It saddens me to cast a dark shadow today
over your name, Dr. Marshall, but you, my
poor man, stepped into the arena when you
declared war on conservative Catholics in
your recent YouTube: “Does Vatican II contain
Error?”
Our Lord said that “scandals will come:
but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the
scandal comes.”
Matthew’s Gospel gives us the Greek work
skandalon, a snare, a trap, a trick.
Many humble Catholics will be ensnared by
that video, Dr. Marshall, unless you remove
it and recant.
Humble souls are dazzled or intimidated by
any man who has published books or earned
a doctorate.
Thousands of us have clicked on your YouTube
videos in recent years because we appreciated
your open discussion of topics that we wished
our pastors or bishops were addressing.
You’ve been a voice that has expressed out
loud what many of us have been thinking in
our hearts.
But gradually, I pulled away from your channel,
disturbed by your criticisms of saintly popes,
and your obsessions with liturgical preferences
as if these were dogmas.
I could understand that a convert sometimes
has a chip on his shoulder and feels a need
to be an over-the-top Roman Catholic to prove
his loyalty, but Dr. Marshall, in this recent
video you dramatically slid off a cliff.
God forbid that any lemmings follow you in
a headlong rush out of the arms of Mother
Church and into the lonely abyss of Protestantism
where every man is on his own, to decide how
to interpret the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Youtube thumbnail and full title was intimidating,
as if you would be quoting bishops and archbishops,
who of course, would know the Council documents
from personal experience, whereas you didn’t
become Catholic until 2006, over 40 years
after the Council.
But as I began to listen, I could hardly hold
back my laughter during that miserable 65
minutes of bravado.
Although you were trying to demonstrate that
Vatican II does contains errors, you yourself
were sufficiently aware of the poverty of
your case against the Council, so you coyly
phrased the video title with a question mark.
But Dr. Marshall that title set a trap and
a snare for the many Catholics in certain
dioceses who have already been scandalized
and weakened by poor catechesis and would
not have the objectivity, or the experience
or the leisure or the sheer confidence to
study and form their own opinion regarding
the credibility of your statements.
I, on the contrary, have all these things,
and I am going to set the record straight,
right now, for the sheeple whom you are leading
astray.
What are my credentials?
My perspective on the Council is not a university
degree, but a lifetime of personal experience.
Before I entered religious life, I acquired
a couple of dozen hours in theology and about
the same in philosophy but after three semesters
in two colleges, I was eager to begin my life
of hidden prayer and penance for the Church
and for the world.
Very briefly for those who don’t know me,
I’ve had a YouTube presence with the MarianNews
channel since 2016 with over 100 original
videos.
My story and my apostolic work are explained
at the website: HouseofMaryOMD.org.
I’m a 
cradle Catholic, educated in Catholic schools
from age 7 until a few months before my 20th
birthday when I entered a cloistered monastery.
I stayed there for 33 happy years as Sister
Anne of Yahweh, OCD, until I experienced an
unexpected call to initiate a new congregation.
My archbishop and superiors urged me to obey
that inspiration and they facilitated the
proper dispensations.
The canonical protocol is to live as a layperson,
as did Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who left
her beloved Loretto Sisters, until the new
congregation is officially established.
My new habit is designed and almost ready
to wear.
The day is not far off when I expect to pronounce
my vows in the new Order of the Mother of
God.
As I was saying I lived the Council.
I was a child during the closing sessions.
Second grade was the last year that I was
taught by a nun in a long black habit and
that was my last year to study from the Baltimore
catechism.
I witnessed firsthand the confusion, the excitement,
the changes in the liturgy, the good, the
bad and the ugly.
The Vietnam war, LSD and rock and roll, were
nothing on my radar compared to the upheaval
going on in my Catholic schools.
I spent hours and hours with an excellent
family, trying in vain to keep them from leaving
the Church to join the schismatic LeFevberites.
In highschool I watched Christian Brothers
smoke pot in the corridors.
One eloped with my classmate, and another
with the nun who was my English teacher.
In college, the Jesuits explained to me that
Jesus never worked any miracles or rose from
the dead.
They gave assignments like “go and watch
this R-rated movie” which had nothing to
do with anything about religion.
When I entered Carmel in the late 70s, Rome
had encouraged all religious congregations
to experiment while we waited, year after
year, for the release of the new edition of
Canon Law which would regulate certain sections
of our Constitutions.
My solemn vows were pronounced under temporary
Constitutions which took an agonizing two
decades to get updated because 800+ Carmelite
monasteries in multiple languages had to hash
out the text, point by point.
I should get some kind of endurance award
for participating in thousands of hours of
discussions.
As for the documents of Vatican II, and for
every single small and large document that
Rome released in an English translation during
thirty plus years of my religious life, we
not only read them word for word, usually
from the refectory pulpit during meals, but
the Council documents were part of my novitiate
formation and part of my life.
I was living with a house full of nuns who
had grown up with the Tridentine liturgy.
They lived through every change personally
and would openly reminisce and share their
impressions about the changes in the rubrics
for Mass and the Divine Office.
I was not living with a house full of liberals.
Far from it.
They could see or read in the Catholic papers
the deviations from the actual texts of the
Council that were happening all around us
under the nebulous umbrella of something called
the “spirit” of Vatican II.
After my first 20 years in the cloister with
only Novus Ordo liturgies, a group of young
men established themselves nearby to initiate
a new branch of Carmelites.
They wanted to revive and restore the Carmelite
Rite.
Yes, many religious Orders have had their
own rites down through the centuries.
Since I was a good typist, the Prioress assigned
me to assist them in their research and in
producing liturgical layouts for use in choir.
The prior had been educated in Europe and
was an expert in Gregorian chant.
Soon the nuns were learning the 18 different
Masses of the Solesmes Kyriale and proper
antiphons.
Since I had played a modal instrument from
my youth, modal chant became my passion and
forte, but I won’t detour now in that direction.
I’ll save that scrumptious topic for future
videos on my channel.
The point here is to address Dr. Marshall’s
underwhelmingly, unbrilliant reasons for demonstrating
why he feels impelled to suggest that he can
use his personal authority as layman and father
of a family to declare null and void either
all, or parts, of a Council of the Catholic
Church.
As a prelude, Dr. Marshall begins by attempting
to convince the listener that the Council
is old news, and for him this itself is evidence
that there is something wrong with the Council,
simply because people are still talking about
it.
Any church historian will tell you that it
takes an average of a full century for any
council to be promulgated and implemented.
It’s not about the mode and speed of travel.
It’s about education to help the faithful
understand what the changes are about and
how to make them correctly.
Bishop and St. Charles Borromeo spent his
entire adult life promoting the Council of
Trent in his diocese, with multiple synods
for the priests, and horseback travel from
parish to parish to speak to the laity in
person.
The actual duration of the Council of Vatican
II was quite speedy, 1962-65.
Trent took 18 years from 1545 to 1563.
Vatican Council I took a century if you allow
for the fact that it was opened in 1864, interrupted
six years later and never formally closed
until the first session of Vatican II.
So just ignore all his hype about this recent
council being a point of discussion half a
century later.
It’s a non-sequitur.
If you need help Dr. Marshall with that Latin
expression, you can google it.
Point #1: Pope Paul closed the Council in
1967 stating: “The magisterium of the Church
did not wish to pronounce itself under the
form of extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements.”
“In view of the pastoral nature of the Council
it has avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary
manner, any dogma carrying the mark of infallibility.”
Duh!
Of course.
From the very beginning Pope St. John XXIII,
made it clear that he was not calling a Council
to address any extraordinary problems or to
evaluate possible new dogmas or to anathematize
extraordinary errors.
The purpose of the Council was pastoral, or
more precisely, evangelical.
In 1962 the Catholic Church was extremely
strong, at least from the outside, a well-oiled
machine churning out millions of students
from Catholics schools, abundant priestly
vocations, thousands of Sisters and even an
American President.
But any good company assesses its own structure
and compares itself to other structures to
judge its effectiveness.
Billions of people on the planet were not
yet Catholic.
They were not enjoying the graces of the Christian
Faith.
Why wasn’t the Church reaching them effectively?
Holy prelates were anxious about the shallowness
of formation going on in convents and seminaries.
In the public forum prelates were asking out
loud how long would the Church hold on to
its youth if the Church clung to the trappings
of a medieval monarchy while most of the kings
and queens of Europe were stepping aside to
allow the people to participate more actively
in government?
Put yourself inside that year.
The world had radically changed between 1910
and 1960.
Illiteracy had become quite rare.
The laity were off the farm.
They had engaged in 2 world wars and they
had developed a cosmopolitan interest in all
cultures.
Technology was advancing, medicine was advancing,
the media was expanding.
The world had a new face.
How many people were wearing hats in 1930?
Everybody.
1940, nearly everybody.
1950, fewer.
1960?
Hat companies begged President Kennedy to
at least carry a hat, even though he wouldn’t
wear one.
Were priests supposed to hang on to their
hats, their birettas, when hats and crowns
no longer had importance because people had
no need to cover their hair since they could
afford hair stylists.
It’s a small point, but it was real in 1962.
Consider my Carmelite Constitutions that hailed
from the 1570s.
St. Teresa stipulated that the habit and scapular
must be made of wool.
It was a point of law.
Why did she do that?
Because she wanted to guarantee that the nuns
would not be tempted against poverty.
Sheep were everywhere.
Wool was the cloth of the poor.
News flash.
The sheep industry collapsed decades ago.
Wool had become the cloth of the rich.
What were nuns supposed to do?
Technically, each Carmel would be obliged
to apply for a dispensation from this point
if they couldn’t afford wool.
Some Carmels insisted on wool for the sake
of tradition, despite the price tag.
Can you understand or even imagine the discussions
that were happening in the Church in 1960?
The Council was not called to address heresies.
Modernism was no longer modern.
The issue in 1962 was pastoral, to unshackle
the Church from mere human and cultural traditions
so that it would have a fresh face to dialog
with the modern world.
Was that a bad idea?
Of course not!
Point #2: Dr. Marshall takes exception that
the Council wasn’t intended to be dogmatic,
but several of the Council documents were
expressly promulgated as dogmatic.
The key word in his quotations from the Pope
which he is failing to notice here is “extraordinary”.
Ordinary magisterium is ordinary.
It happens all the time and we don’t even
blink.
Anything issued as AAS (Act of the Apostolic
See) is part of the ordinary magisterium.
The Church must govern a large body.
It is constantly updating and improving and
fine-tuning it’s own documents: how a seminarian
is evaluated, how a bishop is chosen, how
a bishop behind the iron curtain is consecrated,
how a marriage is annulled, how a religious
can transfer from one congregation to another,
and a million other points of “ordinary
magisterium.”
The two popes of the Second Vatican Council
wanted to narrow the focus to updating the
“ordinary” life of the Church, not to
deal with “extraordinary” dogmatic proclamations.
I assure you, there were enthusiastic factions
that wanted to use the Council to proclaim
Marian dogmas, or, for example, to make pronouncements
to clarify what the Church understands by
grace.
These theological discussions could be handled
in synods and in other ways.
It was not for the welfare of the faithful
to detain all the bishops of the world in
Rome, and away from the government of their
respective dioceses, to thrash out “extraordinary”
theological questions that could involve months
more of discussions which might not even achieve
a definitive conclusion.
Point #3.
I’m throwing this in because it is related
to the question of modernizing the Church
as a goal of the Council.
Latin was not front and center in the official
discussions, but believe me it was a problem.
If you can’t easily google contemporary
articles about the church in the early sixties,
you have to remember that periodicals were
still being produced with lead type.
Nothing was digitized.
Old articles were just tossed in the waste
bin.
They weren’t scanned into PDF files and
archived.
Thousands of articles have been lost to history.
I can testify from experience.
I deeply regret that one of my prioresses
consigned to the incinerator, shelves of old
issues of international articles on consecrated
life.
These represented some of the most erudite
minds of all the countries of the world, as
religious were gradually preparing for the
greatest synod ever on religious life, which
was finally convened by Pope St. John Paul
II in the mid 1990s.
The fruit of decades of careful deliberations
was the magnificent apostolic letter Vita
Consecrata.
Nevertheless, the discussions preceding that
synod were profoundly insightful.
Because so much has been consigned to the
dumpster, I’d have an extremely difficult
time coming up with printed material regarding
the discussions about Latin that went on at
dinner tables, restaurants, street corners,
seminaries and convents.
How many of you listening to this YouTube
are aware that until World War I, most students
who aspired to attend a secular European university
prepared by studying Latin.
Latin was not the property of the Church.
It was a universal language for study, law
and diplomacy.
In French schools it was a required subject
on the curriculum all the way up to 1968.
Look at your dollar bill.
Mottoes of all kinds were in Latin.
In a world of lead type and hand-cranked printing
presses, it was too costly in the 1600s, 1700s
and 1800s to produce textbooks in the many
languages of Europe.
But Latin was dying fast throughout the 1900s.
With two world wars, modern electric presses
and a completely different economy, people
didn’t have the leisure to learn and maintain
a complex language.
Any language learned will be forgotten without
regular practice.
I read and heard stories personally of priests
who studied in seminaries in Rome in the 50s
and 60s and tried to engage in conversation
with seminarians from other nations.
Their Latin accent was so thick with their
native language, that they couldn’t understand
each other’s Latin, not even to give directions
to get across town.
The post-Vatican II Church did not drop the
ancient language like a hot potato.
Believe me, the potato was already quite cold,
and beginning to rot.
Do you want to invest years of your life learning
a language that you’d only use at Mass?
Point #4: In a strange and offhand manner,
Dr. Marshall criticized Pope Paul’s crosier
which he said was “unusual.”
Did he look it up?
Does he know that the artist based the design
on the famous vision of St. John of the Cross.
The saint felt that he was looking down at
Calvary from the heavenly Father’s perspective,
beholding his agonizing Son, sagging on the
Cross.
The artist who designed that crosier was emphasizing
Jesus’ great suffering.
In 1962, almost everyone had personal memories
of the HORRORS of the atrocities of WW2, and
even WW1.
Both wars were more brutal and deadly and
cruel, because of modern weapons and means
of torture, than the wars of many centuries
combined.
The Shroud of Turin would captivate the world
in the 1970s because it too emphasized Christ’s
sufferings.
Today, in 2020, most people in the USA haven’t
seen or served in any war and they take it
for granted that their future surgeries and
death will be steeped in “palliative”
care.
I guess the agonizing crucifix of Pope Paul
doesn’t “speak” to Dr. Marshall or this
generation like it did in 1962.
Remember, it was the cold war era, when people
were building bomb shelters in their backyards
and living in fear of an imminant nuclear
attack.
In 1978 Pope St. John Paul eagerly claimed
that same crosier.
He understood suffering, having lived in Poland
through the occupation of Nazis, then Stalin’s
men).
It’s just a matter of taste, Dr. Marshall.
The crucifix design doesn’t prove that the
Second Vatican Council was “off.”
Point #5: Harping on the fact that Pope Paul
declared that the Council “did not wish
to pronounce itself under the form of extraordinary
dogmatic pronouncements” Dr. Marshall argues
that therefore the whole Council is open for
discussion and reevaluation by any Catholic
today.
The hubris of such an idea is beyond breathtaking.
Every bishop in the world tried to be in attendance
at that enormous Council, and each brought
with him a peritus, that is, the best theological
advisor he had in his diocese.
Every paragraph, every sentence, was carefully
crafted, evaluated and argued from every possible
angle.
In most cases, nothing went forward until
the great majority of bishops were satisfied.
But now, fifty years later, it’s alright
to say, well those men weren’t perfect,
and some fell into sin later on, and some
we now realize were secretly living in sin,
so we can cancel the Council.
It wasn’t the work of the Holy Spirit, because
God only works through saints.
Really?
He can’t work through sinners?
For example, King David never sinned?
St. Peter never sinned?
The Apostles didn’t run away in the Garden?
even though they had witnessed three years
of miracles by this man whom they agreed was
divine?
No, no, today we only believe that the Mass
is valid if the priest can prove his sanctity
by levitation!
We won’t believe that the Holy Eucharist
is confected at Mass unless we have passed
judgment on our pastor!
After all, Jesus never assured us that the
Holy Spirit would be with us to teach us all
things?
Dr. Marshall, despite all your claims, you
are not Catholic.
You are like most Protestants who frequently
hire and fire pastors because they find fault
with their personal lives, or their point
of view or their homilies, or the congregation
just splits off to form a new denomination.
Catholics believe in unity, that Christ wanted
us to be one body in Him.
Catholics do their utmost to hold together.
Point #6: Dr. Marshall is scandalized because
certain proud modernist priests subsequently
bragged that they had deliberately inserted
ambiguous phrases into the Council documents,
like time bombs, which they could reinterpret
differently later on.
That’s like a child bragging that he had
hidden some chocolate Easter eggs during a
hunt to enjoy them secretly later on while
the grown-ups were watching everything and
chuckling at these antics?
During the Council there was transparency.
The documents were not drawn up in secret
and voted on by some secret committee as seems
to have happened with Amoris Laetitia in the
present bizarre pontificate, if it’s even
a lawful pontificate.
In 1965, 2,600 bishops participated in that
Council, in addition to their theologians.
Are we to imagine that 5,000 men suffered
from sagging intellects and indifference to
the Bride of Christ and foolishly allowed
a handful of Judases to ruin the documents
with corrupting clauses?
If some phrases in the Council can be interpretted
rightly or wrongly, it’s because there are
limits to human language.
Even divine inspired expressions in the Bible
have given rise to hundreds or thousands of
Protestant denominations.
Before we address the actual texts that Dr.
Marshall disputes in the Council documents,
I should say a word about the four books that
he recommends.
I have only read one, Dr. Marshall’s own
book “Infiltration.”
I purchased a copy soon after it was published.
Naturally, I first opened to the chapter on
LaSalette and was appalled at so many errors.
What kind of scholarship was this?
No wonder he churned out the book so fast.
I haven’t done a public clarification of
that chapter because the project of translating
2500 pages of French LaSalette documentation
into English isn’t completed.
But very quickly, Catholic author and YouTubist,
David L. Gray, who had been Grand Master Freemason
before his conversion, took apart Dr. Marshall’s
chapter on Freemasonry in a rather devastating
video to show that Marshall didn’t know
what he was taking about.
Mr. Gray released his own book on Freemasonry,
and undoubtedly out of a desire to proclaim
the Faith on his channel in a positive manner
without polemics, removed his video on the
chapter on Infiltration.
If I can’t trust the scholarship and accuracy
of Taylor Marshall’s own book, why would
I spend time reading books that he recommends?
So he begins with two quotations from the
document: Lumen Gentium
Let’s take the second point first:
The Muslims who profess to hold the faith
of Abraham, along with us, adore the one and
merciful God.
Dr. Marshall asserts that the document has
no right to say that the Muslims have the
same faith of Abraham because they adore a
different God.
But the document states only that they profess
to hold the faith of Abraham.
The main argument of Dr. Marshall would apply
to the Jews also, because he insists that
“God = Trinity” and the Muslims reject
the Trinity.
Therefore, Muslims do not adore the one and
merciful God as the document states.
But that argument would also apply to Abraham
and Melchisedek and Job and St. Anne and Native
Americans and whoever has loved and worshiped
God, without recognizing the Holy Trinity.
If God = Trinity, the argument can be reversed,
Trinity = God.
These people, can worship ONE God, without
being aware that Three Divine Persons constitute
one Unity.
I find it deeply sad that Dr. Marshall and
company, just cannot admit that anyone could
possibly be saved who doesn’t belong to
their Catholic club.
Now His first quotation from the documentation
is related to the same argument: “The Church
of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church”.
Dr. Marshall assumes that this dogmatic statement
implies that there are two churches.
But hundreds of theologians hashed out that
point during the Council and crafted the statement
with extreme care.
It’s congruent with the above.
One can be saved by belonging to the “Church
of Christ” which subsist in the Catholic
Church, without having ever been a former
member of the Catholic Church.
These people can be saved-- through the prayers
and merits of the Catholic Church which offers
the daily Sacrifice with Christ the High Priest.
I have a separate video explaining this more
fully.
The title is “Right or Wrong about No Salvation?”
so I won’t spend more time right here.
Next document: Nostrae Aetate
on Hindusim:
“Hindus contemplate the divine mystery”
Dr. Marshall imagines that the document is
affirming that Hindus identify and worship
the correct God when they contemplate the
divinity!
He seems to imply that nobody has a right
to think about the mystery of God or seek
to understand the divinity.
“Contemplate” is a very broad word.
Anyone is free to contemplate the stars in
the sky on a beautiful night.
The document is not equating the contemplation
of a St. Bonaventure on the Holy Trinity with
the contemplation of a Hindu on the sheer
mystery of God.
on Buddhism:
Nostra aetate # 2: “In Buddhism, according
to its various forms, the radical inadequacy
of this changeable world is acknowledged and
a way is taught whereby those with a devout
and trustful spirit may be able to reach either
a state of perfect freedom or, relying on
their own efforts or on help from a higher
source, the highest illumination.”
Dr. Marshall imagines that this Council document
is affirming that Buddhists succeed in their
aspirations to what they consider perfect
illumination.
Pope John Paul greatly offended Buddhists
years after the Council.
In his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope,
which took the form of an interview by Vittorio
Messori, the Pope responded to a question:
“Among the religions mentioned in the Council
document Nostra Aetate, it is necessary to
pay special attention to Buddhism, which from
a certain point of view, like Christianity
is a religion of salvation.
. . the doctrines of salvation in Buddhism
and Christianity are opposed.
. . . (Then the Pope compares the Catholic
classical method and the Buddhist method of
detaching oneself from the world to pursue
a higher goal, especially ) Then the pope
concludes with a sword-thrust: “Carmelite
mysticism begins at the point where the reflections
of Buddha end.”
Young Bishop Wojtyla had taken part very actively
in the forming of the Council documents.
He didn’t think that there were any problems
with them.
He knew what they meant, and what the fathers
meant.
If Dr. Marshall doesn’t understand the documents,
he needs to spend more time getting familiar
with the philosophical terminology.
The Council Fathers had regard for a number
of philosophical systems, for example Bonaventure
(Benedict’s favorite), thomism, neo-thomism
and especially phenomenology (greatly appreciated
by St. Edith Stein and St. John Paul.)
Dr. Marshall is very much limited to St. Thomas
Aquinas, and that, I fear is his main handicap.
There are a number of questions that Aquinas
never addressed because the topic wasn’t
on anyone’s radar in the 13th century, and
Aristotilian philosophy wasn’t broad enough
anyway.
Dignitate Humanis
The final problematic phrase that Dr. Marshall
quotes from the voluminous lucid and unambiguous
documentation from the Council is “people
have a right to worship in their own way.”
Dr. Marshall complains that nobody has a right
to worship the wrong God, or even to worship
Satan.
Notice that he’s rephrasing the text.
First of all, God respects our freedom so
much that he allows us to choose other gods
besides Himself, even to make a pact with
Satan, or even to worship self.The men who
crafted this document wanted to assert a fundamental
right to worship, because they had just experienced
several wars with totalitarian regimes.
In past centuries, citizens were obliged to
belong to the same religion, and worship the
same deity as the king or else leave the country.
That was the historical norm.
In modern, atheistic regimes, no one can worship
any God.
During this Council, the deliberations of
prelates were being observed by world leaders
whose people desired respect for human rights
as the path to peace.
If Dr. Marshall rejects the concept of freedom
to worship, for everyone except Catholics
because only Catholics worship the correct
God, then he needs to find a very unique country
to live in.
Certainly, it’s easier to live in a land
where everyone professes the same creed, but
that would compromise human freedom and human
dignity.
And there is no chance for Catholics to mingle
with humanity and be a light for the world,
bearing witness to the truth of Christ.
Many saints spent periods of their lives in
a wrong religion, or even in agnosticism as
they felt their way forward to the Catholic
Church.
Dr. Marshall, you yourself were living in
the wrong religion!
Look at Augustine.
He could dialog so well because he knew the
pagan philosophies from the inside.
Great saints like Edith Stein would not be
allowed to encounter Catholics during her
search for the truth because they would all
be living in CatholicLand where no one but
Catholics may enter.
Jesus said that the Truth will set us free.
People need to be free to seek the Truth.
Finally, he makes a plea for the phantom of
the “Liturgical Hermeneutic of Continuity”
Trad-Catholics seem to forget or be oblivious
to the brutal fact that with the Council of
Trent, Pope St. Pius V flattened many Latin
rites and Latin usages to enforce a “uniform”
liturgy from the top down.
The saint also suppressed a plethora of polyphonic
Gregorian chants which the Council Fathers
deemed too cumbersome.
That Council was reacting to the wind of Protestant
revolt sweeping through the Church.
Pius V, like a general, bellowed orders to
keep the Church militant marching together
in a tight formation.
If you imagine that the Tridentine Mass represented
a hermeneutic of continuity, you are in lala
land.
When Jesus founded the Church, the 12 Apostles
spread out in different directions, each celebrating
the divine liturgy, first in Aramaic, then
in Greek, and finally in the language of the
land where they landed.
Do you think the Apostle Thomas carried a
Latin missal to India with rubrics printed
in red letters?
In the New Testament it’s clear that the
liturgy was part of a meal, and in the memorandums
of St. Justin martyr he explains that the
priest gives thanks “in his own words to
the best of his ability.”
The Divine Office was celebrated in such diversity
through the centuries, that it’s impossible
to chart it accurately.
The Mass wasn’t much different in the early
centuries.
There were many rites in many languages among
the eastern Catholics, and there still are.
As for the west, eventually the language of
the western part of the Roman empire prevailed
so much that common people could no longer
understand the Mass or read Scripture in Greek.
The Pope commissioned the monk-priest Jerome
to produce a vulgar Bible for the common man.
Vulgate, you know, means common.
Mass was thus celebrated in common, vulgar
Latin even as the NT had been written in kitchen,
non-classical, Greek.
Yet the composition of the Eucharistic prayer
could be spontaneous at each celebration or
whatever local custom developed.
Was every local custom laudable?
The twenty year-long Council of Trent evaluated
many of these liturgies and few passed muster.
The pope asked the bishops to enforce one
particular manner of celebrating Mass, which
for the Catholics of the 16th century was
a novelty, a Novus Ordo.
Today we renamed that old Novus Ordo the Tridentine
Mass, while the recent Council’s liturgy
is the new Novus Ordo.
How many times have you heard some ignorant
Catholic say, “I just want the old Mass
because it’s the Mass of the saints.”
“If it was good enough for St. Thomas More
it’s good enough for me.”
What dolts these Catholics are!
St. Thomas More died before Trent.
He lived in England.
He either attended Masses in the Canterbury
Rite or the Salisbury Rite, or else he attended
Mass celebrated in monasteries according to
their particular usages.
All these ignorant discussions are the work
of the devil to sow discord and division in
the ranks of solid, orthodox Catholics who
would not hesitate to face lions in the arena
to bear witness to Jesus Christ.
It’s diabolic.
Diabalo is to divide.
That’s the oldest strategy in the world,
to divide and conquer.
Together we should be standing shoulder to
shoulder, a solid, formidable wall against
the culture of death.
Divided we’ll be mowed down.
STOP BICKERING EVERYBODY!
Stop rejecting your fellow Catholics over
points that have nothing to do with the Faith,
and everything to do with emotions or personal
tastes.
Dr. Marshall, cease and desist, or you will
have to give an accounting before the just
Judge.
May Jesus and Mary be loved by all hearts.
