The SSPX and The Council

The SSPX and the Council
Why the Society of St Pius X is Right About Vatican II
Moyra Doorly
1/4/2013
Contents
Foreword 1 Turning Towards the World 2 The Background to the Council 3 Religious Liberty 4 Ecumenism 5 The Mass 6 The Priesthood 7 Active Participation 8 A Culture of Desire 9 The Social Reign of Christ 10 The Status of the Council Declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre Bibliography
2 7 20 36 42 49 64 70 86 98 110 114 116
Foreword
Arriving at the conclusion that the Society of Saint Pius X is right about the Second Vatican Council has not exactly been a comfortable process. Fears of exile to the gulag have been combined with stupefaction at how far the Council documents actually do deviate from the traditional teachings of the Church. It may be acceptable to admit that the documents have been wrongly interpreted, or even that they contain weaknesses, failures of prudence and inadequate doctrinal formulations. But the insistence is that the Council documents are true to Tradition and as such should be accepted without dissent. For a long time I did accept them, and even tried to read them. Attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form offered by traditionalist groups reconciled with Rome, as I also did, seemed entirely a matter of aesthetic preference for a richer and more reverent liturgy. These groups shared the opinion that the Council documents had been mistakenly implemented by over-zealous reformers and that the whole scale adoption of the vernacular, Communion in the hand, Mass facing the people and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist and so on had not been mandated by the Council. And for a while this seemed to explain the determination of many in the Church to eradicate all pre-conciliar liturgical forms, as well as the disdain with which the old devotions were held. When Pope Benedicts 2007 Moto Proprio Summorum Pontificum recognised of the status of the traditional Mass and proposed a more liberal framework for its celebration, all the talk for a while was of the reform of the reform. Here at last was recognition of the value of the traditional liturgy and
the suggestion that the reformed liturgy might have something to learn from it. In this light, the refusal of the SSPX to recognise the Council could only be due, it was said, to their refusal to acknowledge that life has moved on since the 1950s. Viewed as prodigal sons of the Church, the priests of the SSPX and their lay faithful were now expected to repent of their stubborn ways. Then I found a passage in the 1970 General Instruction on the Roman Missal which puzzled me, to say the least. This passage claims that while some of the Fathers of the Council of Trent had desired the introduction of the vernacular to the Mass, they had refrained from doing so because:
... the circumstances prevailing in those days forced the Council to a conclusion incompatible with that desire, namely, that there was an imperative need to emphasise once again a traditional doctrine of the Church. This was the doctrine that the eucharistic Sacrifice is in the first place an action of Christ himself, and that its intrinsic efficacy is independent of the manner in which the faithful take part in it.1 (my emphasis)
As explained in the previous paragraph of the General Instruction, the circumstances prevailing in those days referred to the post-Reformation period. But the argument being made seemed to be that the 1960s were considered so favourable to the Church that the need to emphasise this doctrine was not so acute. Therefore the Fathers of Vatican II could relax and introduce the vernacular to the liturgy. What this argument suggests, however, is that the vernacular is only appropriate when times are good, that the traditional doctrines of the Church dont always need to be emphasised, and that the middle of the 20th century really was favourable to the Church. Then I also read that according the General Instruction,...the celebration of Mass is of its nature a community activity ....2 And I was even more startled, because how can the celebration of Mass be a community activity if, as quoted above, the eucharistic Sacrifice is in the first place an action of Christ
1 2
General Instruction on the Roman Missal, Foreword, para 11. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, para 14.
himself, and ... its intrinsic efficacy is independent of the manner in which the faithful take part in it. Another question then arose. If the Sacrifice of the Mass is in the first place an action of Christ himself, why involve actively the laity, especially if the intrinsic efficacy of the Sacrifice of the Mass is independent of how the laity participates? Given that a radical transformation of the liturgy of the Church has taken place since the Council, it seemed likely to me that Vatican IIs vigorous promotion of the active participation in the liturgy by the faithful must have been at least partly responsible for the changes. At the same time, it was being claimed that the current liturgical debacle was due to the misinterpretation and mistaken implementation of the Council by those over-eager for novelty and change. Therefore the Council could not be held responsible for the liturgical revolution that has taken place, and was thereby exonerated from all responsibility for the current dire situation. According to Alcuin Reids study The Organic Development of the Liturgy3, however, the 20th century Liturgical Movement had been promoting liturgical reform for decades before Vatican II. Of course, the Liturgical Movement had not proposed such disgraceful shows as priests prancing about with balloons and liturgical dancing around the altar. But they did promote Mass facing the people, the introduction of the vernacular, the simplification of the rites, an emphasis on the Liturgy of the Word and greater involvement by the laity. Were the Fathers of Vatican II entirely unaware of the Liturgical Movement and its new ideas, which had been around since at least the 1920s? Or could it be that Vatican II was ready to embrace such changes and that those responsible for it are simply embarrassed by the results and cannot bring themselves to admit that the Council got it wrong?
2005, The Ignatius Press, San Francisco
It was then that I decided to study the SSPXs arguments, which of course meant also studying the Council documents, a challenging task if ever there was one. Until then I had shared the opinion that the SSPX was just another traditionalist group attached to the pre-conciliar liturgy, only more so. Quite what that more so amounted to, I wasnt sure, beyond the fact that a dispute with the Vatican, which pre-dated my conversion to Catholicism, had led to the SSPX being ostracised from the Church. But it soon became obvious that the SSPX differs fundamentally from other traditionalist groups reconciled to Rome. As Pope Benedict pointed out in his letter of March 12, 2009 concerning the lifting of the excommunications against the 4 bishops of the SSPX ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988:
...the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-Conciliar magisterium of the Popes.
As it turned out, the difference between the SSPX and traditionalist groups such as the Fraternity of St Peter, the Institute of Christ the King and others, is that the SSPX continues to criticise the Council whereas the others are constrained not to. In fact, in order to achieve reconciliation with Rome, these groups have to sign an agreement not to criticise the Council, an agreement which states:
Concerning other doctrines which the Second Vatican Council teaches, or concerning posterior reforms be they liturgical, or canonical, which are viewed by some as being difficult to conciliate with preceding Magisterial declarations, I assume the obligation of following a positive line of study and communication with the Holy See while avoiding all polemic.4
Granted, Archbishop Lefebvre also signed the Protocol, but later withdrew his consent to the document when he realised what was being said: remain attached to the pre-Conciliar liturgy and Rome will accommodate you,
Protocol, May 5, 1988, para 3
but dont criticize the Council. And yet in his address to the Bishops of Chile, the then Cardinal Ratzinger stated:
The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.5
Furthermore, in the years following the Council, Pope Paul VI made the following comments:
Differing from other councils, this one was not directly dogmatic, but disciplinary and pastoral.6 There are those who wonder what the authorities, the theological qualification, that the Council wanted to give his teachings, knowing that it has avoided giving solemn dogmatic definitions, engaging the infallibility of the Magisterium. And the answer is known for those who remember the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated November 16, 1964: given the nature of the pastoral council, it has declined to speak in an extraordinary manner dogmas with the note of infallibility.7
And so it is clear that the SSPXs approximately 500 priests, 200 seminarians, three hundred religious brothers and sisters, as well as thousands of otherwise ordinary Catholic supporters across the world, find themselves in an extraordinary situation for reasons that go beyond an attachment to some previous form of the Latin liturgical tradition. Hopefully the following account will go some way towards explaining the depth of the Societys opposition to the Second Vatican Council and its reforms.
5 6
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Address to Chilean Bishops, July 13, 1988. www.ecclesiadei.nl. Pope Paul VI, General Audience of August 6, 1975. www.vatican.va. 7 Pope Paul VI, General Audience of January 12, 1966. www.vatican.va.
1 Turning Towards the World

A complete overthrow of the entire tradition and teaching of the Church has been brought about since the Council by the Council. Archbishop Lefebvre.8
In one respect, the most radical liturgical reformer is in agreement with the position taken by the Society of Saint Pius X. Both have identified a spirit of Vatican II at work in the Council, a spirit which justifies all manner of liturgical experimentation in the eyes of those most enthusiastic for change, and a spirit which promotes a new religion that is not the Catholic faith according to SSPX founder Archbishop Lefebvre. Rejecting the opinion that the current liturgical crisis in the Church can be attributed to the faulty interpretation and implementation of the Second Vatican Council, the SSPX claims that at the root of this crisis are the new ideas clearly present in the Council documents and manifested in the reforms the Council introduced. It is this new thinking which has shaped the reforms, the SSPX argues, and attempting to heal the post-Conciliar liturgical rupture by giving Gregorian chant pride of place again, or introducing more Latin, will only paper over the cracks. As Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in An Open Letter to Confused Catholics:
But it is impossible to maintain it is only the later applications of the Council that are at fault. The rebellion of the clergy, the defiance of the pontifical authority, all the excesses in the liturgy and the new theology, and the desertion of the churches, have they nothing to do with the Council, as some have recently asserted? Let us be honest: they are its fruits!9
8 9
A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976, page 260.

page 112.
The radical difference in appearance between the traditional and reformed liturgies is, according to the SSPX, the manifestation of a fundamental shift in belief which has resulted in a new teaching on the Churchs mission to the world. Drawing inspiration from the writings of the Modernists, Liberals, Integral Humanists, Sillonists, revolutionaries and others, and contrary to the repeated warnings of the pre-conciliar popes, Vatican II has abandoned Christs mandate to convert all nations. Instead, the Conciliar Church promotes dialogue with men of all faiths and none in an effort to bring about the unity of all through shared values, thereby creating a universal brotherhood of man based on a concept of human dignity which ignores both the reality and the consequences of mans fallen nature. This radical reorientation, which necessitates the sidelining of the unique teachings of the Catholic Faith in order to achieve common ground with those in error, has determined the nature of the liturgical reform. It explains why the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has become the Celebration of the Eucharist, and why the sacrificing priest is now the president of the assembly. According to Archbishop Lefebvre in A Bishop Speaks:
Let there be no mistake. It is not a question of a difference between Msgr. Lefebvre and Pope Paul VI. It is a question of the radical incompatibility between the Catholic Church and the Conciliar Church, the Mass of Paul VI being the symbol and the programme of the Conciliar Church.10
One of the Councils professed aims was to embrace modern thought and render the rites and worship of the Church more suited to the modern age. For example, according to the 1970 General Instruction on the Roman Missal (Cenam Paschalem):
....the Second Vatican Council assembled with the aim of adapting the Church to the needs of todays apostolate...11
10 11
A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976, page 241. Foreword, para 12.
To achieve this, as the General Instruction points out, the prayers of the new Missal have been adapted and new prayers added in order to speak more effectively to the times:
While many of the texts are derived unchanged from the most ancient traditions of the Church, some have been adapted to contemporary needs and circumstances; yet others are completely new, drawing on the thoughts and even the words of recent conciliar documents ... Such changes have been made so that the mode of expression may be in harmony with that of modern theology and with the facts of contemporary Church discipline.12
It is in seeking to marry the ideas of the age to the morals and teachings of Christian doctrine, according to Archbishop Lefebvre, that the Council not only laid the Church open to the spirit of the age but actually embraced it. In order to achieve a new synthesis of Gospel teaching and contemporary thinking suitable for modern man, Tradition has been adapted to accommodate elements foreign to the Deposit of Faith, while traditional doctrines deemed unsuitable for the modern age are played down. In this way the door is opened by the Councils 1965 Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), for the sidelining of the Churchs traditional teaching on the social reign of Christ. This teaching proposes the union of temporal and spiritual powers in a Catholic state, as well as the obligation of such a state to regulate and moderate the public expression of other forms of worship in order to defend its citizens against the diffusion of false doctrines which, in the judgement of the Church, endanger their eternal salvation. Going way beyond the concept of Religious Tolerance which, in a Catholic state, the Church has deemed necessary for the preservation of peace, Dignitatis Humanae declares:
the right to religious freedom is based on the very dignity of the human person ...[It] must be given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civil right.13
12 13
Para 15. para 2.
This concept of Religious Liberty, the SSPX claims, is based on a view of human dignity which plays down the distinction between the dignity man possesses by virtue of his nature, and the dignity which depends upon his actions and which can be lost by adherence to error. Religious Liberty confers rights on error and inevitably leads to the religious indifferentism of the state in which the one, true faith is viewed as just another religion, along with the others. As Archbishop Lefebvre pointed out:
They thought that they would attract the world by accepting the ideas of the world. They thought they would attract to the Church those who do not believe, by accepting the ideas of those persons who do not believe, by accepting the ideas of modern man this modern man who is a liberal, who is a modernist, who is a man who accepts the plurality of religions, who no longer accepts the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. This I have heard twice from the envoys of the Holy See, who told me that the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ was no longer possible in our time; that we must accept definitely the pluralism of religions. That is what they told me; that the Encyclical Quas Primas which is so beautiful, on the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was written by Pope Pius XI, would never be written today. That is what they said to me the official envoys of the Holy See.14
Similarly, the Councils 1964 Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) introduces the new concept of dialogue with error, not to convert those in error to Catholicism, but to achieve an illusionary unity with those who disagree with the Church on significant points of doctrine and maintain the right to do so. In proposing the doctrine about the Lords Supper15, but not the doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as a suitable subject for Ecumenical dialogue, the Decree also acknowledges the Ecumenical importance of Church renewal and liturgical reform, a connection further suggested by the similarities, as pointed out by Archbishop Lefebvre, between the changes to the Mass introduced by the Council and those of Martin Luther, changes which reflected Luthers view of the Mass as merely:
14 15
A Bishop Speaks, page 247. para 22.
10
The SSPX and the Council a sacrifice of praise, that is an act of praise and thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiating sacrifice renewing and applying the sacrifice of the cross.16
And so, the Councils 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) makes no mention of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice, and instead emphasises the Mass, or rather the Eucharist, as a memorial of Christs death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet....17 The traditional doctrine that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a re-presentation of Christs sacrifice at Calvary, in an unbloody manner, by which Christs Body and Blood are offered to God as satisfaction for the sins mankind continues to commit, has all but been abandoned by the reforms in favour of the view, condemned by the Council of Trent18, that the Mass was instituted solely for the spiritual nourishment of the faithful. At the same time, the Councils promotion of the priesthood of the people of God and its repeated references to the priest as president of the assembly, undermines the concept of the sacrificing priest called by Christ to offer to God His Sacrifice, in His Person, on the altars of the Church. Instead the reforms emphasise the Eucharist as a community gathering, a fraternal banquet celebrated by the people of God who gather round the Table of the Lord, with the priest presiding. But according to Archbishop Lefebvre:
It is the priest who offers the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and the faithful participate in this offering, with all their heart, with all their soul, but it is not they who offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass.19
Thus the reforms introduced by the Council promote a view of the Mass which does not reflect the fullness and entirety of the Churchs traditional teaching. To appeal to autonomous modern man who has discarded such
16 17
A Bishop Speaks, page 194. Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 47. 18 Part II, Ch IV, Question LXX. Baronius Press Edition, p 241. 19 A Bishop Speaks, page 247.
11
outdated concepts as original sin and believes he is intrinsically good, the new rite of Mass and the new thinking behind it, reflect a lack of distinction between the redemption of mankind, achieved by Christ through His sacrificial offering on the Cross which paid the debt to divine justice for the sins of fallen man, and salvation which requires that individuals cooperate with grace and realise that although redeemed, man still sins and is therefore in need of the continued propitiatory offering of Christs Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In effect, the reforms have created a liturgy of the saved according to the SSPX study The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, a liturgy based on a new understanding of the Mass as:
...less an application of the merits of Redemption and more a liturgy of the saved the liturgy of a people your Son has gained for you ... Rather than being an action whereby the priest in persona Christi applies the merits and satisfactions won by Christ in His redemptive sacrifice, the Mass is the action of a people the sacred assembly, a chosen race, a royal priesthood who celebrate with thanksgiving a Redemption already released in full.20
Now, all the emphasis is on the celebrating community while the respect and honour due to the Body and Blood of Christ is neglected, even ignored, as the worship of the Church becomes increasingly profane and secularised. Whats more, the reforms have introduced a collectivist mentality into the worship of the Church, reflected in the relentless promotion of the active participation of the laity, despite the traditional doctrine that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is, in the first place, an action of Christ himself, and that its intrinsic efficacy is independent of the manner in which the faithful take part in it.21 This collective mentality is also reflected in concerted attempts to eradicate devotions considered too individualistic by the reformers; in the promotion of collective confession, or rather reconciliation, services; and in
20 21
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform: A Theological and Liturgical Study, page 33. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, Foreword, para 11.
12
the transformation of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction into generalised blessing services for the sick. As if this wasnt enough, Collegiality undermines the personal authority of priests, of bishops, and the pope, an authority conferred by God on the men He has called to serve His Church. Now, authority belongs to the group, to the collective, to the People of God, and is exercised through innumerable commissions, councils and conferences which paralyse individuals and frequently become talking shops for those with an agenda to push.
Once the impression is given that the teachings of the Church contain no more truth than any other religious or mythical system, and as soon as this is combined with a belief in human autonomy and the innate goodness of man freed from whatever restricts and constrains him, everything is up for grabs: the status of the Catholic Church status as the sole ark of salvation is played down; teachings considered an obstacle to dialogue are avoided. dogmas and ready-made formula are shunned in favour of creative expressions of encounter with the Mystery of God. the true, sacrificial character of the Mass is sidelined; doubts are cast on the True Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; marks of respect towards the Sacred Species and ceremonies in its honour are suppressed. the unique character of the sacrificing priesthood is undermined; the priest is now the president of the assembly which gathers together to celebrate the Eucharist.
13
the exaltation of human dignity and the autonomy of conscience call into question the need for obedience. Collegiality collectivises Church hierarchies and undermines papal authority; the inspirations of the Holy Ghost to an individual bishop are subjected to the vote of the Bishops Conference; parishes are run by committees of lay people.
Inherent in this modernisation process is the vilification of everything considered traditional, outdated and no longer relevant. The Church before Vatican II is presented as out of touch and impotent, according to Archbishop Lefebvre:
The traditional Church is guilty in her wealth, in her triumphalism; the Council Fathers feel guilty at being out of the world rather than of the world. They are already blushing for their episcopal insignia; soon they will be ashamed of their cassocks.22
However contemporary thought presents itself, whether as high or low, libertarian or communitarian, popular or exclusive, the rejection of the sacrificial principle is its distinguishing feature. While traditional belief systems place man firmly within the context of a cosmic order created and controlled by supernatural forces, contemporary belief views man as the primary reality and either rejects the concept of a supernatural realm altogether or relegates it to a source of extraordinary knowledge for mans benefit. Consequently modern man makes no sacrifices and neither does he offer them. Having undergone a spiritual self-promotion, he doesnt think he needs to.
22
A Bishop Speaks, page 230.
14
The irony is that having relinquished his unique status as created by God in His own image, modern man assumes the status of an animal, the payoff being that he is free to behave like one. This allows him the liberty to challenge and discard traditional moral constraints on behaviour that are considered to be the product of outworn and authoritarian structures. Behaviours previously considered wrong because they were sinful are made acceptable in the name of freedom of choice and self-expression, while extreme manifestations of these behaviours are redefined as disorders that can be remedied by social and psychotherapeutic intervention. While contemporary culture boasts of its openness, inclusivity and tolerance, its continual promotion of unity in diversity conceals a desire for uniformity around modern ideas. To this end, traditional belief systems, moral codes and cultural norms are subjected to a comparison process aimed at dissecting and dismantling their claims to uniqueness by stressing their similarities. By claiming that the religions of the world offer different but equal paths to the divine, and by simultaneously accusing them of oppressive and unnecessary restrictions on human freedom, the contemporary belief system is offered as an all-embracing and universal path to a new heaven on earth, one without traditional limits and boundaries and therefore more desirable. What is then advocated is a unity of the diverse around the single, unifying principle that no single opinion should be allowed to dominate, except, of course, the opinion that no single opinion should be allowed to dominate. Thus, the new belief system claims to be unique among all others in its condemnation of the intolerance, prejudice and divisiveness that are said to result from claims to uniqueness. This unity of the diverse is, in fact, the unity of individuals who have transcended the traditional and inherited limitations imposed on them by organised religion, the family, race, gender, social class etc. Since both
15
original sin and mankinds fallen status are denied, modern man has little need of recourse to grace though the sacraments of the Church, or of making satisfaction to God through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Instead, by assuming his autonomous status, and with faith in his ability to save himself by his own means, todays man believes he is capable of achieving paradise in the here and now. The contemporary, anti-sacrificial world view also creates the ideal conditions for an economy of desire to flourish. With their ability to create an abundance of goods on a massive scale, modern manufacturing systems have undoubtedly contributed to the material abundance of the western world. But these manufacturing systems also depend upon the constant stimulation of appetites in order to sell the goods coming off their production lines. In this respect the modern world view and the now dominant capitalist economic system are mutually dependent, and together they forge a culture industry to promote the values and ideas which sustain them. Capitalism both depends upon and encourages the belief in consumption as the ultimate good because it helps create the ideal consumers of its products. Contemporary culture offers to free the will and unleash the appetites, thereby promising entry to the garden of earthly delights. The sign over the garden door might read Abandon restraint all ye who enter here, but as every addict knows, the appetite tends to grow on what it feeds. What the sign doesnt say is that the door to the garden opens in one direction only. Once inside, the individual is anything but free because sooner or later consumption becomes the only aim. The ideal subject of todays culture industry is always hungry but never satisfied.
16
Admittedly, the 1965 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) recognises the problem of the universal drowning out the particular:
...a more universal form of culture is gradually taking shape, and through it the unity of mankind is being fostered and expressed in the measure that the particular characteristics of each culture are preserved.23
But there is a conflict here, because although the need to preserve the particular characteristics of each culture is recognised, this new and more universal form of culture is credited with fostering and expressing the unity of mankind. But universal culture has no interest in preserving particular characteristics, including those of the Church, which contradict its own values, and actively seeks to discredit and marginalize them. And yet Gaudium et Spes speaks in glowing terms of contemporary culture, recognising in it much that is good and admirable:
The Church, moreover, acknowledges the good to be found in the social dynamism of today, particularly progress towards unity, healthy socialisation, and civil and economic cooperation. The encouragement of unity is in harmony with the deepest nature of the Churchs mission, for it is in the nature of a sacrament a sign and instrument that is of communion with God and of unity among all men.24
But what is the nature of this unity? Does it consist of drawing all men into the unity of the Holy Catholic Church founded by Christ as the true arc of salvation? Or does it represent a new orientation characterised by the discarding of the Churchs Divine mandate in favour of a new vision, in which the Pilgrim Church cooperates with those of all faiths and none as they journey together towards their eternal destiny? As Gaudium et Spes claims:
Thus the Church, at once a visible organisation and a spiritual community, travels the same journey as all mankind and shares the same earthly lot with the world: it is to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ and transformation into the family of God.25
23 24
Para 54. Para 42. 25 Para 40.
17
No longer the Church Militant standing in opposition to the values of the world, no longer armed against the hostility of those who seek the Churchs downfall, the Pilgrim Church is now a leaven, offering her services to the world in order to purify the worlds values and learn from the good they contain.
The Church has a visible social structure, which is a sign of its unity in Christ: as such it can be enriched, and it is being enriched, by the evolution of social life not as if something were missing from the constitution which Christ gave the Church, but in order to understand this constitution more deeply, express it better, and adapt it more successfully to our times.26
Again there is a conflict here. The constitution given to the Church by her Divine founder who is God cannot, by definition, be enriched. And so Gaudium et Spes backtracks with the suggestion that until Vatican II, the men of the Church did not properly understand or express that constitution, which now needs to be enriched by the evolution of social life in the 20 th century. And how is this new vision, in which the Pilgrim Church cooperates with those whose values it so esteems, to be achieved? Through dialogue, of course:
And so the Council ... can find no more eloquent expression of its solidarity and respectful affection for the whole human family, to which it belongs, than to enter into dialogue with it...27
Vatican II was convened in the middle of a century estimated by the United Nations to be the most murderous in history. The Council Fathers met less that 20 years after the end of a war which had claimed the lives of 60 million people. It is possible to attribute a naive optimism to the idealisation of the modern world demonstrated by Gaudium et Spes. But surely there is also a new way of thinking at work in this document, a thinking which is at odds with the Tradition of the Church because it chooses to ignore, and
26 27
Para 44. Para 3.
18
consequently fails to address, the reality of evil and its influence on the affairs of men. It is also possible to suggest that the Fathers of the Council got carried away by the heady atmosphere of liberation, and the casting off of outdated constraints, that so characterised the 1960s, a decade in which revolutions of every variety were underway and the prophets of the emerging counter-culture were making their promises of unbridled freedom, love, and letting it all hang out. Time has now tested the Councils new way of thinking and what is the result? The world has simply carried on regardless, ridding itself of every last vestige of Catholic teaching, morality and culture, in order to establish in its place a new Pagan empire in which you can worship any god, or gods, you like as long as you dont claim that yours is the one, true one. The secularist and atheist might profess no belief, and sneer at the ever-growing array of spiritualities on offer in todays market-place in a manner reminiscent of the contempt shown by the liturgical expert for the popular devotions of the Catholic faithful. But underlying secularism and atheism is self-worship, the worship of autonomous man who has come of age at last and stands proud in the face of his achievements and capacity to be master of all he surveys. An atheist might not believe in God, or the gods. But he believes in himself. Turning to Archbishop Lefebvre in I Accuse the Council:
To denounce publicly the machinations of churchmen who sought to make this Council the Churchs peace of Yalta with her worst enemies, which is in reality a new betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, is to render an immense service to Our Lord and to the salvation of souls.28
28
I Accuse the Council, Preface, page x.
19
2 The Background to the Council

The adoption of liberal theses by a Council could not have occurred except in a non-infallible pastoral council, and cannot be explained without there having been a secret, detailed preparation which the historians will eventually uncover to the great stupefaction of Catholics who confuse the eternal Roman Catholic Church with the human Rome susceptible to infiltration by enemies robed in purple. Archbishop Lefebvre.29
Throughout the first half of the 20th century an increasingly influential Liturgical Movement called for the reform of the liturgy of the Church. These reforms were aimed at simplifying the rites by stripping away what was perceived as the superfluous accumulations of the centuries, fostering the laitys active participation in the liturgy, and rendering the rites more suitable for modern man. When the claim is made that the liturgical crisis in the Church is due to the misinterpretation and implementation of the Council documents, the similarity between the reforms introduced by Vatican II and those promoted by the Liturgical Movement for decades prior to the Council should also be noted, as should early indications of the desacralising effect these new ideas would have when adopted by the Church. In the United States the practice of introducing parishes to the new ideas began in 1940 when the first American Liturgical Week was held in Chicago. This is how the people of Seattle were introduced to Mass facing the people for the first time during a Liturgical Week hosted by the Diocese in the summer of 1962, just months before Vatican II convened. Throughout the Mass, a lay commentator speaking in English from a lectern in the sanctuary encouraged the people to join in the responses and in the singing of hymns.
29
A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976, page 260.
20
It was a little taste of the future, the website of the United States Bishops Conference30 observes. It was also a little taste of the past, because the Catholics of Hubbards Woods, Illinois, had been familiar with Mass facing the people since 1957 when Msgr Reynold Hillenbrand re-ordered the sanctuary at Sacred Heart Church, having gained permission for the versus populam orientation.31 Going back even further, Romano Guardini, author of The Spirit of the Liturgy published in 1918, experimented with new liturgical forms when he established a community of young people at Burg Rothenfels, Germany, which continued until the Nazis closed it in 1939. According to a description of the chapel there, quoted in Alcuin Reids The Organic Development of the Liturgy:
The walls were white; daylight, or candlelight in the evening, provided the main decorative element. The altar was not placed against the back wall ... but forward toward the people who sat on small black cubes arranged around it on three sides. The presider was seated behind the altar and so closed the circle...32
In another example, Pius Parsch, a canon of the Augustinian monastery at Klosterneuberg near Vienna, reordered the chapel of nearby Saint Gertrudes in 1935 to include an altar for Mass facing the people. Described by Alcuin Reid as the leader of the Liturgical Movement in Austria, Pius Parschs Sunday Mass liturgy at Saint Gertrudes in 1950 included participatory singing by the people, readings and prayers in German, an offertory procession, and the reception of Holy Communion standing.33 Commenting on the developments at Saint Gertrudes chapel in The Modern Rite, Klaus Gamber neatly encapsulates a common experience of the Mass today:
30 31
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website: www.usccb.com. University of Saint Mary of the Lake website: www.usml.edu/liturgicalinstitute/hillenbrand. 32 page 93. 33 page 111.
21
The SSPX and the Council Pius Parschs Praying and Singing Mass was often transformed into a prayer spoken by priest and people in alternation, and enlivened by a few hymns. Hardly a trace remained of the celebration of a mystery.34
As The Organic Development of the Liturgy documents, the ideas of the Liturgical Movement were also put forward at a series of conferences held during the 1950s. At Mont Sainte-Odile in 1952 it was recommended that:
...the five signs of the cross be dropped ... the celebrant makes his genuflection (if at all) only after the Amen ... the Amen after the Pater noster be omitted ... the Confiteor, Misereatur and Indulgentiam be omitted before the distribution of holy Communion during Mass ... if there are many communicants, the priest be permitted to use a shorter formula for distribution: eg, Corpus Christi or Corpus Domini...35
There were also conferences at Lugano in 1953, at Mont-Csar in 1954 when the topic of concelebration was raised, and at Assisi in 1956. Liturgical conferences were held in France, Italy, Ireland, Australia and Canada during this period. With the convening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 came the culmination of half a centurys endeavour, as the new ideas outlined and developed by the Liturgical Movement were adopted by the Church and put into practice. As already pointed out, one of the Councils aims was the bringing up to date and simplification of the rites of the Church. Sacrosanctum Concilium makes this clear:
With the passage of time ... there have crept into the rites of the sacraments and sacramentals certain features which have rendered their nature and purpose far from clear to the people of today. Hence some changes are necessary to adapt them to present-day needs.36
Sacrosanctum Concilium also claims:

...the rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity. They should be short, clear, and free from useless repetitions. They should be within the peoples powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation.37
34 35
The Modern Rite, page 11. page 195. 36 Article 62. 37 Article 34.
22
To this end, Sacrosanctum Concilium calls for the revision of the rite for the Baptism of Infants, the rite of Confirmation, the rite and formulae of Penance, the Marriage rite, Funeral rites and the rite for the Burial of Infants. The document also makes provision for the adaptation of the liturgy to the culture, traditions and tastes of groups and communities:
Even in the liturgy the Church does not wish to impose a rigid conformity in matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community ... Provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved, provision shall be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions and peoples ... in some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed...38
Also announced in the Constitution is the training and setting up of panels of experts to advise on and oversee the liturgy:
It is desirable that the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Article 22:2 set up a liturgical commission to be assisted by experts in liturgical science, sacred music, art and pastoral practice. As far as possible the commission should be aided by some sort of Institute for Pastoral Liturgy, consisting of people who are eminent in these matters, not excluding laymen ... It will be the task of this commission ... to regulate pastoral liturgical action throughout the territory, and to promote studies and necessary experiments whenever there is a question of adaptations to be proposed to the Holy See.39
These provisions may not have been intended to pave the way for the rule of the liturgists as we now know it, but they certainly advocated and encouraged a stripped-down and simplified liturgy made more comprehensible by the use of the vernacular; the introduction of variations and adaptations suited to different groups and nations; and the appointing of liturgists to implement and oversee these changes. Whether or not a liturgy which includes dancing, clowns or rock music as some have done, demonstrates legitimate variations is anyones guess. But available for viewing on YouTube is a recording of the Catholic
38 39
Articles 37-40. Article 44.
23
Halloween Mass at Corpus Christi Parish in the Diocese of Orange, California, which shows Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist distributing Holy Communion dressed as devils in red, fancy dress costumes complete with horns. Turning to Sacrosanctum Concilium, it is possible to make the albeit ludicrous argument that Halloween celebrations belong to the traditions and culture of the people of Orange Diocese and that since in some places and circumstances an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed, the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority has judged that they might appropriately be admitted into divine worship. And who can argue? The Council documents might occasionally stress the need for caution and prudent consideration in implementing the reforms, but they also pave the way for significant changes and variations to be introduced if deemed appropriate. For example Sacrosanctum Conciliums advises that:
The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved.40
But later the same paragraph points out that the use of the vernacular may frequently be of great advantage to the people and goes on to permit its wider use. Since it is unclear whether the priority is to preserve Latin in the liturgy or to encourage the active participation of the laity in an easily understood, vernacular liturgy, it is necessary to turn to previous statements, such as:
In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else....41
What eventually does becomes clear from any study of the Council documents is that behind the vision of the great renewal they promise lies a body of thought which could not have come together overnight and cannot be ignored in any evaluation of the Conciliar reforms. Indeed it is difficult to
40 41
Article 36. Article 14.
24
imagine how so radical a change to the form and appearance of the Mass, and so rapid an implementation of that change, could have been achieved without the long-term influence of new ideas and ways of thinking. So before looking at the reforms in greater detail, it is worth considering the efforts of the preconciliar Popes to counter these influences which, when adopted by the Council, would lead to the radical re-orientation of the Church and allow the liturgical reforms to take place.
To understand fully the accommodation that Vatican II made with the modern world, it is necessary to examine the pre-conciliar teaching on the Social Reign of Christ and compare it with the Councils new orientation. One of the SSPXs assertions is that this traditional teaching, defended by the pre-conciliar popes, was abandoned by Vatican II. In 1995, SSPX Bishop Tissier de Mallerais wrote:
We are convinced that the rejection of the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ by nations is the cause of their ruin, or of the most serious disorders and of inextricable problems of the moral, political, social and economic order that no one can master today. We are conscious of the fact that the triumphant revolution is establishing a new world order on the ruins of the apostate nations, and this new order is essentially antiChristian. We observe that the conciliar Church cooperates in this work.42
The conciliar Church no longer proclaims the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ which holds that the teachings of the Gospel are the surest basis for building up and ruling society. Man as an individual cannot alone provide for himself the necessities of life, and so it is divinely ordained that he should cooperate with his fellows in establishing a society in which his and his fellows needs can be adequately supplied. To prevent conflict and disarray, God has willed that a ruling authority should govern this society, the
42
Fideliter, March-April 1995, also www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/ecumenism/reign.
25
method of governance not being tied to any particular mode of government provided that its rulers recognise God as ruler of the world and govern according to His law. Since this authority has God for its author as surely as society does, it follows that all public power proceeds from God and that this power is only delegated to those in authority. As Pope Leo XIII wrote in his 1885 Encyclical Immortale Dei:
For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all.43
Since the chief duty of all men is to offer praise to God in the manner He has ordained, all who rule must honour the holy name of God by favouring, protecting, and shielding by legal means the one, true, religion. For it is on this that the full and perfect happiness of mankind depends. As Pope Leo XIII maintains:
... it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.44
When states were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel, according to Immortale Dei, Christian wisdom informed the laws, institutions and morals of the people and the religion instituted by Jesus Christ flourished everywhere by the favour of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates. But the Reformation threw Christendom into confusion and from this arose the claims of modern Man to autonomy and freedom of conscience: New ideas about society developed, in which:
The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed
43 44
para 3. para 6.
26
nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself. Thus, as is evident, a State becomes nothing but a multitude which is its own master and ruler ... Moreover, it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the only one true; or to prefer one religion to all the rest.45
Immortale Dei holds that since God has established both the civil and the ecclesiastical powers to govern the affairs of men both temporal and spiritual, there must exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body. And since the ecclesiastical power has the higher aim of getting souls to Heaven, its authority is the most exalted of all authority, not inferior to the civil power or dependent upon it in any way. An individual freed by Liberalism to claim autonomy from God and act only according to his conscience recognises, of course, that society needs laws. But he cannot submit to a state which acknowledges God as the supreme power and which governs accordingly. In a Liberal society, therefore, individuals claim autonomy from God collectively, by claiming that power resides in them and that it is the people who delegate that power to those who govern. By claiming autonomy from God, modern states undermine the concept of true democracy, in which the people elect rulers who acknowledge instead that the power vested in them comes from God and demonstrate this in the exercising of their legislative authority. Modern societies do everything they can to eliminate God from the political sphere because they no longer acknowledge the Law of God in social and political affairs. Meanwhile the conciliar Church pleads that God has a place in the public realm, but wont proclaim that because Christ is King, the public sphere belongs to Him, that it is His, just like everywhere else.
45
para 25.
27
In his 1864 Encyclical Quanta Cura, written to condemn the errors of his day, Pope Pius IX criticized almost prophetically those who:
...dare to proclaim that the peoples will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control ... who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of attaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstance) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?46
Liberalism claims to liberate man from every constraint not wished or accepted by himself, according to Archbishop Lefebvre in A Bishop Speaks, and aims to:
...free the intelligence from every objective truth imposed on it ... free the faith from any definitively formulated dogmas to which the intelligence and will must submit ... [and] free us from the law which, according to the liberal, limits freedom and imposes on it a restraint first moral and then physical.47
Sooner or later, however, the Liberal will be faced with a dilemma. Once constraint is removed in the name of liberty and traditional morality is replaced with notions of fraternity, love, tolerance, cooperation and dialogue, what happens when the impulses so liberated turn out to be destructive, or have the opposite of Liberalism as their aim? How does the Liberal respond when sin and evil are unbound and set loose, as the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century demonstrate can happen? the Liberal responds with a masterstroke, which is to blame traditional institutions and structures for creating the conditions which allowed these totalitarian regimes to arise, and utilizing this blame to plead the case for dismantling them. But surely totalitarianism is a consequence both of individuals and states refusing to acknowledge that all power comes from God, and of individuals claiming that
46 47
para 4. page 227.
28
power for themselves in the name of the people, seizing absolute control of the state, and attempting to refashion it according to their own ideas. If the liberty of conscience claimed by Liberalism as the right of the individual inevitably translates, in a modern liberal democracy, into liberty of conscience for the state, or government by the will of the people and not God, then the adoption of Liberal ideas by Catholics must have an effect on how those Catholics view their role in the world. Pope Pius X in Our Apostolic Mandate, the Apostolic Letter given to the French bishops in 1910, identified the Sillonists as a group that had been so influenced. Taking their name from the French for furrow, the Sillonists were idealists according to Pope Pius X, and their social doctrine rested on a particular concept of human dignity, freedom, justice and brotherhood. This called on the people to liberate themselves from political authority that is distinct from them, through an electoral process which allows as many as possible to participate in the government of public affairs. Authority comes from God, but it resides primarily in the people and does not escape their control. External in appearance, it is also internal because assented to. Countering individual selfishness, the Sillonists claim, is the love which rises above the pettiness of private interests and enlarges the human heart with a passion for the common-wealth of all men. A reign of love and justice is established on Earth as workers of all religions and none forego what might divide them and share what unites them. Thus we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association working for the reform of civilization. Pope Pius X then asks:
What are we to think of this appeal to all the heterodox, and to all the unbelievers, to prove the excellence of their convictions in the social sphere in a sort of apologetic contest ... What are we to think of this respect for all errors, and of this strange invitation made by a Catholic to all the dissidents to strengthen their convictions through study so that they may have more and more abundant sources of fresh forces?
29
No longer Catholic, the social action of the Sillon incorporates ideas from the world which can only lead to:
...the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
It would not be possible to account adequately for the concerns of the pre-conciliar popes without considering the 1907 Encyclical letter of Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Doctrine of the Modernists). Pope Pius X describes Modernism as a synthesis of all heresies, which holds that all religions are equally valid manifestations of mans unconscious longing for God; that dogmas are particular expressions of that manifestation, symbolic of the truth but not necessarily true in themselves; and that everything is subject to change as evolution demands a constant adaptation of dogma, liturgical expression and ecclesiastical authority to developing historical and social conditions. Thus, explains Archbishop Lefebvre in An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, the Modernists maintain that Faith is no longer the adherence of the intellect to the Truth revealed by the Word of God. Instead, We are now being told that man does not receive truth but constructs it.48 This constructing of the truth comes about because Mans unconscious desire for the divine is converted by the intellect into formulas and dogmas which do not contain the truth but instead are its mere images and symbols. Believers then come together by sharing their religious experiences and combine to create a society in order to preserve and develop the dogmas they have formulated. In
48
p 121.
30
this way the Church is formed as an emanation of the collective unconscious of its members, necessarily limited in expression by time and place and therefore not applicable to all times and places. According to the Modernists, as Pascendi explains, Revelation is not given to man, is not something man receives, but instead must be looked for in man. Faith consists of a certain interior sense which stems from the need for the divine, and this is the beginning of revelation.
It is thus that the religious sense, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking-places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion ... Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest, for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, and by no other way, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. In hearing these things we shudder indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege. And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers. They are Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings!49
From these notions it follows that the 2,000 year Tradition of the Church will be viewed by the Modernists as no more than a particular collective expression of mans inner longing for the divine, alongside all the other manifestations of this longing, which leads to the conclusion that Catholicism contains no more truth than any other religion, Pascendi claims:
...given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true ... On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true.50
It also follows that Mans collective expression of his religious sense is manifested as formulas appropriate to only a particular period in history. Tradition and dogma must necessarily be subject to continuous adaptation and
49 50
para 10. para 14.
31
reform, as the collective unconscious of the faithful continues to manifest itself in the evolution of belief and its symbols. As Pascendi points out;
...evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to historical conditions and of harmonising itself with existing forms of society.51
It then follows that the Church hierarchy, which is also part of the emanation of the collective unconscious, must also be subject to change, since a particular form of that hierarchy may not necessarily be appropriate for all ages. Here is Pascendi again:
Authority, therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its highest development.52
And finally:
...if they write history, they carefully, and with ill-concealed satisfaction, drag into the light, on the plea of telling the whole truth, everything that appears to cast a stain on the Church. Under the sway of certain a priori conceptions they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of the people, and bring into disrespect certain relics highly venerable from their antiquity.53
Since the modern world has turned so radically from God, since Man is god in the modern world, the question must be can the tradition of the Church in any way accommodate or appease the modern belief system? But what is meant by Tradition?
In his 1988 Moto Propio Ecclesia Dei Afflicta which announced the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre and the four SSPX bishops, Pope John Paul II wrote that the root of Archbishop Lefebvres schismatic act in
51 52
para 26. para 23. 53 para 43.
32
carrying out the episcopal ordinations was an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition.54 Meanwhile, the SSPX claims adherence to the 2,000 year old teachings of the Church and points to the influence of ideas, both in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and in the reforms the Council inspired, that are foreign to the Deposit of Faith and contrary to it. Tradition is living, is alive, as long as the Deposit of Faith is accurately transmitted, stated Bishop Tissier de Mallerais in the The True Notion of Tradition.55 But the new theology adopted by Vatican II has falsified, adulterated and disarmed Tradition, so that the mark of the Conciliar Church is sterility and not fecundity, as evidenced in the dearth of vocations, the wide scale abandonment of the Faith, the retreat from the religious life and closing parishes. Tradition is immutable just as God is, according to Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, because God and the saints who adore Him exist in eternity which, unlike time, does not change. New teachings are not added to the Deposit of Faith, or derived by assimilating elements foreign to it. Instead they are formulated through progress in precision, as the qualities inherent in a rough diamond are revealed by the gem-cutter, and through development in explanation, as the truths contained in the revealed deposit unfold like a bud which blossoms but remains, in essence, the same flower. By this development, truths already contained in the deposit pass from being implicitly believed to explicitly stated. Eventually a point which cannot be surpassed is reached, the point at which truth is defined ex cathedra by a pope, as was the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX, or the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin by Pope Pius XII. Defined truths are therefore irrevocable and no longer susceptible to development.
54 55
para 4 Discourse given at Versailles, May 19, 1995, www.sspx.org
33
Thus the Mass codified by Pope St Pius V in his 1570 bull Quo Primum, represents this unsurpassable summit. The result of centuries of liturgical development, it is the full expression of the dogmas of the Mass. In contrast, the new Mass is a regression rather than a development, since the dogmas are less clearly manifested, the Real Presence less affirmed, the propitiatory sacrifice side-lined and the sacrificing character of the priesthood played down. Immutable Tradition has an admirable capacity for application to all contingent circumstances. Catholic application involves no change, no mutation of the principles, but instead allows for the development of different applications of the same principles. Tradition is living because it is lived by the faithful, and alive because it applies the eternal and unchanging principles to the problems and necessities of each century. But Vatican II let the principles fall, under the pretext of adaptation to the thinking of the modern world, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais claims. Tradition is also living because it combats error and opposes worldly ideas which undermine the Faith. But Vatican II, instead, sought to identify those values which, once extracted and purified of their hostile spirit, could be assimilated into Christianity. Modernism may have been condemned by Pope Pius X, and Liberalism by the Popes of the 19th century, but the reformers argue that those pontifical declarations had not discerned the element of Christian truth hidden in demands which at first appeared as attacks against religion and as a revolt against the rights of God. And thus Gaudium et Spes states that:
the Council intends first of all to assess those values which are most highly prized today and to relate them to their divine source. For such values, insofar as they stem from the natural talents given to man by God, are exceedingly good.56
56
Part One, para 11
34
And thus the condemnation of error by successive popes cannot stand against the desire of the reformers to baptise the ideas of the modern world and marry them to the teaching of the Church. Legitimate reform consists of development within the species, not a change from one species with another. Traditional teaching is present in the Council documents, as it should be, but so is the new theology, and the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) demonstrates the confusion that can result, according to the SSPXs SiSi NoNo series. Combining Tradition with the new, it states:
This is the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic ... This Church, constituted and organised as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church ... Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines.57
The above paragraph opens with the traditional doctrine that the Catholic Church is the sole Church of Christ. But then we are told that this sole Church of Christ only subsists in the Catholic Church and that many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside it. This combination seems to be a feature of the documents in general and, interestingly, is also a characteristic attributed to the writings of the Modernists by Pope Pius X, who claimed that the Modernists combine truth with error in an effort to appear orthodox and demonstrate that their new ideas have developed seamlessly from Tradition.
57
para 8.
35
3 Religious Liberty
To adopt the world, they wish to adopt also to the errors of the world; by opening to the world, they wish also to open themselves to the errors of the world, those errors which say, for example, that all religions are of equal worth. We cannot accept those errors which say that the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ is now an impossibility and should no longer be sought. We do not accept that. Even if the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ is difficult, we want it, we seek it ... Archbishop Lefebvre.58
Can the conciliar declaration on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, be reconciled with traditional doctrine? This is the question posed by Archbishop Lefebvre in his introduction to Religious Liberty Questioned, where he argues that not only was the doctrine of the social Kingship of Christ elaborated by the Doctors and theologians of the Church and then clarified by the 19th century popes, but also that liberty cannot have any other foundation than truth, since it is the truth that sets us free. The problem, however, is that:
A certain liberal-evolutionism tries to obscure these immutable truths by building a theology of the historical evolution of doctrine based on a historical relativism of this doctrine.59
This liberal-evolutionism argues that Religious Liberty was condemned by the pre-conciliar popes because the mind of the Church was still attached to hierarchical social and economic structures based on monarchies. But the emergence of liberal democracies calls for a re-think of this position to take account of the prevailing conditions of the modern age, and this will be achieved by referring to the entire tradition of the Church, particularly to its earliest sources, and not just to teachings which developed
58 59
A Bishop Speaks, p 253 Religious Liberty Questioned, Introduction, page 2.
36
during a particular period in history. But as Bishop Tissier de Mallerais has already pointed out, tradition is living because it applies the eternal and unchanging principles of the Catholic Faith to the problems and necessities of each century. Since new teachings are not added to the Deposit of Faith or derived by assimilating elements foreign to it, doctrines must be applied to the circumstances of the age, and not adapted to them. The process by which teachings are elaborated and promulgated has a Divine mandate and the truth revealed by God speaks to all ages. Within the idea that doctrine must adapt, and not be applied, to historical conditions and changing forms of society, are distinct echoes of the Modernist view, condemned by Pope Pius X in Pascendi, that doctrine is formulated as a manifestation of mans unconscious longing for God in a particular historical situation, and that as man evolves, so must doctrine. It also reflects the Liberal ideal of the autonomous individual who resists the influence of laws that originate outside his own conscience, because the source of law, as of religion, lies within man. Thus, Revelation is no longer something received and Faith is no longer an assent to the Truth as revealed by the Word of God. Instead, both Revelation and Faith are negotiable, and the circumstances under which they were formulated should be taken into account when assessing the relevance of the teachings they present. In Religious Liberty Questioned, Archbishop Lefebvre points to the concept of human dignity offered by Dignitatis Humanae, as in:
The Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom ... The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom is based on the very dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom must be given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civil right.60
He then asks:
60
para 2.
37
Does Vatican II teach that human dignity, as the foundation of religious liberty, is based only on the dignity of its nature, endowed with reason and free will, independently of its adherence to what is true and what is good?61
Here, Archbishop Lefebvre is referring to the distinction between the dignity man possesses by having a nature endowed with intelligence and free will, and the dignity man possesses as a result of his actions, which can be lost by adhering to error or evil. The dignity of man in his actions depends on his adherence to truth and goodness, because there is no real dignity outside of truth. But modern thought brushes over this distinction, and dismisses the effects of mans wounded nature on his actions. Modern thought grants full dignity to man by virtue of his nature alone, which it denies is fallen. But as Archbishop Lefebvre maintains:
...it is important to remember that original sin profoundly wounded human nature in its faculties, most especially in its capacity to know God. The natural dignity of man has suffered, as a consequence, a universal degradation that not even the grace of baptism can heal completely in Christians.62
To consider mans dignity apart from truth, and to hold that it derives from his nature alone and not also from his actions, also confers rights on error which by virtue of his dignity every man has the right to embrace. While Dignitatis Humanae asserts that everybody has the duty and consequently the right to seek the truth in religious matters, it also states:
The search for truth, however, must be carried out in a manner that is appropriate to the dignity of the human person and his social nature, namely, by free enquiry with the help of teaching and instruction, communication and dialogue. It is by these means that man share with each other the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in such a way that they help one another in the search for truth. Moreover, it is by personal assent that men must adhere to the truth they have discovered.63
61 62
page 99. Religious Liberty Questioned, page 20. 63 para 3.
38
Archbishop Lefebvre then asks if free research helps man discover the truth more than a Catholic education or hearing the teachings of the Church; and if dialogue with a Muslim helps a Catholic in the quest for truth. Were the apostles sent to preach, or to engage in dialogue with the followers of other religions while remaining mindful of the salutary values they contain? In contrast to Pope Leo XIIIs Encyclical Immortale Dei which claims that the must state grant the recognition due to the one, true religion, and protect the one, true Church by special favour of law, Dignitatis Humanae applies the rights granted to religions and religious communities without distinction.
The protection and promotion of the inviolable rights of man is an essential duty of every civil authority. The civil authority must therefore undertake to safeguard the religious freedom of all the citizens in an effective manner ... [and] help to create conditions favourable to the fostering of religious life ... If because of the circumstances of a particular people special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional organisation of the State, the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom must be recognised as well.64
That the state should give civil recognition to one religious community, is seen as due to a peculiarity of circumstance. And yet in the Syllabus of Errors which Pope Pius IX attached to his Encyclical Quanta Cura, among the condemned propositions is the following:
In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.65
Dignitatis Humanae does contain traditional teachings, such as the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth66. The document also acknowledges the Church as the spiritual authority appointed by Christ the Lord with the duty, imposed by divine command, of going into the whole
64 65
para 6. Syllabus of Errors, condemned proposition 77. 66 para 14.
39
world and preaching the Gospel to every creature.67 But the Declaration no longer acknowledges the public right of the true religion and the tolerance granted by the Catholic State to other religions. Instead, equal rights for all religions are promoted in a State which recognises those equal rights by law. St Cyprians formula, Outside the Church there is no salvation, might seem harsh and exclusive in a culture which relentlessly promotes diversity and inclusivity in order to promote the universal and render the particular insignificant. But the tradition of the Church recognises three ways of receiving baptism the baptism of water; the baptism of blood, ie that of martyred catechumens; and the baptism of desire. Baptism of desire can be explicit in the case of a catechumen who dies before receiving baptism by water, and it can also be implicit. As Archbishop Lefebvre explains:
This consists in doing the will of God. God knows all men and He knows that amongst Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and in the whole of humanity there are men of good will. They receive the grace of baptism without knowing it [and] become part of the Church ... The error consists in thinking they are saved by their religion. They are saved in their religion but not by it ... There is only one Cross by which we are saved, and that Cross has been given to the Catholic Church. It has not been given to others. To his Church, His mystical bride, Christ has given all graces. No grace in the world, no grace in the history of humanity is distributed except though her.68
And yet according to the Councils 1965 Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate):
The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions ... [and] urges her sons to enter with prudence and charity into discussions and collaboration with members of other religions. Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, also their social life and culture.69
Is it really up to Christians to preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths of other religions? How does this square with the traditional
67 68
para 13. An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, pages 80-81. 69 para 2.
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understanding of Christs call to convert all nations? And what is the anticipated result of this new liberty? Dignitatis Humanae claims that:
When the principle of religious freedom is not just proclaimed in words or incorporated in law but is implemented sincerely in practice, only then does the Church enjoy in law and in fact those stable conditions which give her the independence necessary for fulfilling her divine mission ... A harmony exists therefore between the freedom of the Church and that religious freedom which must be recognised as the right of all men and must be sanctioned by constitutional law.70
It is worth considering the situation of the Catholic States which until recently gave constitutional recognition and legal protection to the Catholic Church while accepting the private practice of other religions. For example, the 1886 Constitution of Columbia had declared Catholicism to be the religion of the State and granted to the Church a primary role in its affairs at all levels. Then in 1973, a new agreement was reached with the Vatican, and the clause in the Constitution which had named the Catholic Church as the Church of the nation, was amended to state merely that Catholicism is the religion of the great majority of Columbians. Columbians were also given the right to contract civil marriages, the Church surrendered her right to censor public university texts and ensure the use of the Catechism in schools, and the mission territories, lands with Indian populations, ceased to be enclaves where missionaries had greater jurisdiction than the government over schools, health and other services. These were eventually transferred to the government.71 This astonishing development, in which the Church voluntarily surrenders her status was repeated in Spain, Italy and Argentina, as Catholic states across the world brought their constitutions into line with Dignitatis Humanae. And so the question has to be asked has the pleasant situation predicted above come about?
70 71
para 13. www.concordatwatch.eu
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4 Ecumenism
The keynote of the reform is the drive against certainties. Catholics who have them are branded as misers guarding their treasures, as greedy egotists who should be ashamed of themselves. The important thing is to be open to contrary opinions, to admit diversity ... The mark of a holy life is to join in dialogue with error. Archbishop Lefebvre.72
An economist might view the new orientation promoted by Vatican II as the consent to a free market economy of religions and philosophies in a society characterised by open competition between ideas. But the analogy falls down when the same economist applies the principles of free competition to this market place of beliefs. Because in the struggle for market share, the aim of producers and sellers of goods is to attract the maximum number of customers at the expense of rival producers and sellers, despite the possibility that they may be put out of business as a result. While market regulation attempts to ensure at least some degree of fairness between competitors, the aim of any business is always to achieve an ever increasing market share in order to maximise profits and investor returns. Consequently, no business enterprise plays down the particular characteristics of its products in order to emphasise what they hold in common with other products on the market. When a stall is laid out, the work of attracting customers is focussed on standing out from the crowd. By offering to serve rather than compete, the Church must hope that the other religions and philosophies are also willing to engage in the search for shared values, and that the world is prepared to see baptised those of its values which contain
72
An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, page 69.
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impulses to the good but which might have gone astray. In promoting the unity of all mankind in a fraternity of brotherly love, compassion and respect based on mutual understanding, the conciliar Church anticipates a free and respectful exchange of ideas in the market place while seeming blissfully unaware of just how cutthroat markets can be. In his 1950 Encyclical Some False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine Catholic Doctrine (Humani Generis), Pope Pius XII pointed to a danger concealed beneath the mask of virtue which exists in proposals to set aside the questions which divide men by reforming theology and theological methods.73 Those calling for this change, Humani Generis claims, consider that things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ constitute an obstacle to the union of all and the reconciliation of opposing dogmas.74 To overcome this, they aim to free dogma from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, so that Catholic doctrine may be presented in the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. Whats more:
They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.75
As Humani Generis continues, those who propose this development claim that when dogma has been reformed in line with these notions, it will then be possible to express the teachings of the Church according to the terms and concepts of modern philosophy. Since dogma is only capable of expressing the mysteries of faith by approximate and ever changeable notions, and these notions are manifested by the various forms in which
73 74
Humani Generis, para 11. para 12. 75 para 14.
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revealed truth has been clothed, these forms necessarily change and adapt in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the centuries.76 Written at the very start of the decade before Vatican II, Humani Generis expresses concerns articulated twenty years earlier by Pope Pius XI in his 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos. Here a warning is also given to Catholics regarding the budding Ecumenical movement of the times, that they shouldnt be deceived by the outward appearance of good of this movement or by its promised vision of unity, since beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error. Unity is a mark of the Church, since the Church is one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic, and the error of the Ecumenists lay in their claim that unity only existed in apostolic times, to be replaced later by distinct churches and communities divided by differences of opinion which should now be put aside and from the remaining doctrines a common form of faith drawn up and proposed for belief. Furthermore, Pope Pius XI also refers to the false opinion which considers all religions to be good and praiseworthy since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and accuses those who hold this opinion, shared by the Modernists, of distorting and destroying the idea of true religion. Then, having questioned how unity can be achieved between those who retain each his own opinions and private judgement, Pope Pius XI has this to say on Ecumenism:
.. the Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.77
In complete contrast, however, the 1964 Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) states:
76 77
para 15. Mortalium Animos, para 8.
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The sacred Council exhorts ... all the Catholic faithful to recognise the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism.78
And:
In certain circumstances, such as in prayer services for unity and during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.79
In the face of this complete reversal of the pre-conciliar position, no doubt it will be argued that the popes of that era belonged to a certain tradition born of the Middle Ages; that a return to the sources is necessary to renew the liturgy; and that the teachings of the Church have to take account of the predominant ideas of the age. But the point is that this exhortation represents a clear departure from the pre-conciliar position, and that Unitatis Redintegratio then goes on to demonstrates another obvious sign of Modernist influences, revealing itself in a tendency towards the universal at the expense of the particular, when it urges Catholic theologians to:
...remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists an order or hierarchy of truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith.80
Is this what Pope Pius XI warned against when he referred to:

that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental ... as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful.81
If the term hierarchy of truths is taken at face value it obviously means that some truths are more significant than others, although the 1970 document Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dialogue, makes the following suggestion as to how this new idea can be understood:
For example, the dogma of Marys Immaculate Conception ... presupposes, before it can be properly grasped in a true life of faith, the
78 79
Unitatis Redintegratio, para 4. para 8. 80 para 11. 81 Mortalium Animos, para 9.
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dogma of grace to which it is linked and which in its turn necessarily rests upon the redemptive incarnation of the Word.82
However the implication is bound to be that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception may be put aside so as not to obstruct Ecumenical dialogue, and this is not permissible according to Mortalium Animos, since:
...all who are truly Christs believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff.83
Unitatis Redintegratio certainly praises the separated brethren for their love and reverence of Holy Scripture in which they seek God, and contemplate the life of Christ, His teachings and in particular the mysteries of his death and resurrection.84 Moreover, it is maintained that much of what comes from Christ can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church, such as the life of grace, the interior gifts of the Holy Spirit and visible elements including a liturgical life which gives access to the communion of salvation.85 However Unitatis Redintegratio also admits that, among other things, the Protestants have not preserved the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its fullness, but points out that nevertheless:
...when they commemorate the Lords death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory. 86
Then the suggestion is made that the doctrine of the Lords Supper is a suitable subject for Ecumenical dialogue. But although Protestants commemorate the Last Supper, they deny that the Mass is a holy sacrifice, reject Transubstantiation and, since Justification is guaranteed by faith alone, dont believe in the necessity of offering the Body and Blood of Christ to God
82 83
Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dialogue, part IV, para 4b. Mortalium Animos, para 9. 84 Unitatis Redintegratio, para 21. 85 para 3. 86 para 22.
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as satisfaction for the sins we daily commit. As previously mentioned, the traditional doctrine that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice is not even mentioned in the Vatican IIs Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium), and it is one of the SSPXs contentions that this traditional doctrine has been side-lined in the name of Ecumenism. Archbishop Lefebvre certainly believed this to be the case and compared the changes introduced by the Council to the changes introduced by Martin Luther, changes which reflected Luthers view of the Mass as merely a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiating sacrifice renewing and applying the sacrifice of the cross.87 Luther believed that Mass is offered by God to man, not by man to God, Archbishop Lefebvre points out. He abolished the Offertory and the prayers at the foot of the altar; turned the rite into a Liturgy of the Word followed by Communion; introduced the vernacular; turned the priest round to face the people; introduced tables for altars; and rejected the sacrificing priesthood with the claim that all Christians are priests. It is difficult to deny the similarities between Luthers liturgical reforms and those introduced by the Council. If the new theology has transformed the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into the Celebration of the Eucharist, which according to the SSPX represents a Protestantisation of the Mass, it is hardly surprising that appearance of the reformed liturgy should have also been so transformed. Unitatis Redintegratio even admits that:
Church renewal has notable ecumenical importance ... the biblical and liturgical movements, the preaching of the Word of God and catechetics, the apostolate of the laity, new forms of religious life and the spirituality of married life, and the Church's social teaching and activity ... All these should be considered as promises and guarantees for the future progress of ecumenism.88
87 88
A Bishop Speaks, page 194 Unitatis Redintegratio, para 6.
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All of the above points to a levelling down of dogma in the conciliar decree on Ecumenism, to the introduction of new thinking, and to a departure from tradition. Past mistakes of the Church are also indicated in order to justify the new orientation, with the admission that often enough, men of both sides were to blame for the separation of communities from the Church,89 and:
...in various times and circumstances, there [may] have been deficiencies in moral conduct or in the way that Church teaching has been formulated.90
The traditional approach to the separated brethren used to involve praying for their return to the unity alone possessed by the one, true Church of Christ and proclaiming the teachings of the Church in their fullness and entirety. This approach was based on an acceptance of the distinction between truth, as possessed by the Church, and error into which those who separate themselves from the Church have fallen. But with Unitatis Redintegratio has come the blurring of this distinction and a preference for discussion with error on equal terms. In order to further Ecumenical dialogue, Catholics are now urged to avoid expressions, judgements and actions which do not represent the condition of our separated brethren with truth and fairness,91 and to abstain from any frivolous or imprudent zeal92 which might hold back progress towards unity. This approach, according to the preconciliar popes, represents a danger to the faith of Catholics, a view shared by Archbishop Lefebvre who described Ecumenism as:
...a tendency especially dangerous to the Faith, the more so because it masquerades as charity ... we cannot unite truth and error so as to form one thing, except by adopting the error and rejecting all or part of the truth. Ecumenism is self-condemnatory.93
89 90
para 3. para 6. 91 Unitatis Redintegratio, para 4. 92 para 24. 93 An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, page 78.
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5 The Mass
Nothing is more essential to the survival of the Catholic Church than the holy sacrifice of the Mass. To hide it away is to shake the very foundations of the Church. All Christian, all religious, and all sacerdotal life is founded on the Cross, on the holy sacrifice of the Cross renewed on the altar. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 1975.94
Is there a difference between offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and celebrating the Eucharist? When a priest goes to the altar, is it to offer the Body and Blood of Christ to God as a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, in an unbloody manner, for the sins of mankind? Or does the Sacrifice of the Mass consist of Christ giving His Body and Blood for the spiritual nourishment of the people? Is the priest an alter Christus who alone offers the Sacrifice while the people participate in that offering with all their heart and with all their soul? Or is he the president of the assembly which gathers around the table of the Lord to partake of the Paschal banquet? According to the SSPX, in seeking to render the teachings of the Church more acceptable to the modern age and less of a barrier to the cause of Christian unity, the new theology introduced by the Second Vatican Council and present in the conciliar reforms has produced a liturgy which cannot express traditional Catholic teaching on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its fullness and entirety. Tradition teaches that Christ redeemed man by offering Himself on the Cross to the Father, thereby satisfying the debt to divine justice for the sins of the Fall. But because mankind still bears the wounds of the Fall and continues
94
A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-76, p195. 49
to sin, salvation requires that the individual cooperates with grace and that satisfaction continues to be made. Hence the traditional doctrine that the Mass is a Holy Sacrifice, a true but unbloody offering of Christs Body and Blood to the Father, of which Communion is the fruit. But the new theology introduced by the Council suggests that Calvary was a once and for all offering and that redemption and salvation are virtually equivalent, thereby undermining the teaching that the Mass is a necessary and continuing, true sacrifice to God. According to the Catechism of the Council of Trent:
...the Eucharist was instituted by Christ for two purposes, one, that it might be the celestial food of our soul, by which we may be able to support and preserve life: the other, that the Church might have a perpetual sacrifice, by which our sins might be expiated ... the sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same as that of the Cross, as the Victim is one and the same, namely, Christ our Lord, who immolated himself, once only, after a bloody manner, on the altar of the cross. For the bloody and unbloody Victim are not two victims, but one only, whose sacrifice is daily renewed in the Eucharist ... the holy sacrifice of the Mass is not a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving only, or a mere commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the cross, but also a truly propitiatory sacrifice, by which God is appeased and rendered propitious to us.95
Of course the General Instruction on the Roman Missal does affirm that the Mass is a sacrifice of praise, of thanksgiving, of propitiation.96 And the Catechism of the Council of Trent does explain that more than one term is applied to the Mass, for example, the Eucharist which means the good grace or the thanksgiving; Communion because it unites us to Christ and renders us partakers of His flesh and divinity; the sacrament of peace and charity because it reconciles and unites us in the same Christ; the viaticum since it is the spiritual food by which we are sustained in our pilgrimage through life; and the supper because it was instituted by Christ the Lord at that saving mystery of the last supper.97 But throughout the texts of Vatican II, all the
95 96
Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, Chapter IV, Questions LXVIII, LXXIV, LXXVI, page 240, 243. Foreword, para 2 97 Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, Chapter IV, Questions III -V, page 200-202
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emphasis is on the Mass as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving while propitiation as one of the ends of the Mass is side-lined, thereby watering down an essential element of the Churchs traditional teaching. Indicative of this shift is the difference between the following two paragraphs. The first is from Pope Pius XIIs 1947 Encyclical On the Sacred Liturgy (Mediator Dei), according to which:
Christ the Lord, Eternal Priest according to the order of Melchisedech, loving His own who were of the world, at the last supper, on the night He was betrayed, wishing to leave His beloved Spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice such as the nature of men requires, that would re-present the bloody sacrifice offered once on the cross, and perpetuate its memory to the end of time, and whose salutary virtue might be applied in remitting those sins which we daily commit ... offered His body and blood under the species of bread and wine to God the Father, and under the same species allowed the apostles, whom He at that time constituted the priests of the New Testament, to partake thereof; commanding them and their successors in the priesthood to make the same offering.98 (my emphasis).
Now compare this with an apparently similar but significantly different definition of the Mass in the conciliar constitution on the liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, which states:
At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.99 (my emphasis)
Sacrosanctum Concilium replaces a visible sacrifice such as the nature of men requires with a memorial of his death and resurrection, and makes no mention of the sacrifice of the Mass being applied in remitting those sins which we daily commit. Meanwhile, according to the SSPX in their study The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, the new theology introduced by the
98 99
Mediator Dei, para 67. Sacrosanctum Concilium, para 47.
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Council takes the emphasis away from sin as an offence against God which incurs a debt against His justice, and instead considers the consequence of sin primarily in terms of its effect on the sinner, who is turned from Gods love as a result. Calvary now represents an outpouring of Gods love for the human race with the demands of His justice glossed over. To illustrate this, the SSPX study compares the Collect in the traditional missal for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood, with the Collect in the reformed missal for the votive Mass which replaced it. Here is the Collect from the traditional missal:
Almighty and everlasting God, who didst appoint Thine only-begotten Son to be the Redeemer of the world, and didst vouchsafe to be appeased by His Blood; grant, we beseech Thee, that (by our solemn service), we may so venerate the Price of our Redemption, and by its power, be so defended from the evils of this present life on earth, that we may enjoy its fruit for evermore in heaven.
And the Collect from the reformed missal:

Father, by the blood of your own Son you have set all men free and saved us from death. Continue your work of love within us, that by constantly celebrating the mystery of our salvation we may reach the eternal life it promises.100
Crucially, appeased by His Blood has been omitted in the reformed missal, for the Father has set us free by the blood of his own Son, and Christs death on the Cross is no longer His offering to the Father, but the Fathers gift to man.
At the same time as the propitiatory end of the Mass has been set aside the SSPX argues, the Paschal Mystery theology adopted by Vatican II has diminished the centrality of Christs passion as the principle redemptive act by
100
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 50.
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proposing that Christs Passion and His Resurrection and Ascension are the cause of our redemption. Paschal Mystery theology had no special meaning in the writings of theologians until the 20th century, maintains The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, and was developed to remedy the tendency of classic theology to over-emphasise the satisfaction of justice, the cooperation of man and the pains of Christs Passion.101 Paschal Mystery theology instead emphasises love, the infinite charity with which God pursues man, and the new life of the Resurrection. But:
If we consider Christs work insofar as it benefits men, the death on the cross is still the most important of His actions. The Resurrection certainly contributes to our salvation, notably as an example for us, but classic theology maintains that only the death of Christ and not His Resurrection has a meritorious and satisfactory value. Thus for classic theology, it is the Passion rather than the Resurrection which sums up our salvation.102
Paschal Mystery theology is referred to repeatedly throughout Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Mass is described as a memorial of Christs Death, Resurrection and Ascension which the people gather to celebrate with Salvation guaranteed because Gods justice makes no demands. For example:
The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ Our Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He achieved his task principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and glorious ascension...103 ...the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery, reading those things which were in all the scriptures concerning him, celebrating the Eucharist...104 ...the Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day, which day is appropriately called the Lords Day or Sunday.
A concept of human dignity which plays down original sin and the effect of an individuals actions on that dignity, no longer carries with it the
101 102
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 39. page 76. 103 Sacrosanctum Concilium, para 5. 104 para 6.
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necessity of making satisfaction to God because man is basically good and harms only himself when he strays. Entirely unique among all the religions and philosophies of the world, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by which God the Son is made present daily on the altars of the Church by the hands of the consecrated priest, to be offered to God the Father in sacrifice, is thereby played down. With the aim of furthering union between men of all beliefs and none, and with the emphasis on love and fraternal fellowship, the Modernist principle of equivalence is applied to the theology of the Mass and to the liturgy. With the centrality of Christs Passion diminished and the propitiatory character of His Sacrifice at Golgotha and in the Mass side-lined, belief in the True Presence is inevitably undermined. In raising his concern at this tendency, Archbishop Lefebvre pointed out that, Doubt is cast on the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord? Why? Because if there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer need for a victim! And if there is no longer need for a victim, if the Mass is a fraternal banquet, a memorial of the Last Supper, a memorial of Christ, then there is no longer need for the True Presence.105 Whereas the old missal concentrates on the presence of Christ the Priest in the person of the celebrant, and on the presence of Christ the Victim in the Eucharistic species, the new missal stresses the spiritual presence of Christ in His Word and in the assembly.106 In this way an equivalence is created between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, as in the General Instruction:
The Mass is made up of two parts, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist ... In the Mass both the table of Gods word and the table of Christs body are prepared, so that from them the faithful may
105 106
A Bishop Speaks, page 155. The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 13.
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The SSPX and the Council be instructed and nourished .... the readings from Gods word are among the most important elements in the liturgy...107
And in Sacrosanctum Concilium:

...on this day [Sunday] Christs faithful are bound to come together into one place. They should listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus calling to mind the passion, resurrection and glory of the Lord Jesus...108
So marked is the emphasis on Scripture in the reformed Mass, especially with the addition of another reading on Sundays and Holy days, that the Liturgy of the Eucharist can sometimes seem like an adjunct to the main proceedings, with as great a every prayer spoken out loud contributing to the relentless din of amplified voices. An equivalence is also created between Christs true presence as a Victim on the altar under the species of bread and wine, and His spiritual presence in the gathered assembly, which according to the SSPX study, demonstrates the glorification of the presence of Christ in the assembly to an extent hitherto unseen in the liturgy.109 This is seen in the General Instruction, which refers to the laity present as the people of God, the holy people, the sacred assembly, a chosen race and a royal priesthood,110 and suggests that there is little difference between the modes of Christs presence at Mass:
Christ is really present in the very community which has gathered in his name, the person of his minister, and also substantially and continuously under the eucharistic species.111
This levelling down process has been accompanied by a reduction in the number of gestures due to the sacred species, gestures showing the respect intrinsic to a truly sacrificial rite, for example, of the 14 genuflections in the
107 108
General Instruction on the Roman Missal, Ch II, paras 8-9. Sacrosanctum Concilium, para 106. 109 The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 19. 110 General Instruction on the Roman Missal, paras 7, 10, 62. 111 Ch II, para 7.
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traditional missal, three alone have been kept. And, of the 26 signs of the cross over the oblations in the canon of the traditional missal, one alone remains in each of the Eucharistic prayers. At the same time, Communion is distributed by lay people when previously this was restricted to the sacred ministers, and communicants no longer kneel and receive on the tongue as a sign of respect and adoration, but stand and receive in the hand.112 And so, if the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has become a memorial meal, a fraternal banquet, a community gathering, then many features of the reformed liturgy are explained. It is natural at a memorial meal for the priest to face the people who gather round an altar which has become a table. It makes sense that the people take an active part in simplified rites celebrated in the vernacular. Although not actually mandating Mass facing the people, Sacrosanctum Concilium opened the door for it by announcing the abolition of laws governing the design of churches, the shape and construction of altars and the placing of the tabernacle which seem less suited to the reformed liturgy.113 In this context, the scope given for liturgical variations and innovations also seems natural, although this too represents a discontinuity, claims the Sisal NoNo series published by the SSPXs which claims that Vatican II promoted the adaptation of worship to secular culture, to the different traditions and temperaments of people, to their language, music, and art, through creativity and liturgical experimentation and through simplification of the rite itself. This was against the constant teaching of the Magisterium which called on the culture of different peoples to adapt to the exigencies of the Catholic rite, with nothing ever having been conceded to creativity or
112 113
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 15. Sacrosanctum Concilium, para 128.
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experimentation or to any idea of men's temperaments in any given time in history.114 According to Archbishop Lefebvre:
It is obviously clear that the liturgical reforms of our day tend I say tend advisedly to replace the idea and the reality of the sacrifice with the reality of a meal. Thus one speaks of the celebration of the Eucharist, of the Eucharistic meal, of the Supper, but the term sacrifice is far less often used and is even disappearing from the wording of our catechisms, disappearing from the habitual language of preachers when mention is made of the sacrifice of the Mass. Now, this is a fundamental, capital, error. This is the Protestant error exactly ... They distorted the sacrifice of the Mass and made of it a meal, nothing but a meal. They immediately replaced the table by an altar, and made the president of the assembly turn to face the faithful. They did away with the crucifix exactly what we, alas, are doing today, and it is serious, very serious, for the Mass is a sacrifice!115
Modern mans rejection of the sacrificial principle has its roots in the Reformation. Central to Protestantism is the assertion that Christs death on the Cross was a once and for all sacrifice and that the grace necessary for salvation is a once and for all gift of faith. As a result, the individual justified by faith alone has no need of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass and is also released from the obligation to undergo penitential remedies for sin such as confession, fasting, pilgrimage and almsgiving. Only lack of faith leads to the loss of salvation. Protestant congregations share only bread and wine at communion services because they believe that the work of their justification is already done. Christs crucifixion, the individuals assent to faith and the life it demands are enough to ensure salvation. The obligations of the sacrificial life are dispensed with in favour of work and activity in the world, and man is
114 115
SiSi NoNo series, Angelus magazine, March 2003. A Bishop Speaks, page 154.
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released from the requirement to make reparation for sin. Good works become evidence that the grace of salvation has been attained rather than a means to acquire it. Martin Luthers doctrine of the priesthood of believers asserts that all humans have access to God through Christ, the true high priest, and thus do not need a priestly mediator. The clergy are therefore representatives of the entire congregation with the role of preaching and administering the sacraments. This democratic development extends as far as heaven where no hierarchy of grace is said to exist, hence the belief that the saints and Our Lady are possessed of no more grace than those justified by faith alone. Thus the heavenly and earthly hierarchies are levelled out and a Christian commonwealth established, a commonwealth of all believers. On the heel of these changes in belief came new liturgical practices which emphasised preaching and receiving the Word of God, the use of the vernacular, and congregational hymn singing, changes which favoured the educated and the literate. Luthers rejection of a mediating, sacrificing priesthood and Calvins congregational principle in which the laity elect their pastors and each church becomes virtually autonomous and self-governing, allowed individuals to assume positions of influence in ecclesiastical affairs without the need to make vows or sacrifice their worldly ambitions. The assault on sacred images, devotional practices, fasting, pilgrimage, the veneration of the saints and prayers for the dead, transformed religious experience from a range of diverse interactions with worship, into a reliance on the spoken word, the rationalised and the unadorned. Luthers liturgical reforms turned the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a memorial meal, a communion service, consisting of a series of readings enlivened by hymn singing. Unfortunately, in the reforms introduced by the Council Archbishop Lefebvre observes:
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...a Protestant view of the liturgy of the sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments; their purpose is no longer to apply the merits of the Redemption to souls, to every single soul, in order to impart to it the grace of divine life and to prepare it for divine life through membership of the Mystical Body of our Lord; from now on its central purpose to form part of a human community of a religious character. The whole liturgical reform reflects this change of direction.116
This is why the traditional and explicitly sacrificial structure of the Mass oblation of the victim (Offertory), immolation (double consecration) and consummation (Communion) has in the reformed rite of Mass taken on the structure of a memorial meal blessing of the food (presentation of the gifts), thanksgiving for gifts received (Eucharistic Prayer) and breaking and partaking of the bread.117 And why the traditional Prayers at the Foot of the Altar have been replaced with simple Introductory Rites. In the traditional Mass, the prayers at the foot of the altar are said by the celebrant before entering the sanctuary, with his servers responding. At sung Masses, the Introit or entrance antiphon, which changes according to the Mass of the day, is chanted simultaneously. Once the sign of the cross has been made, the following prayers, taken from the pre-Conciliar Saint Andrew Daily Missal,118 prepare the celebrant to approach the altar.
Celebrant. I will go in unto the altar of God. Unto God, who giveth joy to my youth. (Psalm 42) Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause against an ungodly nation: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. For Thou, O God, art my strength: why hast Thou cast me from Thee, and why go I sorrowful while the enemy afflicteth me? O send out Thy light and Thy truth: they have led me and brought me unto Thy holy hill, even unto Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God, who giveth joy to my youth. I will praise Thee upon the harp, O God, my God, why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me?
116 117
A Bishop Speaks, p228. The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 5. 118 Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., Saint Andrew Daily Missal, Abbey of St Andr, Bruges, Belgium, 1956.
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Hope thou in God: for yet will I praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. Glory be to the Father .... I will go in unto the altar of God. Unto God, who giveth joy to my youth. Our help is in the name of the Lord. Response. Who made heaven and earth. I confess ... etc. (First the celebrant, and then the people pray the Confiteor. Once the celebrant has gone up to the altar the following prayer is said.) Take away from us our iniquities, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that with pure minds we may worthily enter into the holy of holies. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (The celebrant then kisses the altar in the middle, at the place where the relics are enclosed, and continues.) We beseech Thee, O Lord, by the merits of Thy saints, whose relics are here, and of all the saints, that Thou wouldst vouchsafe to forgive me all my sins. Amen.
In the reformed rite of Mass, these prayers have been replaced by the Introductory Rites which according to the General Instruction, help the faithful who have come together in one place to make themselves into a worshipping community and to engender the dispositions they should have when listening to Gods word and celebrating the Eucharist.119 Also, ... the priest, by his greeting, reminds the assembled people that the Lord is present among them. This greeting and the peoples reply express the mystery of the Church formally assembled.120 Similarly, the traditional Offertory with its unstinting emphasis on propitiatory sacrifice and its anticipatory pre-enacting of the Sacrifice, has been suppressed and in its place is the Presentation of the Gifts which emphasises the offering made by the people of bread and wine which will become the bread of life and our spiritual drink. During the traditional
119 120
General Instruction on the Roman Missal, para 24. para 28.
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Mass, the Offertory Antiphon which varies according to the Mass of the day, is followed by the prayers below.
Celebrant. Receive, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this spotless host, which I thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for mine own countless sins, transgressions and failings; for all here present and for all faithful Christians, living and dead: that it ay avail both me and them unto salvation in everlasting life. O God, who in a wonderful manner did create and ennoble human nature, and still more wonderfully hast renewed it; grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our Humanity, Jesus Christ Thy Son, our Lord: who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. We offer Thee the chalice of salvation, O Lord, beseeching Thy mercy that it may be as a sweet fragrance before Thy divine majesty for the salvation of us and of the whole world. Amen. May we, humble in spirit and penitent in heart, be accepted by Thee, O Lord: and may our sacrifice be so offered in Thy sight this day that it may be pleasing unto Thee, O God. Come, almighty Sanctifier and eternal God, and bless this sacrifice prepared unto the glory of Thy holy name. (At solemn Masses the incensing of the offerings, the cross and the altar, the celebrant, the ministers and the congregation follows.) May the Lord be pleased to bless this incense and to receive its sweet fragrance, through the intercession, of the blessed archangel Michael, who stands at the right hand of the altar of incense, and of all His chosen ones. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. May this incense which Thou hast blessed rise up to Thee, O Lord: and may Thy mercy come down upon us. Let my prayer be directed, O Lord, as incense in Thy sight; the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round my lips. That my heart may not incline to evil words: to make excuses in sins. May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of His love and the flame of everlasting charity. Amen. I will wash my hands among the innocent: and will encompass Thy altar, O Lord. That I may hear the voice of Thy praise, and tell all of Thy wondrous works. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth. Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked, nor my life with men of blood. In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts. But as for me, I have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me. My foot hath stood in the direct way: in the churches I will bless Thee, O Lord.
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Glory be to the Father .... Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation which we make to Thee in remembrance of the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honour of the blessed Mary ever Virgin, of blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, of these and of all the saints, that it may avail to their honour and our salvation: and that they vouchsafe to intercede for us in heaven, whose memory we now keep on earth. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father almightly. Response. May the Lord receive the sacrifice at thy hands, to the praise and glory of His name, to our benefit, and to that of all His Holy Church. (Then follows the secret according to the Mass of the day.)
Also highlighted in the SSPX study is the problem of the new Mysterium Fidei, or Mystery of Faith. Following the Consecration in the new rite of Mass, the people are invited to proclaim the mystery of faith according to one of three new acclamations, eg, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ has come again. etc. But in the traditional rite of Mass, the Mysterium Fidei refers to the Consecration itself, to the fact that the Body and Blood of Christ are now truly present on the altar under the species of bread and wine, as its place in the traditional Prayer of Consecration makes clear:
...take and drink ye all of this, for this is the chalice of My Blood, of the new and eternal testament: the mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins...
As a result of this change, the SSPX study claims, the Mystery of Faith no longer refers to the real presence of Christ on the altar, but to all the mysteries of Christs life proclaimed and remembered together.121 Meanwhile, the Last Gospel has been dropped, as have the prayers after Low Mass which included the Hail Mary, the Salve Regina and the prayer to the Archangel Michael. These were relatively late additions to the rite, with the
121
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 12.
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Last Gospel dating from the 16th century and the prayers to Our Lady and the Archangel Michael having been prescribed by Pope Leo XIII in 1884. In return, have come the Prayers of the Faithful, as a revival of an ancient practice which includes prayers for the Church, for those in authority, for those oppressed by various needs, for the local community, and for the world. According to the General Instruction, In the Prayer of the Faithful (General Intercession, or Bidding Prayer) the people exercise their priestly function by praying for all mankind.27 The Preparation of the Gifts also represents the revival of a practice of the early Church, when the faithful would bring their gifts of bread and wine to the altar while an offertory psalm or hymn, later abandoned, was sung. Just how radical the theological and liturgical changes introduced by the Council are, is indicated by the examples given above. Certain that the Mass is the foundation of the Church, and that there is no longer a Catholic Church if there is no longer a true sacrifice of the Mass or priests to offer it, Archbishop Lefebvre insists:
We must therefore preserve this rite, this sacrifice. All our churches were built for this Mass and no other; for the sacrifice of the Mass, not for a Last Supper, a meal, a memorial, for a communion; no, for the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ which continues on our altars! It was for this that our fathers built these beautiful churches, not for a Last Supper, not for a memorial, no!122
122
A Bishop Speaks, page 201.
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6 The Priesthood
One may not distort the sacrifice of the Mass without profoundly affecting the priesthood itself. Archbishop Lefebvre.123
Adapting the rite of Mass to new thinking requires that the nature and role of the priesthood also be redefined, since priest and sacrifice are inextricably linked according to Archbishop Lefebvre. For just as there is no sacrifice without a priest, so too there is no priest without a sacrifice. The two ideas cannot be understood apart, and this is true of all religions, but most especially of our holy religion.124
Here we put our finger on the three realities which are essential in the Mass for it to be a continuation of the sacrifice of the Cross: the reality of sacrifice, ie, the oblation of the victim brought about in the consecration; the real and substantial presence of the Victim that must be offered, and thus the necessity of transubstantiation: the need of a priest who is the minister of the principal Priest, who is our Lord, and consecrated by His priesthood.125
Vatican IIs new ideas have transformed the Mass from a Holy Sacrifice in which Christ is made truly present on the altar by the action of the priest who then offers the divine victim to the Father in a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, to a sacrifice offered solely for the benefit of the people which takes on the form and appearance of a community meal and celebration. Thus the essential priestly action, which is offering sacrifice to God, is side-lined. Now it is the People of God who celebrate the Eucharist, with the priest presiding over the gathered assembly, each fulfilling their priestly role. This redefinition affects the priest in his essential function, the
123 124
A Bishop Speaks, page 154. page 171. 125 page 93.
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very act for which he exists, which is offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. By elevating the Eucharistic assembly, the Council documents give the impression that priest and people together offer the sacrifice, although each in their own way. For example, while acknowledging traditional teaching on the nature of the ministerial priesthood who offers the sacrifice in the person of Christ, the General Instruction adds the following:
...the very nature of the ministerial priesthood sheds light upon another kind of priesthood of great dignity, namely, the royal priesthood of the faithful ... the celebrating people are in fact the people of God .... they give thanks to God for the mystery of salvation in Christ by offering his sacrifice .... a people, holy by origin, who continually grow in holiness by active, conscious and fruitful participation in the eucharistic mystery.126
Similarly, the 1965 Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis) first acknowledges that Christ appointed certain men as ministers ... to hold in the community the sacred power of Order, that of offering sacrifice and forgiving sins. But in the same paragraph the decree also states that all the faithful are made a holy and kingly priesthood, they offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.127 Presbyterorum Ordinis then goes on to describe the purpose for which priests are consecrated to God, that they should be sharers in a special way in Christs priesthood, and continues with:
...the eucharistic celebration is the centre of the assembly over which the priest presides. Hence priests teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their whole life.128
This undermines the unique role of the ordained priest called by Christ, the High Priest, to act in His person, and renders the priesthood a function of the people of God, claims the SSPX.129 The new emphasis is on the worshipping assembly celebrating the Eucharist and on the priest as president
126 127
General Instruction on the Roman Missal, Foreword, paras 4,5. Presbyterorum Ordinis, para 2. 128 para 5. 129 SiSi NoNo series, Angelus magazine, May 2003.
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of that assembly, with both the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood sharing in the priesthood of Christ, with the people exercising their priestly function by praying for all mankind and offering sacrifice. As the conciliar constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium demonstrates:
Hence it is that the People of God is not only an assembly of various peoples, but in itself is made up of different ranks. This diversity among its members is either by reason of their duties some exercise the sacred ministry for the good of their brethren ... or enter the religious state and, intending to sanctify by the narrower way, stimulate their brethren by their example...130
In this way, the sacred ministry is conceived of as an order of the People of God, with the priest no longer a priest of God, but a priest of the People of God, contrary to the entire tradition of the Church and her divine constitution according to the SiSi NoNo series131. Whats more, in Sacrosanctum Concilium there is a parallel drawn between the liturgical participation of the faithful and their priestly role:
The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christs faithful, when present at the mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators. On the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they should take part in the sacred action, conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration ... offering the immaculate victim, not only through the hands of the priest but also together with him, they should learn to offer themselves.132
Pope Pius XIIs Encyclical Mediator Dei is often cited as having endorsed the movement for liturgical reform and giving a green light to its advocates. And yet the encyclical warns that:
...certain enthusiasts, over-eager in their search for novelty, are straying beyond the path of sound doctrine and prudence. Not seldom, in fact, they interlard their plans and hopes for a revival of the Sacred Liturgy with principles which compromise this holiest of causes in theory or
130 131
Lumen Gentium, para 13. SiSi NoNo, May 2003. 132 Sacrosanctum Concilium, para 48.
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practice, and sometimes even taint it with errors touching Catholic Faith and ascetical doctrine.133
Among such enthusiasts were those who approximating errors long since condemned teach that the priesthood applies to all the baptised and that Christs command to the Apostles at the Last Supper to do what He Himself had done, applies directly to the entire Christian Church, and that thence, and thence only, arises the hierarchical priesthood. Whats more, they assert that the people are possessed of a true priestly power, while the priest only acts in virtue of an office committed to him by the community.134 Pope Pius XII considers it necessary to define the exact meaning of offer and the peoples role in this action in order to avoid giving rise to a dangerous error, since Christ is made present on the altar in the state of a victim by the action of the priest alone as the representative of Christ, and not as the representative of the faithful:
...it is because the priest places the divine victim upon the altar that he offers it to God the Father as an oblation for the glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the good of the whole Church. Now the faithful participate in the oblation, understood in this limited sense and after their own fashion and in a twofold manner, namely, because they not only offer the sacrifice by the hands of the priest, but also, to a certain extent, in union with him.135
As Mediator Dei explains, the faithful offer the sacrifice by the hands of the priest because the priest, in offering sacrifice in the name of all His members, represents Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body. Thus the whole Church can be said to offer up the victim through Christ. And the faithful offer the sacrifice in union with the priest, not because they perform a visible liturgical rite; for this is the privilege only of the minister who has been divinely appointed to this office, but because they:
133 134
Mediator Dei, para 8. Mediator Dei, para 83. 135 para 92
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...unite their hearts in praise, impetration, expiation and thanksgiving with prayers or intention of the priest, even of the High Priest himself, so that in the one and same offering of the victim and according to a visible sacerdotal rite, they may be presented to God the Father.136
Mediator Dei also explains why Christ instituted the priesthood:

...the Divine Redeemer has so willed it that the priestly life begun with the supplication and sacrifice of His mortal body should continue without intermission down the ages in His Mystical Body which is the Church. That is why He established a visible priesthood to offer everywhere the clean oblation which would enable men from East to west, freed from the shackles of sin, to offer God the unconstrained and voluntary homage that their conscious dictates.137
And criticises those who devalued private Masses celebrated without the presence of the faithful:
They, therefore, err from the path of truth who do not want to have Masses celebrated unless the faithful communicate; and those are still more in error who, in holding that it is absolutely necessary for the faithful to receive holy communion as well as the priest, put forward the captious argument that there is question not of a sacrifice merely, but of a sacrifice and a supper of brotherly union, and consider the general communion of all present as the culminating point of the whole celebration.138
And yet Sacrosanctum Concilium did just that:

It must be emphasized that rites which are meant to be celebrated in common, with the faithful present and actively participating, should as far as possible be celebrated in that way rather than by an individual and quasi-privately. This applies with special force to the celebration of Mass (even though every Mass has of itself a public and social nature) and to the administration of the sacraments.139
Whereas traditionally the priest is defined, firstly, by the power to consecrate, offer and dispense the Body and Blood of Christ and, secondly, by
136 137
Mediator Dei, para 93. para 2. 138 Mediator Dei, para 114. 139 Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 27.
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the power to remit or retain sins, the conciliar decree Presbyterorum Ordinis claims that preaching is primary among the functions of a priest:
The People of God is formed into one in the first place by the Word of the living God, which is quite rightly sought from the mouth of priests. For since nobody can be saved who has not first believed, it is the first task of priests as co-workers of the bishops to preach the gospel of god to all men. In this way they carry out the Lord's command: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk. 15), and thus set up and increase the People of God.140
Also, the 1965 Decree on the Training of Priests (Optatam Totius) advocates that in seminaries:
The standards of Christian education should be faithfully maintained and they should be supplemented by the newer findings of sound psychology and pedagogy.141
Not only is the priests identity to be merged with that of the laity as he presides over the assembly, preaches, engages in dialogue, attends the parish liturgy committee, but the seminarian must embrace the findings of modern thought. The priesthood is in crisis according to Archbishop Lefebvre, because it is worthwhile to be a priest to offer the true Sacrifice of the Mass, but not in order to bring together an assembly where the laity may all but concelebrate.142 The new Mass can neither hold seminarians nor raise up vocations, and vocations are in decline. After all:
What does the seminarian regard as the most beautiful of all things: the call to mount the steps to the altar. Throughout our time in the seminary we lived for that ... By pronouncing the words of consecration I can bring God down upon the altar as, by her Fiat, the Virgin Mary bought down her Son into her womb ... When we speak the words of consecration, Jesus comes down from heaven under the species of bread and wine. It is a miraculous, unbelievable honour for such poor creatures as we. Then it is worthwhile to be a priest to go up to the altar, to offer the Divine Sacrifice, to continue the sacrifice of the Cross. That is the liturgy. That is the Mass.143
140 141
Presbyterorum Ordinis, para 4. Optatam Totius, para 11. 142 A Bishop Speaks, page 113. 143 A Bishop Speaks, page 171.
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7 Active Participation
Catholics are degraded by being made to pray in commonplace surroundings, multi-purpose halls that have nothing to distinguish them from any other public space, sometimes not even coming up to that. Archbishop Lefebvre.144
One significant and frequently startling feature of the modern age is the contrast between the seductive glamour of its culture industry and the banality of its liturgical expression. Given the Oxford English Dictionary definition of banality as trite, trivial or commonplace, a situation has come about in which the modern culture industry portrays as extraordinary what is essentially ordinary, while contemporary liturgists play down the profoundest mysteries and present them as something quite dull. In signalling Vatican IIs new orientation of the Church towards the world, and in accommodating the shift from the Holy Mass offered by a sacrificing priest, to the Eucharist celebrated by the assembly with the priest presiding, the liturgists of the post-conciliar period adopted a visual language which displayed all the characteristics of the 20th century Modernist style of art and architecture, with its stripped-down, machine-inspired aesthetic, its aversion for the decorative, and its disdain for extravagant ornamental displays. In The Dark Side of the Bauhaus, Joseph Rykwert claimed that the Modernist style adopted by the Church in recent decades owes its spiritual heritage to Theosophy, a 19th century movement based on the proposition that the different religions of the world are all necessarily limited manifestations of
144
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mans search for the divine, and that the real task is to pass beyond the restrictions of a particular religions signs and symbols in order to attain a true encounter with the one, universal being.145 This search for the universal, manifested itself in the rejection by Modernist architects and artists of traditional signs and symbols which, they insisted, had become burdened by centuries of additions, elaborations and frivolities, and served no purpose but to obscure the meaning of the truth being signalled. By liberating art and architecture from the shackles of style, the restrictions of localism and the constraints of tradition, a new style would emerge, an International Style of art and architecture, open to the truths of the universal and able to respond to the impulses and energy of the modern, technological world. Hand in hand with the Modernist process of dusting down the studios, galleries and academies of the establishment and letting the fresh air blow, came a certain attitude to the masses who, annoyingly, tended to prefer traditional styles over the primal purity of forms and the honesty of materials so beloved by the avant garde. Clearly ignorant, the dozing proletariat had to be educated out of their old habits and woken up to the new, machine age that was so obviously dawning. And the protagonists of the modern movement in art and architecture were determined to raise the alarm for the great awakening to begin. Early movements for liturgical reform had been fairly modest in their aims, as Alcuin Reid points out in The Organic Development of the Liturgy. Mainly 19th century efforts to encourage the laity to follow the rites and prayers of the Mass had cantered around the production of missals, for example The Roman Missal Translated into English for the Use of the Laity published in 1822 by Bishop John England of Charleston, South Carolina.146 The Saint Andrew Daily Missal quoted earlier, which was published during
145 146
Joseph Rykwert, The Dark Side of the Bauhaus, from The Necessity of Artifice: Ideas in Architecture, p49. The Organic Development of the Liturgy, footnote, page 63.
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the First World War by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, of the Abbey of St Andr, Bruges, was also a product of that endeavour. But language familiar to followers of revolutionary movements eventually begins to appear, as in the influential Liturgy the Life of the Church of 1926 by Lambert Beauduin, OSB, of the Belgian Abbey of Mont-Csar, this work having originally been published as La Pit de Lglise in 1914. Described by Alcuin Reid as effectively the founder of the Liturgical Movement147, Beauduin writes that there is no need to prove the existence of almost complete ignorance or apathy among the faithful in regard to liturgical worship148, since the fact is all too evident. Even worse though, the faithful of our generation are suffering from an evil in regard to the liturgy, with the result that the truths of the Catholic Faith which find expression in every liturgical act, are asleep in mens souls. To remedy this situation, Beauduin makes the following suggestion:
Let us change the routine and monotonous assistance at acts of worship into an active and intelligent participation: let us teach the faithful to pray and confess these truths in a body: and the Liturgy thus practised will insensibly rouse a slumbering faith and give new efficacy, both in prayer and action, to the latent energies of baptised souls ... Utopia! Dream of another age! Undoubtedly the work will be arduous. People have for centuries ignored this traditional piety; it will take them a long time to relearn it.149
So, the masses are slumbering and must be awoken from their indolence, while the men of the Church are bound by rubrics and formulae which prevent the new-found liturgical spirit from bursting forth and awakening the Christian soul. Beauduin also insists that religious individualism is quite contrary to the conception of Catholicism, and that unity of belief on points of doctrine, morals, discipline, and the sacramental life is not enough, because souls that are truly Catholic ... desire that this
147 148
The Organic Development of the Liturgy, page 78. Lambert Beauduin, Liturgy the Life of the Church, page 19. 149 Liturgy the Life of the Church, page 21.
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union of hearts and minds be affirmed and cemented by perfect community of worship.150 While the superabundant source of all supernatural life is the sacerdotal power of the High Priest of the New Covenant according to Beauduin, this sanctifying power Jesus Christ does not exercise except through a visible sacerdotal hierarchy. All Catholics without exception who truly seek God must associate themselves as intimately as possible with all the manifestations of the hierarchical priestly life, and this is to be achieved through the greatest possible active and frequent participation in the priestly life of the visible hierarchy.151 Since the liturgy comprises the priestly acts of the hierarchy, 152 it follows that the laity must participate actively in its celebration rather than pray the Rosary or recite the litanies and other prayers during Mass. To achieve this, the collective soul must be restored to the social environment created by the Church for prayer,153 and this necessarily had implications for the devotions favoured by the laity of the time. While recognising their value, Beauduin is clear that devotions will acquire a new vigour by taking the liturgy as their model, thereby challenging the sickly desire that is ever in quest of pious novelties and which justly frightens the liturgical mentality.154 Beauduin also looks to the liturgy to counter what he claims is the widespread theological ignorance of Catholics, and he compares traditional catechetical religious instruction to the grammar of a language, necessary but insufficient in itself. Fluency is only achieved by habitually speaking that
150 151
page 24. pages 13-15. 152 page 32. 153 page 25. 154 page 27.
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language, and since the liturgy is the catechism of the people155, this is reason enough for encouraging the people to participate and for giving our acts of worship their maximum didactic value.156 The central idea to be realised by the Liturgical Movement according to Beauduin, is to have the Christian people all live the same spiritual life, to have them all nourished by the official worship of holy Mother Church. To this end, Liturgy the Life of the Church includes the following recommendations:
The active participation of the Christian people in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by means of understanding and following the liturgical rites and texts ... The basing of our daily private devotions, meditation, reading, etc., on the daily instructions of the Liturgy ... Aiming to give regular liturgical education to circles, associations etc., and to employ all the customary methods of popularisation to this end.157
Dom Virgil Michel, OSB, who studied under Beauduin and established the Liturgical Press and the periodical Orate Fratres at Saint Johns Abbey, Collegeville in 1926, also found the laity problematic. In a collection of his sermons titled My Sacrifice and Yours, he decried the situation in which:
...those who flock to the Sunday Masses recite one, two, or three rosaries while attending Mass, read litanies and other prayers from their books, recite the Angelus and the morning prayers, or even follow the devotional prayers set down in their books for recitation during Mass.158
To remedy this situation in which Catholics flock to Mass Michel argued that every devoted Catholic should try their utmost to participate actively in the Mass by following the priest and praying and acting with him. In developing this theme, H.A. Reinhold, a contributor to Orate Fratres, published My Dream Mass in 1940 in which he described:
...the ideal parish Mass, the outcome, as I see it, of all those years of effort of the liturgical revival in Germany, Italy, France, England, Switzerland and these United States.
155 156
page 42. page 45. 157 page 52. 158 Quoted in The Organic Development of the Liturgy, page 97.
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Reinholds dream is of a church in which Mass is said facing the people, with the people gathered in fan formation around an altar which resembles a stone table. In this ideal Mass, the traditional prayers at the foot of the altar are recited as the priest and assistants vest in the sacristy; the readings are in English with the people responding in English; an offertory procession has been introduced; and enthusiastic singing is much in evidence.159 Mass facing the people, with the people seated on three sides of the altar, was also the liturgical arrangement adopted by Romano Guardini at his community at Burg Rothenfels, Germany, as previously noted. In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Guardini claims it to be of paramount importance that the whole gathering should take an active share in the proceedings,160 and called on the laity to renounce the right of self-determination in spiritual activity161 to meet the demands of the liturgys communal life. This is because:
The liturgy does not say I but We, unless the particular action which is being performed specifically requires the singular number ... the liturgy is not celebrated by the individual, but by the body of the faithful ... it is on the plane of liturgical relations that the individual experiences the meaning of religious fellowship.162
By adopting Mass in the round, the proponents of liturgical reform were able to send the clear message that lay participation was to be the order of the new day. In order to assist this participation, the rites had to be simplified and easy to understand, and to this end Josef Jungman, SJ, read a paper at the Maria Laach liturgical conference of 1951 which proposed:
The silent prayers (outside the Canon) are no older than the Carolingian era of the Roman Liturgy. In any revision of the missal ... they would really all have to vanish (including the prayers at the foot of the altar). At a minimum we would have to say today: In order that any of these
159 160
Quoted in The Organic Development of the Liturgy, page 108. Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, page 30. 161 The Spirit of the Liturgy, page 40. 162 pages 36-37.
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prayers be retained, a justifying reason must, in each single case, be adducible.163
Recommendations made at the Maria Laach Conference included:

...The Fore-Mass a better name for which would be the Liturgy of the Word should take place, not at the altar but in choro ... In order that the reading of the Bible fulfil its function of communicating the word of God to the faithful more effectively, all present at this congress express their unanimous and most urgent hope that in every Mass at which the people assist the scriptural readings will be done directly and exclusively in the mother tongue ... The recitation of the Creed should occur much less frequently ... When holy Communion is distributed during the Mass, the Confiteor and its following prayers should be dropped ... Mass ought to end with the blessing by the priest without the addition of the last Gospel...164
From this brief survey, it becomes apparent how many of these themes and ideas were adopted by the Second Vatican Council, as the following quotes from Sacrosanctum Concilium demonstrate:
In this restoration both texts and rites should be drawn up so as to express more clearly the holy things which they signify. The Christian people, as far as is possible, should be able to understand them with ease and take part in them fully, actively, and as a community.165
Whats more:
...the principle manifestation of the Church consists in the full, active participation of all Gods holy people in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, in one prayer, at one altar, at which the bishop presides, surrounded by his college of priests and by his ministers.166
And:
The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as well as the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved. For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance. Parts which with the passage of time came to be duplicated, or were added with little advantage, are to be omitted. Other parts which suffered
163 164
Quoted in The Organic Development of the Liturgy, page 187. The Organic Development of the Liturgy, page 189. 165 Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 21. 166 Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 41.
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loss through accidents of history are to be restored to the vigour they had in the days of the holy Fathers, as may seem useful or necessary.167
In his 1996 study Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of Its Contemporary Form, Aidan Nichols, OP, locates the roots of the twentieth century Liturgical Movement in the 18th century Enlightenment and describes the Movements keynotes as:
...a utilitarian or pragmatist philosophical infrastructure for which happiness or usefulness is the key to truth; anthropocentrism; a predominance of ethical values over strictly religious ones; a downplaying of the notion of special revelation in favour wherever possible of religion within the limits of reason; and in aesthetics an ideal of noble simplicity ... the result of the extrapolation of the wider Enlightenment motifs into the liturgical domain was threefold: a demand for the simplification of the Liturgy, an emphasis on its socially useful or community-building character, and the insistence that through as complete an intelligibility or reasonableness as possible it should edify morally those who worshipped by means of it.168
Enlightenment man desires to come of age by abolishing formulas and traditions which keep him in a state of servility and dependence, and this impulse found its counterpart in the efforts of the Liturgical Movement to transform a laity subservient to priestly ritual into liturgically aware and scripturally literate Catholics. But because the Enlightenment impulse is also towards functionalism, utility and the stripping away of all mystical qualities, one of its consequences has been the disenchantment of the world, as observed in Dialectic of Enlightenment, a collection of essays by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, first published in German in 1944:
From now on, matter would at last be mastered without any illusion of ruling or inherent powers, of hidden qualities. For the Enlightenment, whatever does not conform to the rule of computation and utility is suspect ... Enlightenment is totalitarian. Enlightenment has always taken the basic principle of myth to be anthropomorphism, the projection
167 168
Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 50. Aidan Nichols, O.P., Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of Its Contemporary Form, page 21.
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onto nature of the subjective. In this view, the supernatural, spirits and demons, are mirror images of men who allow themselves to be frightened by natural phenomena. Consequently the many mythic figures can all be brought to a common denominator, and reduced to the human subject...169
Thus the disenchantment of the liturgy begins to seem inevitable, as the laitys participation in the priestly prayers and actions of the hierarchy necessitates a levelling down of that hierarchy and a paring down of the ritual formulae. As Dialectic of Enlightenment continues:
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract qualities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion ... Unity is the slogan from Parmenides to Russell. The destruction of gods and qualities is insisted upon.170
But while the Reformations rejection of the sacrificial principle released the Enlightenments impulse towards excessive rationalisation, systemisation and mechanisation, it also lifted the bounds of constraint and released an equally powerful impulse towards emotionalism, abandon and impulse. Embodying three main ideas, Romanticism promised to free the creative expression of mans innermost experiences by liberating man from the limits imposed by the structures and boundaries of inherited forms. According to these ideas; over-reliance on reason alienates man from his true self; the route to real truth is not discovered by rational reflection, but by embracing ones deepest and most intense feelings; and this path to the authentic self, where true divinity is found, is uncovered by immersion in the natural world. While Romantic thinking appears to contradict the ideas of the Enlightenment, each stems from a belief in the primacy of man over God man who has the capacity to submit the workings of the universe, himself and his fellows to rational, systematic study; and man whose imaginative and creative self is the beginning and end of all knowledge and truth. In Looking
169 170
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, page 6. Dialectic of Enlightenment, page 7.
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at the Liturgy, the influence of Romantic thinking on recent Catholic liturgical development is described:
If the Enlightenment insinuated into the stream of consciousness of practical liturgists such ambiguous notions as didacticism, naturalism, moral-community building, antidevotionalism, and the desirability of simplification for its own sake, early Romanticism contributed such baleful notions as piety without dogma, reflecting the idea that man is a Gefuhlswesen (what really matters is how you feel); a subjectivism different in kind from the Enlightenments and more voracious, for anything and everything could be made to serve the production of the Romantic ego; an approach to symbolism that was aestheticist rather than genuinely ecclesial; and an enthusiasm for cosmic nature (Naturschwarmerei) that would see its final delayed offspring in the creation-centred spirituality of the 1980s.171
By dismantling the formal and hierarchical structures of the liturgy which alienate the laity from the truths of the Faith, and encouraging all the People of God to immerse themselves fully in the liturgy, the restrictions of dogmatic rigidity will dissolve, allowing a creative and authentic expression of that truth to flower. This promise reflects the Romantic idea of childhood as some sort of perfect, pre-lapsed state, free from the restrictions and limits imposed by adult life in a rationally formulated and mechanised society. In his Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, William Wordsworth explores the theme of childhood as spontaneous and transcendental communion with nature, a communion lost but capable of being rediscovered by the poets imaginative powers. As he remembers:
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; Turn wheresoeer I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.172
171 172
Looking At the Liturgy, page 36. The New Oxford Book of English Verse, page 508.
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In Frost at Midnight, Wordsworths friend and colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge remembers his childhood in the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, and addresses his infant son:
But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, and beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! He shall mould Thy spirit ...173
Another characteristic of Romanticism is the association of Christianity with the suppression of joy, beauty and kinship with nature. A poem by John Keats, Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition, was composed in response to hearing the ringing of church bell:
Still, still, they toll, and I should feel a damp A chill as from some tomb, did I not know That they are dying like an outburnt lamp; That tis their sighing, wailing ere they go Into oblivion that fresh flowers will grow, and many And many glories of immortal stamp.174
Not to mention Algernon Charles Swinburnes Hymn to Proserpine:

Wilt thou take all, Galilean? But these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake; Breasts more soft than a doves, that tremble with tenderer breath; And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death .... Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath...175
Romanticism may have challenged the rational and mechanised world view of the Enlightenment, but both movements exalted man, either for the supremacy of his reason or the wonders of his imagination. To the rationalist,
173 174
The New Oxford Book of English Verse, page 524. John Keats: The Complete Poems, page 93. 175 Swinburne
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the extension of the physical realm represented the eviction of the divine to the furthest reaches of the universe and hence of mans consciousness. For the Romantic, the divine realm was absorbed into both the natural world and into mans own self, the only authentic source of truth available.
Probably the Liturgical Movements most significant theologian according to Alcuin Reid, was Dom Odo Casel, OSB, of Maria Laach Abbey. In The Mystery of Christian Worship of 1932, Casel offers to remedy the situation in which the clergy possessed and enacted the liturgy while a largely passive laity engaged in their own devotional worship during the usually silent prayers of the Mass, a model based on a view of the Church as an aristocracy ruling over a disenfranchised lower class. If the Church would only look past the mysticism of the late Middle-Ages and Renaissance, she would find in the ancient world that liturgical mysticism which blooms in the heart of the Church herself, which belonged to her very being from the first, and which is therefore open to all Christians.176 Based on his studies of the mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world, Casel drew a parallel between the liturgy of the Mass and the form of the mystery rite, which was aimed at enabling participants to enter into the lives the gods, in many cases a God who had appeared on earth, suffered, died, and returned to life in some way. As a result:
The members of the cult present again in a ritual, symbolic fashion, that primeval act; in holy words and rites of priest and faithful the reality is there once more. The celebrant community is united in the deepest fashion with the Lord they worship; there is no deeper oneness than suffering and action shared. Thereby they win a share in the new life of God; they enter his chorus, they become gods. The Mysteries way is,
176
The Mystery of Christian Worship, page 50.
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The SSPX and the Council therefore the way of ritual action as a sharing in the gods acts; its aim is union with the godhead, share in his life.177
While acknowledging that he has portrayed only an unrealised ideal given the difficulty of reconstructing the religious life of the ancient world,178 Casel nevertheless maintains that Christ gave to the Church not merely faith and Spirit but his mysteries in order that the life of faith and grace should find continual new stimulus and expression in the Church through the common celebrations of his mysteries. Christ instituted the mystery as the last act of his life in this age when at the Last Supper he gave to his disciples this mystical celebration of his redeeming deed.179 At the core of Casels teaching is the principle that Christ is really present in the enactment of his saving deeds, and that active participation in this enactment fosters participation in the life of God. By acting out the mysteries given by Christ to the Church, she thereby fulfils his action, which has become hers. So Christ and the Church become one in act and passion; the mystery is made new and eternal covenant.180 Whats more:
...the Lord has given us the mysteries of worship: these sacred actions we perform ... Through these actions it becomes possible for us to share most intensively and concretely in a kind of immediate contact, yet mostly spiritually too, in Gods saving acts.181
In applying Casels ideas to sacramental theology, according to the SSPX study The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, the word sacrament which has traditionally meant a sign producing grace in the soul hence the seven sacraments has become the presence beneath the veil of the symbols of the divine act which brings salvation.182 Thus the liturgy becomes the sacrament which makes present the mystery of salvation veiled beneath its ritual
177 178
page 53. page 54. 179 page 58. 180 page 59. 181 page 15. 182 The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, page 54-55.
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symbols, and participation in the liturgy becomes the means by which the people penetrate the mystery and come into living contact with the God who reveals. By this definition the Church also becomes the sacrament which makes Christ present for us, as Lumen Gentium states:
...the Church, in Christ, is in the nature of sacrament a sign and instrument, that is of communion with God and of unity among all men...183
In contrast, the SSPX Study, claims, tradition teaches that the sacraments apply to us the merits of Christ and produce the grace in the soul necessary for salvation, and that the laity participates, not actively in a visible liturgical rite or by making Christ present in their midst, but by uniting themselves with the prayers and intentions of the priest by whose hands the offering is made, so that the external sacrificial rite is reflected in their interior worship. According to the Catechism of the Council of Trent:
...none points it out more plainly than the definition given by St. Augustine, which all scholastic Doctors have since followed: A sacrament, says he, is a sign of a sacred thing; or, as has been said in other words, but to the same purport: A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace, instituted for our justification.184
A sacrament is a sign because it makes known to us, by a certain appearance and resemblance, that which God, by his invisible power accomplishes in our souls. For example, the water of Baptism, accompanied by certain solemn words, signifies:
...that, by the power of the Holy Ghost, all the stain and defilement of sin are inwardly washed away, and that our souls are enriched and adorned with that glorious gift of heavenly righteousness ... that corporal ablution ... accomplishes in the souls that which it signifies.185
Viewed according to tradition, therefore, the sacraments are remedies for the soul which preserve or recover the souls health. Through the
183 184
Lumen Gentium, para 1. Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, Ch I. Q. IV. 185 Part II, Ch I, Q V.
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sacraments flows the efficacy of the passion of Christ, that is the grace which he merited for us on the altar of the cross. And of the greatest importance:
...the sacraments subdue and repress the pride of the human mind, and exercise us in humility, by obliging us to subject ourselves to sensible elements in obedience to God, from whom we had before impiously revolted to serve the elements of the world. 186
At this stage, it is worth looking at some of the criticisms of the Liturgical Movement contained in Mediator Dei, since this encyclical of Pope Pius XII is often cited as an endorsement of that movement. Because although the scholarship undertaken by the Liturgical Movement is applauded, as are its wholesome results, Pope Pius XII also explains why duty obliges him to give serious attention to this revival as it is advocated in some quarters.187 What he observes with considerable anxiety and some misgiving, is that certain enthusiasts:
...over-eager in their search for novelty, are straying beyond the path of sound doctrine and prudence. Not seldom, in fact, they interlard their plans and hopes for a revival of the Sacred Liturgy with principles which compromise this holiest of cause in theory or practice, and sometimes even taint it with errors touching Catholic faith and doctrine.188
Mediator Dei then makes a number of assertions directly related to the aims of the Liturgical Movement. Concerning active participation, the Encyclical states that the Church must render to God worship that is in its entirety, interior as well as exterior, but that the chief element of divine worship must be interior.189 Then, having defended the private and interior
186 187
Part II, Ch I, Q IX. Mediator Dei, paras 4-7. 188 para 8. 189 paras 23, 24.
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devotions of individuals,190 Mediator Dei has the following to say on the priesthood:
The priesthood is not transmitted by heredity or human descent. It does not emanate from the Christian community. It is not a delegation from the people. Prior to acting as a representative of the community before the throne of God, the priest is an ambassador of the divine Redeemer ... the power entrusted to him, therefore bears no natural resemblance to anything human. It is entirely supernatural. It comes from God.191
Pope Pius XII was also concerned that some in the Liturgical Movement looked only to the earliest sources of Church ritual for inspiration, and pointed to the temerity and daring of those who ... call for the revival of obsolete rites out of harmony with prevailing laws and rubrics.192 While praising the desire to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the Sacred Liturgy the Encyclical continues:
...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 colour from 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 Redeemers 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.193
In criticising such proposals, Mediator Dei also warns of the consequences of introducing such reforms:
For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyse and weaken that process of sanctification by which the Sacred Liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly father of their souls salvation.194
190 191 192 193 194
para 32. para 40. para 59 para 62. para 64.
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8 A Culture of Desire
It is high time to react. When Gaudium et Spes speaks of the movement of history becoming so rapid that everybody finds it hard to follow, we can take this as meaning the headlong rush of liberal society into disaggregation and chaos. We must take care not to follow! Archbishop Lefebvre.195
In 1723 the London-based, Dutch physician Bernard Mandeville published an economic tract in verse titled The Fable of the Bees: Private Vice, Publick Benefits in which he argued that the rich were the most useful members of society because their appetites for consumption, their profligacy and their extravagance created an constant demand for goods and luxuries which kept the poor in employment thus enabling them to survive. Comparing human society to that of bees in a hive, the poem describes a social structure in which every vice runs wild and unchecked. Lawyers delay their cases to maximise their retaining fees; physicians value fame and wealth above their patients health; clerics hide their sloth and avarice behind pious practices; and blind justice allows her scales to be tipped with gold so that the innocent go to the gallows while the guilty stay free. Bribery and corruption are rife, ease and self indulgence the norm. And yet Mandeville describes the society of the hive as a paradise:
Thus every Part was full of Vice, Yet the whole Mass a paradise; Flatterd in Peace, and feard in Wars They were thEsteen of Foreigners, And lavish of their Wealth and Lives The Balance of all other Hives. Such were the Blessings of that State; Their Crimes conspired to make them Great;
195
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And Virtue, who from Politicks Had learnd a Thousand Cunning Tricks, Was, by their happy Influence, Made Friends with Vice: And ever since The worst of all the Multitude Did something for the common Good.196
The reason for the happy state of affairs in the hive was that the desire for pleasure, comfort and ease on the part of the rich provided employment for the poor which allowed them to live better lives than even the rich of times past. As the poem continues:
The root of Evil Avarice, That damnd ill-naturd baneful Vice Was Slave to Prodigality, That noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employd a Million of the Poor, And odious Pride a Million more Envy it self, and Vanity Were Ministers of Industry; Their darling Folly, Fickleness In Diet, Furniture and Dress, That strange, ridiclous Vice, was made The very Wheel, that turnd the Trade.197
Underpinned by greed and corruption, society prospered until the day came when the inhabitants of the hive were overcome by a desire for honesty and temperance, with unfortunate consequences. Those who had committed crimes owned up to them, thereby putting the lawyers out of work. The physicians attended to their patients who recovered, no longer needed medicines and put the apothecaries out of business. The clerics roused themselves from laziness so that the laity, infused with virtue, no longer required their ministry. Everyone worked hard thereby allowing one job to replace three; the taverns closed; the tailors lost their trade as ladies and gentlemen of the court no longer purchased their finery; diets grew plain and
196 197
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings, page 27. page 28.
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simple so that the gardeners of exotic fruits had no customers; and the merchants suffered as pride and luxury lessened. And the moral of the tale? Just as the vine runs to wood when left to grow unchecked but yields its fruit when pruned and tied by the gardener, so vice is beneficial, even necessary for society to thrive and grow prosperous, provided that it is bound by justice. Nations cannot prosper by relying on virtue and to imagine they can is a vain hope. Allowing the wealthy to indulge their vices, even encouraging them to do so, benefits everyone. Here was a story from which the wealthy could take comfort, although it may not have sat well with Christs advice to the rich young man to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor in order to follow Him. A rich man may have found it harder to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a camel to get through the eye of a needle, but now he had a new role as the creator of the prosperity that kept the tradesman in business, filled the master craftsmans order books and employed the labourer who otherwise might have been forced into beggary. And the more the rich man indulged his desires the more society benefited. Making and spending money was his duty; greed and profligacy his virtues. This new belief in the power of consumption to stimulate economic growth and prosperity was taken up by the economist Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. In his recent bestseller On the Wealth of Nations, P.J. ORourke adds to the title of Adam Smiths influential work the unprinted subtitle Works Which Lets Admit Youll Never Read the Whole Of.198 Even its original title is frequently shortened from the full An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. And yet according to ORourke:
Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. There is no mystery.
198
P.J. O Rourke, On The Wealth Of Nations, page 26.
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Smith took the meta out of the physics. Economics is our livelihood and just that. The Wealth of Nations argues three basic principles and, by plain thinking and plentiful examples, proves them. Even intellectuals should have no trouble understanding Smiths ideas. Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labour, and freedom of trade. There is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of self-interest. That was Smiths best insight.199
Adam Smiths achievement was to subject economics to rational appraisal and set out the conditions necessary for the development of Capitalism. The Wealth of Nations is one of those books that changed the world, like Marxs Das Kapital, Darwins On the Origin of the Species and almost everything written by Freud, but which only a few manage to read in full. The Protestant reformers criticised the Church for guarding biblical texts too jealously, but it is unlikely that workers on the assembly lines so necessary for the division of labour to function have ever read Adam Smith. But the density of Smiths writings didnt prevent the consequences of the new economic system becoming apparent, and not only to the Communists who would eventually seek to overthrow it. Hilaire Belloc in The Crisis of Civilisation published in 1937, argues that Capitalisms triumph over the feudal system was a consequence of the Reformation which shattered the unity of Christendom and unleashed forces of greed and self interest that had been kept in check by the Church for centuries. While not denouncing profit or property ownership in themselves, he defines the Capitalist system as follows:
When the mass of men and families in a society think of themselves as wage-earners and are so regarded by the few who pay them their wages and make a profit out of them, that society is capitalist.200
It might have come as a shock to many on the left at the time that an influential Catholic writer could denounce the Capitalist system and the
199 200
page 1. Hillaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization, page 141.
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principles of usury and unlimited competition by which it operates. In an analysis that would impress any Marxist, Belloc states:
We mean by capitalism a condition of Society under which the mass of free citizens, or at any rate a determining number of them, are not possessed of the means of production in any useful amount and therefore live upon wages doled out to them by the possessors of land and capital, men who thus exploit at a profit the dispossessed, known as the Proletariat ... Therefore the root evil which we roughly term Capitalism should more accurately be termed Proletarianism; for the characteristic of the bad state of Society which we call today Capitalist, is not the fact that the few own, but the fact that the many, though politically equal to their masters and free to exercise all the functions of a citizen, cannot enjoy full economic freedom.201
The idea that the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism had created the conditions for Capitalism to develop had already been proposed by the sociologist Max Weber in his 1904 essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber claimed that both Calvins doctrine of Predestination, which holds that only those predestined by God are saved, and Luthers conception of the Calling, were significant factors in the development of a world view favourable to Capitalism. In rejecting the absolution of the Church, according to Weber, the Calvinist adopts a rational approach to salvation which includes the necessity of proving faith through worldly activity, both to himself and to the rest of the elect. Good works become the means, not of attaining salvation but of banishing the fear of damnation. Weber points out:
In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves. Thus the Calvinist, as it is sometimes put, himself creates his own salvation. But this creation cannot, as in Catholicism, consist in a gradual accumulation of individual good works to ones credit, but rather in a systematic self-control which at every moment stands before the inexorable alternative, chosen or damned.202
201 202
page 139. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, page 69.
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Thus the Calvinist in need of confirmation that salvation is his, looks for evidence in an upright life and worldly enterprise. At the same time, Luthers concept of the calling was, according to Weber, the result:
...of a new valuation of the fulfilment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance ... the only way of living acceptably to God was not to surpass worldly morality in monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfilment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world. That was his calling.203
Having denounced the monastic renunciation of the world as an act of selfishness, Luther identified worldly labour in a calling as the will of God and an outward expression of brotherly love. Although the pursuit of material gain for its own sake was frowned upon, the attainment of [wealth] as a frit of labour in a calling became a sign of Gods blessing.204 Weber also describes the operation of the textile industry in Europe before it was transformed. According to the traditional, pre-Capitalist method, a peasants would come with his cloth, often entirely made from raw materials produced by the peasant himself, to the town where the putter-out lived, and after an often official appraisal of the quality of the cloth, would receive the customary price for it. Business hours were moderate, and so were earnings, but enough to lead a respectable life and in good times to put away a little. On the whole relations among competitors was relatively good, with a large degree of agreement on the fundamentals of business.205 Customers were rarely solicited and generally sought traditional qualities of cloth, Weber continues. Relationships between the peasant, the putter-out, the middleman who bought from his warehouse, and the customer, were marked by a leisureliness which stemmed from traditional attitudes to
203 204
page 40. page 116. 205 page 29.
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work, acquisition and competition. This traditional textile industry became Capitalist when:
...some young man from one of the putting-out families went out into the country, carefully chose weavers for his employ, greatly increased the rigour of his supervision of their work, and thus turned them from peasants into labourers ... he would begin to change his marketing methods by so far as possible going directly to the final consumer (and) would personally solicit customers ... At the same time he began to introduce the principle of low prices and high turnover ... those who would not follow suit had to go out of business.206
According to Weber, this transformation came about because the new spirit, the spirit of modern capitalism, had set to work.207 And fundamental to this spirit was the conception of money-making as an end in itself to which people were bound.208 An enterprising, new-style putter-out would pursue his self-interest by adopting the division of labour as a means of maximising his output. Production processes would be separated into their constituent parts and workers would be employed to operate each stage. In this way, Capitalist manufacturing methods dramatically increase production compared to what can be achieved by traditional methods in which the peasant raises the crop, then produces and sells the cloth. And whereas under the medieval guild system, shoemakers would agree a fair price for shoes, a price that would both benefit all shoemakers large and small and satisfy the customer, the new putter-out would have to compete with other producers to sell his goods. In this way the emerging spirit of enterprise came together with the new approach to scientific enquiry which viewed the physical world as matter in motion and denied the essence of things. As reality was reduced to systems interacting with other systems, to which all other considerations are subservient, so the labour of men was fitted into automated production
206 207
page 30. page 31. 208 page 34.
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processes to became a commodity which, like any other, can be bought and sold. This relationship between labour and capital would inevitably lead to conflict, as Marx duly noted. If human labour can be bought and sold like a commodity, it is in the interests of the manufacturers who purchase labour to suppress wages, thereby maximising profits. But it is equally in the interests of the worker who sells his labour to fetch the highest price he can. Under the Capitalist system of production, distribution and exchange, there is really no way out of this conflict, especially as the pursuit of selfinterest is one of its core principles. However de-humanising the effects of a working life spent on the production lines of the new enterprises might have been, the division of labour dramatically increased manufacturing capabilities and therefore the impulse was towards ever more mechanisation and rationalisation. Well-suited to satisfying the demands of the developing industrial economy was the empirical method of scientific investigation, because as this new economy grew, so did the number of inventions. James Watt, a friend of Adam Smiths, developed the steam engine in 1765, and in 1779 Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, thereby adding to a host of technological advancements in the mills, foundries and factories. In 1814 George Stephenson invented the first locomotive to carry coal from the mines; Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831; Samuel Morse invented the electric telegraph in 1832; and Alexander Graham Bell the telephone in 1876. In 1849 the safety pin made its first appearance, then the sewing machine in 1851, the typewriter in 1867 and custard jelly in 1890.
It soon became obvious that industrialised, systematised, mass production methods were capable of creating such huge increases in output
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that an ever-increasing number of customers would have to be found for the goods coming off the assembly lines. A system designed to turn out a constant stream of identical products, round the clock and throughout the year, is not geared to stopping or slowing down periodically. As a result, demand must be stimulated in order to sell its products and keep the factories operating. Having proclaimed money-making through mass production as an ultimate good, Capitalism now had to generate a set of cultural ideas and beliefs in order to achieve the same for consumption. To this end, Sigmund Freuds nephew Edward Bernays, one of the hundred most significant people of the twentieth century according to Life magazine, recognised the power of human desire and suggested the means by which it could be manipulated in order to increase sales. Able to count General Motors, Proctor & Gamble and the American Tobacco Company among his clients, and studied by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, Bernays offered a solution to the problem of too many goods and not enough customers that had been created by the large scale adoption of massproduction techniques in American industry. Drawing on his uncles theories, Bernays virtually created public relations as a discipline by advising businesses to appeal to and manipulate human desires in order to stimulate demand for goods where previously there had been little or none. From his studies on group psychology he also showed how status within a group could be encouraged to depend on an individuals material success as demonstrated by their ownership of consumer goods. In order to stimulate consumption, the public relations industry persuaded consumers to desire the most recent version of a product for the status it conveyed rather than for its reliability and longevity. By stimulating trends in favour of the newest, the latest and the most up-to-date, the habit of making a single purchase to last a life-time could be changed to that of making subsequent purchases of the same item, if each was enhanced with the
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most recent innovations. Subsequently, the term built-in obsolescence became identified with the deliberate manufacture of goods of limited life span as part of this process. To illustrate the importance of influencing the customs and beliefs of the public, Bernays offered the example of selling pianos in which rather than attempt to persuade individuals to make purchases based on price, quality and utility, the new public relations industry would set about creating the custom of owning pianos among certain categories of individuals. This would be achieved by media campaigns designed to promote the concept of the piano as evidence of a desirable lifestyle, and by lobbying the members of mothers groups, music groups and school groups, for example, where target customers were most likely to be found. By recognising the effect on individuals of group alliances and behaviours, the new industry sought to increase the influence of peer pressure on spending habits, and to encourage the concept of the status purchase as conferring authority on the owner of a particular product. In his 1928 study Propaganda, Bernays alleges that Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.209 Writing before propaganda had acquired its reputation as a tool of totalitarian regimes, Bernays pointed to the importance of managing public opinion during World War I, and proposed that the same principles be acted on during peace time. He observes:
Propaganda is not a science in the laboratory sense, but it is no longer entirely the empirical affair that it was before the advent of the study of mass psychology. It is now scientific in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite knowledge drawn from direct observation of the group mind, and upon the amplification of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent and relatively constant.210
209 210
Edward Bernays, Propaganda, page 52. page 72.
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Having discussed the role of group interactions and loyalties in determining trends and influencing customers, Bernays continues, It is not sufficient only to understand the mechanical structure of society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless he knows how steam behaves under pressure he cannot make his engine run. Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.211 The desired result of all this endeavour was the creation of the consumer who realises his identity through the lifestyle he chooses and sets about proving both his inner worth and his membership of a social and cultural group by the material badges of consumption he displays. In his classic commentary on the Western media industry, Ways of Seeing, the historian John Berger wrote:
Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers and thus the national economy ... choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal .... that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer even though we will be poorer by having spent our money. Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.212
In 2005, worldwide spending on advertising reached $385 billion according to the global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.213 By the time the average American reaches the age of 70 he will have spent the
211
page 75. John Berger, Ways of Seeing, page 131. 213 PricewaterhouseCoopers, Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010. www.pwc.com.
212
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equivalent of 7-10 years watching television.214 With enormous financial, human and technological resources at its disposal, the contemporary culture industry promotes a world view that has rejected the sacrificial principle and which constantly stimulates the desire to consume in order to sell its products. Mans innermost desires, contemporary culture insists, can be satisfied by acquiring more. That is the promise being continually made.
214
Strasburger VC, Children, Adolescents, and the Media:Five Crucial Issues (Adolescent Medicine, 1993), 4:479-473.
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9 The Social Reign of Christ

There will be no peace on earth except in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. Archbishop Lefebvre.215
Recognising the fundamentally exploitative nature of the relationship, under capitalism, between those who own capital and those who have only their labour to sell, the communists proposed the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange as a solution. State ownership of property, the abolition of markets, and an economy planned and directed by central government, would allow a new kind of society to emerge, a workers state which functioned according to the needs of the many and not just the greedy few. In holding out the promise of equality, brotherhood and an end to the class struggle, Karl Marx repeated the standard claim of the modern visionary, which is that after centuries of oppression man is at last ready to realise his destiny and bring a new world into being through revolution if necessary. Predicting that capitalisms inbuilt inequalities and conflicts would eventually tear it apart, Marx was also international in the scope of his vision. He rejected the petty claims of locality, clan, and family; declared that religion is the opium of the masses;216 and looked forward to the evolution of the new man who would no longer live in a state of servility to Church, king and speculator, but in comradeship with his fellows.
215 216
A Bishop Speaks, page 270. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, page ?
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In his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour), Pope Leo XIII criticised those who hold out the illusion of a perfect world as a means of attracting followers to a cause:
To suffer and to endure ... is the lot of humanity ... If there be any who pretend differently who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment they delude the people and impose on them ... Nothing is more useful than to look on the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.217
While rejecting the main tenet of socialism, community of goods218, and upholding the right to own property, Pope Leo XIII asked that a remedy be quickly found for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.219
Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and foremost is to act with strict justice with that justice which is called distributive towards each and every class alike.220
In articulating these principles, Rerum Novarum helped inspire Catholic writers of the time to explore an alternative to both capitalism and communism which became known as distributionism. The problem of vast wealth inequality was to be solved, not by abolishing the class system, but by ensuring a more just distribution of wealth between the classes. During the 1930s, distributionism was discussed in numerous essays by G.K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc and others in The American Review, published and edited by Seward Collins. Works on the subject by these authors include Bellocs The Servile State, published in 1913, and Chestertons The Outline of Sanity of 1927. In The Crisis of Civilisation of 1937, Belloc highlighted the plight of the property-less working class and the nature of the contract they make to sell
217 218
para 18. para 15. 219 para 3. 220 para 33.
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their labour to the owners of capital, a contract characterised by the gulf that exists between those who produce and those who profit by it. As an alternative to revolution, Belloc advocated the better distribution of property: the restriction of monopolies through taxation and legislative control; and the establishment of working associations similar in principle and organisation to the medieval guild.221 In this way:
...the small owner may be brought into being and survive ... his grand enemy that threatens to murder him, monopoly, may be curbed ... his cooperative institutions may reinforce his freedom and render it stable and prolonged.222
As would be expected, distributionism lays great stress on the importance of the family as the society on which society at large depends, in direct contrast to communism which seeks to absorb the family into society by taking over its functions and dissolving its bonds. In fact the medieval guild system is viewed as having family characteristics, in that the guild protects and provides for its members both strong and weak. This it does by reigning in the competitive impulse whenever it undermines the livelihood of others, thus preventing the accumulation of capital in the hands of an increasingly small number of individuals while fellow producers are put out of business. As Belloc points out:
The essential of the guild-idea is that [of] men pursuing the same form of activity, but only in cooperation limited to the end of preserving the economic freedom that is the property and livelihood of each member of the guild. The function of the guild is not to prevent a man from prospering in some economic activity wherein he shows merit and industry; its function is to prevent the man so prospering from taking away the economic basis of one or more of his fellows for his own advantage.223
In the struggle against communism, the capitalist nations and the Church quite naturally considered themselves allies, since the regimes
221 222
Hillaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization, page 164. page 166. 223 page 185.
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inspired by communism constituted a threat to both. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and Chinas embracing of capitalist methods, the free market economies surged in confidence. Markets were deregulated and labour controls lifted in order to encourage an increasingly globalised economy. New buzz words started to appear, such as diversity, inclusivity and tolerance, a language of openness readily embraced by the socially aware. Globalisation would bring the nations together and allow the individual to become a world citizen, unbound by national and local restrictions and inspired by the ever-greater reach of the modern culture industry with all its promises of freedom and self-fulfilment. During the Cold War, the choice between democracy and totalitarianism, whether communist or fascist, was presented by the western media as the choice between freedom and individuality on the one hand, and conformity and collectivisation on the other. This choice is also presented by advertisers who appeal to the liberated, autonomous individual searching for his own truth, and then invite him to express his authentic self through the products he buys and displays. In this way the primacy of the individual conscience in determining moral choice is brought into the market place in the name of consumer choice, while the ability to acquire high-status goods becomes a display of individual worth, driving an economy in which acquisition and display become an end in themselves. While secular, liberal thought tends to be critical of consumer capitalism and its excesses, it holds dear the principles of liberty and individual primacy which consumer capitalism depends on. Soft on communism for challenging capitalisms fundamentally exploitative nature, liberal thought is, at the same time, hostile to any belief system which challenges freedom of choice, whether it be moral choice, lifestyle choice or where to go shopping. No longer challenged by communism, the free markets are just that, free. In rejecting constraint, spiritual or otherwise, modern
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thought underpins an economic system which trawls a globalised world for cheap labour, driving down wages in the western nations while maintaining the illusion of prosperity through the ready availability of cheap credit, and subjecting the poor of the developing economies to the privations once endured in the dark, satanic mills of 19th century England. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, after a decade of creditfuelled speculation, the Great Depression brought worldwide manufacturing and trade to a standstill creating unemployment on a vast scale. The economy had fallen foul of the boom and bust cycle, in which a speculative frenzy inevitability leads to the collapse of the market with catastrophic results for the working class. Whatever the outcome of the recent Credit Crunch, it demonstrates how inbuilt is capitalisms tendency to run wild with the desire to accumulate, and how the credit system fuels that tendency. When the Second Vatican Council assembled with the aim of adapting the Church and her liturgy to the needs of todays apostolate, the social teaching of the Church explored by the Catholic theologians and writers of the late 19th and early 20th century fell out of favour. While identifying a common cause with the western world against the Soviet Union and her allies, the Church also embarked on a spring-cleaning project, seeming to join with the modern age in challenging and eradicating any influence of pre-modern tradition, in particular any tradition construed as being medieval. But Hillaire Belloc was not afraid to look to the Middle Ages, and even described the medieval period as our best time. While recognising that traditional Catholic social teaching holds no preference for a particular form of government, that feudalism is not compulsory, Belloc wrote:
In our best time, when there was indeed a good division of property, control of monopoly, and a flourishing of the guild, all the framework of that society grew from a certain philosophy held as strongly as a religion. It was the philosophy, the religion of the Catholic Church. Therefore does it remain true that we shall only recover a moral society, secure small property, the control of monopoly, and the guild if we also 102
recover the general spirit of Catholicism. In other words, you will not remedy the world until you have converted the world.224
If the Protestant Reformation was a liberating force, as is frequently claimed, it was the entrepreneurs who enjoyed a new economic freedom to demonstrate their merits through action in the world. The rejection of the sacrificial life combined with the view that good works are evidence of grace rather than a means to acquire it, had helped create a new vocation for industry and wealth creation. In order to further dismantle the old hierarchies of the Church and the aristocracy, and cement the status of the emerging bourgeoisie, a social ideal more suited to the modern age was required. Meritocracy is defined by Oxford English Dictionary as: Government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of merit, specifically in a competitive educational system; a society governed by such people or in which such people hold power; a ruling or influential class of educated people. By promoting equality of opportunity, and by intervening where necessary to dismantle the barriers standing in the way of the individual with ambition and the desire to advance, the aim of meritocratic societies is to ensure that all talent is able to develop and flower regardless of socioeconomic background. However, in spite of the efforts made by modern governments to level the social and economic playing fields, the problem remains of those who cant, or wont, take advantage of the opportunities on offer. In his bestseller Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton writes of the underclass in a meritocratic society as follows:
But there was, inevitably, a darker side to the story for those of low status. If the successful merited their success, it necessarily followed that
224
The Crisis of Civilization, page 165.
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the failures had to merit their failure. In a meritocratic age, justice appeared to enter into the distribution of poverty as well as wealth. Low status came to seem not merely regrettable, but also deserved ... The question why, if one was in any way good, clever or able, one was still poor became more acute and painful for the unsuccessful to have to answer (to themselves and others) in a new meritocratic age.225
Under a system based on the inheritance principle, de Botton argues, the poor could at least be spared the shame that comes from being at the bottom of the social pile. If wealth and power is allocated on the basis of the lottery of birth or according to a divinely ordained plan, then ones place in the hierarchy has no moral connotations. Similarly, if social and economic advancement is restricted, if not impossible, the poor can also be spared the anxiety associated with the imperative to get on in life. But the combination of meritocratic principles and the culture of desire, which aims only to increase consumption, has succeeded in removing every barrier to expectation. While the modern media relentlessly insists that anything and everything is achievable, those who do not achieve are under continual pressure to be dissatisfied with their lot. In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut wrote of the effects of this pressure to always want more:
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves ... The meanest eating and drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking the cruel question: If youre so smart, why aint you rich ... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful.226
The flipside of the shame carried by the western poor who cannot or will not accept the meritocratic ideal, is the pressure placed on those who do embrace it. If merit is measured by material wealth, then the urge to excel
225 226
Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, page 86. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five, page 93.
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financially will have to be strong enough to sustain the effort necessary to achieve this end. Ambition and the desire for material fulfilment are impulses particularly favoured and rewarded in the modern world, while the lack of them is viewed as a disgrace, adding to the stress and anxiety instilled by the fear of being labelled a nobody, a brutal but increasingly used term. Written in 2007 by the psychologist Oliver James, Affluenza is defined by its subtitle: A contagious middle class virus causing depression, anxiety, addiction and ennui. James describes the condition as placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances (physical and social) and fame,227 and uses data provided by the World Health Organisation to demonstrate a link between higher incidences of affluenza in the English speaking nations the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Singapore and increased levels of mental distress, as signified by rates of mental illness that are twice as high as those of mainland Western Europe. In Australia, according to James, over one fifth of the population is emotionally distressed compared to one quarter of Americans, and almost the same proportion in the UK. This is apparently a recent phenomenon:
Two-thirds of Aussies now say that they cannot afford to buy everything they really need ... Infection with these values accelerated at precisely the time when rates of psychological distress grew. Nowhere has that been truer than in Sydney, which has become hugely affluent compared with the rest of the country, with rocketing property prices and all too conspicuous consumption.228
According to James, Sydneys current malaise is the result of greater focus on share price, deregulation of Australias economy and other Selfish Capitalist developments since the 1990s.229 Anyone in genuine material need might offer the opinion that a dose of affluenza is a small price to pay for a higher level of economic prosperity. But James is clear that the desire to
227 228
Oliver James, page xi. page 39. 229 page 52.
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provide a decent standard of living for ones family is not to be confused with the soul destroying compulsion to continually acquire material signs of achievement as a replacement for genuine human fulfilment.
One of the concerns of the Second Vatican Council was that Catholics should become acquainted with the findings of the modern sciences. But according to modern science, ninety per cent of the universe is missing. Whereas in the medieval model of the universe the planets were moved by the love of God, planetary motion in the modern universe is explained as the action of gravitational forces governed by laws and equations. For example, Isaac Newtons inverse square law of gravitation states that two bodies of mass m1 and mass m2 separated by a distance r, attract one another with a force proportional to m1m2/r2. Since large bodies have more mass than small bodies, the gravitational force of a huge body like the sun will be greater than that of the smaller planets of the solar system, sufficient to keep them orbiting around it. Similarly, the clustering of stars in distant galaxies is explained by the attraction of gravitational forces exerted by massive bodies within the galaxy. Only now it seems that there isnt enough matter in the universe for the equations to work. This problem first came to light in 1933 when the astronomer Fritz Zwicky announced he had measured the individual velocities of a large group of galaxies known as the Coma cluster, and found they were moving so rapidly relative to one another that the cluster should have fallen apart long ago. According to the equations, the visible mass of the galaxies making up the cluster was too small to produce enough gravitational force to hold the cluster together.
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Whats more, Zwickys observations held for other galaxies too. The rotation of galaxies is deduced from the effects of the Doppler Effect which predicts that the shifting of light towards the blue or red end of the spectrum indicates whether the light is moving towards or away from the observer. When a galaxy is viewed edge-on, the light from one side is blue shifted and the light from the other side is red shifted, from which it is deduced that the galaxy is rotating. By measuring these shifts, the galaxys rotational speed can be determined and its mass worked out. But as scientists look closer at these rotations, they find that the stars within galaxies are moving at speeds too great for the galaxy to remain intact. Throughout the observable universe, the shortfall in matter currently stands at 90 per cent. Scientists sometimes refer to this missing matter as dark matter, which is somewhat misleading since the implication is that dark matter exists but simply cant be seen. Because whether dark or not, the missing matter has so far not been detected in any shape or form. Instead it is deduced to exist because the laws of gravitation require it, and gravity, not God, is supposed to keep the planets and stars in motion. Searches currently underway for this missing matter are concentrating in two main areas. Astronomers are looking for MACHOs, or Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects, thought to be mainly brown dwarfs and black holes. A brown dwarf is an accumulation of hydrogen gas held together by gravity which gives off some heat and a small amount of light; while a black hole has so much mass and is so dense that nothing close to it, not even light, can escape its gravitational field. So far researchers havent found nearly enough brown dwarfs or black holes to account for the missing matter. Astrophysicists, meanwhile, are looking for WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which are thought to be smaller than atoms and can therefore pass through ordinary matter. One method for detecting WIMPs is to cool a large crystal to almost absolute zero, thereby restricting the
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motions of its atoms, and detect the energy created by a WIMP interaction with an atom in the crystal. Scientists working for the Amanda project are currently searching for WIMPs by placing detection instruments deep within the Antarctic ice. Results, to date, have not been encouraging. It has also been suggested that Newton's laws of gravity might not be applicable in all situations, and that galaxies are not held together by gravity after all, but are formed, driven, and stabilized by dynamic electromagnetic forces. It has even been said that MACHOs and WIMPs belong to a category of particle known as Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories, or FAIRIE DUST. As astrophysicist Dr. Bruce H. Margon of the University of Washington in Seattle told the New York Times admitted:
It's a fairly embarrassing situation to admit that we can't find 90 per cent of the universe.230
Modern science has long used the Galileo affair as a stick with which to beat the Church. Here is a prime example, the modern world says, of backward and superstitious theologians refusing to accept the truth of enlightened scientific enquiry, the truth that the solar system is sun-centred and that the universe is moved, not by the love of God, but by physical forces capable of being studied and measured by the human intellect. Obviously the Church is an outdated institution concerned only with safeguarding its power to restrict free thought. But there is another explanation for the Churchs reluctance to abandon the old universe. It was beautiful, and although inaccurate, it had fired the imagination of poets and believers for centuries with its celestial spheres and heavenly harmonies. Even as it was being dismantled, the old model could still inspire the poets, as John Milton demonstrates in Paradise Lost:
230
Dr. Bruce H. Margon, quoted in article by John Noble Wilford, New York Times, 29 November, 1994.
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Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels Resembles nearest; mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular Then most when most irregular they seem: And in their motions harmony divine So soothes her charming tone that Gods own ear Listens delighted.231
231
The Works of John Milton, Paradise Lost Book V, line 620.
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10 The Status of the Council

It is because we judge that our faith is endangered by the post-conciliar reforms and tendencies, that we have the duty to disobey and keep the Tradition. Let us add this, that the greatest service we can render to the Church and to the successor of Peter is to reject the reformed liberal Church. Jesus Christ, Son of God made man, is neither liberal nor reformable.232 Archbishop Lefebvre.
Any consideration of the SSPXs arguments against the Council is likely to provoke a number of questions, not least, how could such a thing happen? How could the men of the Church depart so clearly from tradition by embracing Religious Liberty and Ecumenism, turning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a Celebration of the Eucharist, demoting the ordained priest to the president of the assembly, and so radically revising the liturgy? In I Accuse the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre refers to one consequence of the reforms as the breaking up of the Churchs institutions, religious foundations, seminaries, Catholic schools in short, of what has been the permanent support of the Church.233 This assault on the life of the Church, he maintains, is the inevitable outcome of the Councils adoption of errors repeatedly opposed by the popes of the pre-Conciliar period. As a result of the admirable vigilance of these popes, the Church grew firm and spread; conversions of pagans and Protestants were very numerous; heresy was completely routed; states accepted a more Catholic legislation.234
232 233
An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, page 136. I Accuse the Council, page 80. 234 page 81.
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But groups of religious imbued with the false ideas of liberalism, introduced their notions to the seminaries, universities and other Catholic institutions, thanks to a certain tolerance on the part of the bishops and the tolerance of certain Roman authorities. Eventually, bishops were chosen from among priests who had been influenced by these ideas, and it would be to deny the evidence, to be wilfully blind, not to state that the Council has allowed those who profess the errors and tendencies condemned by the Popes ... legitimately to believe that their doctrines were approved and sanctioned. While traditional doctrine was clear, unambiguous and unanimously taught, Archbishop Lefebvre claims that numerous texts of the Council allow doubt to be cast upon the fundamentals of the Faith, so that:
doubts about the necessity of the Church and the sacraments lead to the disappearance of priestly vocations; doubts on the necessity for and nature of the conversion of every soul involve the disappearance of religious vocations, the destruction of traditional spirituality in the novitiates, and the uselessness of the missions; doubts on the lawfulness of authority and the need for obedience, caused by the exaltation of human dignity, the autonomy of conscience and liberty, are unsettling all societies beginning with the Church religious societies, dioceses, secular society, the family.235
Another question likely to be raised by the SSPXs arguments must surely concern the question of obedience, and whether or not Catholics are obliged to accept Vatican II, a pastoral and not a dogmatic Council. According to Archbishop Lefebvre, a non-dogmatic, pastoral council is not a recipe for infallibility.236 Therefore consider the facts on the ground, he suggests, and let the more qualified ponder these questions, because by leaving this problem to theologians and historians, the reality constrains us to respond practically.237
Tudor England, led by its pastors, slid into heresy without realising it, by accepting the change under the pretext of adapting to the historical
235 236
page 82. An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, page 112. 237 A Bishop Speaks, page 261.
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circumstances of the time. Today the whole of Christendom is in danger of taking the same road ... children and younger seminarists brought up in new catechisms, experimental psychology and sociology, without a trace of dogmatic or moral theology, canon law or Church history, are educated in a faith which is not the true one and take for granted the new Protestant notions with which they are indoctrinated? What will tomorrows religion be if we do not resist? You will be tempted to say: But what can we do about it? It is a bishop who says this or that. Look, this document comes from the Catechetical commission or some other official commission. That way there is nothing left for you but to lose your faith. But you do not have the right to react in that way. St Paul has warned us: Even if an angel from Heaven came to tell you anything other than what I have taught you. Do not listen to him. Such is the secret of true obedience.238
A typical rhetorical safeguard of the modernists, who always protest that their attitudes are orthodox, is to combine their plans for the total renewal of the Christian faith at the threshold of a new cultural era, with the assurance that they are taking care to keep close to the faith of the Apostles. And what is the basis on which the Modernists give their assurances?
The Holy Spirit! ... the goal is achieved: there is no more any Magisterium, no dogma, nor hierarchy; nor Holy Scripture even, in the sense of an inspired and historically certain text. Christians are inspired directly by the Holy Spirit. The Church then collapses. The recycled Christian becomes subject to every influence and receptive to every slogan; he can be led anywhere, while grasping, if he needs reassurance, at the declaration: Vatican II assuredly shows many signs of a change in the terms of the enquiry.239
Meanwhile, the terrorised laity are told that they are clinging to the past and being nostalgic, that they should learn to live in their own time. Often they are unsure how to reply, Archbishop Lefebvre acknowledges, but
238 239
An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, page 140 page 118
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the answer is easy. It is not a question of past, present or future, because Truth belongs to all times, it is eternal.240
This is why I persist, and if you wish to know the real reason for my persistence, it is this. At the hour of my death, when Our Lord asks me: What have you done with your episcopate, what have you done with your episcopal and priestly grace?, I do not want to hear from His lips the terrible words You have helped destroy the Church along with the rest of them.241
240 241
page 132. page 167.
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Declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre

Addressed to professors and students of the SSPX seminary at Ecne, Switzerland on November 21, 1974.
We cleave, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, the guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary for the maintenance of that faith, and to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth. On the other hand we refuse and have always refused to follow the Rome of the neo-Protestant trend clearly manifested throughout Vatican Council II and, later, in all the reforms born of it. All these reforms have contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the Church, the ruin of the priesthood, the abolishing of the sacrifice of the Mass and of the Sacraments, the disappearance of the religious life, to naturalist and Teilhardian teachings in the universities, seminaries and catechetics, a teaching born of liberalism and Protestantism, and often condemned by the solemn magisterium of the Church. No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, clearly laid down and professed by the magisterium of the Church for nineteen hundred years. But, said St. Paul, though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:8). Is not that what the Holy Father is telling us again today? And if there appears to be a certain contradiction between his words and his deeds as well as in the acts of the dicasteries, then we have to cleave to what has always been taught, and we turn a deaf ear to the novelties which destroy the Church. It is impossible to profoundly modify the lex orandi without modifying the lex credendi. To the new Mass there corresponds the new catechism, the new priesthood, the new seminaries, the new universities, the Charismatic
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Church, and Pentecostalism all of them opposed to orthodoxy and to the age-old magisterium of the Church. This Reform, deriving as it does from liberalism and modernism, is poisoned through and through. It derives from heresy and results in heresy, even if not all its acts are formally heretical. It is therefore impossible for any informed and loyal Catholic to embrace this Reform or submit to it in any way whatsoever. The only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic doctrine appropriate for our salvation is a categorical refusal to accept this reformation. That is why, without any rebellion, bitterness, or resentment, we pursue our work of training priests under the guidance of the never-changing magisterium, convinced that we can render no greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, the Sovereign Pontiff, and future generations. That is why we hold firmly to everything that has been consistently taught and practised by the Church (and codified in books published before the modernist influence of the Council) concerning faith, morals, divine worship, catechetics, priestly formation, and the institution of the Church, until such time as the true light of tradition dissipates the gloom which obscures the sky of the eternal Rome. Doing this with the grace of God, the help of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. Pius X, we are certain that we are being faithful to the Catholic and Roman Church, to all the successors of Peter, and of being the fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Spiritu Sancto. Amen.
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Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming, New York: Verso, 1997.
Hillaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization, Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 1992.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London: BBC and Penguin Books: 2003.
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The SSPX and The Council

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The SSPX and the Council

Why the Society of St Pius X is Right About Vatican II