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[Catholic Caucus] Lost in a battle of interpretations: Claude Barthe on a council that did not dogmatize and a liturgy that lacks the form of lawAbbé Claude Barthe has just published a partially revised and expanded fourth edition of his book Trouvera t-Il encore la foi sur la terre (Will he still find faith on earth?), published by Via Romana. We are publishing this passage from the introduction, which concerns the new liturgical law, which in fact is no longer a law. (Paix Liturgique Letter 984)* * *This teaching [on ecumenism], which was intended to be neither black nor white,...

IT’S THE MASS THAT MATTERS: A Study in Faithful ResistanceSOME YEARS AGO I heard an extraordinary story from a friend who lived for a time in the extreme northern end of the country, in a remote and beautiful valley of the Alps, the Val d'Ossola. In brief, three priests one day told their bishop that they would no longer celebrate the Mass in the new rite, and adopted the traditional Mass when Summorum Pontificum was published. And despite immense pressure and months of struggle, they never did again.The story has thus far had a happy ending; the priests continue celebrating...

Francis Discovers “Alarming Sign” in Novus Ordo LiturgyThe “sad experience” of 2020's "liturgical 'fasting" has highlighted a “goodness” of the “long liturgical journey” that has been made since Vatican II, Francis wrote in a message for the Italian Liturgical Week (August 23-26), although there is no direct link between the Novus Ordo and Covid.But already in the next paragraph, he contradicts this accolade when stressing the difficulties of the resumption of the liturgy which he calls “an alarming sign of the advanced stage of the change of epoch.”The euphemism “change of epoch” shows that Francis fears facing the extent of...

What I Didn’t Know about Bugnini and the LiturgyAs a Millennial who was weaned on the Novus Ordo Missae, I have been inescapably molded by its main architect, Abp. Annibale Bugnini. Yet there is so much that I didn’t know about Bugnini and his revolution of the liturgy.I didn’t know, growing up, that a man infamously alleged to have been a Freemason or “something far worse” was behind the freewheeling liturgy of my youth. I didn’t know that the Roman Canon was supposed to be shrouded in the silence of the Cross — or that my pastor’s altar theatrics were...

My Experience with the New MassI do not like to write in an autobiographical vein, but since I am of those Pope Francis has marked for extinction, perhaps public testimony is fitting. An aggressor should tolerate a word even from his victims. The Holy Father may consider this a contribution for an anticipated exhibit on the indigenous people of the Catholic Church. The New Mass and I grew up together, so to speak. The Mass was introduced to my home diocese of Wichita, Kansas, during my second-grade year, 1970-1971, and our Catholic school prepared us to receive First Communion in...

Triumph of the Will: The Novus Ordo, RIPGERMAN FILMMAKER LENI Riefenstahl’s 1936 cinematic encomium to the Berlin Olympics, Festival of Nations, opens with a montage of marble statues of Greek gods and goddesses in the ruins of ancient temples. One statue, of a discus thrower, comes to life, after which the action is of human beings engaging in the ancient Greek sports of javelin hurling, shotput, and long-distance running. Apollonian men strive in dramatic lighting, bodies glistening with sweat, taut with exertion. Aphroditic female nudes cavort with rings and dance in the glory of the human form. This prelude soon...

Abp. Viganò Tells Abbé Barthe: Derailing of Vatican II, Creation of New Mass are Results of “Revolutionary Forces Infiltrating the Church”In a new and extensive interview with Abbé Claude Barthe (first published here), author of Le Messe de Vatican II (“The Mass of Vatican II” — see here for a review in English), Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò fields several questions related to the Second Vatican Council and the creation of what he calls “Montini’s Novus Ordo,” referring to the new rite of Mass created after the Council by the Consilium (liturgical committee) under the direction of then-Fr. Annibale Bugnini and...

Don Pietro Leone: THE ENEMY WITHIN: a Critique of Vatican IIRorate Caeli is delighted to publish in installments, Don Pietro Leone’s latest work of anti-modernism: ‘The Enemy Within: a Critique of Vatican II.’Not content to rehash the three or four best-known sticking points of the Council, such as Collegiality, Ecumenism and Subsisit, the author with remorseless logic, offers a penetrating analysis, both metaphysical and theological of its entire distorted vision of the Faith, Truth and Reality, so exposing it as a diabolical attack on Holy Mother Church Herself and one of the greatest evils of the 20th century. In...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Gullickson: “Stay Tuned for More Thoughts”Picture: Thomas Gullickson © FSSP, #newsQbzppapqas Swiss Nuncio Thomas Gullickson reiterated on his blog (November 26) his conviction that “the only future for the Church is in its recovery of integral Catholic Worship according to the Vetus Ordo.”For him it is urgent to step back from the Novus Ordo, “especially when it comes to Eucharistic Reverence.” Gullickson will retire early, by the end of 2020.“I will need some time yet to be able to work out the implications for myself as a retired member of the hierarchy,” he writes, “Stay tuned for...

EXPOSÉ: New Interview with Fr. Charles Murr on Mother Pascalina, Bugnini, Paul VI, and Other Major Figures Preliminary Note: For decades, traditionalists have suspected or accused Annibale Bugnini of being a Freemason, based essentially on hearsay and circumstantial evidence. The matter remained doubtful to such an extent that the eminent French historian Yves Chiron, himself a traditionalist, was unable to credit the rumor, judging the evidence inadequate and inconclusive. The situation began to change last May when Kevin Symonds presented credible details, courtesy of Fr. Brian Harrison, naming Cardinal Dino Staffa as the one who brought Paul VI the...

Time to stop making excuses for Vatican II and the New Mass Many good authors have told the tragic story well. Now it is time for clergy and laity both to do something about it. Editor’s note: The following article comes from an anonymous priest. June 30, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — In several recent statements, culminating in an interview with Philip Lawler, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has traced the evils that afflict the Church today back to their root within the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and the New Order of the Mass (1969). In this he has rendered a service to...

First One Archbishop, Now Another: The Council is the Problem “Return, O ye revolting children, saith the Lord: for I am your husband: and I will take you, one of a city, and two of a kindred, and will bring you into Sion. And I will give you pastors according to My own Heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine.” – Jeremias 3:14-15On November 21, 1974, a certain French archbishop and founder of a priestly society penned what came to be known as his Declaration. He wrote it in response to scandalous comments made by two apostolic...

Catholic young men ask bishops to teach traditional faith and save them from nihilism, despair MONTREAL, November 29, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A group of young French-Canadian Catholic men are asking their bishops to teach the traditional faith and give the spiritual leadership they say is essential to combat the nihilistic culture that tempts many to despair. That includes allowing access to the traditional Latin Mass.  Twenty-nine men between the ages of 18 to 44, including university students, a doctor and two lawyers, signed an open letter titled “We Ask for Faith: Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic...

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Novus Ordo: Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture “Beyond ‘Smells and Bells’: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior” In his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969), Pope Paul VI specified that the Novus Ordo Missae would go into effect on the First Sunday of Advent that year — November 30, exactly fifty years ago. In my recent Minneapolis lecture, written with an eye to this important anniversary, I argue that the Novus Ordo Missae constitutes a rupture with fundamental elements of all liturgies of apostolic derivation, and that, as a consequence,...

[Catholic Caucus] NY Daily News Op-Ed -Pining for the Latin Mass: Reflecting on major changes to the Catholic liturgy, 50 years later Pining for the Latin Mass: Reflecting on major changes to the Catholic liturgy, 50 years later By KENNETH J. WOLFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS NOV 30, 2019 | 5:00 AM Fifty years ago this weekend, the Catholic Church debuted a new version of Mass following reforms made by the 1960s’ Second Vatican Council. From the use of vernacular language instead of Latin, to the priest facing the people instead of the tabernacle, the changes became mandatory at all...

[Catholic Caucus] The Church in Self-Imposed Exile: Where is Ezra? The second reading for the Mass of Ember Wednesday in September:  “And the people wept when they heard Ezra reading the Law”. Ember Wednesday.  Most Catholics have never heard of an Ember Day, this despite the fact that the Ember Days, the Quattuor Tempora in Latin, the four seasons, are among the oldest of liturgical celebrations, at least back to Leo the Great in the fifth century.  They have their roots in the four seasons of the year, and hence before each season of the year—Autumn, Winter, Spring and...

Archbishop Bugnini: The Man Behind the Post-Vatican II Mass The concept of “living and prayerful assembly” looks tragic in retrospect; it led to a collapse on every front. And soon after the “New Mass” was promulgated, a 1971 petition in the London Times, signed by high-profile personalities such as Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene and Yehudi Menuhin, called for the survival of the Tridentine Mass. The response of intellectuals and artists is forgotten now, but at the time, it must have stung the reformers. The exile of the average laity, however, seems to have never given the reformers a second’s remorse;...

Don't whitewash history: Paul VI was front and center the creator of the New Mass of Paul VI Sandro Magister, the great Vaticanist of our age, has an article today with important excerpts from a biography of Paul VI in which it is claimed that he was almost a victim of the liturgical revolution, a bystander who had almost no control over what Bugnini did at the Consilium for the application of the liturgical reform. Sorry, we don't buy that. Saying Paul VI had little responsibility for the New Mass of Paul VI is like saying Louis XIV had no...

A Case Study of Rupture in the Lex Orandi: The Epistles of Lenten Sundays One of the most striking areas of rupture and discontinuity between the traditional Latin Mass and the Mass of Paul VI is to be found in the passages of Scripture read on Sundays. The annual cycle of the old Missal, embodying the practice of well over a millennium, puts before the Christian people year after year essential truths of the spiritual life and fundamentals of morality to which we must always return. The three-year cycle of the new Mass, an unprecedented novelty against the backdrop of...

The 15th century choir of the cathedral of the Austrian Military Ordinariate in Wiener Neustadt is about to be disfigured. The high altar will be removed to make room for chairs. It will be replaced by a table. Military Bishop Werner Freistetter is responsible for this devastation which will start in summer 2018.Freistetter was consecrated a bishop in June 2015. Already in January 2016 he dissolved the military parish of his cathedral in order to get rid of the parish-priest, Father Siegfried Lochner who ran a very dynamic, young and Catholic parish, including families. Under the new, paleo-liberal regime, Masses...