Editorial: Radicati nella fede, August 2015
Newsletter of the Catholic community of
Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy
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| [Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ, celebrates "mass" - Los Angeles] |
They were anticipating a new Church, and so they set about changing the Mass. They wanted a Church with new dogmas and new morality, so they had to tinker with the Catholic Mass and make it into a skeleton of itself. And a skeleton Mass corresponds to a skeletal Church, made up of skeletal dogma and morality.
We said this last month: the new liturgy presumed to skip two thousand years of Christian history, in the illusion of reconnecting to a mythical beginning of Christianity. The men of the post-council reform said that it was necessary to simplify [the Mass], so that the noble essence of the Catholic Rite would emerge. They believed effectively negative, all the Church’s work of centuries and centuries to make the Catholic Rite increasingly more limpid and edifying . They continued to eliminate and eliminate, retaining negative all that had been added [over the centuries] and a skeleton Mass was what emerged.
A Mass of empty things and the unsaid - empty things and the unsaid were then filled up by the fantasy of the celebrant and the faithful. And the fantasies have become as numerous as the churches in the world because it is obvious one cannot live off a skeleton: men fatten-up the skeleton, but the flesh and the blood are not of God, but usually that of the dictatorship of the mentality in vogue. So, according to the seasons, we have had socialist Masses, poetic masses, happy-clappy masses, wordy masses, catechesis Masses, healing Masses, Charismatic Masses, missionary Masses, quick Masses and so on and so forth. In short – you can construct the Mass so that it matches you and your Christianity. A Mass so impoverished no longer gave nourishment, and so it became necessary to turn to the various ideologies in vogue to fatten it up. By eliminating much that was due to God, the Mass had to be filled by the things of men, so that it could still be considered of some use: a tragedy [which amounts to] the loss of the Catholic heart, that is to say, the redeeming work of Christ Crucified.
And the tragedy has been propagated right through the entire Catholic organism: the new skeletal Mass, filled of empty things, has become so ambiguous so as to produce a skeletal Christianity, skeletal dogma and morality: the result: ambiguous Catholicism.
Priests, reduced to celebrating a skeleton of a Mass, thus no longer nourished nor defended by the Mass itself, are, in their turn, unable to nourish and defend the people.
Regarding Christianity of skeletal dogma
What has been left in the majority of Christians today, of Catholic dogma which originates from Divine Revelation? Almost nothing. Perhaps that God does exist remains, but who, in the end, will save us all: it’s undeniable, that of the entire Revelation, the entire dogma, the entire catechism there is hardly anything left in the lives of most Catholics. Yet, why did God reveal Himself? Why did He speak in the Old and New Testament? Why did He reveal Himself completely through Jesus Christ? He certainly didn’t do all this to see Himself horrendously “simplified” by a modernist Christianity.
Some will say that we are forgetting the biblical riches of the liturgical reform! Certainly, the Bible has been read a lot, but the skeleton Mass even overcame the Bible, so much so - it’s true - that Christians have never been as ignorant of Sacred History and Holy Scripture as they are today. They have certainly read the Bible at every occasion , but have been formed by the mentality of the ideology in vogue which was fattening up the skeleton Mass [at the time].
Regarding Christianity of a skeletal morality
What remains of the riches of Catholic morality in most Catholics today? Perhaps they know that God is love, that we have to love one other, and little more: it’s undeniable, very little remains. Of Catholic Morals of the law and of grace, hardly anything is known anymore. This is the reason we are terribly vulnerable in front of widespread immorality, and above all, in front of the [actual] ideology of immorality, which wants to allow all with the excuse “of loving each other”. We are witnessing the fulfillment of the apostasy: the most indecent immoral laws will be passed to the silence of Catholics, to the approval of some, and to the false prudence of priests, who will be silent in the name of liberty and human respect. More than skeletal morality, it’s the actual death of morality.
And all of this began with the stripping of the Mass, by emptying it of its dogmatic defenses in words and actions.
A rebirth will only come about with a return to the true Catholic Mass in its entirety .
The post-council reformers wanted a new, much freer Christianity i.e. more attractive from a human point of view, - and to do this, they deprived the Mass of its defenses, and did not defend Christianity founded by God.
Perhaps Paul VI had not foreseen this tragedy, perhaps he thought it would stop only at the simplification and modernization of the language, perhaps, ….but language is content; and emptiness of language is emptiness of content which the world hastens to fill up the way it wants.
Perhaps Paul VI had never imagined [things would have turned out to be] such, but it is certain that a Pope will not be able to stop this flow now, without accepting martyrdom. Yes, he will have to accept martyrdom, because if he really attempts to take steps to remedy the situation , he will be attacked by the world and by that [same] world which has infiltrated the House of God. On the other hand, if he doesn’t accept martyrdom, he will risk not fulfilling his mission as Pope.
Translation: Francesca Romana
