Replies

1. "We have it on the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be present in the Church forever and will guide it to all truth. This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils."

But this didn't mean the Holy Spirit would spare the Church the damage caused by fools. And while He would protect the Church from dogmatic error, this doesn't mean that every utterance of a body of bishops is infallible. Vatican II, after all, was a failed council. It was not the springtime of renewal anticipated by Catholics. Instead it was the opportunity long awaited by Modernists to impose a revolution. It has achieved not a single one of its purported goals. It made some pastoral suggestions. But it said nothing binding on our intellects and wills. If it did--suppose you tell us what it is. In fact, you can't, because nothing was stated as infallible truth beyond what had always been stated.

2. "This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils. You refuse to do that. You place your private opinion and the opinions of individual liturgists above the authority of the Church to modify the liturgy. You lead others into your misguided ways."

What pompous, arrogant, self-serving nonsense. If you imagine I refuse to accept the teachings of the Church and refuse to abide by the decisions of the Councils, suppose you tell me which of these I don't accept. You can't possibly do this since I don't deny any such truths or decisions. If you mean the truths and decisions of Vatican II--tell me what are they? If I have called the Council a failure, that is simply a fact. But as a pastoral council, it taught no new truth that I am bound to follow. If it did, tell me what it is. Instead of hurling invective, explain how I am being disobedient. Be specific!

The truth is, if you've followed my posts at all, you'd know they are all about the disobedience to the Church of the people you support. It is they, not I, who have failed to abide by the Church's truths and decisions. Your claim that I place my private opinions above the authority of liturgists and above the right of the "authority of the Church" to modify the liturgy IS EXACTLY WHAT I DON'T DO. I cited one of the greatest liturgists of the twentieth century to underscore my points. How is this placing my opinion above authority? Do you suppose it is I alone who am critical of the Novus Ordo Mass? Some of the greatest scholars in the Catholic Church, including Cardinal Ratzinger, have been just as critical.

3. "The Church had already converted the known world before the official transition of the liturgy from Latin to Greek under the reign of Pope Damasus (366 to 384 A.D.). So you see, the Tridentine Mass is certainly not essential to the Catholic faith."

A straw man. Who ever said the Tridentine Mass was essential to the Catholic faith? Do you think I do not know that there are, and were, other great rites in the Church which express its faith? But having said this, you should also know the Novus Ordo is not one of them. It is a concoction designed to attract Protestants, based on a Protestant theological perspective, hostile to the Council of Trent which condemned making the Mass a memorial meal at the expense of a re-presentation of Christ's Sacrifice at Calvary.

As for the citation by St. Justin--that is all fine and dandy, but if you will reread Mediator Dei, Pius XII makes warns that the present age needs what has accrued over the centuries. The more we retreat from that ancient time, the more we need to bolster the faith transmitted by the past. The ancients did not need what we need, buffeted as we are by unprecedented distractions. We need constant reminders that the sacred is a reality. We NEED to genuflect, to kneel for Communion, to affirm our adoration physically.

But Catholic modernists have been fixed foolishly on a single presumption--that Luther was right. Not only must they imitate his search for a pie-in-the-sky primitivism, they must also brutally impose their fictitious recreation of it. The result has been a nosier Mass, a busier, fussier Mass without a modicum of reflective silence or true contemplation allowed, a superficial recitation of words without interiority, devoid of beauty, without even the saving virtue of being expressive of the Catholic faith.

This was to be expected. It is pretty much what modernists usually produce--buldings which chill the spirit, paintings without meaning, literary verbal trickeries--expressions of big egos rather than of meaning or faith.

4. "The church has the right to change them. It has done so for centuries. And there have always been those misguided souls like ultima ratio who think the liturgical practices can't ever change from what they are used to. It is dead things that don't move or change. That is because they are not animated by a spirit. The church is alive. It is animated by the Holy Spirit. Those who possess the Spirit change with it."

The Church has indeed the right to change the liturgy. But this is not what happened. A single pope assigned a committee to fabricate a Mass that would resemble a Protestant worship service. So it was not "the Church" making the change, not the Mystical Body of Christ allowing the Liturgy to evolve organically as it always had, but the steward of that Church interrupting that evolution and attempting to destroy what the Church had evolved through two millenia. There is a difference. The question is open as to whether he had the right to do what he did. The Pope, after all, has his limits. He is not an absolute monarch. His powers are limited by Sacred Tradition itself--as Cardinal Ratzinger has reminded us.

As for the Holy Spirit in all this--He is certainly not evident in the twin fruits of this liturgical innovation--a precipitous decline in church attendance and a failure of belief in the Real Presence. The fruits of the Novus Ordo have been rotten from the start. So I wouldn't go around bragging about the inspired Presence of the Holy Spirit if I were you.

As for things being dead which don't move--the Tridentine Mass was alive for a thousand years--and it managed to stay alive without clowns and liturgical dancers. It will go on for another thousand years, long after the Novus Ordo is assigned to the dustbin of Church history, another failed idea by intellectual smart alecks who imagined that despite a dearth of faith or even poetic inspiration, they might nevertheless concoct a Mass to replace the one guided through the centuries by God Himself.

Finally, if you were a little more humble, you might have the wits to distinguish between change and revolution. It was Cardinal Newman, remember, who warned that a certain sign of corruption in the Church is revolutionary change. The sign of the Holy Spirit is change that is always gradual and gentle, the very subtlest of shifts in emphasis and understanding.

And while He would protect the Church from dogmatic error, this doesn't mean that every utterance of a body of bishops is infallible. Vatican II, after all, was a failed council. It was not the springtime of renewal anticipated by Catholics. Instead it was the opportunity long awaited by Modernists to impose a revolution. It has achieved not a single one of its purported goals. It made some pastoral suggestions. But it said nothing binding on our intellects and wills. If it did--suppose you tell us what it is. In fact, you can't, because nothing was stated as infallible truth beyond what had always been stated.

Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.  In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.  This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.
LUMEN GENTIUM
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
Second Vatican Council

For any Catholic with eyes to see, that's a pretty sharp and tight tug of closure on loopholes.  Some will continue to deny; just like Frances Kissling, and John Kerry surely do.

Pray for HH John Paul II, the Bishops, clergy, and the faithful.

Luke 18:42 Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."
2 Corinthians 5:7 We live by faith, not by sight.

Thanks St. Chuck for bringing up these two verses!