Why Bishops Don't Like The EF

When asked what they don't like about the Church, a lot of traditionalists will respond,

"Vatican II destroyed the Church. We used to have high Mass attendance, schools overflowing with children, lots of priests and nuns, but now look at us!

Catechesis is destroyed! No one goes to Mass! The Catholic schools are falling apart! There aren't any vocations! This is the "fruits" of Vatican II!"

I grew up in the 1970's. I personally experienced the crap that passed for catechesis during those years. So, for years I found this a very compelling argument. I couldn't figure out why so many priests and bishops shuddered when faced with the thought of returning to the older form of Mass.

The first time I attended a traditional Mass, I hated it.
Absolutely hated it.

The second time, I read through the English prayers and found the prayers very beautiful. A few years later,  for reasons beyond the scope of this article, I found myself attending a traditional Mass every weekend.

Now, I have been very happy about the beautiful music and the opportunity to receive Jesus at the communion rail. While the EF prayers of consecration are more beautiful, I have continued to dislike what passes for a cycle of readings in the EF form. The Novus Ordo cycle Liturgy of the Word is simply superior to the EF version - anyone who follows the four senses of Scripture will find this ancient method of reading Scripture a lot more accessible in the OF than in the EF.  Similarly, the EF liturgical year is just terminally screwed up when compared to the beautifully rational OF liturgical year.

I say all of this because the comparison of the two forms and the constant whining of various "experts" blinded me to a specific truth: Vatican II and the OF was created by the traditional Latin Mass and the nuns and priests of the Catholic schools.

If we are going to blame poor post-conciliar catechesis on the Second Vatican Council, then we have to blame the existence of the Second Vatican Council on the pre-Vatican II Missal and the pre-Vatican II catechesis (school system).

Everyone who participated in VC II was formed by the EF and pre-conciliar Catholic schools. Everyone who implemented VC II reforms was formed was formed by the EF and pre-conciliar Catholic schools.

If we hate the current situation because it was created by VC II, then we must also hate the EF and the parochial school system, because that is what brought us to call VC II.

Now, if the Second Vatican Council had been foisted upon us by outsiders and enemies of the Church, then we wouldn't have to accept that line of argument. This is why so many traditionalists are fixated on the existence of Freemasons or Jews or Protestants or whoever "infiltrating" Vatican II.

VC II *HAD* to have been a betrayal by enemies, because anyone formed by the ancient Missal would never have done such a thing. It's the same line the Germans used when they lost WW I. They couldn't bear to blame it on themselves, so they decided the Jews/Socialists/Communists/Democracies stabbed them in the back.

Unfortunately, that's the one line of argument a Catholic cannot use. It is a point of Catholic doctrine that it doesn't matter who matters to "infiltrate" a council or a papal throne. God will get His work done regardless. He draws a straight line, regardless of how crooked the sinner.

So, the argument works as well for us as it did for the Germans. The Catholics who espouse it become increasingly paranoid. So, the council was infiltrated. If the council wasn't infiltrated, then we have a fall-back position - it wasn't a true council. Yet the Pope ratified it, which would make it a true council. Then, obviously, he can't have been the true Pope. If he isn't the true Pope, then the chair of Peter is empty and it has been empty since Paul VI or John XXIII or Pius XII or Pius XI or no, wait, Pius X. But the new Mass changed the way sacraments are administered, so the sacraments are no longer valid, so there are no more valid priests. Which means there are no valid bishops. Which means there are no valid cardinals. That means we are waiting for the true Pope to re-emerge, except he can't because the rules of election must be followed   by cardinals which we ain't got any more - all the valid ones are dead.. So the Church failed. But it can't. But it has to have. But it can't so God will save it in a miraculous fashion which was never revealed during the fullness of public revelation, so we must pay constant attention to private revelation. This visionary, that visionary, the one over here. Our Lady of the Recent Moment said...

Sigh.

You can't start down that road.
That way lies madness.

We have to accept the facts. We did this to ourselves. The bishops and priests who wanted to reform what is now the Extraordinary Form of the Mass wanted to do so for a very good reason: the EF sucked wind. It stank. It was at least sub-optimal. In fact, it was so substantially flawed that it required reform.

And the proof is clearly present. If the liturgy is really the best thing the Church has to offer, then the men and women formed by the pre-conciliar Missal demonstrated how lousy their formation was when most of them accepted any of a number of post-conciliar heresies. They swallowed heresies almost immediately and nearly universally, heresies the council never taught but those formed by the pre-conciliar liturgy thought the council taught.

That's why the bishops don't want to return to the pre-conciliar liturgy.
They know it won't work because it already proved that it didn't work.

I haven't quite figured out why these same bishops continue to insist on parochial schools that also didn't work. Perhaps they insist on them because they know so little about how the schools operate. Or maybe they're just a different version of traditionalist - bitterly clinging to their schools because they don't know what else to do, blaming the manifest failures of the parochial schools on "the Catholic ghetto" or the Catholic lay adult.

It's a sad problem, but rather ironic.
The bishops see the EF liturgy as irredeemable, but they cling to Catholic schools, which job of educating children is pre-eminently the job of the parents. The traditionalists see Catholic schools as irredeemable (thus they homeschool), but they cling to the EF liturgy when liturgy is pre-eminently the responsibility of the ordained man.

Again, sigh.
The fault lies not in the council, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

How Vatican I Destroyed the Church

I've been hearing a lot of caterwauling from "traditionalists" who claim that Pope Francis, and indeed all the Popes since Vatican II, were really sub-par, assuming they were even valid Popes. At the very least, the last three Popes have not been "friends of Tradition."

Well, if the last three Popes are not friends of Tradition, then neither were any of the bishops who voted in favor of the documents of Vatican II, because - in nearly every case - those documents were voted on favorably by nearly all the bishops present.

So, if essentially none of the bishops who attended VC II were in favor of Tradition, then the seminaries which formed those bishops are at least partially at fault. That means most of the seminaries in the world from about 1910 onward were opposed to Tradition. 

And if those seminaries were opposed to Tradition, that means the men who ran those seminaries between 1910 and 1960 were also, and almost everywhere, opposed to Tradition.

So, if Vatican II is at fault, we must conclude that Vatican I was the cause. 

And it makes sense, right?

I mean, we didn't NEED another council after the Council of Trent.
We hadn't had one for 300 years, and we had gotten on just fine.

You could even argue that God Himself stopped Vatican I because He sent in the Italian army to shut it down - the only ecumenical council that ever had such a thing happen. Clearly, God didn't like Vatican I. Note the angry thunder at the definition of papal infallibility: obviously, God was ticked off by that.

And we know that Vatican II saw itself as a continuation of Vatican I.

So, we can clearly conclude that Vatican I was a Freemason's dream, and Vatican II was the fruit of Vatican I, the Freemason's council. Pope St. Pius X was therefore not a valid Pope, being elected by a bunch of stinking Freemasons, and the SSPX is a heretical schismatic branch that pretends to hold to the teachings of the Council of Trent while actually insinuating their Masonic heresies into the minds of people who would otherwise be faithful Catholics.

We need to return to the last Pope who really embraced Tradition, Pope Pius IV (1559-1565). The innovations to the Roman Missal of 1570, introduced only a few short years after this Pope of happy memory had passed, were clearly a violation of the Tradition that Pius IV had tried so hard to preserve, and a violation of the teachings of the Council of Trent, which had just ended in 1563.

Clearly, the innovations of Pius V were merely a Masonic attempt to undermine the foundations of Catholic Faith by introducing a false Mass whose sacraments were, under even the most charitable interpretations, barely valid. As we can now see, the papal see can really be considered vacant since that unhappy time, etc., etc., etc.


You know that when Pope Pius V CHANGED the Roman Missal in 1570, just five years after the death of the previous pope and just seven years after the close of Trent, you can see the rot had already set in! Yes, it's true! If you study it, you can clearly see that the changes introduced by Pope Pius V were catastrophic to the Church. It's obvious. After all, following those changes, Protestantism wasn't destroyed, it FLOURISHED.

And flourishing Protestantism was clearly nourished by the enervating changes this obviously Masonic Pope, Pope Pius V, made to the hallowed Missal of 1570! The succeeding Popes were no friends to Tradition, since they never changed the Missal BACK to what it had been prior to 1570!

Oh, be still my heart!
Now it is all clear to me!

EVERY POPE since Pius IV has been a dirty Masonic Protestant, allowing the tentacles of the New Mass of 1570 to spread its slimy hooks into the minds of good Christians everywhere!

Oh, the humanity!

But we, we faithful few, we maintain the flame of Catholic Faith by adhering to the Missal of 1570, and rejecting this Novus Ordo Mass that followed the Council of Trent!


So, we can blame Pope Pius V for why we now are forced to labor under the "reign" of Pope Francis.

For those of you who are upset about Vatican II, I hope this little slice of history has been edifying.
I could use future postss to delve into the exact details of how the Masons and the Protestants insinuated their slimy tentacles into the barely valid Missal of 1570, how this Protestantized Mass undermined the Catholicity of the Faith, etc., but I have to stop now, as "My Favorite Martian" reruns are playing, and I don't want to miss decoding any of the secret messages that are embedded in the dialogue.

Awkward

A stopped clock is right twice a day.
The National Catholic Reporter said something very profound:

Liturgy is not about taste or aesthetics. It is how the church defines itself. Those who rejected Vatican II and its liturgy were the first to understand the connection between liturgy and our self-understanding as church.  

Pope Paul VI also understood this. The rejection of the Vatican II liturgy is a rejection of its ecclesiology and theology.

There's one problem, of course.
It was precisely Pope Paul VI who rejected the Vatican II liturgy.

As has been noted by virtually everyone, the liturgy described in Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium isn't the Mass that Pope Paul VI implemented. He tossed the council's advice into the trashcan, created and promulgated his own liturgy. Nothing wrong with that - he's the Pope, he has the authority to do it.

But if we want to say "the rejection of the Vatican II liturgy is a rejection of its ecclesiology and theology" - and I think that is a fair statement - then we must admit that Pope Paul VI was the first to obviously reject Vatican II. 

QED.

Which is really awkward for everyone.

Playing Catholic Jeopardy

The Answer: The Bishop of Rome

What's the question?

Well, therein lies a tale.
And, yes, it does have something to do with the Second Vatican Council.

The Pope and the Council: Take I
In 857 AD, a layman living in Constantinople, named Photius, was well-known for his learning about the Catholic Faith. He was also related by marriage to the emperor. The emperor, sadly, was living in incest with his daughter-in-law. The patriarch of Constantinople, one Ignatius, judged that this constituted public scandal and mortal sin, and so refused the emperor reception of the Eucharist at the high feast of Epiphany in that same year.

The emperor did not much like being refused. He banished Ignatius, sent Photius through an intensive six-day course in the priesthood, and then had him ordained patriarch of Constantinople. To add insult to insult, the bishop who ordained Photius had been excommunicated by Ignatius long before Ignatius was banished. Photius' willing acceptance of this ordination by an excommunicate bishop to an already occupied see made Photius automatically excommunicate.

Obviously, Ignatius was unhappy with all this. He protested strenuously to the Pope. Just as obviously, both the emperor and Photius defended themselves. Each wrote separate letters to the Pope begging him to investigate the matter and justify the new consecration. 

The Pope called Fourth Constantinople, the eighth ecumenical council of the Church to resolve precisely this problem. The Council not only deposed Photius and declared his ordination invalid, it also declared that the man could never again be validly ordained nor ever hold the patriarchate of Constantinople. Remember, Fourth Constantinople was called precisely to deal with the problem of Photius, and this was their solution, ratified by the Pope. 

Of course, neither the emperor or Photius were willing to stand by the resulting decision of an ecumenical council, ratified by the Pope. Photius excommunicated the Pope. Sadly for him, his emperor was soon murdered, another seized the throne. Photius was sent to a monastery to live out penance and Ignatius was restored as Patriarch of Constantinople.

But Photius was smart and Photius was young while Ignatius was old. Photius not only did penance, he ingratiated himself with everyone, including the now-restored Ignatius. And he waited. When Ignatius died, Photius had become so popular that the whole city begged the Pope to place Photius on the patriarchate's throne. The Pope ignored his own personally ratified decrees, the decrees of the eighth ecumenical council, and did so. Photius was now Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Pope and the Council: Take II
Why do I tell this story?
Because every traditionalist who loves the Latin Mass is always on about the horror of Vatican II, how it was mis-interpreted, slapped around, how the liturgy was dressed as a prostitute and forced to do the walk of shame according to the rules of the liberal modernist Freemasons in the Church. 

"Oh, how terrible that the liberals distorted the true teachings of the Council!" they cry. "You see, if we follow the council's documents, the Mass should really look like X or Y or Z! The Council was suborned!"

Perhaps it was.
So?

After all, just as with the Eighth Ecumenical Council, we must not only ask whether Vatican II was suborned, but who, exactly, suborned it.

The answer is, of course, the answer which heads this essay: if the Council was suborned, the Pope did it.

Now, you can claim the Pope was fooled, the Pope didn't know, the Pope was in Mongolia while nefarious Freemasons twisted the Council all out of recognition. You can claim whatever you want. 

But we all seem to forget that the Pope who instituted the Novus Ordo was at the council. 
He participated in the discussions, he voted on the decrees in the first session.

He knew full blessed well what was in the Vatican II decrees. If he didn't know what was in the decrees, he was either stupid or a fool. You can say he was stupid, you can say he was a fool, but you can't claim that he was ignorant of what the Council wanted. You cannot claim that he was ignorant regarding how what he voted on matched up against what he eventually implemented.

If you are a traditionalist, you fully recognize that the Pope has the power to sweep away conciliar decrees.
That's exactly what the Pope did after Fourth Constantinople.
That's exactly what the Pope did after Vatican II.
So quit blaming the Council for the Novus Ordo.

If you don't like the Novus Ordo, lay the blame wherever you will, but you cannot ignore the facts: the Pope bears the sole praise/blame for the Novus Ordo liturgy. If you leave that out, you demonstrate willful blindness to the facts.

Prudentially Speaking
Now, there's nothing wrong with saying the Pope screwed up in his prudential decision to implement the new liturgy. The Pope's prudential judgement has been wrong in the past. Consider the sin of abortion:

Sixtus V excommunicated all who practised abortion (1588), irrespective of opinions about animation. Absolution from this excommunication was reserved to the Pope himself. 

Gregory XIV later decided that the action of Sixtus was not reducing the scale of the abuse and, while still condemning all abortion, allowed that others beside himself might absolve from the sin of abortion before the time of animation. Gradually Catholic thenlogical opinion came to discard the Aristotelian distinction between the animate and the inanimate foetus.
...[I]n 1869 ...Pius IX in revising the list of excommunications reserved to the Pope quietly suppressed all mention of different categories of abortion. Thus a distinction which had been used by canonists to reduce the penalty—though not the sin—of abortion was discarded for good.

Was Sixtus V right to do what he did? 
Probably not.
Gregory XIV certainly didn't think so.
Pius IX certainly agreed with Gregory XIV.

And Sixtus V's judgement was always a concern. His edition of the Vulgate, for instance, was rife with errors.

But, for at least several years, the Church had to labor under Sixtus V's prohibition on absolution for abortion.  

So, today we have had a Pope who, by at least two later Popes' judgements, made a bad call on the liturgy. Too bad, so sad. Life is like that sometimes. 

The point is this: if you really are a traditionalist, and you really believe the Pope has greater authority than an ecumenical council, then you cannot blame Vatican II or the modernists or the Freemasons or the small green leprechauns of the Emerald Isle for the Catholic liturgy available in most parishes today.

The Pope, for good or ill, is responsible for what we celebrate.
Stop blaming people who don't deserve it. 

UPDATE:
Told ya' so...

UPDATE II:
For those who think Fourth Constantinople was a one-off deal, it wasn't.

Pope did the same thing with Fifth Lateran - council decreed a lot of reforms, Pope signed off, nobody did squat about reform, Martin Luther hammers 95 Theses on the door seven months later.

Pope did the same thing with Council of Constance. Council decreed there must be an ecumenical council every five years, Pope signed off on it. Yeah. Whatever. That was the end of that.

Ecumenical councils are advisory. Popes do what they want.