THE SLOW AND METHODICAL DESTRUCTION OF THE TRADITIONAL LITURGY

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       Copyright 2001.  Reproduction prohibited without authorization.

 
This article well summarizes the significance of what has happened to 
the Church in the last century, as well as how the disaster came about.  
It should definitively answer all those Catholics who ask "how could it 
have happened?  If only the Pope or Vatican knew what was going on," 
etc.  At the very least the article informs the reader what changes 
were made to rubrics of the Breviary and Missal in the years leading up 
to the Novus Ordo Missae.  And it does not shrink from passing judgment 
upon such changes.


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The Liturgy, considered as a whole, is the collection of symbols, 
chants and acts by means of which the Church expresses and manifests 
its religion towards God.

In the Old Testament, God Himself is the liturgist: He specifies the 
most minute details of the worship which the faithful had to render to 
Him. There was an awesome importance attached to this worship, a form 
of worship which was but the shadow of that sublime worship in the New 
Testament which Christ the High Priest wanted His Church to continue 
until the end of the world.

In the Liturgy of the Catholic Church, everything is important, 
everything is sublime, down to the tiniest details, a truth which moved 
St. Teresa of Avila to say: "I would give my life for the smallest 
ceremony of Holy Church."

Our devotion for the True Mass, the Apostolic Mass, cannot fail to be 
strengthened by an understanding of the Liturgy of the Church, and the 
use and meaning of those sacred rites by which this most solemn of all 
religious actions is accomplished.

The Church tells us, in the Decrees of the Council of Trent, that the 
ceremonies of Holy Mass are designed precisely to promote the reverence 
and edification of the faithful. Another very important object is to 
impress the ministers of religion themselves with a sense of the 
greatness and majesty of the work in which they are engaged. An 
incidental result of the care which the Church bestows upon the 
externals of religion, and which is obviously a part of her end in 
providing for them, is the preservation, in all its integrity, of the 
great doctrines to which these ceremonies are evidently subservient.

Let us look first on the effect the ceremonies have upon the people. We 
naturally form a high esteem for actions which we see done with care 
and attention. This principle is well understood by kings and the great 
men of the world, who, whenever they appear in public, entrust their 
marshals and ushers with the care of arranging their processions and 
receptions according to a prescribed ceremonial. The Church, fearing 
the curse of those who perform the work of God negligently (Jer. 
48:10), and animated by that spirit of loyalty which inclines us to 
execute every labor of love with careful exactness, abhors nothing more 
than a perfunctory and slovenly performance of religious actions. We 
know how disedified we are by such events, and how we walk away from 
such ceremonies with confusion of spirit. Likewise, attending a Mass 
devoutly said does much to uplift our souls.

Another end of the liturgical ceremonies is to fix in the mind of the 
priests and ministers of religion a sense of the greatness of the work 
in which they are engaged. Our outward gestures have the greatest 
effect upon the disposition of our minds. For this reason, in well-
regulated families, children are brought up to observe an outward 
demeanor of respect and affection to their parents as the best, or 
rather the only, security for keeping themselves habitually in those 
dispositions. What prudent teacher or ruler would ever think of 
dispensing with ceremonial proprieties and etiquette saying that true 
love and duty are not connected with such minutiae? We well know that 
the certain consequence of neglecting such outward signs of regard is 
to cool, in the end, even the most fervent affection. It is for these 
reasons that the Church binds her priests and ministers, even under 
pain of grievous sin, to an exact performance of all the most important 
ceremonies of Mass.  They may not deviate from the ritual, nor can they 
invent ceremonies of there own or invite the faithful to write up their 
own ceremonial.

Thirdly, considering what vital doctrines are wrapped up in the Holy 
Sacrifice of the Mass, and how intimately many of its ceremonies are 
connected with these doctrines, it is obvious that the Church has other 
still higher reasons for the attention she bestows upon the ceremonial 
of religion. It cannot be doubted that these ceremonies have materially 
contributed to preserve the doctrines of the Incarnation, Redemption, 
the Holy Eucharist, and other great mysteries of our Faith. There is 
not one of these ceremonies which does not spring from reverence 
towards the Holy Eucharist, while many of them directly imply the great 
truth of Transubstantiation.

It is important for us to understand that not one of the seemingly 
least of all these ceremonies is, as the enemies of the Church assert, 
idle and insignificant.

With an understanding of the sacred nature and provenance of the 
Liturgy then, can it be wondered that the enemies of the Church would 
seek to attack its sacred mysteries and so undermine the entire 
fortification of this sacred establishment?  Perhaps the only source of 
wonderment would be that such enemies worked within the Church rather 
than from without, as was the case with the Protestant heretics.  That 
clerics and prelates of the Church should have hatched a nefarious and 
treacherous conspiracy while entrusted with the highest offices of the 
institution they so obviously hated might seem bewildering to faithful 
and loving sons and daughters of the Church and Tradition.  But the 
faithful ought not be bewildered.  There are historical precedents for 
perfidy, apostasy, heresy and all manner of treachery within the 
Church, precedents that begin with St. Peter, first pope, and his 
denial of our Blessed Lord.

Courageous and inspired popes have battled with innovators within the 
Church for centuries.  Popes have fought for the faith and for the 
preservation of a pure Liturgy, a Liturgy which had been entrusted to 
them as conservators and custodians by the Apostles themselves.  
Conspicuous among these true Defenders of the Faith, warriors against 
the innovators and destroyers of Tradition, are Pope St. Pius V, and 
Pope St. Pius X.  St. Pius V was able to use the new invention of the 
printing press to codify and publish the Apostolic Roman Mass for all 
eternity, in a supreme effort to combat scattered and widespread forces 
within the Church, proto-modernist agents, that had sought to renovate 
the sacred Liturgy according to heretical principles that can now be 
interpreted as humanist, relativist, illuminist, Jansenist, and 
Protestant.  Pope St. Pius X was a brilliant exemplar of orthodoxy 
against powerful heresiasts at work inside the Church.  Pius X clearly 
saw heterodox and dangerous agents working methodically in Vatican 
offices, and in seminaries across the Catholic world, seeking to 
destroy the Church by infiltrating the establishment and contaminating 
young minds of future leaders, debasing the very treasure they had been 
entrusted to guard. Pius X valiantly endeavoured to root out these 
infiltrating enemies, and condemned in the very strongest terms all the 
errors and evils within the Church, giving the name "modernism" to this 
great plague attacking Catholicism, and defining it as the "synthesis 
of all heresies."  Pius X attempted to enforce a rigorous discipline of 
orthodoxy on teachers, liturgists, and theologians, recognizing that 
many among them had become corrupted by modernist heresies.  The Oath 
Against Modernism, the mandatory profession of which Pius established, 
is evidence of the immanent threat modernism already had within the 
Church.

Between Pius V and Pius X, many, many popes recognized and condemned 
modernist infiltrators.  It should come as no surprise to knowledgeable 
Catholics, then, that these diabolical forces have for many years been 
among us, and that it is our duty always to defend and protect the 
faith against all attack and from any quarter -- as St. Isidore said, 
even if an angel from Heaven should preach contrary to the Tradition 
which has been entrusted to us from the Apostles:  that angel "shall be 
called anathema".

This article seeks to show how the present corruption of the New Order 
Church, epitomized by its reformed worship service, the Novus Ordo 
Missae, is the culmination of centuries of contention within the Church 
between orthodox followers of Tradition and heretical infiltrators.  It 
is very important for Traditional Catholics to understand very clearly 
that the NOM did not originate holus bolus after the 2nd Vatican 
Council, that this council  was not a crisis within the Church (that is 
to say, a turning-point or abrupt change of direction within the 
Church), but rather that the NOM is the final triumph of clerical 
agents who have strenuously laboured for centuries against the Liturgy, 
and that the council was simply the conspicuous affirmation of a now 
public agenda of conspirators and revolutionaries who at long last had 
secured unchallenged control of Church government.

The question as to why, in the Providence of God, this apparent victory 
of our enemies ought to have happened is not for us to know with any 
certainty. If, however, we as faithful adherents of Tradition seek to 
understand how the reformed church came to be, how the Sacred Liturgy 
was assailed for centuries by its perfidious guardians, we should come 
to a better understanding of how our enemies ought to be resisted, and 
that they must be given no quarter in our battle against the dark 
forces arrayed against Tradition.

The Church's enemies were all too well aware of the importance of the 
Liturgy — heretics corrupted the Liturgy in order to attack the Faith 
itself. Such was the case with the ancient Christological heresies, 
then with Lutheranism and Anglicanism in the 16th century, then with 
the Illuminist and Jansenist reforms in the 18th century, and finally 
with the Modernism, beginning with the Liturgical Movement in the early 
20th century, and culminating in the Novus Ordo Missae, created by 
Vatican II's Liturgical Commission.

No defender and adherent of Tradition would accept the heterodoxy of 
the New Order, and similarly all ought to reject out of hand the 
liturgical corruption of the fifties and sixties spread by Fr. Bugnini, 
who was himself the ultimate fruit of the internecine modernist heresy 
festering in the Church for decades, and the principal architect of the 
New Order.

Those responsible for replacing our Holy Mass with a community 
celebration were content for years to work slowly — very slowly, and 
the heretical impulses which motivated the innovators within the 
Vatican itself from 1945 on are traceable back several centuries 
through Church history.

The Church was stricken towards the end of the eighteenth century with 
the blight of Illuminism. Clerical proto-modernists were dissatisfied 
with the traditional liturgy, because they felt it did not correspond 
with the concrete problems of the times.

Emperor Joseph II, the Gallican bishops of France, and some bishops of 
Italy, meeting together for the Synod of Pistoia, carried out reforms 
and liturgical experiments which resemble to an amazing extent the 
corrupt innovations of the New Order; they are just as strongly 
orientated towards Man and social problems, as is the humanist-
socialist New Order.  The deepest roots of the present liturgical 
desolation, therefore, began to grow with this movement.

Jansenism, a virulent and stubbornly persistent heresy which flourished 
in many parts of France for years, can also be seen as the inspiration 
and model for the modern liturgical innovations.

The Jansenist aversion against tradition, its frenzy for novelty and 
reformation, its desire to replace Latin gradually by the vernacular, 
its efforts to replace ecclesiastical and patristic texts by Scripture 
alone, its diminution of the cult of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, 
its suppression of liturgical symbolism and mystery, and finally its 
shortening of the Liturgy where it judged the sacred ceremonies to be 
excessively and uselessly long and repetitive, all these elements of 
the Jansenist liturgical reforms are found in the present New Order.

The Church at the time condemned the innovators: thus, Clement IX 
condemned the Ritual of the Diocese of Alet in 1668, Clement XI 
condemned the Oratorian Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719) in 1713, Pius VI 
condemned the Synod of Pistoia and Bishop Scipio de' Ricci in his bull 
Auctorem Fidei in 1794.

Many years later, after the liturgical restoration of Pope St. Pius X, 
little by little, the so called "Liturgical Movement" came to embrace 
the theories which it had been founded to combat. All the ideas of the 
anti-liturgical heresy were now taken up again in the 1920s and 30s by 
important and influential churchmen, liturgists like Dom Lambert 
Beauduin (1873-1960) in Belgium and France, and by Dom Pius Parsch and 
Romano Guardini in Austria and Germany.

The "reformers" of the 1930s and 1940s introduced the "Dialogue Mass," 
because of their deliberate misapprehension and false interpretation of 
"active participation" of the faithful in liturgical functions. In may 
youth and student organizations, Catholic scouting organizations and 
such like, the innovators succeeded in introducing Mass in the 
vernacular, the celebration of Mass on a table facing the faithful, and 
even concelebration. Among the young priests who took a delight in 
liturgical experiments in Rome in 1933 was the chaplain of the Catholic 
youth movement, a certain Father Giovanni Battista Montini.  The 
innovators specifically and intentionally targeted the most vulnerable 
and innocent minds within their charge, knowing they they were thereby 
sowing the seeds of their nascent revolution which a later generation 
of revolutionaries would reap.

In Belgium, Dom Beauduin gave the Liturgical Movement an ecumenical 
purpose, theorizing that the Anglican Church could be "united to the 
Catholic Church." He also founded a "Monastery for Union" with the 
Eastern Orthodox Churches, which resulted in many of his monks 
"converting" to the eastern schism.

Rome intervened: the Encyclical against the Ecumenical Movement, 
Mortalium Animos (1928) resulted in Dom Beauduin being discreetly 
recalled. The great protector of Beauduin, however, was Cardinal 
Mercier, the founder of "Catholic" ecumenism.  By sheltering his 
protege, and by promoting his program of revolution, Mercier, a 
prominent and powerful prince of the Church, a cardinal and member of 
the sacred Consistory, was well described at the time by discerning and 
concerned churchmen as the "friend of all the betrayers of the Church."

In the 1940s liturgical saboteurs had already obtained the support of a 
large part of the hierarchy, especially in France (through the "Center 
for Pastoral Liturgy") and in Germany.

Not all prelates, however, were asleep or unaware of, or complicit with 
the vipers that the Church had long nursed at its breast. On January 
18, 1943, the Archbishop of Freiburg, Conrad Grober wrote a long letter 
addressed to his fellow bishops, in which he gathered together 
seventeen points expressing his criticisms of modernist plan to re-
architect the Church.  He criticized the theology of the charismatics, 
the Schoenstatt movement, but above all the Liturgical Movement, 
involving implicitly also Theodor Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna.

Representatives of the modernist heresy reacted quickly to Archbishop 
Grober, among them Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ, who then lived in Vienna, as 
well as Hans Küng and Schillebeeckx, who were all to be the German 
hierarchy's conciliar “experts” at the Second Vatican Council.

This dispute ended up in Rome. In 1947 Pius Xll's Encyclical on the 
liturgy, Mediator Dei, while it ratified the condemnation of the 
Liturgical Movement, it tragically contained no effective measures to 
be taken against the modernist innovators; Pius XII did not suppress 
the French CPL, and he did not prohibit the many heretical publications 
written and distributed within the Church by heterodox and modernist 
clerics.

Pius XII underestimated the seriousness of the liturgical problem: "It 
produces in us a strange impression," he wrote to Bishop Grober, "if, 
almost from outside the world and time, the liturgical question has 
been presented as the problem of the moment."

Additionally, the pope was terribly afraid that any actions stamping 
out the innovators would have resulted in an open conflict with a 
French hierarchy that was already thoroughly diseased with modernism 
and heterodoxy.

Sensing the weakness of Rome, the reformers recognized that they could 
move forward with impunity: from unofficial experiments they now passed 
to official Roman reforms.

The reformers hoped to bring their Trojan Horse into the Church through 
an unguarded gate, and in fact they were helped by the very persons 
charged with manning the defences against such breaches, clerics very 
close to the Pontiff, such as his own confessor Agostino Bea, future 
cardinal and "super-ecumenist."

The following testimony of Annibale Bugnini is enlightening:

"The Commission (for the reform of the Liturgy instituted in 1948) 
enjoyed the full confidence of the Pius XII, who was kept informed by 
Mgr. Montini, and even more so, weekly, by Fr. Bea, the confessor of 
Pius XII. Thanks to this intermediary, we were able to arrive at 
remarkable results, even during the periods when the Pope's illness 
prevented anyone else getting near him."

Fr. Bea was involved with Pius XII's first liturgical reform, the new 
liturgical translation of the Psalms, which replaced that of St. 
Jerome's Vulgate, so disliked by the protestants, since it was the 
official translation of the Holy Scripture in the Church, and declared 
to be authentic by the Council of Trent.

By design the liturgical changes from the time of Pius XII to those of 
the present followed each other every few years until the clergy were 
accustomed to living in an atmosphere of constant change, so that most 
of them inevitably gave in to the confusion. They no longer considered 
themselves bound to know and apply properly the body of rubrics. In the 
name of "simplification," the rules and principles which governed the 
liturgy for centuries were slowly exchanged for the constant state of 
flux which presently obtains in the Conciliar Church.

The innovators' method is one of gradualism, the very same one employed 
by Satan in slaying souls. This was as much as admitted by Cardinal 
Heenan of Westminster who said the changes had to be made gradually, or 
the people would never have accepted them.

This work of gradual change began inside the Vatican on May 28, 1948 by 
the appointment of a Commission for Liturgical Reform with Father 
Antonelli as General Director, and Father Bugnini as Secretary, the men 
who respectively imposed and composed the Novus Ordo Missae.

Two years later on November 22, 1950, Cardinal Liénart, in his capacity 
as head of the French assembly of bishops, formally petitioned the Holy 
See for permission to celebrate the Easter Vigil at night rather than 
in the morning for "pastoral reasons." He got more than he bargained 
for.

Under the guise of a simple change of times, a substantially rewritten 
rite was slipped in, even as later the "English Mass" was imposed in 
the name of the vernacular, with little reference to that fact that 
only thirty percent of the text of the traditional Mass remains.

The first jarring, discordant strains of the "New Order Symphony" were 
already heard in this new Easter Vigil:

1. The principle of optional rites used experimentally was introduced.

2. For the first time, the vernacular was introduced into the liturgy 
proper. (This was Cranmer's first step as well in 1548)

3. The rubric directing the celebrant to "sit and listen" (sedentes 
auscultant) to the lessons rather than reading them at the altar is 
introduced for the first time and is immediately interpreted as 
justifying the exclusive use of the vernacular in this part of the 
liturgy.

In 1953 the immemorial midnight eucharistic fast was mitigated to three 
hours under certain conditions as a concession to modern weakness. The 
modernist liturgists, however, saw in this the beginning of the gradual 
destruction of the Church's sacramental discipline, which would end 
with Paul VI's "15 minutes."

Rumblings of liturgical anarchy were heard even louder after these 
changes, and Pope Pius XII warned priests in an allocution not to 
change anything in the liturgy on their own authority. But still 
modernist innovators were at work in his Vatican, and the changes 
continued and were promulgated by his authority.

The whole of the Church's venerable Holy Week got the axe in 1955 with 
the publication of Maxima Redemptionis. The lie is repeated and 
extended:  this is merely a change of times. Proof that this early 
period of modernist infiltration was working the very same diseased 
agenda of the post-conciliar period and its New Order is contained in 
the very words of Paul VI when he promulgated the New Mass on April 3, 
1969:

"The liturgical renewal has clearly demonstrated that the formulae of 
the Roman Missal had to be revised and enriched. The renewal was begun 
by the same Pius XII with the restoration of the Easter Vigil and the 
Order of Holy Week, which constituted the first stage of the adaptation 
of the Roman Missal to the needs of our times."

Maxima Redemptionis, which introduced the new rite in 1955, speaks 
exclusively of changing the times of the ceremonies of  Maundy 
Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, to make it easier for the 
faithful to assist at the sacred rites, now transferred after centuries 
to the evenings those days.

But no passage in the decree makes the slightest mention of the drastic 
changes in the texts and ceremonies themselves. In fact, the new rite 
of Holy Week was a nothing but a trial balloon for post-Conciliar 
reform which would follow. The modernist Dominican Fr. Chenu testifies 
to this:

"Fr. Duploye followed all this with passionate lucidity. I remember 
that he said to me one day, much later on. 'If we succeed in restoring 
the Easter Vigil to its original value, the liturgical movement will 
have won; I give myself ten years to achieve this.' Ten years later it 
was a fait accompli."

In fact, the new rite of Holy Week is an alien body introduced into the 
heart of the Traditional Missal. It is based on principles which occur 
in Paul VI's 1965 reforms.

1. Paul VI suppressed the Last Gospel in 1965; in 1955 it was 
suppressed for the Masses of Holy Week.

2. Paul VI suppressed the psalm Judica me for the Prayers at the Foot 
of the Altar; the same had been anticipated by the 1955 Holy Week.

3. Paul VI (following the example of Luther) wanted Mass celebrated 
facing the people; the 1955 Holy Week initiated this practice by 
introducing it wherever possible (especially on Palm Sunday). Key rites 
were performed by the priest with his back to the altar, facing the 
people: the Blessing of Palms, the final prayer of the Palm Sunday 
Procession, the Holy Saturday Blessing of the Baptismal Water, etc.

4. Paul VI wanted the role of the priest to be diminished, replaced at 
every turn by ministers; in 1955 already, the celebrant no longer read 
the Lessons, Epistles, or Gospels (Passion) which were sung by the 
ministers --even though they form part of the Mass. The priest sat 
down, forgotten, in a corner.

5. Paul VI suppressed the offertory in his new worship service, which 
was replaced by a Jewish grace before meals. Following the same 
principle, the New Rite of Holy Week in 1955 had suppressed the 
Epistle, Offertory and Preface.  Palm Sunday, lost its ancient rite of 
blessing which incorporates many prayers of the Mass, thus associating 
the sacramental palm with the Blessed Sacrament. The seven collects 
were reduced to one, the Fore-Mass of the Blessing entirely 
disappeared, as did the ceremony of the Gloria Laus at the door of the 
Church. The Passion account was shortened, omitting the Anointing at 
Bethany and the Last Supper.

6. Paul VI, challenging the anathemas of the Council of Trent, 
suppressed the sacred order of the subdiaconate; the new rite of Holy 
Week, suppressed many of the subdeacon's functions. The deacon replaced 
the subdeacon for some of the prayers (the Levate on Good Friday) the 
choir and celebrant replaced him for others (at the Adoration of the 
Cross).  It can be presumed that the innovators, in their attack upon 
the subdeaconate, were assaying an initial attack upon the ordained 
priesthood itself, as part of a coherent and consistent effort to 
establish and consecrate a “priesthood of all believers.”

As can be seen from these parallels, the foundation stone of the Novus 
Ordo Missae was first laid by the New Rite of Holy Week, established in 
1955 by Bugnini.

Other innovations of the 1955 Holy Week included:

1. The Prayer for the Conversion of Heretics became the "Prayer for 
Church Unity"

3.  The new rite suppressed much important symbolism (the opening of 
the door of the church at the Gloria Laus, for example).

4.  The new rite introduced the vernacular in some places (renewal of 
baptismal promises).

5.  The Pater Noster was recited by all present (Good Friday).

6.  The prayers for the emperor were replaced by a prayer for those 
governing the republic, imbued with political modernism.

7. In the Breviary, the very moving psalm Miserere, repeated at all of 
the Office, was suppressed.

8.  For Holy Saturday the Exultet was changed and much of the symbolism 
of its words suppressed.

9. Also on Holy Saturday, eight of the twelve prophecies were 
suppressed.

10. Sections of the Passion were suppressed, even the Last Supper 
disappeared, in which our Lord, already betrayed, instituted the 
Blessed Eucharist.

11. The ancient Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday was abolished 
and replaced with a simple Communion Service for the people on Good 
Friday, contrary to the tradition of the Church, and condemned by St. 
Pius X when petitioned by innovators to initiate this practice

12. All the rubrics of the 1955 Holy Week rite insisted continually on 
the "participation" of the faithful, and they scorned, as abuses, many 
of the popular devotions connected with Holy Week.

13. The Triduum: The whole of the balance of the Triduum Sacrum, the 
last three days of Holy Week, was upset. The beautiful Office of 
Tenebrae practically disappeared, as did the popular devotion of the 
Tre Ore.

This brief examination of the reform of Holy Week clearly shows how the 
"experts", who would come up with the New Mass fourteen years later, 
had first desecrated Holy Week rites to test their revolutionary 
experiments before applying them to the liturgy for the rest of the 
year.  This desecration, at the end of the pontificate of Pius XII, and 
instituted during a time in which the world later learned the pope was 
mentally and physically incapacitated, was carefully designed to be the 
first stage of the self-destruction of the Roman Liturgy.

Pius XII apparently did not realize that the changes authorized in his 
name were shaking discipline and corrupting the liturgy during one of 
the most crucial periods of the Church's history; above all, he did not 
realize that he was legislating the very agenda of the modernists and 
their liturgical revolution.

Many Catholics today believe in their innocence that defenders of 
Tradition were not aware of the degree or scope of the conspiracy 
within the Church at this early stage of the modernist program.  This 
belief is not justified by fact.  To illustrate that many knew the evil 
that was afoot in the Vatican, there is the case of the suppression of 
the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church.  This 
attack on the Heavenly protector of Holy Mother Church, by replacing 
its patron's feast with a kind of Feast Day of Labor (St. Joseph the 
Worker) on the international socialist holiday of May Day, was resisted 
by many in the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the Vatican.  Already, 
however, the modernists had out-manoeuvred Traditionalists, and had 
acquired secretly the levers of power within the Holy See.  A learned 
priest, Jean Crete, who was at the time working in the Vatican's Sacred 
Congregation of Rites, has commented about the situation within the 
Vatican at the time:

"Most people, except those who were party to the subversion, are 
thought of today as having been ignorant as to what was going on. I 
can, on the contrary, give a categorical testimony on this point. I 
realized very well that Pius XII's decrees were just the beginning of a 
total subversion of the liturgy, and I was not the only one. All the 
true liturgists, all the priests who were attached to tradition, were 
dismayed.

"The Sacred Congregation of Rites was not favorable toward the proposed 
innovations, which were the special work of a modernizing commission. 
When, five weeks later, Pius XII announced the feast of St. Joseph the 
Worker, which caused the ancient feast of Ss. Philip and James to be 
transferred, and which replaced the Solemnity of St Joseph, Patron of 
the Church, there was open opposition to it.

“For more than a year the Sacred Congregation of Rites refused to 
compose the office and Mass for the new feast. Many interventions of 
agents purporting to represent the pope were necessary before the 
Congregation of Rites agreed, against their will, to publish the office 
in 1956 — an office so badly composed that one might suspect it had 
been deliberately sabotaged. And it was only in 1960 that the melodies 
of the Mass and office were composed — melodies based on models of the 
worst taste.

"I relate this little-known episode to give an idea of the violence of 
the reaction to the first liturgical reforms of Pius XII".

The modernists could scarcely believe their good fortune, how easy it 
had been to breach the bulwark of Sacred Tradition, and destroy the 
continuity of centuries by implementing their program of liturgical 
revolution.

On the heels of these innovations, the decree Cum hac nostra aetate, 
oddly enough not published in the Acta Apostolica Sedis and not printed 
in the liturgical books, made significant and surreptitious changes to 
the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary.

These changes included:

1. The ancient ranks of semi-double and simple feasts were abolished.

2.   Most vigils of feast days were suppressed, leaving the celebration 
of vigils "a shadow of its former self." (Vigils such as All Saints, 
the Apostles, Our Lady, etc.)

3. The number of octaves was reduced from fifteen to three. Some of the 
suppressed octaves went back to the seventh century.

4. For the first time a distinction between "public" and "private" 
recitation of the Divine Office was introduced, even though tradition 
teaches us that the Office is by its very nature a public prayer. This 
foreshadows the Novus Ordo distinction between Masses with and without 
people.

5. The Paters recited in the Office were reduced from sixteen to five, 
and the ten Aves and three Credos were entirely omitted, as were 
certain other prayers before and after the office.

6. The penitential ferial prayers were abolished with two minor 
exceptions.

7. The Suffrage of the Saints and the Commemoration of the Cross were 
abolished, and the beautiful Athanasian Creed (dating from the eighth 
century) was said but once a year.

8. The additional Collects said at Mass during the different seasons of 
the year (such as those of Our Lady and Against the Persecutors of the 
Church) were abolished.

9. The Proper Last Gospel was abolished. Here again we have been 
obliged to content ourselves with a brief overview of these changes 
which were described as "provisional" — but which so altered the sacred 
liturgy as to discourage all but the most dedicated priest from 
learning them.

In 1957, the bishops of the world were consulted about further 
liturgical changes. The majority asked that the traditional structure 
of the Divine Office be preserved. Fr. Thomas Richstatter, in his book 
Liturgical Law: New Style, New Spirit, gives the following account:

"One bishop quotes Saint Thomas (Summa, I-II, q. 97, art. 2) where he 
states that the modification of any positive law will naturally bring 
with it a certain lessening of discipline. Consequently, if there is to 
be a change, it must be not just for something 'a little better' but 
for something 'much better' in order to compensate for this falling off 
of discipline which necessarily accompanies any change in legislation. 
Therefore, the bishop states, we must be very cautious in this matter. 
It is not easy to say 'no' to requests for change, but that is the 
proper action here. The bishop concludes by stating that he is among 
that large number who are not only satisfied with the liturgy as it is, 
but who consider any change not only undesirable but dangerous to the 
Church."

On September 3, 1958, one month before the death of the beleaguered 
Pius XII, the Instruction on Sacred Music was issued. The use of the 
"Dialogue Mass," was encouraged, so that the congregation would recite 
much of the Mass along with the priest:  the Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, 
etc., as well as all the responses. It should be noted here that the 
traditional form of congregational participation is Gregorian Chant. 
Popular recitation of Mass prayers was never done until the "Dialogue 
Mass" was introduced.

Under the cover of participation, lay commentators made their 
appearance for the first time. Their role was to read in the vernacular 
while the priest read in Latin.  Additionally, the opportunity was 
exploited to remove so-called "undesirable accretions" in the Sacred 
Liturgy.

Pope Pius XII was succeeded by John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli. Roncalli 
wasted no time in calling a general Council which would "consecrate 
Ecumenism." The following year, in June of 1960, John XXIII appointed 
Fr. Bugnini to serve as secretary of the Preparatory Liturgical 
Commission for the Council.

In the meantime, Fr. Bugnini continued his work with the commission for 
the reform of the liturgy, producing yet another series of provisional 
changes, to last until the conciliar reforms. The Missal and Breviary 
were again changed, as was the Calendar, and for the first time, the 
Pontifical and the Ritual.

Throughout his ecclesiastical career, Roncalli was involved in affairs 
that placed his orthodoxy under a cloud. Here are a few facts:

As professor at the seminary of Bergamo, Roncalli was investigated for 
following the theories of Msgr. Duchesne, which were forbidden under 
Saint Pius X in all Italian seminaries. Msgr Duchesne's work, Histoire 
Ancienne de l'Eglise, ended up on the Index.

While papal nuncio to Paris, Roncalli revealed his adhesion to the 
teachings of Sillon, a movement condemned by St. Pius X. In a letter to 
the widow of Marc Sagnier, the founder of the condemned movement, he 
wrote: The powerful fascination of his [Sagnier's] words, his spirit, 
had enchanted me; and from my early years as a priest, I maintained a 
vivid memory of his personality, his political and social activity."

Named as Patriarch of Venice, Msgr.Roncalli gave a public blessing to 
the socialists meeting there for their party convention. As John XXIII, 
he made Msgr. Montini a cardinal and called the Second Vatican Council. 
He also wrote the Encyclical Pacem in Terris. The Encyclical uses a 
deliberately ambiguous phrase, which foreshadows the same false 
religious liberty the Council would later proclaim.

John XXIII's attitude in matters liturgical, then, comes as no 
surprise. Dom Lambert Beauduin, quasi-founder of the modernist 
Liturgical Movement, was a friend of Roncalli's from 1924 onwards. At 
the death of Pius XII, Beauduin remarked: "If they elect Roncalli, 
everything will be saved; he would be capable of calling a council and 
consecrating ecumenism..."

On July 25, 1960, John XXIII published the Motu Proprio Rubricarum 
Instructum. He had already decided to call Vatican II and to proceed 
with changing Canon Law. John XXIII incorporated the rubrical 
innovations of 1955–1956 into this Motu Proprio and made them even 
worse. "Although we have reached the decision," he writes, "that the 
fundamental principles concerning the liturgical reform must be 
presented to the Fathers of the future Council, nevertheless, the 
reform of the rubrics of the Breviary and Roman Missal must not be 
delayed any longer."

In this framework, so far from being orthodox, with such dubious 
authors, in a climate which was already "Conciliar," the Breviary and 
Missal of John XXIII were born. They formed a "Liturgy of transition" 
destined to last — as it in fact did last — for three or four years. It 
is a transition from the Catholic liturgy consecrated at the Council of 
Trent to that heterodox liturgy proclaimed in full by Paul VI.

Principles of the antiliturgical heresy 18th century inspired by 
Illuminism and Jansenism continued to actuate John XXIII's modernist 
Vatican, and innovating efforts proceeded apace in his innovations, 
which touched the Breviary as well as the Missal:

1.   Reduction of Matins to three lessons. Archbishop Vintimille of 
Paris, a Jansenist sympathizer, in his reform of the Breviary in 1736, 
"reduced the Office for most days to three lessons, to make it 
shorter." In 1960 John XXIII also reduced the Office of Matins to only 
three lessons on most days. This meant the suppression of a third of 
Holy Scripture, two-thirds of the lives of the saints, and the whole of 
the commentaries of the Church Fathers on Holy Scripture. Matins, of 
course, forms a considerable part of the Breviary.

2.   Replacing ecclesiastical formulas style with Scripture. "The 
second principle of the anti-liturgical sect," said Dom Guéranger, "is 
to replace the formulae in ecclesiastical style with readings from Holy 
Scripture." While the Breviary of St. Pius X had the commentaries on 
Holy Scripture by the Fathers of the Church, John XXIII's Breviary 
suppressed most commentaries written by the Fathers of the Church. On 
Sundays, only five or six lines from the Fathers remains.

3.   Removal of saints' feasts from Sunday. Dom Gueranger gives the 
Jansenists' position: "It is their [the Jansenists'] great principle of 
the sanctity of Sunday which will not permit this day to be 'degraded' 
by consecrating it to the veneration of a saint, not even the Blessed 
Virgin Mary. A fortiori, the feasts with a rank of double or double 
major which make such an agreeable change for the faithful from the 
monotony of the Sundays, reminding them of the friends of God, their 
virtues and their protection — shouldn't they be deferred always to 
weekdays, when their feasts would pass by silently and unnoticed?"

John XXIII, going well beyond the well-balanced reform of St. Pius X, 
fulfills almost to the letter the ideal of the Jansenist heretics: only 
nine feasts of the saints can take precedence over the Sunday (two 
feasts of St. Joseph, three feasts of Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, 
Saints Peter and Paul, St. Michael, and All Saints). By contrast, the 
calendar of St. Pius X included 32 feasts which took precedence, many 
of which were former holydays of obligation. What is worse, John XXIII 
abolished even the commemoration of the saints on Sunday.

4.   Preferring the ferial office over the saint’s feast. Dom Guéranger 
goes on to describe the moves of the Jansenists as follows: "The 
calendar would then be purged, and the aim, acknowledged by Grancolas 
(1727) and his accomplices, would be to make the clergy prefer the 
ferial office to that of the saints. What a pitiful spectacle! To see 
the putrid principles of Calvinism, so vulgarly opposed to those of the 
Holy See, which for two centuries has not ceased fortifying the 
Church's calendar with the inclusion' of new protectors, penetrate into 
our churches!"

John XXIII totally suppressed ten feasts from the calendar (eleven in 
Italy with the feast of Our Lady of Loreto), reduced 29 feasts of 
simple rank and nine of more elevated rank to mere commemorations, thus 
causing the ferial office to take precedence. He suppressed almost all 
the octaves and vigils, and replaced another 24 saints' days with the 
ferial office.

Finally, with the new rules for Lent, the feasts of another nine 
saints, officially in the calendar, are never celebrated. In sum, the 
reform of John XXIII purged about 81 or 82 feasts of saints, 
sacrificing them to "Calvinist principles."

Dom Gueranger also notes that the Jansenists suppressed the feasts of 
the saints in Lent. John XXIII did the same, keeping only the feasts of 
first and second class. Since they always fall during Lent, the feasts 
of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gregory the Great. St. Benedict, St. 
Patrick, and St. Gabriel the Archangel would never be celebrated.

5.   Excising miracles from the lives of the Saints. Speaking of the 
principle of the Illuminist liturgists, Dom Gueranger notes: "the lives 
of the saints were stripped of their miracles on the one hand, and of 
their pious stories on the other."

The reform of 1960 suppresses two out of three lessons of the Second 
Nocturn of Matins, in which the lives of the saints are read. Eleven 
feasts were totally suppressed by the preconciliar rationalists. For 
example, St. Vitus, the Invention of the Holy Cross, St. John before 
the Latin Gate, the Apparition of St. Michael on Mt. Gargano, St. 
Anacletus, St. Peter in Chains, the Finding of St. Stephen, Our Lady of 
Loreto; among the votive feasts, St. Philomena.

Other saints were eliminated more discreetly: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 
Our Lady of Ransom, St. George, St. Alexis, St. Eustace, the Stigmata 
of St. Francis — these all remain, but only as a commemoration on a 
ferial day.

Two popes are also removed, seemingly without reason: St. Sylvester 
(was he too triumphalistic?) and St. Leo II (the latter, perhaps, 
because he condemned the heretic Pope Honorius.)

6.   Anti-Roman Spirit. The Jansenists suppressed one of the two feasts 
of the Chair of  St. Peter (January 18), and also the Octave of St. 
Peter. Identical measures were taken by John XXIII.

7.   Suppression of the Confiteor before Communion. The suspect Missal 
of Trojes suppressed the Confiteor. John XXIII did the same thing in 
1960.

8.   Reform of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday. and Holy Saturday. This 
happened in 1736, with the suspect Breviary of Vintimille ("a very 
grave action, and what is more, most grievous for the piety of the 
faithful," said Dom Gueranger.)

9.   Suppression of Octaves. The same thing goes for the suppression of 
nearly all the octaves (a usage we find already in the Old Testament, 
to solemnize the great feasts over eight days), anticipated by the 
Jansenists in 1736 and repeated in 1955-1960.

10. Make the Breviary as short as possible and without any repetition. 
This was the dream of the renaissance liturgists (the Breviary of the 
Holy Cross, for example, abolished by St. Pius V), and then of the 
illuminists. Dom Gueranger said that the innovators wanted a Breviary 
"without those complicated rubrics which oblige the priest to make a 
serious study of the Divine Office; moreover, the rubrics themselves 
are traditions, and it is only right they should disappear. Without 
repetitions...and as short as possible... They want a short Breviary. 
They will, have it; and it will be up to the Jansenists to write it."

11. The long petitions in the Office called Preces disappear; so too, 
the commemorations, the suffrages, the Pater, Ave, and Credo, the 
antiphons to Our Lady, the Athanasian Creed, two-thirds of Matins, and 
so on.

12. The suppression in the prayers of Good Friday of the Latin 
adjective perfidis (faithless) with reference to the Jews, and the noun 
perfidiam (impiety) with reference to Judaism.

These changes reveal the liberalism, pacifism, and false ecumenism of 
those who conceived and promulgated them.

13. Denial of the Communion of Saints.  The Ottaviani Intervention 
rightly declared that "when the priest celebrates [the NOM] without a 
server the suppression of all the salutations (i.e., Dominus Vobiscum, 
etc.) and of the final blessing is a clear attack on the dogma of the 
communion of the saints."  Traditionalists of course know that the 
priest, even if he is alone, when celebrating Mass or saying his 
Breviary, is praying in the name of the whole Church, and praying with 
the whole Church in Communion with the Saints and the angels. This 
truth was denied by Luther.

Luther’s attack on dogma was joined by John XXIII in his reformed 
Breviary; it obliged the priest when reciting it alone to say Domine 
exaudi orationem meam (O Lord, hear my prayer) instead of Dominus 
vobiscum (The Lord be with you). The idea, "a profession of purely 
rational faith," was that the Breviary was not the public prayer of the 
Church any more, but merely private devotional reading.

It is to be noted that the "Liturgy of John XXIII” was in vigor for all 
of three years, until it came to its logical conclusion with the 
promulgation of the Conciliar Decree on the Liturgy, and ultimately 
with the proclamation of the Novus Ordo Missae, all the work of 
Bugnini.