 Father Frechette Objects "Well, all right," I can imagine some intrepid supporter of the revolution saying, it might well be Father Frechette of Baltimore. Let's picture him sitting on the trunk in which he conceals visiting priests before they leap out to celebrate Mass, preside over the family meal, or do whatever it is they believe they do when they stand behind the table. He pats his little dog on the head. "Well, all right, let's concede that you are right," he says, "let's concede that there has been a revolution rather than a reform, that most of the changes were not mandated by Vatican II, that some even contradict its teaching, that many Protestant practices-----I would rather call them 'insights'-----have been incorporated into our liturgy, that the English we use is not quite what Shakespeare would have written (but who reads Shakespeare today, anyway?), all this may be true-----but look at the great pastoral benefits which the reform has brought. Surely that is what really matters. The people can understand the Mass now, they can play an active part, they enjoy coming to church. When we consider this, all the objections you have been making are mere pedantry. You people are not better than modern-day Pharisees." He pats his little dog on the head once more, and smiles at us complacently. "By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them" My answer to this viewpoint, which I have often heard expressed, is that the liturgical reform has brought no pastoral benefits at all. If, as we are assured, the traditional Latin Mass was an obstacle to understanding and participation, then the first and most obvious fruit of the revolution would have been a dramatic increase in Mass attendance. In no country can any evidence be produced of such an increase. In most Western countries there has been a decline which can be described justly as catastrophic: declines of over 60% in France and Holland, 50% in Italy, 30% in the United States, 30% in Great Britain. What these figures mean is that tens of millions, I repeat, tens of millions of men and women who went to Mass in the bad old days when the liturgy was supposed to have alienated them from the Church have ceased to attend now. And yet, according to the "experts," it has been a great pastoral success and we are deliriously happy with it. Listen to Archbishop Bugnini for the very last time: "The renewed Mass was received with joy, with enthusiasm, and in a short time entered into the practice of the Christian people with obvious advantages to the community." Well, if I may quote the Duke of Wellington again: "If you believe that, you'll believe anything." Now, these liturgical experts are very strange people. They keep telling us that the revolution has been a tremendous pastoral success, and when we prove to them that it has not been, they reply that the undeniable decline in Mass attendance can't be attributed to the post-conciliar changes. Can't it indeed! They repeat an old adage with which you are probably familiar, post hoc non ergo propter hoc, which I will translate as "afterwards, but not necessarily because of." Because the decline followed the reform it does not necessarily follow that it was because of the reform. Well, suppose in your country the reform had been followed by a 30% increase in Mass attendance, and some reactionary Catholic who preferred Latin said that it could not be proved that this had anything to do with the changes, would the liturgical "experts" have taken him seriously? Of course, they wouldn't. Nor do I take them seriously when they argue that the current decline has nothing to do with their revolution. I am not arguing that the liturgical revolution is the only cause of the decline. The principal reason is a triumphant resurgence of the Modernism condemned by Pope St. Pius X. The liturgical revolution is an effect, not the cause, of this resurgent Modernism, but it is through the liturgical revolution that the lives of ordinary Catholics have been most immediately affected. The way they now worship reflects what they now believe-----lex orandi, lex credendi. One cannot help recalling an observation made by Msgr. Philip Hughes in his classic history of the English Reformation: This Prayer Book of 1549 was as clear a sign as a man might desire that a doctrinal revolution was intended and that it was, indeed, already in progress. Once these new sacramental rites, for example, had become the habit of the English people the substance of the doctrinal reformation, victorious now in northern Europe, would have transformed England also. All but insensibly, as the years went by, the beliefs enshrined in the old and now disused rites, and kept alive by these rites in men's minds and affections, would disappear-----without the need of any systematic, missionary effort to preach them down. And pending the arrival of the day when such missionaries could be found, and trained to preach the meaning of the new, these rites newly revised would dispose the minds of those who used them, forming habits of piety for which only the new theologies could give a congenial explanation. 11 11) Msgr. Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, (London, 1953), Vol, II, p.111. HOME
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