Some Conclusions and An Archbishop Speaks

Some Conclusions

I will now sum up very briefly what I have tried to convey to you:

1) Since the Second Vatican Council there has been a revolution rather than a reform within the liturgy of the Roman Rite.
2) Even the officially approved changes were far more radical than Pope John XXIII and the Council Fathers had intended.
3) Few of these official changes were actually mandated by the Council.
4) There have been countless unofficial abuses, such as dancing in the sanctuary, which bishops have condoned and sometimes actively supported.
5) Some of the officially approved changes break with the consistent liturgical tradition of the Roman Rite, and contradict the clear teaching of Roman Pontiffs.
6) Protestant Observers played an active part in concocting the New Mass, which incorporates many disturbing ecumenical concessions even in the papally-approved Latin version.
7) The ICEL version of the Mass contains so many serious linguistic and doctrinal deficiencies that it is legitimate to complain that it is not the rite of Mass approved by Rome.
8) The Revolution has been a pastoral fiasco which has produced no good fruits.
9) The Roman Rite has been destroyed.

An Archbishop Speaks

 I will conclude my talk by quoting just one sentence written by Archbishop Lefebvre. It sums up exactly what I have been saying to you tonight. "All these changes," he wrote in 1974, "have but one justification; an aberrant senseless ecumenism that will not attract a single Protestant to the Faith, but will cause countless Catholics to lose it, and will instill total confusion in the minds of many more who will no longer know what is true and what is false."

Reverend Fathers, ladies and gentlemen, if you will have the fairness to consider this sentence very carefully, if you will look around you at the liturgical situation in your own country with complete objectivity, if you examine your old missals as I have suggested, and note for yourselves the changes that have been made, do you know, I have a feeling that some of you just might agree with him.