The Fury of the Death Throes of the “Spirit” of Vatican II

by Father Richard Cipolla

It was always about the Liturgy. Bugnini and those who preceded him in the
twentieth century redefinition of the Liturgical Movement, away from a
rediscovery of the Traditional Liturgy to a drive to change and adapt the Liturgy to
the “needs of modern man”, always knew and understood this. The Documents of
the Second Vatican Council will meet the same fate as the great majority of the
Canons of past Ecumenical Councils—save the first seven— mostly forgotten,
except for what was part of the genuine unfolding of Catholic Tradition. No one
remembers the Canon from Lateran IV calling for provincial councils for the
purpose of reforming morals, nor the Canon that condemned the teaching of
Joachim of Fiore. What is remembered and therefore became a part of the
Tradition is the definition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in terms
of “transubstantiation”. Even more recently, who remembers or refers to the
teaching of Vatican I on faith and reason, or its condemnation of rationalism? The
definition of Papal Infallibility is what is remembered in the living Tradition. In no
way does this reduce the central importance of the Ecumenical Councils in the
Tradition of Catholic Church. It merely reminds us that what is fundamentally
important in the decrees of these Councils in the development of dogma becomes
apparent in the voice of the Holy Spirit who is not encumbered by the limitations
of time, space and human frailty.
When one looks at and reads the Documents of Vatican II –there are no
Canons—one is constantly struck by the language that tries to include the voice of
the Tradition and openness to “the modern world”, or at least the world of the
1960s.
This is clearly seen in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Document on the Liturgy.
There we read that the Latin language is to be preserved, but in those parts of the
Mass that include instruction of the faithful the vernacular may be used. Pride of
place is to be given to Gregorian chant as the music of the Mass. But other forms
of music, including contemporary compositions, may be used if it helps with
“active participation.” The fact is that both Latin and Gregorian chant disappeared
within a few years after the imposition of the Mass of St. Paul VI. Le trahison des
clercs used the cultural forces unleashed in the !960’s and the decades following to
not only reduce the Liturgy to a permanent replay of the Brady Bunch complete
with polyester and bad taste, but also invented what became known as the “Spirit”
of Vatican II, the actual documents of which Council were of little interest to those
imbued with this “Spirit”.

It is not as if that “Spirit” were not opposed by both clergy and lay men and
women. But for the most part, the laity that were so eloquently championed in a
real way by St. John Henry Newman a century before were all too happy, guided
by this “Spirit” to become chierichetti, little clergy, happy to have the honor of
being lectors, eucharistic ministers, and running CCD classes, instead of attending
to their vitally important role in their families and in the world in which they live
and worked.
The greatest accomplishment of those imbued with the “Spirit” of Vatican II was
the work of the Concilium set up by St Paul VI to do the work of the reform of the
Liturgy based on the admittedly sketchy hopes of Sacrosanctum Concilium. What
they produced was the product of a deep antipathy to the Traditional Roman Mass,
(rather an antipathy to the Tradition itself) and of a longing to embrace the world
around them that they identified as the future of mankind. One cannot and must
not deny the reality of the grace that Catholics have received while participating in
the Novus Ordo Mass these past six decades. The validity of that form of the Mass
is not in question. What is in question is the continuity of the Novus Ordo Mass
with the Roman Mass of Catholic Tradition. This author is one of many, who are
much more learned than I, who have shown clearly that there is a discontinuity of
content and form between the Novus Ordo rite and the Traditional Roman Mass.
The fact that 70% of Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence of Christ in
the Eucharist and that in many if not most places in the Western world fewer than
20% of Catholics go to Mass is strong evidence that something went wrong after
the imposition of the Mass of St. Paul VI and still is wrong.
One of the most important hopes of the Concilium inventors of the Novus Ordo
Mass and those who invented the “Spirit” of Vatican II is that by this time no
Catholic would have heard of (except in history books) or experienced the power
and beauty of the Traditional Roman Mass in an actual celebration of that rite.
And they almost succeeded. Thanks to St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict
XVI, and to the working of the Holy Spirit in his own time and manner, thousands
of Catholics, especially young Catholics both priests and lay, have discovered the
power and beauty of the Traditional Roman Mass.
The Motu Proprio, Traditionis Custodes, the following “Response to the Dubia”
and now the latest salvo just published by Cardinal Roche completely taking away
the bishops’ fundamental right as Pastors of their flock to regulate worship in their
diocese is the fury of a death throe. Boldly eliminating the power of Canon Law as
a potent spray-can deterent to get rid of roaches and other insects that infest the

holy house of the Church: this is an intensification of the Fury of the Death
Throes of the SPIRIT of Vatican II. And we have cause to await a further death
throe in Holy Week (irony) with yet another document that will not only proclaim
the death of the Traditional Roman Mass but also issue restrictions on how some
young priests celebrate the Novus Ordo in a way that this “Spirit” fears as redolent
of the Tradition.
But we must not fear this “Spirit”. For it will die with my generation, which is the
generation of the present Pope. The malodor of the “Spirit” will linger in puffs
throughout the world, from Rome to San Diego to parts of Europe. But the air will
clear.

And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Report: the Church of St, Benedict the Moor has been sold. See my full description of this former parish, with photos, HERE.

A historic Hell’s Kitchen church which was the first Black Catholic parish north of the Mason-Dixon has been sold for $16 million, putting the future use of the 1869 building into question. First established as an act of reparation by a priest, the former St. Benedict the Moor building played a part in African-American history for decades, marking a time when Hell’s Kitchen was home to a large Black population before the growth of Harlem.

As first reported by Bisnow New York, the deconsecrated church at 342 W53rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue and former rectory and parish buildings at 338 W53rd Street have been sold to billionaire developer Walter Wang. Publicly available New York County Supreme Court records show that the Archdiocese of New York sold the empty buildings to Wang’s JMM Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) based in Los Angeles, California. Wang is the Taiwanese-American CEO of JM Eagle, the world’s largest manufacturer of plastic and PVC piping, while his wife, Shirley Wang is the CEO of Plastpro, a fiberglass door maker.

(The parish was originally in the Village. )

St Benedict’s move to Hell’s Kitchen cost $30,000, which the New York Sun of the time credited to fundraising by the pastor, Irish-born Reverend John E Burke, who was to stay its parish priest for decades. In 1903, he traveled to Rome, meeting Pope Pius X. Pioneering Black newspaper The Colored American, of Washington D.C., reported: “Father Burke, of the Catholic church of St Benedict, the Moor, brings back from Rome a special benediction from the new Pope, Pius the Tenth, for all the colored people of this country.” Four years later he was made the director-general of all Black parishes in the US.

The church became a center of African-American intellectual life, with a library dedicated to Black literature, a drama group performing Shakespeare and a weekly debating society dedicated to economic advancement. It had a parochial school beside the church, and a convent whose nuns ran an orphanage in Rye, Westchester. A 1911 book called Half a Man, about Black New Yorkers, said: “Only in this Catholic church does one find white and black in almost equal numbers worshipping side by side.

Beling, Sarah, “Historic Hell’s Kitchen Church — Home to First Black Catholic Parish in North — Sold for $16 Million,” w42st.com, 14/1/2023

(Above) Cardinal O’Connor at St Benedict the Moor. It had been a primarily “Hispanic” parish for decades prior to this event.

As the KIng of Siam said.

(February 15, 2023 – Manhattan, NY) – The Office of the Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese of New York today announced 12 Catholic schools will cease operations at the end of the 2022-23 academic year. Four schools will merge into two. (The Announcement is HERE)

• Academy of St. Paul & St. Ann, Manhattan
• Ascension School, Manhattan
• Guardian Angel School, Manhattan
• Holy Family School, Bronx
• Immaculate Conception School, Manhattan
• Immaculate Conception School, 760 E Gun Hill Rd, Bronx*
• Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, Manhattan
• Santa Maria School, Bronx
• St. Angela Merici School, Bronx
• St. Brendan School, Bronx
• St. Christopher School, Staten Island
• St. Margaret Mary School, Bronx

• St. Francis Xavier, Bronx, will merge with St. Clare of Assisi.
• St. Gabriel School, Bronx, will merge with St. Margaret of Cortona.

EV Grieve reports on the closing of Immaculate Conception School:

The school dates to 1864 (find a PDF with history here), part of the Immaculate Conception church when it was at 505 E. 14th St. The (original -SC) church, on the north side of 14th, was demolished in the 1940s to make way for Stuy Town. 
The school’s current building was completed in 1945. Per Wikipedia: 

In 1943 the parish took over the chapel and hospital buildings now known as Church of the Immaculate Conception and Clergy Houses, completed in 1896 to designs by Barney and Chapman and formerly owned by Grace Church. This existing facility was expanded with a four-story brick convent and parochial school at 415-419 E. 13th St. and 414-416 E. 14th St. … and completed in 1945.

(Immaculate Conception School) is the last Catholic grade school (serving students K-8) in the East Village. The archdiocese shut down St. Brigid School, founded in 1856, at the end of the 2018-2019 school year.  

On Guardian Angel School:

Guardian Angel, nearly 123 years old and the last Catholic elementary School left in Chelsea, will shut down at the end of the current academic year as part of a new rounds of closures announced by the Archdiocese of New York last week.

“It feels like one of the cornerstones of Chelsea is going to be gone,” said Eddie Edmonds, 58 the oldest of five siblings who graduated from there.

Kelly, Keith J., “Guardian Angel, the Last Catholic Elementary School in Chelsea, to Close,” The Spirit, 19/2/2023

On Ascension School:

Parents of children at Ascension were stunned and disappointed that the 126 year old school will be no more. A school originally opened on West 107th in 1897, the same year that the largely working class German immigrants had built the Ascension Church. The opening of the churtch meant that Mass no longer had to be celebrated in the basement of the massive Lion Bre(w)ery, that once occupied six sity blocks in the neighborhood. In its heyday, the parish boasted 10,000 parishioners and the school that had 1,100 students with the boys taught by the Christian Brothers and the girls taught by the Sisters of Charity. At the end, it had less than 290 students. Still the end sent shock waves through the community.

Kay Bontempo, “Parents Stunned as 126-year-old Ascension School Slated to Close,” The Spirit, 17/2/2023

St. Paul and St. Ann Academy:

St Joseph’s in the Village makes it to Vatican News! The parish is run by the Dominicans – obviously having the right connections helps getting noticed!

St. Joseph Church set to open first Perpetual Adoration Chapel in New York

How can we otherwise explain how planning a minor chapel merits the attention of the Vatican? I also am not totally sure if this is the “first perpetual adoration chapel” in Manhattan – see here.

I have previouly described the history of St Joseph’s and the state of the Catholic Chaplaincy at NYU as it existed up to 2016 HERE. Whatever else we think of it, the promotion of Eucharistic adoration is a far cry from the practices of the ideologies that once dominated at St. Joseph’s. (Of course, nowadays a growing number of New York City parishes have taken up the progressive causes once championed at St. Joseph’s.) Yet what is the intention behind establishing this chapel? The chapel is promoted as a place to encounter God and “meet Jesus.” But this can be done in any church or really anywhere. There is no discussion of the specific reason why one would visit a chapel for eucharistic adoration – is this knowledge assumed to exist among the faithful today?

In contrast, nebulous psychological benefits are cited:

Such an intimate and quiet place might appear opposite to the busy and striving nature of New York. However, according to Fr. Boniface, “what keeps us striving is the natural human impulse for happiness. Striving for whatever we think will make us happy, which is holiness.”

“What we are hoping here is that people will encounter what brings peace to their souls, a place where they can find the ultimate consummation of their own desires.”

Security is a most important concern here.:

Much effort was spent on security planning. “Because this is the middle of Manhattan, you can’t just leave an open door. People will come to the parish office, and we will issue them a key card that will grant them access so that we can control who is in there, and people can feel safe as they enter the chapel,” Fr. Boniface explained.

Vatican News adds this advertisement at the bottom of the report:

YOUR CONTRIBUTION FOR A GREAT MISSION:
SUPPORT US IN BRINGING THE POPE’S WORDS INTO EVERY HOME

The totalitarian drift of the Vatican becomes clearer with every day.

From the Our Old House Facebook Page (2/18/2023):

“We recently closed on this 1890 Catholic Church that we plan to renovate into our dream home! We plan to go all out with the gothic style and want to incorporate a medieval theme as well. It’s about 4000sqft and we are going to keep it an open space. It’s going to be a lot of work but we cannot wait to restore this beautiful church!!”

We read in the Forum Catholique that Alessandro Gnocchi has joined the Russian Orthodox Church. Actually, he seems to have taken this step in 2019, but more recently, breaking what appears to have been a long silence, he has published a book on the subject (which I hope to read soon). Readers may recall that Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro (1968-2014), working as a team, were among the earliest and most perceptive critics of Pope Francis. For that unforgivable crime, the authors’ positions with Catholic media were terminated – this is the way the Roman Catholic Church dialogues with those perceived as adversaries of the governing establishment. Need I add that the early critiques of Gnocchi and Palmaro have been all too terribly vindicated? Now Gnocchi has joined the Orthodox Church. It is a step that in recent years other prominent Catholics, most notably Rod Dreher, have felt compelled to take.

Professor Roberto de Mattei has written on this tragic situation, accusing Gnocchi of “apostasy.” Now although we all esteem Prof. de Mattei, this judgment seems to me far too strong – after all, the Orthodox Church, in Catholic understanding, is only schismatic. If we understand “apostasy” to mean repudiation of the Catholic or even of the Christian faith, we must seek it elsewhere. For the most notorious apostates of our day are the controlling powers of the Roman Catholic Church: the German Catholic Church, the Jesuit order, etc. The primary blame for Gnocchi’s decision lies with them. Let us alway keep in mind the substance of what is going on, not the legal formalities so dear to conservatives.

Prof. Luc Perrin has written a perceptive coomentary on this affair, rightly focusing on the primary role of the institutional Roman Catholic Church as the obsequious servant of the New World Order. The natural consequence of its misdeeds is a movement towards the Orthodox Church, less infected by modern deviations. For all its faults, the Orthodox Church, in contrast to the West, as a church has preserved the Christian liturgy. It has also preserved the contemplative life and mysticism. Now, of course, within the Western Church traditionalists have preserved the liturgy, just as contemplative monasteries survive and even flourish. But the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, works either to supress or at least marginalize these manifestations of spiritual life. We should always remember all this before critiquing the choices of men like Alessandro Gnocchi.

Sandro Magister reports on the ever-growing problem of using Catholic churches – once the clergy and faithful are gone:

Closed Churches. Two Criteria for Their Best Reuse

Here are excepts with my commentary.

More than attacks, thousands of churches in Europe suffer from abandonment. With ever fewer Catholics at Mass, they find themselves empty. And so they are being closed. In Germany, in Holland, in Belgium, the figures are dizzying. But in Italy as well there is a growing number of churches in disuse. 

(In Italy), at least, the churches are not state but ecclesiastical property, and therefore enjoy spontaneous and lasting protection on the part of their respective diocesan and parish communities. (Is this intending to be humorous? In the US, where the Church, in various forms, owns its own properties, such protection has been nonexistent. Indeed, it is largely because of state ownership (where such regimes prevail) and state-imposed restrictions that the Catholic architectural heritage has been preserved.)

But when these communities dwindle and disappear, for their respective churches it is the end. They are at serious risk of going under and ending up on the market, perhaps turned into supermarkets or dance halls, or in any case into something contrary to the purposes for which they arose.

(Again, speaking for the US experience, the churches are at risk even if the “communities” still exist. For one thing, all properties are de facto exposed to the financial problems of the entire diocese and its insatiable need for funds.)

A conference at the Vatican issued recommendations in 2016 for the disposal of such churches:

(The conference) produced “guidelines” advising against “commercial reuse for speculative aims,” and instead encouraged “reuse for aims of solidarity,” with “cultural or social” purposes: museums, conference halls, bookshops, libraries, archives, art studios, Caritas centers, clinics, soup kitchens, and more. Still leaving the option of “transformation into private homes” in the case of “more modest buildings with no architectural value.”

In the same vein, Giuliano Zanchi, a priest from Bergamo, professor of theology and a “great expert on art and themes on the border between aesthetics and the sacred” has now made his suggestions.

 (T)here are two criteria that Zanchi suggests be followed in the reuse of churches that have ceased to be such but want to “relaunch themselves in civil life with the function of cultural crossroads and spiritual threshold.”

The first criterion, he writes, is that which “harnesses the artistic dignity normally connected to historical sacred buildings…..”

There is in fact today a “social sect of art, which has its shrines, its liturgies, its priests, its myths, its sacraments, its pilgrimages, and its holy days of obligation,” which in turn, together with music, cinema, literature, “delimit a rather hospitable space of a common and shared ‘pensiveness’.”

The historic precincts of many religious buildings no longer functioning as places of the liturgy have all the qualities to be able to accommodate these social needs so deeply rooted,  and to bid to act as a true crossroads of a ‘cultural fraternity’ in which to enliven, in debate, in encounter, in plurality, in hospitality, a common sense of the human.”

(So, henceforth Catholic Churches will function as museums and cult locations for the “social sect of art.”)

The second criteron, according to Zanchi:

consists in “that typical need of the contemporary city” to have liminal areas, thresholds, “capable of steering toward the profound and the transcendent, which in the absence of anything else are identified in theaters, museums, libraries, and other places of non-utilitarian ulteriority.”

 “In our cities, which remain mercilessly horizontal even when they build skyscrapers that defy the heavens, there is a need for spaces that can be traversed as ‘spiritual thresholds’ and embody a vertical impulse even when they remain hidden on the ground floors of urban life.”

We cannot say that any of this typically European, Roman Catholic gibberish makes sense or imposes any real restrictions on anyone regarding the future use of former churches. What is clear, however, is the Church’s acceptance of the elimination of Christianity from modern society, as vividly symbolized by the closing of Catholic churches. The decline of Catholic practice is silently assumed to be an unalterable fact of life. In place of Christianity, secular functions are acknowledged that provide psychological benefits to the man of today (the “sect of art,” a “common sense of the human,” a “shared pensiveness” and “spiritual thresholds” that embody a “vertical impulse.”) Moreover, this psychological and emotional assistance is apparently viewed as an adequate substitute for the Christian cult previously practiced in these buildings. And are we not forced to conclude that the Catholic Church already sees its own primary role as providing such benefits (the “field hospital” of Pope Francis)? Did not the great Christian writer Novalis in 1800 denounce “pious” contemporaries for whom the Christian religion was “dope.” (emotional and psycholgical comfort). Such a “religion” is doomed to extinction. By actually endorsing such principles, the Catholic Church acquiesces in its own marginalization – and eventual elimination – from the world of modernity.

(Above) The Interior of the Church of Notre Dame (2008)

We have now received more detailed information about what is going on near Columbia University.

Columbia University, one of the premiere institutions among the Ivies, now has a proper Catholic center. 

The Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life had a “soft opening” at the upper Manhattan campus this week, as the center continues to finish construction. 

Named for who is most likely Columbia University’s best-known Catholic convert, the Merton Institute is being constructed at the Church of Notre Dame. 

Columbia Catholic Ministry is planning a grand opening of the Merton Institute for later this semester, when the space is better furnished, said CCM co-president Joel Kattady.

Merton Institute President Brian McAuliffe, a Columbia alumnus, estimates it will take $10 million to finish the Institute, which still requires further construction and furnishing. McAuliffe anticipates that successful alumni fundraising will meet this need.

“So much about the living of the Catholic faith goes beyond worship,” said Fr. Roger Landry, the chaplain to the Merton Institute and Columbia’s Catholic religious life adviser. Fr. Landry arrived at Columbia last year after serving at the Holy See Mission to the United Nations.

Source: Columbia University gets its own Catholic Center (2/16/2023)

And the website of Corpus Christi parish(“Masks requested, please“) – until now silent on all these developments swirling about it – has posted this:

It’s official: Corpus Christi and Notre Dame have merged into one parish.  We are called, quite simply, the Parish of Corpus Christi and Notre Dame.  We are one territorial parish, whose boundaries extend from 110th Street to 125th Street, and from Morningside Drive to the Hudson River.  We remain two church sites, Corpus Christi on 121st Street and Notre Dame on 114th Street.  According to Cardinal Dolan’s decree, Corpus Christi is the parish church, housing the rectory, office, and all parish records (including those of Notre Dame and St. Vincent de Paul).  Notre Dame will continue to serve the community as it has been, as the center of French-language Catholicism in New York City as well as a center for Columbia Catholic Ministry (under the aegis of the Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life, who are in the process of transforming the Notre Dame rectory for this purpose).

In the coming weeks, Archdiocesan officials will help us to form a new civil corporation.  This will mean appointing trustees and setting up a new finance council and parish council.  We are a diverse parish and I intend to have qualified representation from across the community in these councils.

CORPUS CHRISTI AND NOTRE DAME CATHOLIC PARISH NEW YORK CITY

So many questions are still unanswered. It takes $10 million to renovate a rectory? Who will own the renovated rectory? Is Fr. Landry now at least de facto the Catholic chaplain of Columbia University? Is Notre Dame church once again the center of the Columbia chaplaincy? Is anything going to be done to the magnificent church itself? Will the Thomas Merton Institute be transparent on the details of Thomas Merton’s life in the 1960’s? We will have to see!