We All Have Our Agenda

In my blog entries for March 21 and 22 I mentioned that this blog, What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You had come to the notice of Father Anthony Ruff, OSB of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville and the blog he edits, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit, and Wisdom (http://www.praytellblog.com).  What I should have realized is that the positive recognition I received from Father Anthony would bring down the plague of Katholic Krazy gnats that buzz around his site looking for something with which to disagree (and be disagreeable).  I am a little naïve about the blogosphere and don’t spend a lot of time trolling around.  A friend of mine alerted me to be Father Anthony’s tip o’the hat and I have since learned to check out Pray Tell from time to time and have found it to contain excellent material that has stimulated much conversation and even more thought on my part.  But for some reason the other day I ended up on the site of The New Liturgical Movement/Novus Motus Liturgicus (http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org).  Now, to be fair, the various authors that blog on this site are not, at least for the most part, Katholic Krazies but men and women who, for the greater part, know what they are writing about.  I probably would not agree with much of what they write, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate both their work and their thoughtfulness.  Of course, they have an agenda and their agenda lines up with a significant group of the KK’s—and guarantees their readership.  The self-appointed mission of TNLM/NML is to put the toothpaste back into the tube and restore the Church to its monarchial model that we can remember from the 1950’s.   While they are not, for the most part, the Society of Saint Pius X sort of strict restorationists,  TNLM/NML follows the “Reform of the Reform” philosophy outlined by Monsignor M. Francis Manion in an article he wrote for America Magazine about twenty-two years ago.  (Unfortunately I don’t have immediate access to the article and so can’t give you the exact date of publication.)  The Reform of the Reform approach to liturgical renewal is that the Novus Ordo of Paul VI far exceeded the reforms of the Roman Rite called for by the Council and should be dialed back in favor of a Rite that would still be celebrated—for the greater part—in Latin with the priest facing away from the congregation, and without the structural changes of the 1970 Missal.  Gregory DiPippo, the managing editor of the TNLM/NML blog, recognizes the threat to this agenda posed by What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You’s critique of the old liturgy and why Father Anthony picked up on it.

Fr. Ruff’s reason for bringing them to the readers’ attention is, as he writes, that the original author “… shows why for so many of us there can’t be a going back to the old rite – no way, no how.”

And that is precisely my point.  We aren’t going back; we can’t go back. The Tridentine Rite, and some of those medieval rites on which it was based, have several serious theological flaws.  (By the way, so does the Novus Ordo and—in my opinion—the recently revised translation has not only failed to clear them up, but made them worse.  Notice I refrain from saying “humble opinion” as I am the first to admit there is nothing humble about my opinions.  Humility would deprive me of the pleasure I have in doing this blog.)  In the end, there will always be flaws in the Liturgy.  Our faith, or at least the doctrinal expression of our faith, is always a living reality that needs constant modulation to approach ever more closely the Truth of the Divine Mystery.  And that is one reason why we cannot ever again allow the liturgy to be frozen for four hundred years—or forty years, for that matter.   Like it not, we live in history and not yet in that timeless realm where there is no benefit in change. 

In any event, Mr. DiPippo, a graduate student studying for his Master’s Degree (more probably the License or STL) in Rome at the Augustinianum (The Pontifical Institute for Patristics which is one of Rome’s more credible faculties), goes on, by clipping quotes from Father Anthony or myself, to set up a straw man whom he can refute.  By quoting Peter Lombard (whom I agree is the “gold standard” of medieval theologians) he implies that all Scholastic theologians who followed him were orthodox in their doctrines of Eucharistic Sacrifice.  Would that there was truth to that.  We may have been saved the Reformation.  But alas and alack, to use one of my favorite archaisms, all one has to do is read medieval sermons or devotional books or even popular hymns to see that there were gross exaggerations of the Church’s authentic faith in the popular imagination.  And those exaggerations became part of the commonly accepted teaching of the Church over time.  Bad liturgy does that.  The lex orandi becomes the lex credendi which is why the reform of the liturgy is a constant task and needs to be an ongoing work. 

Mr. DiPippo  makes his error in methodology when he writes:

As a first principal, I will take it for granted that liturgical texts must be understood according to the sense in which the Church gives them to us. Furthermore, I take this to be true, even when another sense at variance with the Faith may be plausibly found within them. (http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2014/03/the-theology-of-offertory-part-3.html#.U3j92b8-aX0) 

The liturgical texts should be understood according to the sense in which the Church gives them to us.  But they often aren’t.  Unfortunately once I utter a word or commit it to paper it no longer belongs to me but to the listener or the reader. This is what permits Mr. DiPippo to put his interpretation on my text and while I may insist that is not what I meant or said or wrote, I can’t deny his understanding.  The same is true for the teachings of the Church whether Papal Encyclicals, Council Documents, or Liturgical texts.  One of my favorite Latin axioms is Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.  (That which is received is received according to the manner of the recipient.   Or in other words, while I can tell you what I said, only you can tell me what you heard.)  No, maybe Peter Lombard or Thomas Aquinas never said that bread and wine become a secondary sacrifice in the offertory of the Mass—and depending on the rite with which they were familiar perhaps there was no ambiguity about this.  But by the time we had the Mass of Pius V for 350 years the Catholic Encyclopedia would have something to say in refutation to Mr. DiPippo’s claim that

Now obviously, the claim that the Scholastics (or anyone else) thought that there were two sacrifices in the ritual of the Mass, one of bread and wine, and another of the Body and Blood of Christ, is absurd.

So no one thought there were to two sacrifices in the Body and Blood of Christ?  Check out the pre-Vatican II edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10006a.htm ).  

The question therefore arises first: Is the sacrifice comprised in the Offertory? From the wording of the prayer this much at least is clear that bread and wine constitute the secondary sacrificial elements of the Mass, since the priest in the true  language of sacrifice, offers to God bread as an unspotted host (immaculatam hostiam) and wine as the chalice of salvation (calicem salutaris).  So much for no once claiming that there were two sacrifices in the Mass. 

Now to be fair, the article in the older Catholic Encyclopedia clearly locates the essential sacrifice of the Mass in the Consecratory Prayer, but it does above admit to the offertory rites involving offering in sacrifice to God bread and wine.  This is a clear flaw in the Tridentine Liturgy and the revised 1970 Rite does not eliminate sacrificial language but redirects the focus away from the bread and wine and places it on the Eucharist in which we proclaim the Death of the Lord until he comes again.  Does this mean that the Tridentine Liturgy is not valid?  By no means.  But it does mean, at least to those of us who value a clear focus on the Sacrificial Death of Christ on the Cross, that we have no desire to return—“no way, no how” to use Father Anthony’s words—to the old liturgy.  That may make TNLM/NML folk unhappy but be content that you can find your Summorum Pontificium and your Reform of the Reform versions of the Novus Ordo while the rest of us sing a little Gospel or have our Mass for kids with special needs or just enjoy the fruits of Vatican II and how the liturgy helps us to pray.  O—and by the way—we aren’t finished yet and the work of Liturgical renewal (and reform) is an ongoing mission. 

Of Cranmer, Eucharistic Sacrifice, Problems in the Mass, and Students Writing Papers

I had the following two responses to my entry on Cranmer and his elimination of the idea of Sacrifice from the Eucharist, especially in reference to the secondary sacrifice of bread and wine at the Offertory.  This was a particularly inflammatory blog as Father Anthony Ruff picked up on it in his blog, Pray Tell, and it set of a bit of a firestorm as one of the bones that defenders of the “old Mass” love to pick is the changed offertory rites of the Mass of Pius V (1570) and the Mass of Paul VI or the Novus Ordo,(1970)  The liturgical revisions of Paul VI reduced the rite from an “offertory” where bread and wine were offered to God to a “Preparation of the Gifts” where the bread and wine were prepared for the Eucharistic Rite which followed.  Cranmer, because of a faulty understanding of Eucharistic Theology common in the sixteenth century among both Catholics and Reformers, would have denied that the Eucharist was a sacrifice in any sense.  Most Catholics of the time had a very exaggerated—exaggerated to the point of heresy—understanding of the “Sacrifice” of the Mass to which the reformers reacted strongly—too strongly by the standards of modern scholarship.  In other words there were serious theological problems on both sides of this debate.  Over the course of the Council of Trent and subsequent Catholic theology, especially since the time of Leo XIII and most especially with the biblical research initiated by Pius XII, a sound theology of Eucharistic Sacrifice has been recovered in the Catholic tradition.  Similarly, contemporary scriptural scholarship among those Protestant denominations that invest in scriptural scholarship (as differentiated from fundamentalist ravings) has opened an ecumenical dialogue in which all parties have come to a mutual understanding of the relationship of the Eucharistic celebration and the One Eternal Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  Of course, just as there are those on the Protestant side who reject serious theological scholarship in favor of biblical fundamentalism, so too there are those on the Catholic side who are stuck in the exaggerated pieties and theological aberrations of ages past.  Those who argue against the “validity” of the current liturgical rites do so, in part, because of the scaled down offertory rites and the absence of a notion of the bread and wine being sacrificed. 

This  has taken me far from the two comments sent me by a student with a paper due.  And given the tardiness of my response, I probably have not been much help.  I regret that, but it has taken me awhile to get back with the information that might help. 

Here are the student’s responses/requests

No worries. That was the first suggestion that I read somewhere on how to contact a blog author. I am writing a college paper for a theology class and would like to quote part of this blog as it is brilliant research. Profs don't look highly on uncredited references. I am most intrigued by the multiple sacrifices considered before Vatican II as opposed to the ONE sacrifice understood by 1970. If you could devise a credible way for me to quote your work in my class paper, without disturbing your privacy, I would appreciate it very much! Thank you!

Thank you.Consolamini. I understand. I am trying to figure out how to cite this page for a paper I am writing for a class. Can you help me with that?

I must admit that I might over-react a bit as I am amazed at how often people contact me during my day job and want me to do their research for them.  Ordinary grad students aren’t too bad at this, Law students are outrageous—but the worst are often full professors who will contact me and ask me to research a topic for them.  Excuse me: do your own research.  I see professors abusing their teaching assistants all the time by assigning them research projects.  It makes me lose respect for many of my colleagues.  There are a lot of lazy people in academia these days.  However, while I will not do research for other people, I am willing to point out to people where they might look, at least at the beginning, for further information. 

Regarding the idea of the double sacrifice: that is the lesser sacrifice of bread and wine at the offertory and the greater Sacrifice of the Eucharist in the Canon of the Mass, you want to look first and foremost at the text of the prayers.  For the offertory rite, the idea of the bread and wine being sacrificed is found very clearly in the prayer

Suscipe, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus, hanc immaculatam hostiam, quam ego indignus famulus tuus offero tibi, Deo meo vivo et vero, pro innumerabilibus peccatis, et offensionibus, et negligentiis meis, et pro omnibus circumstantibus, sed et pro omnibus fidelibus Christianis vivis atque defunctis. ut mihi, et illis proficiat ad salutem in vitam aeternam.

The corresponding prayer for the chalice

Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem salutaris tuam deprecantes clementiam: ut in conspectu divinae majestatis tuae, pro nostra et totius mundi salute com odore suavitatis ascendat. Amen.

Also contains this idea but it is not as vividly and explicitly expressed as it is in the bread prayer.

If you want a secondary source to confirm this interpretation, let me refer you to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia that says in its article “The Sacrifice of the Mass. 

The question therefore arises first: Is the sacrifice comprised in the Offertory? From the wording of the prayer this much at least is clear that bread and wine constitute the secondary sacrificial elements of the Mass, since the priest  in the true  language of sacrifice, offers to God bread as an unspotted host (immaculatam hostiam) and wine as the chalice of salvation (calicem salutaris).

I will pick up on this in my next posting and give you sources for Cranmer and his theology, but I am under the gun right now for time and am racing the clock to get this posted asap.

Grateful to Father Anthony For Recognition

Shortly before I was taken ill last month, I received an email from a friend and colleague in Australia telling me that my Blog: What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You, had come to the favorable attention of Father Anthony Ruff, OSB and the blog he coordinates: Pray Tell http://www.praytellblog.com/ .  I have never done anything to promote my blog and have watched it grow slowly over the last several years.  I had been a bit startled to suddenly see the number of hits double and even treble in mid-February and wondered for what reason this might account.  I was flattered to have Father Anthony write: Whoever runs the blog about church history “What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You” knows his stuff. 
I have long admired Anthony Ruff.  Dom Anthony is a monk of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville and teaches Liturgy and Liturgical Music there at the University.  He also writes well on monastic spirituality.  Father Anthony had served on the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) in preparing the revised translation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal which was introduced two years ago as the “new translation” of the Roman Liturgy in the United States.  At the last moment, Father Anthony withdrew from ICEL and published an open letter explaining why he would not promote the “new translation.”  “I'm sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe."
I am not as negative as many towards this new translation.  Overall I find it extremely artificial with its retention of Latin Syntax which simply does not translate well into contemporary English.  On the other hand, there is some lovely phraseology and in particular I am grateful for the return of “From the Rising of the Sun unto its Setting, a Perfect Sacrifice may be offered to the Glory of Your Name” rather than that pedestrian (though still idiomatically accurate) translation: “From East to West etc.”  The better celebrants I know somewhat pick and choose and between the various translations and massage the faux-Ciceronian syntax into something intelligible.  One priest told me that he actually likes the new translation because it has freed him from a slavish dependency on the book and encouraged him to “pray” the prayers from his heart rather than read them by rote.  But I wander.
I am flattered at Father Anthony’s review of my entry on Cranmer and Eucharistic Sacrifice (http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2014/02/15/what-sister-never-knew-and-father-never-told-you-about-the-mass-as-sacrifice/) and amused at the firestorm it unleashed.  The comments section validated my reasons for talking about the Anglican Liturgy of the First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward VI.  I could not care less about sixteenth-century Anglican liturgies no one uses today.  My point was to draw attention to the flaws regarding an oblatio of bread and wine in some late medieval western liturgies and in the Missal of Pius V.  I am deeply grateful for the 1970 Missal and what is, I believe, a far more clear celebration of our Christian Faith in Christ’s Redemptive Sacrifice as we encounter it Sunday after Sunday (or, for some of us, day after day) in the Eucharistic Banquet.   Father Anthony cited my posting as a reason why “we can’t go back” and that is very much my point.  The 1970 Missal has several flaws, but so does the 1570 Rite (and its 1962 Edition) and there is no doubt that the 1970 Rite is vastly superior as an expression of our historic faith as found in the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. 
That being said, it was later drawn to my attention that this blog, What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You  was also given a recognition on  New Catholic Blogs http://newcatholicblogs.blogspot.com/.  I don’t seek acknowledgement but am grateful for whatever attention these mentions bring What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You.  

More on the Problem of a Double Sacrifice

I had an interesting response to one of my postings and I want to examine it critically as it shows, I believe, some of the misunderstandings of our Catholic faith by people who have been inadequately catechized. 

Isn't an offering of bread and wine an appropriate at this point in the mass, preceding as it does the Eucharistic sacrifice, seeing as Jesus is high priest according to the order of Melchizedek? Melchizedek, after all, did offer bread and wine. By this I mean, as Melchizedek was the Old Testament figure of Christ as High Priest, and priests offer sacrifices. Seeing as the Mass is a recapitulation of the saving action of The Word of God, including some referent to the pre-Incarnation work of God redeeming mankind isn't out of place. Ergo, if it is an offering, even if it suggests that there are in fact two offerings during the mass, essentially, so what? From what little I've read, while not being specifically prepared to respond to your trumped up accusation of "blasphemy", I pretty sure I could gather up support that refutes your charge.   Foundations of the Anglican Church LXVII

“Isn’t an offering of bread and wine appropriate at this point in the mass…”   Offering is an ambiguous word.    In the sense of presenting the bread and wine for the Eucharistic Sacrifice, there is no problem, but I wasn’t writing of an “offering” but rather of a sacrifice (oblatio, the word used in the prayer Suscipe Sancte Pater and where the hostiam being offered is not Christ the Victim but the bread and the wine).  The Church teaches that the Sacrifice of Christ is the one efficacious sacrifice and the only sacrifice of the new covenant.  It is demeaning of the Sacrifice of Calvary in which each Mass participates to consider any other “sacrifice” that might be offered.  The bread and wine—and indeed the financial gifts and other items presented—oil, candles, flowers, etc. may be said to be “offered” but offered as gifts and not as Sacrifice.    This is not a fine line.  We can present things to God’s service.  We may donate a vestment to the Church or sacred vessels to be used at Mass.  We may make a charitable donation for the homeless.  These gifts may be a “sacrifice” in the that they cost us more than we can comfortably give.  But as for Sacrifice: there is one and one only in the new Covenant and it is Christ’s Sacrifice at Calvary in which we participate each time we “proclaim the Lord’s Death until he comes again.” 

Our correspondent continues:
Seeing as the Mass is a recapitulation of the saving action of The Word of God, including some referent to the pre-Incarnation work of God redeeming mankind isn't out of place.
I am not sure where our reader got the idea that the mass is a recapitulation of the saving action of the Word of God, including the pre Incarnation work of God redeeming mankind, but he certainly did not get this from either Scripture or our Catholic Tradition.  There are pious writers who suggest such things for meditation, and within certain limits that is fine, but The Mass is a participation in the Saving action of Christ on Calvary.  It, or rather the Sacrifice of Calvary, may sum up the entire redemptive work of God through both covenants in as that it is the completing and fulfilling deed, but it is Calvary’s Sacrifice and Calvary’s Sacrifice alone which the Mass re-presents.  There is no other work by which we are saved than Christ’s Sacrifice at Calvary.  Our salvation is not the result of a cumulative process of God’s saving acts.  There is one and one only definitive act by which we are saved and that is the cross.   At the Mass we may recall the Passover of the Hebrew people (Especially on Holy Thursday), or the deliverance of Noah and his family, or the victory of the Maccabees, or the sacrifice of bread and wine by Melchizedek,  but we certainly don’t simply place the Cross at the end of this long string of God’s redemptive acts.  The Cross stands alone as the sole and definitive Sacrifice by which we are saved.  Through the entire liturgy—including the Liturgy of the Hours, and especially in the Easter Vigil, we recall this long saga of salvation but the relationship of Christ’s eternal sacrifice to the Mass is unique and uncompromised for it is by Calvary and Calvary alone that humankind is reconciled to the Father.  In other words, the relationship of the Liturgy to the Giving of the Law on Sinai, for example, is not the same as the relationship of the Mass to the Death of the Lord. 
We are not saved through Noah or Melchizedek or even Abraham’s faith.   Cardinal Ratzinger made it abundantly clear in Dominus Iesus that salvation is through Christ and Christ alone.  Pious reflection on the parallels of the Sacrifice of Melchizedek and the Eucharistic banquet are very appropriate and sources of grace—but they must not be stretched to theological distortion. 
The issue behind this discussion is that the oblatio of bread and wine in the Mass of Pius V is seriously problematic from a theological background.  The development of a second sacrifice of bread and wine is inconsistent with the ancient liturgies and indeed with our faith that Christ offers the one eternal redemptive Sacrifice at Calvary.  Each Mass participates in that one eternal Sacrifice but in no way is Christ sacrificed anew and in no way is bread and wine a hostiam (sacrificial victim) at the mass as the word oblatio in the prayer Suscipe Sancte Pater, implies.  I am not saying that this theological slop-shop invalidates the Mass.  By no means.  That Liturgy served as the Church’s primary vehicle for the Church’s latria  for four centuries.  But its elimination from the 1970 Rite corrects a serious flaw in the 1570 Rite and, as Father Anthony Ruff points out, serves as a serious reason why we cannot go back to the earlier Rite. 
Our correspondent goes even more off track about Christ and the priesthood of Melchizedek but let me save that for another time. 

Is Vatican II in Danger? I

I want to introduce a new line of conversation here—and it reflects a topic that I have been hearing with increasing frequency over the past ten or more years, becoming so frequent that now not a week goes by that I don’t hear it discussed—“What’s going on with Vatican II? Are we going backwards?” Last week I had an opportunity to give a lecture I entitled “Is Vatican II in Danger?” To be honest, I had made a commitment for a talk in a parish and not given sufficient thought to a topic, so I pulled out a paper I had prepared for a more academic lecture last October and trimmed it down to a more popular audience. Both times I gave the talk the reaction from those present was: “I’ve seen things change over the past few years and I was wondering what was happening to the Church?” People had seen the same signs I referred to—signs that the Council was being “reinterpreted” or more bluntly was being dismantled under the guise of a more “authentic” interpretation.
One of the people I have been privileged to know in my lifetime was Archbishop Denis Hurley OMI, Archbishop emeritus of Durban, South Africa. I had met this feisty old gentleman at an annual conference we each attended in Rome and would look for him there each year. I would offer to carry his briefcase and vestment bag and help set him up for the concelebrated mass each day of the Conference. He was an incurable extrovert and recognizing that he had a fascinated audience in me, stuck by my side during these conferences, so that we often took our meals together and sat with each other for the talks. I was only too willing to run and get him a cup of tea and some biscuits at the breaks because the reward was some of the most fascinating stories about the life of a phenomenal man in the midst of the very controversial society (South Africa during and after Apartheid) and a Church that was at times supportive and at times resistant. The Archbishop told me stories about his conflicts with the white regime, about his participation the Second Vatican Council, and his relationships with a wide variety of people from Archbishop Tutu to the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The last time I saw the Archbishop was the end of January 2004 just two weeks before his death. His Grace was a feisty personality and not hesitant to speak his mind. That Tuesday morning when I came into the conference hall and sat next to him, without even saying “hello” he began—“well, I had a meeting with the Holy Father.” (This was just over a year before Pope John Paul II died.) “I said to him: Holy Father, I am an old man and we old men—you understand this, you’re only a few years younger than me—we old men sometimes have problems with our memory. But I distinctly remember: we had a Council. What did you do with it?” The Archbishop was concerned—I won’t say angry, that might be an interpretation—but concerned over issues such as the revision of the work of ICEL (International Commission on English in the Liturgy, a commission which he had chaired for many years.) He rarely criticized directly, most often using humor and incomplete sentences with significant glances to get his point across. I wish now that I had been a more conversant respondent, evoking more explicit statements from him, but if I had fished more eagerly for specifics he may not have been as free-spoken. As I said, I tended to listen and to laugh at his anecdotes, but up to his death he remained not only sharp but slightly acidic when he talked about—not the Church, but the ecclesial bureaucracy.
Let me share a letter that points out some of the reason that the late Archbishop may have been concerned. It is all over the internet and it is from Father Anthony Ruff, a monk of Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville. Dom Anthony was very involved with the re-constituted ICEL and the production of the “new missal” that will be introduced this autumn. Read his explanation of why he is distancing himself from the missal. You will see another voice that is concerned that we are sliding back down the mountain from the goals that the Popes and Bishops of Vatican II set for us. This is an open letter to the American Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals. The fact that it is “open” means that Father wanted to share it with the whole Church and that is perhaps his principal point—the Church is not a body of bishops, it is the whole People of God and there must be mutual respect and accountability.

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,
With a heavy heart, I have recently made a difficult decision concerning the new English missal. I have decided to withdraw from all my upcoming speaking engagements on the Roman Missal in dioceses across the United States. After talking with my confessor and much prayer, I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. I’m sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe.
I love the Church, I love the sacred liturgy, I love chant in Latin and English, and I treasure being involved with all these as a monk and priest. It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process, as well as my observation of the Holy See’s handling of scandal, has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church.
The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church. When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.
I see a good deal of disillusionment with the Catholic Church among my friends and acquaintances. Some leave the Catholic Church out of conviction, some gradually drift away, some join other denominations, some remain Catholic with difficulty. My response is to stay in this church for life and do my best to serve her. This I hope to do by stating the truth as I see it, with charity and respect. I would be ready to participate in future liturgical projects under more favorable conditions.
I am sorry for the difficulties I am causing others by withdrawing, but I know this is the right thing to do. I will be praying for you and all leaders in our church.
Pax in Christo

“handling of the scandal” “secretive…process” “little consultation” “allowed a small group to hijack” “unsatisfactory” “was imposed” “violation of their legitimate episcopal authority” “deception and mischief” I am sure Dom Anthony is going to get nine kinds of hell—not from his Abbot or community—but from the very people he had served in his work on the liturgy for his frankness. Here we have someone saying “The emperor has no clothes!” This is the role of the Religious priest, brother or sister—to be prophetic, to raise their voice and start leaping around and pointing like a mad person announcing that the Emperor is walking down the street—thinking himself clad in magnificent cope and miter—but in fact quite nude.
History is not about the past. Those who study the past for its own sake are not historians, they are antiquarians. Antiquarianism is fun. You get to play dress up and pretend you live in some sanitized version of the days of Yore. History is using the past as a means of talking about the present and the future. It requires thought and analysis. In looking at “What is happening to Vatican II” we get to see history as it unfolds—a rare opportunity. I won’t be doing a steady diet of it. I have a lot more to say about the history of anti-Catholicism in the United States as well as the role of Religious Women—both in the Civil War and in the life of the Church in the States. I am anxious to get back and look at the development and construction of St Peter’s Basilica and I am trying to figure out how to approach a history of the Liturgy in the West. So this episode on Vatican II and whether or not it is in danger is only one topic but I think it will be an interesting one and probably take about a dozen postings over the next month. It is not as interesting as Whispers in the Loggia, but I bet it gets me “reported” to somebody or other. There is more than one wicked witch of the west and each has her flying monkeys.

The image today is the dome of St. Peter's taken from the Apostolic Palace