Unfortunately, the present Pope and his supporters would undoubtedly find beauty in the first example above: barren, empty and devoid of any sense of the sacred.

When I was small I was fortunate to attend Mass at the Basilica at Notre Dame University. Magnificent interior with so much detail to keep a young child occupied. I would have been bored out of my skull if I were at Mass in the barren church depicted here. But liberals know best!

Yes, and they'll twist our arms to make sure that we agree, eh?

We will get nowhere without acceptance that there were sound reasons for the overwhelming endorsement of Sacrosanctum Concilium by the bishops, and the enthusiasm of Archbishop Lefebvre for the 1965 changes to the ars celebrandi of the Mass of the Catechumens.

Sound reasons for revolution? No, never.

See Yves Chiron's scholarly biography of Bugnini, depicting him as a manipulator who drafted SC so carefully that it could be used afterwards to justify a wholesale revolution.

"The office of Prime shall be abolished." No orthodox pope or council would ever speak such words.

https://rorate-caeli.blogsp...

The reform that was needed was to continue the recovery of the liturgical tradition already under way, not to overthrow it.

Years ago, when I was able to go on retreat, we had Prime every morning. The best part of Prime imo was the Martyrology. I loved hearing about the Saint(s) of the day.

The priests also invited us to Compline if we desired. I loved Compline too. I am a lifelong Ukrainian Greek Catholic and still know how to sing "Salva nos, Domine", "In manuas tuas, Domine" and especially the Salve Regina (simple tone) as well as prayers from our Byzantine Compline.

"The office of Prime shall be abolished."

Has NLM ever published an examination of how the Council came to turf the office of Prime?

Meanwhile, the traditional communities "are getting somewhere" by having more High Masses, more Solemn Masses, more children and more vocations. The only thing "getting nowhere" is the postconciliar Church of geriatric decline.

There was a need to confront modernity. They unfortunately did not recognize that the perfect weapon was the one they threw away. In the face of post-modern deracination and atomization, we needed to hold fast to our patrimony instead of allowing it to be degraded back into clay; we threw open the doors of the Church when we needed to prepare for a flood by throwing a rope ladder down to the unfortunate souls left outside the Ark. They read the signs of the time. They made an assessment. They were wrong. They failed to foresee the way it would be wielded by their own clergy to destroy orthopraxis. If progress is what you desire, start by accepting that SC was a mistake in and of itself.

Indeed, far from confronting modernity, SC and VII as a whole simply embraced it. No need to elaborate the results, eh?

But wouldn't you say that most of them voted for something vastly different than the reform that actually followed the conclusion of the Council? How did Archbishop Lefebvre of 1970 compare with his views of 1965, for example?

most of them voted for something vastly different than the reform that actually followed the conclusion of the Council?

They did!

But that said, we have to also admit that there were some pretty radical reforms in the very texts of SC itself. There is a clear call for a multi-year lectionary in there. (SC 51) And the abolition of the office of Prime! (SC 89(d))

Roberto de Mattei has alluded to a certain exhaustion with the Roman Rite as it existed, among many Council Fathers when they started convening in Rome in 1962, especially among the Italian bishops. Not necessarily modernists, either. I think we must consider that some of this impulse was at work, too, in order to explain such radical prescriptions.

I quite agree, the problem was indeed SC itself, not the so-called "hijacking" of it. I don't think, however, that most of the bishops who voted for it noticed any of the implications that lay just below the surface.

Yes, I talk about that here:

"Sacrosanctum Concilium: The Ultimate Trojan Horse"

https://crisismagazine.com/...

Certainly I agree they did not vote for the 1969 rite, or anything like it. Indeed at the 1967 Synod of Bishops less than half of them expressed unqualified approval for the missa normativa as demonstrated.
Is there evidence that Abp Lefebvre changed his mind about the 1965 revisions? was not the eventual reversion of SSPX to 1962 essentially a political move (and in France generally still with vernacular readings).

That's an interesting question to which I don't have an answer. I'd note, however, that when the Archbishop rebelled against the NO, he returned to the Missale Romanum of 1962, not the VII 1965 version.

The whole “reform” was based on falsehoods. For example what is unintelligible about a Rite when one is equipped with a Missal with the vernacular translation? I was a product of a Catholic grade school and our daily Mass was a Missa Cantata. I have never heard such participatory singing since that time. It was high handed hubris and clericalism on steroids what these loons did

21% of adults in the US were illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level.

So what? I assume these stats includes African- Americans, illegal aliens and a host of others who are not Catholic. Find the literacy rates of US Catholics and then we’ll discuss. And please, no stats from Leftwing Loons R Us. By the way, North Korea has a 100% literacy rate!

Perhaps "intelligibility" is not so important, considering that 90%+ of the laity were illiterate and didn't speak much Latin when the Faith was spread to all corners of the globe.

Indeed, but some instruction/information was routinely given except in the Curia, which had no congregations to instruct. Trent rejected the proposition that all liturgy should be in the vernacular, but 'lest the hungry sheep look up and are not fed' commanded that pastors should expound 'some of the texts'. (Session XXII ch8 https://www.capdox.capuchin...
And a homily is still needed now because the language of vernacular liturgy is not understood by a sizeable portion of the congregation. (This is NOT an argument for dumbing down the texts).

If you read Stripping of the Altars a book about liturgical practice in pre-Reformation England, even the uneducated could say and sing the Ordinary in Latin. Yet the 20th condescending jackasses in the reform camp brushed off such inconvenient facts

Would that it were still so. 25 years ago, when my wife was teaching "Latin 101" in seminary it was only to selected students who wanted a university degree.

Prior to 1982/83 there was a variety of liturgical praxis within the SSPX. At Econe for Solemn Mass 1965+ was the norm but private Masses ranged from pre-1956 to 1967. The first priest ordained by Abp Lefebvre for the SSPX in 1971, Fr Peter Morgan, was staunchly pre-1956 and used that in the UK. The first 'General Chapter' of the SSPX in 1976 endorsed the, then, current, praxis of different regions using different vintages. It was only after 1982/3 that 1962 became the norm.

Thank you.
And after the 1984 indult it made sense to stick to the 1962 books.

There was an article here some time ago showcasing a number of prominent bishops following the Council stating that the Roman Canon would remain in Latin. No mention of new eucharistic prayers. So clearly there was no appetite for what we got. What boggles my mind is how quickly they folded to Bugnini

Most likely because he had the backing of Paul VI for just about anything he wanted, in addition to his consummate skills as a dissembler and manipulator.

This is why the fault ultimately lies with Paul VI and not Bugnini. The buck should have stopped with him. Bugnini's influence and power started and ended with Paul VI's.

I was young then. I could chant 5 Latin ordinaries by heart at age 10. I saw no need for the “reforms.” It was an act of extraordinary hubris and it has been an extraordinary failure. The laity was never consulted!

An odd twist in the Age of the Laity as we so often heard we were living in during the post VII era.

To the extent that there were bishops of good will who endorsed and voted for Sacrosanctum Concilium, I think we must grant that remarks of concern (indeed, in the decades before the Council!) about a certain impoverishment of the Latin Church's liturgical life were not without foundation. A desire for a reform therefore made some sense.

The question I have is: Was what needed reform our rites? Or ourselves?

Also, as Gregory DiPippo and others have noted, certain problems by 1962 had occurred *precisely because of the tinkeritis* on the Tridentine liturgy that occurred between Pius X and Pius XII. What was needed was a recovery of the fullness of the Tridentine rite, including, perhaps, a recovery of additional ferial readings that used to exist (just to take on example).

Or an upgrade in music, i.e., more Palestrina and Gregorian chant, as opposed to the saccharine Victorian hymnody which was the staple of most American parishes, if indeed they used any music at all.

In hindsight, it is clear that any problems should have been addressed with a renewed investment into the liturgy rather than a restructuring.

We will get nowhere without acceptance of the fact that bishops of the world to all intents and purposes withdrew their endorsement of Sacrosanctum Concilium, since Paul VI enacted a liturgical reform that violently trammeled on every word of it, and Archbishop Lefebvre was almost the only one who protested.

I have yet to see a convincing explanation of why I or anyone else should show an enthusiasm for any of the documents of Vatican II which their own authors and signatories never showed.

We are perfectly free to hold the opinion that Sacrosanctum Concilium was not correct in identifying either what was "wrong" with the liturgy, or how to fix it. The documents of Vatican II were written about a different Church living in a different world, and have little to no relevance to anything any more.

https://www.newliturgicalmo...

The bishops were not consulted about the revised liturgy, so even though they mostly obeyed the Pope, as they were sworn to do, it does not mean that they resiled from SC.
Abp Lefebvre was involved in the Central Preparatory Commission for VII, and had an inside view of the machinations that went into the rejection of all that they had drafted. As he had reason to be wary, the fact that he endorsed SC and parts of the 1965 reforms carries extra weight.

But this fact is itself also a repudiation of Vatican II, since one of the supposed great rediscoveries of the Council was "collegiality." The bishops might therefore at least have spoken out to say, "This newly invented liturgy is NOT what we approved. We will implement it out of obedience, but it is certainly not the fulfillment of Sacrosanctum Concilium. It is the repudiation of that document." But no, none of them cared enough about SC to say a word in its defense.

But even assuming they felt that they could not do that, whether out of a sense of obedience, or a reverence for the person of the Pope, there were hundreds and thousands of ways in which people other than Paul VI also viciously stomped on the documents of Vatican II. And the vast majority of the world's bishops still did not take enough interest in those documents to say, "This is certainly not what we had in mind when we wrote and approved those documents." Almost never did they exercise their God-given authority to curb even the worst abuses perpetrated in the name of the "Spirit of Vatican II".

And the fact remains that Sacrosanctum Concilium, like all the documents of Vatican II, was written about a different Church living in a completely different situation, and is now every bit as obsolete as the disciplinary failures of Lateran V or the theological conceits of the conciliarist movement which had its apex at Constance.

So again, since they evidently took no interest in seeing those documents correctly implemented, why should any of us?

Why should any of us?
Because their insights, and those of Trent, were correct, as Abp. Lefebvre said. The fact that PaulVI makes specious claims to be faithfully implementing the VII, in the same terms as PiusV specious claims to be implementing Trent, does not invalidate either Council.

Were they? What insights? Most of Sacrosanctum Concilium is a collection of glittering generalities, devoid of specific ideas, and too vaguely phrased to be of any real use to anyone. It does specific say that Prime should be suppressed, which is obviously an absolutely terrible idea. For the rest... meh...

https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2020/10/the-hopeless-ambiguity-of-sacrosanctum.html

And I know your favorite battle horse is the whole thing about explaining the liturgy to the faithful during the liturgy spoken of at Trent, which is an atrocious idea, and thank God it was not implemented ad litteram. You are welcome to ride that horse as long and far as you like, but to compare what St Pius V did re: Trent with what Paul VI did to Vatican II is an absolutely grotesque distortion of history.

In any case, no one is talking about "invalidating" any Council, which is an ontological impossibility. But recognizing that a Council has become obsolete does not "invalidate" it. Constance is a fully valid and almost totally obsolete ecumenical council; so is Lateran V. There are some things about Vatican II which are worth saving, but most of it is also obsolete, including basically all of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Well, and I would say unfortunately, a repeated, routine exposition to the congregation of the Ordinary of the Mass was implemented in some places. https://journals.sagepub.co...

But I do not think that was what Trent was commanding (Session XXII ch 8), I think 'explaining some part of the things read' means what SC meant by ' the homily, therefore, is to be highly esteemed as part of the liturgy itself'.

In the time after the Council there was a repudiation of the art and architecture of the past. Since the "community" was the church, it would provide the color and focus of the building. This led to an increasingly Man-centered concept of worship and the loss of the transcendence of God.

From the time I was a boy in the 1950's, I recognized beautiful churches and buildings. I also noticed what was ugly. I remember at church everyone dressed their best and remained quiet. Along with the erosion of beauty came the deterioration of reverence. And now we have silent bishops and pro abortion politicians the Bishops implicitly tell us to vote for. This article gives a sprig of hope.