"As a Historian, I Believe That the Traditional Latin Liturgy Will Not Disappear" - Catholic Historian Yves Chiron presents his "History of the Traditionalists"

French journal La Nef published an interview with Yves Chiron on the occasion of the publication of his book dedicated to the Traditionalists (Histoire des traditionalistes, Tallandier). Below are the main excerpts published at Le Forum Catholique.

Where do traditionalists come from, who are they, and what do they defend?

Yves Chiron - The term "traditionalists" appears in the Magisterium with the Letter on the Sillon of Saint Pius X, in 1910 [Notre charge apostolique]. The Pope affirmed: "the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators but traditionalists. The term had already existed for several decades. Émile Poulat drew attention to a specific current: the Catholic counter-revolution, that is to say, Catholics (priests, bishops or laity) who, throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century, were hostile to the Revolution and its aftermath, not primarily out of nostalgia for the king, but out of a rejection of the principles of 1789. The Catholic counter-revolutionaries were hostile to intellectual and moral liberalism, so naturally they became anti-modernist, anti-progressive, etc. (...)

BOMBSHELL: New historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s association with Freemasonry — Names are named

The latest edition of the magazine of the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, Mass of Ages, contains a review by Kevin Symonds of Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within. (The review as published may be viewed in a PDF of the magazine, starting at page 40, as well as on the author’s personal website; it has been reproduced in full here.) 

Pursuing hints in the book, Symonds goes much beyond the conclusions of Marshall regarding Bugnini, having uncovered new material on Bugnini that decisively moves the question of his association with Freemasonry from the realm of shadowy speculation, where it remained even as recently as the scholarly biography by Yves Chiron, to the level of reasonable certainty. Instead of “unnamed sources,” where the matter was left by Michael Davies, we finally have named sources, with a plausible paper trail.

New Evidence on the Freemasonic Membership of Annibale Bugnini

Kevin Symonds

In this book, Taylor Marshall firmly maintains that the Catholic Church has been literally infiltrated by her enemies, thereby experiencing a massive campaign of disruption and distortion. A particular area in which Marshall advances this thesis pertains to the influence of the Vincentian priest, and later Archbishop, Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982) in the liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century. This review focuses on Marshall’s presentation of Bugnini’s influence upon these reforms and in particular of Marshall’s claim that Bugnini was involved with Freemasonry. It will be argued that, despite his eagerness to find evidence of ‘infiltration’ and his animus against Bugnini, Marshall actually misses some important evidence in favor of Bugnini’s membership of the Italian Freemasons.

Book Announcement: Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy by Yves Chiron

A proper review of this book will be coming along at Rorate later, but it seemed a good idea, especially in the Christmas season, to let our readers know about one of the great publishing events of the decade: the first full-length "scientific" biography of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini. Until now, the only biographies available have been short (usually hagiographical) accounts by Bugnini's disciples and friends, or the lengthy (and definitely hagiographical) writings left by Bugnini himself. No professional historian has tackled this important and intricate figure until Yves Chiron did so in Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982): Réformateur de la liturgie, which appeared at the beginning of 2016. Thanks to the diligence of John Pepino and Angelico Press, an English edition has now been released. Below is the publisher's announcement.

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Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy

Yves Chiron

Foreword by Alcuin Reid

214 pages, 5.5 × 8.5 in

978-1-62138-411-3 (paper) $17.95

978-1-62138-412-0 (cloth) $26.00

In this book, French historian Yves Chiron turns his attention to one of the most influential figures of 20th-century Catholicism: Annibale Bugnini, guiding spirit of liturgical reform in the period surrounding the Second Vatican Council. Highly controversial in his day, and down to the present, Bugnini has attracted high praise from his disciples and vilification from his detractors—but all agree that without his energetic organizational skills and access to the levers of power, the most extensive overhaul of the Roman Catholic liturgy in the history of the Church would not have taken place as it did.

Yet who was Bugnini, really? What were his formative experiences, personal ideals, intellectual assumptions, practical aims? How did he accomplish so much in so short a time? Why, after such a singular collaboration with Pope Paul VI, did he suddenly fall from grace and suffer exile? Should he be remembered as liturgiae amator et cultor, lover and servant of the liturgy (his epitaph), or as the éminence grise of an unscrupulous reinvention of Catholic worship? Can we cut through the legendary, the polemical, and the partisan, to arrive at a clear portrait of the man and his work?