1537 was a dire year for the Catholic Church or, as it was said at that time, for Christendom. Rome was still staggering after the sack of 1527. The Turks were advancing by land and by sea. Worst of all, Protestantism continued to advance by leaps and bounds. It had swept across Germany and Scandinavia. It was now beginning to surge in the Low Countries, in France and in French Switzerland. England had thrown off the authority of the pope and now the English shrines and monasteries were being liquidated.

In 1536 Pope Paul III (1534-49) summoned a commission of Cardinals to advise on dealing with the “root causes” of the seemingly overwhelming crisis. The result in 1537 was the report Consilium …de Emendanda Ecclesia, an unsparing critique of the abuses in the Church. The authors included some extraordinary men, including Cardinals Pole (subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Mary and at times a leading candidate for the papacy) and Carafa (later Pope Paul IV).

Original Document

(Mr. Nicholas Salazar has taken the trouble to prepare the following translation of the first paragraphs of the Consilium – I have tweaked it and apologize for any distortions thereby introduced.)

Council of Select Cardinals and Other Prelates

On Reforming the Church

Most blessed Father, it is far beyond our powers to explain in words what great thanks Christendom ought to give to our perfect and supreme God for having made you pontiff in these times and having put you at the head of his flock, and for having given you such a mind as you have, that we may at least hope, in thought, it will be able to obtain those graces which it owes to God. For, as we see, the Church of Christ is tottering, nay has nearly fallen headlong. That illustrious Spirit of God, however, by which, as the prophet says, the power of the heavens is confirmed, has decided through you to place his hand under this ruin, and to raise her to her former loftiness, and to restore her to her former beauty. We can make a most certain interpretation of this divine sentence, for, having been summoned by you, Your Holiness gave us the command to point out to you–taking no account of either your or anyone else’s convenience or advantage–those notorious abuses, even plainly very serious diseases, under which for a long time now the Church of God and particularly this Roman Curia has labored. Through which it has been brought to pass that, gradually, little by little, as these plague-bearing diseases grew more serious, she has drawn down upon herself this great ruination that we see. Instructed by the Spirit of God, Who, as St. Augustine says, speaks in hearts with no noise of words, Your Holiness correctly knew that the beginning of these evils was the fact that some of your predecessors, “with their ears itching,” as the Apostle Paul says, “heaped up for themselves teachers according to their own desires.” Not, as they ought to have done, in order that they might learn from them, but rather in order that, by their partisanship and cunning, there might be found a means by which that which was pleasing might be permitted. So it happened – apart from the fact that fawning follows all power, as a shadow follows the body, and truth has always found access to the ears of princes very difficult – that the experts who were instructing the Pontiff immediately proclaimed that he was the lord of all benefices. Therefore when, as lord, he lawfully sells that which is his own, it necessarily follows that the Pontiff cannot be charged with simony. This is so because the will of the Pontiff–whatever it may be–is the rule by which his operations and actions are directed: as a result of which invariably whatever is pleasing is also permitted.

Now the Consilium squarely identifies as the foremost source of the evils afflicting the Church the conduct of the Vatican, specifically, the assertion of the Pope’s arbitrary, (lawless) power, that the Pope can do whatever he wills. A by-product, but also a cause of this abuse was a Vatican culture of sycophancy and intrigue. Of course, in the 16^th century what the Popes strived for was, in the first instance, centralized arbitrary power over the worldly possessions of the Church, not over doctrine or liturgy. The result of these practices, however, was a vicious, secularly minded Papal court and a largely incompetent episcopate throughout most of Europe. It was this decayed clerical establishment that by its outrageous behavior largely contributed to igniting the Protestant Reformation and then proved incapable of confronting it.

The rest of the document deals more with more specific issues. Yet some of these criticisms also remain extremely relevant to our time: such as the disastrous effect of the mass ordinations of unworthy and immoral clerics or the impact of too liberal dispensations from the law.

Note, in those pre-ultramontane days, the openness with which the conduct of recent popes is castigated. The authors were unrestrained by fear of being accused of “criticizing the Pope” or “giving scandal.” Indeed, the text of the Consilium was almost immediately leaked. The reformers republished it gleefully, furnished with their own notes. Yet the authors thought – correctly – that declaring the truth far outweighed the impact of any “scandal’.”

The relevance of the Consilium’s analysis to the papacy of Francis and its revived ultramontanism is of course evident. Yet the Consilium is not some kind of 16^th century Dubia. For starters, the Pope himself commissioned it. The authors were among the leading cardinals of the Vatican, still holding important offices. And whatever had been the misdeeds the popes of that era – and there were many – undermining Catholic morality in the exercise of the teaching authority was not one of them.

The abuses spelled out in the Consilium were not immediately corrected. Indeed, in many respects Pope Paul III and his Farnese family continued to be among the worst offenders. Yet gradually many changes did materialize. And beyond the immediate results, the Consilium stands as a monument to the honesty and willingness to reform of the much-maligned Renaissance Church. For the beginning of reform is the willingness to tell the truth and acknowledge one’s own faults. Can we claim that the Church of our day is capable of this?

A special thanks for Jim Morlino for creating this video.

See our photos of this Mass: link

by Father Richard Cipolla

Once again we hear from the highest circles of power in the Church of the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. But this time, what is being talked about is not men in “special circumstances” but in general. I was able and gratuitously blessed to be ordained a Catholic priest while married because of a special Pastoral Provision instituted by Saint John Paul II in 1982 that gave permission for married Episcopal priests who had left the Episcopal Church because of reasons of conscience to be considered for the Catholic priesthood.  For me these reasons for leaving Anglicanism included the ordination of women priests and women bishops and the rapidly accelerating cutting of ties to Christian orthodoxy. The recent formation of the Anglican Ordinariate is the result of a similar situation where Anglican priests who want to be in full Communion with the Catholic Church are given this special privilege and grace.

But what is being contemplated now at the highest levels of the Church is to allow married priests as a general rule. Those who are pushing this say they are doing so because of the severe shortage of priests in certain areas of the world, i.e. those areas associated with the “West”.  Of course, they never ask the question of why there are so few men being called to the priesthood (except those who have a love of the Tradition). So their solution is to ordain “viri probati”, married men who are good examples of what it means to be a Catholic man. In this pontificate one must be cautious about reacting negatively to every trial balloon that rises over Casa Santa Marta. But this trial balloon if blossomed into a luxury aircraft would open up the priesthood to a radical reformulation that would deny the understanding of the priesthood in Catholic Tradition.

It is certainly true that St Peter was married. The Gospels tell us about the healing of his mother-in-law. But that certainly is no basis for an abandonment of the celibate priesthood. We never hear about Peter’s wife or family. It is not a part of the Gospel message. We do know that Peter abandoned everything and became a “fisher of men”. Priestly celibacy is part of the development of the doctrine of the priesthood, a development that begins as early as the fourth century in the West. It is also true that priestly celibacy was not always enforced in the history of the Church, but priests living with women and fathering children was never understood as the norm or ideal. Nor did this situation lead to a rethinking of clerical celibacy. In fact the great reformers of the Church of every age did all that they could to enforce clerical celibacy, and they did so because of celibacy’s relationship to the celibacy of Christ himself, and specifically to Christ as the High Priest. Although married men are allowed to be priests in the Eastern Churches, their situation is quite different from the Catholic priest. And, significantly, both in the East and West, all bishops, who have the fullness of priesthood, are required to be celibate.

Those who are advocating this change have little experience in living a typical and normal life as husband and father. They are part of a clerical system that lives in an unreal world, where celibacy is lived as being “unmarried” and gives one freedom to do what one wants to do when wants to do it and have too many long dinners on the Borgo Pio. That behavior is impossible in a marriage. There is no doubt that this call for married priests is a result, at least partially, of the deliberate misunderstanding of what “priest” means. And this misunderstanding is one of the results of fifty years of the Mass of Paul VI and how it is commonly celebrated that has made our people forget that the heart of the priesthood is to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, that he stands there in persona Christi, in the person of Christ himself, to offer up the Sacrifice of the Cross that is re-presented at every Mass. It is no accident that the post-Vatican II terminology for the one who celebrates Mass is not priest but rather “celebrant” or “officiant” or that awful Orwellian word “presider”. Cardinal Sarah said recently that he believes that the great majority of priests and bishops have forgotten or do not know that the Mass is a Sacrifice, in and of itself, and that the function of the priest, is to offer that Sacrifice. Now this does not mean that a married man cannot offer the Sacrifice. But what it does mean is that the Tradition of celibate priests is consonant in the deepest way with the person of Christ who offered Himself totally and completely on the Cross.

But what is even more disturbing about this latest trial balloon, which may morph into a gas filled dirigible( would that it met the fate of the Hindenberg without loss of life!), is that it seems that the ‘60s gang who caused so much damage to the Church in the liturgy and the priesthood are hell bent on becoming like the main stream Protestant denominations that have abandoned orthodox Christianity in favor of a “live and let live” attitude covered by a veneer of religiosity. There is no direct link between allowing “viri probati” to be ordained priests and allowing women priests and women bishops and a reversal of Humane Vitae and a further degradation of the liturgy. But they lie on the same trajectory, and this is what must be cause for great concern for those who love the Church of Jesus Christ.

The hatred of the Traditional Roman Mass by the current builders of balloons is completely understandable, quite apart from their abundant fount of hot air. For it is the Traditional Mass that embodies the Tradition of the Church and that exposes for all to see that the emperor has no clothes. The Church today is living in Alice’s Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts can order the white roses painted red and declare by fiat that they are red roses. The current hierarchy are fed on a positivism that has nothing to do with the freedom bought on the Cross by Jesus Christ and so are powerless to oppose either the beast that slouches to Bethlehem or Robert Hugh Benson’s machines of destruction in “Lord of the World” whose goal is to destroy the Catholic Church.

But don’t get too excited and don’t get worried. Sit back and enjoy the show. For the gates of hell will not prevail. But what if hell does not exist, as some princes of the Church say?

Monday evening at St Vincent Ferrer: a Solemn Requiem in the Dominican rite – accompanied by Mozart’s requiem directed by James Wetzel. The combination of ceremonial, music and the Gothic splendor of this church, vast and mysterious in the semi-darkness, left a unique impression in this month of prayer for the dead. It was not a mere concert but a profoundly spiritual experience.

A large congregation occupied almost the entire center nave of this huge church. And afterwards many stayed and gathered downstairs for the festive reception. Our thanks to the Dominicans of this parish and of New York who made possible this liturgy as as to the many involved in making this evening such a success in every respect.

(Above) Pope Clement XIV (1769-1774) was a spineless individual who labored to please the powers of this world – in his day, the absolute monarchies – by abolishing the Jesuit order and imprisoning its leaders. His sympathizers financed well after his death this great monument by Canova, that disingenuously depicts this pope as a grandly authoritarian, Caesar-like monarch.

Gibbon wrote his massive  Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the era of the late Enlightenment, a time of profound spiritual change in Europe.   More recently, some notable authors have applied Gibbon’s framework of “decline and fall” to Christendom and the Roman Catholic Church itself. Noteworthy examples are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church by Malachi Martin (1981) and The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America by David Carlin (2003). Just in this year, Michel Onfray has contributed Decadence: the Life and Death of Judeo-Christianity. On closer inspection such works describe three distinct historical phenomena.

The first “decline and fall” is the secularization of the West, eventually culminating in the disintegration of “Christendom” as a cultural, religious and political reality. Loss of faith was accompanied by the evaporation of papal political power. We perhaps can place the beginnings of this development around 1300. By the time (1799) Novalis wrote Christendom or Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, this phase could be considered over. Even the pope died that very year in exile, as a prisoner of the French.

After the collapse of Christendom, however, the Roman Catholic Church was able to reorganize itself internally under the leadership of the ultramontane papacy. Ultramontanism in the 19^th century sense contested the growing hegemony of liberalism yet also depended on it. The renewed stature of the papacy presupposed liberalism’s eliminating or weakening other competing centers of material and spiritual power in the Church (especially the absolute monarchies, but also the landed contemplative monasteries, the state churches of France and the Holy Roman Empire, etc.). What emerged by 1870 was a rigidly centralized Church organized around the clergy and the pope. All authority in matters of doctrine, liturgy and to some extent politics was reserved to the Pope and Vatican. The Church strived for uniformity in worship, music, philosophy and theology. Obedience to authority was elevated to an almost mystical value.

The second decline (and fall) dates to the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. As a consequence of the Council and contemporary secular cultural revolutions, the uniform, centralized structure perfected between 1870 and 1958 collapsed. A great diversity of ecclesiastical organizations, “theologies” and liturgies emerged among the more “engaged’ members of the church. As Malachi Martin perceptively remarked, these new forms of “doing Church” were not just autocephalous but autozoic: not just autonomous in regard to Rome but having fundamentally different structures, practices and philosophies. What resemblances existed, for example, between the Catholic Church of the Netherlands (with its “Dutch Catechism”) and that of Poland, the Jesuit order and Opus Dei, the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and Thomas Aquinas College in California? Over all this chaos the centralized administrative structure of the Vatican and hierarchy remained intact – but the pope hardly dared take action against the (progressive) centrifugal forces even if he wanted to do so. The result, as to the mass of Catholics, was continued erosion of religious belief and practice – not only among the laity but even the clergy and religious.

With the election of Pope John Paul II, however, the Church experienced a “Wojtylian Restoration” with a renewed focus on the pope and the Vatican.  The pope reoccupied the center of attention, even if stylistically now more as a secular political leader than as a religious figure. The journeys, public appearances and media interviews of Pope John Paul II were the defining characteristics of his renewed papacy.

Yet the ultramontane revival of John Paul II remained only a “Great Facade” (Chris Ferrara).  Aside from insisting on a limited external conformity and firing warning shots at the most egregious progressive offenders, the Vatican made no attempt to recreate the uniformity of doctrine and morals that existed the pre-Conciliar years.  At all times in the papacy of John Paul II, Catholic hierarchs, religious orders and schools embraced and agitated for the most diverse and contradictory positions. The Vatican’s solution to mounting massive problems – like declining numbers of clergy and religious; clerical sexual abuse, financial corruption and above all the decline in the West of belief and religious practice among Catholics – was to sweep them under the rug.

Now the start of the third “decline and fall” can be placed in the reign of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict had continued in most respects the regime of his predecessor. He departed from it, however, by taking a marginally more conservative teaching line and implementing significant legislative changes in the field of liturgy. This naturally aroused a storm of opposition both within and outside the Church, both in public and behind the scenes. Pope Benedict was utterly incapable of mastering the powers challenging his papacy:  the establishment religious orders, the Vatican bureaucracy, the mass of Catholic “academics” and “scholars,” the Western European episcopates (especially that of Germany!).  These more or less open opponents had no intention of yielding the positions of power they had acquired over the Church since the Vatican Council. Moreover, they acted in the closest alliance with the secular media and to some extent even the secular political powers. They rendered the Church almost unmanageable for Pope Benedict, whose ultimate answer was capitulation.   Pope Benedict’s resignation was a staggering blow to papal authority.

In Pope Francis, the Catholic progressive forces finally established a man of their own as the supreme power in the Church. There followed an unprecedented outpouring of progressive words, gestures and deeds – often in direct contradiction to what had been considered settled (at least on paper) in morality, theology and philosophy. The supposed bastions of Wojtylian conservatism, like the Italian and United States hierarchies or the Knights of Malta, fell almost overnight. Supposed “Wojtylian” bishops, publicists and scholars (like Cardinal Marx of Munich) quickly became bellicose advocates of the new order.

A ”cult of personality” around Pope Francis arose dwarfing anything in the past. The Pope also employed authoritarian, not to say crudely manipulative, means in furthering his agenda. Indeed, Francis and his clique have sought to address the rising number of critics of Bergoglian policies by reviving ultramontane rhetoric in its most extreme form. The Pope himself talks of his “magisterial authority” and of the “irreversible” reforms of Vatican II. The canonization or beatification of every pope since 1958  – excluding perhaps Pope Benedict – also fits into this pattern.  The paladins of Team Francis accept as at least de facto infallible every document of Pope Francis – even his uncontrolled ramblings in planes, interviews and, daily, in the Casa Santa Marta acquire in their eyes magisterial force. Substantive criticism of the current regime is triumphantly countered by accusations of “criticizing the pope” of “disloyalty to the Holy Father” and of course, “creating scandal.”

It’s all a delirious and previously unimaginable alliance of dissent and ultramontanism, of the National Catholic Reporter and L’Osservatore Romano, of the Jesuit order and the Knights of Columbus. We believe though, that this novel Bergoglian ultramontanism is inherently unstable. The notion of a “progressive” a “dissenting” or even a “heretic” pope is simply too outrageous and contradictory for too many people. The sudden reversal of principles   – like that on marriage – that only yesterday were proclaimed immutable will prove even more destabilizing than the changes of the 1960’s.  And just a cursory look reveals that Pope Francis can only be authoritarian and decisive when conforming to the dogmas and expectations of Western civil society.

At least as of this moment, hardly anyone in the Catholic establishment will take on Pope Francis. Yet outside of the mainstream institutions, the Bergoglian revolution has aroused a storm of criticism.   It’s quite a contrast to the initial unopposed implementation of Vatican II, which built on the legacy of centralized ultramontane control. The main effect so far of the reign of Francis is to compound the already existing fractures and chaos of the post-conciliar Church. Pope Francis professes to endorse such “diversity” as a positive development conducive to ongoing change. We see the early quantifiable results already in the free fall of vocations and of the practice of the faith. Truly this is the third “fall” of the Catholic Church since 1789!

But out of this seemingly inevitable tragedy may come at least one advantage: the truth.  For far too long the Catholic Church has continued to take refuge in fantasies of stability and success, of secular standing and influence.  You need look only at any of the official Catholic media to confirm this – isn’t the Al Smith Dinner in New York the incarnation of this self-deception? Even the supposedly hard-nosed liturgical traditionalists remained to some extent in thrall to these mirages. The poison of dishonesty has eroded the faith more surely than any persecution or loss of worldly advantages could do. Moreover, in addition to obscuring reality, the culture of ultramontanism also inculcated habits of spiritual torpor, passivity and blind deference to authority (by extension, also to secular authority!) that have left Catholics ill-equipped to navigate the unprecedented post-Conciliar crisis.

Let be be finale of seem! Jettisoning the Catholic culture of pretend is the first, most necessary step towards reform. To that extent we owe Pope Francis a debt of gratitude. Does not the shipwreck of a mythical centralized day-to-day magisterium make possible a return to the Catholic spiritual “basics” of prayer, penitence and evangelization? And, doesn’t the Tradition of the Church, present before us in the Fathers and Doctors, in history and art and, above all, in the liturgy as it is lived every day remain to us as a surer guide?

(Above) Fall and renewal. On September 25, 1534 the disastrous papacy of Clement VII came to an end. Just over a month earlier in that year, before dawn on August 15, the first Jesuits had taken their vows (before Peter Faber, the only priest among them). (Mural in the church of St. Francis Xavier, New York)

Monday, November 13
Solemn Requiem Mass in the Dominican Rite, St. Vincent Ferrer Church, New York, 7 pm, featuring Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, K. 626. information

Solemn Requiem Mass, St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT, 7:30 pm.

Tuesday, November 14, Votive Mass for the Dead, St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven, 7 pm.

Wednesday, November 15, Missa Cantata for the Feast of St. Albert the Great, St. Vincent Ferrer Church, 7 pm. information

Friday, November 17-18 All Night Vigil in Reparation to the Most Precious Blood, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, begins at 7:30 pm, ends with 5 am sung Mass on Saturday. information

Tuesday, November 21, Solemn Mass for the Feast of St. Cecilia, Church of St. Cecilia, Brooklyn, 7:30pm. information

Also Tuesday, November 21st at 7:30 p.m., Solemn Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Harlem, New York. The sermon and readings from the pulpit will be in Spanish. After Mass there will be devotions to Our Lady of Divine Providence, Patroness  of Puerto Rico, whose feast falls on November 19th.

Sunday, November 26, 12:30 pm, Solemn Mass for Feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, ST. John the Baptist Church, Allentown, NJ. information

Sunday, December 3rd,  Rorate Missa Cantata in the Dominican Rite to conclude the parish’s all-night watch,  6:30 AM at St. Vincent Ferrer, New York.
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Tuesday, December 12th, Solemn Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, sponsored by the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny. Music of Ignacio de Jerusalem with period instruments, Church of the Immaculate Conception (414 East 14th Street, New York), pm time to be announced.

Saturday, December 16, Rorate Mass in honor of Our Lady, St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT, 6:30 am.

Monday, December 18, Sung Requiem Mass, Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, NY, 7 pm. Sponsored by the NY Purgatorial Society

Monday, December 25th, Missa Cantata in the Dominican Rite for Christmas, St. Catherine of Siena Church, New York, 12 Midnight. Featuring Tomas luis de Victoria’s Missa Alma Redemptoris

Stained glass window in the Cathedral of St. James, Brooklyn.

The church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York will offer a Missa Cantata in the Dominican Rite for the Feast of the Saint Albert the Great, a Dominican bishop and teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, on Wednesday, November 15th at 7 pm.
The Schola will sing the Taverner’s  Missa Sancti Wilhelmi devotio,  Palestrina’s Justus ut palma (I); and Willaert’s O salutaris hostia.