Mike Lewis of “Where Peter Is” blog had an inane post about St. Pope Paul VI condemning traditionalists or conservatives, as they were called in his day, for causing dissent and disunity in the Church. Thus he wrote an exhortation calling for reconciliation in the Church for the Holy Year of 1975.
I have already called out Lewis for his rewriting of history through the lens of Pope Francis’ papacy and the renewed liturgical wars that the now deceased Holy Father caused and the great polarization of his papacy.
So what was the origin of the original liturgical wars?
1. Orthodox Catholics, while not liking all the changes of Vatican II, accepted them in obedience to the Pope and the Church—they were the original “pray, pay and obey” Catholics.
2. Heterodox progressive Catholics were the dissenting class of Catholics during Paul VI and through Benedict XVI’s papacies. They originated the idea of “faithful dissent” beginning with Humanae Vitae.
3. Heterodox progressive Catholics were the ones fomenting liturgical abuses and grotesque ones that not only deformed the Mass but ate at the heart of Orthodox Catholic doctrines and dogmas concerning the Mass and the Most Holy Eucharist as well as the reservation of the Most Blessed Sacarmanet. The Mass for them was not a sacrifice but a congenial meal.
4. Heterodox Catholics dissenting from dogmas and doctrines of the Church said, by way of lies and deceits, that all they were doing was commanded by Vatican II. As it regards the liturgy, the casual approach to the Mass, the removing of altar railings, the wreckovation of churches, standing for Holy Communion, receiving Holy Communion in the hand and lay Eucharistic Ministers, altar girls, were all called for by Vatican II—THE BIG LIE!!!!
Fed up with the heterodox Catholics hijacking of Vatican II and all the liturgical abuses they foisted on orthodox Catholics, the then so-called conservative Catholics reacted and demanded the proper reading of Vatican II and the proper celebration of the New Mass:
1. They wanted the New Mass celebrated by the missal, in other words, the priest was to read the black and do the red and follow the General Instruction of the New Roman Missal
2. They wanted the removal of altar railings and the wreckovation of churches to cease!
3. They wanted a return to kneeling for Holy Communion distributed by an ordinary Minister of Holy Communion.
4. They wanted the preservation of some Latin and Gregorian Chant as Vatican II actually taught.
5. They wanted reverence, awe and wonder in the manner in which the New Mass was celebrated
6. They wanted an end to banal music dragged into the Mass, such as silly folk songs, secular music and sentimental ditties of the 1960’s and 70’s and then broadway tunes set to religious music and piano bar sounds in church!
7. Only a very small minority of Catholics wanted the Traditional Latin Mass fully restored. Most accepted the New Mass as Pope Paul VI intended it to be celebrated; like him they decried the liturgical abuses of the progressive heterodox left and the grotesque dissent the left fomented in the Church during Paul’s reign!
8. They wanted priests to stop ad libbing and turning the Mass into a one man star of the Mass for themselves of which they were the MC and orchestrator of the cadre of people participating in formal ministries
Those my age and older, correct me if I am wrong!
2 comments:
As the wise saying goes, "Wantin' ain't gettin'."
To be fair, there were proto-trads among the clergy and laity opposed to Pope Paul VI's sweeping de-construction of the Church's rites. However, unlike progressives and modernists, who got very soft-handed treatment if they received any treatment from the Vatican, Pope Paul in 1965 publicly attacked those particular critics as "spiritually lazy". Gee, I wonder if that might've set the tone for the debates and disagreements surrounding the Church's liturgy.
Nick
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