Enough Spin To Make One's Head Spin

by Thomas A. Droleskey

As each of us should know so very well, we live in the world where professional career politicians who ply their grubby, naturalistic trade of craven electoral self-interest and survival attempt to spin bad news about themselves or their organized crime families (Republican or Democratic) or their friends on almost constant basis, a phenomenon that is even more pronounced in a world of twenty-four hour-a-day all-news television/satellite/cable channels and internet sites that feed off of even the slightest spin coming from one of these careerists or their pollsters or their political consultants or apologists. These same careerists and their sycophants love to spin good news about themselves and to make good news their false opposites in the other organized crime family of naturalism appear to be bad news.

One of the chief means by which spinning is done prior to a particular farce of naturalism called an election is by what is called the "lowering of expectations." That is, many candidates for public office like to lower the public's expectations of their actual vote total in a primary or a general election so as to demonstrate that they did "better" than anyone expected once all of the votes had been tallied. This kind of spinning is also done prior to debates among the clowns and nincompoops who seek public office as their strategists seek to lower expectations as to how a particular candidate will perform while over inflating the expectations for his opponent. This is all a farce. It is all from the devil, who prowls about the world seeing the ruin of souls.

One of the first times that the sort of modern spin-doctoring was used in my memory was when the late United States Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Wisconsin) came within 7.2% of defeating the stand-in candidate who represented then President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the March 12, 1968, New Hampshire Democratic Party presidential primary. Johnson, who had not formally announced his re-election plans and would announce to the nation on March 31, 1968, that he was not going to seek a second full term as president, joked publicly at some kind of function shortly after that primary about how press commentators were saying that McCarthy had "won" the election by getting more votes than anyone thought he was going to get. Johnson said something along the following lines (this is a paraphrase as I cannot find the exact quotation; the paraphrase is, however, based on my having watched from my bed, to which I was confined in a plaster body jacket for five months following a spinal fusion operation on February 14, 1968, every single newscast about the 1968 elections that I was capable of watching by flipping channels the old-fashioned way as I reached from my bed to the dial of my portable, ten-inch screen General Electric color television): "This is the first time in a history that the man who got more votes in an election is considered to be the loser." Johnson evoked a great deal of laughter from his audience when he made that remark.

Lyndon Johnson's observation, however, was but a harbinger of how election strategy and even the public's reaction to various policy proposals and crises would be "shaped" by the ubiquitous species of creatures known as spin-doctors, who have metastasized aplenty in the past four decades in practically every segment of our national life (medicine, education, entertainment, the media, the corporate work), including the realm of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, whose "popes" and "cardinals" and "bishops" and media spokesflacks have been telling us for the past forty-five years that the "Second" Vatican Council and the magisterium of the conciliar "popes" and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service are each perfectly compatible with the immutable teaching and authentic tradition of the Catholic Church.

The latest to serve up this swill is the "papal" Master of Ceremonies, "Monsignor" Guido Marini, who gave an interview with Cate Devine of the Glasgow, Scotland, Herald newspaper, which is not available online (its contents were e-mailed to me by a reader, who transcribed the interview from a photograph of the newspaper article found on an Italian website, Secretum Meum Mihi Blog). Here is an excerpt:

“It is difficult to describe the personal style of a Pope, but the one thing that does emerge is Benedict XVI’s ability to take the liturgy and communicate it in a way that is very understandable,” he says. “You see the great theologian that he is, but at the same time he is the pastor who can translate complex theological ideas into everyday idiom. The best way to describe him is from the scriptures. He is meek and humble of heart.

“Also, you have to remember that Cardinal Ratzinger worked very closely with John Paul II for over 20 years. There is a different style with each pontificate and each brings its own particular enrichment, but we would also say that while styles may vary, content is continuous.”

Which brings us to the rather baffling buzz-phrase of the modern Papacy, the “hermeneutic of continuity”, which concerns the interpretation of sacred liturgy. I ask Mgr Marini to explain. He smiles and takes a breath.

“The term itself was coined by Benedict XVI with especial reference to the Second Vatican Council,” he begins. At this point he’s interrupted by an incoming call on his mobile phone, whose ring tone is a rather blousy version of Pachelbel’s Canon. Time, then, for a quick recap: the Second Vatican Council – a Herculean undertaking which involved the first revision of the established Latin liturgy which had been in exclusive use for 1500 years – was opened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and introduced by Pope Paul VI. The most striking change was that it allowed Mass to be said in English and other languages instead of Latin. YET Vatican II remains controversial for those who prefer the solemnity of the Latin mass.   In 2007 – the year of Mgr Marini’s arrival – Pope Benedict lifted restrictions on celebrating Mass, effectively allowing priests to use Latin once again.   Earlier this year the announcement of the Pope’s visit to the UK sparked fresh debate about the unity of the Church – and some Scottish bishops and priests were said to be opposed to the idea of returning to old-fashioned liturgy.

Mgr Marini is not inclined to dwell on divisions. “There is no rupture,” he says.     “With Vatican II there was a development, but it was a development in continuity and is not divorced from what happened before.”

 

No rupture, huh? Oy, vey! Why do I bother to deal with this insanity?  Well, it's because I need to make more and more penance for my sins, especially when brother donkey is sleepy and is calling me away from the computer. I promise, however, that this exercise in correcting the spin of conciliar official will be mercifully brief as two recent articles have, yes, yet again, attempted to refute and explode such absurdities in great deal (Witness Against Benedict XVI: The Oath Against Modernism and Taking Catholics For Fools).

Permit me to start by pointing out once more than Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" is a figment of his own fertile, apostate mind which he has devised to rationalize the defections from the Faith represented by the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes." Please see those two recent articles on this subject in the event that short-term memory loss has overtaken you in the past week or so. Enough of the absurdity that "it was necessary to learn" that certain papal pronouncements and decisions become "obsolete" over time in the "particulars" that they contain. This is philosophical absurdity. It has been condemned solemnly by Holy Mother Church at the [First] Vatican Council.

No rupture, eh? Then, "Monsignor" Marini, why did the men who planned the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and/or who knew the mind of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI speak of a break with the Catholic past that was designed to appeal to Protestants?

We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants. (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)

"[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.)

Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, an associate of Annibale Bugnini on the Consilium, quoted and footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman.)

 

You know more than they did, "Monsignor" Marini?

What about the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, a liturgist who was not a traditionalist but who wrote the following about the destruction of the Roman Rite wrought by the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

 

Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example, references to a God who judges and punishes.

At the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy created after the Second Vatican Council is identical in essence with the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point, and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting rid of elements of no particular interest.

Most priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform of the Divine Office and of the liturgical chant introduced by Pope St. Pius X.

Following this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while, in many cases, they themselves refused to obey. . . .

The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church, the inspiration of countless Catholics over many centuries. Will someone, some day, be able to say the same thing about the new Mass? (Monsignor Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, p. 39, p. 99, pp. 100-102.)

 

If Monsignor Gamber did not know what he was writing about, "Monsignor" Marini? If this is your contention, then why did Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger write the following in the French language preface to Monsignor Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy?

What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of 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. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, oppose this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery. (Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to the French language edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.)

 

Just a slip on the part of your "pope," "Monsignor?" Well, why did Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger write the following in his own memoirs, Milestones?

 

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones.)

 

Even though Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the apostle of the "new theology" that is wrapped in enigmas and contradictions and paradoxes because of its contemptuous rejection of Scholasticism, contradicted himself in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum by stating that "In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture," he did take the opposite view before issuing Summorum Pontificum on July 7, 2007, which has had Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X, and others who were longtime critics--in their own published words on numerous occasions--of the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes" and the Novus Ordo service doing their own handstands and spin-doctoring in behalf of concilairism ever since. No rupture? What about a frontal lobotomy? It's enough spin to make your head spin, isn't it?

Cate Devine of the Glasgow Herald also asked "Monsignor" Marini about the use of Latin in the Novus Ordo services that Ratzinger/Benedict will be staging during his visit to the United Kingdom that begins on Thursday, September 16, 2010:

 

Speculation that the Mass at Bellahouston would be said entirely in Latin is not, it turns out, entirely unfounded.

A new English translation of the Mass, which is currently under way and will be introduced in full next year, will be markedly closer to the original Latin. It will completely replace the current 1960s liturgy.   “The translation done at the time of Vatican II was rushed, but this one is more considered,” explains Mgr Marini. “Not all of the new translation has been approved, though the Ordinary of the Mass – such as the Gloria, the Credo, and Agnus Dei – have been. It is a gradual introduction.”

The parts of the new translation that are ready will be said for the first time at Bellahouston – or rather sung, to solemn music by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Mgr Marini has not yet heard it, and neither has the Pope, meaning that Glasgow will effectively have the honour of holding the world premiere of the new translation, sung for the first time in MacMillan’s setting by a choir of 800 people from every Scottish diocese.

Then comes the real revelation. “For all the Masses said in the UK the Preface and the Canon will be said in Latin,” states Mgr Marini. “What the Holy Father intends by using Latin is to emphasise the universality of the faith and the continuity of the Church. It is the language that unites all the leaders of the church. Latin is the language of Catholicism.”

On the altar, the crucifix will be firmly in the centre. “The reason for this is that Pope Benedict wants the focus to be on Christ,” explains Mgr Marini. “The whole dynamic of liturgy during the celebration of Mass is that we look towards Him and not at each other. This reorientation is very dear to Benedict’s heart. He is very happy that his wish is starting to find expression in the Church.”

 

This is very nice except when one considers the inconvenient truth that the many Anglo-Catholics have services that are partly in Latin. One cannot make something that is premised upon a rejection of the Catholic Faith pleasing to God. This is as true of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service as it is of the false Anglican liturgies that Ratzinger/Benedict is permitting those Anglo-Catholics who are abandoning the false Anglican sect for the false conciliar sect to keep once they have finalized their change of address aboard the S. S. One World Ecumenical Church. So what? One cannot made something that is false into something that is true and pleasing to God, Who has given us the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that produced good fruit, not the fruitlessness and sterility that has been produced by the false rites of the Protestant sects and the false rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. So what? (See also With Perfection Staring Directly At Them, Turning Perfection Aside For A More Perfect Banality, and Sanctioning Apostasy With Sanctimony).

That's not the end of the conciliar "spin," however. Far from it. One conciliar official after another in the United Kingdom is trying to depress expectations of large turnouts of Catholics for the Novus Ordo stagings and other events of Ratzinger/Benedict's upcoming visit there (see Public doesn't want papal visit bill).

Don't believe a single word of it as it is my surmise, and it is only that, a surmise, that this is all spin which is designed to condition the media for a very low turnout at the "papal" services and events only for there to be a "miraculous" outpouring of Catholic support throughout the United Kingdom once Ratzinger/Benedict is in the country and is facing opposition from Protestants and atheists and those steeped in unrepentant sins of perversity against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and from ultra-progressive conciliar Catholics who want "women priests" and a married clergy and the victims of conciliar clerical abuse, opposition that will, as noted in Prepare Ye The Way For Antichrist, part four, fuel the "martyr 'pope,'" the "poor suffering 'pope'" syndrome amongst Ratzinger/Benedict's apologists. Some of these apologists, many of them once his fiercest critics who have never once explained how their former criticisms of Ratzinger's orthodox were in the least bit incorrect, will seek to use sordid emotional ploys to curry pity for a man who denies the nature of dogmatic truth, who has blasphemed God publicly by esteeming the symbols of false religions and terming places of false worship as "sacred," a man who rejects the "ecumenism of the return" and the Social Reign of Christ the King and who has endorsed what Pope Pius VII called a heresy and Pope Gregory XVI called "insanity," religious liberty.

Talk about rupture with the Catholic Faith. How about a rupture with reality, with right reason, with truth itself.

Enough of this. It's time to enjoy the rest of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, without whose Immaculate Conception and Nativity our redemption would not have been wrought. 

In the midst of the incredible spin-doctoring against truth taking place before our very eyes, we must, as always, have recourse to Our Lady, Maria Bambina, as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and as we keep her company in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in our time in fervent prayer before her Divine Son's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. She will help us to cleave only to true bishops and to true priests who make absolutely no concessions to the abominable apostasies and blasphemies and sacrileges of conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its "popes" and "bishops" who offend God so boldly, so openly and so brazenly--and with the full support and admiring approval of most of the world's baptized Catholics.

While each person must come to recognize this for himself (it took me long enough to do so; I defended the indefensible for far too long!), we must nevertheless embrace the truth once we do come to recognize and accept it without caring for one moment what anyone else may think about us as we make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

As I noted months ago now, we can never grow accustomed to apostasies that can never become acceptable with the passage of time. We can never grow accustomed to offenses given to God by the conciliar "popes" and their conciliar "bishops." We must never "spin" in their behalf.

We must cleave to the Catholic Church, not to the counterfeit church of conciliarism, as we attempt to plant the seeds for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to live more and more penitentially, making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own many sins and for those of the whole word.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints