Although I have some unfinished business to attend to on this site, including dealing with Jorge Mario Bergoglio's belief that wars can never be fought in the name of God and completing part two of It Is Still A Terrible Thing to Fall into the Hands of the Living God, part one, as well as making an additional comment or two on the big, bold "pro-life" moves by the Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives, a recent post on Novus Ordo Watch about the relaying of supposedly consecrated hosts by members of the laity during Jorg's Mega Liturgy in Manila, The Philippines, on Sunday, January 18, 2015, the Second Sunday after the Epiphany and the Commemoration of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome (and the Commemoration of Saint Paul and of Saint Prisca) called to mind other incidents of abuses associated with what is an abuse in se, that is, the distribution of what purports to be Holy Communion in the hand within the staging of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.
As longtime readers of this site know, my work, however inadequate it might be, attempts to concentrate on root causes of problems. Most of this article will provide a discussion of the Protestant origins of "Communion in the hand" and how Giovanni Battista Enrinco Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick sought to further eradicate belief in the sacerdotal, hierarchical nature of the Holy Priesthood and in the sacrifical nature of Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as a matter of practical sacramental theology, admitting that entire conciliar liturgical revolution was designed to accomplish such an eradication from its very outset.
Before doing this, however, it might be useful to recount once again the very first time I saw the “relay” system for the distribution of what purported to be Holy Communion at a “papal” extravaganza liturgy.
Yes, you see what happened in Manila, The Philippines, on Sunday, Janauary 18, 2015, was not really new, although it might have been the first time the “relay system” had received “official” approbation from a national “episcopal” conference, thus creating a “precedent” that will be invoked at the “retail” level in dioceses and parishes—and may indeed be used eight months from now in this country when Jorge Mario Bergoglio is sure to have when he comes here.
This would be ironic as it was on Thursday, October 4, 1979, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that I saw a laywoman take it upon herself to relay what those of us in the crowd along Franklin Parkway at Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II’s extravaganza service, which took place at Logan Circle some distance away from where some of us had to stand for four hours or so. A presbyter who had been distributing the purportedly consecrated hosts saw this woman relaying what we all believed to be the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, screamed, “Hey, lady, you can’t do that!”
There is a further irony represented by this story as the laywoman’s relaying of purportedly consecrated hosts occurred came just less than two years after Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/VI had given permission for the distribution of “Communion in the hand” after one conciliar “episcopal” conference after another petitioned the conciliar the Vatican to regularize what began without “official” approval in various dioceses and parishes. What was considered to be an “abuse” became an “accepted practice” that had to receive “official” sanction from Paolo Sicko in the days when the conciliar “pontiffs” actually lived in the Apostolic Palace, leading to an unparalleled era of commonplace acts of desecration and sacrilege being committed against what is purported to be the Most Blessed Sacrament in formerly Catholic churches around the world almost every day of the year.
Indeed, it was just two days before I witnessed the “relay system” being used for the first time that a priest, who shall not be named, in the conciliar structures reported in the late-1990s in what was then called The Latin Mass magazine that he began to question the conciliar agenda when he saw what he believed (and probably still believes) were validly consecrated hosts "consecrated" at Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's "papal" liturgy at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, October 2, 1979, being carried away in burlap sacks after the extravaganza was over. The priest's eyes moistened quite a bit when he recounted this story in various talks that he gave over the years. He was truly sorrowful over the profane, sacrilegious way that Our Lord's Real Presence, which he presumed to be in the Novus Ordo hosts, was treated.
The so-called “pope of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, presided over a “papal” extravaganza liturgy at the same place, the now-demolished Yankee Stadium II (which consisted of a renovated grandstand area inside of the shell of the original structure that opened on April 18, 1923), that the burlap sacks scandal had occurred eighteen and one-half years earlier. Here is how “leftover” “hosts” were hauled out of the Stadium that George Herman Ruth built and John Vliet Lindsay rebuilt:
Catholics believe that the altar bread, once consecrated and transubstantiated into the body of Christ, must be consumed. So leftover wafers will be put in fabric-lined carts in the stadium concourse and consumed, eventually, during regular Masses. (Candles, Clergy, and Communion for 57,000.)
The only consolation in all of this was that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was not present in those hosts, although He was greatly offended by the travesties that were represented to the public, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, in His Holy Name and under what is alleged to be the authority of His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Countless are the stories of supposedly consecrated hosts have been found in the pews of Catholic churches that have been in conciliar captivity for so very long now. Such hosts have turned up in the pages of missalettes and hymnals. They have been put into purses or pockets by Catholics who have not been “officially authorized” “extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.” One even wound up on eBay ten years ago now:
Earlier Friday, Monsignor Roger J. Augustine, administrator of the Diocese of Sioux City, met with the seller and was advised that the sale would not be consummated. According to Msgr. Augustine, the seller deeply regretted the effort to sell the Eucharist and extended a personal apology to him, the diocese and any others who had been offended by the eBay listing. Because the transaction never materialized, there was no money exchanged or received.
"The Eucharist detailed in the eBay auction was given to Msgr. Augustine and has been properly disposed of according to the dictates of Catholic Church law," states a diocesan press release. "'As I said earlier this week, the Eucharist represents the true presence of Jesus Christ to Catholics,' said Msgr. Augustine. 'I am most grateful that the seller agreed that it was in everyone's best interest to bring this issue to a positive conclusion.'"
Continues the press release: "The issue of the attempted sale of the Eucharist has attracted both national and international attention with e-mails and fax messages coming into the diocesan office from countless communities. Although this specific issue has been resolved, the diocese still has differences with eBay and its policy governing the listing of items that are offensive to people of faith. E-Bay officials contend they see nothing offensive with the sale of such items on their website. Many Catholic organizations and individuals have taken issue with that policy and apparently are making their opinions known to eBay officials."
Meanwhile, the man who purchased the Host, a member of the Knights of Columbus, told us that he is more than pleased with the outcome. "I'm overwhelmed with the silent majority and how they spoke up and took action in this case," he told us, referring to the many who voiced outrage [see secular report ].
There were two bids before he placed his $2,000 offer, one for $120 and one for $150.
"I am not a Catholic and do not believe I'm going to hell for selling this collectible," said the owner in his original advertisement. "It's a memento from that great afternoon with Pope John Paul II. Yes, this is the actual Eucharist I saved during the Mass that I participated in on October 18th, 1998. I ate one wafer then I went back and got another one to save and he gave me another one, but I did get a very dirty look! I was studying in Florence that semester and a bunch of us went down to Rome that week to partake. I'm not Catholic, but I found it all very interesting. Along with the Eucharist, I have the program from that day and a little bulletin. It's all in Italian. I also have four stamps from the Vatican that year and a bottle opener that I bought when I was in Rome way back in 1992. From what I understand, if you're holding something in your hand during a certain moment when Pope John Paul II spoke during his Mass, it becomes blessed. I was holding this bottle opener during Mass with him in 1992. It has his picture on one side and a picture of the Trevi Fountain on the other."
The seller went on to explain that everything from 1998 (Eucharist, bulletin, program, and stamps) were encased in plastic in his "scratch book" and all were in "awesome condition." Photos authenticating his presence there that day were also to be included (although we cannot verify any of his claims). (This report appeared on The Spirit Daily website and had been sent to me by a then-colleague of mine.)
All the eBay seller got was a “dirty look” when he took two supposedly consecrated hosts in Florence, Italy, in 1998. With the “relay system” possibly coming to a conciliar parish near you, there will be no more “dirty looks,” especially if it is used again in “papal” extravaganza liturgical service.
Stories of the Novus Ordo hosts being taken outside of Catholic churches in conciliar captivity that I did not even bother to make a comment on an incident that was brought to my attention last year about the efforts of a conciliar pastor’s well-intentioned efforts to warn his parishioners not to remove hosts from the church after one of those hosts had made its way onto the windshield of a parked car, something that distressed the pastor greatly. In the revolutionary world of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, though, even rightly-intentioned pastors cannot stop that which the “pope” and his “bishops” approve and which the laity have come to accept as a “traditional” practice in what is believed to be the Catholic Church.
The words of the late Father Frederick Schell, S.J., come to mind at this point.
Father Schell, who had left the Jesuits in the 1970s and was assisting parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange, was told in 1977 that he would have to distribute Holy Communion in the hand. His response was direct and to the point, "It's a sacrilege. They can't make me do it." He preached against it from the pulpit on November 20, 1977. He was gone by the next week, one week before the "implementation" of this "restoration" on the First Sunday in Advent on November 27, 1977, eventually returning to the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass in order to provide the people of southern California with the safe haven provided by the stability of the glories of a liturgical rite that communicates in all of its parts the absolute and firm distinction between the hierarchical priesthood of the ordained priest and the common priesthood of the lay faithful (whereby we in the laity help to sanctify the world by cooperating with the graces made available to us in the sacraments to give honor and glory to God in all that we do and by uniting our petitions interiorly with those of the priest as He offers the ineffable Sacrifice of the altar that is Holy Mass).
[Father Schell died on September 28, 2002, the Feast of Saint Wenceslaus, at the age of eighty-six. He had told us four months previously that he was praying for a “quick exit” after he had handed over his work to younger man, noting that “Our Lady usually gives me whatever I ask her.]
The late Monsignor George A. Kelly, who was reference three days ago now in "Rabbits" to Jorge, God's Blessings to Pope Pius XII, told me in February of 1983 in his offices at Bent Hall on the campus Saint John’s University, Jamaica, Queens, New York, that the American "bishops" were so pleased as punch that their strategy of securing “Communion in the hand” worked, wo week that they used it again to expand the conciliar practice of distributing what purports be Communion under both kinds, thereby creating a "need" for so-called Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist to further blur the distinction between the priesthood of the ordained priest and the common priesthood of the lay faithful.
The strategy of encouraging an “unapproved” practice on a de facto basis in order to have it recognized de jure by the conciliar Vatican used it yet again to secure permission in 1994 from Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II for "altar girls" in 1994. Wojtyla/John Paul II was not serious about enforcing the ban against altar girls that was reiterated in various postconciliar documents, including Inaestimabile Donum, April 17, 1980, which was issued by the then named Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship as a follow-up to Wojtyla/John Paul II's Holy Thursday letter to conciliar priests/presbyters, Dominicae Cenae, February 24, 1980, a document wherein he also rued the “abuses” associated with “Communion in the hand.”
Then again, all of this stemmed from a deliberate, concerted effort on the part of the liturgical revolutionaries to destroy the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in order to accustom Catholics to a Protestantized version that is no more valid than liturgies staged, say, in the Anglican or Lutheran sects:
“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)
“Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense.” (Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, 1965, Quoted and footnoted in Assault on the Roman Rite. This has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)
"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)
Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, an associate of Annibale Bugnini on the Consilium, quoted and footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)
Make no mistake about it, though, the introduction of practices as “Communion in the hand” on a de facto basis was meant to further Protestantize the conciliar liturgy as this practice, which existed in some places in some circumstances in the first millennium of the Church, even though it had been prohibited by the Church over time precisely because of the sorts of abuses and sacrileges that have been happening on a much wider scale in the past forty years, given the near-universality of "Communion in the hand" in the conciliar sect today. Holy Mother Church, guided infallibly by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, came to preserve the privilege of ordained priests and deacons as being able to touch the Sacred Species.
The eventual disappearance of the practice of Communion in the hand by the late Seventh Century reflected Our Lord's command to the first pope, Saint Peter, to "Feed my lambs," "Feed my lambs," Tend my sheep. We, the sheep of Christ's true Flock, must have the humility to fed by an alter Christus, an image of the Good Shepherd Himself, as a shepherd would feed his flock: on the tongue. Sheep cannot feed themselves. They need to be fed. It is not an uncommon practice for children to place bits of feed on a sheep's tongue at a petting farm. Sheep are dependent upon the shepherd. We must be dependent upon the Good Shepherd. This is a sign of our humility and our dependence upon the One Who is feeding us with His own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Pope Pius XII noted in Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947, his Encyclical Letter on the Sacred Liturgy that preceded the “Second” Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, November 1, 1963, by sixteen years (and which was referenced precisely once, at Paragraph 22, in that first document issued by this false council), that Catholics should not desire to "restore" obsolete rites and practices in the name of "simplicity," ignoring the fruits for the Church and thus for souls that had been borne as a result of the abandonment of ancient practices (such as Communion in the hand and Communion under both kinds):
The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. [52] They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.
Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.
Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.
This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn.[53] For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation. (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947.)
It must be remembered, therefore, that the appeal to "antiquity" by the Catholic leaders of the "Liturgical Movement" throughout the Twentieth Century sought to make the antiquarian claims of the Protestant Revolutionaries "respectable" in the eyes of the hierarchy and thus serve as the foundation for what was claimed to be a "much needed" reform of the Sacred Liturgy. This matter was discussed in my book, G.I.R.M. Warfare (a book that is in need of extensive revision, something I hope to be able to two in 2016 after completing volumes two and three of that other great best seller, Conversion in Reverse):
Indeed, it appears as though the authors of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal--GIRM (and the liturgical revolutionaries on the Consilium who devised the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service) hoped to lure traditionally minded Catholics into something of a trap. Some traditional Catholics might be tempted to reflexively dismiss GIRM and the new Mass as an attempt to Protestantantize Catholic worship, which it is, of course. However, it is important, though, to recognize that some elements of the new Mass that enshrine the spirit of the Protestant Revolution do indeed have Catholic roots. Although there was never “Mass facing the people,” Communion in the hand was an accepted practice in some parts of the Catholic Church for half of a millennium and Communion under both kinds lasted longer than Communion in the hand, ending somewhere around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, there were good pastoral and dogmatic reasons why the Church discontinued both practices.
Acting in a spirit quite similar to that of our contemporary revolutionaries, Protestant Revolutionaries claimed to be “recapturing” the “purity” of the “Christian liturgy” when Communion in the hand and Communion under both kinds became common practices in most Protestant worship ceremonies. As Father Joseph Jungmann, S.J., noted, “When the chalice Communion was already practically forgotten, it was seized upon by hostile groups and made a symbol of their movement.” (It should be noted, though, that the Church granted Communion under both kinds in monasteries and in some coronation Masses for emperors and kings.) Thus, as will be discussed much later in this analysis, even though Communion under both kinds was once a practice in the Catholic Church, its abandonment in the Latin Rite for solid pastoral reasons was something seized upon by Protestants as robbing “the people” of the true spirit and sources of the liturgy. This is exactly what our contemporary revolutionaries have done and are doing.
Similarly, Communion in the hand had for the Protestants (and has for our own revolutionaries) a very important theological significance, no matter that it was once a practice in the Catholic Church which was later prohibited. As Ferrara and Woods point out [in The Great Facade], “When the German Protestant Martin Bucer suggested that English Protestants introduce the practice of Communion in the hand, he did so because, as he said at the time, this novel practice would undermine two Catholic teachings at once: the priesthood and the Real Presence. Allowing the faithful to receive the Eucharist in their hands would tend to establish the belief that the Host was nothing more than ordinary bread (so indeed why shouldn’t the faithful be able to touch it?) And that there was nothing special or unique about the priest that should entitle him alone to handle the sacred species. Bucer knew full well what he was doing.” So do our contemporary revolutionaries, those who appeal to the distant Catholic past, either one that actually existed or is projected by their imaginations as having existed, to adapt abandoned practices that have served the purposes of Protestantism, not Catholicism. (Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D, G.I.R.M. Warfare, Chartes Communications, 2005.)
The late Michael Davies, who, of course, was very much opposed to sedevacantism, wrote a very good scholarly essay on "Communion in the Hand and Other Frauds" in 1990. He provided a solid historical background before explaining how the conciliar "permission" for the distribution of Communion in the hand could be understood only in light of a general desire to "learn from" Protestantism and to appeal to Protestants:
The key issue of the debate concerning the escalating imposition of Communion in the hand is not whether it was once widespread in the early Church, but whether it should be introduced in the present day. In order to simplify the debate, let it be conceded, for the sake of argument, that for some centuries it was considered acceptable for the priest to place the host in the hand of the communicant. There is, however, definite evidence that, in at least some regions, the laity were receiving Communion on the tongue by the end of the sixth century.
The Roman Ordo of the ninth century accepts Communion on the tongue as the normal practice.
The Synod of Rouen in the year 650 condemned the reception of Communion in the hand by the laity as an abuse. This indicates that the reception of Holy Communion upon the tongue must have already become the established practice.
Scholars are not clear why the transition took place—differing explanations are given and there is probably some truth in most of them. The precise reason is not important, however. What is important is that the change must have been made for good reason under the influence of the Holy Ghost. The change to unleavened bread is given as one reason; the fear of abuse is another; Fr. Jungmann cites “growing respect for the Eucharist” as the decisive reason. . . .
The Protestant Reformers were particularly sensitive concerning the symbolism of liturgical ceremonies, and particular attention was therefore paid to eliminating anything which could perpetuate belief in a sacrificing priesthood possessing powers denied to the laity or in the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. In his 1549 Communion Service, Cranmer allowed the Sacrament to be placed on the tongue of the communicant by the minister. This was severely criticized by Martin Bucer, who demanded that Communion should be given in the hand. Cranmer complied and changed the rubric for his 1552 Prayer Book, to bring it into line with Protestant practice on the Continent. The reasons Bucer gives for insisting on this change are quite unambiguous:
I cannot see how the seventh section requiring the bread of the Lord to be put not in the hand, but in the mouth, of the recipient, can be consistent. Certainly the reason given in this section, namely, lest those who receive the read of the Lord should not eat it but take it away with them to misuse it for superstition or horrible wickedness, is not, it seems to me, conclusive; for the minister can easily see, when he puts the bread in the hand, whether it is eaten or not. In fact, I have no doubt that this usage of not putting these sacraments in the hands of the faithful has been introduced out of a double superstition; firstly, the false honour they wished to show to this sacrament, and secondly the wicked arrogance of priests claiming greater holiness than that of the people of Christ, by virtue of the oil of consecration. The Lord undoubtedly gave these, His sacred symbols, into the hands of the Apostles, and no one who has read the records of the ancients can be in doubt that this was the usage observed in the churches until the advent of the Roman Antichrist.
As, therefore, every superstition of the Roman AntiChrist is to be detested, and the simplicity of Christ, and the Apostles, and the ancient Churches, is to be recalled, I should wish that pastors and teachers of the people should be commanded that each is faithfully to teach the people that it is superstitious and wicked to think that the hands of those who truly believe in Christ are less pure than their mouths; or that the hands of the ministers are holier than the hands of the laity; so that it would be wicked, or less fitting, as was formerly wrongly believed by the ordinary folk, for the laity to receive these sacraments in the hand: and therefore that the indications of this wicked belief be removed—as that the ministers may handle the sacraments, but not allow the laity to do so, and instead put the sacraments into the mouth—which is not only foreign to what was instituted by the Lord but offensive to human reason.
In that way good men will be easily brought to the point of all receiving the sacred symbols in the hand, conformity in receiving will be kept, and there will be safeguards against all furtive abuse of the sacraments. For, although for a time concession can be made to those whose faith is weak, by giving them the Sacraments in the mouth when they so desire, if they are carefully taught they will soon conform themselves to the rest of the Church and take the Sacraments in the hand.
It will be noted here that the consecration of the priest’s hands is seen as indicating the privilege of handling the Host, something denied in such propaganda tracts as Take and Eat [a pamphlet that propagandized in behalf of Communion in the hand]. The fact that the Protestant Reformers introduced Communion in the hand specifically to deny the Catholic doctrines on the priesthood and the Real Presence invested the practice with an anti-Catholic signification from that time onwards. This was a signification it did not possess in the early centuries. This practice is, then, totally unacceptable in Catholic worship, and can never become acceptable. Contemporary Protestants would certainly not change to the reception of Communion on the tongue to accommodate Catholics, and so, in the interests of a spurious ecumenism, Catholics are being made to accept what is now a specifically Protestant practice in order to remove any remaining vestige of external respect for the Blessed Sacrament which those who consider it to be no more than bread would find offensive. This is something which should not surprise us—it is simply a logical continuation of the pattern which began with the destruction of the Mass of St. Pius V. (Communion in the Hand.)
Such destruction, of course, cannot come from the hand of Holy Mother Church. This is impossible.
Sadly, there continue to be otherwise intelligent people who continue to justify the liturgical revolution by ignoring the dispassionate scholarship that has disproved the antiquarian presuppositions of the Augustinian liturgist Pius Parsch that were at the foundation of Sacrosanctum Concilium and who refuse to acknowledge the the intention of the conciliar revolution was the destruction of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in order to accustom Catholics to Protestantized liturgy, which itself would serve as the singular vessel of perdition to accustom them to the false doctrines and corrupt pastoral practices of a false church.
The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist, said almost precisely this in The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, noting that he believed the conciliar church to be the Catholic Church recognizing a new liturgy was necessary to accustom people to a new faith:
The "traditionalist" priest will always stand in front of the altar, as has been commonly done in the Eastern Church and in the Western Church throughout history. They are priests offering a sacrifice who, together with the faithful, face God.
The other priests function as presiders over a Eucharistic meal, and from their seats, or from behind the altar facing the people, which has become a table, they direct their gaze towards the assembled faithful. They are, apparently, not troubled in the least by the fact that their backs on turned on the former High Altar and on the tabernacle--the altar at which, only a few years ago, the holy sacrifice of the Mass was offered and on which the eyes of the praying faithful had been focused.
In the years before the reform, no Catholic could have imagined that the Roman Church, founded on the Rock of Peter, would undergo such changes and at the same time cause such confusion among its members.
Of course, it is true that there have been progressives, particularly during the Age of Enlightenment, who, in part because of erroneous interpretations of history, in part because of "modern" theological views, pressed for changes in the liturgy as it was then practiced. In the past, the Church's teaching Magisterium has carefully guarded against such developments and has always been able to control the emergence of radical ideas.
Now, all this has fundamentally changed. Today, those who out of a sense of personal belief hold firm to what until recently had been strictly prescribed by the Roman Church are treated with condescension by many of their own brothers. They face problems if they continue to nurture the very rite in which they were brought up and to which they have been consecrated. That theirs was a decision made as a matter of conscience and that their conscience is being sorely tested is of little consequence to those who oppose them.
On the other side, the progressives who see little or no value in tradition can do almost no wrong, and are usually given the benefit of the doubt, even they defend opinions which clearly contradict Catholic teaching.
To add to this spiritual confusion, we are also dealing with the satiated state of mind of modern man who, living in our consumer society, approaches anything that is holy with a complete lack of understanding and has no appreciation of the concept of religion, let alone of his own sinful state. For them God, if they believe in Him at all, exists only as their "friend."
At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old and until now the heart of the Church, was destroyed. A closer examination reveals that the Roman rite was not perfect and that some elements of value had atrophied over the centuries. Yet, through all the periods of unrest that again and again shook the Church to her foundations, the Roman rite always remained the rock, the secure home of faith and piety . . . .
Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and the new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example, references to a God who judges and punishes.
At the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy created after the Second Vatican Council is identifical in essence with the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point, and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting rid of elements of no particular interest.
Most priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform of the Divine Office and the liturgical chant introduced by Pope Saint Pius X.
Following this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while, in many cases, they themselves refused to obey.
The pastoral benefits that so many idealists had hoped the new liturgy would bring did not materialize. Our churches emptied in spite of the new liturgy (or because of it?), and the faithful continue to fall away from the Church in droves.
Although our young people have been literally seduced into supporting the new forms of liturgical worship, they have, in fact, become more and more alienated from the faith. They are drawn to religious sects--Christian and non-Christian ones--because fewer and fewer priests teach them the riches of our Catholic faith and the tenets of Christian morality. As for older people, the radical changes made to the traditional liturgy have taken from them the sense of security in their religious home.
Today, many among us wonder: Is this the Spring people had hoped would emerge from the Second Vatican Council? Instead of a genuine renewal in our Church, we have seen only novelties. Instead of our religious life entering a period of new invigoration, as has happened in the past, what we see now is a form of Christianity that has turned towards the world.
We are now involved in a liturgy in which God is no longer the center of our attention. Today, the eyes of our faithful are no longer focused on God's Son having become Man hanging before us on the cross, or on the pictures of His saints, but on the human community assembled for a commemorative meal. The assembly of people is sitting there, face to face with the "presider," expecting from him, in according with the "modern" spirit of the Church, not so much a transfer of God's grace, but primarily some good ideas and advice on how to deal with daily life and its challenges.
There are few people left who speak of the Holy Mass as the Sacrifice of the New Covenant which we offer to God the Father through Jesus Christ, or of the sacramental union with Christ that we experience when we receive Holy Communion. Today, we are dealing with the "Eucharistic feast," and with the "holy bread"to be shared among us as a sign of our brotherhood with Jesus.
The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church, the inspiration of countless Catholics over so many centuries. Will someone, some day, be able to say the same thing about the new Mass? (Monsignor Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Rite.)
Unfortunately, Monsignor Gamber believed that an absolute return to the integrity of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition before it was attacked by Bugnini in 1955 was probably not desirable. He believed in what has been called "the reform of the reform." That having been noted as a matter of intellectual honesty, Gamber's analysis of the actual state of the so-called liturgical "renewal" was founded on a rejection of the claim that the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service was a continuation of Tradition. It is not. The Novus Ordo has devastated the Catholic Faith and is responsible for giving rise to the "restoration" of one formerly and properly abandoned practice of antiquity after another, thus creating the very conditions in which Catholics have come to believe in the "egalitarian" spirit of a false litugy that was inspired by the devil himself in the mode of the liturgies used by the Protestant revolutionaries into whose prideful ears he whisphered nearly five hundred years ago now.
Perhaps it is good to review the following sentences quoted above from The Reform of the Roman Liturgy to see how perfectly they describe the condescending treatment that Jorge Mario Bergoglio accords believing Catholics who are attached to the structures of his counterfeit church of concilairism while he himself presides over some of the grossest liturgical sacrileges that the world has even seen, sacrileges that would have made even the pagans of Ancient Rome, Green and Egypt blush with shame:
Today, those who out of a sense of personal belief hold firm to what until recently had been strictly prescribed by the Roman Church are treated with condescension by many of their own brothers. They face problems if they continue to nurture the very rite in which they were brought up and to which they have been consecrated. That theirs was a decision made as a matter of conscience and that their conscience is being sorely tested is of little consequence to those who oppose them.
On the other side, the progressives who see little or no value in tradition can do almost no wrong, and are usually given the benefit of the doubt, even they defend opinions which clearly contradict Catholic teaching. (Monsignor Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Rite.)
Why is it that those Catholics who this to be true still accept Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a member of the Catholic Church and as a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter even though he has done little else than contradict Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals throughout his career as a lay Jesuit, including, of course, the time since March 13, 2013, that he has posed to the world as “Pope Francis”? What’s so difficult about saying, “Hey, Jorge, you can’t do that! You’re not even a Catholic, no less a true pope”?
Every Rosary we pray--and we should pray as many each day as our states-in-life permit--helps to make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world. We must have confidence in Our Lady's intercessory power to help others as she has helped us, sinners who are no better than anyone else at all (!), to find a way out of the false church of conciliarism and into the glories of the Catholic catacombs where they can find concentrate on their own personal sanctification as the Faith is taught in all of its Holy Integrity.
May Our Lady help us to persevere as we seek to save our souls under the yoke of good shepherds who care about our salvation and not about their privileges as each of us uses the passage of time to grow in holiness and to be ready to accept whatever suffering that comes our way with the Gifts and Fruits of the her Divine Spouse, God the Holy Ghost.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Timothy, pray for us.