Motu Plus Two

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Motu mania is in full swing in many circles. Even though Summorum Pontificum has given "permission" for the "private" offering of the modernized, 1962 version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and envisions incorporatingNovus Ordo elements (including the Novus Ordo lectionary and the celebration of new "saints" and the Novus Ordo prefaces) into its offering over the course of time and mandates that priests in the "indult" communities offer the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service, if only once a year at the annual "Chrism Mass," many people are whooping it up as though a major victory for the cause of the Catholic Faith has been won. It has not.

Indeed, the very language of Summorum Pontificum and Father Joseph Ratzinger's accompanying letter to the world's conciliar bishops goes to great length to attempt to convince traditionally-minded Catholics and the conciliar "bishops" that the "Mass of Paul VI" and the modernized, 1962 version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition are just two forms of expressions of the "one" Roman Rite, that there are no "contradictions" between the two forms, thus indicating that there the whole controversy is a matter of aesthetics or style rather than of the dogma of the Faith. Father Anthony Cekada makes this point very directly in his The Motu Mass Trap, explaining that Karol Wojtyla's and Joseph Ratzinger's documents on the "old Mass" are couched in subjectivism, reducing an "attachment" to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition to one of mere subjective sensibilities. This is as, as Father Cekada points out, pure Modernism as it gives first place to the "religious sense" of the believer rather than to what is objectively true. And this is at the essence of the Modernist contention that truth, such as it is, is only appertained in the mind and thus can never be known perfectly as our "understanding" of it changes over time in light of changing circumstances.

A little refresher course on this point is in order.

Pope Saint Pius X used Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, to condemn the Modernist notion of the "religious sense" and its application concerning how dogmatic truth is to be understood:

We have thus reached one of the principal points in the Modernist's system, namely, the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma in those primitive and simple formulas, which, under a certain aspect, are necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear knowledge of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself, they apparently hold, strictly consists in the secondary formulas.

To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which exists between the religious formulas and the religious sense. This will be readily perceived by anyone who holds that these formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the believer with a means of giving to himself an account of his faith. These formulas therefore stand midway between the believer and his faith; in their relation to the faith they are the inadequate expression of its object, and are usually called symbols; in their relation to the believer they are mere instruments.

Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.

Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with some modification when needful -- should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are brought forth the .secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself."

Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.

How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to experience is also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which has always been maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as understood by the Modernists, is a communication with others of an original experience, through preaching by means of the intellectual formula. To this formula, in addition to its representative value they attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which acts firstly in the believer by stimulating the religious sense, should it happen to have grown sluggish, and by renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly, in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the first time the religious sense and producing the experience. In this way is religious experience spread abroad among the nations; and not merely among contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both by books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives, at other times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Thus we are once more led to infer that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not survive.

 

The Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service was designed of its nature to communicate these essential beliefs of Modernism, principally by accustoming Catholics to the ceaseless, unremitting changes in the offering of what purports to be an offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The back issues of various traditionally-minded publications over the past four decades include numerous articles making this point, citing the endless array of options that are stated quite explicitly in the text of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal, the document "governing" the offering of the Novus Ordo service. As I point out in G.I.R.M. Warfare, the traditional Confiteor has been replaced by what is called "The Penitential Rite," which can be improvised entirely according to the terms of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. Celebrants are also able to improvise at the beginning of the service by giving a general "introduction" to the day's liturgy, serving as a veritable Ed McMahon to the "show" that follows.

The Novus Ordo, therefore, is all about subjectivism. Each "celebrant" (or the parish liturgical committee that "plans" the "weekend liturgy") has so many legitimate options in the course of the new order service that it is impossible to speak of the Novus Ordo service as anything approaching a fixed rite. Its very fungibility has been designed to communicate the false, heretical belief that dogmatic truth--and our understanding of it--can change as ceaselessly and unremittingly as can the liturgy as the latter is adapted to the "needs" of the mythical entity known as "modern" man, adapted, that is, to the subjective "religious sense" of the "believer" as he "experiences" new circumstances on his "search" for truth, his "search" for God.

The Novus Ordo thus communicates a Modernist understanding of the nature of religious "faith" that can never be reconciled to the Catholic Faith, which is what the courageous champions of the Faith who rejected it completely in the 1960s and never looked back had been given by Our Lady's graces to understand from the very beginning. These great champions, some of whom were listed in Mister Potter's Big Cigar on motu day two days ago, understand that it would be wrong to make even one itsy-bitsy compromise with the evil that is the Novus Ordo service.

Would Saint John Fisher, the only bishop out of one hundred who remained faithful to the Catholic Church at the time that King Henry Tudor broke from Rome in 1534, have made one compromise with the Anglican version of the "Mass" that was but a demonically prophetic forerunner of the Novus Ordo service? How is it a cause for any kind of celebration, therefore, that a "motu proprio" requiring priests who have been ordained to offer some sort of version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition are forced to offer a Protestant-Masonic service that is designed of its nature to attack the Catholic Faith on many levels, starting with the immutability of God and of His dogmatic truths?

Father Joseph Ratzinger, being an Hegelian, sees no problem in making gratuitous claims alleging that no contradiction exists between the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Novus Ordo service when the objective truth of the matter is that one comes from God and is a perfect expression and guarantor of the transmission of the purity of the Catholic Faith while the other is an attack everything authentically Catholic. The Modernists themselves admitted this was the case. Just consider these words from Annibale Bugnini, contained in L'Osservatore Romano in 1965:

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.

 

A close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, the late Jean Guitton, made this same point in 1993:

"[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. (The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara, The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)

 

It is, therefore, an exercise in Modernist skullduggery for Father Ratzinger to claim that there are no contradictions between any version of the Immemorial Mass of Traction and the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service. Then again, contradiction is just part and parcel of an Hegelian mindset that can assert things as being true that are completely false. Consider these words from Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers.

 

An Hegelian mind does not see any contradiction between Catholics of the same liturgical rite worshiping in different "forms" of that rite that are premised upon entirely different dogmatic foundations because it can be asserted gratuitously that no contradiction exists. Minds steeped in ambiguity and paradox and contradiction cannot grasp reality clearly, preferring instead to convince others that they must see "continuity in discontinuity," a thorough Modernist approach that was dealt with very precisely by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi:

To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death -- dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself. The enunciation of this principle will not be a matter of surprise to anyone who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects. . . .  Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to historical conditions and of harmonizing itself with existing forms of society. Such is their view with regard to each. And here, before proceeding further, We wish to draw attention to this whole theory of necessities or needs, for beyond all that we have seen, it is, as it were, the base and foundation of that famous method which they describe as historical.

Although evolution is urged on by needs or necessities, yet, if controlled by these alone, it would easily overstep the boundaries of tradition, and thus, separated from its primitive vital principle, would make for ruin instead of progress. Hence, by those who study more closely the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from the conflict of two forces, one of them tending towards progress, the other towards conservation. The conserving force exists in the Church and is found in tradition; tradition is represented by religious authority, and this both by right and in fact. By right, for it is in the very nature of authority to protect tradition: and in fact, since authority, raised as it is above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or not at all, the spurs of progress. The progressive force, on the contrary, which responds to the inner needs, lies in the individual consciences and works in them -- especially in such of them as are in more close and intimate contact with life. Already we observe, Venerable Brethren, the introduction of that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity the factor of progress in the Church. Now it is by a species of covenant and compromise between these two forces of conservation and progress, that is to say between authority and individual consciences, that changes and advances take place. The individual consciences, or some of them, act on the collective conscience, which brings pressure to bear on the depositories of authority to make terms and to keep to them.

With all this in mind, one understands how it is that the Modernists express astonishment when they are reprimanded or punished. What is imputed to them as a fault they regard as a sacred duty. They understand the needs of consciences better than anyone else, since they come into closer touch with them than does the ecclesiastical authority. Nay, they embody them, so to speak, in themselves. Hence, for them to speak and to write publicly is a bounden duty. Let authority rebuke them if it pleases -- they have their own conscience on their side and an intimate experience which tells them with certainty that what they deserve is not blame but praise. Then they reflect that, after all, there is no progress without a battle and no battle without its victims; and victims they are willing to be like the prophets and Christ Himself. They have no bitterness in their hearts against the authority which uses them roughly, for after all they readily admit that it is only doing its duty as authority. Their sole grief is that it remains deaf to their warnings, for in this way it impedes the progress of souls, but the hour will most surely come when further delay will be impossible, for if the laws of evolution may be checked for a while they cannot be finally evaded. And thus they go their way, reprimands and condemnations not withstanding, masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance of humility. While they make a pretense of bowing their heads, their minds and hands are more boldly intent than ever on carrying out their purposes. And this policy they follow willingly and wittingly, both because it is part of their system that authority is to be stimulated but not dethroned, and because it is necessary for them to remain within the ranks of the Church in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience. And in saying this, they fail to perceive that they are avowing that the collective conscience is not with them, and that they have no right to claim to be its interpreters.

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: "These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts." On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason"; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth." Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: "Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation

 

There is nothing in the history of the Catholic Church to support the Modernist proposition that there is "continuity in discontinuity" or to support the belief that completely contradictory liturgical rites are not at all contradictory. Far from a cause of celebration, the very false, Hegelian foundation of Father Joseph Ratzinger's thinking makes Summorum Pontificum an exercise in attempting to convince traditionally-minded Catholics that the contradictions they see before their very eyes do not exist and that there are no dangers posed to the Catholic Faith by any of the decrees of the "Second" Vatican Council and/or by the Novus Ordo service. According to this Modernist way of thinking, therefore, no one should be in the least bit concerned that priests in "indult" communities will have to participate, if only annually by means of "concelebration" in the "Chrism Mass," in that which they know to be offensive to God and thus contrary to the good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, that is the Novus Ordo service.

Joseph Ratzinger has demonstrated over and over again his rejection of the binding nature of past papal decrees and pronouncements, believing that there are certain decisions that are subject to reinterpretation and revision. (And this is to say nothing of how he believes he can concoct things out of whole cloth, such as stating in 2001 that the "Eucharistic prayer" of the Assyrian Church of the East makes Our Lord truly present sacramentally without any words of consecration, a sort of "immantizing" the Eucharist, if you will. This is the doctrinal expert whose assurances about the "value and holiness" of the Novus Ordo Missae are to be taken at face value?) He believes, therefore, he is bound by nothing that has preceded him if the circumstances of any given moment require there to be some kind of "adjustment" in a past decree, which adjustment can be justified as an attempt to make a "living tradition" "relevant" to "modern" man. Ratzinger has said this quite plainly:

The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms -- perhaps for the first time with this clarity -- that there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

“In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 2, 1990)

 

William Levada, Ratzinger's hand-picked successor as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the [conciliar] Faith, said the same thing four months ago in an interview with the Whispers in the Loggia website:

"We believe that the apostles and their successors received the mission to interpret revelation in new circumstances and in the light of new challenges. That creates a living tradition that is much larger than the simple and strict passing of existing answers, insights and convictions from one generation to another."

 

Such a view of dogmatic truth, which is the foundation of Modernism and helps to lay the foundations of the Novus Ordo service that liturgically enshrines its false tenets, has been condemned by the Catholic Church time and time again, including by the [First] Vatican Council, 1869-1870:

Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema.

 

The Catholic Church can never permit two "forms" of one liturgical rite that are founded on entirely different doctrinal principles, one being Catholic, the other being Modernist. The Anglican "Church" permits this, to be sure. The Catholic Church can never do so. The counterfeit church of conciliarism sees no problem in doing this as its leaders believe that every apparent contradiction can be finessed, if only by the gratuitous claim that no contradiction exists. It cannot be the case that the "guitar Mass" or the "Mass" featuring the incorporation of pagan rituals are expressions of the one and same Faith best protected in and expressed by the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. It cannot be that "Eucharistic prayers" (there are about thirteen of them floating around out there right now in the world of the Novus Ordo service) that are deficient in their expression of the Catholic Faith, no less invalid on their face, are expressions of the one and the same Faith as contained in the Roman Canon of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.

A non-sedevacantist writer, who shall not be otherwise identified as my purpose here is not to stick my thumb in his eye, made pretty much the same point several years ago while accepting the validity of the Novus Ordo service (which I did in my own G.I.R.M. Warfare, sad to say).

The problems of the new rite extend well beyond aesthetics, or the hubris of its architects in discarding beautiful prayers hallowed by tradition in favor of manufactured substitutes. The new rite is also markedly inferior in its presentation of Catholic doctrine. Anyone even minimally versed in Catholic Eucharistic teaching can see that three new Eucharistic prayers are clearly deficient in their presentation of doctrine; the traditional teaching on the Catholic priesthood and its uniqueness vis-a-vis the priesthood of the faithful is likewise obscured. And yet if even a moderately educated Catholic can see this, how can the Pope fail to see it?

 

Well, this is precisely the point that I came to recognize last year: a "pope" cannot fail to see this, a conclusion that places me, most regrettably, in opposition to the writer cited above. The Catholic Church cannot give us liturgical prayers that are deficient. His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen put the matter this way:

For how could the Catholic Church faithfully, consistently and infallibly teach the same faith for 1900 years, and then suddenly propose, during the Second Vatican Council, false doctrines previously condemned by the past Popes and Councils (viz., ecumenism and religious liberty)? How could the Catholic Church continuously renew the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary in the Holy Mass and then abruptly substitute it with a Lutheran “memorial of the Last Supper”? How could the Catholic Church so firmly legislate in her laws against interfaith and intercommunion, as these would foster religious indifferentism, and then suddenly abrogate these laws and permits these undertakings?

Are we to suppose that the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, has suddenly changed His Mind and allowed contradictions in matters of the Faith, the Mass, and her universal laws? Are we to suppose that Christ suddenly abandoned His Church and let her fall into error and heresy?

Yet, it is primarily this issue of infallibility that divides those who call themselves traditional Catholics. Some traditional Catholics reject the errors of false ecumenism and religious liberty of the Second Vatican Council, the new Protestant memorial of the Last Supper — the Novus Ordo Missae — and the heresies of the New Code of Canon Law (1983) and yet insists that the very authors of these errors are still Christ’s representative here on earth. In reality, they say that the Living Magisterium of the Church has erred and has led the majority of Catholics into error, and continues to err. Such a conclusion is nothing more than to deny the infallibility of the Church.

There can be no doubt that the Conciliar Church has erred. Not only in 1965 at the conclusion of Vatican Council II, but also for the past thirty years in its ordinary universal magisterium. How can it be any more clear — this Conciliar Church is not the Catholic Church!

As Pope Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum:

“If the living magisterium could be in any way false — an evident contradiction would follow, for then God would be the author of error.”

And also the First Vatican Council (1870), in the Dogmatic Constitution, Pastor Aeternus, reaffirmed the teaching of the Fourth Council of Constantinople:

“And their truth has been proved by the course of history, for in the Apostolic See, the Catholic religion has always been kept unsullied and her teachings kept holy.”

And again, in the same Dogmatic Constitution:

“Indeed, it was this apostolic doctrine that all the Fathers held, and the holy orthodox Doctors reverenced and followed. For they fully realized that this See of St. Peter always remains untainted by any error...”

For those who continue “to walk the fence” — with one foot in the traditional movement and the other in the Conciliar Church — face the reality: there are two different Churches today, the Catholic Church and the Conciliar Church. There is the Catholic Church, which possesses the attribute of infallibility, and there is the Conciliar Church, which does not. (Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, The Infallibility of the Catholic Church.)

 

There are a few thoughtful readers who have written me in the past few days to say that God can use Summorum Pontificum to lead people out of the Novus Ordo once and for all. Yes, this is true. God is omnipotent. Many of us, myself included, found out way out of the counterfeit church of conciliarism by means of the 1984 indult, Quattuor abhinc annos, and its 1988 "companion," Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, both of which are now abrogated (but not, as some commentators believe, to remove the conditions on supporting the "Second" Vatican Council; Summorum Pontificum is premised on acceptance of the false doctrines of the "Second" Vatican Council and on an acceptance of the "value and holiness" of the Novus Ordo Missae, which even priests in indult communities must now offer, which is the real reason the previous indults have been repealed). Point noted and accepted, as far as it goes, that is.

However, the indults have never been intended to lead people out of the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite the fact that they have served as a double-edge sword in this regard. Indeed, many people in the indult have gone "backward" over the years, accepting silence about doctrinal issues just to have a Mass they "like" while immersing themselves in the culture and seeing nothing wrong with the new ecclesiology or ecumenism or inter-religious dialogue or religious liberty or the separation of Church and State or episcopal collegiality. The purpose of my previous article and this one is point out the fact that Father Joseph Ratzinger wants to reaffirm the "doctrinal integrity" of the Novus Ordo Missae by contending, falsely, that there are no contradictions between it and the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, which he reduces to but a nice, pleasing form of aesthetics--certainly part of Church history and something that must be treasured and made accessible to "modern" man--but a form of liturgical aesthetics that is in no way doctrinally superior to the new order service.

God will bring good out of Summorum Pontificum as He sees fit to do so. The objective good, however, is not what Father Joseph Ratzinger intends to pursue. Summorum Pontificum is all about moving traditionally-minded Catholics closer to the Novus Ordo Missae as some of its elements are introduced into the modernized, 1962 version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and re-educating those inclined to see a discontinuity in the teachings of the "Second" Vatican Council and the postconciliar "pontiffs" into "recognizing" that there is indeed "continuity in discontinuity" and that the contradictions one's simple reason apprehends do not really exist.

Ratzinger does not mind if a few deck chairs on the Titanic that is the counterfeit church of conciliarism get rearranged by means of a few Catholics leaving the Novus Ordo to go over to the Motu Mass, most of which, as Father Cekada points out, will be "offered" by men who are not truly ordained as priests, because he knows full well that "Pontifical" Commission Ecclesia Dei is going to try to work more and more elements of the new order service into the Traditional Mass, making it a "High Anglican" version, if you will, of the Novus Ordo. The cost of the scattered few people who might get out of the counterfeit church of conciliarism entirely as a result of the Motu Mass is nothing to Ratzinger in comparison with the "good, " as he sees it, that can be accomplished by "mainstreaming" traditionally-minded Catholics into more and more elements of the Novus Ordo Missae and by having it beaten into their skulls that the "two forms of the one Roman Rite" are not different expressions of the Faith.

Indeed, Ratzinger's desire to "re-educate" those "attached" to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and to incorporate various elements of the Novus Ordo service into its offering under Summorum Pontificum gives "papal" approbation to the efforts in the late-1990s of functionaries in "Pontifical" Commission Ecclesia Dei to use the corrupt and thoroughly disgraced Society of Saint John, which has now resurfaced in "good standing" under "Bishop" Rogelio Livieres Plano of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, as a means of experimenting with the modernized, 1962 version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. (For the resurfacing of the Society of Saint John, see: Who We Are at the Society of Saint John.)  Thus it is that the work of the Society of Saint John, which was from its outset to "see where the liturgy would have gone had it not been for the polemics of the 1960s" (as Father Carlos Urrutigoity said to me in an interview conducted in Shohola, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, November 18, 1999), is going to be continued with direct "papal" approval by "Pontifical" Commission Ecclesia Dei. This is not good news for the Catholic Faith whatsoever.

No, the unintended "good" consequences of Summorum Pontificum do not redeem its false, Hegelian foundations and its Modernist intentions to synthesize the 1962 Missal, to one degree or another, with the Novus Ordo service. Pope Leo XIII explained in Libertas, June 20, 1888, in the context of human legislation enacted by the civil state, that God tolerates evil but that we must never ourselves seek to do evil in the hope that good will come from it:

But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.'' This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.

 

Pope Gregory XVI made a similar point in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?

 

Summorum Pontificum is poison, representing no cause for celebration, not on "motu day" and not on "motu plus two" day.

Condemning absolutely no one who believes otherwise, I can only continue to pray that the wonderful work that has been done for souls over the past few decades by Bishops Robert McKenna, who celebrated his eightieth birthday yesterday, July 8, 2007, and Mark Pivarunas and Daniel Dolan and Donald Sanborn, among others, will continue to be examined seriously by all traditionally-minded Catholics so that they can embrace them as the absolutely true shepherds given to us in this time of apostasy and betrayal to protect us from the ravenous wolves of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The words of Saint John Fisher, spoken before he was martyred by the bloodlust of King Henry VIII 471 years ago (June 22, 1536), apply to the conciliarists just as much as they applied to the conciliarists' kindred spirits of the English Protestant Revolt:

[Speaking to several apostate bishops who had been sent to him in prison in the Tower to convince him to submit to Henry]: Methinks it had been rather our parts to stick together in repressing these violent and unlawful intrusions and injuries dayly offered to our common mother, the holy Church of Christ, than by any manner of persuasions to help or set forward the same.

And we ought rather to seek by all means the temporal destruction of the so ravenous wolves, that daily go about worrying and devouring everlastingly, the flock that Christ committed to our charge, and the flock that Himself died for, than to suffer them thus to range abroad.

But (alas) seeing we do it not, you see in what peril the Christian state now standeth: We are besieged on all sides, and can hardly escape the danger of our enemy. And seeing that judgment is begone at the house of God, what hope is there left (if we fall) that the rest shall stand!

The fort is betrayed even of them that should have defended it. And therefore seeing the matter is thus begun, and so faintly resisted on our parts, I fear that we be not the men that shall see the end of the misery.

Wherefore, seeing I am an old man and look not long to live, I mind not by the help of God to trouble my conscience in pleasing the king this way whatsoever become of me, but rather here to spend out the remnant of my old days in praying to God for him.

On the scaffold he said to the people assembled:

Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my stomach hath served me very well thereunto, so that yet I have not feared death.

Wherefore I do desire you all to help and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of death's stroke, I may in that very moment stand steadfast without fainting in any one point of the Catholic faith free from any fear; and I beseech Almighty God of His infinite goodness to save the king and this Realm, and that it may please Him to hold His holy hand over it, and send the king good Counsel. (Words of Saint John Fisher Shortly Before His Death.)

 

This is what, my good readers, the above-named bishops, among others, have done for a long time now: to defend the Catholic Faith against ravenous wolves. This is what they will continue to do for as long as God gives them the breath of life and as long as they maintain their own lives of prayer and penance and mortification in the service of souls by giving all to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

May it be our privilege, therefore, to place ourselves under their pastoral care and guidance so that we will not be prone to the traps laid by ravenous wolves and will seek only the purity of the Catholic Faith found in the catacombs, where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the "legitimacy" of the false shepherds of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in any way, shape or form no matter the threats and no matter the calumnies that come our way.

May Saint Maria Goretti, who is commemorated this day along with Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, who was executed on the Octave Day of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, July 6, 1535, help us to remain as pure in the Faith as she remained pure in body at the point of being stabbed to death.

May we pray for those who have Crucified Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ mystically by means of the false doctrines and false "Mass" of conciliarism, hoping that they will publicly repent and abjure the evils that they have proclaimed, falsely, in the "name" of the Catholic Church.

May Our Lady help us in this time of suffering to remain steadfast clients of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, keeping company with her at the foot of her Divine Son's Most Holy Cross every day in the legitimate offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition by a true bishop or a true priest who is not compromised by any taint of association with the falsehoods and errors of conciliarism.

Our Lady was splattered with the Most Precious Blood her Divine Son, the true Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world. May we be reminded by this fact at every Mass we hear so that the cleansing effects of her Divine Son's Most Precious Blood may be applied to our souls in the worthy reception of Holy Communion and in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance as we confess our sins that have done so much to wound Our Lord physically once in time and which have wounded His Mystical Body, Holy Mother Church, today.

The Angel of Death passed over the Jews when he saw the blood of the paschal lamb on the lintels of their doorposts on the evening of the first Passover. May that Angel of Death pass over us at the moment of our own deaths, seeing that the lintels of the doorposts of our immortal souls have been signed with the Most Precious Blood of the Paschal Lamb, the same Blood that covered Our Lady as she fulfilled her role as the Co-Redemptrix of the human race on Good Friday.

The faithful bishops named above, among others, will help us to be so signed at all times. Perhaps more and more Catholics will come to recognize that they must follow these true shepherds, each of whom is an apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to protect them in this passing, mortal vale of tears with the breastplate of the true Faith so as to be ready at all times for the moment of their Particular Judgments.

Viva Cristo Rey!

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 Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us.

Saint Maria Goretti, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.