The National "Catholic" Reporter published an article this month entitled "Attempt to resurrect pre-Vatican II Mass leaves church at crossroads." Written by an invalidly ordained "priest" who is honest enough to just call himself Ron Schmit without the title, he implicitly understands that you can't be Catholic and accept Vatican II.
He writes:
It was curiosity and a sense of irony that moved me to open the Oct. 1 issue of our diocesan newspaper. On the cover was the headline "Moving Forward in Faith" next to a picture of our former bishop vested as would be a prelate from more than 50 years ago. This was a photo from a liturgy in the "extraordinary form" (pre-Vatican II 1962 Latin Mass), welcoming a group of very traditional Carmelite nuns to the diocese.
Lately, there seems to be an increasing interest in this "extraordinary form" in our diocesan paper and among some of our clergy. In the past my attitude has been "so what." If people are into antiquarianism, let them. Some people like to spend weekends reenacting the Civil War. They dress in period costume. They stage mock battles of Union and Confederate soldiers. It's a harmless hobby. I just figured that the people attached to this "extraordinary form" were the liturgical version of societies for anachronistic re-enactment.
Ironically, Ron accuses those that have at least some vestiges of the Catholic Faith of wanting to "return to the past." He doesn't realize that it was the excuse of the Modernists at Vatican II to return the "liturgy" to a more ancient form and it was CONDEMNED beforehand by Pope Pius XII in his Encyclical Mediator Dei:
"Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See."
Ron continues:
However, I have come to change my opinion. Those attached to the extraordinary form are not like Civil War re-enactment societies. At least those people know they are play-acting about a time that can never return. The people attached to the extraordinary form are seriously trying to enact a particular worldview and understanding of church. And it is an understanding that we left behind at the Second Vatican Council. It is a worldview that is incompatible with the council.
Bravo Ronnnie!! Indeed the Holy Sacrifice is incompatible with the Novus Bogus "Happy Meal" of Vatican II. The understanding of the Church (known as "ecclesiology") is contradictory pre- and post- Vatican II. So much for Ratzinger's "no rupture with the past" and the pseudo-Traditionalists of the SSPX and John Venneri types who think we can read heresy "in light of Tradition."
Liturgy is not about taste or aesthetics. It is how the church defines itself. Those who rejected Vatican II and its liturgy were the first to understand the connection between liturgy and our self-understanding as church.
Right again Ronnie!!
The attempt to resurrect and popularize the 1962 pre-Vatican II Mass has serious ramifications. Will we be a church that looks narrowly inward -- where God is found only in piety and private devotion, or will we be a church as Vatican II defined it -- a Spirit-filled people on fire with an urgent sense of mission? We are at a crossroads. The extraordinary form is incapable of activating us as the priestly people of God -- the vision of Vatican II. Which path will we follow?
So, what is this "Spirit filled mission"? Empty convents and rectories with pedophiles on the prowl? The True Mass gave us, through thic piety and devotion ---as Pope Pius XII taught:
“Certainly the loving Mother [the Church] is spotless in the Sacraments, by which she gives birth to and nourishes her children; in the faith which she has always preserved inviolate; in her sacred laws imposed on all; in the evangelical counsels which she recommends; in those heavenly gifts and extraordinary graces through which, with inexhaustible fecundity, she generates hosts of martyrs, virgins and confessors.”Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, par. 66 (1943):
Ron finishes with
The feisty, joyful perseverance of St. Teresa of Avila is reflected in one of my favorite quotes of hers: "From sour-faced saints and silly devotions, good Lord, preserve us!" Amen.
Notice what he refers to as a "silly devotion"; the True Mass which the Council of Trent dogmatically declared in Canon 7: "If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of masses, are incentives to impiety rather than stimulants to piety, let him be anathema."
Let our prayer be "Libera nos a malo. Amen" (But deliver us from evil. Amen)
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