Here:
“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [the older Latin Mass] should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?”
Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p. 416.
This is precisely right.
However, there are bishops who do despise the Church’s whole past. They want the past erased and buried. They want a new morality, especially. That way they can be popular.
Bowman also quotes Edward Feser:
Preference for the Traditional Latin Mass is massively correlated with orthodoxy. This is precisely why certain people want it suppressed. They call the TLM “divisive” but the reality is, it’s TLM ‘s opponents who want to divide the Church from her liturgical and doctrinal past.
Unlike my friend Feser, I have serious reservations about elements of traditional RCC doctrine. But I have far stronger reservations and outright objections to the destructive Left, in particular, to their trademark erasure of the historical record. Pedant that I am, I will point out once again that the past cannot be erased or buried, for it remains, tenselessly, what it was. But the past can be sent into oblivion which is, practically speaking, the same thing: what has been sent down the memory hole can no longer inform or guide our action in the present.
The RCC should stand as a bulwark against the leftist insanity all around us. So, to the extent that it becomes just another piece of leftist cultural junk, the RCC must be defunded. You are therefore a fool complicit with the forces of the anti-civilizational Left to the extent that you contribute to the RCC monetarily, in the same way that you are complicit fool and a useful idiot if you continue to contribute to those of your alma maters who refuse to renounce publicly the destructive DEI agenda.
But what if the particular church you attend needs repairs, a new roof say, and a collection is taken up within that church for the funds needed. Go ahead, make a contribution despite the theological ignorance of the priests, their homosexual vibe, and the defective Novus Ordo liturgy. If you need services on Sundays, Novus Ordo is better than nothing. If you take a harder line, and shun Novus Ordo, you may convince me.
Bill,
After almost sixty years, the letter written by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to Paul VI on 25 September 1969 still offers the best concise critique of the theological, liturgical, and ecclesial defects of the Novus Ordo. * While I urge your readers to study the critique in its entirety, the thrust of the argument is found in the summaries of each section, including the following:
1. “By a series of equivocations the emphasis is obsessively placed upon the ‘supper’ and the ‘memorial’ instead of on the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary”
2. “The three ends of the Mass are altered: no distinction is allowed to remain between Divine and human sacrifice; bread and wine are only “spiritually” (not substantially) changed.”
3. “The Real Presence of Christ is never alluded to and belief in it is implicitly repudiated.”
4. “The position of both priest and people is falsified and the Celebrant appears as nothing more than a Protestant minister, while the true nature of the Church is intolerably misrepresented.”
5. “The abandonment of Latin sweeps away for good and all unity of worship. This may have its effect on unity of belief and the New Order has no intention of standing for the Faith as taught by the Council of Trent to which the Catholic conscience is bound.”
But none of this touches on another fundamental reason to avoid the Novus Ordo, which is that to participate in it is implicitly endorse the long-standing political and cultural agenda of the liberal/leftist elite that have dominated the Church since the death of Pius XII in 1958 and that has become more open about its radical intentions since 2013. As Guillaume Cuchet argues in his Comment notre monde a cesse a être chrétien, which demonstrates that the Council was the precipitating event in the decline of the faith in France, “In sociological terms, one can define [the entire Vatican II project] as enterprise of modernization of the Church that conforms to the to the aspiration of the most advanced milieus of Western Catholicism, and even more precisely West-European, with nuances and themes privileged according to countries and episcopates” [my translation].** It is precisely this elite, now lead by its worst elements, the BergoLEOns, that as part of its heterodox religious indifferentism supports unlimited illegal immigration, which, in Europe, is leading to the Islamification of much of the continent.
Vito
* “The Ottaviani Intervention: A Critical Study of the New Mass” https://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/ottaviani.htm
**Editions du Seuil (145). A recent study of the decline of the faith in many countries has come to a similar conclusion: Robert J. Barro, Edgard Dewitte & Laurence Iannaccone, “Looking Backward, Long-term Religious Service Attendance in 66 Countries” (https://www.nber.org/papers/w34060).
Thanks, Vito. I said that Novus Ordo is better than nothing for a lot of people. What is your personal solution? Is that Latin mass you were attending still available? If not, what will you do? Why do you need a church at all?
Here is a bit of a paradox. Vat II moved the RCC in the Protestant direction. That is my main takeaway from the points you make above. My solution? Join no church. Seek the truth sincerely on one’s own. But that in a certain sense is a Protestant move too. There is no need for this mediating institution betwixt a man and the Absolute. Hence the paradox or quasi-paradox. I’m shootin’ from the hip. Time is short.
Bill,
Because of a terrible illness of our pastor, it looks as if we are going to lose the TLM sooner rather than later. Once it is gone, I will follow your path, praying, reading scripture, etc. at home by myself. I will do this because I wish to avoid the inevitable spiritual harms that the NO inflicts on my faith, already beset with existing doubts and questions.
The underlying point of my initial hasty comment is that behind all of these modernist changes in the Church, the pace of which is accelerating, there lies a the politics, broadly defined, many aspects of which are shared by the both the secular and ecclesial wings of the globalist left. One cannot discuss the crisis of the Church in isolation from the general crisis of Europe and the West.
By the way, Feser just posted on his blog a response to your recent post on hylomorphic dualism and the soul, which, in my very inexpert opinion, does not address your main argument and raises more problems for his position, some of which are pointed out in comments from some of his readers.
Vito