From Une Voce Miami. (With a h/t to our longtime visitor from Australia, Geoff Kiernan, for alerting us to this video)
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Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
Numerous men, both before and after the Novus Ordo Mass was promulgated in the wake of Vatican II, have warned us about the dangers inherent to the Faith in changing its liturgical worship. The statistics have shown us that the great falling away from Mass attendance over the past fifty years is sufficient proof that they were right.
“To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries stood as a sign and pledge of unity in worship, and to replace it with another liturgy which, due to the countless liberties it implicitly authorises, cannot but be a sign of division – a liturgy which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic Faith – is, we feel bound in conscience to proclaim, an incalculable error.” ~Cardinals Ottaviani & Bacci
Catholic author, Michael Davies, in ‘Pope Paul’s New Mass’, pp. 142-143 writes:
“What matters in the Tridentine Mass is the reverence due to God, that the sacrifice should be celebrated in a manner appropriate to the majesty of God to Whom it is offered. Article 14 of the ‘Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’ is unambiguous, attention must be focused upon the congregation rather than God.”
Thus, Vatican II officially teaches that attention in the Mass must be on man rather than God. And this is why at the New Mass we hear about every kind of abomination which are all directed to making the worship conform to the assembly.
Michael Davies, ‘Pope Paul’s New Mass’, p. 170:
“…the most evident characteristic of the new liturgy is that it is the Cult of Man rather than the Cult of God. The last thing it intends to convey is that we are in but not of the world; the last thing it intends is that we should be drawn out of our ordinary lives. The leit-motiv of contemporary writing on the [new] liturgy is that the congregation must be made to feel at home during Mass and this is best done by insuring that that the liturgy reflects its particular milieu… This is particularly true in the case of children…the Directory on Children’s Masses….”
Perhaps that is why so many children have left the practice of their Faith once they reach adulthood: they outgrow it! This tragedy was foreseen but the warnings went unheeded.
Many have also warned about the dangers of changing the language of the Mass from Latin into the vernacular….
Much more ore could be said on the subject: the abuses that followed in with the NOM are legion. Although some of these changes to the Mass could be justified by ambiguously written passages in V2 documents, there are plenty of others that have no justification whatsoever, and yet have gone uncorrected by ecclesiastical authorities.
It must also be said that there are many good priests who offer the NOM with due reverence and piety, making the most of its shortcomings and its greatly reduced aspect of adoration of God. This is especially so when it is celebrated ad orientem and in Latin.
However, since Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, an Apostolic Letter that of his motu proprio by which he specified the circumstances in which priests of the Latin Church may celebrate Mass with no restrictions in the holy Tridentine rite (also called the Traditional Latin Mass), there has been a slow but steady comeback to the Faith through the Church’s ancient and beautiful Liturgy. The initial problem was the lack of priests who know how to celebrate the old rite, and the reluctance of the many seminaries steeped in Modernism to teach it! But this is being gradually solved by a surge of young traditionalist vocations to the priesthood, and some laudable new orthodox orders.
Yet the fact remains: it is now young Catholics, who never knew the strong and flourishing pre-Vatican II Church, who are discovering the truth and wonders of our Catholic heritage and the incomparable Mass of the Ages who (as Geoff Kiernan mentioned the other day on the Chartres pilgrimage post) will be the torch-bearers of the resurgence of Our Glorious Faith in the coming years.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
I agree with most of the statements and assertions in this article, but there is one sentence that puzzles me:
“Thus, Vatican II officially teaches that attention in the Mass must be on man rather than God.”
I’d be very grateful to anyone who could cite the document where Vatican II teaches that. I’d like to read it.
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Robert,
Michael Davies might have had further texts and/or documents in mind when he wrote that, but I believe he bases it on those words from the Vatican II document on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium #14: “This full and active participation of the people [in the liturgy] is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit*.”
And of course that *”true Christian spirit” is a synonym for the indisputably destructive “spirit of Vatican II”.
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Good God.
I’m in agreement with Mr. Bennett.
I find that statement questionable at best – meaningless, in fact.
….And what on earth does “attention in the Mass” mean in this context?
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And this from Michael Davies’ Pope Paul’s New Mass, p. 149:
“Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of the man-centred nature of the new liturgy is the turning round of the altar, or rather, its replacement by a table… Man has turned away from God to face his fellow men. Not all liturgical experts would state formally that they are replacing the Cult of God by the Cult of Man. For some it is a subconscious process. But it is all part of a trend which, if not stated formally, is nonetheless clear.”
And from the same book, p. 141:
“The late T.S. Gregory… was very disturbed by the post-conciliar liturgical reforms… he warned: ‘… But though we can no more change the Catholic Mass than we can change the nature of God… We can even think that the heart of the matter is not the sacrificed Son of God but the assembled faithful.’ This was a prophetic warning of the nature of the New Mass as defined by its compilers in the notorious Article 7, i.e. the essence of the Mass consists in the coming together of the faithful. Those who undertake the tedious task of wading through even a fraction of the propaganda which has accompanied the New Mass in any Western country would certainly concur that almost invariably it sees the meaning of the Mass in the assembly, not the sacrifice for which, in theory at least, the assembly comes together… Professor Salleron noted at once [in 1970] that the New Mass represented the liturgical expression of the Cult of Man…”
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Isn’t that interesting that this old film predicts the discrepancies of our present day? Perhaps, show this video to youngsters, but they’d ask ” what is Latin “?
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I was brought up on the new Mass and for most of my life I have been very fortunate in having excellent priests who said Mass extremely well and reverently. I knew how to Mass shop of course! However, I can say that I never knew what the Mass really was until I went to the Latin Mass. Everything that I had struggled to ‘feel’ and ‘understand’ and ‘participate’ became organic and effortless. My immediate thought at my first Latin Mass, when I was a bit lost to be honest, was that it was more worthy praise and worship of God. An unexpected bonus was the effect on my spiritual life. I feel badly at how catholics since the 1960’s have been robbed of their birthright. Lately I have been thinking of how priests have been robbed even more. I do believe that the Latin Mass will become again the Mass of the universal church. And I believe this will happen quicker than we think. I go to the new Mass during the week (as the Latin Mass is to far to travel to and manage to get to work). I have always loved the Mass and I do find that I am much more aware of the sacrificial element than I was before.
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Thank you for the information. So it seems that once again we are confronted, not with Vatican II, but rather with – as you rightly put it – “the indisputably destructive ‘spirit of Vatican II’.”
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…the indisputably destructive ‘spirit of Vatican II’.”
As long as anyone disputes the “destructive spirit ” of Vatican ll – it cannot possibly be “indisputable.”
And, I suspect, that is what millions of Catholics today actually do. They prefer Vat ll. They see it as a better way to worship God. They don’r see it as destructive. They may, or may not, be wrong,
…But that’s entirely another thing.
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Great testimony to the effect of the Latin Mass on you, Michele. Lovely! Thanks!
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If Sacrosanctum Concillium #14 is the best that can be offered then I second Robert’s question where does Vatican 2 teach that? – modernist/ spirit of Vatican 2 interpretations of conciliar documents aside?
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Thank you, John, for this comment. I’ve often wondered how the need for “participation” in the Traditional Latin Mass took us to the “Catholic Lite” of the vernacular Novus Ordo Mass.
As a boy, I always thought I was participating deeply in the Traditional Latin Mass (or just “the Mass,” as it was then) by following it closely and prayerfully in my missal.
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One of the greatest ( if not the greatest) testament to the universality of the Catholic Church has been precisely that, its universality. That is the universality in the language of her Liturgy, Latin.
It used to be when one Traveled from here ( Australia) to any other place in the world you would experience the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
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I guess no one was thinking of that universality in the 1960’s??? Maybe the thought was that English would become more universal, as in some ways, it is. Once things changed, the Mass formula got tweaked?
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…. Some how I pressed the send button…. Let me continue…. Now If I happened to travel to…EG, Spain, Afghanistan, France, Malta, Zululand or just about any other country, we would experience the ‘Mass’ in the vernacular…. why do I sound like I am preaching? Its got to be obvious to even the most obscure… With the vernacular, the universality ( the very Catholic nature of the Church ) flies out the window. We are reduced to the banal the parochial, the very antithesis of the sense of the Catholic, the Universal Faith, and we find ourselves separated from the God of the cosmos.
Talk about the tower of Babel. The ensuing confusion is a product of satan, not of the Godhead. We have been divided, surely a prelude to defeat… (not withstanding the promise of the Almighty) But He will not ensure the survival of the ‘nice, new’ catholic church, only the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church He founded.
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geoffkiernan is uttlerly, absolutely, and incontrovertibly right. And that reminds me: whoever said, “Sometimes we don’t know the value of a thing until we lose it,” was also right.
As a young man in the early 1960’s, spending a year in East Africa, I was oblivious to the almost miraculous universality of the Mass as it was then. When I went to Mass in the outback of Tanzania, celebrated by Italian missionaries, it was exactly the same Mass that I attended when I returned home to Michigan.
And as we all followed the Mass then, prayerfully and thoughtfully, in our missals or prayer cards, I think our “participation” was more profound than it could ever be with Mass expressed in all the cheap hymns and vernaculars in the world.
It’s almost enough to make you weep for the loss.
Dear God, why?
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So was Lavevebre correct all these years? He was verbally persecuted in my diocese.
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I just wish both masses were “legal” following Vatican ii, instead of sweeping Latin under the rug within the year. I was happy with either.
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Can anyone tell me the story behind the video? Why is Martin Sheen in it and who made it and when? It is a great video.
And I agree that it may not be the Church of Nice that survives, Geoff, but the true, Apololic Church of Christ.
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“Conflict” 1973 movie release, Sheen and Trevor Howard. Sheen is a future Vatican emissary who visits an old Abbot to discuss Catholic issues. Google: Martin Sheen Catholic movies.
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Crow – I was wondering where I could see the whole movie too! Yes, Mary is right.
From what I have found out through the YouTube channel of the clip, the original film (1973) was called “Conflict: Catholicism vs Vatican II” (Drama. Director:Jack Gold, Writer: Brian Moore, Stars: Trevor Howard, Raf Vallone, Martin Sheen). Apparently it can be found on eBay. However, according to someone who has watched it, the part extracted for the clip was selective, and the film is not – surprise, surprise! – a defence of true Traditional Catholicism at all, but rather favours the liberal, modernist innovations that first overran the Church in those post Conciliar years.
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John @ 19:10, and Robert @ 19:20 on 19th June
Sorry for the delay in responding to you here…
Naturally, there is no open declaration in the Vatican II documents stating that the “Cult of Man” has replaced our duty to love and adore God above all things. In fact, quite the opposite in most of the Conciliar documents bar Nostra aetate (the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions). On the other hand, some other rather unclear or more ambiguous passages of the other documents were pounced upon by those of a liberal agenda to pretend to justify their radical, modernist changes that went far beyond what the V2 texts stated, even at the longest stretch of the imagination.
All the same, this alteration of every aspect of Catholicism – most notably of course that of the changes in the Sacred Liturgy – all had in common a reducing among the faithful of reverence and awe towards receiving Our Blessed Lord in the Sacraments, a weakening of faith, the sense of sin and of the need for true contrition and Penance…. and instead replaced honour due to God with a blown-up self-importance, i.e., the Cult of Man!
A few enlightened men warned of this dangerous destructive trend (“smoke of Satan”?) filtering in through these innovations – men like the saintly Archbishop Lefebvre who Mary mentioned – but many hoodwinked Catholics only woke up to the disaster when the “smoke” had already become a raging fire!
Those of us who were either still unborn, or too young to properly take in what was happening, still ask ourselves how a flourishing, lively Faith, the Holy Bride of Christ, could have been infiltrated and betrayed so successfully by the forces of darkness!
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Thank you Kathleen and Mary – I didn’t think Martin Sheen was Latin Mass! (Mind you – it might just have been a paying job for a struggling actor!) . The scene where Martin Sheen is doing yoga meditation looks like the film is having a go at the new order and the things the two priests say are so true! It was a real comment on the Liberation Theology but also the social justice version that happened once the core focus of the worship was diverted. It is amazing that the film is not against the changes – I must look at it!
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