Human Respect Trumps God and His Glory

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The wreckage produced by the synthetic novelty that is the Novus Ordo Missae is vast and unending. As even the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist, noted in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, many older Catholics were alienated from the Faith as a result of the unprecedented, revolutionary changes in the Mass, changes that were symbolic of a desire to create a new religion that no longer emphasized man's need for repentance and the possibility that he could lose his immortal soul for all eternity. The Novus Ordo Missae has turned the experience of assisting at Holy Mass into a nightmare for those Catholics who have not yet discovered the glories of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition or who associate the very Mass that Our Lord taught the Apostles to say with "schism" and "disobedience" and "disloyalty." Effort after effort must thus be made by well-meaning people into preserving what they can of a sense of reverence and stability in a Mass that of its very fungible nature produces irreverence, profanity and instability, the very opposite of what a liturgical rite is supposed to foster.

Part of the effort made by well-meaning Catholics to preserve a sense of reverence in the Novus Ordo Missae has involved forestalling plans to wreckovate beautiful church buildings to accommodate the novelties of the new Mass and its synthetic, anti-Catholic religion. As was the case with the wretched, evil man named Oliver Cromwell, who delighted in smashing high altars and removing anything that remotely smacked of Catholicism from churches in Seventeenth Century England, the Catholic revolutionaries of our own day delight in smashing any and all reminders of the glories of Catholic Tradition, intent on imposing upon the faithful not only a form of worship that is offensive to God and thus injurious to the Faith but a form of church architecture that is Calvinistic, trite and profane.

Although the current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, said, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, that the radical changes in church buildings were not mandated by the Second Vatican Council, it is nevertheless true that such changes are the natural result of what was wrought in the aftermath of the Council, namely, the creation of a new Mass that needed a new "environmental space" in which to express its ethos of egalitarianism and anthropocentrism.The same curial officials who have said that the radical changes to church buildings that have occurred in the past four decades were not mandated by the Second Vatican Council have turned around and actually given permission for those changes to occur! Talk about the principle of non-contradiction being stood on its head as it is contradicted by the words and actions of Vatican officials over and over and over again.

The latest of how human respect to placate the desires of prominent bishops trumps God and His ineffable glory can be found in a story about the Bishop of Cloyne, Ireland, Bishop John Magee, who was the personal secretary to the revolutionary cum revolutionary, the late Pope Paul VI, as well as to the late Pope John Paul I and his successor, the late Pope John Paul II (prior to the appointment of the Polish pontiff's friend, then Monsignor Stansislaw Dziszwz, to succeeded Magee as his personal secretary). Magee, who was present at the beginning of the revolution and has been one of its chief apologists, has received permission from the Vatican, headed these days by the same man who had written against radical changes to church buildings, to wreckovate Saint Colman's Cathedral in Cobh, Ireland. Here is the story, written by Tom Peterkin and published by The Telegraph, an English newspaper:

Bishop John Magee, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, has been granted planning permission to rip up an historic mosaic floor and dismantle a 100ft marble altar rail in St Colman's Cathedral, Cobh.

The alterations are part of his plan to extensively remodel the sanctuary, nave and transepts of the cathedral designed by Edward W Pugin, a man regarded as one of the most important Victorian architects of the Gothic revival.

Dr Magee, the Bishop of Cloyne and the former secretary to the previous pope, believes the changes are necessary to bring the style of worship in the cathedral into line with Vatican II guidelines that modernised Mass by ending the use of Latin and bringing the priest closer to the congregation.

Dr Magee wants to strip out 20 pews to extend the sanctuary into the body of the cathedral and lower it to the same level by removing three steps. He also wants to bring the bishop's chair and altar forward.

The move requires the removal of large portions of the mosaic floor laid by Ludwig Oppenheimer, of Manchester, who worked on the Co Cork cathedral built between 1867 and 1919.

The delicate mosaics depict religious symbols as well as the harp, signifying St Colman's sixth-century role as the Bard of Munster.

Bishop Magee would also like to redesign the adjacent marble-floored chapel built by Pugin and his partner George Ashlin for the lying in state of a bishop. He wants to transform the chapel into an ordinary mortuary for lay people.

Breaking up the altar rail will deprive people of the place where they have knelt to take communion for almost 100 years.

Although Cobh town council has approved the proposal, the decision has met with a huge number of objections and is now the subject of a legal challenge from the Irish government.

The Department of Heritage has lodged an appeal with An Bord Pleanala, Ireland's planning appeal board, arguing that moving the mosaics is in breach of architectural guidelines.

The state versus Church row has also been fuelled by objections from the Irish Georgian Society and the Friends of St Colman's Cathedral, who have collected the signatures of 24,124 people in the diocese.

"These are drastic changes in this type of church," said Terry Pender, of the Friends of St Colman's. "This is a church where every stone, every carving was done with a particular reason in mind."

Donough Cahill, of the Irish Georgian Society, said: "The cathedral, and specifically its chancel and sanctuary, are an intact masterwork of high Victorian Gothic Revival design and craftsmanship.

"The alterations proposed would greatly undermine the character and integrity of these works and would diminish a major heritage asset for generations to come."

Objectors have cited a letter written by the current Pope in the 1990s referring to the renovation of Carlow Cathedral, Co Carlow, to bring it into line with Vatican II.

When he was Cardinal Ratzinger he said such changes were not mandatory.

Inspired by the great French medieval cathedrals, it is one of the finest examples of the work of Edward Welby Pugin, the architect who designed more than 100 Roman Catholic churches in the British Isles.

Dr Magee was unavailable for comment. But Father Jim Killeen, the diocese spokesman, said: "We are of the opinion that to facilitate the full activity of the people in the liturgy, the structure should lend to the experience of the community celebrating together.

"What we have at the moment is a significant spatial separation between the priest and all the people in the church."

"We are of the opinion that to facilitate the full activity of the people in the liturgy, the structure should end to the experiencing of the community celebrating together." In other words, the priest is merely a "presider" at a worship service wherein the "people" and virtual "concelebrants" with him. Thus, any "spatial separation" between the priest and the people impede a sense of the "community celebrating together." Thus, as the revolutionaries believe and protest with all of their narcissistic might, the Church had it wrong for, say, 1936 years following Our Lord's Ascension to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles and our dear Blessed Mother ten days later. It is thus against the spirit of "equality" for a Catholic church building to be constructed in such a way as to convey a distinction between the hierarchical priesthood of the ordained priest and the common priesthood of the lay faithful, who are meant, the Church teaches us traditionally, to unite their own prayers and sacrifices interiorly with the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross being offered in an unbloody manner at the hands of an alter Christus in each Holy Mass.

A new religion requires a new ambiance. Oh, yes, a "spatial separation" between the "priest and all the people" in the church" is quite bad in the revolutionary spirit of the Novus Ordo Missae. Why, for Heaven's sake, such a "spatial separation" might convey that the Mass is a timeless act and is not meant to be bound to any particular culture in the name of stroking the egos of men and their vain pride. Such a "spatial separation" might convey the notion that the Mass is meant to reflect the eternal glory of God and that we are not yet ready to enter into the holy of holies, that we must be on our knees in humility at the altar rail as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is placed on our tongues by an ordained priest, whose hands have been consecrated to touch the Sacred Species.

Bishop Magee's plans to remove the three steps at the foot of the altar also carry with them great symbolic significance. Those three steps signify the effort that we must make to climb the heights of sanctity. They signify that a priest himself must be cleansed prior to the offering of Holy Mass and entering into the holy of holies. They signify each of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They signify the fact that the Mass is offered at a particular time in a particular church atop the heights of Golgotha. Just as Our Lord ascended to the his royal throne on Calvary so must a priest ascend the three steps to undergo the laborious work of perpetuating unbloodily the same Sacrifice of the Cross.

Revolutionaries who are committed to the prosecution of their demonic cause, though, take no prisoners as they proceed to dismantle with diabolical fury the beauties of Catholic church buildings in which the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that they hate with a violent passion was offered for so long and with such fruitful results. All vestiges of the past must be eliminated from view. The past must be disparaged as "triumphalistic" and even "harmful" when the objective truth is that triumphalism honored God in all of His glory and thus served as the means to sanctify and to save souls. Heaven is not a place where one will find the profanity of Oliver Cromwell and his contemporary disciples in Catholicism such as Bishop John Magee. Heaven is a place of splendor and glory, the likes of which can only be faintly approximated by the most stately cathedrals and basilicas that were built during the glories of Christendom. The glories of Heaven, not the profanities of earth, are meant to be evoked by Catholic churches and by the very Mass that is offered therein.

And this, you see, is the very nub of the matter. What is the big deal about wreckovating a Catholic church building when the very Mass that Our Lord taught the Apostles to offer has been gutted and made war against with a revolutionary zeal that would have made Joseph Stalin look like a cloistered hermit who spent all of his days in contemplative prayer? Hatred of the Traditional Latin Mass and the Faith that is best expressed and protected therein leads to a desire to rid oneself of everything--and I mean absolutely everything--associated with it. Bishop Magee is thus playing the role of acolyte to Annibale Bugnini and Giovanni Montini to the point of his dying breath, oblivious to the empirical harm that has harmed the Church in her human elements and thus made her less capable, humanly speaking, of turning back the forces of a world whose false values have been enshrined in the very ethos of the Novus Ordo Missae.

The fact that some in Ireland are protesting the Vatican-approved wreckovation of Saint Colman's Cathedral in Cobh is heartening. A very pertinent question needs to be asked, however: How many of those who are protesting Bishop Magee's plans to wreckovate Saint Colman's Cathedral protested the revolution against the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that Pope Saint Pius V wrote in Quo Primum was to be offered to the faithful by every priest of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in perpetuity? It is probably the case that most of the people who are protesting Bishop Magee's plans have not seen that the very path of the Novus Ordo Missae itself leads inexorably to the sort of rear-guard efforts that they are fighting at present to preserve Saint Colman's Cathedral. I know. I did not see this myself for much longer than I should have. More accurately, I refused to see this for much longer than I should have. Far more important than preserving Saint Colman's Cathedral (or any other Catholic church building) is the effort to preserve and to restore the Traditional Latin Mass without any of the unjust and illicit conditions that have been attached to its offering by the Vatican since 1984 and 1988. And even the effort to preserve and to restore the Traditional Latin Mass is inseparable from our firm defense of the perennial teaching of the Church and our absolute, total and unwavering opposition to the errors and novelties of the conciliar and postconciliar eras, especially "ecumenism" and "religious liberty."

Diocesan structures around the world are poisoned by the rot of the Novus Ordo Missae and the novelties and profanities contained therein and that have spread like wildfire into every precinct of Catholic thought and pastoral practice. To protect the integrity of one's immortal soul from these revolutionary novelties that offend God and thus harm the souls for whom He died on the wood of the Holy Cross we must flee to the catacombs, assisting at Mass offered by the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X or by priests such as Fathers Patrick Perez, Paul Sretenovic, Lawrence Smith, Ronald Ringrose, et al., who are exercising their full and absolute rights guaranteed in perpetuity by Pope Saint Pius V in Quo Primum to offer the Immemorial Mass of Traditional without any episcopal permission or interference. Any taint of compromise leads one straight back to the Novus Ordo Missae and its embrace of the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church.

Saint Francis of Assisi helped to rebuild the Church in her human elements at a time of terrible clerical scandal and sloth. Imitating his contempt for the world and worldly honors and riches, may we, as consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, prostrate ourselves in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament on a daily basis, make whatever sacrifices we need to make to get ourselves to churches where the Traditional Latin Mass is offered without any hint of compromise or even passive acceptance of the errors of the conciliar and postconciliar eras, endure whatever sufferings and persecution that come our way by giving them all freely to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, and faithfully fulfill in our own lives her Fatima Message, especially by our prayerful recitation of her Most Holy Rosary.

The Church is divinely founded. She will last until the end of time. The jaws of hell will never prevail against her. Nothing should ever shake our Faith, which must remain strong, recognizing as we must the simple fact that our own sins and our own sloth have added in no small measure to the problems of the Church and the world. We must, therefore, pray for the Holy Father and all of the bishops and priests and consecrated religious, storming Heaven for them to embrace anew the glories of our Catholic past that they hold in contempt and seek to sell out in the name of placating others while offending the honor and the glory and the majesty of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Thus mindful of our need to be cleansed in the Sacrament of Penance on a regular basis and to live penitentially, it is incumbent upon each of us to make whatever efforts we can to help to plant the seeds for the rebuilding of the Church in our own day, which rebuilding will be but one of the glorious fruits of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint John Cantius, pray for us.

Saint Hilarion, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.