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Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Donal Anthony Foley. Medjugorje Complete: The Definitive Account of the Visions and Visionaries. Foreword by Dr. Manfred Hauke; Preface by Dr. William A. Thomas. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021. 538 pp. Paperback: $22.95 / Hardcover: $32. Available from Amazon and affiliates or Barnes & Noble.

WHEN I WAS a greenhorn (bluehorn?) Marian devotee in high school—this would have been right around the year 1988—a friend of mine who used to drive me to conferences, retreats, rosary rallies, special Masses, and the like, and who had strained to breaking point his rearview mirror with the number of devotional items hanging from it, introduced me to the already-burgeoning phenomenon of Medjugorje. He avidly shared the messages and proudly displayed a rosary the metal links of which had changed color. He was also into the Blue Army and Fr. Gobbi’s Marian Movement of Priests.

“At the same time, I ask you to be vigilant in ensuring that every liturgy be celebrated with decorum and fidelity to the liturgical books promulgated after Vatican Council II, without the eccentricities that can easily degenerate into abuses…” Thus spake Francis in the letter that accompanies his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes of July 16, 2021.

Seventy-six years ago, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated in a lonely desert 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today, on July 16, 2021, Pope Francis has dropped an atom bomb on the Catholic Church that will harm not just those who “adhere to the Latin liturgical tradition” but everyone who values continuity and coherence, reverence and beauty, our heritage and our future.

EACH YEAR, AS we turn the corner from the month of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus into July, the height of summer in the northern hemisphere, we fittingly start off with the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus that bathes the rest of the month in its vermilion glow. Like so many feasts in the calendar, this one owes its origin to an act of thanksgiving for a military victory: its inscription in the general calendar was Pius IX’s act of thanksgiving for the expulsion of a revolutionary army from Rome in 1849.

An “octave” is an eight-day period in which the Church—not content to remember some great mystery only on a single day—extends her joyful celebration for the period of a full week, with a culminating remembrance on the eighth or octave day.

The concept of the eighth day is important in Christian theology. The eighth, being one more beyond the seven-day week that represents the order of creation, symbolizes the eternal life reached after passing through this earthly life. In the Jewish reckoning, in which the Sabbath is the seventh day, Sunday—the day of Our Lord’s resurrection from the dead—can be seen as both the first day (the new creation of light) and the eighth day (the gateway to eternity). Running through a week like this—the week of creation that culminates in God’s rest, and beyond it to the day of the resurrection—symbolizes the fullness of the Church’s rejoicing (it is for all time) and the eternal joy of heaven.

In his great work The Idea of a University of 1852, John Henry Newman at one point turns aside from his main point to explain the difference between a minister of the sacraments and a preacher:

In this respect the preacher differs from the minister of the sacraments, that he comes to his hearers, in some sense or other, with antecedents.

Clad in his sacerdotal vestments, he [the minister of sacraments] sinks what is individual in himself altogether, and is but the representative of Him from whom he derives his commission. His words, his tones, his actions, his presence, lose their personality; one bishop, one priest, is like another; they all chant the same notes, and observe the same genuflexions, as they give one peace and one blessing, as they offer one and the same sacrifice. The Mass must not be said without a Missal under the priest’s eye; nor in any language but that in which it has come down to us from the early hierarchs of the Western Church.

But, when it is over, and the celebrant has resigned the vestments proper to it, then he resumes himself, and comes to us in the gifts and associations which attach to his person. He knows his sheep, and they know him; and it is this direct bearing of the teacher on the taught, of his mind upon their minds, and the mutual sympathy which exists between them, which is his strength and influence when he addresses them. They hang upon his lips as they cannot hang upon the pages of his book. Definiteness is the life of preaching. A definite hearer, not the whole world; a definite topic, not the whole evangelical tradition; and, in like manner, a definite speaker. Nothing that is anonymous will preach; nothing that is dead and gone; nothing even which is of yesterday, however religious in itself and useful. Thought and word are one in the Eternal Logos, and must not be separate in those who are His shadows on earth. They must issue fresh and fresh, as from the preacher’s mouth, so from his breast, if they are to be “spirit and life” to the hearts of his hearers.[1]

In this passage, Newman strongly emphasizes—and evidently approves of—the “objectivity” and “instrumentality” of the minister. The minister’s personality and individuality are suppressed in his office, in the regimented words he is bidden to speak and the set actions he is enjoined to perform. No member of the faithful should expect to find creativity, spontaneity, social class distinctions, or educational levels emerging in the strictly ritual aspects of the priesthood or episcopacy. The vestments he wears show that he is acting the role of another; he “sinks” what is individual in order to be the “representative” of Christ. The great sign of this unity and universality is that all clergy “chant the same notes and observe the same genuflexions,” understanding that it is just such worship that is fitting in itself and useful for the people; there is no need to “change it up” for variety’s sake, as that would, in fact, weaken the beneficial effects of steady and constant ritual. The missal must be “under his eye,” that he may read off the words (never improvising), nor should he, a priest of the Roman rite, utilize any language “but that in which it has come down to us from the early hierarchs of the Western Church”—ecclesiastical Latin.

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How disconcerting it is that for the past few decades, and even today, most of Newman’s description of the cleric at public prayer would be well-nigh unrecognizable. This point is too obvious to require unpacking.

Second, and in sharp contrast, Newman describes the preacher as one who has divested himself of (at least some of) the symbols of his liturgical office, and now approaches the people precisely as an individual, as a man with his own mind, who strives to convey the message of the Eternal Logos to the congregation directly in front of him, here and now, drawing upon his own gifts and his knowledge of their needs. Whereas in ritual he enters into the age-old dialogue between the Bridegroom and the Bride, in the pulpit he brings to bear his mind upon the minds of his auditors. It is a horizontal relationship—in service of the truth, yes, but not an act of divine worship as such. For Newman, the faithful can “hang upon his lips as they cannot hang upon the pages of his book” (i.e., the altar missal). The missal’s words are “of yesterday,” they are not “fresh and fresh,” issuing “as from the preacher’s mouth” or “his breast.” It is crucial to see that this is no criticism of ritualized prayer on Newman’s part—ritual has its own requirements and benefits, and rightly is the priest’s eye glued to the Latin of the missal—but rather, a clear distinction is being drawn between the order of worship and the order of instruction. Godward adoration is one thing; teaching the people is another. The former may incidentally instruct and the latter may incidentally prompt interior acts of worship, but their natures and orientations are contrary to one another. Contrary, not contradictory.

In short, when the minister undertakes to preach, to some extent he puts off Christ and “resumes himself.” This is why, traditionally, the priest removes at least the maniple, and sometimes the chasuble too, prior to preaching, as a symbolic indication that he is “resuming himself,” speaking in his own voice, obviously (one hopes) not against the voice of Christ and the Church, as in the preaching of Arius or Luther, but not simply to be equated with them. The traditional liturgical rites really are the voice of the Church at prayer, and the gifts of her Lord in His providential governance of her rites over the course of time. We can and must say “lex orandi, lex credendi” (the way we pray declares what we believe), but we cannot and must not say “lex praedicandi, lex credendi” (the way we preach declares what we believe). For preaching is by no means guaranteed to be free of heresy, immorality, mediocrity, or irrelevance, whereas the traditional prayer of the Church cannot be tainted with any such faults. Let us not forget that many heretics, including Arius and Nestorius, have gotten their start down through the ages in the homilies they preached from the pulpit.

*            *            *

Now let us consider the situation “on the ground” in the mainstream of the Catholic Church. First, the rituality of the ritual has greatly suffered: the idea that the priest is an animated instrument or tool who simply ought to “do the red and say the black” is rarely accepted. The ars celebrandi and the ars praedicandi are seen as two sides of the same coin: the clergy are (contrary to Newman) to personalize the liturgy just as they are (in accord with Newman) to personalize the message from the pulpit. Second, there is no meaningful distinction between the manner in which the Word of God is proclaimed and the manner in which the homily is delivered. Third, no sacred garment is removed before the priest delivers his homily, since the maniple has been treated as if abolished (although it is not), and any priest who decided to remove his chasuble before preaching would quickly earn a reputation for eccentricity and an appointment with the local Ordinary. The general inflation of the ineptly-named Liturgy of the Word has brought about a situation where the homily has acquired too great an importance, while the general decline in theological literacy has evacuated homilies of orthodox and nourishing content.

A friend once wrote to me the following insightful email, to the content of which I am sure many readers can relate:

We just returned from vacation in [——] where we attended a Novus Ordo that was a noisy, irrerevent affair. As the chatty priest said from the altar, it was a “celebration.” However, he gave a rock-solid, orthodox homily. I had an epiphany at that Mass. Up to that point, I had never understood why so many of our Novus Ordo friends church-hopped because of the quality of a priest’s homily. To me, the deciding factor was always how reverently he offered the Holy Sacrifice. But at this Mass in [——], I realized that our friends do this because the homily at the N.O. is the most significant element. The form of that Mass itself is not beautiful and rarely has artistic beauty attached to it, so that is not what attracts the faithful. The Mass barely conveys the fundamental theology of sacrifice, so there is little or no sense that one is at the foot of the Cross with Mary and John. There’s little or no focus on adoration, because the Real Presence is downplayed, and most don’t believe in it. So, it’s the homily that ends up feeling like the meat of the Mass. Contrast this with the TLM, where you get the full banquet: the ritual is obviously a sacrifice; it is beautiful and permeated with adoration.

My final thought is that until the Novus Ordo is suppressed, there will be no unity in the Church. This vacation Mass—which, I have to say, was pretty typical of what I’ve experienced at any time in my life—was like a prayer service at a Protestant church. It wasn’t even akin to a Novus Ordo in Latin and was nothing like a TLM. It didn’t seem Catholic at all. How long will we pretend that the Church can remain one, while celebrating a pluralistic, metastasizing liturgy?

Leaving aside his other comments on which one could profitably dilate, my friend was absolutely right in speaking about the dominance of the homily. Karl Rahner and members of the radical wing of the Liturgical Movement before the Council wanted exactly this Protestant shift to “the Word” (or, as they always liked to say, the Kerygma) and the preaching of it to “Modern Man.” The sacrificial stuff, to them, reeked of the Middle Ages and superstition. Luther’s long-overdue vindication was finally at hand.

Downstream, we are reaping the fruits of these treasons and stratagems. How often have we had to suffer through an interminable flood of words, in which one drowns, by which one is suffocated, with no relief? Always being talked at, as if the whole point of being at Mass is to be addressed, the sole occupation of the Christian to be informed at every moment of what is happening. It turns the whole Mass into a homily. The homily lengthens and spreads out until it consumes the entire body of the liturgy, with mini-homilies popping up here and there like weeds in the springtime.

It’s a curious thing—I have heard very lengthy sermons preached at traditional Latin Masses, and yet they didn’t seem nearly as long as the same preaching would have felt at a Novus Ordo Mass. I think the crucial difference is that the old Mass can “hold its own” against long homilies; its own silence, its ceremonial, its chants, have a greater power than any human speech and therefore relativize it. But the Novus Ordo throughout is largely in the same mode as the homily—verbal, verbose, always “out loud,” making the liturgy seems like a long preparation for the homily, and then a long coda or afterthought tacked on to it. The homily, rather than the Canon, becomes the center of gravity, which is helped along by the way the clergy treat the homily: they are thinking of it as a high point (it’s what they have typically put the most time and effort into), and they expect the congregation to do the same.

*            *            *

In the spirit of parrhesia or Christian boldness on which Pope Francis has insisted and which has been practiced by Archbishop Viganò in his essays on the Second Vatican Council, it seems to me that this false exaltation of Scripture, isolating it from its traditional liturgical context, and the parallel inflation of the place of preaching, can both be traced back to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Regarding Scripture, enough has been written here and elsewhere about the systemic flaws of the new lectionary and its principles. Regarding the homily, here is what Sacrosanctum Concilium says:

Homilia, qua per anni liturgici cursum ex textu sacro fidei mysteria et normae vitae christianae exponuntur, ut pars ipsius liturgiae valde commendatur; quinimmo in Missis quae diebus dominicis et festis de praecepto concurrente populo celebrantur, ne omittatur, nisi gravi de causa.

By means of the homily the mysteries of the faith and the guiding principles of the Christian life are expounded from the sacred text, during the course of the liturgical year; the homily, therefore, is to be highly esteemed as part of the liturgy itself; in fact, at those Masses which are celebrated with the assistance of the people on Sundays and feasts of obligation, it should not be omitted except for a serious reason. (n. 52)

For all the reasons given thus far, this assertion cannot be correct as formulated. The homily is not “part of the liturgy” as such, for the liturgy is the solemn official public prayer of the Church, fixed and determinate and free from error, and the homily is an insertion into the liturgy of a period of instruction by the preacher, who thereby steps outside of cultic worship.[2] Indeed, section 7 of Sacrosanctum Concilium seems to undermine the claim made in section 52. Having noted that “Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations,” section 7 continues:

He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, “the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross,” but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).

Notice that nowhere is it said that Christ is present in the preaching. The reason can be inferred from the words that follow:

Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members. From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree. (Ibid.)

None of these descriptions can be applied to preaching. Every part of the Mass can be considered an “action of Christ the priest and of His Body” except the homily—for obviously, here the priest is neither identifying himself with Christ, nor representing the people to the Father. He is addressing them as a man appointed to teach addresses his pupils. If he is a good, intelligent, and holy man, his teaching will be effective and build up the Church; if he is not, it will be useless or harmful. But in no case it is a liturgical action. Henry Sire treats us to a more vigorous statement of the same idea:

The sacraments, and especially the Mass, are gifts whose efficacy is from the intrinsic power of God. Preaching has no such guarantee; it may be ineffective, and it may be actively pernicious. It is, moreover, a ministry that does not depend on the priestly character and cannot therefore be part of its essence. To put the preaching function of the priest before the sacramental is a monstrosity in antithesis to religious realities.[3]

The same view is implied in the Congregation of Bishops’ Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, published in March of 2004, where we read:

The Bishop should consider his responsibility for divine worship to be his pre-eminent role: his other activity as teacher and Pastor is ordered to this sanctifying function. Although closely united by nature to the ministries of teaching and governing, the sanctifying role is distinguished from the others insofar as it is specifically exercised in the person of Christ, Eternal High Priest, and insofar as it constitutes the source and summit of the Christian life. (Apostolorum Successores, n. 142)

In other words, the sanctifying office (munus sanctificandi) alone is specifically exercised in the person of Christ, not the ministries of teaching and governing. This, again, should be obvious because of the absurd consequences that would flow from maintaining that all three roles enjoy this prerogative.[4]

One who grasps that liturgy is the stable, public, formal, solemn ritual of the Church, and, for that reason, not anything any individual does acting on his own initiative and by his own lights, will not be able to fathom, much less accept, the view that the homily is an intrinsic part of it. Not in a million years will the homily be a part of the liturgy; it is essentially different. Useful it can be; important in passing on the faith; but not liturgical as such, not an act of worship like offering up the sweet-smelling oblation of the chanted Lesson and Gospel, or the still sweeter oblation of the all-holy Lamb of God.

This is why I (and I think it’s fair to say the majority of the laity) so love Masses without homilies. There is something refreshing about going to Mass just for the Mass, that is, the divine, infallible, heavenly meat of it, leaving aside the merely human, fallible, and earthly side-dish. Based on my experience and what I have gleaned from others, most weekday traditional Masses around the world—whether offered by clergy of the FSSP, the ICKSP, or another community, or by a diocesan priest—will not have a homily or sermon. The priest will finish reading or chanting the Gospel and then proceed directly to the Offertory (or the Creed if called for). The seamless garment of worship is not torn, the priest clad in the vesture of Christ and acting in persona Christi capitis never steps aside to speak for himself. The Mass is ad orientem through and through.

How many priests today, having learned the usus antiquior, are discovering for themselves the truth of Fr. Ray Blake’s moving words:

True worship leads us to contemplate the God who is always beyond us, the God before whom Old Testament patriarchs and prophets fall on their faces in worship. Practically at every Mass I have celebrated over the thirty years I have been ordained I have felt the need “to break the bread of the word,” to preach—except at the Traditional Mass, where all I want to do is adore the Father through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

I am beginning to believe that if the Word of God does not lead us to the act of worship, there is something wrong in its presentation, and if the Mass does not lead us to fall on our knees to be fed by God, there is something wrong here, too. Contemplating the Mystery of the Trinity should lead us to be lost in the immensity and beauty of God, realising His greatness and our nothingness, desiring only to abandon ourselves to Him, crying out with Christ: “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” If this realisation is not the result of worship, perhaps we are not worshipping at all! [5]

Newman has helped us to see why the traditional custom of removing the maniple before preaching (and even the chasuble) is laudable, and, one might even say, crucial at this point in time, if only to make clear what is happening—and what is not happening. The priest is putting off his sacerdotal identification with Christ the High Priest, he is stepping aside from the total conformity to Him that he exercises in offering the sacrifice, to address himself to “the hearts of his hearers” with a message that will, please God, draw them closer to the Lord.

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NOTES

[1] This passage is contained in my anthology Newman on Worship, Reverence, and Ritual (Os Justi Press, 2019), 424–25.

[T]he Saints insist so expressly on the necessity of his addressing himself to the intellect of men, and of convincing as well as persuading. “Necesse est ut doceat et moveat,” says St. Francis [It is necessary that he teach and move]; and St. Antoninus still more distinctly: “Debet prædicator clare loqui, ut instruat intellectum auditoris, et doceat” [The preacher ought to speak clearly, so that he may instruct the minds of his listeners and teach them]. Hence, moreover, in St. Ignatius’s Exercises, the act of the intellect precedes that of the affections. Father Lohner seems to me to be giving an instance in point when he tells us of a court-preacher, who delivered what would be commonly considered eloquent sermons, and attracted no one; and next took to simple explanations of the Mass and similar subjects, and then found the church thronged. So necessary is it to have something to say, if we desire any one to listen.

[2] See comments of Martin Mosebach about why the interruption of the homily is so unsatisfactory from a liturgical point of view: The Heresy of Formlessness, rev. ed. (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2018), 28–30.

[3] Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes, 321.

[4] A complementary way of arguing the point is to note, with the Rad Trad, that preaching sems to be more properly an episcopal affair than sacramental worship:

The idea that a sermon is part of Mass is vastly accepted, well ingrained, and totally wrong. A sermon, or homily if I must [use that term], is part of the fundamental teaching authority of the bishop, not of a parish priest or curate. Priests were not permitted to preach without the explicit authorization of their ordinary until after Trent, and even then the faculty was used prudently. The bishop pontificates from a chair because the power to sit and speak—to pontificate—is proper to him and all responsibility for teaching the faithful eventually descends upon him, not the priest, whose main duty is to celebrate Mass, baptize, and absolve sins in the bishop's absence. One could argue quite well that a sermon is a fundamental part of a pontifical Mass in the bishop's home diocese. To require a priest to preach at every Mass on every Sunday or Holy Day is to make him the bishop of his own parish, something Apostolic Succession says he is not.

[5] Text slightly modified. Compare the observation of Robert Louis Wilken in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought:

Before there were treatises on the Trinity, before there were learned commentaries on the Bible, before there were disputes about the teaching on grace, or essays on the moral life, there was awe and adoration before the exalted Son of God alive and present in the church’s offering of the Eucharist. This truth preceded every effort to understand and nourished every attempt to express in words and concepts what Christians believed.

To the extent possible, I attend daily Mass at a chapel run by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. Although I seldom take up my missal for the Ordinary of the Mass, I always consult it for the Propers, and I try to pray them deeply and to draw wisdom from them. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that I keep learning my faith anew, and learning it better, from the Mass: it is a school in which I am always enrolled, where the teaching is quiet, respectful, consistent, earnest, and efficacious. The learning is delightful, because it happens without deliberate didacticism, tedious verbosity, or embarrassing gimmicks. It happens more the way a swimmer gets wet if he dives in.

One thing that has really struck me in the Masses I’ve attended this week (every week it’s something new!) is how strongly the traditional liturgy brings out both the feminine and the masculine sides of human nature and of the Christian life. It is absolutely not androgynous. The sequence of feasts from November 16 to November 20 are a marvelous demonstration of this characteristic.

Two years ago, on October 14, 2018, Pope Francis undertook to canonize several people, including his predecessor, Pope Paul VI. Of course, it is a pope’s prerogative to beatify or canonize anyone he thinks fit to be beatified or canonized. But this does not mean that, in every single case, there is no room for doubts or difficulties in the matter. In this column I will offer seven points that Catholics deserve to know.[1]

First, it is an open theological question whether canonizations must be considered infallible acts of the papal magisterium. While theological consensus has favored infallibility, the Church herself has never made a binding determination on the matter, such that the opposite position would be ruled out in principle. There may be grave reasons for which it would not be unreasonable for Catholics to question a particular canonization.[2]

Second, canonizations have always been understood to be an official response to a popular cultus or devotion. In recent times, however, certain beatifications and canonizations seem to have been driven by political motivations, in order to legitimize a certain “program.” A little comparison may help: the Church canonized only two popes from a span of 700 years (Pius V and Pius X), but now three popes from a span of 50 years (John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II) have been canonized. Commentators have spoken of the real intention, which was to “canonize Vatican II.”

Third, the process by which beatifications and canonizations occur is not without significance. The traditional rigorous process, instituted by Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644) and brought to perfection by Prosper Lambertini (1734–1738, later Pope Benedict XIV, 1740–1758), was followed until 1969. Between 1969 and 1983 the process was in flux, until John Paul II established a new set of much-simplified procedures to speed up the making of saints. In particular, the role of the “devil’s advocate” was minimized, the total number of miracles required for canonization was halved from four to two (i.e., one each for beatification and canonization), and the “magnitude” of miracle expected has also been relaxed. These changes, taken together, increase the probability—even if it generally remains small—that a beatification or a canonization will be mistaken.

The cause for Giovanni Battista Montini in particular shows worrisome features. A source in the Vatican confirmed to me that the process was pushed ahead at such speed that the copious documentation from and about Paul VI in the Vatican archives was not exhaustively reviewed. An archive of such magnitude could still turn up problematic material—especially since, as historians know, Montini was involved in clandestine dealings with the Communists as part of the Vatican’s failed Ostpolitik.

Fourth, contrary to well-meaning attempts to downplay the difficulties, canonization does not mean simply that “a person’s soul is in heaven.” If such were the case, it would be possible to proceed forthwith to the canonization of thousands of individual Catholics who died devoutly receiving the Church’s last rites. (Indeed, this is the kind of “canonization” that routinely happens at modern funeral Masses, with or without evidence of the devout reception of last rites.) In truth, canonization has always meant that the saint is exemplary in the heroic exercise of the Christian virtues, and is therefore held up to the universal Church as a model to venerate and imitate, particularly by those who are in the same or similar positions or states of life. This, of course, is the fundamental reason why, historically, so few Christians have been named saints! Many people exercise some virtues sometimes, but very few exercise the panoply of virtues to an heroic degree. While saints need not be “flawless,” they are still genuine “giants” of the supernatural life. When it comes to Paul VI, unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that he not only failed to exercise certain virtues heroically, but also that he displayed the absence of certain virtues in his discharge of the papal office—above all in regard to the unprecedented magnitude and violence of the liturgical reform in the period 1964–1974, which he acted not as a servant of tradition but as its master and possessor.

Fifth, if some Catholics have doubts about Paul VI’s canonization, are they committed to thinking him a criminal and a villain? By no means. Paul VI did much that can be admired, or at least respected as compatible with his papal duties: his encyclical Mysterium Fidei of 1965, which reiterated traditional Eucharistic doctrine; his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus of 1967, which defends clerical celibacy; his Credo of the People of God of 1968, a resounding reaffirmation of the Catholic Faith; and most famously, his encyclical Humanae Vitae of 1968, which repeated the Church’s teaching that any deliberate attempt to thwart the procreative end of the marital act is sinful. Nevertheless, the fact that a person (be he a layman, religious, or cleric) has done many great things for Christ and His Church does not constitute, in and of itself, a reason to beatify or canonize him. There are dozens of popes from history who have done as much good as Montini did, or rather, far more good—and without the blemishes that mark his papal record and disqualify him from public veneration.

Sixth, even in the case of legitimate beatifications and canonizations, Catholics are not required to have a personal devotion to any particular saint or to invoke him or her as part of their own prayer life, nor would the elevation of someone to the standing of public veneration endow his every action with normative value or his every opinion with indubitable truth. As others have pointed out, the policies of canonized popes—including their liturgical decisions—have been questioned or overturned by later popes.

Seventh, we cannot go wrong venerating and imitating the great saints of the past whose heroic virtue is beyond any reasonable doubt, by objective standards and by the witness of generations of devotees. We also cannot go wrong approving and lauding any Catholic whose words and deeds obviously harmonize with the well-known doctrine, discipline, and tradition of the Church. On the other hand, we would be wise to refrain from venerating or imitating anyone whose heroic virtue there are objective reasons to doubt, or whose opinions on matters of grave importance, such as the sacred liturgy, are saturated with erroneous philosophical theories such as rationalism or utilitarianism.

Two years later, then, we can frankly say: the case for Montini has gained no strength, nor has a robust cultus on the part of the faithful shown any hints of existence. Rather, this “canonization,” like others, has merged into the general dystopian mess of this pontificate, the Augean stables that a future Roman pontiff will have the unenviable job of cleaning out.

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[1] For a fuller treatment, see my article “Why We Need Not (and Should Not) Call Paul VI ‘Saint.’

[2] See John Lamont, “‘The authority of canonisations’: Do all canonisations need to be accepted as infallible?”; idem, “Paul VI: The Infallibility of Canonizations and the Morals of the Faithful.

desacralization 1

A friend sent me the following note.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski:

In our State of ———, masks were recently mandated in public places. Failure to comply with the new order can result in a petty misdemeanor or fine. Even at Holy Mass, all are supposed to wear masks.

On August 4, LifeSite News reported that Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, caught up in the global fear of contagion, has ordered the traditionally-minded Birmingham Oratory—founded by John Henry Newman himself, who, as a Catholic priest, celebrated exclusively the traditional Latin Mass and would always have given communion to the faithful on the tongue—to cease and desist giving Our Lord to the congregation in this manner. For now, the Oratorian Fathers are complying with the directive, but expressed distress and sadness and a keen desire to see this order “rescinded as soon as possible.”

The Oratory thus becomes the latest city to fall to its enemies in the ongoing siege against tradition, in the name of spurious science and arbitrary determinations of hygiene.

Some readers have asked me why I am so adamant about the manner of distributing the Most Blessed Sacrament. In this brief article, I wish to point out the gravity of the situation.

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