Vatican II and Divine Providence

In a remarkable address to the Roman Curia on 22 December 2005 (published in L'Osservatore Romano, 1 January 2006) Pope Benedict launched a much-needed reassessment of the Second Vatican Council whose deliberations and conclusions – as a pastoral council – are subject to winnowing by Tradition and time. Perhaps God was using Vatican II in a way which never occurred to the enthusiasts and revolutionaries who saw it as the foundation stone of a brave new world. Here, Straphanger issues a rallying cry to that faithful remnant who will never allow themselves to be separated from Catholic truth.

Many people cannot see how Vatican II fits into God's Providence. They cannot reconcile the ambiguities of the Council and the ensuing chaos with God's love for His Church. The events of the last forty years have shaken their faith. But they should not allow room for these doubts. They should never allow themselves to suspect that God has somehow lost control. An unbeliever, for instance, reading the Gospel account of the Passion, could think that Our Lord was like a leaf caught up in a whirlwind. But we Catholics know that the leaf was in control of the whirlwind. Perhaps the key to understanding recent events lies in an observation of Cardinal Newman, that God periodically weeds His Church.

What has been happening over the past forty years is the ordinary way that God deals with those He loves. When He sees them living in false security, thinking that they are on the way to salvation when in point of fact they are not, He gives them a rude awakening. Those forty years, for instance, when the Israelites were wondering to and fro in the desert were all part of God's plan. It was obvious that many of the escapees who followed Moses out of Egypt had not the faintest idea what the purpose of the exercise was. God's plan, we know, was to form for Himself a tribe that would withdraw itself altogether from the prevalent idol worship of those days and worship Him, the one true God. Many of those, however, who followed Moses through the Red Sea thought it was simply an escape from slavery and nothing more, so that now they could do their own thing and live in freedom. Over the course of forty years, God, so to speak, weeded out those who clearly were not worthy to be counted among His 'Chosen People'.

Babylonian exile

And again, in Jeremiah's time, we can see from what he wrote that many of the Jews must have been very displeasing to God. We gather that too many of them were extremely worldly, had been skimping their Temple sacrifices, and were simply not worthy now to be called the People of God. At that time, of course, Temple worship must have been very elaborate and very costly. Away from the lowing and bleating of the animals and all the flies, there was the hallowed ritual and the sacred chants. It must have been magnificent.

But once they were in Babylon, things would have been very different. To begin with, no doubt, the priests among them would have carried out as much as they could of the sacred rites, even though now they had no Temple and no altar of sacrifice. But as time went by, their Sabbath observances must have been curtailed and would have been followed by only the most fervent among the captives – people like Tobias. After all (they would have said) one has to live, and many would have taken jobs that entailed their working on the Sabbath. So when finally God sent Cyrus who told the Jews, "You may all go home now to Jerusalem and resume your Temple worship", there were few who did so. "A remnant", we read, went back to rebuild the Temple and resume their traditional worship. Most of the Jews had settled in to the pagan society of Babylon and were satisfied with the abbreviated worship, devoid of sacrifice, that they had now got used to.

And where do we all stand now?

Most priests, most of the laity I meet, seem to be well content with things as they are. The priests find today's liturgy satisfying. They appreciate the scope it gives them for "saying a few words" and arranging the liturgy as they think best. And as for the laity, their only complaint often is that their children no longer go to Mass and their grandchildren, perhaps, are not even baptised.

The 'irrelevant' sacrifice

Most Catholics in this country, I would say, now prefer the Novus Ordo Mass. And I think that for many it has changed their idea of worship. The six Protestant advisers who attended the construction of the new liturgy saw to it that most of the references to sacrifice that were in the traditional liturgy were filtered out, and this omission has perhaps changed the thinking of some Catholics. They no longer see sacrifice as occupying the central role in worship. Just as a saucepan, taken off the stove, soon loses its heat, so with us: because of original sin, we find that worship without sacrifice is better suited to our fallen human nature than the elaborate ritual and references to its being a sacrifice that we find in the Traditional Mass. The word 'sacrifice' now has a wholly negative connotation for many people.

More perhaps than the changes in the text, it was seeing the priest face the people that has made them forget that the Mass is a sacrifice. When, instead of seeing the priest standing at the altar offering the Divine Victim to God, people see him, almost like a shop assistant behind the counter, offering the Sacred Host to all who come up, who can blame the good ladies for thinking that they could do this too?

For the Jews exiled in Babylon, God sent Cyrus when He saw that seventy years of captivity had done its work. For all those years His fan had been in His hand, and now its work was done. The wheat was separated from the chaff, and ready now for sowing once more in the Promised Land.

And with us, sooner or later, God will send us another Cyrus, and Rome will give Catholics free permission to return to their traditional liturgy. But how many will avail themselves of this opportunity? A remnant?

Final perseverance

So perhaps we should stop rash-judging poor Archbishop Bugnini and the other good people who gave us the Novus Ordo Mass of 1968. They were only doing the job God gave them to do. Like Nebuchadnezzar, if you like, they were a scourge God used to chastise His children, a fan with which to separate the wheat from the chaff. Those of us who love the traditional liturgy must have deserved the suffering of the past few decades, or God would not have given it to us. We must now try to make amends by loving Him more and being more grateful for the Holy Sacrifice He has enabled us to offer Him.

And when the dust has finally settled, those millions of Catholics whose lifestyle was not in accord with Catholic teaching and who were happily serving, as they thought, both God and Mammon, will no longer be coming to Mass to receive their sacrilegious Communions. As Fr John Hardon SJ used to say, in relation to the Church of the future there will be just two sorts of Catholics – ex-Catholics and heroic Catholics.

[Taken from "Mass of Ages" May 2006, The Latin Mass Society's quarterly magazine]