Second Edition of G.I.R.M. Warfare to be Published

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

The second edition of G.I.R.M. Warfare will be going to press within the next week to ten days. The second edition will feature a new cover, designed by Father Patrick Perez, who has also written a masterful foreword to the new edition. There has been a very enthusiastic response to the first edition, which sold out its run of one thousand books within five months, and it is hoped that the second edition, which has cleaned up the typographical errors and the inclusion of passages from the original printed anlaysis that was published between March of 2001 and June of 2003 in Christ or Chaos that we thought had been eliminated from the final text, will continue to make a contribution to the promotion of the Traditional Latin Mass without compromise and without any of the unjust and illicit conditions that have been imposed by the Holy See since 1984.

The new edition will cost the same as the first edition, that is, $21.00. As we have not been charging enough for shipping and handling, we will raise the shipping and handling costs from $3.00 to $5.00 per book, which reflects the actual cost of postage and supplies. Checks may be sent to: Chartres Communications, Post Office Box 188, Pine Island, New York 10969.

Here is the revised Author's Preface to the text of G.I.R.M. Warfare. Please get the second edition and place it in the hands of as many of your Novus Ordo friends and relatives and priests and bishops as possible. Thanks.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE FOR SECOND EDITION

The worship of God is the chief public duty of man. Even the pagans of yore understood this, albeit falsely, which accounted for the public liturgies that were handed down from one generation to the next. And our own post-Christian world has recaptured the pagan spirit, concocting a variety of public liturgies to celebrate various rites of passage and to commemorate triumphs and tragedies. It is no exaggeration to state that half-time at the Super Bowl is really a public liturgy to worship self and self-pleasure, to say nothing of crass commercial creed.

The Catholic Church was founded specifically by the God-Man Himself, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, to be the means by which fallen man could attain to salvation. The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, instituted to channel forth into the souls of men the graces won by Christ on the wood of the Holy Cross in the sacraments and to preserve whole and undiluted the Deposit of Faith that He entrusted to the Apostles, and is kept from all error by the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost. Our Lord commissioned the Apostles at the Last Supper to perpetuate His One Sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross until His Second Coming in glory at the end of time, ordaining them to the fullness of the sacerdotal priesthood, that is, the episcopate, at the same time He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The Sacrifice of Calvary has thus been perpetuated in an unbloody manner from Pentecost Sunday to the present, extending in time the worship of the Father through the Son, in Spirit and in Truth.

Man is a social being. His very social character requires him to worship God in a public setting with other men. The Church has always understood this, which is why from her very birth on Pentecost Sunday she has given God the perfect worship that is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There is a variety of liturgical rites within the Catholic Church. Each of these rites, however, developed organically over time, although many of the major elements of the Traditional Latin Mass of the Roman Rite have apostolic origins. There was never a time in the history of the Church when a committee, no less one headed by a Freemason and on which served six liberal Protestants, wrote the texts of a rite of the Church synthetically. The various rites of the Church developed over time. With some minor emendations and amplifications, the Traditional Mass of the Roman Rite was more or less in place by the fifth century, as noted by the great liturgical historian, the Reverend Father Adrian Fortescue. As is explained in the first two chapters of this book, the permanence and stability afforded by a fixed rite are meant to convey the permanence of the Faith and the eternity of God, as well as our unchanging need for Him and His truths.

Tragically, this permanence and stability, that were the bedrock of the Roman Rite, was destroyed by the rotten fruit of something called the Liturgical Movement. As is described in Reverend Father Didier Bonneterre’s The Liturgical Movement: Roots, Radicals, Results, the Liturgical Movement, which had been begun by the incomparable author of The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., was hijacked by Modernist Catholics who were intent on using the Mass as the vehicle by which the false spirit of ecumenism (which is really nothing other than religious Indifferentism) could be enshrined, so as to empty the Mass of authentic Catholic doctrine.

The major players in the Liturgical Movement sought to portray their efforts as nothing more than an attempt to recapture the “noble simplicity” of the earliest days of an alleged Roman Rite. This claim, though, has fallen in the wake of much scholarship in the past few decades, and was even recognized at the time by astute scholars as being nothing more than Antiquarianism: the attempt to project back onto the past a false notion of what the past might have looked like in order to justify present revolutionary schemes.

The leaders of the Liturgical Movement insinuated themselves into key curial positions long before Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council to take place. Pope Pius XII himself put many of the key players, especially the then Monsignor Annibale Bugnini, in place, and even adopted some of the principal “reforms” desired by these players, including the “restoration” of Holy Week, which was nothing more than an imposition of Bugnini’s own desire of what he wanted the Holy Week liturgy to look like, having convinced Pope Pius XII that he, Bugnini, had found the original sources of that liturgy. Thus, Pope Pius XII, who had indeed been warned about many of the revolutionary changes that would be implemented by Bugnini and his Consilium when planning the Novus Ordo Missae, helped to destroy one of oldest parts of the Traditional Roman Rite; that is, the Holy Week liturgy which had been in existence universally until 1955.

More ground was ceded by Pope John XXIII when he promulgated the Missale Romanum of 1962. Gone was the second Confiteor prior to the distribution of Holy Communion to the faithful. Gone also were all octaves of major feasts, with the exception of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Also obliterated from the practice of the Church was the use of second and third Collects, Secrets, and Postcommunions, except in certain rare circumstances.

The radical and revolutionary nature of the Novus Ordo Missae, which is the terribly rotten fruit of the Liturgical Movement and its preconciliar successes, has been well documented in many books and articles over the years. The inestimable Michael Davies, who died in September of 2004, is leaving behind a monumental body of books and articles which have done more than perhaps anybody else has to explain the various elements of the new Mass and the intentions of its drafters. One of Mr. Davies’s great contributions to Catholics, among so many others, is his publication of the works of the Reverend Father Adrian Fortescue, The Wisdom of Adrian Fortescue, wherein is explained the development of the Roman Rite and of each of its constituent parts.

Reverend Father Didier Bonneterre’s important work, noted before, has helped to clarify the goals and the actions of the major players in the Liturgical Revolution. And the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s The Reform of the Roman Liturgy is still helping Catholics wedded to a “reform of the reform” to see that no pope and no council has any authority to abolish the Mass of Tradition, something that a few curial cardinals are beginning to admit. Monsignor Gamber’s work is cited extensively in The Great Facade, Christopher Ferrara’s, and Thomas Woods’s wonderful explanation of how the entire structure of the conciliar and postconciliar eras is based on lies and distortions.

Groundbreaking work is being done by the Reverend Father Romano Tommasi in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture. He is among the first scholars to have had access to the proceedings of the Consilium, documenting how the claims made by then Bishop Bugnini and his co-conspirators that the elements of the new Mass were a recapturing of an older Roman Rite were all false. Indeed, those claims were knowingly false. Father Tommasi has documented how Bugnini knew that various elements of the new Mass were taken from the now defunct Gallican rite and from various Eastern rites, not from the earlier Roman Rite as was claimed for public consumption. Father Thommasi’s work is essential for all serious Catholics to review in order to understand the extent of deception that was used in the unprecedented enterprise of “making” a Mass.

My book, G.I.R.M. Warfare-The Traditional Latin Mass versus The General Instruction to the Roman Missal, is an effort to provide all Catholics of genuine good will an opportunity to review the new Mass as it is presented in the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. The actual paragraph-by-paragraph analysis was written between March of 2001 and August of 2002. It was printed in my journal, Christ or Chaos, between March of 2001 and April of 2003. Its text was also serialized online at www.dailycatholic.org, where it has been viewed by many thousands of readers prior to the publication of this book. The publication of this material in book form is being done to afford readers a permanent reference guide to have on hand. It is hoped that this text will help Catholics who have not embraced the Traditional Mass to recognize the inherent harm contained in an absolute novelty, the Novus Ordo Missae.

The Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy-of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops-prepared a provisional English translation of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal in 2000. Their provisional translation was the one used for my analysis offered in this book.

The entire bishops' conference approved a final English translation in November of 2002. The Holy See "ratified" that final translation in 2003. Although there are some minor changes in phraseology here and there in the final version, a comparison of the provisional translation with the final version indicates that almost all of the original language has been retained and that the subject matter of each paragraph is identical. The text approved by Rome in 2003 is still the wretched document that it was in its original, provisional translation in 2000.

The first two chapters of this book attempt to provide a general apologia in behalf of the Traditional Latin Mass. As we have been through nearly forty years of an unprecedented liturgical revolution, it is important to put into proper context the fruits that continue to be produced by the Traditional Latin Mass whenever and wherever it is offered.

The reader will discover in the body of the actual analysis of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal how the liturgical revolutionaries and theological positivists have attempted to justify the warfare made against tradition, disregarding the harm to souls and to the Church that has been done as a result. An appendix of various articles related to the Traditional Latin Mass is included by way of helping to reinforce the points made in the analysis of the text of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. Parts of this analysis are quite redundant. That is because the General Instruction to the Roman Missal is itself very, very redundant.

As this is not the sort of reading that one will most likely finish in one sitting, I have divided the paragraph-by-paragraph analysis into various chapters, most of which start with an anecdotal description of some of our own experiences attending Novus Ordo Masses during the week-between 2001 and late 2002-when we made the decision to attend only the Traditional Latin Mass. As all things happen in God’s Holy Providence, it is clear to me from a re-reading and slight revision of this book, for this second edition, that we were meant to experience those horrors so as to convince us once and for all to stop playing games with the salvation of our souls.

I am very grateful to Reverend Father Patrick Perez, the pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, for taking the time to write such an inspired foreword to this second edition. Father Perez knows more about the authentic development of the Mass of the Roman Rite than anyone, including the esteemed, late Michael Davies himself. Father Perez offers Holy Mass with exquisite beauty and perfection, and has taught us so much simply by offering Holy Mass day in and day out. We are in his debt unto eternity for all that he has done for us - and for all that he continues to give to Holy Mother Church in the catacombs.

Gratitude is also extended to many other people who have assisted in the writing of this book. Reverend Father Stephen P. Zigrang reviewed every para-graph of my analysis, making invaluable contributions. Michael Matt, the editor of The Remnant, reviewed the manuscript in its original form when such assistance was especially needed. The Reverend Father Lawrence Smith offered many helpful comments which enhanced the value of this book. In addition, John Vennari., Editor of Catholic Family News, contributed helpful comments for which I am very grateful.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the contributions made by countless traditional Catholics to the cause of preserving the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Among these great stalwarts of the Faith are the late Walter Matt, the late Hamish Frazier, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the late Dr. William A. Marra, the late Reverend Fathers Vincent Miceli, Frederick Schell, Salvatore Franco, Gommar De Pauw, and the very much alive Father Harry Marchosky.

This second edition of G.I.R.M. Warfare has corrected any major typographical errors that found their way into the first edition. Also, inadvertent references to things that I no longer support, such as an Apostolic Administration, that were meant to be removed in the first edition have now been removed in this second edition. As the actual analysis of the content of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal was done over the course of one year and five months, my original text did not reflect in many instances the conclusions that I had reached by the time my analysis was finished in August of 2002. Although it was my intent to edit out those references to things that I no longer support as being consonant with the good of the Catholic Faith, some did find their way into the final text of the first edition. The conclusion contained in the first edition and the appendices left no doubt as to my positions. This second edition has provided the reader with a consistency of viewpoint that was lacking in some instances in the first edition.

A special word of thanks must be extended to Ardith Ayotte, SFO, who wrote the comprehensive index, as well as helping to prepare the book for publication. She and her husband, Gilman Ayotte, will always have a special place in our prayers.

Lastly, I am deeply indebted to my wonderful wife, Sharon, whose own devotion to Catholic Tradition has helped me so very much in my own transition from one who sought out the Traditional Mass on Sundays and as frequently as he could on other occasions, to one who came to understand the importance of assisting only at the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. I am eternally grateful to her for her love, her patience, her kindness, her support, and her inimitable zeal for souls. She has helped to foster a fully traditional environment for our daughter, Lucy Mary Norma. It is to my beloved wife and daughter that this work is dedicated.

N.B. The text of this second edition was finalized before the death of Pope John Paul II, and the election of Pope Benedict XVI to be his successor as the Vicar of Christ, the Visible Head of the true Church on earth. Readers should keep this in mind when looking at passages that refer to the late pontiff and his successor, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Please pray for the repose of the immortal soul of Pope John Paul II. We need to pray especially for his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, particularly that he will restore the Immemorial Mass of Tradition without any restrictions or preconditions, and that he will faithfully and expeditiously fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message for the proper consecration of Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.