It's About The Faith, Not About Face
by Thomas A. Droleskey
A man in the conciliar presbyterate who was in my acquaintance for about two decades was never impressed, at least not in the 1980s and 1990s, with proposals to "dress up" the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, which he presided over on a daily basis. He used to say, usually in response to some proposal by the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger to institute a "reform of the reform, "You can dress this thing up. You can even say it in Latin. It's still a dreadful excuse for the worship of God. Not even an accurate translation of the Latin editio typica texts of the Propers would give you a clear expression of the Catholic Faith. The thing is more properly called the 'FM' [for Freemasonic Mass or Faux Mass or False Mass] to distinguish it from the 'TM' [Traditional Mass or Tridentine Mass or True Mass]."
What was true in the 1980s and the 1990s remains true now. That is, no "reforming" that which is a hideous abomination in the sight of God can make the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. The liturgies of the various rites of the Catholic Church are not about mere cosmetic appearances. They are about the worship of God, He Who is immutable, as the truths of His Holy Faith are communicated in all of their holy integrity in the prayers and ceremonies of the rites themselves, housed as they must be in, barring extraordinary circumstances (such as taking refuge in the catacombs during times of persecution or apostasy, or during times of war or natural disaster), a church building whose exterior and interior reflect the beauty that is God and not the ugliness that is a world stained by our sins.
The liturgies of the various rites of the Catholic Church grew organically in her first centuries. They were not devised by committees, including any committee, such as Annibale Bugnini's Consilium, on which served a variety of "observers" from heretical sects desirous of incorporating their own errors about God and His Divine Revelation into the context what purports to be a liturgical rite of the Catholic Church. While there were a few regional or local variations of particular rites, including the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, prior to the issuance of the Missale Romanum by Pope Saint Pius V to standardize the offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and to protect it against the unauthorized improvisations and innovations that had arisen in various places, especially in the areas of what is now called Germany, in the Sixteenth Century to try to make the Catholic Mass "appeal" to those who had defected to some Protestant sect, the Mass codified in the Missal for the Roman Curia that Pope Saint Pius X mandated to be used in every diocese that could not prove local usage dating back
two hundred years or more (thus placing local usages before the date of heretics such as John Wycliffe and Jan Hus and, of course, Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli) was not the creation of a "new Mass." Not at all.
The late Father Adrian Fortescue, a true liturgist and liturgical historian in every true Catholic sense of those words, explained in the early part of the Twentieth Century that the Missale Romanum of Saint Pius V was nothing new and represented no break at all with the past:
Essentially, the Missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is formed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine collection. We find prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis and allusions to it in the [Fourth] Century. So the Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest Liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that Liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world, and thought he could stamp out the Faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of some unresolved problems, in spite of later changes there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.
What happened after the "Second" Vatican Council, presaged by the wave of liturgical changes that took place in the 1950s, including the revolutionary changes in the Holy Week liturgy (see His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan,
Pre-Vatican II Liturgical Changes: Road to the New Mass and
The Pius X and John XXIII Missals Compared; see also Father Francisco Ricossa,
Liturgical Revolution), had never occurred before in the history of the Catholic Church. Indeed, it has not happened in the history of the Catholic Church.
As has been the case in every other heretical sect, however, the counterfeit church of conciliarism's lords saw fit to revolutionize Catholic worship in order to use their synthetic liturgy as the means to propagandize a new and false religion, conciliarism, with such lightning speed so as to break down the supernatural resistance of ordinary Catholics to un-Catholic and anti-Catholic "innovations" by calling upon them to be "obedient" and by helping to disseminate propaganda designed to "erase" true memories of the glories of the Catholic past in order to create artificial" memories that would justify their efforts to "restore" liturgical rites that either next existed or that were used by heretical sects. Most Catholics were so convinced by the revolutionaries that the "past" had been bad that they came to accept the innovations in what was said to be the Catholic liturgy in the name of a "renewal" that was nothing other than a revival of the spirit of antiquarianism (claiming to "restore" ancient rites that never existed or that were used by heretics) that was condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei on August 28, 1794, and condemned as well by Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947:
The Church is without question a living organism, and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows, matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be safeguarded. This notwithstanding, the temerity and daring of those who introduce novel liturgical practices, or call for the revival of obsolete rites out of harmony with prevailing laws and rubrics, deserve severe reproof. It has pained Us grievously to note, Venerable Brethren, that such innovations are actually being introduced, not merely in minor details but in matters of major importance as well. We instance, in point of fact, those who make use of the vernacular in the celebration of the august eucharistic sacrifice; those who transfer certain feast-days -- which have been appointed and established after mature deliberation -- to other dates; those, finally, who delete from the prayer books approved for public use the sacred texts of the Old Testament, deeming them little suited and inopportune for modern times.
The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth. In spite of this, the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission. It is forbidden, therefore, to take any action whatever of this nature without having requested and obtained such consent, since the sacred liturgy, as We have said, is entirely subject to the discretion and approval of the Holy See.
The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.
Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.
Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.
This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation.
"For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation." Anyone who cannot see that this one sentence describes the effects of the innovations of the abomination that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is not being intellectually honest. The Novus Ordo service is of its very nature as much a revolution against Catholic Faith and Worship as that represented by the liturgies of Protestant sects.
The revolutionaries themselves--and their apologists--have told us that this is so:
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, 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 reflect 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.
A rejection of outward penance is at the essence, of course, of how Sean "Cardinal" O'Malley, the conciliar "archbishop" of Boston, Massachusetts, could dismiss so readily the necessity of Edward Moore Kennedy's publicly abjuring his support for chemical and surgical baby-killing and for special "rights" for those engaged in unrepentant acts of perversity in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments (see Sean O'Malley: Coward and Hypocrite). Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are told all too frequently by their priests or presbyters in the confessional (or, more accurately, "reconciliation room") to be "good to themselves," not to "be too hard on themselves" as the receive "forgiveness," not Absolution in many instances, for their sins. The spirit of the Novus Ordo is one of human self-congratulations, not sorrow for one's sin and the necessity of living penitentially in order to make reparation for them.
Thus it is that while the conciliar "Bishop" of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Edward Slattery, has some fine insights into the harmful effects of what purports to Holy Mass facing the people, he fails to understand that the problems of the Novus Ordo service are matters of the Faith Itself. While rubrical innovations such as having the priest or presbyter face the people are indeed harmful, as outlined in "Bishop" Slattery's Article on Mass Facing the People (appended at the end of this article) are certainly an important part of the ethos of the Novus Ordo service's effort to Protestantize the Faith and Worship of what purports to be a Catholic liturgical rite, they are secondary in importance to the actual ideological predilections upon which the Novus Ordo itself is based. and which are enshrined in its Ordinary and Collects.
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI'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."
As well-intentioned as "Bishop" Slattery of Tulsa is, however, his offering of the Novus Ordo facing the Novus Ordo table will take place only in Holy Family Cathedral in the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, not elsewhere in the Diocese of Tulsa when he makes his pastoral visits. This relegates the offering of what purports to be Holy Mass ad orientem to simply another "option," one among gazillions, available to presbyters in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. What "Bishop" Slattery must consider, of course, is that adherence to the totality of the Catholic Faith is not optional, and it is a manifest defection from the Catholic Faith that characterizes the whole ethos of the Novus Ordo service and the false religion that it seeks to propagate, concilairism.
"Bishop" Slattery is certainly concerned about the fitting worship that must be offered to God. It is clear that he loves God, and that he is trying to educate the people attached to the conciliar church within his diocese about what constitutes the fitting worship of God. All well and good. The objective truth nevertheless is this: we must love God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church, the Catholic Church, which can never give us defective liturgies with harmful innovations, never give us unclear or ambiguous doctrines, never even appear to give us doctrines that in any way contradict her perennial teaching. "Bishop" Slattery must come to recognize that the Novus Ordo is an expression of a false religion that has dared to make "innovation" and ambiguity normal features of what is said to pass for Catholic doctrine and pastoral praxis. No amount of cosmetic changes or rubrical adjustments can make a synthetic liturgy designed to institutionalize and propagate a false religion pleasing to God.
Indeed, "Bishop" Slattery and others in the counterfeit church of concilairism who are concerned about the fitting worship that must be given to God have reckon sooner rather than later with the simple truth that there has never been a period in the history of the Catholic Church when there has been such a tremendous loss of Faith following one of her authentic councils. No true liturgy of the Catholic Church has ever produced a loss of belief in the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament or in the sacerdotal, hierarchical nature of the ministerial priesthood or in the nature of the Mass as the unbloody representation of Our Lord's Sacrifice of Himself to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins.
The Council of Trent made it clear that the Catholic Church can never give us any liturgical rite that is defective or is an incentive to impiety:
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.)
Although long-time readers of this site are by now familiar with the listing that follows, it is useful to include it here for first-time readers, few though they may be, and to help give "Bishop" Slattery some things to ponder in the unlikely event that this article happens to catch his attention. For the restoration of the Faith is not merely a matter of cosmetic changes in a synthetic liturgy that is offensive to Our Lord and harmful to the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. It is a a matter of rejecting everything to do with the false religion that is enshrined in that synthetic liturgy, which must be consigned to the dustbin of history as the unreformed Immemorial Mass of Tradition is restored in all of her pre-Bugnini purity.
It is important for "Bishop" Slattery and other "conservative" Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism to consider these facts (and those, of course, provided in
Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism):
-
Ratzinger/Benedict denies the nature of dogmatic truth, cleaving to philosophically absurd notion that dogmatic truth can never be expressed adequately at any one point in time, that each expression of dogma is necessarily "conditioned" by the historical circumstances in which it was pronounced. Condemned by the [First] Vatican Council, Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, and The Oath Against Modernism, and by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.
-
-
Ratzinger/Benedict specifically rejects the "ecumenism of the return," thereby making a mockery of the exhortations of one true pope after another for such a return of non-Catholics to the true Church.
-
Ratzinger/Benedict embraces concilairism's definition of "religious liberty" as he praises the nonexistent ability of false religions to "contribute" to the "betterment" of nations and the world. Condemned by Pope Pius VI in Brief
Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791,
Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right Pope Pius VII in
Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, Pope Gregory XVI in
Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, and by Pope Pius IX in
Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
-
Ratzinger/Benedict endorses the "separation of Church and State," a thesis called absolutely false by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, and rejects the obligation of the civil state to recognize the Catholic Church as its official religion and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, an obligation reiterated by pope after pope following the rise of the religiously indifferentist civil state of Modernity.
-
-
Ratzinger/Benedict has entered two mosque and two synagogues, engaging in acts of apostasy and blasphemy as he, who believes himself to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, has permitted himself to be treated as an inferior as he has treated places of false worship that are hideous to God as worthy of respect, thereby scandalizing His little ones no end.
-
Ratzinger/Benedict has termed Mount Hiei in Japan, where the adherents of the Tendei sect of Buddhism, worship their devils, as "sacred," a term he used to describe the mosque of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on May 12, 2009.
-
Joseph Ratzinger has long rejected the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas, in favor of the condemned precepts of the so-called "New Theology, the subject of an article,
The Memories of a Destructive Mind: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Milestones, on a Society of Saint Pius X website that may well "disappear"--along with other "damaging" citations that will have to be removed as part of the conciliar process of "purification of memory"--once a formal "regularization" takes place. (See also:
Attempting to Coerce Perjury.)
-
Ratzinger/Benedict holds to a view of the Doctrine of Justification that, in essence, hinges on the belief that the Fathers of the Council of Trent, who met under the influence and protection of God the Holy Ghost, were wrong (as is explained in
Attempting to Coerce Perjury.)
-
Ratzinger/Benedict gave his personal approve to the world premiere of the blasphemous motion picture named The Nativity Story on Sunday, November 26, 2006, despite the portrayal of Our Lady as a sulky, moody, rebellious teenager, thereby denying the doctrinal effects of perfect Integrity that she enjoyed as a result of her Immaculate Conception.
This entirely partial listing of examples of the words and deeds and beliefs of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, a chief architect and subsequent propagator of the ethos of conciliarism, raises significant questions about the nature of God, Who wants us to love Him, Who is immutable, exactly as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. The true God of Revelation inspired the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council to speak to us about the fact that we must always understand His teaching the same way and without any shadow of change:
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.
No one who knows and loves God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church can contend honestly that He, the true God of Revelation, is pleased with the symbols of false religions and their places of false worship are esteemed by a man claiming, albeit falsely, to be His Vicar on earth, in full violation of the First and Second Commandments, thereby convey to Catholics and non-Catholics alike that God Himself is as pleased with false religions and their symbols and their beliefs as a putative "vicar" of His on earth. Yet it is that the "pontiffs" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism do and say things that we know displease God and break His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart, defying one anathematized proposition after another just as the liturgy that they "offer" each day displeases God with its ethos of community-self congratulations and prayers that do not communicate fully the truths of the Catholic Faith.
Although there are indeed "conservative" and traditionally-minded Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who upset, at least privately, with some of the things listed above. Being upset privately, however, is not good enough for God. Those who do not defend publicly the honor and glory and honor of God are guilty of the same offenses. Who says so? None other than Pope Leo the Great, that's who:
But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies: they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, Epistle XIV, To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, St. Leo the Great | Letters 1-59 )
Is the true God of Revelation pleased when a putative "pontiff" calls a mosque a "sacred" place or a "jewel" on the face of the earth?
Is the true God of Revelation pleased when a putative "pontiff" refuses to make the Sign of the Cross during prayer in "mixed company" or when he refuses to mention the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in front of adherents of the Talmud or of the Koran?
Is the true God of Revelation pleased with a putative "pontiff" who asserts that false religions can contribute to the "building" of the "better" world and that they have a "right" from Him to propagate their false beliefs publicly?
Is the true God of Revelation pleased with a putative "pontiff" who places into question the dogmatic pronouncements of the past by asserting that they were expressed in contingent terms based upon the historical circumstances in which they were proclaimed, thereby blaspheming the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost?
Is the true God of Revelation pleased when a putative "pontiff" treats the "ministers" of false religions as valid representatives of His as he engages in "ecumenical prayer" meetings that have been condemned consistently by the authority of the Catholic Church (see The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion).
No one who truly, truly loves God can answer these questions in the affirmative. It's about the Faith, not about whether a "bishop" or a priest or a presbyter faces the table during a liturgy was written to destroy the sensus Catholicus and to replace it with a revolutionary ideology that has devastated the Faith of hundreds of millions of ordinary Catholics worldwide.
Pope Pius XI, writing in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, explained that the Catholic Church brings her teaching to her children with ease and security, not with the ambiguity and uncertainty that have traditionalists and progressives and "moderates" in the counterfeit church of concilairism arguing about the "Second" Vatican Council's "true" meaning in "light" of a Tradition with which it can never honestly be reconciled.
For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)
No one who defects knowingly from a single proposition in the Deposit of Faith can remain a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. A la carte Catholicism is wrong for those Catholics who support one moral evil (abortion, contraception, perversity, usury). A la carte Catholicism is wrong for putative "popes" and "bishops" who deny the nature of dogmatic truth and and reject the Church's official philosophy, Scholasticism, and support most brazenly movements (false ecumenism) and propositions (religious liberty, separation of Church and State, the new ecclesiology) that have been condemned by the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
It is always useful to remind readers of the simple truth that no one can hold to a single proposition that has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church and remain within her maternal bosom:
The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).
The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)
We need to pray that "Bishop" Slattery, as well-intentioned as he might be, will come to recognize the simple truth that God will not be mocked by the obscurity and ambiguity and contradiction that supply the "material" of the ethos of concilairism. God will not be mocked by the blasphemies and sacrileges of the conciliar "pontiffs." God will not be mocked by the many drops of poison that have been placed into the well of the Faith by the conciliar revolutionaries, including most especially Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. One must be willfully intellectually dishonest to contend that the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath, including the Novus Ordo, have not dropped many drops of poison into the well of the Holy Faith.
Today is the First Saturday of the month of September and the eleventh Saturday of His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna's
Rosary Crusade. We meditate especially today on the First Glorious Mystery, the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from the dead on Easter Sunday, praying for the virtue of Faith. This is very appropriate and prophetic as the Faith itself has been under attack now for over a century at the hands of the Modernists, who have, only temporarily, mind you, gained the upper hand in the past fifty years. We have no reason to fear as we know that the Immaculate Heart of Mary will indeed triumph in the end.
As I have tried to make clear in each of my articles, good readers, we must be earnest about the sanctification of our own daily lives. We must be brutally honest with ourselves about our sins, conscious of the fact that our own sins have worsened the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large. Our Lady asked Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos to live penitentially as they prayed their Rosaries to console the good God and to make reparation for their sins and those of the whole world. Our Lady's Fatima Message to the children in the Cova da Iria in 1917 is her message to us in 2009. 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. We must remember this as we cling to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism whatsoever, consider it our privilege to hear the Immemorial Mass of Tradition offered at their hands, 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.
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
Saint Lawrence Justinian, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Appendix A: "Bishop" Slattery's Article on "Mass" Facing the People
Because the Mass is so necessary and fundamental to our Catholic experience, the liturgy is a constant topic in our conversation. That is why when we get together, we so often reflect upon the prayers and readings, discuss the homily, and – likely as not – argue about the music. The critical element in these conversations is an understanding that we Catholics worship the way we do because of what the Mass is: Christ’s sacrifice, offered under the sacramental signs of bread and wine.
If our conversation about the Mass is going to “make any sense,” then we have to grasp this essential truth: At Mass, Christ joins us to Himself as He offers Himself in sacrifice to the Father for the world’s redemption. We can offer ourselves like this in Him because we have become members of His Body by Baptism.
We also want to remember that all of the faithful offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice as members of Christ’s body. It’s incorrect to think that only the priest offers Mass. All the faithful share in the offering, even though the priest has a unique role. He stands “in the person of Christ,” the historic Head of the Mystical Body, so that, at Mass, it is the whole body of Christ – Head and members together that make the offering.
Facing the same direction From ancient times, the position of the priest and the people reflected this understanding of the Mass, since the people prayed, standing or kneeling, in the place that visibly corresponded to Our Lord’s Body, while the priest at the altar stood at the head as the Head. We formed the whole Christ – Head and members – both sacramentally by Baptism and visibly by our position and posture. Just as importantly, everyone – celebrant and congregation – faced the same direction, since they were united with Christ in offering to the Father Christ’s unique, unrepeatable and acceptable sacrifice.
When we study the most ancient liturgical practices of the Church, we find that the priest and the people faced in the same direction, usually toward the east, in the expectation that when Christ returns, He will return “from the east.” At Mass, the Church keeps vigil, waiting for that return. This single position is called ad orientem, which simply means “toward the east.”
Having the priest and people celebrate Mass ad orientem was the liturgical norm for nearly 18 centuries. There must have been solid reasons for the Church to have held on to this posture for so long. And there were! First of all, the Catholic liturgy has always maintained a marvelous adherence to the Apostolic Tradition. We see the Mass, indeed the whole liturgical expression of the Church’s life, as something which we have received from the Apostles and which we, in turn, are expected to hand on intact. (1 Corinthians 11:23)
Secondly, the Church held on to this single eastward position because of the sublime way it reveals the nature of the Mass. Even someone unfamiliar with the Mass who reflected upon the celebrant and the faithful being oriented in the same direction would recognize that the priest stands at the head of the people, sharing in one and the same action, which was – he would note with a moment’s longer reflection – an act of worship.
In the last 40 years, however, this shared orientation was lost; now the priest and the people have become accustomed to facing in opposite directions. The priest faces the people while the people face the priest, even though the Eucharistic Prayer is directed to the Father and not to the people.
This innovation was introduced after the Vatican Council, partly to help the people understand the liturgical action of the Mass by allowing them to see what was going on, and partly as an accommodation to contemporary culture where people who exercise authority are expected to face directly the people they serve, like a teacher sitting behind her desk.
Unfortunately this change had a number of unforeseen and largely negative effects. First of all, it was a serious rupture with the Church’s ancient tradition. Secondly, it can give the appearance that the priest and the people were engaged in a conversation about God, rather than the worship of God. Thirdly, it places an inordinate importance on the personality of the celebrant by placing him on a kind of liturgical stage.
Even before his election as the successor to St. Peter, Pope Benedict has been urging us to draw upon the ancient liturgical practice of the Church to recover a more authentic Catholic worship. For that reason, I have restored the venerable ad orientem position when I celebrate Mass at the Cathedral.
This change ought not to be misconstrued as the Bishop “turning his back on the faithful,” as if I am being inconsiderate or hostile. Such an interpretation misses the point that, by facing in the same direction, the posture of the celebrant and the congregation make explicit the fact that we journey together to God.
Priest and people are on this pilgrimage together. It would also be a mistaken notion to look at the recovery of this ancient tradition as a mere “turning back of the clock.” Pope Benedict has spoken repeatedly of the importance of celebrating Mass ad orientem, but his intention is not to encourage celebrants to become “liturgical antiquarians.” Rather, His Holiness wants us to discover what underlies this ancient tradition and made it viable for so many centuries, namely, the Church’s understanding that the worship of the Mass is primarily and essentially the worship which Christ offers to His Father. (Ad orientem: Revival of ancient rite brings multiple advantages, some misperceptions.)
