Restoring Tradition

[CradleCath]

It’s easy to take the stats between 1965 & 2002 but it’s been said in other places that all the numbers had started to fall before Vat. II. I’d like to see a comparison between the stats of say 1925-1945 and those of 1946-65.

I am assuming that you are going to find those stats. Surely, you aren’t asking OTHERS to do that for you, I hope.

Oh & BTW., where are those “other places”. If you could provide a link to that, I’d appreciate it.

 

[otjm]

I think you are right. i think most of us have lost the sense that God may be punishing us for the change of Worship and lack of holiness in His House and disobedience of bishops and priests. the lack of care for God’s House.

but i was listen to EWTN just yesterday when i heard that the pope said that the NO it is the normal Mass in the CC. i was a little disapointed.

Perhaps a little perspective might help (as most of us don’t really know what is going on beyond our parish and a few more): according to Mass Times, which tracks Masses world-wide, our of approximately 117,000 parishes world wide, the EF is said in about 1 in 250; that works out to something like 468 parishes world-wide that have the EF, and something like 116,532 that don’t.

That number obviously will change as more parishes have the EF, but it will be very gradual.

 

[otjm]

For everyone who has posted in regards to the Novus Ordo, you might like reading this:

fisheaters.com/ottavianiintervention.html

I really become disheartened by the lack of knowledge as to how the Novus Ordo came about. And the damage that destroying the true Sacrifice of the Mass has done to the Church as a whole. My dispute with V-II and the disasters that occured afterwards was the ambiguous langage that was used that allowed the modernists, who by the way inserted much of the abiguity into the documents, to destroy our tradition. The point of my original comment was that the loss of tradition, the loss of The sacred Sacrafice of the Mass, and the loss of conformity throughout the Holy Church has allowed the results we see today. Not just the terrible Pederast issues but the blasphemous attacks on the Holy Father by clergy, the Nuns that supported the health care vote, the bishops that will not reign in disenting religious members of their Dioceses and the ignorance of the rank and file faithful about what it is supposed to mean to be Catholic.
To those who are bound and determined to continue supporting this error, and attacking anyone who dares to question the validity of the Novus Ordo and the other changes done in "the spirit of V-II; May God Bless and Keep you.
To the Traditionalists that frequent this forum, please continue to pray for a return to our Sacred Tradition which defended Holy Mother Church from satan for 2000 years.

Pax Vobiscum
Miserére mei, Deus, secúndum magnam misericórdiam tuam

And I become disheartened by those who go outside the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to attack what the Church has done and is doing. The issue of the validity of the OF is established by the last 4 popes. Unless you are a sede, there is no reason to question either their authority or their judgement. And if you are a sede, then you are either going to have to reconcile with the Church or be in for a very long, sad and lonely life cut off from the Church you profes to love.

 

[otjm]

There is an excellent book, The Devil’s Final Battle, ( Dec. 2009) written by Father Paul Kramer. Go to the web site, www.Fatima.org, to purchase the book. It explians how the liberals invaided the Catholic church after the death of PP-12 and how V-II stoled the Traditional church. This book will scare the HELL out of you.

I have not read the book, and I will presume you did. However, if the premise of the book is that liberals invaded the Church after the death of Pope Pius XII, then the book is worthy of being a doorstop and not much more. The problems go back before Pope Pius X (not XII) and have been around and stirring in one form or another since the French Revolution. Vatican 2 did not steal the Church; both Pope john Paul 2 (despised often by the liberals) and Benedict 16 (despised even more often by the liberals) hav thoroughly and completely supported Vatican 2 and both have said that the documents have not yet been fully implemented. Having been alive well before V2, I seriously doubt the book will scare me; bemused might be more appropriate.

 

[otjm]

Powerful.

"Paul VI’s denunciation of the presence of the smoke of Satan in the Church is unforgettable. Still today, that discourse seems to be incredibly relevant.

You from Petrus, have gotten a real scoop here, because I am in a position to reveal, for the first time, what Paul VI desired to denounce with that statement. Here it is. Papa Montini, for Satan, meant to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render worship to the Lord by celebrating badly (mal celebrando) Holy Mass because of an errant interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke of the smoke of Satan because he maintained that those priests who turned Holy Mass into dry straw in the name of creativity, in reality were possessed of the vainglory and the pride of the Evil One. so, the smoke of Satan was nothing other than the mentality which wanted to distort the traditional and liturgical canons of the Eucharistic ceremony."

It is thought that Paul VI was the real culprit as the cause of all the ills of post-Conciliar liturgy. But based on what you have revealed, Eminence, Montini compared the liturgical chaos, even if in a veiled way, actually to something hellish.

He condemned craving to be in the limelight and the delirium of almighty power that they were following the Council at the liturgical level. Mass is a sacred ceremony, he often repeated, everything must be prepared and studied adequately, respecting the canons, no one is “dominus” [lord] of the Mass. Sadly, in many after Vatican II not many understood him and Paul VI suffered this, considering the phenomenon to be an attack of the Devil.

Your Eminence, in conclusion, what is true liturgy?

It renders glory to God. Liturgy must be carried out always and no matter what with decorum: even a sign of the Cross poorly made is synonymous with scorn and sloppiness. Alas, I repeat, after Vatican II it was believed that everything, or nearly, was permitted. Now it is necessary to recover, and in a hurry, the sense of the sacred in the ars celebrandi, before the smoke of Satan completely pervades the whole Church. Thanks be to God, we have Pope Benedict XVI: his Mass and his liturgical style are an example of correctness and dignity."

Well, that is one person’s take on it. Another take is that he was referring to the forces which came up against Humanae Vitae. And considering he is dead, we can speculate until we perhaps meet him on the other side.

Or not.

 

[otjm]

People left in droves for two things that I know of:

1. Humane Vitae
2. The mass they knew and loved changed drastically over night and without warning and for no reason. The changes implemented in 1965 were more than what the VII asked for.

I would agree with you on the first issue. However, according to CARA, the statristics of Mass attendance never showed any massive drop; rather, the drop has been gradual and contiual with one or two blips upward. There is a rumor going around that they left in droves because of the cghanges to the Mass. that, however, is all that it is; a rumor. The statistics, taken from yearly or bi-yearly studies, shows otherwise. In fact, the drop-off of Mass attendance started at the peak in the late 1950’s and was underway before Roncalli was made Pope.

And as to HV; again, people did not so much leave in mass droves as they simply ignored the Church teaching on the matter, and continued to go to Mass and Communion. they used the Pill in mass droves, however. And given that if sex is “safe” with the woman on the Pill in the family, it is not much of a leap to realize that woman not in the family on the Pill ios likewise "safe; which in turn lead to adultery and serial non-marriage sex, and that has had an effect on Mass attendance.

 

[Phemie]

I am assuming that you are going to find those stats. Surely, you aren’t asking OTHERS to do that for you, I hope.

Oh & BTW., where are those “other places”. If you could provide a link to that, I’d appreciate it.

No, I’m not going to seek them out because I don’t care. I simply think it’s disingenuous to give stats after Vatican II and not compare them to the stats before Vatican II. It means nothing to see a drop off after Vatican II unless there was a steady increase before, and my understanding from talking with older priests is that these things were already a problem long before 1965.

 

[Ockham]

Obviously there were change agents inside the Church prior to the council. This explains how the agenda got changed once the council started. Nor are the documents themselves responsible for the changes that occurred after. The misinterpreted ‘spirit of V2’ was the rallying cry and justification for implementing changes that had been festering for centuries. At least Luther had the courage of his convictions to go off and start his own sect rather than infect the true Church with his ‘reforms’.

Of course the sexual revolution and other influences had their affect on the Church. However what is disingenuous is to suggest the radical changes to the liturgy and relaxed attitude from both clergy and laity had no affect.

Are we not obligated to follow the Magisterium, the Truth? What if the current pontiff ruled abortion was acceptable? Would we be sedevacanists if we disagreed?

 

[Phemie]

Obviously there were change agents inside the Church prior to the council. This explains how the agenda got changed once the council started. Nor are the documents themselves responsible for the changes that occurred after. The misinterpreted ‘spirit of V2’ was the rallying cry and justification for implementing changes that had been festering for centuries. At least Luther had the courage of his convictions to go off and start his own sect rather than infect the true Church with his ‘reforms’.

Of course the sexual revolution and other influences had their affect on the Church. However what is disingenuous is to suggest the radical changes to the liturgy and relaxed attitude from both clergy and laity had no affect.

Are we not obligated to follow the Magisterium, the Truth? What if the current pontiff ruled abortion was acceptable? Would we be sedevacanists if we disagreed?

I can only judge by what I saw in my own parish and what I see today. The ‘old’ people didn’t stop going to church after 1965. We started to see a big drop-off when those who were in their teens and early twenties in the 60s started to consider the church ‘irrelevant’. That had more to do with society at large than with how Mass was being celebrated.

I have no stake in this in that to me Mass is Mass: OF or EF; Latin, English or Japanese; it’s all still Mass. Should my present diocese (where there is nary an EF Mass celebrated) decide to invite an FSSP priest to become our pastor and Mass was EF every day, I’d be at Mass every Sunday and as often on the week days as I am now (which is not that often unless I have meetings at church because Mass is not at a convenient time for someone who’s volunteering is out of control). Unfortunately, from conversations I’ve had I know that the same cannot be said for many of the younger families in our parish.

 

[SpiritusSanctus]

It’s easy to take the stats between 1965 & 2002 but it’s been said in other places that all the numbers had started to fall before Vat. II. I’d like to see a comparison between the stats of say 1925-1945 and those of 1946-65.

That’s actually just a rumor going around. I doubt numbers fell that much before Vatican II, if even any.

 

[franklinf]

That’s actually just a rumor going around. I doubt numbers fell that much before Vatican II, if even any.

They might have. Lets not forget, modernism was attacking the Church long before V2. That’s why Pius X so strongly condemned it and other errors.

 

[Ockham]

Let’s not forget Europe was recovering from its second major war in the same century. Often we tend to view these things from our own perspective. The point is our numbers today are significantly reduced from those prior to V2 and the Novus Ordo. By ‘simplifying’ the liturgy the NO stripped the most Catholic of elements making it a banal exercise that failed to attract and retain people like the TLM did for centuries.

 

[Eric_Olsen]

and these resulted from V2 - how? proof?
and these led to the sex scandal --how? proof?

Simple - liberals thought that the “spirit of VII” demanded we water down the faith.

 

[Eric_Olsen]

Not so sure you can just pin it on the 60’s, there was an investigation done in the 50’s which complained of rampent hyper-sexuality in semeniaries. There has long been a problem in the Church, I think Vatican II is what was called for to deal with it, even if unfortunetly the process of weeding out sin was tramadic.

that may be the case but it seems that many thought that VII would lower the bar on what is morally correct.

 

[Eric_Olsen]

This was an EXCELLENT read and made my mouth drop.
I urged so many a liberal homosexual apologist to read this but they always retort that I am a hatefull, mean spirited, usual knee jerk reaction.

Michael Rose saw a connection in Goodbye Good Men between the misinterpreted “spirit of Vatican II” and homosexuality in the seminaries.

Michael Rose, Goodbye, Good Men, pp. 56-57: “According to former seminarians and
recently ordained priests, this ‘gay subculture’ is so prominent at certain seminaries
that these institutions have earned nicknames such as Notre Flame (for Notre Dame
Seminary in New Orleans) and Theological Closet (for Theological College at the
Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.). St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore
has earned the nickname the ‘Pink Palace.’”2

“Father Andrew Walter, ordained for the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 2000,
spent several semesters at the Baltimore school as a seminarian for the Diocese of
Paterson, New Jersey. The [homosexual] problem was so bad when he was there, he
explained, that ‘some of the students and faculty used to get dressed up in leather to
go to ‘the block,’ Baltimore’s equivalent to 42nd Street in Manhattan.’”3

Michael Rose, Goodbye, Good Men, p. 57: “Father John Trigilio of the Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, diocese remembers visiting St. Mary’s in Baltimore when he was a
seminarian in Pennsylvania. ‘There was no discretion at all,’ he said of the gay
subculture there. ‘The few times I was there, some of the seminarians would literally
dress like gays from the Village. They would even go so far as to wear pink silk; it
was like going to see La Cage aux Folles.’

‘In my day at St. Mary’s,’ said Father John Despard, now a religious order priest from
the Southeast, ‘down the hall there would be two guys together in the shower and
everybody knew it.’

“Ada Mason, a philosophy professor at a prominent Catholic university, once served
on the board of a seminary in the upper Midwest. In that position she was shocked to
discover a gay subculture extremely active there. ‘Open homosexual behavior was more
than tolerated,’ she admitted. ‘I was even told by one of the seminary faculty that every
Friday a van took priesthood students to a nearby city to cruise the gay bars.’”4

 

[otjm]

Let’s not forget Europe was recovering from its second major war in the same century. Often we tend to view these things from our own perspective. The point is our numbers today are significantly reduced from those prior to V2 and the Novus Ordo. By ‘simplifying’ the liturgy the NO stripped the most Catholic of elements making it a banal exercise that failed to attract and retain people like the TLM did for centuries.

Considering that the statistics (from CARA) show that the peak of Mass attendance was in the late 1950’s and started dropping off before Vatican 2 was even thought of, and continued on about the same rate through Vatican 2 and after it, the EF it self was failing to “retain people”.

People left because of a variety of reasons. Constantly people make statements that attribute the fall off we have had in Mass attendance to the change in the Mass. The statistics simply do not back up the statement. There were numerous issues that were impacting people at the same time; that is why not only was there a gradual fall-off in the Catholic Church but a similar fall-off in the mainline Protestant Churches. The plain and simple fact is that moving from the EF to the OF had very little to do with the loss of membership.

What you are ignoring in addition was how thankful so many people were to have the Mass in their native language. Most people were not particularly sophisticated concerning the rubrics (and changes) nor were they particularly sophisticated concerning the changes in the prayers and what that might or might not mean from a theological standpoint. In fact, they were not sophisitcated at all; most of them were lucky to have parts of the Baltimore Catechism memorized.

There is no question that numbers are very different in the late 50’s than they are today; 2/3’s or better used to attend Mass on a weekly basis; now if is the reverse. But attempting to shoe-horn the answer into being caused by the changes in the Mass, or the changes of Vatican 2 simply are not supported by the statistics.

And the sad part is that everyone who wants to focus on this, and focus on the reduction in vocations to the priesthood ignores the greater statistical drop - the number of marriages per year. That has dropped off far further and faster than, for example, the drop in vocations.

 

[SpiritusSanctus]

Considering that the statistics (from CARA) show that the peak of Mass attendance was in the late 1950’s and started dropping off before Vatican 2 was even thought of, and continued on about the same rate through Vatican 2 and after it, the EF it self was failing to “retain people”.

People left because of a variety of reasons. Constantly people make statements that attribute the fall off we have had in Mass attendance to the change in the Mass. The statistics simply do not back up the statement. There were numerous issues that were impacting people at the same time; that is why not only was there a gradual fall-off in the Catholic Church but a similar fall-off in the mainline Protestant Churches. The plain and simple fact is that moving from the EF to the OF had very little to do with the loss of membership.

What you are ignoring in addition was how thankful so many people were to have the Mass in their native language. Most people were not particularly sophisticated concerning the rubrics (and changes) nor were they particularly sophisticated concerning the changes in the prayers and what that might or might not mean from a theological standpoint. In fact, they were not sophisitcated at all; most of them were lucky to have parts of the Baltimore Catechism memorized.

There is no question that numbers are very different in the late 50’s than they are today; 2/3’s or better used to attend Mass on a weekly basis; now if is the reverse. But attempting to shoe-horn the answer into being caused by the changes in the Mass, or the changes of Vatican 2 simply are not supported by the statistics.

And the sad part is that everyone who wants to focus on this, and focus on the reduction in vocations to the priesthood ignores the greater statistical drop - the number of marriages per year. That has dropped off far further and faster than, for example, the drop in vocations.

The TLM isn’t to blame for numbers falling off before Vatican II. That’s not the reason they fell off. Numbers fell off more after Vatican II anyway, while they only fell a little before Vatican II.

 

[SpiritusSanctus]

They might have. Lets not forget, modernism was attacking the Church long before V2. That’s why Pius X so strongly condemned it and other errors.

You may be right about that.

 

[Cristiano]

I spent a lot of my professional life dealing with statistics to address causes and effects in product reliability. When I see threads like this I am amazed on how people bias their use of statistical data to support how they feel about things.

I am still trying to understand of what people mean with restoring Tradition. Tradition with the majuscule “T” is just the dogmatic teachings of the Church and that cannot be restored because it can never go away even when some people wish it. Tradition with the minuscule “t” is a set of disciplines and rituals that are set for the good of the people at specific times.

I think that sometime these kind of discussions belong more on a philosophical forum that in the traditionalist forum. While it makes a lot of sense to me to have threads discussing specific “traditions” of the pre-VII times, to me it is an hasty generalization to infer that “Tradition” (for whatever it means, because it is not explicitly defined except in the head of a few posters) is just an extrapolation of the TLM and that the two are always correlated.

Tradition with the a minuscule “t” can also be considered as a medicine for our souls and when we are sick we need it, but when we are healthy it might be counterproductive. I look at the case of frequent confession where it is good for me because of my sinful habits but it could be counterproductive for someone suffering from scrupulosity and in that case spiritual direction would me more effective.

I would also like to point out that breaking with “traditions” might be a good thing; however, breaking with “Traditions” with the excuse that we are just moving away from “traditions” is just plain heresy no matter what our intent is. For example the Church changing the Mass can be seen as a departure from “traditions” while individuals changing the Mass is a departure from “Tradition”.

 

[CradleCath]

Considering that the statistics (from CARA) show that the peak of Mass attendance was in the late 1950’s and started dropping off before Vatican 2 was even thought of, and continued on about the same rate through Vatican 2 and after it, the EF it self was failing to “retain people”.

People left because of a variety of reasons. Constantly people make statements that attribute the fall off we have had in Mass attendance to the change in the Mass. The statistics simply do not back up the statement. There were numerous issues that were impacting people at the same time; that is why not only was there a gradual fall-off in the Catholic Church but a similar fall-off in the mainline Protestant Churches. The plain and simple fact is that moving from the EF to the OF had very little to do with the loss of membership.

What you are ignoring in addition was how thankful so many people were to have the Mass in their native language. Most people were not particularly sophisticated concerning the rubrics (and changes) nor were they particularly sophisticated concerning the changes in the prayers and what that might or might not mean from a theological standpoint. In fact, they were not sophisitcated at all; most of them were lucky to have parts of the Baltimore Catechism memorized.

There is no question that numbers are very different in the late 50’s than they are today; 2/3’s or better used to attend Mass on a weekly basis; now if is the reverse. But attempting to shoe-horn the answer into being caused by the changes in the Mass, or the changes of Vatican 2 simply are not supported by the statistics.

And the sad part is that everyone who wants to focus on this, and focus on the reduction in vocations to the priesthood ignores the greater statistical drop - the number of marriages per year. That has dropped off far further and faster than, for example, the drop in vocations.

Oh please, we have been through this so many times. The changes in the Mass were a symptom of the changes in the CHURCH. No more “dwelling” on sinfulness, no more “barriers” between the priest & the laity, no more sacredness…for that is off-putting to our “Separated Brethren”.

We fill our Sanctuaries with the Laity, but no longer can we find the Tabernacle. We shake hands & give little waves to our friends in the Communion line.

The author of this Mass Annibale Bugnini (& his “commitee”) , in March of 1974 said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper, that "wemust strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated." That is exactly what happened. I was in my mid twenties at the time.

My parents livedacross the street from the Cathedral at that time & I sat with them while flat-bed trucks pulled up to the Church, then hauled away our Communion Rail (tsk, tsk, another one of those “barriers”,
loaded the statues of Our Lady & St. Joseph, the candlestands & votive candles, the Confessionals…everything that spoke of the "horrible"piety of the pre-Vatican II Church. My Mother & Father, who had been devout Catholics, were just sickened by this…as was I.

In 1957, in the state where I live…Missouri…a Minor
Seminary opened in Hannibal Mo.
The head of the Seminary FOR 25 YEARS was Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell…later the Bishop of Palm Springs. By 1965 it was a “Pink Palace” filled with evil & corruption. O’connell brought in more priests who were also contaminated with his “love of young boys”. One of his early victims was Stephan Spalding, who died at the age of 20 from AIDS.

Four of my friends were sent there, 3 returned home within 6 months.
Would Anthony O’connell been allowed to CONTINUE to serve in the priesthood before Vatican II?? Absolutely NOT!! However, during the 60’s & 70’s, our Bishops’s were:

John Patrick Cody † (11 Sep 1956 Succeeded - 10 Aug 1961
Charles Herman Helmsing † (27 Jan 1962 Appointed - 27 Jun 1977 Resigned)
John Joseph Sullivan

Those names should tell the story.

While the wreckage of the Mass is perhaps the worst part of the heritage of Vatican II, it was certainly just part of the story.