Worse than deja vu all over again: Vatican caves

The Remnant ^ | March 31, 2004 | Thomas Drolesky

[ultima ratio]

Worse Than Deja Vu All Over Again:

Vatican caves on meaningful reform of disastrous New Mass

Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D.

“Certainly, we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local traditions: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense.”

--Pope John Paul, while still Bishop of Krakow, as quoted in Mon Ami: Karol Wojtyla. P. 220

When last we left the saga of the Novus Ordo Missae, Pope John Paul II promised Catholics worldwide that a new set of instructions to correct liturgical abuses would be drawn up and issued by the Holy See as a follow up to his Ecclesia de Eucharistica encyclical letter. This caused many well-meaning Catholics in the Novus Ordo community to jump up and down for joy, believing that the long awaited crackdown from Rome was forthcoming. Some commentators said at the time that the Pope’s encyclical letter was just the word “we needed” to have during the Easter season. Others of us said that the Holy Father’s encyclical letter made many of the same points as his 1980 Holy Thursday letter to priests, Dominicae Cenae, which promised a set of instructions to correct liturgical abuses.

Well, if a news report from Catholic World News’s website is to be believed, the forthcoming document from Rome about the liturgy is worse than deja vu all over again. The 1980 instruction, Inaestimabile Donum, issued by the then named Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, did list the major abuses in the new Mass and called for them to be corrected. This gave much hope to those of us who did not then have the grace of tradition. Indeed, I waved copies of Inaestimabile Donum in the faces of offending priests for a year or two before I realized that Rome wasn’t going to enforce anything, including the reaffirmation of the ban on girl altar boys. Many of us did not realize at the time that the abuses were simply manifestations of the false presuppositions of a synthetic liturgy that sought to empty the Mass of its authentic tradition while claiming positivistically that tradition had been maintained as it was “updated.” There was no correcting the Novus Ordo then. There is no correcting it now. There will never be any correction of abuses in the Novus Ordo.

According to the CWN.com news story, the new document from Rome dealing with the liturgy will not mandate any disciplinary measures against liturgical abuses. It will merely call for an adherence to existing norms by “proper training” in the liturgy. If true, this is actually worse than Inaestimabile Donum. All of the thunder made by Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in the immediate aftermath of the Pope’s encyclical last year was merely rhetoric, which yielded in the final instance to the desires of the ideological descendants of the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini to keep exploding the liturgical time bombs that Michael Davies has noted with great precision were placed into the Novus Ordo as it was being created synthetically by the Consilium. Although this was entirely predictable, the fact that the new document will not represent the salvation of the Novus Ordo, which admits of so many legitimate adaptations and exceptions as to make any discussion of a liturgical “rite” an absolute oxymoron, should give traditionally minded priests who remain in the diocesan structure a wake up call. Rin Tin Tin and the Cavalry are not coming from Fort Apache.

All discussion of a “universal indult” for priests to offer the Traditional Latin Mass evidently has disappeared from the final text of the soon to be released liturgical document. Of course, Quo Primum is the only universal and perpetually binding indult any priest has ever needed to offer the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. The powers that be in Rome, however, do not want to admit that on behalf of the Holy Father, who must give his approval to the new document. Thus, those traditionally minded priests who thought that they were going to get a golden parachute from the Holy See so as to be able to offer the Traditional Latin Mass in the daylight rather than in the underground have been deceived. As good sons of the Church, many of these priests wanted to wait and see, although the outcome was predictable. Now that the outcome is clear, it is time for these priests to respond to this wake up call. They will receive no help from this pope.

Indeed, Pope John Paul II is wedded to the liturgical revolution, and has been since the Second Vatican Council. He is not going to be leading the cavalry over the hill. The late Father Vincent Miceli gave me a very important insight into the mind of the Holy Father back in January of 1983. As a self-deceived Catholic conservative who held out high hopes for the pontificate of the former Karol Cardinal Wojtyla when he was elevated to the Throne of Saint Peter on October 16, 1978, I was flabbergasted that the Pope had appointed the then Archbishop of Cincinnati, Joseph Bernardin, to succeed the late John Cardinal Cody as Archbishop of Chicago. Bernardin? Chicago? That was the stuff of Father Andrew Greeley. I had written a priest-friend in Canada in 1979 at around the time Greeley began to push Bernardin for Chicago, that “this will never happen in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Father Miceli took a few bites out of his meal at a diner in Massapequa Park, Long Island, New York, looked at me and said, “The Pope’s a liberal. Bernardin is a friend of his from the Second Vatican Council. They are fellow progressives. Don’t kid yourself.” He continued eating his meal in perfect peace. Well, although I filed Father Miceli’s wise counsel away, I didn’t want to believe it at the time. He was, of course, quite right.

To wit, I received a letter from a reader of Christ or Chaos (which is going to become an online publication by the end of February) that contained a nugget from a 1980 book, Mon Ami: Karol Wojtyla, written by a fellow named Malinski and published in France:

"In 1965—when Pope John Paul II was still the Bishop of Krakow, he discussed the phenomenon referred to as inculturation with a friend, saying: 'Certainly, we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local traditions: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense.'" (page 220)

The reader, Mr. A. E. Newman, had a pithy comment or two of his own in his letter to me: “Tell me, what hope is there from a man who thinks like this–what hope for a stable liturgy, for upholding of age long traditions? What hope from a man who flies in the face of his predecessors? Now that his reign is drawing to a close I can answer that [there is] no hope! My own view is that in the eyes of history the last three popes will bear a heavy responsibility for our present shambles and [the loss] among the faithful of millions. Just at the moment when Islam is strong. We can credit him for one thing: he followed through! God will deal with him, but we [will deal] with the deformation of our Faith.”

Although the fodder for an entire series of articles, the comments of the then Archbishop of Krakow are quite instructive. They should serve as a sobering reminder to good priests and laity who believed that the Novus Ordo can be reformed that the problem rests in the new Mass itself. Not much time needs to be wasted on this as the proverbial handwriting is really on the wall. Those traditionally minded priests who have remained in the Novus Ordo structure should stop believing that their words or even their presence can counteract entirely the harm to the Faith contained within the new Mass, admitting that there are priests within the diocesan structure who are zealous for the salvation of souls and who spend themselves tirelessly for the flock entrusted to their pastoral care. They should, as painful as it may be for them to consider, simply follow the courageous examples of Father Stephen P. Zigrang and Father Lawrence Smith. They should assert their rights under Quo Primum no matter what unjust ecclesiastical consequences might befall them. Many of their sheep will follow them, and those sheep will provide for their temporal needs, as is happening at Our Lady Help of Christians Chapel in Garden Grove, California, where hundreds upon hundreds of fed-up Catholics have found their way to the Catholic underground simply by word of mouth. It is simply time to force the Novus Ordo structure, built on quicksand, to collapse of its own intellectual dishonesty and liturgical incompleteness. It is time for good priests to say goodbye to a synthetic concoction and to bravely embrace the glory of Tradition.

Each priest must make his own decision in this regard. It is, though, a grave disservice to the faithful to try to pretend that the Novus Ordo itself is not the problem and/or that the problems will get better over the course of time. They will not. The Novus Ordo remains the prisoner of its own false presuppositions and of the devolution of liturgical decision making to local level, as was envisioned in Paragraph 22 of Sacrosanctum Concilium itself on December 1, 1963.

What applies to priests applies as well to the long-suffering laity who have waited for such a long time to see the abuses that have their origin in the Novus Ordo itself come to an end. So many good people, who dearly love God and want to save their souls, have fought valiant but ever failing efforts in most instances to keep the liturgical time bombs from exploding in their own local parishes and dioceses. Some of these people have tried to equip themselves with the latest “information” from Rome about what is licit and illicit in the context of Holy Mass. What these good people need to realize, though, is that the Novus Ordo is impermanent and unstable of its very nature. The new Mass is entirely predicated upon the idiosyncratic predilections of a bishop or a priest or diocesan and/or parish liturgical committees.

The Mass of Tradition has always been beyond even the realm of a bishop to change for reasons of “inculturation” or the “genius of the peoples.” The Immemorial Mass of Tradition gives God the fitting and solemn worship that is His due, communicates clearly and unequivocally the nature of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice for human sins, and provides a permanence and stability that are reflective of the nature of God Himself and of man’s need for Him and His unchanging truths. It is time for good lay people themselves to say goodbye to the angst and confusion and anger generated by all of the problems associated with the Novus Ordo Missae.

Enough said.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

[rogator]

"I've got news for you. Jesus never spoke Latin! Peter never spoke Latin. The Apostles never spoke Latin! "

How do you know this? I don't think anyone can prove either side of this issue.

[Viva Christo Rey]

Pope Leo XIII: "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."

Pope Paul IV: "Remembering also that, where danger is greater, it must more fully and more diligently be counteracted, We have been concerned lest false prophets or others, even if they have only secular jurisdiction, should wretchedly ensnare the souls of the simple, and drag with them into perdition, destruction and damnation countless peoples committed to their care and rule, either in spiritual or in temporal matters; and We have been concerned also lest it may befall Us to see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, in the holy place."

Both true Popes knew exactly of what they spoke - and both spoke of the same: the antichrist.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

John 19:19-20 (Douay-Rheims)

19 And Pilate wrote a title also: and he put it upon the cross. And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

20 This title therefore many of the Jews did read: because the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city. And it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.

[gbcdoj]

Pope Leo says that "they HAVE raised the throne of their abominable impiety". This part of the prayer was REMOVED when it appeared that the Roman Question would be settled, because that was what it referred to! Even the sedevacantist priest Fr. Cekada admits this.

You still have not proved examples of notorious heresy on the part of Bl. John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II. You never will be able to. And if Paul VI was the true Pope of Elder Rome, then the promulgation of the 1970 Missal as universal disciplinary legislation was protected by his infallibility and cannot be an incitement to impiety, as was defined by the holy and oecumenical Synod of Trent.

Do you accept these infallible statements of the First Vatican Council?

1. That which our lord Jesus Christ, the prince of shepherds and great shepherd of the sheep, established in the blessed apostle Peter, for the continual salvation and permanent benefit of the Church, must of necessity remain for ever, by Christ's authority, in the Church which, founded as it is upon a rock, will stand firm until the end of time [45].

5. Therefore, if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema. (Pastor Aeternus Ch. 2)

[Viva Christo Rey]

Guess ya' never heard of the Great Western Schism, huh? How long was the papacy in dispute, 39+ years was it not? And of course YOU know the maxim: a disputed pope is no pope.

And just how long was the See vacant before the election of Pope St. Celestine V?

[Desdemona]

I read today about John Kerry opting for a Baptist service (and a stump speech blasting GWB's faith no less!) because if he'd chosen Mass, he would quite probably have been denied by Abp. Burke.

Well, if he had gone to St. Cronan's here, not only would he have gotten Communion, but "We Are Not Worthy" bows ala Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne's World.

[gbcdoj]

During the schism, there was a true pope as well as the antipopes.

http://www.angelfire.com/ms/seanie/papacy/schism.html
The last validly elected Pope before the schism was Pope Urban VI, who was elected in 1378. The list of true pontiffs during the time of the Great Western Schism was : Urban VI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII. Gregory XII called the Council of Constance in 1414 on condition it accept his authority to call it and then resigned as promised. The schism was ended with the election of Pope Martin V.

[GirlShortstop]

not only would he have gotten Communion, but "We Are Not Worthy" bows ala Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne's World.

LOL!  But then again, there's a serious issue a hand, isn't there?  Why wouldn't Kerry have been denied; is it only Abp. Burke who could do so (at this point in time)?  Do I have you in the wrong diocese?  Could I possibly ask you any more questions?!   

[Desdemona]

Why wouldn't Kerry have been denied; is it only Abp. Burke who could do so (at this point in time)? Do I have you in the wrong diocese?

Oh, no, you have right diocese, but the people at St. Cronan might do it just to see what Burke would do. Any bishop says black and the people at Cronan say white. It's a revolutionary colony and frankly, it keeps those people out of everyone else's hair.

[ninenot]

Thanks for your cite. But your original post said "several centuries," and I took that to mean "several," not "a few."

[Viva Christo Rey]

"The devil has always attempted, by means of the heretics, to deprive the world of the Mass, making them precursors of the Anti-Christ, who, before anything else, will try to abolish and will actually abolish the Holy Sacrament of the altar, as a punishment for the sins of men, according to the prediction of Daniel "And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice" (Daniel 8:12D)."
--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church (1696-1787)

[ultima ratio]

There was never any NEED to specify the adjustments to the Liturgy should be minor--since no major changes had ever before been made by any pontiff in all the history of the Church. This is why he insists on keeping any changes at all in the hands of the Pontiff--to keep the grubby hands of liturgists off the Sacred Liturgy! For Pius there was only ONE Roman Rite possible--and he goes at great lengths to describe its long evolution through the ages under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When he speaks of "new rites", he is speaking of the minor adjustments in the SAME MASS--not a wholly new rite in the manner of Paul VI's concoction. You are dishonest to suggest otherwise! The whole tenor of the encyclical runs COUNTER to innovations and novelties or to anything else that is not traditional. Here is what he specifically cautions:
_________________________________________________________
57. The Church has further used her right of control over liturgical observance to protect the purity of divine worship against abuse from DANGEROUS AND IMPRUDENT INNOVATIONS introduced by private individuals and particular churches. Thus it came about - during the 16th century, when usages and customs of this sort had become increasingly prevalent and exaggerated, and when private initiative in matters liturgical threatened to compromise the integrity of faith and devotion, to the great advantage of heretics and further spread of their errors - that in the year 1588, Our predecessor Sixtus V of immortal memory established the Sacred Congregation of Rites, charged with the defense of the legitimate rites of the Church and with the prohibition of any spurious innovation.[48] This body fulfills even today the official function of supervision and legislation with regard to all matters touching the sacred liturgy.[49]
____________________________________________________________

So CLEARLY he is talking about the Tridentine Mass when he talks about changes. --Because none other could even be imagined! He even mentions his predecessor Sixtus V, who set up an office charged specifically to guard the integrity of the Tridentine Mass--an office that still existed. Several other points:

Pius XII discusses how the Mass has evolved organically, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Obviously, he was talking about the very same Tridentine Mass and no other. It was inconceivable to him that a WHOLLY NEW RITE, one that had not evolved but had been concocted--fabricated, as Cardinal Ratzinger says--by a committee of humanists, should ever have been meant. He is referring to CHANGES IN THE OLD RITE therefore, and no other, any changes to which he depicts as "new" and the exclusive province of the pontiff. From the perspective of the Catholic mind of Pius XII, therefore, even minor changes in the only conceivable Roman Rite would render its missal "new". To imagine he meant a "new rite" in the sense of something wholly invented, something which had not evolved over the millenia, is to pervert his meaning.

In addition, he specifically dismisses the concept of a return to a more primitive Church worship--a fond wish of modernist liturgical scholars and the whole raison d'etre, supposedly, for the Novus Ordo. He specifically admonishes the faithful to regard with equal respect the organically- evolved liturgy of the ancient Latin Mass.

The whole point of Pius' encyclical is apologetic in nature--designed to justify any of his adjustments and to silence liturgical critics. So greatly reverent was he even about any minor changes--and they were always minor--that he felt the need to offer elaborate explanations for these. It was inconceivable that the barbarity of concocting a wholly "new rite" in the sense that you have used the term was ever for a moment in the mind of this pontiff.

Klaus Gamber points out as much: "Since there is no document that specifically assigns to the Apostolic See the authority to change, let alone to abolish the traditional liturgical rite; and since, furthermore, it can be shown that NOT A SINGLE PREDECESSOR OF POPE PAUL VI HAS EVER INTRODUCED MAJOR CHANGES TO THE ROMAN LITURGY, the assertion that the Holy See has the authority to change the liturgical rite would appear to be debatable, to say the least." (Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, p. 39).

This was not the thinking of some kook, but one of the greatest liturgists of the twentieth century, a man wholly in the mainstream of Catholic theology whose work carries a Preface written by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is noteworthy that he has stated that "NO major changes" had ever been made to the liturgical rite before Paul VI, and that it is a debatable point whether the Holy See had the right to make such changes.

Finally, here again is Pius XII. How prescient he was!

_________________________________________________________

I am alarmed by the secrets of the Virgin Mary to little Lucy at Fatima. This persistency of the Good Lady in the face of danger menacing the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that would arise from an alteration of the faith, in its liturgy, in its theology, and in its soul…

I hear around me innovators who would like to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, to destroy the universal flame of the Church, to throw out its adornments, to make it regret its past history.

Alas, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must accept its past or it will dig its own grave.

… a day will come when the civilised world will deny his God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God, that His Son is nothing but a symbol, one philosophy among many others, and in the churches the Christians will look in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them.” (Mgr. Roche and P. Saint Germain, Pius XII regarding history, pp. 52-53)

_________________________________________________________

Finally, it is not what I think that counts--it is what other popes and councils have said and done. The New Mass flies in the face of Trent and the entire emphasis placed on the Sacrificial nature of the Mass and its propitiatory purpose. It seeks to do what Luther sought to do, and utilizes a distinctly Protestant theology and congregationalist orientation to do it. It is not a Mass which supports Catholic doctrines nor reflects or expresses the Catholic faith. This is why Traditionalist Catholics believe it is a danger to the faith.

[ultima ratio]

If you think Pius XII meant by this a pope could write his own Mass, you would have to explain further why he would have issued an entire encyclical just to justify his few minor changes in the existing rite. Clearly he was not talking about inventing Masses. By the "introduction" of "new rites" he meant the new missals containing these adjustments. He did not mean INVENTING NOVELTIES. How do we know? Because he goes through great trouble explaining how the Mass had evolved organically over the millenia under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This notion of organic evolution totally contradicts any notion of introducing anything new without its having proceeded from what came before--in the fashion of the Novus Ordo which was, as Cardinal Ratzinger puts it, "fabricated".

[ultima ratio]

"Gee, must o' missed all that. What encyclical refers to the voodooo guys? Where in the latest catechism do Jews need no reedeemer?"

It's worse than that. Nobody bothers reading encyclicals or the Catechism. But they watch this stuff on t.v. and they read about it in the newspapers. It's Vatican POLICY. It's what these high churchmen are DOING in the name of Catholicism--trashing the faith. You may think it doesn't matter--but it does. It's destroying Catholicism from within.

[ultima ratio]

"I heard a sermon on obedience and humility today. It occurred to me that SSPX priests might have to gloss over those virtues."

Not at all. They simply don't practice blind obedience, which is not a virtue but a fault. We must never deny the Catholic faith for the sake of being obedient. On the contrary, disobedience to a superior who demands that we harm the faith, is a virtuous act.

[ultima ratio]

1. You say, "Wrong. You are confusing what you want desperately to believe with what he said. He didn't say 'minor adjustments'..."

No, but the context says it. The entire encyclical was about making changes in the Tridentine Mass which he approached with great deliberation and caution. I say again, it was inconceivable that any pope would destroy the old Mass by inventing something wholly new.

2. You say, "First, you pretend to possess certainty about that which you cannot be certain. You don't know what Pius XII thought his successor might do. Secondly, his successors did not 'invent a mass.' Nor did they 'ban the mass of the ages.' So at least we can be certain about this: You really don't know what you are talking about."

I am certain because Pius XII was a traditional pope through-and-through. For him Trent had settled the matter of proper Catholic worship. It would have been inconceivable for him to believe that any successor would be so rash as to introduce a new Mass based on nothing prior except Protestant worship, in direct defiance of the strictures of Trent. Pius XII also took seriously his papal oath not to alter Sacred Tradition in any way. He would have assumed subsequent popes would do so likewise.

And of course the Novus Ordo was invented. It threw out the Offertory, substituted a Jewish prayer of Thanksgiving Before Meals, destroyed the ancient three-part sacrificial structure, disguised its propitiatory purpose, changed the Mystery of Faith from Transubstantiation to something else, and emphasized the Virtual Presence of Christ in the congregation and in Scripture over his Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament--which it does its level best to ignore. The only real model for most of this was the example of Protestant worship.

As for banning the Mass of the ages, it is true it was not officially abrogated. Paul VI had not the courage nor the inclination to do this. But the Vatican Gestapo made sure it was shut down everywhere after the introduction of the Bugnini concoction. Priests who continued to say it--except for old priests who were allowed to do so in private--were punished or hounded into retirement. A single exception was made for the English--but the so-called Agatha Christie Indult was a very limited one, making allowance for the old Mass only on very special occasions. In short, except for Archbishop Lefebvre's resistance to this barbarity, the ancient Mass of the Ages was effectively eliminated from the face of the earth. Klaus Gamber says it was "destroyed". I concur with this judgment. So it is not my not ignorance that is the problem, it is yours. There is a historical record--about which you seem blissfully unaware.

3. "Pius XII made clear that the Roman Rite is not superior to other rites but on a par with them..."

It is true he esteemed the venerable liturgies of the eastern rites. But these also, like the Roman Rite, had evolved over the millenia in an organic fashion. To think he would have therefore condoned the abomination of Bugnini's Protestantizing concoction is ridiculous. It is NOT organic, it is a prefabrication, a deceptive attempt to disguise the truths of the faith. He would have done exactly as the Council Fathers did when the first version of the Novus Ordo was shown to them--laughed it out of the hall. Ottaviani's view would likely have been Pius' own: that the new Mass was dangerous to the faith.

4. "Just because you have a preference for the Roman Rite does not give you a license to dismember the earthly Body of Christ with your schismatic views. Why don't you put your bloody hatchet away and just attend an approved Tridentine Mass somewhere?"

Tut-tut, such inflammatory words. But think about them for a minute. Who REALLY DISMEMBERED the earthly Body of Christ? It was Paul VI who caused hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world to lose their faith, not I. Millions walked away from the New Mass. Some in disgust, some in open contempt, some in anguish. It is not I who am schismatic--I hold tightly to the same Church and the same teachings as Pius XII. It is the NOVELTY-INVENTORS who must answer for their wreckages--for dismembering the Body of Christ, not I.

4. "Try to grasp this: The POPE has the authority to determine what is substantive and what isn't. NOT YOU. Whatever PETER (not you) binds on earth is bound in heaven. It doesn't matter what your trite opinion of his decisions is. You jam more distortions and illogical trash into a few paragraphs that anybody I have ever read..."

He may have great authority, but not in everything he does.
Vatican I prescribed the limits of papal powere: "For the Holy Spirit was not granted to the Successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith."

Popes are not absolute monarchs, as Cardinal Ratzinger reminds us. Their responsibility is primarily to GUARD AND PROTECT what they've received--which was why Pius wishes to emphasize the role of the Pontiff, rather than fanciful liturgists. But we are not living in normal times. We are living in an age where even pontiffs may be irresponsible and careless with the treasures of the faith--in the manner of Paul VI and JPII.

[ultima ratio]

There is fresh evidence that Latin, not Greek, was used in the earliest days by Roman Christians. I will try to dig up some of the scholarship.

[gbcdoj]

The Holy Sacrament of the altar has not been abolished.

The Byzantine Catholics still use their ancient rites. The FSSP says the Mass according to the 1962 Missal. The 1970 Missal when said in Latin with the Roman Canon is indisputably valid:

http://stagnes.net/media/downloads/latin_english_mass.pdf
http://www.stagnes.net/media/desktops/AgnesDayAltar/agnesDayAltar1024.jpg

Therefore your quote works against you. Since the Mass has not been abolished, neither Bl. John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, or John Paul II are the Antichrist.

[Viva Christo Rey]

The Holy Sacrament of the altar has not been abolished.

"The Holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of Antichrist, and the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know -- and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church --, all of them unanimously say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of the Antichrist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar will cease...." Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it were in the beginning, invisible, hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the unanimous testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries."

--Henry Edward Cardinal Manning (1808-1892), The Present Crisis of the Holy See (1861)

Those who celebrate the TRUE SACRIFICE AND also hold fast to the TRUE FAITH are the TRUE CHURCH.

NO OTHERS.

Wojtyla's Clown Mass, St, Peter's Square, November 17, 2002

[gbcdoj]

...all of them unanimously say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of the Antichrist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar will cease...

It has not ceased. Even you admit this, saying "Those who celebrate the TRUE SACRIFICE".

Those who celebrate the TRUE SACRIFICE AND also hold fast to the TRUE FAITH are the TRUE CHURCH.

40. But we must not think that He rules only in a hidden [59] or extraordinary manner. On the contrary, our Redeemer also governs His Mystical Body in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on earth. You know, Venerable Brethren, that after He had ruled the "little flock" [60] Himself during His mortal pilgrimage, Christ our Lord, when about to leave this world and return to the Father, entrusted to the Chief of the Apostles the visible government of the entire community He had founded. Since He was all wise He could not leave the body of the Church He had founded as a human society without a visible head...

41. They, therefore, walk in the path of dangerous error who believe that they can accept Christ as the Head of the Church, while not adhering loyally to His Vicar on earth. They have taken away the visible head, broken the visible bonds of unity and left the Mystical Body of the Redeemer so obscured and so maimed, that those who are seeking the haven of eternal salvation can neither see it nor find it. (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi)

But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element.

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, (12*) which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd,(74) and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority,(75) which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth".(76) This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him,(Lumen Gentium §8)

The Church is a "society structured with hierarchical organs". Where is the Church, if the Successor of Peter and all the Catholic bishops of the world have fallen into heresy? Your Church sounds like a Protestant Church:

II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion;[2] and of their children:[3] and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ,[4] the house and family of God,[5] out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (Westminster Confession of Faith Ch. XXV)

Not a Catholic one!