Cardinal Sarah laments "devastation" of Catholic liturgy

Sadly, what you see in the picture is not an April Fool joke. It's not a joke on any day. It is a "clown mass", as celebrated in what is called a Roman Catholic church. It is but one of the 1000s of grave liturgical abuses committed every year by people calling themselves Catholic priests, following the "reforms" of Second Vatican Council.

One of many poisoned fruits of Vatican II was the unlawful suppression of the tradition Latin Tridentine Mass, the Mass of All Ages. In the interests of "modernizing" the Church, the Council (directed by the Abp. Annibale Bugnini, a Freemason!) decreed that the Mass should be celebrated in the vernacular, the vulgar tongues of the people. And it should be more man-centred than God-centred, and more... wait for it... fun! Yes, just a big happy-clappy celebration of a community coming together for a family supper.

Ten years ago, seeing the horrors that the reforms had wrought -- the "clown masses" are not the worst -- Pope Benedict XVI issued a moto proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which said (as traditional Catholics knew all along) that the Latin Mass was not "illegal", and that it should be used more often, alongside the vernacular mass. But, he said, the "new mass" would continue to be the "ordinary rite", with the Latin Mass relegated to second-class status as the "extraordinary rite".

This week, in an address to a German conference marking the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Robert Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, offered an extraordinarily blunt appraisal of  "the disaster, the devastation, and the schism that the modern promoters of a living liturgy caused."

The prelate reminded his audience that Summorum Pontificum was intended to broaden access to the traditional Latin liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI expressed the hope that the two forms of the Roman rite would enrich each other. That enrichment is badly needed, the cardinal argued, in light of the impoverished state of the Catholic liturgy today. He said:

"The serious crisis of faith, not only at the level of the Christian faithful but also and especially among many priests and bishops, has made us incapable of understanding the Eucharistic liturgy as a sacrifice, as identical to the act performed once and for all by Jesus Christ, making present the Sacrifice of the Cross in a non-bloody manner, throughout the Church, through different ages, places, peoples and nations. There is often a sacrilegious tendency to reduce the Holy Mass to a simple convivial meal, the celebration of a profane feast, the community’s celebration of itself, or even worse, a terrible diversion from the anguish of a life that no longer has meaning or from the fear of meeting God face to face, because His glance unveils and obliges us to look truly and unflinchingly at the ugliness of our interior life.

"Even today, a significant number of Church leaders underestimate the serious crisis that the Church is going through: relativism in doctrinal, moral and disciplinary teaching, grave abuses, the desacralization and trivialization of the Sacred Liturgy," 

Cardinal Sarah said that while some liturgists say the period after Vatican II as a "springtime" for the Church, today wiser observers recognize "a renunciation of her centuries-old heritage.... Political Europe is rebuked for abandoning or denying its Christian roots. But the first to have abandoned her Christian roots and past is indisputably the post-conciliar Catholic Church."

Further reading: "Saint Annibale Bugnini, Pray For Us!", by Michael Matt in The Remnant, 19/10/14.