(S. C. Doct. Fid., 24 July, 1966) AAS 58-659.

A Letter of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Ottaviani, was sent with the approval of Paul VI to all the Episcopal Conferences on 24 July, 1966. 

To the Venerable Prelates of the Episcopal Conferences:

Since the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, recently brought to a happy termination, has promulgated some very wise documents concerning both doctrine and discipline, in order more effectively to promote the life of the Church, all the people of God have a serious duty to strive with all earnestness to put into practice everything that was solemnly proposed or decreed by that vast gathering of Bishops under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the presidency of the Supreme Pontiff.

On the other hand, the Hierarchy has the right and duty to supervise, direct, and promote the renewal which the Council set in motion, so that the Documents and Decrees of the Council may be rightly interpreted and be put into effect with precise fidelity to their proper sense and intention. For this doctrine must be defended by the Bishops, invested as they are with the office of teaching authoritatively under the leadership of Peter. And, to their credit, many of these Shepherds have already begun to explain properly the doctrine of the Council.

Unfortunately, however, from many sources dismaying reports have come, of growing abuses in the interpretation of the Council’s doctrine, and of strange and bold opinions springing up here and there, which have seriously disturbed a number of the faithful. Researches and efforts to investigate the truth more deeply are praiseworthy, provided the distinction is clearly kept between what must be believed and what is a matter of opinion. But documents which this Sacred Congregation has examined show that there are many current declarations which go far beyond the limits of simple opinions or hypotheses and seem to affect in some degree the very dogma and foundations of the faith.

It will be useful to mention by way of example some of these statements and errors as they appear from reports furnished by learned men and from published writings.

1) In the first, place there is Sacred Revelation. Some, purposely disregarding Tradition, have recourse to Sacred Scripture. but restrict the scope and force of biblical inspiration and inerrancy, and hold false views on the historical value of the texts.

2) As regards the doctrine of the Faith, dogmatic formulas are declared to be so subject to historical evolution that their objective meaning is subject to change.

3) The ordinary magisterium of the Church, especially of the Roman Pontiff, is sometimes so neglected and so little esteemed that it is almost reduced to the category of mere opinion.

4) Some scarcely acknowledge any absolute objective truth, firm and immutable; they regard everything as subject to a kind of relativism, on the mistaken ground that all truth must necessarily follow the rhythm of the evolution of conscience and history.

5) Even the adorable Person of our Lord Jesus Christ is attacked, for in the rethinking of christology the concepts of nature and person which are employed are such as can hardly be reconciled with defined dogmas. A sort of christological humanism creeps in, reducing Christ to the status of a mere man who arrived gradually at the consciousness of his divine Sonship. His virginal conception, His miracles, even His Resurrection, are verbally acknowledged but really reduced to the merely natural order.

6) So too, in the theological treatise on the Sacraments, certain elements are either ignored or receive insufficient attention, especially in regard to the Most Holy Eucharist. There are those who dispute about the real presence of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, proposing an exaggerated symbolism as though the bread and wine were not changed into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were merely transferred to a certain symbolic significance. There are also some who unduly urge the concept of agape in the Mass, as taking precedence over the idea of Sacrifice.

7) Some choose to explain the Sacrament of Penance as a means of reconciliation with the Church, not expressing sufficiently the reconciliation with God who has been offended. They even claim that for the celebration of this sacrament the personal confession of one’s sins is not necessary, and so they seek to express only the social function of reconciliation with the Church.

8 ) As for the teaching of the Council of Trent on original sin, some either make little of it or present it in such a way that the original sin of Adam and the transmission of sin itself are at least clouded.

9) In the field of moral theology, errors are no less current. Several go so far as to reject the objective nature of morality; others refuse to accept the natural law and assert the legitimacy of so-called ethics of the situation. Pernicious opinions are advanced regarding morality and responsibility in the matter of sexuality and marriage.

10) Besides all this, something must be said about Ecumenism. Certainly the Apostolic See has praise for those who, in the spirit of the Conciliar Decree on Ecumenism, promote projects designed to foster charity for our separated brethren and to draw them toward the unity of the Church. But it deplores the fact that some are interpreting the Decrees of the Council in their own way and are urging a type of ecumenical activity which is contrary to the truth of the Faith and the unity of the Church, favoring a dangerous irenicism and indifferentism, a thing which is utterly foreign to the mind of the Council.

It is true that these errors and dangers, taken singly, are scattered here and there; but taken all together in a summary group, they are presented to the local Ordinaries in this letter, so that each one according to his function and office may take proper measures to restrain or forestall them.

This Sacred Congregation earnestly prays the local Ordinaries, when united in their respective Episcopal Conferences, to take action in this matter and to report to the Holy See offering their advice on it, before the feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ of this current year.

This letter, which obvious reasons of prudence prevent from being made public, is to be kept strictly secret by the Ordinaries and by any other persons to whom they may for sufficient reason decide to communicate it.

A. Card. OTTAVIANI

Rome, 24 July, 1966.

AAS 58-659; S. C. Doct. Fid., 24 July, 1966.

“The opening to the world called for by Vatican II has often been interpreted, in the years after the Council, as a sort of “conversion to secularization”: This attitude was not lacking in generosity, but it led to obscuring the importance of the liturgy and to minimize the need for observing the rites, which were considered too distant from the life of the world which had to be love and with whom one had to be fully connected, up to being fascinated by it. The result was a grave crisis of identity of the priest who could no longer perceive the importance of the salvation of souls and the need to announce to the world the newness of the Gospel of Salvation. The liturgy is, without doubt, the privileged place of deepening the identity of the priest, called to “fight the secularization”; for, as Jesus says, in his priestly prayer: “I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth.” (John 17, 15-17).

“This certainly will be possible through a more rigorous observation of the liturgical norms that preserve the priest from the requirement, even the unconscious one, to draw the attention of the faithful on his person: the liturgical ritual which the celebrant is called to receive filially from the Church in fact allows the faithful to come more easily to the presence of Christ the Lord, of which the liturgical celebration must be a telling sign, and which must always come first. The liturgy is wounded when the faithful are left to the arbitrariness of the celebrant, his quirks, his personal ideas or opinions, to his own wounds. Hence also follows the importance of not banalizing the rites which, tearing us away from the secular world and thus from the temptation of immanentism, have the gift to immerse us suddenly in the Mystery and open ourselves to the Transcendent. In this sense, one can never stress enough the importance of the silence preceding the liturgical celebration, an inner narthex, where we are freed of the concerns, even if legitimate, of the secular world, in order to enter the sacred space and time where God will reveal his Mystery; [sc. one can never stress enough the importance] of silence in the liturgy to open oneself more readily to the action of God; and [sc. one can never stress enough] the appropriateness of a period of thanksgiving, integrated or not into celebration, to apprehend the inner extent of the mission that awaits us, once we were back in the world. The obedience of the priest to the rubrics is also itself a silent and eloquent sign of his love for the Church of which he is but the minister, i.e. the servant.”

Taken from: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9276

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009/01/benedict-xvi-on-liturgical-orientation.html

The following are excerpts of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Address to the Bishops of Chile in 1988

http://unavoce.org/resources/cardinal-ratzingers-address-to-bishops-of-chile/

“It will not do to attribute everything to political motives, to nostalgia, or to cultural actors of minor importance. These causes are not capable of explaining the attraction which is felt even by the young, and especially by the young, who come from many quite different nations, and who are surrounded by completely distinct political and cultural realities. Indeed they show what is from any point of view a restricted and one-sided outlook; but there is no doubt whatever that a phenomenon of this sort would be inconceivable unless there were good elements at work here, which in general do not find sufficient opportunity to live within the Church of today.”

“While there are many motives that might have led a great number of people to seek a refuge in the traditional liturgy, the chief one is that they find the dignity of the sacred preserved there. After the Council there were many priests who deliberately raised ‘desacralization’ to the level of a program, on the plea that the New Testament abolished the cult of the Temple: the veil of the Temple which was torn from top to bottom at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross is, according to certain people, the sign of the end of the sacred. The death of Jesus, outside the City walls, that is to say, in the public world, is now the true religion. Religion, if it has any being at all, must have it in the nonsacredness of daily life, in love that is lived. Inspired by such reasoning, they put aside the sacred vestments; they have despoiled the churches as much as they could of that splendor which brings to mind the sacred; and they have reduced the liturgy to the language and the gestures of ordinary life, by means of greetings, common signs of friendship, and such things.”

“…we ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director.”

“Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.”

“The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.”

“I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the Council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain rudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the Council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the Faith.”

“All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.”

“In the spiritual movements of the post-concilar era, there is not the slightest doubt that frequently there has been an obliviousness, or even a suppression, of the issue of truth: here perhaps we confront the crucial problem for theology and for pastoral work today.”

“The ‘truth’ is thought to be a claim that is too exalted, a ‘triumphalism’ that cannot be permitted any longer. You see this attitude plainly in the crisis that troubles the missionary ideal and missionary practice. If we do not point to the truth in announcing our faith, and if this truth is no longer essential for the salvation of Man, then the missions lose their meaning. In effect the conclusion has been drawn, and it has been drawn today, that in the future we need only seek that Christians should be good Christians, Moslems good Moslems, Hindus good Hindus, and so forth. If it comes to that, how are we to know when one is a ‘good’ Christian, or a ‘good’ Moslem?”

In Latin

In English

Interesting points:

1. It is the task of the Supreme Pontiff to maintain unity in the Church, among bishops, and faithful (par. 1).
2. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei was founded by PJPII to serve the needs of those clergy and faithful attached to the previous liturgical form (par. 2).
3. The pope wishes to widen and renew the scope of PJPII’s Motu proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, along with PBXVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, with more precise rules (par. 3).
4. “We desired to remit the excommunication of the four Bishops illicitly ordained by Mons. Lefebvre. With such a decision, We intended to remove an obstacle which could prevent the opening of a door to dialogue, and thus invite the Bishops and the “Fraternity of Saint Pius X” to find anew the path towards full communion with the Church” (par. 4).
5. “The doctrinal questions, however, obviously remain, and, until they are not clarified, the Fraternity does not have a canonical status within the Church, and its ministers cannot exercise any ministry legitimately” (par. 4).
6. “Since the questions which must be dealt with the Fraternity are of an essentially doctrinal nature, We have decided - twenty-one years after the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, and as We had planned to do - to restructure the Commission Ecclesia Dei, linking it more directly with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (par. 5).
7. “With this decision, We have desired, in particular, to display our fatherly solicitude to the “Fraternity of Saint Pius X” so that in the end it may come to full communion with the Church (par. 7).

To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the disappearance of Latin and the turning of the altars towards the people. Those who read the relevant texts will be astonished to learn that neither is in fact found in the decrees of the Council. The use of the vernacular is certainly permitted, especially for the Liturgy of the Word, but the preceding general rule of the Council text says, ‘Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36.1).

There is nothing in the Council text about turning altars towards the people; that point is raised only in postconciliar instructions. The most important directive is found in paragraph 262 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the General Instruction of the new Roman Missal, issued in 1969. That says, ‘It is better for the main altar to be constructed away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate facing the people (versus populum).’ The General Instruction of the Missal issued in 2002 retained this text unaltered except for the addition of the subordinate clause, ‘which is desirable wherever possible’. This was taken in many quarters as hardening the 1969 text to mean that there was now a general obligation to set up altars facing the people ‘wherever possible’.

This interpretation, however, was rejected by the Congregation for Divine Worship on 25 September 2000, when it declared that the word ‘expedit’ (’is desirable’) did not imply an obligation but only made a suggestion. The physical orientation, the Congregation says, must be distinguished from the spiritual. Even if a priest celebrates versus populum, he should always be oriented versus Deum per Iesum Christum (towards God through Jesus Christ). Rites, signs, symbols, and words can never exhaust the inner reality of the mystery of salvation. For this reason the Congregation warns against one-sided and rigid positions in this debate.

This is an important clarification. It sheds light on what is relative in the external symbolic forms of the liturgy and resists the fanaticisms that, unfortunately, have not been uncommon in the controversies of the last forty years. At the same time it highlights the internal direction of liturgical action, which can never be expressed in its totality by external forms. This internal direction is the same for priest and people, towards the Lord-towards the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The Congregation’s response should thus make for a new, more relaxed discussion, in which we can search for the best ways of putting into practice the mystery of salvation. The quest is to be achieved, not by condemning one another, but by carefully listening to each other and, even more importantly, listening to the internal guidance of the liturgy itself. The labelling of positions as ‘preconciliar’, ‘reactionary’, and ‘conservative’, or as ‘progressive’ and ‘alien to the faith’ achieves nothing; what is needed is a new mutual openness in the search for the best realisation of the memorial of Christ.

This small book by Uwe Michael Lang, a member of the London Oratory, studies the direction of liturgical prayer from a historical, theological, and pastoral point of view. At a propitious moment, as it seems to me, this book resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican Council.

The Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the architects of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the, very beginning resolutely opposed to the polemical catchphrase that previously the priest celebrated ‘with his back to the people’; he emphasised that what was at issue was not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary, his facing the same direction as the people. The Liturgy of the Word has the character of proclamation and dialogue, to which address and response can rightly belong. But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this reason, Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action. Louis Bouyer (like Jungmann, one of the Council’s leading liturgists) and Klaus Gainber have each in his own way taken up the same question. Despite their great reputations, they were unable to make their voices heard at first, so strong was the tendency to stress the communality of the liturgical celebration and to regard therefore the face-to-face position of priest and people as absolutely necessary.

More recently the atmosphere has become more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann, Bouyer, and Gamber without at once being suspected of anti-conciliar sentiments. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come.

In this situation, Lang’s delightfully objective and wholly unpolemical book is a valuable guide. Without claiming to offer major new insights, he carefully presents the results of recent research and provides the material necessary for making an informed judgment. The book is especially valuable in showing the contribution made by the Church of England to this question and in giving, also, due consideration to the part played by the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century (in which the conversion of John Henry Newman matured). It is from such historical evidence that the author elicits the theological answers that he proposes, and I hope that the book, the work of a young scholar, will help the struggle-necessary in every generation–for the right understanding and worthy celebration of the sacred liturgy.

I wish the book a wide and attentive readership.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Rome, Laetare Sunday 2003

My review of the book in 2007:

Book Review: 

Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (Paperback)

by Uwe Michael Lang (Author)

List Price: $12.95
Amazon.com Price: $11.01

Paperback: 156 pages
Publisher: Ignatius Press (February 28, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0898709865
ISBN-13: 978-0898709865

A little over three years ago, my interests in this mysterious “Latin Mass” was fostered by friends I met on online discussion groups. Little did I know that attending one of these “Latin Masses” would have such a profound impact on my future progress in the faith and in spirituality in general. At that time I had no concept of “schism” and “sedevacantism”, and I didn’t realize how controversial this “old Mass” has been and would become in the next few years. The first Latin Mass I went to was one celebrated by a priest of the Society of St. Pius X, almost in my back yard of Colton, CA. My first thoughts were: (1) why is everyone so quiet?; (2) why is Father whispering; (3) why is Father not looking at us (except for those brief moments he says “Dominoes Nabisco” [Dominus Vobiscum]); (4) this music is amazing; and (5) the art is inspiring. I have since found a happy home in the most local indult, since at that time I found the SSPX to be in a less than regular situation with Rome.

This book focuses on one argument, and one argument alone, the direction of liturgical prayer. In my struggle to reconcile the differences between the old Mass and the so called “Novus Ordo”, I argued that “didn’t Jesus face the Apostles just like it is depicted in most renditions of the Last supper?” I have come to find out that the tradition of the earliest times was not to have the place of honor in the center, like it is today, but to have it in the right-most place, on the same side of the table, a table which is shaped like a U.

Another important point to note is that the tradition of all ancient religions was directional. The Jews had Jerusalem, Muslims had Mecca, and the Christians had East. Why is that? Well the sun was a symbol of the Son. While the sun gave us light energy which was a source of physical life on Earth, the Son is the Light of the World, which not only gives physical life, but also spiritual life. Remember, the early liturgies were said at dawn. As the sun rises in the East to meet us, so too shall the Son of Man meet us in the East. The book points out some Scriptural allusions to the significance of the East.

Also, as I spoke about in my review to Cardinal Ratzinger’s book Spirit of the Liturgy, there is significance to the priest facing the same direction as the people and that is, he is leading us to meet Christ. The posture is directional, progressive, towards our goal, our final destination. Whereas, as Ratzinger pointed out, facing the people is a posture which closes the community off up into itself, a “closed circle”, focused upon itself. Note, that this does not mean it is wrong to face the people; it simply means the ideal posture is facing East, because of its theological significance.

Since East gained theological significance, it became the architectural principles beginning in the second century. The apse was placed in the East, and the entrance in the West. Where this was not possible, the priority became facing the open window or door at the time of Consecration, which is, facing the sunlight, symbolizing the Son-Light.

This review is already getting to be too long, so, I will simply say, for those who wish to have a survey study of the early practice of liturgical direction ad orientem (facing the East), and even the early practice of versus populum (facing the people), this is the book for you. It is short and to the point. Highly recommended.

God Bless,
Laurence

Feast of St. John the Apostle, 2007

Milestones: Memoirs 1927 - 1977

The Regensburg Years

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

The second great event at the beginning of my years in Regensburg was the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, which was accompanied by the almost total prohibition, after a transitional phase of only half a year, of using the missal we had had until then. I welcomed the fact that now we had a binding liturgical text after a period of experimentation that had often deformed the liturgy. But I was dismayed by the prohibition of the old missal, since nothing of the sort had ever happened in the entire history of the liturgy. The impression was even given that what was happening was quite normal. The previous missal had been created by Pius V in 1570 in connection with the Council of Trent; and so it was quite normal that, after four hundred years and a new council, a new pope would present us with a new missal. But the historical truth of the matter is different. Pius V had simply ordered a reworking of the Missale Romanum then being used, which is the normal thing as history develops over the course of centuries. Many of his successors had likewise reworked this missal again, but without ever setting one missal against another. It was a continual process of growth and purification in which continuity was never destroyed. There is no such thing as a “Missal of Pius V”, created by Pius V himself. There is only the reworking done by Pius V as one phase in a long history of growth. The new feature that came to the fore after the Council of Trent was of a different nature. The irruption of the Reformation had above all taken the concrete form of liturgical “reforms”. It was not just a matter of there being a Catholic Church and a Protestant Church alongside one another. The split in the Church occurred almost imperceptibly and found its most visible and historically most decisive manifestation in the changes in the liturgy. These changes, in turn, took very different forms at the local level, so that here, too, one frequently could not ascertain the boundary between what was still Catholic and what was no longer Catholic.Consequences could only be tragic.

In this confusing situation, which had become possible by the failure to produce unified liturgical legislation and by the existing liturgical pluralism inherited from the Middle Ages, the pope decided that now the Missale Romanum - the missal of the city of Rome - was to be introduced as reliably Catholic in every place that could not demonstrate its liturgy to be at least two hundred years old. Wherever the existing liturgy was that old, it could be preserved because its Catholic character would then be assured. In this case we cannot speak of the prohibition of a previous missal that had formerly been approved as valid. The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something “made”, not something given in advance but something lying within our own power of decision. From this it also follows that we are not to recognise the scholars and the central authority alone as decision makers, but that in the end each and every “community” must provide itself with its own liturgy. When liturgy is self-made, however, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own product but rather our origin and the source of our life.

The disintegration of the liturgy.

A renewal of liturgical awareness, a liturgical reconciliation that again recognises the unity of the history of the liturgy and that understands Vatican II, not as a breach, but as a stage of development: these things are urgently needed for the life of the Church. I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God exists and whether or not He speaks to us and hears us. But when the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.

Extract from Cardinal Ratzinger’s book Milestones: Published by Ignatius Press.

[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's May 1999 Newsletter.]

“The Holy Mass is a prayer itself, even the highest prayer that exists. It is the Sacrifice, dedicated by our Redeemer at the Cross, and repeated every day on the altar. If you wish to hear Mass as it should be heard, you must follow with eye, heart and mouth all that happens at the altar. Further, you must pray with the priest the holy words said by him in the Name of Christ and which Christ says by him. You have to associate your heart with the holy feelings which are contained in these words and in this manner you ought to follow all that happens at the altar. When acting in this way, you have prayed Holy Mass.”

~ Pope St. Pius X

Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century
By Romano Amerio

Purchase on Amazon.com

This is an excellent work, largely ignored and only recently brought back into the mainstream discussion. We have seen what the so-called fruits of Vatican II brought, much confusion, to say the least. A favorable review of a book regarding the thought of Amerio was published in the publication of the Jesuits in Rome, La Civilta Cattoloica. For the record, he never rejected Vatican II, nor supported the actions of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But, even Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger saw the revolution which was taking place before his very eyes:

“The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision. More and more the Council appeared to be like a great Church parliament that could change everything and reshape everything according to its own desires. Very clearly resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive. The disputes at the Council were more and more portrayed according to the party model of modern parliamentarism….For believers, it was a remarkable phenomenon that their bishops seemed to show a different face in Rome from the one they wore at home. Shepherds who had been considered strict conservatives suddenly appeared to be spokesmen for progressivism. But were they doing this all on their own? The role that theologians had assumed at the Council was creating ever more clearly a new confidence among scholars, who now understood themselves to be the truly knowledgeable experts in the faith and therefore no longer subordinate to the shepherds….But now in the Catholic Church all of this - at least in the popular consciousness - was up once again for revision, and even the Creed no longer appeared untouchable but seemed rather subject to the control of scholars. Behind this tendency to dominance by specialists one could already detect something else: the idea of an ecclesial sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determines what it wants to understand by Church…” (Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, pp.132-134).

The review can be found here at Chiesa.

Pax.
Laurence Gonzaga

Excerpt from:

[FULL DOCUMENT]

Three questions were asked of the bishops, and the replies received by 12 March 1969 were as follows:

1. Do you think that attention should be paid to the desire that, over and above the traditional manner, the rite of receiving holy communion on the hand should be admitted?

Yes: 597

No: 1,233

Yes, but with reservations: 315

Invalid votes: 20

2. Is it your wish that this new rite be first tried in small communities, with the consent of the bishop?

Yes: 751

No: 1,215

Invalid votes, 70

3. Do you think that the faithful will receive this new rite gladly, after a proper catechetical preparation?

Yes: 835

No: 1,185

Invalid votes: 128

From the returns it is clear that the vast majority of bishops believe that the present discipline should not be changed, and that if it were, the change would be offensive to the sentiments and the spiritual culture of these bishops and of many of the faithful.

Therefore, taking into account the remarks and the advice of those whom “the Holy Spirit has placed to rule over” the Churches,[11] in view of the gravity of the matter and the force of the arguments put forward, the Holy Father has decided not to change the existing way of administering holy communion to the faithful.

The Apostolic See therefore emphatically urges bishops, priests and laity to obey carefully the law which is still valid and which has again been confirmed. It urges them to take account of the judgment given by the majority of Catholic bishops, of the rite now in use in the liturgy, of the common good of the Church.

Where a contrary usage, that of placing holy communion on the hand, prevails, the Holy See—wishing to help them fulfill their task, often difficult as it is nowadays—lays on those conferences the task of weighing carefully whatever special circumstances may exist there, taking care to avoid any risk of lack of respect or of false opinions with regard to the Blessed Eucharist, and to avoid any other ill effects that may follow.