FRIDAY-SUNDAY
March 8-10, 2002
volume 13, no. 45

Vatican II and the Gospel of Man


Part Four: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

          No matter how hard the post-conciliar church has tried, they cannot usurp what the Second Council of Nicaea decreed

    "Therefore all those who dare to think or teach anything different, or who follow the accursed heretics in rejecting ecclesiastical traditions, or who devise innovations, or who spurn anything entrusted to the Church (whether it be the gospel or the figure of the cross or any example of representational art or any martyr's holy relic), or who fabricate perverted and evil prejudices against cherishing any of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church, or who secularize the sacred objects and saintly monasteries, we order that they be suspended (deposed) if they are bishops or clerics, and excommunicated if they are monks or lay people."
[Preliminary Note: Please make sure you're seated when reading this series. I don't want to be responsible for people fainting and falling to the floor. --M.D.]     In the previous three installments, I think I argued fairly convincingly that since Vatican II, the status and role of man has been greatly exaggerated and, in one way or another, even usurped the place of God. Though this can be seen from some of the documents in the council as well as the speeches of the Popes around and after the time of Vatican II, there is probably no more convincing proof of this than the new liturgy, the Novus Ordo Missae. Because while many - if not most - Catholics have never read the documents of Vatican II, nor would they care to (I can't blame them, but we'll get to this in Part 5), or constantly check what's happening at the Vatican and what the Pope says here or there, every Catholic (even minimally true to the name) goes to Mass, and thus a reformed rite of Mass is the vehicle par excellence to carry the gospel of man into the farthest corners of the earth. Even the Catholic most disinterested in the Church's affairs - or the Catholic living in a place with no TV and very little communication - even he will see and absorb the gospel of man as preached in the council and the New Mass, the Novus Ordo.

    And I don't necessarily mean "preached" as in using words, but rather preached as in actions and omissions. (For instance, Vatican II refused to condemn communism, though it had ample opportunity and every reason to do so. Yet it is precisely this refusal to condemn that speaks volumes.) I think one would be hard-pressed to find unequivocal heresy in the New Mass. But the point, and this is a point apparently very well understood by the modernists and masons, is that it suffices to introduce very subtle changes and omit seemingly "insignificant" gestures, actions, and prayers at Mass, in order to change our religion. It was with this easily-discernible truth in mind that the dogmatic Second Council of Nicaea decreed:

    "Therefore all those who dare to think or teach anything different, or who follow the accursed heretics in rejecting ecclesiastical traditions, or who devise innovations, or who spurn anything entrusted to the Church (whether it be the gospel or the figure of the cross or any example of representational art or any martyr's holy relic), or who fabricate perverted and evil prejudices against cherishing any of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church, or who secularize the sacred objects and saintly monasteries, we order that they be suspended (deposed) if they are bishops or clerics, and excommunicated if they are monks or lay people."
This infallible council also decreed in Article four that, "If anyone rejects any written or unwritten Tradition of the Church, let him be anathema." The Council of Trent strongly reinforced this. Did not Vatican II reject 'any written or unwritten Tradition of the Church? Did not Pope Paul VI do that as well in rejecting the Traditional Roman Rite? For those who might argue that such a decree was only for those times, consider what the holy Pope Saint Pius X reinforced in his excellent encyclical on Modernism - Pascendi Dominici Gregis on September 8, 1907:
    "For Catholics, nothing will remove the authority of the Second Council of Nicaea, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics to deride ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind or to endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church."
    The grave omissions of essential prayers and gestures and actions are especially damaging to those who have grown up with the Novus Ordo exclusively. To them, the suppression of Psalm 42 and the other prayers at the foot of the altar, the scarcity of kneeling, the omission of genuflections during the Credo, the omission of the Last Gospel, the removal of the Offertory and its replacement by the "Prayer over the Gifts," the suppression of the Hanc Igitur and the introduction of a Protestant version instead, the omissions of constant reference to sacrifice and propitiation, the Canon in the vernacular and said out-loud in a narrative manner, the priest facing the people, the priest's failure to purify his fingers at the Ablutions, Communion in the Hand, Communion under both species, the Tabernacle's location somewhere to the side and often having an ugly exterior, and I could go on and on - all of these things indicate to someone who's grown up with the Novus Ordo and has never been taught about the true Mass, that what's taking place is a mere meal, that there is nothing holy about the sanctuary or about the Mass, that one does not have to humiliate oneself first before ascending to the altar of God and plead for forgiveness, that the Mass is the celebration of a community closed in on itself, that it is really just a feast in which we celebrate...er...something (who knows what?), that Christ is not physically and literally present in what appears to be bread and wine or that one ought to receive Communion under both species in order to receive both the Body and Blood of Christ, that what is being offered is bread and wine in thanksgiving (not the Body and Blood of Christ for the four ends of adoration, propitiation, thanksgiving, and petition), that man is important because the people look at the priest and the priest looks at them, that there is no difference between the holy and the profane (since anyone can enter the sanctuary, be a "lector," distribute Holy Communion, etc.), that the priest's spreading his hands over chalice and paten signify the descent of the Holy Ghost (when in fact it represents the transferring of our sins onto the Lamb, Jesus Christ), and on and on……..these are all things that the person indoctrinated in the Novus Ordo church learns and understands, simply from observing the liturgy without being taught any unequivocal heresy by anyone. I know what I'm talking about, 'cause I've "been there, done that," as they say. Born in 1979 under John Paul II, Novus Ordo is all I knew until about 1998.

    When I reconverted to (albeit Novus Ordo) Catholicism in 1996 after an approximately two-year flirt with Protestantism, I was knocked off my behind when I read in Karl Keating's book Catholicism and Fundamentalism that Catholics believe in something called the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I'd never heard that before, despite having gone to Mass weekly or sometimes fortnightly all the way from childhood until even 1994-96, when I considered myself to be a "non-denominational Christian." Then again, should we really be surprised? The New Mass certainly doesn't teach the Real Presence unequivocally, and my instructors for First Communion class were - hold tight! - a non-practicing Catholic and a Lutheran! (These two women shared teaching First Communion classes in our little village in Germany in 1988-89). But then, why should I be surprised when I discovered that the Novus Ordo was created by a great majority of Protestants!

    So, folks, that's what I mean when I talk about the Novus Ordo being the perfect vehicle for the innovators to spread their modernistic and Protestant poison all around the world, something that could never have been accomplished had the Mass remained untouched. The gospel of man has thus been carried into all the corners of the world to the innocent, well-meaning, and unsuspecting. And nearly everyone went along either out of obedience or because they naively thought, "Well, that's just the way we do it now. Times have changed, and I'm sure the Vatican knows what they're doing."

    The changes in the Mass had much greater impact than just their primary object, the Mass itself. By touching such a venerable rite and most august expression of Catholic doctrine, essentially unaltered for centuries upon centuries, the innovators used the Church to make a very loud and clear statement to the world: there is nothing that is not subject to change and revision, nothing holy and untouchable that cannot be altered by us in the name of progress, aggiornamento, or the spirit of the times. And we all know the famous dictum that when Rome sneezes, the whole world catches a cold. And so it was.

    Again without putting anything into words, the whole world "got the drift": the Catholic Church can change, just as anything else in this unstable world can and does. If something so holy and venerable and previously considered to be totally untouchable can be so urinated upon (forgive the crude expression, but it's very fitting, I think), so wrecked and demolished within the course of merely 5 years (given that the 1962 Missal, despite some omissions and changes, was still thoroughly Tridentine), then anything else in the Church can, too: for instance, the status and role of the Pope, the nature of doctrine and dogma, the nature of obedience (the specific case of nearly outright disobedience to Humanae Vitae [1968] comes to mind) and the Vatican's authority concerning disciplinary measures.

    I remember having a conversation with a woman who professes to be a Catholic and goes to Mass (Novus Ordo) every Sunday. It turned out that she didn't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture or possibly even the inspiration thereof, nor in the Church's authority to let people contract valid and indissoluble marriages before God, and who knows what other dogma she didn't believe in either. What was her reasoning? "Mario," she said, "don't tell me that this or that view of Scripture or marriage can't change. When I was a child [the 1930 and 1940's], we were told that the Mass could never change. That changed. Mario, anything can."

    See, she fell prey to exactly what the innovators have had in mind: infiltrate the Church through a council governed by a naïve, weak, or sympathetic Pope, make drastic changes under the pretensions of "bringing the Church up to date" and making the liturgical rites more "alive" and letting the people "participate in them more fully," then give it a few years, perhaps even a decade or two, and the whole Catholic landscape will have changed. Unfortunately, their diabolical plans were implemented perfectly and had the desired result. Nowadays, many people consider it merely a question of time (and another Pope) before the Church will lift the requirement of priestly celibacy, let women be "ordained" priests, and change its stance on homosexuality, divorce, and contraception. Voilá. The satanic plot to wreck the Catholic Church seems to have worked.

    But there's one more thing; a most decisive thing. We have the assurance of Our Most Holy and Divine Lord Jesus Christ and of His Most Blessed Mother, our Lady, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church (cf. Matthew 16:18-19) and that the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph in the end, because the Holy Father, though late, will consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart. Let us pray, brothers in the faith, that this time will come very soon. We have our Lady's own words to assure us that the Papacy will not cease - there will be a Pope to consecrate Russia to her Heart and thus bring peace upon earth. And though at this point it seems as though the enemy has triumphed, similar to how it seemed as though the devil had triumphed over Our Lord when He hung on the Cross, the true victory will be ours in the end. Let us hang in there during these distressing times, our very own Agony in the Garden, until our Lord deigns to intervene and to fully restore His Church, as He has promised to do by sending His Most Holy Mother at Fatima.

Mario Derksen

    Editor's Note: So many of the post-conciliar bishops today refer to those clinging to the true Roman Catholic traditions that were in vogue for 2000 years prior to the reforms of Vatican II as 'fossils,' 'dinosaurs,' 'old folks who will die off soon.' We beg to differ and offer as proof the youthful wisdom and enthusiasm of the younger generation in the Traditional Insights of Mario Derksen who exemplifies the thinking of many more young men and women today who realize the new thinking of the post-conciliar church does not add up to true Catholic teaching. Thus they long for those traditions so tried and true. His insight shows great promise, optimism and hope for the future of Holy Mother Church.

www.DailyCatholic.org

Your email:
Your name:
E-mail it  to:
For past columns in The DAILY CATHOLIC by Mario Derksen, see Archives



March 8-10, 2002
volume 13, no. 45
Mario Derksen's young and refreshing TRADITIONAL INSIGHTS
www.DailyCatholic.org
Return to Current Issue