praise." [Historical note: the Mount Saint Mary's Seminary referred to in the bulletin was known as Mount Saint Mary's Seminary of the West, located in Norwood, Ohio.]
What had been accepted calmly by most Catholics in England over 400 years before was accepted calmly by most Catholics in the United States of America in the 1960s and thereafter. The revolutionaries accustomed Catholics to what they had theretofore been unaccustomed to: ceaseless change and unpredictability as institutionalized features of a parish's liturgical life. The "few months" of adjustment noted in the bulletin announcement above has become four and one-half decades of ceaseless, unremitting liturgical change, which has played its role in accustoming Catholics to changes in matters of Faith and morals. Catholics who become accustomed to ever-changing forms of prayer in what purports to be the Mass, which must convey the permanence and the immutability and the majesty of the Blessed Trinity Himself, will come to expect all too logically that everything in the Faith is "up for grabs," that nothing is permanent, not even God Himself.
Want to get rid of the Catholic Faith in a flash? Change the liturgy. It worked in Germany with Martin Luther. It worked in Geneva with John Calvin. It worked in England with Thomas Cranmer and Elizabeth I It worked in Scotland with John Knox. It worked in the lives of most Catholics in the wake of the "Second" Vatican Council.
A quote from Giovanni Montini/Paul VI in this regard was included in the aforementioned Saint Matthew's Church bulletin the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 4, 1965:
The Liturgical reform affects habits that are dear to us; it demands of us some effort. We may not relish this, but we must be docile and have trust. The religious and spiritual plan unfolded before us by the new liturgical constitution is a stupendous one for death and authenticity of doctrine, for rationality of Christian logic, for purity and riches of culture and art. It corresponds to the interior being and needs of modern man.
Ah, yes, the "needs of modern man." Giovanni Montini/Paul VI was a thorough believer in Modernism's condemned presuppositions about the "necessity" of tailoring the Faith for "modern" man, heedless of the fact that man's authentic "needs" never change. They are as unchanging as God Himself. Each man needs, no matter what era of salvation history in which he lives, to be a Catholic, to submit to the truths revealed by Our Lord to His Holy Church, to cooperate on a daily basis with the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, to surrender himself to God through Mary Immaculate. There are no "modern" needs for man. He needs the security and the stability and the certainty provided by the Catholic Faith, not ambiguity, uncertainty, confusion, instability, impermanence and disarray.
Indeed, Pope Pius XI wrote in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, that the Catholic Church brings forth the teaching that her Divine Bridegroom and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, has entrusted to her with "ease and security:"
For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained.
Can any truthful, honest person say that the "Second" Vatican Council and the conciliar "popes" have brought forth their teaching with "ease and security to the knowledge of men"?
Giovanni Montini/Paul VI's mind about "modern" man is reflected perfectly in the mind of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Their perception of the Church and the world is identical. And this perception of the Church and the world just happened to be condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, and by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950. The Modernist always justifies his advertence to novelty by claiming to suit the needs of "modern" man, creating ambiguity out of certainty, complexity out of simplicity, contradiction out of truth.
Pope Saint Pius X noted this in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:
One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking "men speaking perverse things," "vain talkers and seducers," "erring and driving into error." It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of Our office.
That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.
These truths were lost on Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and Giovanni Montini/Paul VIand Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. They are lost on Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI who had a professor in seminary who was so enraged by Pope Pius XII's condemnation of the "new theology" in Humani Generis that he, the professor, threw his books onto the floor of his living room after a class in 1950. Pope Pius XII's words, however, apply to the minds of each of the conciliar "popes" and their contempt for the Faith as It has been handed down to us through the ages under the infallible guidance and protection of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost:
These new opinions, whether they originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others more audacious, causing scandal to many, especially among the young clergy and to the detriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they are usually more cautious in their published works, they express themselves more openly in their writings intended for private circulation and in conferences and lectures. Moreover, these opinions are disseminated not only among members of the clergy and in seminaries and religious institutions, but also among the laity, and especially among those who are engaged in teaching youth.
In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.
The Ordo Missae of 1964-1965, which abolished the recitation of the Judica me (Psalm 42), the Last Gospel, which had been a custom of priests of the Roman Rite from the time of the Twelfth Century and had been mandated by Pope Saint Pius V in 1570, the Prayers after Low Mass, which had been optional by Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961, presaged a new religion, conciliarism that sought to make what was represented as the Catholic liturgy acceptable in the eyes of Protestants, something that Giovanni Montini/Paul VI admitted to his longtime friend Jean Guitton:
"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)
Behold the results of forty-five years of a continuing liturgical revolution that has confused and bewildered Catholics as God Himself has been profaned in his formerly Catholic churches day in and day out.
High altars have been smashed in a manner that would have delighted the likes of John Calvin and Oliver Cromwell.
Tables have replaced altars in many conciliar churches, emphasizing the liturgy as a "community meal," not as the unbloody re-presentation of Our Lord's one Sacrifice of Himself to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father in Spirit and in Truth in atonement for our sins.
The sacred music of the Catholic Church has been replaced with the profanity of songs composed to propagandize in behalf of the new religion.
The architecture of many of the newer conciliar churches reflects an ugliness and sterility evocative of Puritanism and rank paganism, conveying also a Calvinist-Americanist ethos of egalitarianism. This is especially the case with Roger "Cardinal" Mahony's two hundred million dollar monstrosity on the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles, California, as I reported in The Remnant in its January 31, 2003, issue, I believe.
"Papal" liturgies have been used to promote the falsehood known as the "inculturation of the Gospel" to permit outrages theretofore unknown in the history of the Church that would have made even the Arians and the Donatists and Novatians blanche.
The loss of the sacred on the part of many Catholics who have been exposed to the Novus Ordo service and its banalities is attested to by the low percentage of attendance at weekend services and by the fact that only around thirty percent of conciliar Catholics believe as a matter of dogmatic truth that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is truly present--Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity--in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Behold the results of forty-five years of a continuing revolution that has confused and bewildered Catholics as God Himself has been profaned in is formerly Catholic churches day in and day out. No, this is not a mistake. I meant to write this sentence again.
The Novus Ordo service has driven large numbers of out of their parishes as they found refuge in the waiting arms of Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist sects. The "new liturgy" heralded at Saint Matthew's Church in Norwood, Ohio, forty-five years ago is just part of a new religion, one that disdains the Social Reign of Christ the King and forbids "proselytism" in the name of "ecumenism" and "religious liberty."
Saint Matthew's Church in Norwood, Ohio, was a victim of the very conciliar revolution it helped to launch. It was closed by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It is not known as Saint Matthew's Church any longer. It is now known as Immaculate Conception Church, where the Immemorial Mass of Tradition is offered by Fathers William Jenkins and Joseph Greenwell of the Society of Saint Pius V. Who says God doesn't have a good sense of humor? He saw to it that a place that reveled in the revolution was handed back to authentic Catholics, some of whom were parishioners at Saint Matthew's many decades a
We must be consoled during this Advent that God, Who is Omnipotent, can restore "in a flash" what was taken away "in a flash." The horrible "gift" given on the first day of the liturgical year in 1969 will go away one day. We must never doubt this. We must put our trust in His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, which waited with great joy for His own Nativity in poverty and humility in Bethlehem. We must be patient in the midst of the storm as we seek to make reparation for our own sins.
Moreover, we must be on guard against losing our own Faith "in a flash," which can happen very easily if we are not assiduous in assisting at the daily offering of the Mass of all ages in the catacombs (where the catacombs are to be found, that is) without any concessions made to conciliarism or to the "authority" of the conciliarists, if we are not assiduous about spending at least some time before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer each day (again, obviously, where Our Lord is truly present), if we do not pray our Rosaries every day, if we do not read Sacred Scripture and other good spiritual books every day, if we do not make a good Confession on a regular basis, if we are content with being lukewarm in our interior lives. Oh, yes. It is quite easy for us to lose it all "in a flash."
Thus, we must make use of this season of Advent, which this year is the second-longest Advent possible (twenty-six days long from last evening), to renew our spiritual disciplines if they have slackened somewhat, to abstain from legitimate pleasures, to fast and take upon ourselves extra penances as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
That same Immaculate Heart of Mary will help us to take heart in these trouble times. For, you see, the Modernists lose in the end. The Immaculate Heart of Mary wins as her Fatima Message is fulfilled. She will see to it that the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is restored to national flags and is enthroned in the homes of all men and women in all countries of the world. She will see to it that Holy Mother Church is restored gloriously and that Christendom is restored triumphantly in the world.
May we use this Advent to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and all of the great fruit that will flow therefrom for the Church and for the world. May it be our privilege to see these things, if not here then in eternity, "in a flash!"
