Against the Robots

More than fifty years ago, the Catholic Church adopted a new Mass that broke with Church tradition in an unprecedented way. The reformers, however, had not foreseen that the traditional Mass would outlive them. They were even convinced of the opposite. And they used every means at their disposal to achieve their goal: the suppression of the traditional Roman Mass. ^Yet , it must be acknowledged that this Mass continues to attract many faithful, including young people who commit themselves, as prayerful worshippers and seminarians, to celebrating and keeping alive this form of the Roman Rite. These individuals are often accused of being troublemakers, nostalgics, identity-obsessed, and, above all—a crime of lèse-majesté—of being against the Second Vatican Council, which is no longer separated from its own spirit; this spirit of the Council which is invoked without ever truly being defined, as with almost all important matters. In the Church, as in other circles, progressives tend to stigmatize their opponents by reducing them to stereotypes, which serves to devalue them. The liturgy is the summit and source of the Church's life, as the last council reminds us, and the liturgy is tradition. To resolve the liturgical crisis within itself, the Church will have to mend the threads of its damaged and wounded tradition, even and especially if the times urge it to do nothing.

Which Vatican II?

“The new Ordo Missae, if we consider the new elements, open to widely varying interpretations, which appear to be implied or implied within it, departs impressively, both in its overall structure and in its details, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated at the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, which, by definitively establishing the ‘canons’ of the rite, erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy that might undermine the integrity of the Mystery.” ^² Cardinal Ottaviani, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, addressed Paul VI in this way on September 3, 1969, just a few weeks before the new Mass was to come into effect. This, in a certain way, concluded the Second Vatican Council, which had, however, closed its doors four years earlier! Let us dwell a little on the figure of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. This baker's son, from the poorer neighborhoods of Rome, proved to be an excellent student at the Pontifical Seminary in Rome, earning three doctorates: in theology, philosophy, and canon law. Secretary of the Holy Office, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he worked for four years before the Council preparing the topics to be addressed. He would pronounce "Habemus Papam" upon the election of John XXIII. That October of 1962 would see the masks fall and the positions, progressive or modernist, become clear. John XXIII, in his opening address to the Council, displayed a certain contempt for Pius XII's curial team, declaring: "The Bride of Christ prefers to resort to the remedy of mercy, rather than brandish the weapons of severity. She believes that, rather than condemning, she responds better to the needs of our time by highlighting the riches of her doctrine." “ ^3. This sentence contains a dichotomy that inaugurates and foreshadows the entire Second Vatican Council: can there be mercy if there is no condemnation of an act? Why should there be a remedy if there has not first been a wound? Was there not a desire to sweep sin under the rug like a bothersome speck of dust? The tone used, in which clemency asserts itself as supreme authority, would become the leitmotif of the Second Vatican Council. From then on, a rebellion was organized. The texts prepared by the Curia were rejected, notably “ De fontibus revelationis ,” on the sources of revelation, and “ De Ecclesia .” An absolute majority was required to ratify this rejection; John XXIII gave his consent and was content with a relative majority.” “Thus was carried out a veritable coup d’état, by which all the liberal tendencies, in the process of organizing themselves into a ‘conciliar majority,’ seized doctrinal power from the Curia inherited from Pius XII.” ^⁴ Work on the liturgy then began, since the working texts had been trampled underfoot and discarded. The subject was thought to be unifying. The progressives, as usual, had an agenda, something the conservatives almost never do. Cardinal Ottaviani, on October 30, 1962, took the floor; he was not yet blind and was about to demonstrate foresight. He asked that the rite of the Mass not be treated “like a piece of fabric that is put back into fashion according to the whim of each generation.” The audience felt he was going on too long. He was interrupted without regard for his rank. His microphone was cut off to the applause of a large number of Fathers. The Second Vatican Council could begin.

Reformers at work

Does loving the traditional Roman Mass mean one is against the Council? The question has been debated for fifty years. Even today, anyone who cherishes the Tridentine Mass is met with fierce resistance if they try to justify their position. As if love for the traditional rite were enough to demonstrate rejection of the new Mass. Essentialism, yet again. Many people would agree with this assertion, and an equal number would argue that the Second Vatican Council put an end to the Latin Mass, to the celebration with the celebrant facing away from the people, and to communion on the tongue. And this number, however large, would be wrong. A Council that announces almost from the outset that it will be pastoral can engender a form of mistrust. And it seems quite naive to believe that the pastoral and the dogmatic have mutually agreed to draw a line between them that nothing and no one will want or be able to cross! During Vatican II, a profusion of ideas emerged. This is what impressed minds as diverse as Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Journet, and Father Congar. With the fall of the Curia, Vatican II saw the last remaining barriers weaken. A new wind swept through the Church; it was the wind of the world, and the taste for novelty infected everyone, but it also created an unprecedented intellectual and spiritual emulation. Not all the prelates gathered were revolutionaries, far from it. And to reduce Vatican II to that alone would be untrue. Beginning, therefore, with the liturgy, the spirit of the Council began to take hold and came to believe that everything was possible. Was it the breath of the Holy Spirit or the smoke of Satan ^? The commission issued the constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium , which completed the studies undertaken as Mediator Dei by Pius XII, forcefully reiterating what the liturgy can and cannot be. The status of Latin was renewed and guaranteed; many forget that the entire Second Vatican Council took place in Latin, that all the assembled prelates followed the Tridentine Mass, since there was no other! But, in the French translation of Sacrosanctum Concilium , the progressive spirit that would enter through the Vatican's somewhat too-open windows and that would blow with ever-renewed fervor in France during the implementation of the liturgical reform is already evident. Thus, we read for the verbs " instaurare " and " fovere ": the constitution sets as its goal the "restoration and progress of the liturgy." "Instaurare" can be translated as "to restore," but "fovere" has nothing to do with any kind of progress! " Fovere " means rather to promote, to encourage. "Thus, the clearly stated goal (in Latin and in faithful translations) was to restore and promote the liturgy. Not to destroy it in order to create another." Not even to make it “advance”… ⁶ » “ Sacrosanctum Concilium ” affirms, by reiterating it, the theme of active participation (already highlighted by Pius X and taken up again by Pius XII), respect for the sacred language (I quote: “the use of Latin will be preserved in the Latin rites”), and one will find nothing there concerning communion in the hand or the priest’s orientation… While a draft may be refreshing for a moment, it can also cause a stiff neck, all sorts of collateral damage where a closed window would simply have made us sweat. As the Second Vatican Council saw itself as a restorer of ancient things forgotten or buried under successive layers of tradition (driven, all the same, by a hatred of the Middle Ages), it also tended to embrace its era as closely as possible and lower the bar of its demands. Scholars drawing from another tradition, sometimes opposed to the liturgy, sometimes inspired by the Liturgical Movement, were preparing to unveil their strengths and engage in this debate.

We know that all the revolutions the world has known had but one goal: power. The discourse of revolution relies on the people, but only the people derive any benefit from it. Thus, we can read in Sacrosanctum Concilium : "The rites must be simple and brief and adapted to the faithful."... Is there only one type of believer? And why insist on the rite being understood? Isn't the sacred shrouded in mystery? Isn't mystery an integral part of the believer's wonder? How many faithful with sound habits have been shaken, to say the least, by the reform of the liturgy? How many have been violated by having their possessions stolen by the removal of the Latin recitations of the prayers of Saint Ambrose or Saint Gregory the Great? Yet, the faithful are the peasants of the Garonne, as Maritain calls them in his eponymous book. And the peasant often failed to see or understand the "new fire" of the Council, which, on the contrary, turned him away from the Church with so many innovations! The faithful found this new fire in the custom that was not yet called rite, as Pascal so aptly summarizes ^. The Protestant Reformation at the beginning of the 16th century honed this hatred of what is called Christendom, pointing out only its flaws, and the Council of Trent stemmed the bleeding by undertaking to rebuild the shaken Catholic faith. Dom Prosper Guéranger, the founder of the Abbey of Solesmes, the restorer of the Order of Saint Benedict, and a holy man if ever there was one, wrote an edifying book: The Liturgical Year. We are in the 19th century. The French Revolution and its upheavals have left their mark, and the memory of Gallicanism and Jansenism ("French Protestantism," as Dom Guéranger called it) still lingers in the dioceses, whose liturgies are all quite different. Dom Guéranger restores the church to the heart of the community by favoring the Roman Missal. It is sometimes said that *L'Année liturgique* marks the beginning of the liturgical movement, but this book and this movement would nevertheless diverge increasingly in their intentions and actions. In 1680, Dom Henri Leclercq wrote about the reform of the Paris Breviary : "They undertook to cut back without restraint; where it would have sufficed to weed, they cut down, under the pretext of eliminating everything that might have the appearance of superstition." The reformers of the liturgy follow one another and resemble one another. This anti-liturgical tradition had thus been running for four centuries when it found fertile ground in the Second Vatican Council. Progressives have this knack for passing off old ideas as new ones when conservatives are incapable of celebrating their heritage, being too decent and too modest. Dom Leclercq continued: “They ravaged both the Sanctoral and the Temporal… They allowed themselves reductions in the rite of Marian feasts, which demonstrated as little good taste as common sense and piety… On this slippery slope, they went too far. The lessons of the feasts of the Virgin, the blessings of her particular Office, underwent alterations and suppressions that were, at the very least, inopportune.” It was disrespectful to Mary to suppress that beautiful and ancient formula: Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti (Rejoice, Virgin Mary, for you alone have vanquished all heresies), just as it was inappropriate to no longer say to her this invocation: Dignare me laudare te, Virgo Sacrata; da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos (Grant me praise, Holy Virgin; give me the strength to fight your enemies). The names of certain feasts were changed. We will discover in the missal of Paul VI that the liturgists were consistent in their thinking, since they thus changed the solemnity of March 25, which was the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, and it became Annontiatio Domini , a feast of the Lord. Dom Leclercq concludes on this point: “A long-standing tradition was violated by suppressing the proper office of the Visitation. If the Mother of God was thus treated, her vicar in this world was not spared. The responsory: You are the shepherd of the sheep, you who are the prince of the Apostles, and the antiphon: When He was High Priest, He did not fear earthly powers… were doomed to disappear.” Dom Guéranger would prophetically affirm: “The modern liturgies of the Churches of France (have been) composed far more often by partisan men than by saints.” The Benedictine monk attempts a telling comparison ^: “In reflecting on the current Reformation, the comparison of an old family home has often come to mind.” If we show it to a purist aesthete, he will find many lapses in taste, the styles too mixed, the rooms too cluttered, and so on. If we show it to an archaeologist, he will find it a shame not to restore this old house to its original state as a 17th-century manor house and that everything that clashes with the style of the Grand Siècle should be eliminated. No doubt they are scientifically correct, and yet they miss the essential point: that a house has its own soul, and that this soul is made up of the personalities of all those who have lived in it and who live in it. Personalities that betray themselves in the countless details of the decor, obscure to an outsider. It is probably too early to judge whether our modern reformers have truly grasped the “spirit” of the house, but we can believe Dom Guéranger when he says that those of the 17th and 18th centuries neither understood it nor, even less, appreciated it. "It was therefore necessary to innovate, and the liturgists of the Second Vatican Council set about doing so, thanks to the support of the new Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John XXIII and who, enthusiastic about the ideas of his time, particularly appreciated the Liturgical Movement.

Dom Guéranger, with his foresight, said of the liturgists that they wanted to profane the sacred language. Drawing on his experience and understanding of Protestantism and Jansenism, he explained their intention to "remove from worship all the ceremonies, all the formulas that express mysteries." They labeled as superstition and idolatry everything that did not seem purely rational to them, thus restricting expressions of faith and obstructing, through doubt and even denial, all the paths that open onto the supernatural world. Thus… no more sacramentals, blessings, images, relics of saints, processions, pilgrimages, etc. There is no longer an altar, but only a table; no more sacrifice, as in all religions, but only the Last Supper; no more churches, but only a temple, as among the Greeks and Romans; no more religious architecture, since there is no longer any mystery. No more Christian painting and sculpture, since there is no longer any tangible religion; finally, no more poetry in a worship that is neither nourished by love nor by faith. A century later, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council had not read Dom Guéranger, or had at the very least forgotten him. They were preparing to reform, transform, and thus "advance" the "Holy Mass, as formulated at the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, which, by definitively establishing the canons of the rite, erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy that could undermine the integrity of the Mystery." They would soon turn their attention to Latin, the first step in their reform. Enamored with novelty, they had forgotten that they were the successors of the sinister constitutional clergy of Year V during the French Revolution, where the arguments for and against Latin as the language of the Church had already been formulated… But that was asking modern people to have a memory. A Protestant who left his country no longer understood anything of the service, whereas a Catholic could follow Mass anywhere in the world thanks to Latin. The Catholic's universality stemmed first and foremost from his language. He was Roman Catholic. Is he still?

The door opened ajar by Sacrosanctum Concilium will be swept open by the "rioters" who expected nothing less. To return to our metaphor of the draft, who hasn't seen the mistress of the house, wanting to air out a room, unaware of the violent gust that lay in wait for the window to be opened? Collateral damage is always calculated in hindsight. The Revolution thrives on momentum and the chain of events that vindicate the attackers, never the defenders. Yet at this stage of the Council, at the very beginning, a phenomenon reminiscent of the Estates-General of 1789 is set in motion. The men appointed by Paul VI are preparing for battle. The secretary of the commission is named Annibale Bugnini; he will possess the fierce and efficient manner of the Phoenician warlord after whom he is named. “This ‘constituent assembly’ (…) tasked with the overhaul of the entire Roman liturgy, was of considerable size. It comprised some fifty members, in addition to one hundred and fifty expert consultants, seventy-five expert advisors, not counting those who were consulted sporadically.” ⁹ The Council continued its work, and the reform unfolded in parallel, aiming to achieve a power superior to that of the congregations of the Curia. Paul VI was consulted from time to time for a decision that was intended to be final. The Holy Father’s numerous delays gave even more power to the commission, which decided when he did not. Progress was necessary, for only movement, this purification of the “old church,” was deemed essential. The progressives convinced themselves of a contradictory mission, to say the least: to rediscover the freshness of the early Church and to adapt to the spirit of the times. In other words: to give the Church a youthful appearance and to fill once again the naves that had begun to empty for some time. It is easy to see that it failed on both counts. In many parts of Europe, the spirit of the times had already triumphed over tradition. This gave the reformers a taste of victory. Liturgical initiatives proliferated. The preface and the canon were the focus of initial attention. These were recited aloud, in the vernacular… It was like a vestige of Luther within the Catholic Church. A thousand reasons were found to expand concelebration. They relied on Sacrosanctum Concilium , which had opened the door by its vagueness regarding the number of concelebrants permitted. Everyone seemed to agree on restricting the number so that the dignity of the liturgy would not be compromised, yet no one specified what that number should be, so everyone did as they pleased, and thus excess reigned supreme. When pastoral care seeks to establish authority, everything is turned upside down! But in fact, the Church already corresponded completely to its time, it endorsed the idea that authority no longer had a place because it no longer knew that authority stemmed from love, and that it confused, like the world, power and authority, authority and authoritarianism.

The Mass of Paul VI

The revolution was visible everywhere. François Mauriac wrote in a beautiful plea on his "Notebook" in Le Figaro Littéraire in November 1966: "They (the provincial seminarians who wrote to him) found television, tobacco, the film club, leisure activities back at the seminary: '(...) The clerics are no longer black, Gregorian chant exists only as a memory. Before meals, we no longer hear a few verses from the Bible... In short, we'll stop there, we had no right to make this point, a soldier never knows he's surrendering.' (...) This dismay among seminarians, after two years of seminary, will leave their elders completely indifferent, I suspect, as they, along with the cassock, have rid themselves of what torments these demanding young hearts." They wanted to be in tune with the times and keep up with the times, but not with the people; People were expected to be subjected to what was deemed best for them. So, this was avoided. All popular traditions, often likened to superstitions, were gradually eliminated. Saints were given too much prominence, so this was remedied. It must be said that there were many Protestant "advisers" on or around the commission. The supernatural, in general, preoccupied the minds of progressives, so it was adapted. If necessary, things were invented, improvised, and improvised a great deal. The anti-liturgical roots that had been running through the world for over four centuries were rediscovered, those that one might have thought had been exhausted by the Protestant Reformation. But no, it was necessary to continue exploring this vein, such as the hatred of private Masses, the saints… No one can honestly deny that the liturgy became Protestantized after the study of the Second Vatican Council and its liturgical reforms. Father Abbot of Solesmes, Dom Guéranger, liked to repeat that "the Protestants separated themselves from unity in order to believe less." During those 1960s, it would have seemed to any saints of the past that the Church believed less.

“The liturgy needed to be less clerical, more ecclesial, and open to participation. In this participation, Christians will more readily realize that they are the Church with which Christ associates himself in the exercise of his priesthood to worship the Father and sanctify humanity ^. ” A liturgy that was too clerical due to priests who were adherents of clericalism? The priest, in persona Christi , became the problem. But the reason was never stated, and authority was once again confused with authoritarianism. Everything was mixed up, as usual. It had been forgotten that the attire, the uniform, not only signified identity but, above all, compelled one to that identity. When confronted with this, the one who wears the uniform knows how this garment stifles his passions, transforming him into something greater than himself. But they wanted to force us to be what we were, without contributing anything of ourselves, without elevating ourselves and submitting to God's authority, since we were all ministers of Christ, without even seeking to imitate him, without any effort whatsoever. We see that the themes do not change from one era to the next. If we want an example of the loss of the supernatural, and therefore of the sacred, let us note that nowhere in the new Mass does Saint Paul's warning to those who receive Communion unworthily appear ^. Thus, during the Mass of Paul VI, there is never any confession, and yet everyone receives Communion, with almost no exceptions. "The Body of Christ is a right!" If one were to listen closely, one might perhaps hear: "I come to Mass, I have a right to it!" And everything concerning Communion has become somewhat pathetic in the new Mass. Long queues, single file , to take the sacred Body of Jesus in one's hand! For the sake of the air elsewhere, and without knowing what his hand held, without any gentleness, Dom Guéranger would have said… Finally, pitifully and mechanically, he took a step aside and moved beside the priest. Without blinking, he displayed his devotion by performing an improbable gesture, never prescribed by anyone, but copied by everyone. He prostrated himself stupidly before the empty tabernacle, swallowing the Holy Host at the conclusion of his disordered gesture. Oh, desolation! What a loss of meaning! A holy Curé of Ars would go mad to see faithful receiving communion in this way, faithful who have become robots thanks to the liturgical reform of Paul VI! Only robots could fail to realize that they hold the Lord of Lords in their hands, which already borders on sacrilege! Fortunately, the ignorance that governs this new practice partially exonerates the faithful! Dom Guéranger thus declared, speaking of the Protestants, that they "found themselves led to remove from worship all the ceremonies, all the formulas that express mysteries. Thus… there are no longer altars, but only a table; no longer sacrifice, as in all religions, but only a supper; no longer a church, but only a temple. We were there."

Let us compare the beginning of the celebration of Mass in the two “forms” to understand what separates them :
¹² – In the traditional Roman Missal: “First, the celebrant takes the amice by the ends of the cords, kisses it in the middle on the Cross, places it on his head; immediately he lowers it onto his neck so that the collar of his vestments is covered, passes the cords under his arms, then behind his back, etc. (…) The priest puts on the vestments and takes the chalice in his left hand, as it has been prepared, which he holds raised before his chest. His right hand holds the purse over the chalice. After bowing to the cross or to the image (of the cross) which is in the sacristy, he goes to the altar, preceded by the minister, etc.” (…) He ascends to the center of the altar, where he places the chalice towards the Gospel side, takes the corporal from the burse, which he spreads out in the center of the altar, places the chalice covered with the veil on it, while he puts the burse on the left side, etc. (…) He descends back onto the pavement, turns towards the altar where he remains standing in the center, with his hands joined before his chest, fingers joined and extended, right thumb crossed over left thumb (which he must always do when he joins his hands, except after the consecration), bareheaded, having first made a deep bow towards the cross or the altar, or a genuflection if the Blessed Sacrament is in the tabernacle, he begins Mass standing, etc. (…) When he says Aufer a nobis , the celebrant, with hands joined, ascends to the altar, etc. (…) Bowing in the middle of the altar, with his hands joined and placed on the altar in such a way that his little fingers touch the front, while his ring fingers rest on the table (this must always be observed when the joined hands are placed on the altar), etc. (…) When he says “the bodies whose relics are here,” he kisses the altar in the middle, with his hands outstretched and placed equidistant on either side, etc. (…) At solemn Mass, he places incense in the censer three times, saying at the same time: Ab illo benedicaris , “Be blessed by him,” etc.
– In the Missal of Paul VI: “In the sacristy, according to the various forms of celebration, the liturgical vestments of the priest and his ministers shall be prepared: for the priest, the alb, the stole, and the chasuble. (…) All those who wear the alb shall use the cord and the amice, unless another arrangement has been provided.” (…) The priest goes up to the altar and venerates it with a kiss. Then, if he deems it appropriate, he incenses it, walking around it. (…) Then, turning towards the people with outstretched hands, the priest greets them with suggested formulas… The entire Mass has thus become a rite bristling with options! Paul VI's missal makes so many parts and prayers of the ceremony optional that from one church to another, one does not attend the same Mass; it depends on the priest, sometimes on the bishop, but so rarely. One might almost think that we are giving far too much power to the priest by allowing him to decide on matters that are beyond his control. One might almost find, and some saints of the past would not be mistaken, that there is clericalism in letting the priest decide on the essential: the form of the path the faithful should take to reach God. The priest takes on a completely new dimension in the Mass of Paul VI, for what is often remembered about the Mass is his homily, and the new liturgy is often said to have been beautiful because of the priest's homily. Thus, clericalism is constantly on the verge of being present in the new Mass. The priest, who was merely a servant and who slipped into the vestments of the ultimate priest, Jesus Christ, could change nothing, take nothing away, add nothing to a rite that transcended him. It was only through the grace of a metamorphosis that he dared to proceed and follow in the footsteps of Christ, the priest of priests. There is no personalization of the priest as in the Mass of Paul VI. And the proliferation of choices also creates another flaw that does not exist in the Tridentine Mass: relativism. This is what too many choices entail. Who am I to choose? It was becoming a way for the modern world, poised for the great schism foreseen by Father Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, to grow: “The Church is uncompromising on principles because she believes, and tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church, on the contrary, are tolerant on principles because they do not believe, but uncompromising in practice because they do not love. The Church absolves sinners; the enemies of the Church absolve sins.” So yes, a little of Saint Pius V remains in Paul VI, but so little. The pomp, the sacredness, the meaning have been diminished. One can say one or two “Kyries” at will. Here, three were said to honor the three persons of the Trinity! The Confiteor has been reduced to the specific intercession of patron saints. In 2021, an aggiornamento of the French translations took place, which were often disastrous and sometimes heretical. Much was drawn from the old missal to return to clearer language. The Orate fratres , which Paul VI had earnestly requested be retained but which, in French, had been forgotten, was reinstated. And what about those faithful who were supposed to participate actively with this battery of new measures? Well, they don't participate, or only like robots, when everyone knows exactly what they have to do during a Tridentine Mass. When everyone actively participates through interior prayer, following the priest who advances with hushed steps towards God. As a Benedictine monk says: "And this, perhaps, is indeed why someone who has practiced the old Missal for years feels out of place in the new one: the formulas often recall Christian Antiquity and its source-like beauty, but the spirit is not always ancient; It reveals concerns that are neither ancient nor medieval [7]. This is how Abbot Barthe defines the authority of the Mass of Paul VI: "one could say that the new liturgy is lex orandi , not in itself, but for what it contains of the old liturgy." Now, 13% of the old missal remains in the new one.

It must be understood that all of this took shape in an era where contradictory statements were commonplace. Paul VI, in his address of November 26, 1969, indicated that Mass would be celebrated in the national language, whereas the Council, through Sacrosanctum Concilium, had explicitly requested the opposite, with very few exceptions. Here again, while the Council had stated that Gregorian chant should occupy the principal place in the chants of the Mass, it was agreed that by suppressing Latin, Gregorian chant would also be suppressed. Bugnini, the architect of the reform, went so far as to declare that it would be truly regrettable if, in the final restoration, this little gem had disappeared from the Ordo Missae . He was referring to the antiphon " Introibo ad altare dei ." Need we specify that it would disappear in the final version of the missal? The destruction of the liturgy necessitated the destruction of the Divine Office. Here again, the commission set about this task with extraordinary zeal. It was deemed that certain offices were redundant, so they were reduced and simplified. Prime was eliminated, with the claim that Lauds was already sufficient. People openly considered themselves more intelligent than their predecessors in the Church. A lectionary was compiled whose complexity continues to astonish, and the understanding provided by the annual rhythm of the traditional Mass was destroyed. Liturgy and catechism were confused. The readings were poorly structured, sometimes so long that they prevented any comprehension. The decisions of the rationalist professors on the commission so closely resembled what Dom Guéranger called "a lack of unctuousness" that there was nothing unctuous left in the new Mass, or only what existed before it and was still there for some unknown reason. "The need to find different readings for three years led to aberrant choices." Thus, the Gospel reading for the Ascension in Year A… makes no mention of the Ascension. For Pentecost in Year A, it's even worse. The Gospel reading is the one where Jesus appears to the apostles on Easter evening and breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Proclaiming this passage at the Mass of Pentecost can only create confusion among the faithful. What is the point of Pentecost if the apostles have already received the Holy Spirit? In the traditional missal, it is the Gospel reading for the first Sunday after Easter, along with the passage that describes what happens the following Sunday, that is, this Sunday after Easter (Saint Thomas). And there, it is clear that this gift of the Holy Spirit is distinct from that of Pentecost . ¹³ To align with the mentality of the time and the prophecy of John XXIII, the Bride of Christ prefers to resort to the remedy of mercy rather than wielding the weapons of severity . The story of Ananias and Sapphira has been omitted, and the account of Judas's suicide has been cut... even though the new lectionary offers an almost complete reading of the Acts of the Apostles! These passages describe scenes that are certainly too difficult for modern believers to bear. The "Judgment of Solomon" (1 Kings 3:16-28) has been removed because it might have shocked some people... A king threatening to cut a baby in two, good heavens! This is, therefore, as Dom Nocent said, a "new religion." It should be noted that the current Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Arthur Roche, has confirmed this in almost all his interviews for several months now. Those who thought that the only revolution that ever took place was the coming of Christ into this world have been sorely mistaken. Vatican II and its revolutionary upheavals have established themselves as the new gold standard of Catholicism, and it is clear that anyone who thinks otherwise is rebuked and mocked, publicly if necessary [12]. The traditionalists, as they are called, are the new public penitents, and one can imagine that in the near future they will be treated as public penitents were in the Middle Ages! The Song of Songs, which, in a magnificent premonition, spoke of the birth of the Virgin Mary, has been almost entirely suppressed. Dom Alcuin Reid, founding prior of Saint Benedict's Monastery ⁱⁿ La Garde-Freinet, through his articles and his book (available only in English), " Liturgy in the Twenty-Fifth Century ," meticulously details the abuses of the Bugnini Commission, aided by a myriad of subcommittees, one of which would become infamous: the one responsible for collections. Lauren Pristas, Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Philosophy at Caldwell College in the United States, has written a fascinating book (also only available in English, perhaps unsurprisingly), " The Collects of the Roman Missal ." She demonstrates that the reformers acted as if they were filming " The Texas Chain Saw Massacre " with obvious references to " Frankenstein ." The reformers sought out a prayer from the Gelasian Sacramentary because the one before them was unsuitable. However, when they didn't find what they were looking for at the source, they falsified it! It was no coincidence that it was inaccurate and had disappeared: its quality was compromised. Plenipotentiaries! The book deciphers and exposes all the reformers' abuses. For example? The postcommunion for the first Sunday of Advent is composed of a collect from the Ascension and a secret prayer from the month of September in the Verona Sacramentary. A collect and a secret prayer to create a postcommunion! And yet, the commission for the collects claimed to want to "respect the literary genres and liturgical functions (collects, offertory, postcommunion)." The postcommunion for the second Sunday of Advent says this: " Satisfied with this food of spiritual nourishment, we beseech you, Lord, to teach us, through participation in this mystery, to despise earthly things and to love heavenly things …" The ending has been changed to these words: “Teach us the true meaning of earthly things and the love of eternal goods.” Love, yes, but what kind of love? And above all, this kind of formula, a catchy phrase, as Claude Tresmontant would have said, is so prevalent in our era, and has been for far too long. Indeed, what is the true meaning of things? Why not change the wording? “Lord, we pray that you will teach us, through participation in this mystery, to despise earthly things and to love heavenly things.” Teach us the true meaning of earthly things and the meaning of heavenly things! The 1970 missal abounds in doctrinal approximations, compounded by French translations of great poverty or great ideology—whichever seems most appropriate. “The suppression of the opposition between the pursuit of earthly things and the pursuit of heavenly things is systematic throughout the neo-liturgy, whereas this opposition is omnipresent in the traditional liturgy and in traditional spirituality, because it is omnipresent in the Gospels and the Epistles ¹⁵ Thus, what was true for past generations was no longer entirely true for ^us.16

Of our time

Lauren Pristas denounces the Reformers' plundering of the old liturgy and the ideology that guided it. She shows that "every nuance of the 1962 Advent collects unambiguously expresses this Catholic doctrine of grace, in the rather subtle and non-didactic manner characteristic of prayers. Although the 1970 Advent collects do not explicitly contradict Catholic teaching on grace, they do not express it and, more worryingly, they do not seem to endorse it. The delicate question is how to summarize this fairly, because, given that the 1970 Advent collects cannot legitimately be understood or interpreted in a way incompatible with Catholic truth, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that they are liable to be misunderstood by those who are not sufficiently instructed in Catholic truth." The influence of Pelagianism is pervasive. At the same time as the reform led by Bugnini, Paul VI agreed with his minister and this commission, abolishing with a wave of his hand five of the six traditional orders leading to priestly ordination (porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, and subdeacon). Since society was becoming secularized, religion had to be secularized as well. Fifteen centuries of tradition erased in a few minutes (the list of orders is found in the Good Friday prayer from the 5th century). Similarly, Septuagesima and the Ember Days were abolished. On February 17, 1966, Paul VI had written an apostolic constitution, Paenemini , explaining that fasting was not only physical, but could be replaced by acts of charity! Everyone remembers Matthew (17:21), but this kind of demon is driven out only by prayer and fasting , and it is obvious, or at least it has been for 2000 years, that Christ is speaking of physical fasts that cannot be other forms of fasting … Ash Wednesday owed its survival to the Pope's displeasure at the suppression of Septuagesima… The teaching on the Last Things became optional, and, like everything that was optional and did not align with the reform, it disappeared into the dustbin of history. For at least a decade, society had begun to unravel, and the Church, instead of remaining a beacon in this desolate world, preferred to reject its foundations rather than affirm them. The world and the Church, as Gustave Thibon described, shared the same ambition: to be fashionable, like a falling leaf.

The rebellion began. It took many forms, it made mistakes, some recanted, there were betrayals, and most felt bewildered. The spirit of reform was everywhere and had transformed everything, from top to bottom, not only the liturgy and sacred ritual, but also the sacraments, which were profoundly reworked, and not necessarily for the better. Priests were no longer identifiable; indeed, nothing was; everything was blurred, nothing was certain anymore. The churches, which had already begun to empty, emptied completely. This reform had been so thoroughly conceived that the faithful had not been considered, or were treated as undifferentiated entities destined to follow the Church in all its depravity… The desertion of the churches was confirmed and intensified. Almost everything the reformers had foreseen failed to materialize. After decades of turmoil, the beloved Pope Benedict XVI published his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. This document was intended to give greater prominence to the traditional, or "extraordinary," Mass in the dioceses. To say that it was largely ignored by the bishops is an understatement. In a Church that was witnessing people of varying ages ceasing to be Catholic one after another, the German pope's motu proprio offered a glimpse of the Church's potential for renewal. Since progressive ideology still held sway in many minds and hearts, this motu proprio was deliberately suppressed. The bishops worked to bury this retrograde motu proprio. Even today, some priests still condemn the pontiff's actions! Since the end of the Council, it was acceptable to be content with a few older figures, such as Josemaría Escrivá, who was granted the grace to use the old rite (cf. Agatha Christie's Indult ¹⁷ ), but for young people to engage in the "usus antiquior" was truly too difficult to accept! The fruits of the reform did not correspond to what the experts had predicted. In ten years, from 2007, the date of the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum , to 2017, the number of traditional rites had doubled worldwide (not counting the expansion of the Society of Saint Pius X)! And without any support on the ground from the guardians of the institution, the bishops. Pastoral care and synodal meetings are open to all, except for the older generation. The calculation was correct: roughly 5% of the French faithful, with a very young average age, provide between 15 and 20% of French priests! Ask any diocesan priest still authorized to celebrate in both forms what he thinks. He will always tell you the same thing: the fruits of the Tridentine Mass are unparalleled. Since the arrival of Traditionis Custodes, the seminaries of the Society of Saint Peter and Saint Pius X have experienced significant growth, with a total enrollment of over one hundred seminarians. It's almost as if the motu proprio has created the opposite (once again!) of its intention. The Chartres Pilgrimage had to close registration and, with 16,000 participants, has never been so successful as this year! The 5,000 pilgrims of the Society of Saint Pius X have been unintentionally overlooked. This figure seems insignificant compared to the number of French pilgrims. Who walks 100 kilometers in three days for their faith these days? We can note here the desire of young Catholics who regularly attend the traditional Mass; they are also dedicated to renewing their lives with the Gospel! In these times, when it is common to hear individuals express themselves in the media, stating, for example, "I am Catholic, but I am in favor of abortion," we see people who follow their own moral code, or more precisely, the morality of their time, and who think that this is what it means to be Catholic!

A pattern emerged in every revolution throughout the world when the utopia that sparked the revolution clashed with reality. The attitude inevitably hardened. All those who had praised the supposed fruits of reform without seeing that it had only accelerated the utter collapse of the Church of God, hardened their stance. Organized by men from the Vatican, by priests, by the University of Saint Anselm in Rome—a veritable hotbed of progressives of every stripe, whose treatment of Benedict XVI before and even after his election we will refrain from recounting—they lay in wait, lying in wait, for the chance to emerge from the shadows into which Summorum Pontificum . They stepped into the light when Pope Francis was elected, and they succeeded in "advising" him. Their champion, Andrea Grillo, wrote out the content of Pope Francis's motu proprio in numerous articles several years before it became official. No one familiar with the machinations of the progressive liturgists who make up the Pontifical University of Saint Anselm was surprised by the content of Francis's motu proprio, wielding both whip and stick to drive the "traditionalists" from the temple—a term, or rather a label, often used by priests who only know lovers of the Tridentine Mass from the hours they spend on the internet—allowing them to create a vast, extraordinarily diverse range of life profiles. The blow was severe, not only for the faithful attached to the traditional Roman Mass, but also for the humble servant of the vineyard that was Benedict XVI. But what are such considerations compared to the revolution that must take place? The Pope Emeritus, who had restored peace to the faithful, was being reproached for having acted improperly, and people rejoiced that this was being rectified . ¹⁸</sup> It is easy to learn about Andrea Grillo and note that, in his works, he sometimes diverged considerably from Church law. So much so that he declared transubstantiation not to be a dogma. Many dogmas, among the most important, fundamental, and decisive, are not written down. Andrea Grillo thus asserted that it was abnormal to have two forms of the rite… One might be tempted to point out to a professor of liturgy that this has always existed, especially during the time of Saint Pius V, who, when he published his Roman Missal, did not authorize the use of older missals if they were more than two hundred years old, but forbade them from changing, because their legitimacy was so deeply rooted! Paul VI would act in precisely the opposite way and grant himself the power to prohibit the old Mass, the Mass of All Saints, which had been celebrated for almost 2000 years! Why did he need to ban the Tridentine Rite? Did he truly believe in the righteousness of his actions? Why didn't he allow the two rites to evolve in parallel, like Saint Pius V? And besides, isn't there an "extraordinary" rite of the Roman Rite for Zaire, endorsed by Pope Francis himself? Another example is the Anglo-Catholic form of the Roman Rite, the "Divine Worship" missal ^Tridentine missal. We see in the repeated actions of these reformers that their modus operandi is based on authoritarianism. This was the case fifty years ago, and it is the same with their children or heirs, as you prefer. Professor Grillo, who is active in the press, acting as a kind of enforcer for Pope Francis and Cardinal Roche, defends and promotes Traditionis custodes (a title that adds insult to injury in a certain way) against anyone who expresses doubt about the validity of the said motu proprio.20 ^He has clashed with Dom Alcuin and with Dom Pateau, Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault. In his response to the interview Dom Pateau gave to Famille chrétienne ²¹ Grillo rebuked the Abbot, acting as the arm of the late Argentinian pope: “What Francis is asking, with Traditionis custodes , is to build bridges ‘between people’ in the single Ordinary Common Rite , and not ‘bridges between two forms of the Roman Rite.’” “The Reverend Father de Fontgombault replied, beginning his letter with: ‘Indeed, the liturgy is the place par excellence for building bridges: a bridge with Christ so that all members of God’s people may be reunited in him.’ Fifty years of pitched battles summarized in a single sentence. On one side, the desire to find solutions here below on one’s own, in a horizontal manner, and on the other, the understanding that we owe everything to God’s grace and that everything must lead us back to that grace! On one side, a hermeneutic of rupture, and on the other, the hermeneutic of continuity, so dear to Pope Benedict XVI ^. On one side, the Pelagian approach, so well suited to the modern world; on the other, the Catholic approach, entirely Catholic, respecting the entire history of the Church and all its tradition. This battle has only just begun.”

Article written on Ember Friday of Pentecost. ²³