Catholics welcome a return to order and meaning in the Mass

November 28th's New York Times carried a fascinating op-ed piece by Kenneth J. Wolfe, the first traditional Catholic to contribute to the left-liberal paper in living memory. Mr. Wolfe explains how it was that Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who should have been excommunicated, being a Freemason, came to destroy the traditional Mass of St. Pius V, the Tridentine Mass, the Mass of All Time.

The story goes back to 1948, when Pope Pius XII, who was opposed to any modernization of the traditional Latin Mass, in use for over four centuries, nevertheless appointed Bugnini to the Vatican's liturgical commission. One wonders if Pius knew that Bugnini “aimed at appeasing non-Catholics, and…emulating Protestant services…including placing altars to face the people instead of a sacrifice toward the liturgical east.”

Wolfe’s piece quotes Bugnini’s infamous declaration: “We must strip from our...Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.”

And he succeeded, at least partly because none of Pius's successors knew or cared much about the liturgy. The next pope, John XXIII, named Bugnini secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of Vatican II, in which position he worked with Catholic clergymen and, surprisingly, some Protestant ministers on liturgical reforms. In 1962 he wrote what would eventually become the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the document that gave the form of the new Mass.

Wolfe recounts how Bugnini changed so many things so quickly and so completely that the popes themselves sometimes did not know the latest directives. He tells how Pope Paul VI once questioned the vestments set out for him by his staff, saying they were the wrong color, only to be told "he" had eliminated the week-long celebration of Pentecost and could not wear the corresponding red garments for Mass. The pope’s master of ceremonies then saw Paul break down in tears.

"What a telling bit of history this is," says Catholic commentator Christopher Ferrara. Since Vatican II, he says, "the Pope has too often become a rubber stamp for the whims of the Vatican bureaucracy, whose functionaries all purport to act in his name and with his 'full authority'. The result of this factory-like process is that a Pope confronted with a fait accompli enacted in his name may lack the hardihood to overturn it."

Thanks be to God, we at last have a Pope, Benedict XVI, who seems to want to undo the incalculable damage of Vatican II. In particular, Benedict seems bent on "reforming the reform", to restore to the faithful the true Mass, the traditional Mass which served us so well for so long.

Wolfe concludes with praise for Pope Benedict XVI’s "counterrevolution". He ends with this indictment of the past forty years of "liturgical reform":
"Bugnini may have finally met his match in Benedict XVI… 40 years of the new Mass have brought chaos and banality into the most visible and outward sign of the Church. Benedict XVI wants a return to order and meaning. So, it seems, does the next generation of Catholics."