Catholic Perestroika
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
[This article, published in The Remnant in 2004, is being published here on this site at this time in light of Loyal to the Faith, Not in Schism. As Bishop Robert Vasa's "warnings" about the Society of Saint Pius X were referenced in my article of two days ago now, I believed that it was prudent to post my original critique of Bishop Vasa's "warnings" in light of Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos's utter contradiction of Bishop Vasa's contentions. It is my hope and prayer that Bishop Vasa, who was a priest of the Diocese of Lincoln in 1996 when Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz "excommunicated" the priests and laity associated with the Society of Saint Pius X there, will have the humility to admit his errors and to inform the faithful that the Society of Saint Pius X poses no threat to the Catholic Faith whatsoever.]
The Bolshevik Revolution was ushered in by a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs intent on creating a new order of things that would sweep away everything about Russia’s past, especially everything to do with Christianity. The top leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution trained proteges to follow them. These proteges continued to rule the synthetic concoction known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from Vladimir Lenin’s ascendancy in 1917 to Konstanin Chernenko’s death in March of 1985. Chernenko’s death made possible the rise to power of a man who had been born after the revolution and was thoroughly indoctrinated in it, one Mikhail Gorbachev.
Mikhail Gorbachev was in 1985 and remains now a committed Marxist-Leninist. It was never his intention to end Communist rule in the Soviet Union, not that Communism actually ended when the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 25, 1991. Indeed, Communism is alive and well under Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federated Republic. It is alive and well in most of the former republics of the old Soviet Union. The spirit of Marxism-Leninism is alive and well in almost every aspect of our own popular culture and governmental institutions today. The errors of Russia, which Our Lady spoke about at Fatima are really the errors of Modernity, founded as they are in a fundamental indifference (at best) and violent opposition (at worst) to the Incarnation of Our Lord and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross as defining everything about men and their nations.
Far from wanting to end Communism in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to restructure it in order that it might adapt itself to the realities of the modern world. This restructuring is called in the English transliteration from the Russian as perestroika. Gorbachev’s perestroika was founded on an on-again/off-again policy of glastnost, or openness to public discussion of ways to engage in this restructuring. When criticism of Gorbachev’s own restructuring policies become too open and intense, the supposed “reformer” clamped down for a few months at a time before loosening the screws a bit in order to attract capital investment from eager Western dupes. Gorbachev set in motion a series of events that he found himself powerless to control, including a possibly staged “coup” in August of 1991 that provided his nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, with an opportunity to come to the forefront as the leader of authentic “reform.” Gorbachev’s perestroika resulted in a slight restructuring of the system as the nomenclature of the various bureaucracies changed while most of the old Communist leaders, having changed their party affiliations, continued to rule after his own fall from power pretty much in the same way as they had under overt Bolshevik rule.
All political ideologies are sterile secular substitutes for the true Faith. Bolshevism, though, is the quintessential perversion and inversion of Catholicism. It is a perversion of Catholicism in that it proposes to possess salvific power to redeem man from the problems of this life, offering rigid dogmas that are said to be infallible and can only be retarded temporarily as they march forward to the point at which all class struggle will end and the state will wither away and die in the classless society. It is an inversion of the Faith in that it arrogates unto the State, which is controlled by the party apparatchiks in the name of the “people,” the ability to interpret and enforce Communist orthodoxy. As Communism is evangelical of its perverse nature, the entire world is meant to come under its sway--whether by means of natural social evolution or by means of armed struggle and violent, bloody revolutions. One can even go so far as to say that Moscow was to Bolsheviks what Rome is to Catholics. All of this is quite logical: for if one rejects special creation of man by God and his fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, if one rejects the Incarnation and the Redemption, if one rejects the true Church the God-Man founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, then one will look all too readily for alternate reasons to explain the problems of the world and how to solve them. Communism thus proposes to have all of the answers for all of the problems of this world. Any problems encountered in the implementation of its dogmas cannot be blamed even on the possibility that those dogmas are false and are thus bound to fail; no, problems encountered in the implementation of dogmas must originate in faulty mechanisms or inept managers or the wile of those rascally counter-revolutionaries seeking to turn back the pages of progress and history.
As one can see all too readily, this has application to the current state of the Catholic Church. That is, we have been through an unprecedented revolution in the past forty to forty-five years. Countless numbers of souls have abandoned the practice of the true Faith as the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was thrown down the Orwellian memory hole and replaced by a synthetic concoction that would have pleased the Protestant Revolutionaries no end. Many of the souls who have stayed in the true Church despite the convolutions produced by the Novus Ordo Missae have found fundamental dogmas contained in the Deposit of Faith put into question or denied altogether from the pulpit and in classrooms of supposedly “Catholic” institutions of “learning” from kindergarten right through professional schools. The revolutionaries who planned this assault upon the Faith castigated almost everything to do with the Church’s patrimony prior to 1958, daring to say that the Second Vatican Council was “fulfilling” the mandates of the Council of Trent and actually preserving tradition as our churches were sacked and altars demolished. Slogans have been incanted to convince the faithful that things are better now than they ever were, that we are in a veritable “springtime of the Church” and are experiencing a “qualitative renewal.”
Well, just as the first wave of Bolsheviks died out over time, so is it the case that many of the revolutionaries from the Second Vatican Council have either died or are approaching death. They are being succeeded in most instances by men who are really the kindred spirits of Mikhail Gorbachev, men who are trying, albeit perhaps unknowingly, to effect a Catholic perestroika–or restructuring–of a failed revolution. These men are rising to the episcopate under Pope John Paul II. Barring an unforeseen miracle, which we must beseech Our Lord for quite fervently, the Holy Father’s own successor will be one of these second generation defenders of the revolutionary faith of the Second Vatican Council and of the work of the Consilium that concocted the synthetic entity that is the Novus Ordo Missae, doing so while lying about the origins of its component parts.
What makes this particularly dangerous for the average Catholic in the pew is that most of these second generation defenders of the new order of things ushered in by Vatican II and its aftermath are indeed believers and men who are outwardly pious and devout, leading Rosary processions and participating in prayerful vigils in front of abortuaries. They are not rank heretics denying articles of the Faith. Some even protest as to how they are concerned about dissent from items contained in the Deposit of Faith from within the ranks of the Church. The Bishop of Baker, Oregon, the Most Reverend Robert Vasa, who is one of these second-line defenders of the novelties of the Second Vatican Council and thereafter, was one of two American bishops who publicly stated that it was immoral to remove food and water from a disabled person, doing so as the Bishop of St. Petersburg, Florida, the Most Reverend Robert Lynch, was issuing several contradictory statements that more or less said that such an issue should be decided by family members, conceding that the removal of food and water could be moral in some circumstances. Nevertheless, Bishop Vasa has more in common with Mikhail Gorbachev than he realizes.
The Bolshevik revolutionaries lived under the Czar and hated everything to do with Russia’s Christian past. As noted earlier, Gorbachev had lived only under the revolution. Bishop Vasa, ordained to the priesthood in 1976 by Bishop Glennon Flavin of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, is not, say, Roger Cardinal Mahony, who was ordained in the Mass of Tradition. Mahony hates almost everything to do with our Catholic past, heaping scorn upon it in the process. Bishop Vasa, on the other hand, has spent his entire priesthood in the Novus Ordo, serving as a priest in a diocese where two successive bishops were about as strict as they could be in enforcing the few non-fungible norms that actually govern the offering of the new Mass. He has no personal memory of the past, sincerely believing that a careful restructuring will help to stabilize the offering of the new Mass in the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, whose ordinary he now is.
Apparently unaware or uninterested in the glories of Catholic tradition, Bishop Vasa wrote a letter to warn Catholics about attending Mass offered by priests of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X in his diocese. They are, whether or not he realizes it, a caricature of all of the standard arguments made against the Society and against the Traditional Latin Mass. They can be summarized as follows:
1) The Society of Pope Saint Pius X does not recognize ties with the Pope;
2) Members of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X have been excommunicated;
3) While they may have noble intentions and legitimate concerns, members of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X are committing the same errors as Martin Luther;
4) He has great respect for those who have “memories” of the past, but that Catholics must follow the dictates of the Pope and worship in the new Mass;
5) He is going around the diocese to discuss the enforcement of liturgical norms;
6) He is “open” to having a priest from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter offer the “Latin Mass” in his diocese.
It is wearying to have to deal with this drivel over and over again. However, as Bishop Vasa is a believer and seems to be truly ignorant of and uninterested in the truth of this matter, it is important to make one more effort to explain that all of Bishop Vasa’s willing good to come from a “restructuring” of the Novus Ordo Missae will came to naught.
First, the Society of Pope Saint Pius X does indeed recognize ties with the Holy Father. The priests of the Society pray for the Pope and for the local bishop of the diocese in which they are offering Mass in the Roman Canon. The Society of Pope Saint Pius X is not a sedevacantist group, which one could infer from Bishop Vasa’s letter. Indeed, Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos has warmly received Bishop Bernard Fellay, welcoming him as his brother bishop. Is Bishop Vasa aware of this? Does he wish to revise his statement in this regard?
Second, there is a considerable debate among canon lawyers who are in good standing with the Holy See over the matter of the “excommunication” of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the bishops he consecrated in June of 1988. As Pope Saint Pius V’s Papal Bull Quo Primum gave every priest in the world the perpetual right to offer the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, solid canon lawyers and liturgical scholars, such as the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber (who was not a traditionalist), have argued that no priest needs the permission of any diocesan bishop to offer the Traditional Latin Mass.
Third, far from following the errors of Martin Luther, the Society of Pope Saint Pius X has worked to preserve the Mass in which the fullness of the Catholic Faith is best expressed and protected and in which God is given the highest degree of glory possible. The Novus Ordo Missae is an enshrinement of the errors of modernity, starting with Protestantism. The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (along with numerous other brave souls, both priests and laity) was attempting to preserve the Catholic Faith whole and undiluted from the onslaught of revolutionaries. The Traditional Latin Mass produced the glories of Christendom. The Novus Ordo Missae has profaned the worship of God and thus emptied our pews in country after country, including our own, precisely because it is a reaffirmation of the spirit of the world and not a stirring contradiction of it.
Fourth, a commitment to the Traditional Latin Mass is not a matter of sentimentally-based nostalgia. To defend the baptismal birthright of every Catholic of the Latin Rite to assist at the Immemorial Mass of Tradition is a matter of great urgency prompted by our need to restore order within the Church and hence in the world at large. The aforementioned Cardinal Hoyos noted on May 24, 2003, while offering the Traditional Mass in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, that the Immemorial Mass of Tradition has never been abrogated and that it is incapable of being abrogated. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger noted the same thing in an interview with Raymond Arroyo of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) that aired in September of 2003. If the Traditional Mass is incapable of being abrogated, why does Bishop Vasa seek to disparage those who defend its glories and want to assert their rights under Quo Primum as being nice but misguided folks who simply have a longing for the past?
Fifth, Bishop Vasa must remember that all of the king’s soldiers and all of the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The Novus Ordo Missae is based upon the false, antiquarian suppositions woven into Sacrosanctum Concilium and upon the lies told by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini about the origins of its component parts. Monsignor Klaus Gamber debunked the false presuppositions of Sacrosanctum Concilium in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy. Father Romano Thomassi has done important, original work by reviewing the minutes of Bugnini’s Consilium to discover incontrovertibly how the new Mass was made up as the Consilium did its work, finding justifications for its false claim to have been “restoring” a non-existent, simpler Roman rite of the past as they went along. Father Thomassi’s work is irrefutable. Is Bishop Vasa aware of this work? Would he like to inform his people of it? If he makes himself aware of this scholarship, he will come to realize that the new Mass is no more capable of order and stability than the Federal budget.
Sixth, Bishop Vasa is most condescending in stating that he is open to having a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter offer the Traditional Mass in his diocese. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Holy Father himself has called for a “wide and generous” application of the 1984 and 1988 heavily-conditioned indults (which are unnecessary on their face and contain unjust and illicit conditions attached to them) for the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass. Bishop Vasa is “open” to permitting Catholics what Pope Saint Pius V gave us an absolute right to have in perpetuity? That’s very magnanimous of Bishop Vasa. Is he aware that the Bishop of Verona, Italy, permits a priest of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X to offer his own diocesan “indult” Mass? Why can’t he do the same with the priests of the Society in is diocese? Wouldn’t that be showing true pastoral solicitude for the needs of the faithful in his diocese? Why are we so open to the spirit of the world but so contemptuous and dismissive of our Catholic tradition?
It is almost impossible to explain to one who has not exposed himself on a regular basis to the glory and the splendor of the Traditional Latin Mass why it is that Catholics must do everything they can to seek it out to defend their right to assist at it with all of the prayerful vigor and zeal they can be given by Our Lord and His Blessed Mother. All revolutionaries, both religious and civil, have sought to stamp out the Traditional Latin Mass. How ironic it is that believers such as Bishop Robert Vasa are doing the bidding of the Modernist inheritors of this revolutionary heritage of the past five centuries. He will be no more successful than Gorbachev himself in his own “perestroika” of a failed revolution, no matter his own good intentions and his obvious ignorance of authentic Catholic history.
Michael Davies wrote of the hatred of the French Revolutionaries for the Faith of our fathers in For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee. Just as priests and the laity are expected to swear allegiance to the revolutions ushered in by Vatican II–and are hunted down, so to speak, by ecclesiastical authorities, so was it the case during the Reign of Terror that Catholic priests and laity were hunted down quite literally and put to death.
“Blessed Noel Pinot was not among the Martyrs of Avrille beatified by Pope John Paul II, as he had already been beatified by Pope Pius XI, but he is undoubtedly the most celebrated of the two thousand who died. Father Pinot was a priest of exceptional holiness, who had refused to take the oath and continued to minister to his parishioners in secret. He was betrayed to the authorities and condemned to death on 21 February 1794. His priestly vestments had been found with him in his hiding place, and they provided the conclusive evidence against him at his trial. An apostate priest among his judges asked, sarcastically, whether he would like to be executed in his Mass vestments. Father Pinot thanked him for the offer, which he accepted. As he mounted the steps of the scaffold, he was heard to recite the words: ‘Introibo ad altare Dei.’”
How sad it is that priests who utter those words yet as they prepare to ascend the steps to the high altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are castigated as disloyal sons of the Church. How sad it is that priests who want to defend the binding words of Pope Saint Pius V to protect the right of all Catholics to hear the Traditional Mass are adjudged guilty of a crime for their fidelity to that which has been handed down to us by God Himself from the earliest centuries of the Church. May men like Bishop Vasa come to realize how little they know and how much they are doing to advance the cause of the further decay of the Church.
Praying to Our Lady, Gate of Heaven, may we never give up our fight for Tradition, basing our efforts in Eucharistic piety and total consecration to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, no matter how many bishops distort history and attempt to engage in a Catholic perestroika.
