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The ‘68 Consecration Rite and Lutheran Orders

Friday, June 27, 2008

ON JUNE 26, 2008, the conservative Novus Ordo website Rorate Coeli published an article criticizing those modernist theologians who promote the notion that Lutheran ministers may indeed possess valid apostolic succession. (This would mean that the sacraments they confer are all valid.)

This came on the heels of Rorate’s 14 June 2008 article, “Got a Revolution, Got to Revolution,” a withering critique of the modernist innovations in the 1968 ordination rites promulgated by Paul VI. The article alluded to the controversy over the new form for episcopal consecration, which, as I have demonstrated in my study “Absolutely Null and Utterly Void” does not sufficiently specify the order being conferred and therefore renders the whole rite invalid. A 17 June article by Brother Ansgar Santogrossi OSB went on to defend the new form on grounds of “context.”

Now all this is a very interesting juxtaposition, because the principles of post-Vatican II sacramental theology do indeed seem to allow its adherents to maintain that Lutheran orders are valid.

The reason is that the notion of a readily-identifiable essential sacramental form has been replaced with “context” — in the “particular church” or community, and in the sacramental rite itself.

This principle is the basis for the Vatican’s 2001 statement declaring valid an Assyrian anaphora (canon) that contained no words of consecration. General drift and context were sufficient.

(For a discussion, see Bishop Sanborn’s article “O Sacrament Unholy“.)

At the time, members of the modernist theological establishment pointed out that the document could be used as a starting point to declare protestant orders valid.

This “context” argument, of course, seems to be the same one Br. Ansgar used in his earlier thread to defend the validity of the 1968 Rite of Episcopal Consecration — if “spiritus principalis” in the essential form is vague, well, the “context” makes it specific.

All of this, though, is impossible to reconcile to the standard principles of pre-Vatican II sacramental theology.

Might as well just admit that the old rules don’t apply.

Filed in Epis Cons: '68 Rite, Sacrmnts | Comments (0)

An Ex-Sede, the Motu Mass and Refusing Sacraments

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A CASE TO RESOLVE: Father Romanus, a sedevacantist, is asked to offer Mass for and address a small gathering of traditionalists in another state. The topic of his address: Why one should not actively participate in “una cum” Masses — that is, Masses at which the name of Benedict XVI is put into the first prayer of the Canon. (These include Latin Masses offered under the aegis of Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio, as well as those offered by such groups as the Fraternity of St. Peter and the Society of St. Pius X.)

As Father Romanus is preparing the temporary altar for Mass, Titus arrives and announces his intention to listen to the address and then assist at the Mass.

Titus was raised in a large and somewhat prominent traditionalist family and is known to all present. For many years, Titus, together with his wife and children, traveled a great distance to assist at the Mass of Fr. Romanus, and was to all appearances, a convinced and highly articulate sedevacantist.

He and his family, however, tired of the travel, and under the influence of “conservative” Catholics in their area, began to assist regularly at the Indult, later, the Motu Mass.

Fr. Romanus and his colleagues repeatedly and with considerable patience explained to Titus why this course of action was wrong and attempted to dissuade him.

These efforts, alas, were to no avail, and sad news of the defection of Titus spread to members of Fr. Romanus’ congregation. Indeed, the story was known to most of the traditionalists present at the gathering at which Titus had unexpectedly arrived.

Fr. Romanus informed Titus privately that he commits a mortal sin by taking himself and his family to the Motu Mass, and that Fr. Romanus was therefore obliged to deny him the sacraments.

Titus became indignant, and accused Fr. Romanus of being “like the St. Pius V Society,” which on spurious grounds publicly withholds the sacraments from various categories of traditional Catholics.

Was the course of action of Fr. Romanus justified in this case?

RESPONSE: Based on the general principles of moral theology governing the refusal of sacraments to the unworthy and upon the facts of this particular case, yes.

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I. PRINCIPLES.
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The canonist Cappello lays down the following general principle:

“The minister of a sacrament is bound per se under pain of mortal sin to deny sacraments to the unworthy … because they cannot obtain its effect, since they are in the state of mortal sin without the will to amend.…”

“Sacraments must be denied to a public sinner, whether he asks for them publicly or secretly. The reason is that in this case, a reason for administering sacraments is lacking; indeed, administering the sacraments would give grave scandal to the faithful.

“A public sinner is one whose unworthiness becomes common knowledge.…

“Per se and ordinarily speaking, two things are required for someone to be considered a public sinner: (1) That the sin be grave. (2) That it be continuous and persevering, either by reason of the type of sin itself or at least by reason of the scandal that proceeds from it.” (De Sacramentis 1:58, 63. Cappello’s italics and bold.)

As some examples, Cappello gives concubinage, murder and neglect of Paschal communion or confession, when it is publicly known.

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II. APPLICATION:
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As regards how the foregoing applies to the case of Titus:

(1) Gravity of Sin: Titus’s active assistance at the Motu Mass, among other things, (a) affirms that a sacrilegious and invalid rite (the Novus Ordo) is the “Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite,” (b) affirms that a false religion (that of Vatican II) is the religion founded by Jesus Christ, (c) places his family in a proximate occasion of mortal sin against the faith.

These acts are grave sins against religion, faith and charity.

To this is added the grave sin of scandal — “a word or deed (whether of commission or omission) that (1) is itself evil, OR (2) has the appearance of evil, AND (3) provides an occasion of sin for another.” (Prümmer, Moral Theology, 230.)

Other Catholics, knowing that Titus comes from a well-known traditionalist family would conclude that assistance at a Motu Mass is not only permissible but laudable for a Catholic — and thus be induced to imitate his sin.

(2) Continuous and Persevering: Titus’s assistance at the Motu was not simply one-time or occasional, but continued and persevered.

(3) Public: His participation at the Motu Mass is not simply known to a few, but it is somewhat widely known.

(4) Aggravating Circumstances: The point of the address that Fr. Romanus intended to give was to explain why it is wrong to participate in una cum Masses. To have administered sacraments to Titus, especially under those circumstances, would not only have condoned Titus’s sinful example, but also contradicted the principles Fr. Romanus intended to explain.

(5) Imputability: While many (if not most) who assist at the Motu Mass may do so in good faith or out of ignorance of the issues, such excuses would not hold in the case of Titus. He is intelligent, clearly understood the issues, and has had the principles explained clearly to him many, many times.

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III. CONCLUSION.
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For the foregoing reasons, Fr. Romanus was obliged to refuse the sacraments to Titus.

* * *

SOME lay Catholics may find the mere mention of such a conclusion to be distressing. And it will set a-chattering a few lay controversialists who maintain that any valid Latin Mass is just fine, and that for the administration of sacraments, the Prime Directive is “the consumer is king.”

But here the priest is merely doing his job by applying to a particular case the principles of moral theology and canon law that he learned in the seminary and that he applies every day. He is supposed to judge the morality of acts — to separate right from wrong — and then instruct the layman to act accordingly. If this is not the priest’s job, whose is it?

Finally, just as appealing to the correct principle “Outside the Church, no salvation” almost inevitably leads to the accusation that one is a “Feeneyite,” so too, appealing to and applying correct principles about the refusal of sacraments leads to accusations of being “like the St. Pius V Society.”

But such accusations are merely emotional appeals based on honest misunderstandings (or in a few cases, cynical manipulation), rather than real arguments that are based on objective principles in theology or canon law.

That ignorant clergy consistently misapply the Church’s rules for refusing the sacraments does not make these rules the exclusive property of the ignorant and then suspend their application to all other cases.

There are, in fact, situations in which these principles oblige a priest to refuse to administer sacraments to someone. And the case under discussion, alas, is one of them.

Filed in Canon Law, Trad Controversies | Comments (0)

Ratzinger, Reverence and the Epistle Babe

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

IS BENEDICT XVI launching a liturgical reform to restore tradition and reverence in Catholic worship? Having permitted the use of the ’62 Missal as the “Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite,” is he now trying to make New Mass itself “more traditional”?

Conservative bloggers who devote themselves following liturgical matters in the post-Vatican II Church would answer yes, and they are positively ecstatic.

Members of this group refer to themselves as a “new liturgical movement” and call for “a reform of the reform,” by which they mean a reworking of the Novus Ordo.

Recently they have started to attach great significance to the reappearance of traditional accoutrements in the various Vatican ceremonies that Benedict XVI presides over. An eye-popping jeweled miter on Ratzinger’s head, a Baroque morse (cope clasp) on his chest, or an ornate Pius XII-era throne behind him sets them buzzing in the blogsphere like little Barberini bees.

Another cause for excitement among the restorationists was the appointment of new Vatican Master of Ceremonies with conservative street cred, Mgr Marini. He replaces the JP2-era MC (also named Marini) who had started out as secretary to Bugnini, the principal creator of the New Mass. The “old” Marini favored liturgical theatrics of the “progressive” variety. The new one favors lace surplices. (!)

According to the bloggers, the way Benedict XVI celebrates the New Mass at the Vatican is proof that the great restoration has already begun. Ratzinger is giving us an example and showing us the new liturgical model. Chant is accorded “pride of place,” significant portions of the rite are in Latin, and the celebrant conducts himself a restrained and dignified fashion.

It is, we are assured, a return to tradition in the Roman Rite. Or is it?

To test this out, I decided to watch a re-broadcast of the Christmas Midnight Mass that Benedict XVI celebrated this year in St. Peter’s.

To a layman who goes to a garden-variety Novus Ordo in a standard suburban American parish or to a neo-con diocesan priest persecuted by his Ordinary, I can see how Ratzinger’s Latin-laced Midnight Mass would seem like Roman-Rite retro and the absolute apex of liturgical tradition.

But what Mgr Marini had on offer certainly didn’t bowl me over.

It was Christmas evening, and I had just returned from more than 24 hours’ worth of Christmas liturgical celebrations conducted according to the real Roman Rite: Prime, Vigil Mass, First Vespers, Matins, Solemn Pontifical Mass, Lauds, Low Masses and Second Vespers. I have not only performed most of these ceremonies for decades, but also taught seminary courses on the history and meaning of their prayers and ceremonial. I also teach another course on problems with the Novus Ordo itself.

From this perspective, Benedict XVI’s Midnight Mass was nothing more than rehash, albeit more staid, of the same old modernist assembly-supper. Here are my impressions.

Baroque Miter, Twisted Lizard…

The various pre-Vatican II liturgical furnishings are indeed now used in St. Peter’s once again. For Christmas, the high altar was decked out with a magnificent frontal, and a crucifix stood in the center. The stubby Paul VI candlesticks have been replaced with glorious old-fashioned Baroque ones — including a seventh, which in the old rite was a privilege reserved to Ordinaries. The latter will be especially thrilling for true devotees of Tridentine arcana.

Benedict XVI processed into the Basilica wearing (gasp!) a jeweled miter.

Alas, he was also carrying The Twisted Lizard. This item is a creepy modern “crucifix” staff first employed by Paul VI, and then used in Vatican ceremonies by all his successors. I consider it utterly diabolical.

Once the horde of concelebrants who preceded him had kissed the altar, Benedict incensed it and went to his presidential chair, which had been set up in front of the altar to face the people.

After the Sign of the Cross and a Pax vobis, he read a short vernacular instruction to the people. This is one of the many inventions the modernists introduced into the Mass in order to make it “instructional.” Needless to say, Pontifical Mass in the old rite contains no such thing.

An Invented Rite, an “Edited” Text…

Next, instead of the Novus Ordo equivalent of the Confiteor and the Kyrie, a hokey rite made up especially for Christmas was inserted. This consisted of an “edited” version of the proclamation of the birth of Christ that appeared in the pre-Vatican II Martyrology. Indeed, I had chanted the traditional version the previous day at the Office of Prime.

I’m sure that the restorationists thought this rite was very grand. But removing a part of the Ordinary of the Mass and dumping in a chunk of the Divine Office is pure Vatican II stuff — “needless duplications must be eliminated,” the Council told us.

The text sung at Ratzinger’s Mass, moreover, omitted the phrases from the traditional text about the number of years from Creation, the Flood, etc. Such cannot be reconciled with modernist scripture scholarship, so, tradition be damned. At least they didn’t put in Darwin…

More Invented Stuff…

Ratzinger intoned the Gloria, and presto, another invented rite was interpolated. This time, kids carrying flowers and dressed in cutesy national costumes appeared at the head of a procession, followed by a deacon carrying a Christ Child and wearing a dazzling embroidered dalmatic. The Child was placed in a little shrine, and the kids did something (I forget what) with the flowers — a nice devotional touch, to be sure, but none of it a part of the traditional liturgy.

The Gloria was then sung. The congregation sang bits of the Mass of the Angels in Latin, while the choir chimed in with a fancy musical setting that sounded like a toothpaste commercial. (Really.) At the end, Benedict chanted the Collect in Latin.

Inert at the Chair…

Next came the New Mass’s Liturgy of the Word, during which (unlike the traditional rite) the presider sits mute and inert at his chair. (Others have taken over the jobs he used to do.) All of it was conducted, as required, facing the people, because these bits of the Novus Ordo are supposed to be particularly instructional.

A layman in a suit appeared at the lectern, and proclaimed the First Reading in Spanish.

His place was then taken by a cantor in an alb, who led the congregation in singing the Responsorial Psalm, alternating with them in a hammy voice for the verses. The Responsorial that appears in the Novus Ordo is another post-Vatican II innovation that did not exist in the traditional rite.

And Subbing for the Subdeacon…

Then, to proclaim the Second Reading, there appeared not the Apostolic Subdeacon of days gone by, but that distinguished liturgical functionary who now adorns every post-Vatican II “Papal Mass”: the Epistle Babe

The Epistle Babe this year was young, American and good-looking enough to more than merit her title. There, before the high altar of the greatest church in Christendom, in a basilica packed with prelates of every description, she giggled and smiled her way through a positively perky rendition of the Epistle in English.

Great performance, honey! Glad you’re onboard as the Holy Father and the lace-surpliced Mgr Marini restore our sense of the sacred…

A Missed Opportunity?

Then came the chanting of an Alleluia and the Gospel procession, conducted in a fashion that more or less resembled the traditional rite. The deacon, vested in another dalmatic that would send “reform of the reform” bloggers into a swoon, chanted the Gospel magnificently in Latin.

One element of pre-Vatican II liturgical tradition, however, was overlooked here. When the deacon sings the Gospel in the traditional rite, the book is held open for him by the sacred minister who proclaimed the Epistle. In the new rite, of course, this would be the Epistle Babe…

After the Gospel, Benedict delivered his homily. This had a good, clever opening, but eventually meandered around to offering the obligatory grain of incense to ecology. (His pal, the Archbishop of Canterbury, did the same.)

Line Up at the Lectern…

The congregation then chanted the Credo. According to the new rules, it’s never supposed to be sung by the choir alone, so bye-bye Palestrina.

Then came another made-up part of the Novus Ordo: The Prayer of the Faithful.

Ratzinger read the Introduction — another didactic “instruction” — and a gaggle of lay men and women lined up at the lectern. Each delivered one trendy petition in his or her native language.

This is a hokey bit of theatre, invented to make for “relevant” liturgy, and in this context, to demonstrate that “the Church is universal.” Making the latter point, of course, required no such theatrics when Catholics everywhere used Latin, period.

I advise restorationists to spare me the canard that the Prayer of the Faithful is a restoration of an ancient practice. Litanies were led by deacons in the primitive Church, not divvied up and parceled out to women.

And as for trendy petitions, I’d like to sneak into one of these Prayer of the Faithful conga lines and lay on Marini and Ratzinger a real text used by the primitive Church at this point in the liturgy:

“Let the heretic now depart! Let the Jew now depart! Let the pagan now depart!”

More Cutesy Stuff…

The Offertory Procession, another bit of didactic and empty post-Vatican II symbolism followed. The cutesy kids in costumes appeared with the “gifts” they had gotten from Benedict’s sacristan thirty seconds earlier, and presented them to Benedict. Remember how one of the characteristics of the liturgical reform was supposed to be “authenticity”? An uncomfortable moment occurred when the tots didn’t want to leave; the Laced One eventually stepped up and shooed them off.

The Preparation of the Gifts was standard, stripped down, Novus Ordo version.

Ratzinger, however, recited prayers to himself as he circled the altar. Now, the Paul VI Missal abolished the old prayers, and prescribed that the incensation be done in silence. I suspect, therefore, that the restorationist bloggers are now desperately searching for Latin-speaking lip readers in hopes of discovering that, yes, it was indeed the incensation prayers from the Tridentine Missal (!!) that the Benedict was using…

On the down side, Mgr Marini missed yet another opportunity here to restore a Tridentine practice. Before the Offertory incensation in the old rite, the subdeacon has a humeral veil placed over his shoulders, receives the paten and goes to stand at the foot of the steps, there to hold the paten at eye level.

Perhaps this job, too, could have been handed over to the Epistle Babe… another “overflow” from the Extraordinary Rite!

The whole congregation responded in Latin to the Orate Fratres. In both its origins and in the Tridentine rite, however, this prayer was recited in a low voice exclusively by the clergy at the altar.

Lots of Latin, Loudly…

The Prayer over the Gifts (formerly the Secret), the Preface, the Eucharistic Prayer (the Canon), Our Father, Libera Nos, Pax Prayer, Communion Prayers, etc., were all chanted or recited aloud in Latin.

The Eucharistic Prayer was No. 1, which the restorationists think of as “the old Roman Canon.” In fact, the modernists changed the text in 1969 to bring what they called the Institution Narrative (formerly, the Consecration) into line with the other Eucharistic Prayers they had cooked up. They popped an “acclamation” into the Canon after the Institution Narrative.

Restorationists and most laymen hear all this Latin recited aloud, and think it’s the sound of Benedict XVI turning back clock to the old rite. My perspective, needless to say, is quite a bit different.

All these prayers are recited aloud because of the new theology of the liturgy embodied by the Novus Ordo. The old liturgy, said Father Martin Patino (a member of Study Group 10, that actually formulated the new Ordinary itself) was theocentric (God-centered); the new rite, he said, was anthropocentric (man-centered) instead.

In the old rite under the old theology, it didn’t matter whether the faithful heard all the prayers or not. God did. In the new rite, based on a new theology, hearing everything matters. You’re being “instructed,” and it centers on you, man!

Hence, Benedict must chirp out every last word so you can hear it, even if it is in Latin. If he wanted to be traditional, he’d turn the microphones off after the Preface and shut up.

Some Official Inventions…

Also not traditional and a Vatican II invention: concelebration. Parts of the text of the Canon are assigned to different concelebrants, who then bark them out on cue. The idea, I supposed, is to be egalitarian (all just priests here, folks!) and to engage the interest of the congregation, which is being instructed by long blocks of text recited aloud at them.

Another weird feature was the procedure for consecrating hosts at a service in which everyone (or nearly, it seems) receives communion. The ciboria were not placed on the altar. Instead crowds of priests wearing stoles and holding ciboria stood several yards away from the altar on either side at the bottom of the steps.

The balance of the rite was a standard by-the-book Novus Ordo: Luther’s “for thine is the kingdom” after the Libera Nos, the non-hierarchical Sign of Peace, the priest’s and people’s communion lumped together, and the rest. That those who perform these protestant assembly-supper rituals should now be considered “traditional” because they conduct them in Latin shows how far the Roman Liturgy and the understanding thereof has fallen.

Two other general comments are in order.

First, in the traditional rite, a priest or a bishop is the anonymous functionary. He’s supposed to keep his eyes lowered when he’s moving, sitting, or turned in the direction of the congregation.

Like JP2, Ratzinger has no custody of the eyes. Given the character of the New Mass — man-centered — I suppose that this is not particularly surprising.

Second, though the restorationists had expressed their enthusiasm over the appointment of a new Vatican music director, the choir at the Midnight Mass was horrible. The boys and men have a rough and raw sound that comes through in every piece.

The organist wasn’t much better. Once Ratzinger departed, Twisted Lizard in hand, the organist slowly trudged through Widor’s F-Major Toccata, an old warhorse that’s meant to be played brilliantly at a breakneck speed.

The bottom line on the whole production: The same old New Mass with a few new old trimmings. Neo-Tridentine? A restoration of tradition? You’re kidding yourself.

But Seriously…

Now, I’ve had quite a bit of fun thus far — an inordinate amount, some steely-eyed Dominican moral theologian might insist — at the expense of the reform-of-the-reform and restorationist enthusiasts.

Underneath it all, however, my point is a serious one: the Mass of Paul VI cannot be “redeemed” by tacking onto it various externals from the traditional rite. It is incongruous and absurd to do so because, as Paul VI’s Secretary of State, Mgr Benelli, remarked during the controversy with Archbishop Lefebvre in the 1970s, the old Mass represents “another ecclesiology.”

That ecclesiology was hierarchical. Vatican II swept it away, and substituted the fuzzy ecclesiology of Church as “sacrament,” “mystery,” “communion” and “People of God.”

The New Mass is a product of that new, ecumenical ecclesiology, and indeed a whole new theology. To get excited when the rite is dressed up with lace, embroidered dalmatics and the seventh candlestick is to fall into the trap of High Church let’s-pretend. The old doctrine is gone.

Besides, by permitting the Motu Mass, Ratzinger will now let you play that game with most of the old tea set anyway.

Whether you opt for the “Ordinary” or the “Extraordinary” Rite, though, one rubric still remains non-negotiable: You must adhere to Vatican II and the ecumenical One-World church it created.

But as long as clerics still cling to the myth that Vatican II was a “new springtime” that needs nothing more than to be interpreted correctly, the downward spiral will continue in the Conciliar Church, and no amount of ritual frippery, whether ordinary or extraordinary, will stop it.

So, as far as I’m concerned, the only Vatican ceremony worth getting excited over in the future will be the one in which the MCs get out all the copies of the Vatican II documents they can find, pile ‘em high in St. Peter’s Square and douse the lot of them with gasoline.

Who’d light the match? I’d even let the Epistle Babe do it…

Filed in Benedict XVI: Misc, Liturgy: Misc | Comments Off

The St. Michael Prayer: A “Falsified” Text?

Monday, November 12, 2007

ONE STORY that periodically resurfaces in traditionalist circles alleges that the St. Michael Prayer, recited after the traditional Mass in many places as a part of the Leonine Prayers, is a “falsified” version of a longer prayer written by Leo XIII. The longer prayer, the story goes, warned that Judaeo-Masonic infiltrators would achieve their long-time goal of usurping the papal chair; for this reason conspirators “censored” it twice after Leo’s death. (See Gary Giuffré, “Exile of the Pope-Elect, Part VII: Warnings from Heaven Suppressed,” Sangre de Cristo Newsnotes 69–70 [1991], 4–7)

This is the sort of juicy tale that certain types on the traditional Catholic scene really love to promote. It incorporates some familiar elements: private revelations, infiltrators, altered documents, a deceived pontiff, and prophecies of an evil intruder sitting on the Chair of Peter. For those who understand how the enemies of the Church operate, parts of the account may sound plausible at first. It also (as book reviewers love to say) makes for “a rollicking good read.”

Unfortunately, it is the type of conspiracy story which exposes traditional Catholics to ridicule — because when you look closely at the facts adduced as “proof” for a conspiracy, you discover that the story’s originators managed to get just about everything wrong.

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TWO PRAYERS: 1886 AND 1888
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The promoters of the falsified text theory begin with an absolutely fatal error. The Latin text of the St. Michael Prayer we all know so well was published in 1886. (See Irish Ecclesiastical Review 7 [1886], 1050.)

The text that they claim was the origin of our St. Michael Prayer, however, in fact appeared two years later when, on 25 September 1888, Pope Leo XIII approved a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and granted an indulgence of 300 days for its recitation. (For the Italian text, see Enchiridion Indulgentiarum [Vatican: 1950)], 446.) This text was in fact a completely new prayer.

Like the 1886 text, the 1888 prayer also invokes St. Michael’s aid us in our warfare against the devil. But it is a very lengthy text, filled with line after line of vivid and striking imagery about the devil and his minions.

The prayer describes the devil as one who pours out on “men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.” Of these servants of Satan, the prayer adds:

“These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions.”

The prayer then expands upon this description with the following:

“In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of the abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered. (tr. A. St. John, Raccolta, 11th ed, [London: 1930] 407.)

These two passages, needless to say, are the ones which the censored text theorists claim “predict” the effects of Vatican II.

After its approval, the 1888 text was at some point included in The Raccolta (the Church’s official collection of indulgenced prayers).

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THE 1890 EXORCISM AGAINST SATAN
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In an audience two years later, moreover, Leo XIII approved a new and lengthy “Exorcism against Satan and Apostate Angels,” intended to be used by bishops and by priests who received special permission from their ordinaries. (See SCPF, ex aud. SSmi., 18 May 1890, AAS 23 [1890–91], 747.)

This rite employed the 1888 prayer to St. Michael, including the two pas-sages quoted above, as sort of a preface to a series of prayers of exorcism. (See SCPF “Exorcismus…, AAS 23 [1890–91], 743–4.) The rite was then incorporated into the Appendix of The Roman Ritual (the book containing the official texts for sacramental rites and various blessings) among the more recent (novissimae) blessings. (See Rituale Romanum, 6th ed. [Ratisbon: 1898], 163*ff.)

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SUBSEQUENT OMISSIONS
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Later editions of The Raccolta omitted the conclusion of the 1888 prayer, beginning with the passage which spoke of the “throne of abominable impiety” raised where the See of Peter stood.

Later editions of The Roman Ritual went even further: they omitted not only that passage, but also the one referring those who have laid impious hands on the Church’s most sacred possessions. Other passages were deleted as well, leaving only about one-third of the 1888 text. (See the Appendix below.)

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THE “CONSPIRACY” EXPLAINED
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Now, having misidentified an 1888 prayer as the antecedent to an 1886 prayer, the proponents of the censored-text theory contend that unnamed infiltrators in the Vatican, fearing exposure of their plot to seize control of the See of Peter, stealthily deleted these passages from the Raccolta and the Ritual after Leo’s death.

All of it is nonsense.

(1) Pope Dead? Pope Alive! The passages were not removed after Leo XIII’s death. They were already suppressed in 1902 — a year and a half before the pontiff died.

(2) Mysterious Author? A Public Document! This suppression was not, as we are told, an “ambiguous forgery” perpetrated “mysteriously” by some “unnamed Vatican official.”

The Sacred Congregation of Rites, in consultation with the Congregation for Indulgences, revised the 1888 prayer and issued a new edition. This was printed in 1902, bearing the seal of the Congregation’s Prefect, Cardinal Ferrata, and the signature of the Congregation’s Secretary, Archbishop D. Panici, and his attestation that is “agrees with the original.” (See supplementary material bound into back of Pustet Rituale Romanum, 6th ed., [1898].)

(3) The Future? The Past! The passages in question, please note, were not written in the future tense, as one would expect for a prophecy. They were written in the past tense, and thus referred to events which had already taken place in 1888.

(4) Crafty Enemies? Revolutionaries! To whom, then, do the passages refer? One has but to look to the situation the Pope faced in Italy in the late 1880s.

The “crafty enemies” of the Church who “laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions” were none other than the revolutionaries who (as we have seen above) invaded the Papal States and despoiled the Church’s properties.

(5) Throne of Impiety? The King of Italy! And the “throne of abominable impiety“ raised up in “the Holy Place itself, where there has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of truth for the light of the world”? This was the throne of the King of Italy, set up in the Quirinale Palace.

Prior to its seizure 1870 by the excommunicated King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel, the Quirinale was the principal papal palace in Rome. It was the customary location for papal conclaves. It was also one of the places where the pope had held court, sitting, of course, on a throne — the “Chair of truth for the light of the world.”

When the 1888 prayer was composed, the throne of a usurping and excommunicated monarch then stood in this palace which had been stolen from the the pope. So — throne of impiety!

(6) Changed Texts? Changed Politics! Why, finally, were the texts altered toward the end of the Leo’s reign? Again, we look to historical situation.

By 1902 Leo XIII had been carrying on secret negotiations for years with the new King, Umberto. The King at one point ap-peared willing to return a substantial part of the city of Rome to the Pope’s control — a proposal that could have infuriated Parliament enough to call for the King’s deposition. (See E. Jarry, “Les États Pontificaux,” Tu es Petrus [Paris: 1934)] 610) Had Umberto made such a risky concession, he would have expected (and received) official recognition of his status from the Pope. (This finally came with the Lateran Treaty in 1929)

Further references to the King in the Church’s Ritual as occupying “a throne of abominable impiety,” needless to say, would have been at odds with papal acknowledgement of the King’s legitimacy.

The prayer also linked the establishment of the King’s throne with the devil, who pours out on “men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.” Since the King gave signs of wanting to make amends, it probably seemed appropriate to alter the prayer.

* * *

TO SUM UP, then: The lengthy 1888 prayer to St. Michael was composed after the St. Michael prayer in the Leonine Prayers appeared. The passages in the 1888 text which are supposedly “prophetic” refer in fact to the Italian government’s past actions, including seizure of the Church’s property. The “throne of impiety” was the one the excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel had set up in the “holy place” — the Quirinale Palace, where the pope’s throne had previously been.

Once the King of Italy appeared willing to arrive at a settlement of the Roman Question — the dispute over the disposition of seized Church property — the Vatican dropped from the prayer passages which he and the Italian government would have found offensive.

So while in the history of the Church we may indeed find real instances of conspiracies and falsified texts, the case of the St. Michael Prayer isn’t one of them.

Beware the too-juicy tale!

——–

APPENDIX

“Prayer to St. Michael from Exorcism against Satan and the Apostate Angels (Approved 18 May 1890.)”

NOTE: In 1902 the Congregation of Rites issued a decree approving a new version of the prayer. The passages indicated in bold face below were removed.

O GLORIOUS ARCHANGEL St Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, defend us in battle, and in the struggle which is ours against the principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against spirits of evil in high places. (Eph 6.) Come to the aid of men, whom God created immortal, made in his own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil, (Wis 2, 1 Cor 6.)

Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in Heaven, But that cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan, who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with all his angels, (Apoc 12.)

Behold, this primeval enemy and slayer of man has taken courage, Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the name of God and of his Christ, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. This wicked dragon pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.

These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions.

In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.

Arise then, O invincible prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and bring them the victory.

The Church venerates thee as protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of this world and of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.

Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENCHIRIDION INDULGENTIARUM: PRECES ET PIA OPERA OMNIUM CHRISTIFIDELIUM. Vatican: Polyglot Press 1950.

GIUFFRÉ, GARY. “Exile of the Pope-Elect, Part VII: Warnings from Heaven Suppressed,” Sangre de Cristo Newsnotes 69–70 (1991). 3–11.

JARRY, E. “Les États Pontificaux.” In Tu es Petrus: Encyclopédie Populaire sur la Papauté, edited by G. Jacquemet. Paris: Bloud 1934. 551–617.

PARSONS, WILFRED SJ. The Pope and Italy. New York: America Press 1929.

RITUALE ROMANUM. 6th edition post typicam. Ratisbon: Pustet 1898.

SACRORUM RITUUM CONGREGATIO [S.R.C.]. Decree Iam Inde ab Anno, 6 January 1884, Acta Sanctae Sedis 16 (1884). 249–250.
_______________. Decree Mechlin., 31 August 1867, 3157, in Decreta Authentica.
_______________. Decreta Authentica Congregationis Sacrorum Rituum. Rome: Polyglot Press 1898.

S.C. DE PROPAGANDA FIDE. Ex audientia Sanctissimi 18 May 1890, Acta Sanctae Sedis 23 (1890–91). 747.

_______________. “Exorcismus in satanam et angelos apostaticos iussu Leonis XIII P.M. editus,” Acta Sanctae Sedis 23 (1890–91). 743–746.

SCHNÜRER, GUSTAV. “States of the Church.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by Charles G. Habermann et al. New York: Enylopedia Press 1912. 14:257–268.

ST. JOHN, AMBROSE [translator]. The Raccolta or Collection of Indulgenced Prayers and Good Works. 11th edition. London: Burns Oates 1930.

The foregoing was adapted from material in another longer article, “Russia and the Leonine Prayers,” that originally appeared in Sacerdotium 5, (Autumn 1992).

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The Traditional Mass: How We “Participate”

Friday, November 9, 2007

QUESTION: Friends who are regulars at the Novus Ordo say that they like all the participation at the service, and that they don’t like the traditional Latin Mass because it doesn’t really have much.

I tell them that there’s nothing wrong with not participating, and that it makes for more reverence. Do you have any thoughts about this?

RESPONSE: Both you and your friends are somewhat mistaken in your understanding of what “participation” is and how that takes place at the traditional Latin Mass.

Traditional Catholics tend to look upon a sacrament as primarily something the priest gives and the layman receives. The priest is active, the layman passive. The priest confers the sacrament; the lay recipient cooperates.

This paradigm does not hold, though, for assistance at Mass. The layman is meant not merely to receive something passively (grace, Holy Communion, “credit” for fulfilling his Sunday obligation, etc.), but to participate and to give something actively. What? Active worship of God, because as a result of his baptism, the layman is privileged and obliged to participate, according to his state, in offering up Holy Sacrifice.

Please note the verb: participate.

Unfortunately, during and after Vatican II, the modernists appropriated this language, corrupted its real meaning, and used it to transform the Mass into an engine for doctrinal revolution throughout the world. Thus, they turned the priest into a president, the “assembly” into the primary agent of worship, and regimented “responses” into the only permissible indicator of participation —this is where your friends got their idea — with all present pummeled into submission by the Giant Amplified Voice.

Traditionalists, therefore, are understandably skittish about any talk of how they are supposed to assist or participate actively in offering the Holy Sacrifice. Nevertheless, active assistance and participation in the Mass, understood in the correct sense, is required of every Catholic.

At the traditional Mass, how do members of the laity manifest their active assistance or participation in the Mass? There are several ways, and this list is by no means exhaustive.

(1) By receiving Holy Communion during the Mass itself.

(2) Serving Mass for the priest at the altar.

(3) Singing in the choir.

(4) Singing responses as a member of the congregation at High Mass, or singing hymns during Low Mass, where either practice is the custom.

(5) Using a Missal to follow and pray on your own the prayers of the Mass as the priest recites them at the altar.

(6) Using a book of meditations or prayers that follows the actions of the Mass.

(7) Reciting the Rosary, while looking at the sacred actions taking place at the altar.

(8) Attentively following the actions of the priest at the altar while making the customary external signs of devotion appropriate to each part of the Mass (standing, sitting, kneeling, striking your breast, making Signs of the Cross, looking up at the Sacred Host, folding your hands, etc.)

(9) Physical presence, accompanied by the intention to assist at Mass and fulfill the Sunday obligation, together with a certain degree of attention during the rite.

In one or more of the foregoing, of course, the traditionalist reader will recognize the method he employs every Sunday when he goes to Mass.

But whichever of these methods the layman chooses, it does in fact constitutes a true and active participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

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Bp. Williamson Plays Cat and Mouse

Sunday, November 4, 2007

IN HIS latest blog entry on Pascendi (St. Pius X’s great Encyclical against modernism), Bishop Richard Williamson (SSPX) once again promotes his theory that the modernists of our own days (Ratzinger and company) are not true heretics because “subjectivism unhooks their mind from reality.” See Pascendi II

It is another application of Bishop Williamson’s Mentevacantist Error which I described in an article of the same name.

In his most recent comments Bishop Williamson also uses his typical trick of suggesting (through a series of rhetorical questions) a false general principle — in this case, that modernist heretics are not responsible for their errors (and thus, we are meant to infer, they are unable to lose office):

“However the Conciliar fantasies have taken such a grip on many of today’s churchmen that the temptation arises to consider that none of them are churchmen at all, in particular the last few Popes. But ‘Pascendi’ can offer a way out of this temptation by its same teaching that subjectivism unhooks churchmen’s minds from reality. Are they fully aware of how mad they are, when virtually everyone shares in their madness? And if they are not fully aware, do they necessarily disqualify themselves as churchmen? ‘Pascendi’ suggests to me that sedevacantism is not binding.”

But Bishop Williamson then avoids the objection that would naturally follow from applying the false principle (that modernists are “let off the hook,” i.e. excused), by quickly adding that this issue is “of secondary” importance.”What is of primary importance,” he says, is saving our souls:

“By no means everyone agrees with letting the Conciliar churchmen off the hook in this way, but that is of secondary importance. Back to ‘Pascendi’ – what is of primary importance is to give glory to God and to save our souls by submitting our minds to that one objective Faith which God has revealed, and without which nobody can please God.”

Bishop Williamson has been using this particular trick for decades: False general principle, then switch to another topic before you’re smoked out.

His recently re-published seminary newsletters from the 1980s are full of it. I will offer a prize to any SSPX seminarian (anonymous, of course) who can find the most examples of it in that collection — a great exercise for the First Year Philosophy students.

Bishop Williamson’s rhetoric is dishonest and manipulative. Those who look to him as a “hard-liner” are being toyed with and led astray.

Some European brethren are now criticizing the symbolism on his episcopal coat-of-arms. Bishop Williamson should change it to a cat playing with a mouse.

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A Pope as a “Manifest” or “Public” Heretic

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

QUESTION: In 2004 the SSPX Canadian publication “Communicantes” published “Sedevacantism,” a lengthy critique of that position by Fr. Dominique Boulet. One of his principal arguments against sedevacantism was that, whatever you may think about the post-Conciliar popes, they are not really “manifest,” “public,” or “notorious” heretics, as canon law understands those terms.

What’s your response to this? And how are these terms defined?

RESPONSE: The key theological principle behind sedevacantism is found in the treatises of pre-Vatican II canonists and theologians and may be summed up as follows: If a pope as a private individual embraces some heresy and then professes it to others openly in some fashion — theologians use various terms to characterize this heresy: “public,” “notorious,” “manifest,” or “openly divulged” — he puts himself outside the Church and automatically loses his office.

Father Boulet, like so many other anti-sedevacantist controversialists, makes two errors: (1) He confuses the sin of heresy with the crime of heresy, and (2) He confuses generic terms applied to heresy before the 1917 Code of Canon Law (manifest, notorious, public, etc.) with the more specific meanings these terms were given after the 1917 Code.

I. HERESY: CONFUSING
“SIN” WITH CANONICAL “CRIME”
———————————————————————-

The principal flaw in Fr. Boulet’s argument — and one that runs through his lengthy article from beginning to end — is that he utterly confuses two aspects of heresy:

(1) Moral: Heresy as a sin (peccatum) against divine law.

(2) Canonical: Heresy as a crime (delictum) against canon law.

The moral/canonical distinction is easy to grasp by applying it to abortion, which likewise can be considered under the same two aspects:

(1) Moral: Sin against the 5th Commandment that results in the loss of sanctifying grace.

(2) Canonical: Crime against canon 2350.1 of the Code of Canon Law that results in automatic excommunication.

Fr. Boulet, like so many other anti-sedevacantist controversialists, seems to think it is the second aspect of heresy — heresy as a crime against canon law — that renders a public heretic incapable of becoming a true pope or that automatically strips him of his office if he falls into heresy after has already been elected to it.

Consequently, Fr. Boulet quotes at great length criteria from the Code of Canon Law that are used to determine when a crime is imputable, public, notorious, pertinacious, etc. Any “heresies” of the post-Conciliar popes, he maintains, do not meet these canonical standards, so (he concludes) there is nothing to the sedevacantist case.

But all this is barking up the wrong tree. It is not heresy in the second sense (crime against canon law), but heresy in the first sense (a sin against divine law) that prevents a public heretic from becoming or remaining pope. This is clear from the teaching of pre-Vatican II canonists like Coronata:

“III. Appointment to the office of the Primacy [i.e. papacy]. 1° What is required by divine law for this appointment: … Also required for validity is that the appointment be of a member of the Church. Heretics and apostates (at least public ones) are therefore excluded.”…

“2° Loss of office of the Roman Pontiff. This can occur in various ways: … c) Notorious heresy. …“If indeed such a situation would happen, he [the Roman Pontiff] would, by divine law, fall from office without any sentence, indeed, without even a declaratory one.” (Institutiones Iuris Canonici [Rome: Marietti 1950] 1:312, 316. My emphasis.)

Divine law removes the heretical pope. One need not therefore look to all the criteria laid down for crimes against canon law.

To attempt to do so in the case of a pope, moreover, is to commit a “category error” — to ascribe to something a property it could not possibly have. A pope, as Supreme Legislator, is above canon law, and therefore cannot commit a crime against it, so no evil act he commits can be properly called a “crime.” It can only be called a sin, because he is subject to the divine law alone.

II. MISTAKEN ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT
“MANIFEST,” “PUBLIC,” “NOTORIOUS”
——————————————————————–-

Most anti-sedevacantist controversialists over the years have, like Fr. Boulet, made exactly the same error. Why? The answer lies in their false assumptions about the meaning of technical terms.

The long line of theologians and canonists over the centuries who examined the question of a heretical pope distinguished between two general types of papal heresy according to the “notice” or “publicity” it received.

(1) “Occult” (i.e., secret or hidden) heresy. (E.g., written in a diary, uttered in private to a few discreet people, etc.)

(2) A second type of heresy that is not occult. (E.g., published in an official document, proclaimed in a public discourse, etc.)

For the latter, the various theological and canonical treatises did not always use an identical term, but instead employed a variety of expressions to describe the papal heretic or his heresy: “public,” “notorious,” “manifest,” “openly divulged,” etc.

These were generic terms that did not have a uniform meaning in sources and authors before the 1917 Code, and were simply used in contradistinction to “occult.” (See F. Roberti, “De Delictis et Poenis,” schemata praelectionum [Rome: Lateran 1955] 80–1) Authors writing after the 1917 Code about the question of a heretical pope continued to use the same generic language to distinguish between occult and non-occult heresy.

Because of this, Fr. Boulet and many others like him have fallen into anachronism about the terminology. They mistake this generic language used by authors writing about papal heresy before the Code, and subsequently taken up even by authors after the Code, as an indication that all the minute criteria of the Code’s criminal legislation must be satisfied before a loss of papal office can kick in.

This, alas, is a fatal error, so none of their arguments on this point can be used against the sedevacantist case.

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The “Canonized” Mass and Abp. Lefebvre

Thursday, August 16, 2007

QUESTION: In your Quidlibet article “Quo Primum: Could a Pope Change It?” I read your comment that a future pope after St. Pius V could, as a supreme legislator, abrogate this Bull.

However, I still wonder why the Bull then states that “and that this present document cannot be revoked or modified,” which could only possibly be done by a future pope? This specification in the Bull would just make no sense then.

RESPONSE: In times past, various persons and institutions — kings, lower ecclesiastics, the faculty of the University of Paris, etc. — claimed the right to review, modify or revoke papal legislation.

The phrase quoted is simply standard legal language directed against attempts to do this.

QUESTION: Has the Bull, apart from juridical value, no dogmatic value?

RESPONSE: It is an ecclesiastical law regulating how priests are to say Mass, and is not a dogmatic pronouncement.

If it had indeed been a dogmatic pronouncement, the pre-Vatican II manuals of dogmatic theology would have treated it as such, but I know of no manual that does so.

QUESTION: Some authors state that the Bull contains a “canonization,” which in itself can never be revoked?

RESPONSE: Archbishop Lefebvre invented this idea, and I was present when he came up with it. Here is my recollection of how it happened:

When I was a seminarian at Ecône, Switzerland in the mid-1970s, Archbishop Lefebvre was giving us a conference in which he was discussing his battle with Paul VI, why the New Mass was wrong, and why Catholic priests had the right to say the old Mass.

On one such occasion, the Archbishop was speaking half-extemporaneously. As part of a digression, he was searching for some sort of analogy to describe the status that Pope St. Pius V gave to the old Mass.

The Archbishop finally said that St. Pius V “canonized” the Tridentine Mass. He then smiled at the cleverness of his offhand analogy, and said that, of course, when a pope “canonizes” a saint, another pope cannot undo the canonization. So, Paul VI cannot abolish our right to celebrate the “Mass of All Time.” It has been “canonized.”

Although I saw heads all around me nod in agreement, even then, the argument struck me as a really strange. The only thing I had ever heard the verb “canonize” applied to was the process of making a saint. This, I would later discover, was exactly the case. The analogy was completely false.

However, since Archbishop Lefebvre himself had offhandedly said that the Tridentine Mass was “canonized,” it became part of the SSPX party line/creation myth — itself “canonized” — and passed on from generation to generation. I wonder how many SSPX clergy were taught this and still believe it.

Traditional Catholics in general and SSPX in particular should really abandon phony arguments like these — especially when so many convincing arguments based on real principles can be made against the New Mass and the New Religion.

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Seminary High Schools after Vatican II

Thursday, August 9, 2007

THE AUGUST 9, 2007 issue of The Wanderer contained an article by James K. Fitzpatrick on the demise of seminary high schools after Vatican II.

Seminary high schools, also called “minor seminaries,” once played a major role in fostering priestly vocations. These institutions provided boys who felt inclined towards the priesthood with a spiritual and academic formation appropriate to their age, and prepared them for the higher studies that would come in the later stages of the seminary program.

Seminary high schools were a great success, and before Vatican II most priests started on their road towards ordination in such a school. I myself graduated from one in 1969, and I am forever grateful to God for what I received.

Mr. Fitzpatrick says that up until about 10 or 15 years ago, he was inclined to defend these institutions. An article in The Washington Post (!), however, changed his mind.

“Facts are facts,” Mr. Fitzpatrick says. Not one of his classmates from Cathedral High, a seminary high school in New York, went on to become a priest.

In the late 1960s, he notes, there were 122 high school seminaries in the U.S. with a total enrollment of about 16,000. Now there are just seven with a combined enrollment about 500.

Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, closed in June after 102 years in existence, has seen just one graduate ordained in the past 17 years .

Most men being ordained in U.S. seminaries these days, Mr. Fitzpatrick observes, are older, often in their 30s and 40s.

“What are we to conclude? Is this another unfortunate sign of the materialism and loss of Catholic identity in the modern world? Or is it more a situation where the Church has learned that it is better for young men to be a bit older and with more life experience before they begin their training for the priesthood and religious life.”

Did the graduates of these institutions, Mr. Fitzpatrick asks, go on to become “good priests”?

“The large wave of defections from the religious life in the 1960s and 1970s,” he answers, “included large numbers of religious who were in training from their early teenage years.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick ends his article with an anecdote about a religious brother he admired, but who abandoned his vocation. He then closes with the following sentence:

“He had been living as a member of the order since his early teens, through his high school, college, and young adult years.”

From this, readers are meant to infer that the pre-Vatican II system of seminary high schools was the cause for so many to abandon their vocations.

These comments prompted me to send Mr. Fitzpatrick the following letter:

* * *

Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick,

In your article on seminary high schools (Wanderer, 9 August 2007), you wonder why these institutions ceased to attract potential young vocations to the priesthood, and you claim that “there is no self-evident answer.”

Well, I can give you one: Vatican II destroyed the Catholic priesthood.

I studied at a seminary high school in Milwaukee during the years 1965-1969 and I witnessed this from the inside. As the changes in doctrine, discipline and worship began to touch each facet of Church life, I saw good and holy priests whom I admired turn into heretics, time-servers or disheartened apostates from the priestly state.

What idealistic young man would aspire to become part of such a mess?

My minor seminary, De Sales Prep, soon closed its doors, as did my seminary college, St. Francis. The massive new complex that housed both institutions (completed in 1963) was transformed into offices for the metastasized diocesan bureaucracy, exercise facilities for the Milwaukee Bucks and a retirement home for priests.

The major seminary, founded in 1848, shut down its academic program in July of this year. The few students who remain in the empty and downsized building take courses at a small religious order seminary nearby.

Before Vatican II all these institutions were thriving. One hundred and twenty-five boys entered with me as freshmen in the seminary high school. The Rector told us that after the twelve, hard years of study that would follow, just a small number of us would be ordained — “only” twenty-five.

To deny that Vatican II emptied these seminaries and destroyed the Catholic priesthood is to deny reality. From the time of St. Benedict (+543), religious institutions received boys, formed them spiritually, educated them and prepared them to be monks, priests and religious — a practice repeatedly commended by the popes.

But what flourished before the Council withered after it — nearly instantly — yet people like you refuse to read the writing on the wall.

I know the usual excuse Wanderer types make for the post-Vatican II mess: the Council was not properly “interpreted,” it restated all the traditional doctrines, etc.

However, as I quickly discovered in the seminary when I tried to use Vatican II’s statements against modernists, the documents are rife with double-talk, ambiguities and terminal logorrhea.

(If this were not so, by the way, the CDF statement on Lumen Gentium’s “subsists in” that you’ve been doing cartwheels over would not have been necessary. Forty years, and it still needs to be “clarified”?)

The Vatican II documents are classic modernist claptrap of the type St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi: Catholic-sounding on one page, doctrinally subversive on the next. This was method and intention of the periti [theologians] — Rahner, Schillebeeckx, de Lubac, Congar and, yes, Ratzinger — who massaged the language of the texts as they were being written.

If we wish to restore the Catholic priesthood, the only “light” in which we should “interpret” the Vatican II documents should be that of a bonfire — in which we burn every single copy.

Sincerely yours…

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Frankenchurch Rises Again: Ratzinger on the Church

Monday, July 16, 2007

ON JUNE 29, 2007, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), with Benedict XVI’s approval, published “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.”

Our local paper carried a short article on it entitled “Pope Says Others Are Not True Churches.” The writer portrayed the Vatican document as anti-ecumenical and as a return to the pre-Vatican II teaching that “Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.”

Similar accounts appeared elsewhere in the popular press. Many commentators linked the statement to Benedict XVI’s approval of the Motu Mass, and treated it as another sign that he was “turning the clock back” or restoring pre-Vatican II teachings.

Naturally I received a lot of questions about it from parishioners. One said, “No salvation outside the Church! Boy, the paper makes Ratzinger sound like Pius IX.” And indeed it did.

But by now traditional Catholics should be wary of how the popular press covers religious questions. It is simply not a reliable source for information, especially for anything touching upon doctrinal matters. The media applies to religion — especially Catholicism — the same false liberal/conservative, left/right polarities it applies to politics.

So it came as no surprise to discover that the Vatican statement was nothing more than a rehash of Vatican II heresies on the Church — heresies that Ratzinger himself had earlier refined and developed in two CDF documents published during the reign of John Paul II.

These heresies I refer to collectively as Frankenchurch. This system posits a “People of God” and a Church of Christ that is not identical with the Roman Catholic Church and somehow broader than it. It is an entity created from “elements” of the true Church that are possessed either “fully” (by Catholics) or “partially” (by heretics and schismatics).

The lightning strike that sent this monster lumbering off was Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), which stated the Church of Christ “subsists in” the Catholic Church — rather than IS the Catholic Church.

When Lumen Gentium first appeared in 1965, many non-Catholic commentators viewed the “subsists in” as the Church’s retreat from her teaching that she is the one, true Church of Christ. It implies that this church can now “subsist” elsewhere as well. Post-Vatican II theologians developed a whole new ecclesiology (theology of the Church) based on this notion.

Ratzinger’s June 2007 declaration now attempts to reconcile Vatican II’s “subsists in” with the traditional doctrine on the Church — that the one, true Church of Jesus Christ is the Roman Catholic Church.

The document consists of five questions and responses. The following points should be noted:

.
I. A Change in Doctrine?
——————————————————————
The first question that Ratzinger’s statement poses is whether Vatican II changed the Catholic doctrine on the Church.

Not surprisingly, the answer is no — Vatican II “developed” this doctrine, “deepened” it, and “more fully explained” it.

The CDF statement cites no pre-Vatican II pronouncements from the magisterium for us to compare with the new doctrine. Indeed, the footnotes for the document do not cite even one pre-Vatican II pronouncement or source. Everything is Vatican II and beyond — a sure sign that Vatican II did change Catholic doctrine on the Church.

To answer the question, the CDF merely trots out a 1965 statement from Paul VI that Lumen Gentium “really changes nothing,” that “that which was uncertain is now clarified,” and that everything “is now put together in one clear formulation.”

But apparently not clear enough, because after 47 years, Ratzinger must put out a document to answer the question…

.
II. What Does “Subsist In” Mean?
——————————————————————
“What is the meaning of the affirmation that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church?” the document asks.

It replies that “‘subsistence’ means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.”

Please note it well: subsistence does not mean identity (as in “is”) but possessing elements.

And with “elements” there appears, green-skinned and neck-bolted, the head of the Frankenchurch monster.

According to Vatican II, John Paul II’s Code of Canon Law and Ratzinger’s Catechism of the Catholic Church, all those who have been baptized — Catholics, heretics, schismatics — are incorporated into the “People of God.” This endows them with “degrees of incorporation” into, degrees of “communion” with, or “elements” of, the Church of Christ, which work out as follows:

(1) Catholics: Full incorporation or communion, or all elements of the Church of Christ.

(2) Schismatics and heretics: Partial incorporation or communion, or some elements of the Church of Christ.

Having all elements of the Church is best, but having just some of them is pretty good too.

If you are in the second category and “partially incorporated,” you have “invisible bonds of communion” that somehow attach you to the Church of Christ.

That is why I call it “Frankenchurch.” The Church is not an integral entity, but a monster stitched together with visible and invisible bonds, full and partial, from disparate parts — Catholics, heretics and schismatics.

Thus, according to Ratzinger: “It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine” — no citations to Boniface VIII or Leo XIII are given, alas! — “to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.”

Christ’s Church “is present” and “operative” in heretical and schismatic bodies? Has Ratzinger here merely given us a “clarification” or a “clearer formulation” of the Catholic doctrine on the Church enunciated by Pope Leo XIII?

“The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium.”

Or again, can we say that Ratzinger’s statement “really changes nothing” in Leo XIII’s teaching that he who separates from the Pope “has no further bond with Christ”?

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III. Why Not Just Say “Is”?
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Well, Frankenchurch, that’s why.

Ratzinger’s statement explains that Vatican II adopted “subsists in” rather than “is” because it “comes from and brings out more clearly the fact that there are ‘numerous elements of sanctification and of truth’ which are found outside [the Church’s] structure, but which ‘as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, impel towards Catholic Unity’.”

The purpose, then, of adopting “subsists” was to float the partial communion or “elements” theory of the Church — and thus promote the cause of ecumenism.

This much is clear from Ratzinger’s next statement: “Separated churches and communities” — schismatics and heretics, in other words — possess both significance and importance in the mystery of salvation, and “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation.”

• • •

The remaining two questions in the CDF statement are devoted to demonstrating how the Frankenchurch ecclesiology — partial communion, elements, particular churches, etc. — applies first to schismatics and then to heretics. These need not detain us here.

What we have said should be sufficient to demonstrate that the popular perception of Ratzinger’s declaration (a return to pre-Vatican II doctrine) was the opposite of the reality of it (a rehash of the ecumenical Frankenchurch heresy).

Finally, Ratzinger and company surely knew that the popular press would give the declaration a “traditionalist” spin. Why issue it now?

Coupled with the Motu Mass, a document that will be perceived as pre-Vatican II in tone — “Pope Says Others Not True Churches!” — is precisely what Ratzinger needs to hoodwink gullible traditionalists.

Then they, too, can be “fully incorporated” into his Frankenchurch…

For more on Ratzinger’s errors on the Church, see:

The New Ecclesiology: An Overview
The New Ecclesiology: Documentation
Resisting the Pope, Sedevacantism and Frankenchurch
Ratzinger: 99% Protestant
Ratzinger’s Dominus Jesus: A Critical Analysis
Communion: Ratzinger’s Ecumenical One-World Church

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