Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter’s Simultaneous Continuity and Rupture at the Vatican
Simultaneous continuity and rupture at the Vatican.
On the left, the celebration of the immemorial Mass of all time at St. Peter’s.
On the right, on the same day, Vatican colonnade draped in color banners celebrating the most revolutionary acts of Pope John Paul II. Above are photos from his 1986
pan-religious meeting at Assisi, and his 1986 visit to the Rome synagogue.
Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter’s
Simultaneous Continuity and Rupture at the Vatican
by John Vennari
On Sunday May 15 at 8:00 am, a Pontifical High Tridentine Mass was celebrated at the Vatican at the Altar of St. Peter’s Chair. I was privileged to attend this historic Mass, as I had been in Rome the previous week for the Fatima Center’s “Consecration Now!” conference.
The Vatican that morning was a striking illustration of the simultaneous continuity and rupture coming from the hands of the same man. We will start first with the continuity.
The Palestrina Mass
 From the Pontifical Mass at the Vatican, May 15, 2011 |
The Altar of St. Peter’s Chair where the Mass was offered is a major altar at the Vatican. It is located directly behind St. Peter’s Main Altar with its signature Bernini columns. Various reports indicate it was the first time the Tridentine Mass had been celebrated at the Altar of St. Peter’s Chair in decades.
The Mass was celebrated by Walter Cardinal Brandmüller.
It opened with long, impressive procession of prelates and priests to Bach’s Preludio in Sol maggiore. Apart from the Celebrant, a number of recognized names were seen proceeding up the aisle, such as Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei; Cardinal Franc Rode; Cardinal Domenico Bartollucci of whom we will speak later; Bishop Athanasius Shneider, Bishop Peter Elliott, Bishop Marc Aillet and other prelates
Also in procession were Msgr. Giles Wach, Founder and Prior of the Institute of Christ the King; Msgr. M. Michael Schmitz, Vicar General of the ICK and Providential Superior of the United States; Superiors and clergy from the Fraternity of Saint Peter; groups of Franciscans and Dominicans; and clergy from several other Congregations and dioceses. The entrance procession alone took a good nine minutes.
The Mass was the crowning event of a three day conference in Rome on Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio on the Old Latin Liturgy.
The Pontifical Mass was indeed magnificent: Christ-centered, reverent, holy, majestic, masculine, thoroughly Roman. It was celebrated with careful attention to correct rubrics befitting the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. The Palestrina Mass, hymns and other liturgical pieces were beautifully executed by choir and organist.
At least 500 attended the early morning Mass, not including the large number of clergy that filled the sanctuary. Some were dressed properly, others according to the new laxity. The majority of women had no head-coverings. By the end of the liturgy, it was difficult to determine how many had come specifically for the Pontifical Mass, and how many had drifted in while on a Sunday morning visit to St. Peter’s.
For example, at Communion time I saw a young woman in slacks cup her palms to receive Communion in the hand. The priest had to gesture to her at least three times before she finally understood she was expected to receiving kneeling and on the tongue. The young woman seemed genuinely baffled. Apparently no one had ever refused her Communion in the hand before.
Cardinal Bartolucci
One prelate who arrested my attention during the entrance procession was an ancient churchman in Cardinal’s robe assisted in his haltering steps by a young cleric.
I later learned this man was 94-year-old Domenico Cardinal Bartolucci, who was made an ‘ad honorem’ Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI this past October. A maestro of Gregorian and Polyphonic liturgical music, he had been “perpetual director of the Sistine Chapel Choir that accompanies the Pope’s liturgies”.
In 1997, however, as Sandro Magistro reports, Bartolucci had been “treacherously expelled” from the Sistine chapel choir by the directors of the pontifical ceremonies under John Paul II. “What a shame that since then” writes Magistro, “the choir of the Sistine chapel has fallen to abysmal levels.”
The Cardinal’s hat bestowed on Bartolucci is regarded as a rehabilitation of Bartoloccui, even though Magistro writes that the newly appointed director of the Sistine Chapel choir is a protégé of the Vatican Secretary of State, and not truly worthy of the position.
Cardinal Bartolucci conducted Palestrina’s Credo at the Pontifical Mass at the Vatican on May 15, clearly a great joy for this aging churchman.
The Mass was also a great joy for me personally, as it could represent a major step forward for the Tridentine Mass. The average layman who has not studied the matter closely is not always given to nuances about the various problems apparent in both Summorum Pontificum and the new Universae Ecclesiae. All he knows is that the Old Latin Mass was celebrated at St. Peter’s with a large number of prelates and priests in attendance, and this further legitimizes the celebration of the Tridentine Mass in his mind.
This is a far cry from the situation of the Old Mass in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. I remember traditionalist priests in the 1980s, such as Father Francis LeBlanc, celebrating the Tridentine Mass on the sneak at a side altar at the Vatican.
If I recall correctly, Father LeBlanc did not ask permission to offer the Old Latin Mass, he simply said to the Sacristan, “I have to say my Mass, may I use one of the altars?” and the Sacristan would give the go-ahead without realizing the “forbidden” liturgy would be celebrated. I seem to remember Father Paul Wickens doing the same thing.
But on Sunday May 15, a Pontifical High Mass echoed through the Vatican itself in broad daylight, without anyone having to tip-toe through the old missal or play games with mental reservations. In itself, the celebration of the Pontifical Mass is a step forward.
Of course, the triumph of this Mass is dampened by the Vatican’s Cardinal Koch’s May 14 revelation that Pope Benedict’s long term plan for wider use of the old Mass is to eventually form one new liturgy that contains elements from both the old and new Masses (see page 3).
If the true Mass is threatened in any way by incorporating elements of the Protestantized Novus Ordo, concerned Catholics must oppose this plan in full battle dress. We did not fight for the true Mass for 40 years only to have it diluted into a new Conciliar synthesis. Holy Father, please leave the true Mass alone. It needs no improvements, though this might be hard to explain to churchmen who subscribe to the modernist principle of the Church ever-in-evolutionary-flux.
Thank you, Archbishop Lefebvre
As I gloried in the Sunday Pontifical Mass on the morning of May 15, I wondered how many of those in the congregation, the choir or the sanctuary were aware of the fact that the celebration of this Pontifical Mass is primarily due to one man: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
It was Archbishop Lefebvre who refused to compromise on the true faith and the true Mass, and who suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous calumny for doing so.
Without the firm tenacity of Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X, there would probably not have been this glorious Pontifical Mass at the Vatican on May 15.[1] It also must be admitted without malice that were it up to Pope Paul VI or Pope John Paul II, the Latin Tridentine Mass would have been dead and buried decades ago. Paul VI presided over the destruction of the Mass, and John Paul II increased the ruin of liturgy through rock’n’roll extravaganzas at World Youth Day, inculturated liturgies such as the pagan Hindu rituals that comprised the beatification Mass of Mother Teresa, or countless other raucous Masses that defied the Catholic piety of the ages.
Archbishop Lefebvre is indeed a model of true Catholic resistance to the modernist revolution of Vatican II. The Archbishop always knew the fight was not for the Mass only, but for the restoration of the Catholic Faith “whole and entire”. His public stand was for the true Catholic Faith marked by the scholasticism, anti-liberalism, anti-ecumenism and anti-modernism of the Popes prior to 1958. A Catholic will not be satisfied with the restoration of the Mass alone, but will work for the utter collapse of the liberal-Catholicism, anti-scholasticism and modernism that is the hallmark of the post-Vatican II revolution and today's post-Conciliar leaders.
Which brings us back to the Vatican on the morning of May 15 as an illustration of rupture with the past.
A Celebration of Rupture
 Close up of banner at Vatican celebrating John Paul's pan-- religious meeting at Assisi. |
When walking on a cloud out of the magnificent Pontifical Mass at St. Peter’s Sunday morning, my rapture was soon checked when I confronted the Vatican colonnades now literally wallpapered with photos from the pontificate of John Paul II.
John Paul II’s “beatification” had taken place at the Vatican only two weeks earlier, and the remnants of the celebration were still very much thrust upon us.
At least 26 banners containing large color pictures of John Paul II’s life covered the eastern Vatican colonnade. On display on bright yellow banners were photos from his 1986 pan-religious prayer meeting at Assisi, his 1986 visit to the synagogue; his praying at Israel’s wailing wall; his inculturated liturgies with pagan religions.
Just minutes after celebrating the Mass of All Time, we are assaulted with the brutal contradictions that flow from modernist mind. On the one hand, we see Pope Benedict encourage the Old Liturgy in Latin which is a most visible sign of continuity with the Faith of the centuries; and on the other, we see the same Pope Benedict glorify Pope John Paul II whose pontificate was defined by revolution and rupture with the past. This rupture includes the Assisi pan-religious prayer gathering, the visit to the synagogue, the pagan inculturation ceremonies, all of which are celebrated in living color on the Vatican colonnade.
What’s worse, the Pontifical Mass was a two-hour event on a lone Sunday morning. The color photos of John Paul’s revolution are still on full display on the Vatican colonnade, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; and for at least three weeks as we go to press. In the long run, it is John Paul’s revolution that will leave its imprint on the mind of the average Catholic who visits the Vatican while these banners are on display.
Assisi
It pays to revisit one of the most revolutionary acts of John Paul II now depicted at the Vatican, an act so manifestly un-Catholic that there are now young Catholics born after the event who find it so scandalous they believe it never happened.
On October 27, 1986, at the invitation of John Paul II, 160 leaders of the world’s religions gathered at Assisi Italy to pray for peace. It was an unprecedented event that defied 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine and practice.
Of this Assisi prayer meeting, then-chief Vatican spokesman and Opus Dei member Joaquin Navarro‑Valls, exclaimed with apparent approval, “Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of mankind.”[2]
The 12 religions represented at the Assisi prayer meeting were African animists, American Indians, Bahais, Buddhists, “Christians”,[3] Jains, Jews, Hindus, Moslems, Shintoists, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians.
Among those attending were the Dalai Lama, Robert Runcie (Anglican “Archbishop” of Canterbury), Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev, who represented the Russian Orthodox Church, Muneyoshi Tokugawa, president of the Shinto Shrine Association of Tokyo.
The Chicago Tribune, commenting on the event, remarked that the day of prayer “ended in a unique dinner when the Pope played host to men whom most of his predecessors regarded as heathens.”[4]
At the Assisi meeting, the different religions formed 12 groups and dispersed among Romanesque churches, Baroque churches, and Medieval palaces, so that each religion could pray separately.
Vatican officials tried to deflect criticism on the plea that “at no time did all the participants pray together, they were brought ‘together to pray’.” This, however, is a classic distinction without a difference, since gathering all religions together in full view of the world gives a great boost to the heresy of liberalism that one religion is as good as another; or more precisely, that any religion is good enough for salvation, which is the prevalent error of modern times. In truth, the Assisi meeting was liberalism and religious indifferentism enfleshed.
Further, Sacred Scripture forbids Church leaders to engage in any activity that gives even the appearance of scandal. St. Paul upbraided Peter (the first Pope) because St. Peter gave scandal to the Christians at Antioch. “I withstood him (Peter) to his face, because he was to be blamed.”30 (Gal. 2: 14)
At the Assisi meeting, however, scandal ruled the hour. Practically every pagan aberration was represented as a respectable religion whose false gods may be invoked for the sake of world peace.
• In a chapel overlooking the rolling hills of Umbria, the head of the Zoroastrian church in Bombay, Dr. Homi Dhalla, sat alone before a burning brazier praying to the fire he said symbolized his god.
• Next door, a group of six turbaned Sikhs sat chanting their prayers in the lotus position to the music of a gramophone.
• An Indian guru named Paramahansa Yogandanda, representing one of the many sects that had joined the ecumenical gathering at Assisi, was distributing his own prayer leaflets in the streets while members of the Hari Krishna sect canvassed for disciples.
• At an old Roman temple close to the town hall, Moslems sat on prayer mats under the auspices of Saudi Arabian Sheik Mohammed Nasir, Secretary of the world Islamic League.
• African animists in their colorful off‑the‑shoulder togas, invoked the spirits of trees and plants to come to the aid of peace.
• One African animist snake worshiper delivered a staccato prayer to “Almighty God, The Great Thumb” from a platform in Assisi’s Renaissance city hall. At his prayer, the witch doctor cursed “all the wicked persons who frustrate this laudable effort made to achieve peace,” and added, “Let all the evil ancestors and spirits receive their drink and flee to their doom.”[5]
• Only the Jewish contingent, led by Rome’s Rabbi Taoff, did not enter a Christian church. The Jews prayed around a table outside the church of the young St. Francis.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “It was the more esoteric religions that drew the largest crowds of onlookers, the most sought‑after was Chief John Pretty‑onTop” a Medicine Man of the Crow Indians who conducted his superstitious ritual in full Indian regalia, including headdress.
The Indian Chief “offered stentorian intonations against the evil sprits in the Crow language, waving a straw fan like a magic wand. A pieta painting, depicting the dying Jesus with the Madonna looking down on him from behind the altar.”
At one point, “Chief Pretty‑on‑Top offered to cast out evil spirits of anyone who sought to be thus cleansed. Many came forward, including a young Franciscan monk.”[6]
But perhaps the greatest outrage occurred when,
“The Buddhists, led by the Dalai Lama, quickly converted the altar of the Church of San Pietro by placing a small statue of the Buddha atop the tabernacle and setting prayer scrolls and incense burners around it.”[7]
Even the Vatican’s Cardinal Oddi voiced public disapproval of the Assisi outrage:
“On that day ... I walked through Assisi ... And I saw real profanations in some places of prayer. I saw Buddhists dancing around the altar upon which they placed Buddha in the place of Christ and then incensed it and showed it reverence. A Benedictine protested and the police took him away ... There was obvious confusion in the faces of the Catholics who were assisting at the ceremony.”[8]
Freemasons Applaud John Paul’s Assisi
 Freemasons publicly applauded John Paul II’s pan-religious prayer meeting at Assisi, claiming it was a manifestation of the Masonic doctrine for which they were condemned by previous Popes |
Yet if Cardinal Oddi disapproved, the Masonic Lodge celebrated. Shortly after John Paul’s meeting at Assisi, Freemasons voiced public support for the pan-religious prayer gathering as a vindication of their own vile doctrine:
“Our interconfessionalism earned us the excommunication issued by Clement XI in 1738. However, the Church was certainly in error if it is true that on October 27, 1986, the present pontiff [John Paul II] united in Assisi men of all religious confessions to pray together for peace. What indeed did our brothers seek as they gathered in their temples, if not love for all mankind, tolerance, solidarity, defense of the dignity of the human person, considering themselves as equals above political creeds, religious creeds, and the color of their skin.”[9]
Of course the Lodge rejoices, as the ecumenism advanced by Vatican II is actually a reflection of the religion of Freemasonry. The French Freemason Yves Marsauden wrote approvingly:
“One can say that ecumenism is the legitimate son of Freemasonry ... In our times, our brother Franklin Roosevelt claimed for all of them the possibility of ‘adoring God, following their principles and their convictions.’ This is tolerance, and it is also ecumenism. We traditional Freemasons allow ourselves to paraphrase and transpose this saying of a celebrated statesman, adapting it to circumstances: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant, Israelites, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, freethinkers, free‑believers, to us, these are only first names; Freemasonry is the name of our family.”[10]
It is a sad fact that the religion of Freemasonry was on full display by John Paul II at Assisi on October 27, 1986. John Paul held a second Assisi meeting in 2002. And Pope Benedict plans a pan-religious meeting at Assisi for October of this year to mark the 25th Anniversary of John Paul’s first event.
Speaking in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on January 1, 2011, Pope Benedict said the aim of the upcoming October summit would be to “to solemnly renew the effort of those with faith of all religions to live their faith as a service for the cause of peace…” He said the summit would also “honor the memory of the historical event promoted by my predecessor”.[11] Hindus immediately agreed to participate.[12]
Assisi: Catholic Youngsters Can’t Believe It
While preparing this article I learned of a homeschool online discussion now going on amongst 6th to 9th graders. A traditional Catholic youth was telling non-traditionalist Catholic acquaintances about Pope John Paul II’s pan-religious meeting at Assisi and the youngsters refuse to believe it. They claim it cannot be true; that the Assisi photos are doctored; that that no Pope – especially one “beatified” by Benedict XVI - would perform this act of ecclesiastical treason.
 An online chat drama: when a traditional Catholic youngster recently told 6th-to-9th grade non-traditional Catholic friends about John Paul II’s pan-religious meeting at Assisi, the youngsters refused to believe it. They claim it is a malicious story with doctored photos spread to defame "Blessed” John Paul II, since no pope would undertake such an un-Catholic initiative. |
The young traditional Catholic who told his acquaintances about Assisi is accused of making up the account; of trying to defame the name of “Blessed” Pope John Paul II by inventing a malicious story about a pagan-packed, pan-religious meeting that no Pope would countenance.
Now, here’s the most important point: The children know the Assisi prayer meeting is wrong. The children know it is not Catholic. The children know it is a scandal of colossal dimension, and refuse to believe John Paul II could be guilty of it. To their credit, these youngsters have a better sensus Catholicus than today’s Vatican leaders.
If Catholic homeschool children under the age 12 recognize the scandal of the pan-religious meeting at Assisi, why cannot Pope Benedict XVI? Why is Benedict further legitimizing this scandal by beatifying the man who performed the act twice and who showed no sign of regret? Why is Benedict commemorating the act this October at Assisi with his own pan-religious jamboree? And why does Pope Benedict allow full color posters of this outrageous event to be plastered on the colonnade of St. Peter’s for all to see and admire?
This is the dire state in which we find ourselves. Pope Benedict is first and foremost a man of Vatican II who on the one hand will advance the cause of the Old Latin Mass (even if it is to perhaps eventually merge it with certain aspects of the Novus Ordo), and on the other give the appearance of support for some of John Paul II’s most scandalous acts of revolution and rupture.
While I am thankful for whatever strides are made to re-establish the Old Latin Mass in the Catholic world, the last thing we need is a new synthesis of traditional liturgy and modernist thinking. We don’t want a new breed of clergy who perform the Tridentine Mass, but simultaneously subscribe to liberal Catholicism, as was the case with the Modernists at the time of Pius X and the neo-Modernists in the years up to the Council.[13]
Let us not forget that the modernists and neo-modernist clergy prior to the liturgical revolution -- Fathers Alfred Loisey, George Tyrrell; Karl Rahner, Yves Congar; Henri Boulliard; Edward Schillebeeckx; Gregory Baum; Henri DeLubac; Hans Kung-- all celebrated the Tridentine Mass daily while simultaneously holding a head full of liberal tenets. Though it may be a step in the right direction, the recent past tells us that celebration of the Tridentine Mass is no guarantee of orthodoxy.
Our duty is to work for the re-establishment of the entire Catholic Tradition – whole and inviolate - in both liturgy and doctrine. We will advance the Catholic Faith, as Vatican I and the Oath Against Modernism teaches, “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” as what the Church always held, without any mixture of liberalism, ecumenism or the Council’s new tenets of religious liberty that even Father Yves Congar admits is the opposite of what was taught by Leo XIII through Pius XII.[14] In the process, we will openly and continually resist the progressivism of Vatican II and its reforms.
“Most Deplorable Error”
 I confess I will not take Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity” seriously until I hear him thunder in continuity with his pre-Vatican II predecessors, the condemnation of religious indifferentism taught by the great pontiffs such as Pope Gregory XVI [above]. |
In closing, we can thank God for any legitimate gains for the true Mass in the Church. I truly believe it was a great grace for the Pontifical Mass to be held at the Vatican, and I am thankful to have attended.
At the same time, we must pray and work for a full restoration of the Faith. We can pray that Heaven may soon send us a Thomistic Pope who does not give us a counterfeit “hermeneutic of continuity”, which is merely a new synthesis of Tradition and Conciliar liberalism, but rather a Pontiff who will deliver a no-nonsense reiteration of the anti-liberal, anti-modernist and anti-ecumenist doctrine of all the pre-Vatican II Popes.
The Vatican on May 15, with its simultaneous Pontifical High Mass and larger-than-life celebration of John Paul II’s revolution is visual manifestation of Benedict XVI and his pontificate. No matter how well-meaning he may be, I confess I will not take Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity” seriously until I hear him thunder in continuity with his pre-Vatican II predecessors, the condemnation of religious indifferentism taught by the great pontiffs such as Pope Gregory XVI; and when Benedict’s policies are in line with this condemnation.
“Now” taught Pope Gregory XVI, “we come to another very fertile cause of the evils by which, we are sorry to see, the contemporary Church being afflicted. This is indifferentism, or that wicked opinion which has grown up on all sides through the deceit of evil men. According to this opinion, the eternal salvation of the soul can be attained by any kind of profession of faith, as long as a man’s morals are in line with the standard of justice and honesty. You must drive out from the people entrusted to your care this most deplorable error on a matter so obviously important and so completely clear. For, since the Apostle has warned that there is one God, one faith, one baptism, those who pretend that the way to [eternal] beatitude starts from any religion at all should be afraid and should seriously think over the fact that, according to the testimony of the Savior Himself, they are against Christ because they are not for Christ; and that they are miserably scattering because they are not gathering with Him; and that consequently, they are most certainly going to perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith and keep it whole and inviolate”.[15]
Notes
[1] This is not to devalue the heroic work of the independent traditional priests throughout the years, such as Father Marian Palandrano, Father John Keane, Father Francis LeBlanc, Father Thomas Ross, Father Paul Wickens, Father Victor Mroz and the others. Archbishop Lefebvre, however, founded a worldwide priestly society that was – and still is – a force to be reckoned with.
[2] “City of Saint Francis Prepares for His Modern Heirs”, Robert Suro, New York Times, Sept. 26, 1986.
[3] Catholics, the Pope included, were simply folded in with schismatic and heretical Protestant sects under the umbrella name, “Christian”.
[4] “Peace Has a Prayer at Assisi”, Ubi Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28, 1986.
[5] “60 Religious Leaders Join Pontiff; Streets of Assisi Ring with Prayers for Peace,” Don A. Schanche, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 1986.
[6] “Peace Has a Prayer at Assisi”, Ubi Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28, 1986. [emphasis added]
[7] “12 Faiths Join Pope to Pray for Peace,” Robert Suro, New York Times, Oct. 28, 1986.
[8] “Confissões de um Cardeal,” Interview granted by Cardinal Oddi to Tommasco Ricci, 30 Dias, Nov., 1990, p. 64. Cited from Quo Vadis Petre? by Atila Sinke Guimarães (Tradition in Action, Los Angeles, 1999), pp. 5‑6.
[9] Armando Corona, Grand Master of the Great Lodge of the Equinox and of the Springtime, Hirum, April 1987. Quoted from One Hundred Years of Modernism, Father Dominic Bourmaud [Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2006], p. 317.
[10] Yves Marsaudon, Oecumènisme vu par un Maçon de Tradition (pp. 119‑120). English translation cited from Peter Lovest Thou Me? (Instauratio Press, 1988), p. 170. Except for the first line “One can say ...” which was translated into English by Suzanne M. Rini.
[11] “Pope Benedict XVI to Hold Religious Peace Summit”, BBC, Jan. 1, 2011.
[12] “Hindus okay for participation in Pope’s religious peace summit”, ANI, Jan. 2, 2011.
[13] See “The Components of Liberal Catholicism”, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, July, 1958.
[14] Father Congar said, “What is new in this teaching [Vatican II’s doctrine of religious liberty] in relation to the doctrine of Leo XIII and even of Pius XII … is the determination of the basis peculiar to this liberty, which is sought not in the objective truth of moral or religious good, but in the ontological quality of the human person.” I Accuse the Council, [Kansas City, Angelus Press], p. 21.
[15] Pope Gregory XVI, Morari vos arbitramur, August 15, 1832.
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