Turning Aside Perfection For A More Perfect Banality

by Thomas A. Droleskey

It was nearly five months ago that I wrote the following words in With Perfection Staring Directly At Them. Although I am sure that each and every single one of you remembers this article, I am providing the excerpts below as an easy means to review them for reasons that you will see after you review the older article:

With perfection staring directly at them in the early part of the Twentieth Century, the leading revolutionaries of the Liturgical Movement desired to change the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in order to use it as a vessel to communicate one Modernist proposition after another, including the false ecumenism that was condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, a false ecumenism that was seen by Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., as the greatest threat to the Reign of the Immaculata:

"Only until all schismatics and Protestants profess the Catholic Creed with conviction, when all Jews voluntarily ask for Holy Baptism – only then will the Immaculata have reached its goals.”

“In other words” Saint Maximilian insisted, “there is no greater enemy of the Immaculata and her Knighthood than today’s ecumenism, which every Knight must not only fight against, but also neutralize through diametrically opposed action and ultimately destroy. We must realize the goal of the Militia Immaculata as quickly as possible: that is, to conquer the whole world, and every individual soul which exists today or will exist until the end of the world, for the Immaculata, and through her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” (Father Karl Stehlin, Immaculata, Our Ideal, Kansas City, Missouri, Angelus Press, 2007, p. 37.)

 

Yet it was after the death of Pope Pius XII, who, sadly, authorized changes to the Sacred Liturgy of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in the 1950s that were proposed to him by Fathers Annibale Bugnini, C.M., and Ferdinando Antonelli, O.F.M., that some of the aging champions of the Liturgical Movement and its goal of false ecumenism expressed the hope that the "election" of Angelo Cardinal Roncalli would "consecrate" their concept of ecumenism and result in the furtherance of the liturgical revolution (see the late Father Didier Bonneterre's The Liturgical Movement: Roots, Radicals, Results). These revolutionaries accomplished their objectives.

The results of the liturgical revolution that saw an incorporation of Protestant and even Talmudic elements in the Novus Ordo worship service have been devastating to the Catholic Faith as God Himself is offended every time this false form of worship is "presented" and as very large numbers of Catholics attached to the conciliar structures have lost the sensus Catholicus to such an extent that they can't even recognize apostate acts, such as esteeming the symbols of false religions and the praising of the ability of false religions to "contribute" to the building of the "better world," when they are right in front of f them. These things are not "accidents" that were somehow unintended by the liturgical "renewal," as it is called in conciliar circles. These things were intended so that the new liturgy could communicate a new religion, conciliarism.

Giovanni Montini/Paul VI spoke of the progressive nature of the revolution that he helped to bring to fruition when he issued his decree on April 3, 1969, officially promulgating the Novus Ordo worship service, going to great lengths to explain how the changes made in the 1950s were meant to lead to the "new Mass" even though, of course, revolutionaries such as Bugnini and Antonelli and company could have had no idea how very successful they would have been when the first sets of changes were made in the 1950s under Pope Pius XII:

This renewal has also shown clearly that the formulas of the Roman Missal ought to be revised and enriched. The beginning of this renewal was the work of Our predecessor, this same Pius XII, in the restoration of the Paschal Vigil and of the Holy Week Rite, which formed the first stage of updating the Roman Missal for the present-day mentality. (Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, April 3, 1969.)

 

Quite contrary to the assertions made in the past few years by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and that are being made at present by his chief liturgist, "Monsignor" Guido Marini, the "fathers" of the liturgical "renewal" did not want "continuity" with the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. They desired a complete break, and they told us that this was their intention before Bugnini's Consilium had held even one meeting and they told us that they had made that break after the Consilium had planned the "new liturgy" with the help of six liberal Protestant "observers" (who made their "observations" during coffee breaks that were then read into the record by bishop-members of the committee as their own remarks once the official proceedings has resumed). The contention of "continuity" that Ratzinger/Benedict has been making since he issued Summorum Pontificum on July 7, 2007, and that his current master of ceremonies, "Monsignor" Marini, is making at present (see Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' of the liturgy) is an exercise in rank positivism as the planners of the "new liturgy" told us exactly what they wanted do, and "continuity" was not part of their agenda:

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

"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)

Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, an associate of Annibale Bugnini on the Consilium, 1uoted and footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)

 

The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist himself as he was in favor of some liturgical changes to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, discussed the truly revolutionary nature of the liturgical "reforms" wrought by the Consilium in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

Not only is the Novus Ordo Missae of 1969 a change of the liturgical rite, but that change also involved a rearrangement of the liturgical year, including changes in the assignment of feast days for the saints. To add or drop one or the other of these feast days, as had been done before, certainly does not constitute a change of the rite, per se. But the countless innovations introduced as part of liturgical reform have left hardly any of the traditional liturgical forms intact . . .

At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old and until now the heart of the Church, was destroyed. A closer examination reveals that the Roman rite was not perfect, and that some elements of value had atrophied over the centuries. Yet, through all the periods of the unrest that again and again shook the Church to her foundations, the Roman rite always remained the rock, the secure home of faith and piety. . . .

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

 

No amount of cosmetic changes to that which has been from its outset a revolution against the Catholic Faith and has proved itself to be a veritable Trojan Horse containing endless manner of possibilities for blasphemy and sacrilege that has pitted Catholic against Catholic and has opened up so many hundreds of millions of Catholics to the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity and Modernism as never before, anti-Incarnational errors that are reflected in the very ethos of a "Mass" that is premised upon the hideous contention that signs of outward penance "belong to another age in the history of the Church:"

The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church. (Paragraph 15, General Instruction to the Roman Missal, 1997.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's and Guido Marini's own views on Mass offered in conversus Domini do not reflect a desire to restore the expressions of the Catholic Faith that are contained in Ordinary and the Collects of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, but represent instead a desire to make it more possible for there to be a greater sense of "decorum" in what purports to be the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, a sense of decorum that is to be found in various liturgies of Anglo-Catholics who are part of the "worldwide Anglican Communion" but who nevertheless lack an adherence to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Ratzinger/Benedict's desire for "decorum" is a matter of personal "taste," not a matter that he sees is essential for the transmission of the Faith as he has presided over abominable "liturgies" in his capacity as the conciliar "pontiff," "Benedict XVI."

How can a "reform" of that which was a revolutionary break with the Catholic Faith and thus an offense to God represent any kind of progress when the closest thing to Heaven itself, the beauty and glory and the perfection of the unvarnished Immemorial Mass of Tradition is staring one right in the face?

Moreover, the talk of the "reform of the reform," which is designed to appeal to the "Anglo-Catholics" who are considering "converting" to the conciliar structures as they retain their own liturgical rites that were condemned as heretical by Pope Saint Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570, and to the Orthodox and to Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X, comes at quite a high price: acceptance of the Novus Ordo once and for all from those who want to remain attached to the "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite," that is, the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that was promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 and 1962.

 

Let me reiterate the points made above: Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has no intention of restoring even the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition as normative in the life of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. He wants to modernize that modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition even more over the course of time as the some of the prefaces from the Novus Ordo service and some of the newer "saints" are used by those offering or simulating what is called the "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite."

Ratzinger/Benedict, the master synthesizer, wants to synthesize a few traditional elements into the Novus Ordo. There will be such an amalgamation over time that the only difference between the two will be the direction which the priest/presbyter faces and the fact that, presumably, Latin will be retained as the language for the collects and for the Canon of the Mass. A Novus Ordo service simulated in Latin will be pretty much indistinguishable from the ultra-modernized version of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII's Missal of 1961/1962 (1961 was the year that a new missal incorporating all of the Bugnini changes made in the 1950s and those made by Roncalli in 1960 was issued; the only change made in 1962 was the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph into the Roman Canon, delighting liturgical revolutionaries everywhere as it demonstrated the Canon, theretofore thought untouchable ever since Pope Saint Gregory the Great rearranged a few words in the Hanc Igitur, had been "broken").

Who says that Ratzinger/Benedict, that great "restorer of tradition" who is always singing the glories of false ecumenism and praising places of false worship as "sacred," is interested in synthesizing the two liturgies? He does. He has told us so in plain language:

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these. For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal.  The “Ecclesia Dei” Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage.  The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal. (Letter to the "Bishops" that accompanies the Motu Proprio Summorum)

 

Guess what? Ratzinger/Benedict really, really meant what he wrote. The vaunted "1962 Missal," which was in effect for all of three years prior to being replaced by the Ordo Missae of 1965, is now what it was meant to be at the time: a step in the direction of the Novus Ordo service. The fact that the false "pontiff" has no intention of offering Mass using the "rites prior to the council" should be a fairly good indication that he is not going to use his "papal" office to give any personal impression on a worldwide basis that he is reversing the course of the conciliar revolution. Ratzinger/Benedict, that "true interpreter" of the "Second" Vatican Council, wants to leave behind a legacy that includes "definitive" statements on "faith and worship" according to the "mind" of those council fathers.

He is screaming at us through his minions that this is the case:

Rome Reports: June 8, 2010. Italian Monsignor Guido Marini is 45 years old and has been Papal Master of Ceremonies since October of 2007. It is a delicate job keeping in mind that the careful attention to liturgy one of the core elements of Benedict XVI's pontificate.

Mons. Guido Marini, Master of Ceremonies Benedict XVI:  “I think the pope's attention to the liturgy, his lessons in this environment and his example, help many priests and many Catholics to rediscover the central value of the liturgy for the life of the Church and for the life of each person.”

Rome Reports: According to the Papal Master of Ceremonies, the liturgy is not an area only reserved for experts. But he notes that Catholics need help to understand the full meaning of the liturgical symbols and gestures.

Mons. Guido Marini, Master of Ceremonies Benedict XVI: “The liturgy has a popular dimension that should be preserved because through the liturgy we find ourselves with the mystery of God. There the mystery of salvation it is made real for the life of each person. So it is important to prepare people so they can read the gestures and symbols of the liturgy.”

Rome Reports: In recent years, Benedict XVI has brought back some traditional liturgical elements that were rarely used. For example, the presence of the crucifix in the center of the altar or the receiving communion on the knees. They are gestures the pope has explained as the so-called “hermeneutic of continuity.”

Mons. Guido Marini, Master of Ceremonies Benedict XVI: “The hermeneutics of continuity highlights that in the life of the Church there is an authentic growth in the way in which they don't cut the roots so that this development includes the richness of its history and tradition.”

Rome Reports: He says that for now it is not expected that the  pope will celebrate a mass according to rites prior to the Second Vatican Council.

Monsignor Marini regularly receives instructions from the pope, but the office of liturgical ceremonies also proposes elements
for each celebration.

Mons. Guido Marini. Master of Ceremonies Benedict XVI: “In addition to putting into practice the instructions of the pope, we suggest some liturgical elements. He decides whether to accept them or not. It's to say, in every ceremony there are instructions from the Holy Father and suggestions presented by our department.”

Rome Reports: In any case, since the pope has written many works on the liturgy, from his time as a cardinal, for the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations, it is very easy to know what the pope expects of every celebration. In other words, that the celebration helps draw people closer to the mystery of God. (Rome Reports.)

 

More Acme liturgical "planning" that can be found in many conciliar parishes as one "option" after another (which form, if any, of the "penitential rite" should be used or whether a new one should be composed for a special occasion) is selected much like items on a Luby's or Wyatt's cafeteria line way down yonder in the southland of Texas. "Hermeneutics of continuity"? These people are serious. They take themselves seriously. They believe that they are doing God's work in turning perfection aside for a "more perfect" form of banality, the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service.

Who says that the Novus Ordo is banal? Hmm. Three guesses:

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

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

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

 

Why, then, is there the need for "liturgical planning" to decide what variations of options will be used in the conciliar liturgical rites? Contradiction and paradox are two of the false "pontiff's" specialties. His explanatory letter to the conciliar "bishops" upon the release of Summorum Pontificum asserted that there had been no break, no rupture between the Mass of Pope Saint Pius V and that of "Pope" Paul VI even though he had written to the contrary rather consistently before that time:

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum".)

 

I guess that these contradictions are just some of the mysteries that will be revealed to us on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead as they lack any internal consistency or coherency of a clear-thinking mind trained in Scholasticism, which is precisely the problem as Ratzinger/Benedict, aping the Orthodox and the Protestants, rejects Scholasticism, leading him to live his life in a perpetual fog of ambiguity and self-contradiction.

One of the ironies represented by "Monsignor" Guido Marini's is that there is that there is uniformity, no stability to the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. A valid liturgical rite of the Catholic Church is supposed to reflect the permanence, stability and immutability God Himself, not the whims of various "papal" masters of ceremonies or of parish liturgical planning committees. Liturgical travesties that would have angered the Arians or other heretics have become commonplace, and one is deceiving himself if he thinks these now long-established "traditions" in the conciliar structures will just somehow kind of go away all on their very own. Error and sacrilege need to be opposed and suppressed.

This very week in Rome, for example, the so-called "Year of Priests" is coming to an end. A "day of reflection" was held on Tuesday, June 8, 2010, at the Basilica di San Giovanni Laterano in Rome for priests and presbyters of the "charismatic" bent. It was addressed by none other than Claudio "Cardinal" Hummes, the prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Clergy. How many offenses to God have been given in these "charismatic" gatherings where the very nature of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, has been distorted and misrepresented, making God the Sanctifier into little more that a "wispy wind" Who goes here and there in such ways as to obliterate the memory of what has gone before as a "spirit-driven force"? Grave acts of impiety have occurred in the past forty years with the full approval and support of men who believed themselves to have been "popes" and "bishops" of the Catholic Church.

Take heart, however, the Catholic Church cannot be responsible for any of this. Who teaches us this? The Fathers of the Council of Trent, who, just by the way, you understand, guided infallibly by none other than God the Holy Ghost:

CANON VII.--If any one saith, that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs, which the Catholic Church makes use of in the celebration of masses, are incentives to impiety, rather than offices of piety; let him be anathema. (Session Twenty-Two, Chapter IX, Canon VII, Council of Trent, September 17, 1562, CT022.)

 

I rest as I need to get some rest. What more can be said? None of the travesties of the past forty years can be sanctioned or permitted in any way by Holy Mother Church, she is as spotless and immaculate as Our Lady herself.

We must pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, accept with joy and with gratitude each of the sufferings and calumnies and difficulties that come our way as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The path to Heaven can be trod only by those who are willing to bear the Cross and to lift it high in their daily lives. considering it our privilege to hear the Immemorial Mass of Tradition offered at the hands of true bishops and priests who reject conciliarism, seeking only to live in such a way that we will be ready at all times to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

It's the Faith that matters, the entire Faith without any compromises, now and for all eternity.

Aren't we willing to suffer some more for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Margaret of Scotland, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints