Promulgating Sacrosanctum Concilium Has Led to a Liturgical Trainwreck

David Martin | The Daily Knight

The liturgical Reform of Vatican II was Masonically Generated

Railroading the Catholic Church under the guise of a reform has been the major ploy of the modernists in these last times. It is deplorable that spurious innovations have crept into the Church without them being questioned by the Catholic hierarchy. The change of liturgy at Vatican II no doubt was the most destructive innovation ever introduced to the Church, which has led to an ecclesial trainwreck. The hierarchy has yet to look into the real origin of the New Mass, known as the Novus Ordo Missae. 1

The principal architect of the new Mass was Msgr. Annibale Bugnini, a Freemason, who helped generate the tsunami of change at Vatican II. He and his Protestant clique formed the eye of this conciliar hurricane that would set the Barque of Peter onto a new and destructive course.

With the help of the Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy established in 1960, Bugnini drafted up what is known as the “Bugnini Draft,” which was approved seven months before Vatican II even convened. From that point in time there was very little text, if any, to be added to the document.

When Vatican II convened in October 1962, there were 72 documents that Pope John XXIII presented to the Council, i.e. the 72 schemas, all of which were worthy and orthodox, but the Council rejected them. Most of them were thrown into the wastepaper basket and booed by the bishops because the schemas called for a strict retention of Catholic tradition.

However, the Bugnini Draft, which was not part of the set, became the darling of the Council, which was applauded and cheered by nearly all the bishops at the Council. As mentioned above, the draft was already completed excepting a few small details. According to liturgical expert Michael Davies, Vatican II simply served to push the liturgical schema through, whereupon it was officially adopted as The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy on December 7, 1962. The liturgical Constitution would then change names and assume its final name of Sacrosanctum Concilium on December 4, 1963. The purpose of the document was to guide liturgists in the implementation of the New Mass of Vatican II.

Historic Turning Point

The new liturgical Constitution was historic in that it signaled a revolt from the everlasting ordinance. From the earliest times the sacrifices to God were done facing the tabernacle. This point is affirmed by acclaimed liturgist Monsignor Klaus Gamber, whom Pope Benedict XVI while a cardinal proclaimed as a prophet for our time. “We can say and convincingly demonstrate that neither in the Eastern nor the Western Church was there ever a celebration facing the people.” There is no disputing that the sacrificial offering was always done facing God until modern times.

Vatican II marked the first time in history that the priest offered the sacrifice facing the people with his back to the tabernacle (versus populum). The enemy knew that a new direction for the Church could not be set in motion unless the liturgy was first altered.

The switch from Mass ad orientum to Mass versus populum was set into place at the Second Vatican Council. The Sept. 26, 1964 conciliar instruction, 2 Inter Oecumenici, article 91, called for Mass with the priest facing the people with his back to the tabernacle.

The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people.

What has ensued is a historic shift of focus where the emphasis today is on the community and not on God. The faithful seem to turn to each other in humanist guru fashion, fulfilling the prophetic statement of Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII) in response to the Third Secret of Fatima, when he said that the Church “will be tempted to believe that man has become God.” (1931)

Sacrosanctum Concilium and its Pseudo Renewal

The “reform” of the liturgy would be implemented according to the norms of the conciliar document Sacrosanctum Concilium, which called for a general revision of the Mass, wherein archaic “elements” accumulated through time “are now to be discarded” and “the rites are to be simplified” so that “active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved.” (50)

This is what the modernists called a renewal or restoration of the liturgy, but there was nothing of the liturgy the needed restoring in 1963. Neither had anything fallen out of the liturgy in the previous five centuries, nor had any corrupt elements crept in. The final revision of the liturgy as mandated by St. Pope Pius V had remained intact since 1570. Nothing of the Mass needed restoring.

With that said, consider this excerpt from Sacrosanctum Concilium: 

“Holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy itself. 3 For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed with the passage of time.” (21)

Note that conciliar architects tampered with the rite itself, which is immutable. What was it that these agents of perfidy were trying to restore? What “elements” of the immutable Latin rite needed discarding? Pope Pius V made it clear that any efforts to change the formula of the Mass would “incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.” (Quo Primum, 1570)

This quest for “restoration” accused the Old Mass of having been inadequate for the needs of the faithful, as we read below.

“In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease [e.g. vernacular] and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community.” [21]

Here we see the Council accusing the Old Mass of having alienated the faithful, which has been a scandal to the faithful. The new Mass has turned many against their religious heritage, unlike the old Mass that drew humanity to God.

Fake Restoration

In addition to discarding elements of the old liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium proposed that “other elements which have suffered injury through accidents of history are now to be restored.” (50) This would include the injury suffered by the Reformation through its expulsion by the Council of Trent, which Vatican II lamented as an unfortunate “accident of history.”

Elements of Protestantism indeed were “restored” after the Council so that people would now see the Mass as a lay empowerment movement where the laity can perform liturgical prayers as if they were priests. Take for instance section 53:

“On Sundays and feasts of obligation there is to be restored, after the Gospel and the homily, “the common prayer” or “the prayer of the faithful.” By this prayer, in which the people are to take part, intercession will be made for holy Church, and for the civil authorities.” (SC 53)

In the centuries prior to Vatican II, there never existed a “common prayer” in the Roman Rite, yet Vatican II called for a "restoration" of this as if it had been lost. The common prayer in fact is a Protestant practice stemming from the Reformation and is among those elements which “suffered injury through accidents of history” which were now being "restored." The plan was to reinstate these elements under the pretext of a reform.

Novus Ordo Not Pastoral

Monsignor Gamber, whose work was highly praised by Cardinal Ratzinger, had this to say about the change of liturgy:

“The liturgical reform welcomed with so much idealism and hope by many priests and lay people alike has turned out to be a liturgical destruction of startling proportions, a debacle worsening with each passing year. Instead of the hoped-for renewal of the Church and of Catholic life, we are now witnessing a dismantling of the traditional values and piety on which our faith rests.” (The Reform of the Roman Liturgy)

Cardinal Ratzinger himself had this to say:

“What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over the centuries, and replaced it—as in a manufacturing process—with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.” (From his preface to The Reform of the Roman Liturgy)

Cardinal Ottaviani, who was special adviser to Pope Paul VI, refuted the New Mass in a letter to His Holiness on September 25, 1969, saying:

“The Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass.” (From his cover letter to his famous Ottaviani Intervention on the New Mass)

The New Mass indeed marked not a renewal but a departure from the Traditional Latin Rite that had never changed through the centuries. Msgr. Gamber says that “unlike the appalling changes we are currently witnessing, the changes made in the Roman Missal over a period of almost 1400 years did not involve the rite itself. Rather, they were changes concerned only with the addition and enrichment of new feast days… and certain prayers.”

Pope Paul Never Abrogated the Old Mass

What is interesting is that Pope Paul VI, so often accused of imposing the new Mass, never forbade the Old Mass. In 1986, a panel of nine Vatican cardinals concluded that Pope Paul VI never abrogated the Mass of Pius V. He neither mandated the New Mass, nor did he grant bishops the right to forbid or restrict priests from saying the Tridentine Latin Mass. Pope John Paul II had commissioned the cardinals to look into the legal status of the old Mass, as it was his intention to bring its legality to light.

This laid the groundwork for Benedict XVI to continue the process of liberating the old rite, which he did via Summorum Pontificum (July 7, 2007), thereby reaffirming the legality of the pre-conciliar Latin Mass. The Motu Proprio did not make the old Mass legal, but made official what already was the case, namely, that it always was the right of priests to say the old Mass without permission from their bishops.

After all, if priests today do not need permission to say a Mass that was never mandated, they certainly don’t need permission to say the Mass that was. Do they need permission to keep the Ten Commandments too?

If Pope Paul VI had truly mandated the New Mass, he would have specified this, but this was never done. Pius V, on the contrary, laid down the law with his subjects, saying, “We order them in virtue of holy obedience to chant or to read the [Tridentine] Mass according to the rite and manner and norm herewith laid down by Us.” He said: “Let Masses not be sung or read according to any other formula than that of this Missal published by Us” mandating that “This new rite alone is to be used.”

Nowhere in the 1969 Missale Romanum does it mandate that the New Mass must be said. The document merely mandates the publication of the new missal, ordering that “the prescriptions of this Constitution go into effect [are published and validated] November 30th of this year” and that it “be firm and effective now and in the future,” but there is no mention of its use.

The decree then validates and makes available the new missal for those who want it, making it an indult. A Traditionalist priest of the Society of St. Pius X, Father Francois Laisney, points out that “Pope Paul VI did not oblige the use of his [new] Mass, but only permitted it. There is no clear order, command, or precept imposing it on any priest!”

According to Fr. Laisney, the same applies to subsequent decrees on the New Mass, including the 1971 Notification from the Congregation of Divine Worship, of which he says: “One cannot find in this text any clear prohibition for any priest to use the traditional Mass nor an obligation to celebrate only the New Mass.”

Father Laisney speaks a pure sentence here. In order for a mandate to exist it must state what the mandate is. If a centuries-old practice is going to be changed and imposed upon the universal Church that will radically alter the worship of millions, then this needs to be spelled out in clear, juridical terms. Without this there is no mandate.

It should also be pointed out that while Pope Paul VI did sign for the New Mass in 1969, he did not design the Mass or want a New Mass, but he unfortunately gave in and yielded to the pressures of those who proposed and designed the Novus Ordo, namely, Bugnini and his clique.

Architect of Confusion

Bugnini was all about creating confusion and disunity in the Church, which is why he and the Consilium changed the liturgical calendar when there was no reason for this. His plans for the Church match those of a Communist agent whose memoirs were discovered after being involved in a fatal auto accident in the mid-sixties. Consider this brief excerpt:

“In the Mass, the words ‘Real Presence’ and ‘Transubstantiation’ must be deleted. We shall speak of ‘Meal’ and ‘Eucharist’ instead. We shall destroy the Offertory and play down the Consecration and, at the same time, we shall stress the part played by the people. In the Mass, as it is today, the priest turns his back to the people and fills a sacrificial function which is intolerable. He appears to offer his Mass to the great Crucifix hanging over the ornate altar.

“We shall pull down the Crucifix, substitute a table for the altar, and turn it around so that the priest may assume a presidential function [facing the people]. The priest will speak to the people much more than before. In this manner the Mass will gradually cease to be regarded as an act of adoration to God, and will become a gathering and an act of human brotherhood. All these points will have to be elaborated in great detail and they may take anywhere up to 30 years before they are implemented, but I think that all my objectives will be fulfilled by 1974.”

Ring any bells? Can we understand why the Church is where it’s at today? Does this not confirm that the radical changes that came upon the Church after Vatican II were largely the work of Marxist and Masonic agents that had captured key positions in the Church?

1. Despite its defects, the new Mass remains valid insofar that the Sacrifice of Calvary is reenacted during the Consecration if the Mass is said by a legally ordained priest.

2. At the top of the document reads, “For the proper implementation of the Mass of Vatican II.”

3. The "liturgy itself" is immutable yet Vatican II changed both the immutable and mutable elements of the Mass.