Marinis Conciliarist Manifesto

by Peter Kwasniewski
a Council that redefined the Church and her theology from top to bottom. For historians of the influential Bologna school, the Council gave birth to a new Church, ushered in a new age, cleared away ages of debris and decadence, proclaimed at last an ecumenical Gospel that sought out s a historical phenomenon, conciliarthe world and passionately embraced it. While the falsity of ism refers to the erroneous view that such a bald statement may cause a wry smile, it is a sad fact a general council of the Church is that this peculiar brand of conciliarism has been the main superior to the Pope in matters of faith force at work in the wreckage of the and moralsthat Sacred Liturgy for the past forty years. a Pope can be trumped, so to speak, It is a sad fact that So much so, indeed, that a new Great by all the Bishops assembled. This this peculiar brand of Schism appeared in the twentieth heresy was dealt a series of blows century: a schism between a self-styled conciliarism has been throughout the second millenium of modern Church and the Church of Christianity, culminating in the double the main force at work Tradition. This virtual schism, like the coup de grace of a pair of dogmatic in the wreckage of the doctrinal rupture and rampant liturgical constitutions on the Church: Vatican Is Pastor Aeternus and Vatican IIs Lumen Sacred Liturgy for the past abuses that are the hallmarks of its proponents, is far worse than any internal Gentium. As those who have studied forty years. So much so, crisis the Church has ever faced before, the latter document know, section 25 of indeed, that a new Great outstripping in combined ignorance, Lumen Gentium contains the clearest, most extensive teaching ever given Schism appeared in the error, and contempt even the horrors of the Protestant revolt. concerning the unique, supreme, direct twentieth century. As students of Church history know, authority of the Pope over the entire the Holy Spirit does not long allow the Church and all her members, including Church to be storm-tossed and in danger of shipwreck. the Bishops who must remain in union with him in order 2 All the hard-won gains of the aging old guardreligious to remain truly Catholic. liberalism, laicism, secularism, feminism, soft modernism, In the past forty years, however, a new form of conciliarhorizontalism, relativism, and so forth, a whole litany of ism has arisen, one harder to define with precision and far -isms that have replaced the Litany of Saints as the standard more influential: the view that Vatican II, all by itself, was Just before sunrise, the wind got up. It was a vile, stubborn wind Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea1

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hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity. and measure of Catholic life todayare now being called Journalist John Allen summarizes Marinis identiinto question by a new generation of believers and, ironicalfication of historical factors that paved the way for the ly perhaps, by the elderly Pope who was a major force at the Consiliums triumph. First, the presence of the council very Council whose spirit is claimed to be embodied in the fathers in Rome during the first two years of implementanew order of Mass and the new style of worship it promotes. tion of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican IIs constitution Those who follow the Catholic media can see it daily: the on Liturgy. The Bishops themselves, [Marini] said, were graying liberals sound outraged, panicked, desperate. The the first guarantors of reform. How easily the victors more intelligent among them must surely know that the sun rewrite history! Many who were present at and involved is beginning to go down on their long-reigning agenda. in the Council have testified that the Bishops had no idea Standing tall and unrepentant in the ranks of the rupturthey were about to witness the wholesale dismantling and ists is the retired papal M.C. for John Paul II, Archbishop reconstruction of the Roman Rite. Archimandrite Boniface Piero Marini, who was unceremoniously replaced at Pope Luykx (19152004) frequently noted that not a single Benedict XVIs behest by the infinitely more competent bishop at the Council believed that Latin would be aboland traditional Monsignor Guido Marini (no relation), a ished, in practice, from the celebration model M.C. if ever there was one. For of the Mass, that the priest would face the remainder of this article, Marini Not a single bishop at will always refer to the bishop plagued the Council believed that the people, or that the prayers would be notably altered. In a moment of honesty, with a futuristic agenda and no future. Latin would be abolished, could Marini admit that Sacrosanctum Back in 2007, Marini published a Concilium did not ask for most of the book that made quite a splash. A Chalin practice, from the changes that were implemented? lenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of celebration of the Mass, The second factor in the Consiliums the Liturgical Renewal contains little to that the priest would face success, according to Marini: The surprise those who are already familiar personal support of Pope Paul VI. Alas, with the standard (Bologna) history the people, or that the this is no relevation; it is but one more of the Council and the divinely inspired prayers would be notably reason to hold this beleaguered pontiff reforms attributed to it. Anyone who has of modernist sympathies in suspicion. dared to dip into Bugninis disturbing altered. People often rush to Paul VIs defense memoirs will find Marinis book not by pointing out his heroically counterterribly original. It comes across rather cultural defense of chastity and the natural law in Humaas the last gasp of a dying cause, a kind of rage against nae Vitae. We might be in danger of damning with faint the dying of the light from an energetic retiree. At a press praise. Humanae Vitae may seem bizarrely backwards or conference in England, Marini portrayed in livid terms startlingly revolutionary to a world of hedonist nitwits, an ongoing battle between conservation and progress, but any Catholic with an instinctive attachment to healthy and the center and the periphery. He wanted his book to sexuality, a modicum of religious education, and a morsound an invitation to look to the future, to take up with ally sound outlook on family life would not for a moment enthusiasm the path traced by the council. Hows that for be tempted by something as disgustingly unnatural as tendentious? Wethe Church of the agesare the periphartificial contraception, nor would he or she register any ery? I believe it was Chesterton who said that Tradition is surprise about what the Church had always taught and will the democracy of the dead. It is the soft modernist facalways teach. tion of the Council that are the periphery, with their loud Let us move on to Marinis third factor: The rapid minority opinion. emergence of a network of competent scholars, led by Benedict XVI has been the only Pope since Blessed Lercaro and Bugnini. Do I sense what the logicians call a John XXIII who seems to have understood with crystalline petitio principiia begging of the question? Competent by clarity that Vatican II can have been a legitimate council whose definition? Many of the fashionable scholarly theoonly if it was intended to be, and is continually received as ries of the mid-century have long since been discredited, being, in continuity with the entire Tradition that preceded even ridiculed, by liturgists and scholars whose first job is it. The path traced by the Council is, de facto and de not grinding axes but understanding the history of Westiure, the path traced by Traditionor it is irrelevant, not to ern liturgy. The business about how the Pope historically say worse. The speech Pope Benedict delivered to the Rocelebrated versus populum in Saint Peters Basilica was man Curia on December 22, 2005 was a beautifully clear one of the main myths that drove the novelty of the priests indicator of the mind of Holy Mother Church: the Council turning his back to Christ, the symbolic East. We now is to be received within a hermeneutic of continuity, not a
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know, thanks to better studies, that the Pope and the people At the same press conference, Marini pontificated: The faced eastwards at the most solemn part of the Mass, so goal of the liturgy is none other than the goal of the Church, important was their unanimous orientation felt to be.3 and the future of the liturgy is the future of Christianity and Christian life. Even the devil quotes Scripture, and As the old guard present at Vatican II passes away year Balaams ass had intelligent counsel to offer. The future of by year, Marini pleads that it is important for the Church the liturgy, in reality, is nothing other than, and nothing less to retain and renew the spirit that gave rise to the liturgical than, the Mass of the Ages, the traditional Roman Rite that movement, and that inspired the council fathers to approve had organically developed for almost 2000 years until its the constitution on the liturgy as the first fruit of that great violent deformation at the hands grace of the twentieth century of Bugnini & Company. which was the Second Vatican Anyone with good sense Council. Hmm. The spirit can see that the sudden virtual behind the liturgical movesuppression of huge parts of mentis that anything like the Catholic liturgical tradition can particolored spirit of Vatican only have had a profoundly unII? What about the origins of settling, disorienting, and destathe liturgical movement among bilizing effect on the Church as people who deeply and dearly a whole. The apparent success loved the Churchs traditional of the reform has been belied by liturgy and would have been the bitter problems of doctrine disgusted by the superficial (if and morals that have plagued the not sacrilegious) hootenanny The End of Mass at Rocafort by Jose Benlliure Ortiz Church in the past four decades, that often replaced it? I cant help centering on a loss of priestly thinking of a funny quotation by identity, a drastic decline in priestly British Dominican Herbert McCabe, Our Lord gave the Mass to vocations, and an almost universal no traditionalist he, who nonetheless the Church for all her people, ignorance of the Faith and of the points out with brutal honesty: Sacred. The glamorous meetings especially for the simple and of ICELated conspirators conveThere are satisfying experiences the childlike. It is precisely niently fail to mention the countless that are immediately satisfying, such lowly laity who are not Catholics who felt betrayed, alienlike drinking good Irish whiskey, but there are other satisfactions sophisticated enough to judge ated, and even scandalized by the drastic changes that occurred as if that occur only over long periods on the basis of theories and overnight. I was talking to a neighof time, like having a decentlyhypotheses, but who judge by bor one daysomeone Id gotten furnished room. . . . If you are to know from seeing him so often deprived of a decent liturgy for what they see and hear around townand when he found a fairly long period of time you O taste and see how gracious out that I taught for the Catholic discover an important gap in your College, he volunteered that he was emotional life. I might as well say the Lord is a fallen-away Catholic who stopped at this point that I think there is a going to Mass back in the seventies. I went one Sunday mistaken tendency, more especially in the United States and it was Hallelujah this and Hallelujah that, and I said to but to some extent here [in England], to design the liturgy myself: What the hell is all this? It sure isnt Mass! Years for too immediate a satisfaction. I have been with the ago, another friend told me a similar story. He said when underground groups in the American Church who do not the drums and guitars invaded the sanctuary, practically really feel they have celebrated a Eucharist unless they get overnight, and routed the quiet low Mass he had grown up some kind of immediate experience of personal warmth with, he felt dismayed, betrayed, assaulted, actually sick and enhanced sensitivity. I think the liturgies designed by to his stomach. He stopped going to Mass for years, and these people are very frequently in bad taste. I agree with nearly lost his faith entirely. Fortunately, he was one of those critics who find the Missa Normativa a little dull, those who, thanks be to God, returned to the Church after except that I do not think it is altogether a criticism. A the indult Masses began. room furnished in good taste is a little dull compared to Our Lord gave the Mass to the Church for all her peoone covered in psychedelic posters saying Love is Love ple, especially for the simple and the childlike. It is preand Mary, the ripest tomato of them all.4

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Consilium came along andto the horror of orthodox cisely such lowly laity who are not sophisticated enough Catholics, the delight of far-seeing modernists, and the to judge on the basis of theories and hypotheses, but who surprise of just about everyonediscovered that the rites judge by what they see and hearO taste and see how of the Roman Church were thoroughly defective and in gracious the Lord is And judging by what they saw and need of a massive overhaul. An overhaul, in fact, that heard, many came to the conclusion that the Church had would culminate, decades later, in a pathetic banalization either gone bonkers or had come of age and surrendered of the very rite of exorcism, as if we could pull the wool to secularism. In either case, it was time to stop going to over Old Scratchs intellectual eyes. According to many Church. Rather than rejoicing in a botched reform conexorcists, the new rite does not even work very well; it ducted with all the finesse of bulldozers, one ought to feel is certainly much less effective than the old. A personal righteous indignation about the high and mighty doings of friend of mine, an exorcist for a major diocese, told me the liturgical elite in the heady days of the late sixties and that water blessed by the old solemn formula is considerbeyond, as they indulged in their liturgical fantasies while ably more effective against demons than water blessed carelessly trampling on the hearts and minds of innumerwith newer formulas. In a way, if one may compare great able ordinary Catholics who loved the beauty and dignity things to small, Church leaders made the same mistake as of the Churchs worship as they knew it. Coca-Cola did, but lacked the marketing brains to realize Marinis talk in London was full of that peculiar mesit and bring back the original recipe. It seems that hiersianism characteristic of Vatican II nostalgics. Here is archical office does not bring with it a charism of factual how it ended: The Holy Spirit that inspired the liturgical analysis. movement and the council fathers still encircles us like a The Consilium found that the Tradition was defective sacred cloud, and guides us like a column of fire, offerand the People of God were crying out for a new Mass, ing beauty ever new as well as joy and hope. Thats a new Liturgy of Hours, new blessings, new everything. what they call rhetoric, folks, but not in the most flattering This sounds like special pleading. Who are we to trust: sense of the word. If it was indeed the Holy Spirit and the Tradition of the Church, which embodies the faith, not the Zeitgeist or something more infernal yet, then the hope, and love of countless believers and pastors over entire way we receive and rejoice in the Council and in many centuries, or the Experts whose theories embody (at the liturgical movement will of necessity exemplify the best) the ephemeral wisdom of academia, here today and hermeneutic of continuity: the Council is to be interpreted gone tomorrow? Why do the Experts think that they know in line with and in light of the great Tradition of Catholic better than the common manor, for that matter, than the theology and worship. It will not, pace Marini, cleave to Common Doctor, Saint Thomas the hermeneutic of rupture, Aquinas, who is always on the whereby the Council would Anyone with good sense can see common mans side? The whole signify a decisive change of that the sudden virtual suppression tenor of the Consilium ascendancourse that requires systematiof huge parts of Catholic liturgical cy, as of Marinis book, smacks cally deconstructing what came of the spirit of Protestantism: before and terrorizing those who tradition can only have had a we, a select few enlightened by adhere to it. profoundly unsettling, disorienting, the Spirit of God, will choose Let us remind ourselves again what is the best way forward in and again that Sacrosanctum and destabilizing effect on the Catholic worship. Concilium expressly says that Church as a whole. In any case, one thing is certhere must be no innovations tain: we will see a lot of this kind unless the good of the Church of nostalgic resistance from the aging conciliarists; it will be genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be a hallmark of at least the next ten years, and it will become taken that any new forms adopted should in some way more and more acerbic, accompanied by an increase in grow organically from forms already existing (23). To clandestine acts of desperation. They accuse the traditionthose who are familiar with the wonderfully durable and alists of wallowing in nostalgia, but as brilliant a light as ineffably beautiful preconciliar sacramental rites, it would Father Richard McBrien finds himself caught short trying seem obvious that few, if any, changes could have been to explain how young Catholics who never grew up with defensible according to this strict criterion of genuine the Latin Mass are flocking to it, loving it, and passing it good. It would be like looking into a chest filled with on to their children. A nostalgia for what one could never treasures fashioned of precious metals and jewels, and have remembered is positively indecent and categorically saying: Lets get rid of anything in here thats worthless. illogical! (I was born in 1971, after Pope Paul VI had safely Good luck finding the iron and bronze brooches. But the
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sanctifying reality, but also the sanctified history of the Communion of Saints. The reaction of any sane believer is to fall to his knees in adoration, along with generations of his fathers andmay God in His mercy grant itgenerations of his children to come. In my years of teaching undergraduate and graduate theology, I have seen how young people who are serious about their faith flock to the traditional Mass, with little First of all, its important that I spoke about a path [of prompting or explanation required, and how they conliturgical reform], one that I believe is irreversible. I often tinue to attend it throughout their adult lives, eventually think about the journey of the ancient Israelites in the Old introducing their children to it. I have seen the spectacle Testament. It was a difficult journey, and sometimes the of college students who, because they grew up in a parish people became nostalgic for the past, for the onions and or chapel run by the Fraternity of Saint Peter, have never the melons of Egypt and so on. In other words, sometimes attended a Novus Ordo Mass, and who therefore need it they wanted to go back. But the historical journey of the to be explained to them. I was one of those young people church is one which, by necessity, has to move forward. who flocked to the (once-forbidden) old Mass, and as the years pass, my love for it only Marini is not quite finished, grows deeper and stronger. It however, with his penetrating The Mass is not an experiment, has nothing to do with nostalgia. analysis. He is puzzled that so a proving ground for academic Nostalgia would be impossible many young people are drawn theories, a do-it-yourself when for people who existed only to the older liturgical forms how can this be? He shares his ordained ministers run dry. It is the in Gods mind, not on earth, when Paul VI made his fatereasoning process with us: one and only Sacrifice of Calvary ful decision to promulgate the Novus Ordo Missae. It has to I see a certain nostalgia for made present in our midst, in a do with something much more the past. What concerns me in hallowed form we receive from fundamental than nostalgia: the particular is that this nostalgia our forebears, bearing not only transcendentals of truth, goodseems especially strong among ness, and beauty. Every soul is some young priests. How is it its own sanctifying reality, but created by God to resonate with possible to be nostalgic for an also the sanctified history of the these transcendentals. We yearn era they didnt experience? for their presence in a modern Im always surprised to see Communion of Saints. world hell-bent on falsity, evil, young people who feel this nosand ugliness. And the traditional talgia for something they never Mass, the crown of all the sacred rites and ceremonies of lived with. Nostalgia for what?, I find myself asking. our Faith, powerfully contains and expresses them. What a gift! And what a privilege is ours to see this gift once more In reality, now that we are finally beginning to see given and received! genuine liturgical renewal thanks to Summorum Pontificum and the reform of the reform movement, the nostalgia Notes is all on the side of the wrinkled cheerleaders with their 1. Trans. Kingsley Hart (n.p.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), 88. 2. The same section 25 redresses an imbalance from Vatican I: while Pastor Aeternus placards of Man has come of age; so should the Mass. seemed to focus on infallible ex cathedra pronouncements, i.e., what could be called They are gazing wistfully back to the sixties while younger the extraordinary Magisterium, Lumen Gentium broadened its consideration to include, and to emphasize, the authoritative nature of the Popes ordinary Magisteriand wiser Catholics are thanking God that weve made uma lesson the vast majority of Catholics, both liberal and conservative, have still tracks away from that benighted time of false hopes and not accepted. Teilhardian illusions. Or better, the younger Catholics who 3. For more on this, see Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, and Lang, Turning Towards the Lord. take their faith seriously are doing just that: taking it seri4. Herbert McCabe, God Matters (New York/London: Continuum, 2005), 2156. ously. Taking it as given, not as manufactured; as timeless, not as up-to-date. The Mass is not an experiment, a provDr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of ing ground for academic theories, a do-it-yourself when Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic ordained ministers run dry. It is the one and only Sacrifice College in Lander, Wyoming. of Calvary made present in our midst, in a hallowed form we receive from our forebears, bearing not only its own earned his place in the ranks of the worst popes of history, so I can add fuel to McBriens ire.) In an interview for the National Catholic Reporter, Marini memorably compared the traditional nostalgics with the carnal Jews who, having been liberated from the bondage of Pharaoh and his evil empire, longed for the fleshpots of Egypt:

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