by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The dissection of the Faith represented by the liturgical and doctrinal revolutions of conciliarism did not occur all at once.
True, some elements of the revolution occurred in a blitzkrieg, such as the promulgation and implementation of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service forty years ago this year. Other took place in an incremental manner. Indeed, it can be argued rather persuasively, as I tried to do in G.I.R.M. Warfare (a book that needs revision in various parts), that the Novus Ordo is a formless "mass" that is ever-mutating, a direct result of the wide latitude granted in the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. It is the case that the same conciliar "priest" can simulate back-to-back "liturgies" using a variety of different and fully "legal" "options" in the two simulations. The Sacred Liturgy is supposed to communicate permanence and stability, not incoherence and instability.
Indeed, the gradual changes introduced, whether legitimately or as a matter of "priestly" improvisation, into the Novus Ordo service over the last four decades have been more harmful to the Faith than its introduction on November 30, 1969. Catholics attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have grown accustomed to change as a natural and normal part of their parish's liturgical experience. Most Catholics in the conciliar structures, much like the frog being boiled alive slowly as the temperature in the pot in which he is sitting is elevated slightly to permit his amphibious body to adjust to the changes, have been boiled alive as their sensus Catholicus has been eviscerated, predisposing them to accept blasphemy and abomination while they recoil in "horror" at the thought of returning to the "bad old days" of Latin and reverence and solemnity befitting the unbloody re-presentation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and in Truth.
This acceptance of ceaseless change as a natural and normal part of parish liturgical life in the conciliar structures has extended as well to the gutting of the sanctuaries of church buildings, what author Michael Rose called "wreckovation," thinking nothing as high altars were smashed and as statues of Our Lord and Our Lady and Saint Joseph and other saints were thrown into the garbage. The average Catholic accepted the Cranmer table and theater-style seating in many formerly Catholic churches, participating merrily as "lectors" and "extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist" in these egalitarian temples of man. Yes, others of us "fought" like Sisysphus of Greek mythology as we rolled up those boulders time and time again to "fight for the Faith within our parish," oblivious that those in "Rome" were on the side of the revolutionaries and were quite content to see those boulders roll down on top of us over and over again.
The strategy to gut the Faith from the top down took root in local parishes to such an extent that those who resisted "pastorally approved" changes were deemed to be "schismatic" or "disloyal" or even "anticlerical." Even older priests who were scandalized by the changes were bewildered. Many, as the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber noted in The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, went along out of a sense of "obedience," unaware
Was all this really done because of a pastoral concern about the souls of the faithful, or did it not rather represent a radical breach with the traditional rite, to prevent the further use of traditional liturgical texts and thus to make the celebration of the "Tridentime Mass" impossible--because it no loner reflected the new spirit moving through the Church?
Indeed, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the prohibition of the traditional rite was announced at the same time as the introduction of the new liturgical texts; and that a dispensation to continue celebrating the Mass according to the traditional rite was granted only to older priests.
Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form; and in no way a liturgy that represented what the Council Fathers had envisioned, i.e., a liturgy that would meet the pastoral needs of the faithful.
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 pastoral benefits that so many idealists had hoped the new liturgy would bring about did not materialize. Our churches emptied in spite of the new liturgy (or because of it?), and the faithful continue to fall away from the Church in droves.
Although our young people have been literally seduced in to supporting the new forms of liturgical worship, they have, in fact, become more and more alienated from the faith. They are drawn to religious sects--Christian and non-Christian ones--because fewer and fewer priests teach them the riches of our Catholic faith and the tenets of Christian morality. As for older people, the radical changes made to the traditional liturgy have taken from them the sense of security in their religious home.
Today, many among us wonder: Is this Spring people had hoped would emerge from the Second Vatican Council? Instead of a genuine renewal in our Church, we have seen only novelties. Instead of our religious life entering a period of new invigoration, as happened in the past, what we see now is a form of Christianity that has turned towards the world.
We are now involved in a liturgy in which God is no longer the center of our attention. Today, the eyes of our faithful are no longer focused on God's Son having become Man hanging on the cross, or on the pictures of His saints, but on the human community assembled for a commemorative meal. The assembly of people is sitting there, face to face with the "presider," expecting from him, in accordance with the "modern" spirit of the Church, not so much a transfer of God's grace, but primarily some good ideas and advice on how to deal with daily life and its challenges.
There are few people who speak of the Holy Mass as the Sacrifice of the New Covenant which we offer to God the Father through Jesus Christ, or of the sacramental union with Christ that we experience when we receive Holy Communion. Today, we are dealing with the "Eucharistic feat," and with the "holy bread," to be shared as a sign among as a sign of our brotherhood with Jesus.
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, pp. 100-102.)
Even the Novus Ordo itself, no matter its many truly revolutionary and blasphemous elements, was but a logical progression from the "reforms" engineered by Fathers Annibale Bugnini and Ferdinando Antonelli in the 1950s and the Jansenist changes, including the suppression of feast days of various saints, made in 1960 by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII that presaged the "Missale Romanum" bearing his name in 1961 that was modified the following year, 1962, when the Canon of the Mass was broken for the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph. and that served as the "norm" for Catholics in the conciliar structures until November 29, 1964, when the Ordo Missae that eliminated the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel was introduced. Altars were turned around shortly thereafter. The Canon of the Mass began to be prayed in the vernacular in 1967. Only a few Catholics, priest or the laity, objected to these changes, accepting them as coming from "ecclesiastical" authority. I certainly didn't object. I said "baa, baa" and went along with the changes for far too long, believing that the "problems" could be fixed.
Alas, the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is the problem. It has given expression to a synthetic "faith" that has denied most of the Catholics in the world of Sanctifying Grace as it offends God every time it is performed. Far from attracting Protestants, which was one of the goals of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, the Novus Ordo has driven Catholics out by the droves. Catholics have fled from its profanities, taking refuge into the waiting arms of the "world" or the waiting arms of various evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant "ministers," making it possible for the conciliar revolutionaries to close down parishes and sell their properties to the highest bidder so as to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been paid out to victims of the systematic cover-up of crimes against souls and bodies that have been perpetrated by conciliar "bishops" and conciliar "priests."
Additionally, of course, the fact that conciliar churches remain empty in places where demographic changes have taken place (older parishioners moving away or dying off) is the result that there are no efforts to go door-to-door to gain converts to be found within a parish's boundaries. The counterfeit church of conciliarism will accept "converts" if individuals decided that conversion is "best" for them (which was the attitude of the late Richard John Neuhaus about his own "conversion" to the conciliar structures; see
Saying Luther's Goal Was One Church, Noted Lutheran Turns to Catholicism).
Proselytism however, is, at least in most instances, forbidden by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is one of the reasons that the heroic efforts of the late Father Daniel Johnson, who brought over 554 people into the church by walking the parish boundaries of Saint Mary by the Sea Church to knock on every door to seek out the lost sheep, were never honored by the conciliar officials in the scandal-torn diocese under the control of "Bishop" Tod Brown. Such truly heroic zeal for souls is not in favor in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is content to close down its parishes and to sell off their properties rather than to do the apostolic work entrusted to the Catholic Church by her Divine Bridegroom and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was about to Ascend to the Father's right hand in glory.
The fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is content to close once Catholic parishes is but a sign of its fruitlessness. The selling off of church properties is without precedent in the history of the Catholic Church. Catholic churches in past centuries were destroyed by fire or floods or earthquakes or wars. Catholic churches have been seized by heretics (the Protestants, the Orthodox) or infidels (the Mohammedans, Communists, pagans). It has never before now been the case the Catholic churches have been sold en masse as a result of declining church attendance, no less to raise funds to pay off legal judgments or settlements precipitated by the moral corruption of "bishops" and "priests" who have participated actively in the liturgical and doctrinal corruption of the Faith that has devastated so many countless millions upon millions of souls. The fact that the buildings now in the illicit possession of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are being sold off is the logical, inevitable result that the doctrinal purity of the Holy Faith and the integrity of the Sacred Liturgy of the Roman Rite were "sold off" first.
Well-meaning Catholics still attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, convinced that they are in the Catholic Church, have attempted to save their beloved church buildings by staging "vigils" in various places, including, most recently, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts. While adherents of the Society of Saint Pius X effectively wrested the de facto control of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet Church in Paris, France, away from the conciliar authorities in 1977, the specific legal circumstances in this case are far different than those that obtain in the United States of America. The well-meaning Catholics attempting to save church buildings that have become home to the abomination that is the Novus Ordo with all of its accompanying outrages (average parishioners dressed immodestly or indecently or slovenly, the proliferation of lay people in the sanctuary during purported "offerings" of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, art, music and architecture that offends God and any of His creatures who has a modicum of the sensus Catholicus left in his soul) do not realize that the Faith left those buildings decades ago and that they should be clinging to the Faith where it is to be found in the catacombs and not to buildings where God is now profaned the Faith distorted and perverted.
This is, of course, to take nothing away from the courage of ordinary Catholics who think that they are helping the Church and who have, in at least a few instances, been manhandled by the conciliar authorities and subject to arrest. It is, however, to point out that our attachment must be to the purity of the Faith and integrity of Worship in these times of apostasy and betrayal.
Saint Athanasius put it best in his letter to his flock during the time of the Arian heresy:
May God console you!...What saddens you...is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises -- but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: What is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle? The one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?
True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there -- they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way...
You are the ones who are happy. You who remain within the Church by your faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to us from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis.
No one, ever, will prevail against your faith, beloved brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from It and going astray.
Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.
(Letter of St. Athanasius to his flock.)
"What is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle? The one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?"
These are words to remember. No place, not even places where the Holy Mass was once offered by true bishops and true priests, is more important than the Faith. We must seek out that true Faith today as we cling to the modern-day Saint Athanasiuses, true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, recognizing, of course, that we are not one whit better than anyone else and that we have much for which to make reparation as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.
Every Rosary we pray, offered up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will help to make reparation for our sins, which are so responsible for the state of the Church Militant on earth and for that of the world-at-large, and those of the whole world, including the conciliarists who blaspheme God regularly by means of lies such as the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity." The final triumph belongs to the Immaculate Heart of the very Mother of God who brought forth her Divine Son on Christmas Day and presented Him to the Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar on this day, the Feast of the Epiphany (which is as yet ongoing where we are at Saint Gertrude the Great Church).
The conciliarists lose in the end. Christ the King will emerge triumphant once again as the fruit of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother and our Queen, Mary Immaculate. The Church Militant will rise again from her mystical death and burial.
Keep praying. Keep sacrificing. Keep fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message in your own lives.
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary right now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
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
