Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, 8 am and 7 pm.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, 7:45 am, 6 pm

St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven, 5:30 pm

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, 8 am and 6 pm

New York

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Shrine, 7 AM Low Mass, 745 AM Low Mass, 7 PM Missa Cantata

Holy Innocents Church, 8 AM Low Mass, 6 PM Missa Cantata

Saint Josaphat’s Church, Bayside, NY, 7 pm Missa Cantata

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon.

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, 7 pm

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 5 pm

Our of Lady of Victories, Harrington Park NJ, Low Mass, 6:15 pm.

Crepusculo: Lettere dalla Crisi della Chiesa (Twilight: Letters from the Crisis of the Church)

By Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong, 2022

Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli have now given us three short books that together represent a profound series of reflections on the state of the Church today. I have already reviewed the first in the sequence, Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church(Sradicati, 2019)) – which also has been translated into English. I am looking forward to receiving the second, Decadence (Decadenza, 2020). Finally, in 2022 appeared Twilight (Crepuscolo). The title captures the state of the Catholic Church of today. The authors ask if this twilight is the growing darkness before nightfall or that before a new dawn? For the American reader, however, the title of course has  added significance in relation to the Roman Catholic Church of today: the Twilight Zone!

Like its sisters, Twilight takes the time-honored literary form of an exchange of letters. The personalities of the two authors are complementary. Aldo Maria Valli, a journalist, Vaticanist, media and TV commentator, is poetic and forceful, even visionary. I can confirm, having heard Valli speak in Rome last October at a conference during the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage, that he is an extraordinary speaker. Aurelio Porfiri,  a musician and composer by profession,  has a more discursive and restrained style, featuring generous quotations from favored authors of conservative Catholicism, like Henri de Lubac  – but also from Romano Amerio. That is not to say, however, that Porfiri does not make his own pointed observations. What is common to both authors is that,  after having served the Church and secular media establishments for years in high positions, they have become determined critics of the present Vatican regime. Aldo Maria Valli, moreover, has turned decisively to Catholic traditionalism.

The writers’ assessment of the present situation of the Church is honest and bleak. The institutional Church has identified herself totally with the world. The Church speaks and acts exactly like the secular powers. “Nothing good for the soul can come from ‘shepherds’ who talk like the United Nations, are champions of political correctness and who embrace all the theories of the New World Order.”

Even though the Church cannot end, Valli states the Church as he had known it up to now is finished. The Church that may arise again will have nothing to do with hierarchy, the episcopal conferences and the dicasteries of the Roman curia. ”That ship has been wrecked and sunk.” As for the papacy, under Bergoglio, “the papal authority, already undermined, has received the death blow.” But Bergoglio is only the last link in a chain. Decisive for this realization of Valli’s was Amoris Laetitia and, even more so,  Traditionis Custodes. 

Valli describes his spiritual situation: 

The word that comes to mind is extraneousness. Look, I feel ever more estranged from the hierarchical church, from the shepherds – these shepherds! From their preaching, from their rites. Extraneous to all the so-called pastoral initiatives that live from empty slogans. Extraneous to the ceremonies which put at their center not God but man. Extraneous to sloppy and distorted liturgies. Extraneous to the conformism of the guardians of mercy….  

In such a dilemma, what can a Catholic do?  Here the authors draw on Ernst Jünger and his archetype of the Waldgänger (literally, “one who goes into the forest”). The Waldgänger is a combination of rebel, outlaw, and anarchist. Such a man asserts the truth in a dishonest world. The price of his personal integrity is exclusion from that world and immersion in the figurative forest.  Valli emphasizes that the Waldgänger is not fleeing, but making a manly choice of resistance,  “when by now it is clear that the institution has taken the path of betrayal and apostasy.” 

Valli does not at all see himself leaving the Church. “(Going to the forest)does not mean in my case abandoning the Church, but rather is a cultural attitude, by which everything coming from the summit of today’s Church, dominated by a humanitarianism which is confounded with that of the Masons, is decisively denounced, rejected, and refuted.“ Do we not see here some similarities with Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option and – even more so – his Live not by Lies? And does not the latter title in turn remind us of Solzhenitsyn and his colossal solitary struggle? We should also remember that Ernst Jünger became a Catholic a year or so before his death (at age 102)….

Aurelio Porfiri ends Twilight by quoting Joseph Ratzinger: a small rest (of Catholics) will remain, perhaps like those Japanese of the past, who lived their faith far from the (institutional ) Church but without separating from her.  So, Porfiri concludes, while we cannot say that a paradigm shift has happened in the Church it is taking place in ourselves, in those of us “who  take seriously the promises of the Man from Nazareth and sit here in the twilight, dispelling the darkness with confused actions while waiting for the dawn.”

For the feast of Candlemas, February 2: mass, blessing of the candles and procession at the historic church of the Transfiguration on Mott Street.

This afternoon a Solemn Mass was offered at St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT for the Regina Pacis Academy community. The celebrant was Fr. Peter Lenox, the deacon was Fr. Michael Clark and the subdeacon, Mr. William Riccio. A host of Regina Pacis students served at the altar.

Peter A. Kwasniewski

The Once and Futrure Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile

2022 TAN Books, Gastonia, NC

It’s no exaggeration to say that Peter Kwasniewski is the most energetic advocate of the traditional Roman Rite in America today. We have covered his many lectures and conferences on the site since 2015;  he is a familiar presence on the internet.  The books he has written or edited just since 2018 have been remarkable both in quantity and quality. In addition to all this, Dr. Kwasniewski is active as a church musician. Thus, his knowledge of the liturgy, both in the West and the East, is based in large part upon his own practical experience.  

The Once and Future Roman Rite is the most complete summary of Kwasniewski’s thought and advocacy on behalf of the traditional mass, for which he makes a passionate case. Dr. Kwasniewski’s tone can be intense, engaged, colloquial, even argumentative. He does not pretend to be a disinterested observer. But in this regard is St. Augustine’s City of God any different ?

The author first sets forth tradition as the governing norm in Catholicism. Tradition is not static but is, as the Newman explained, always involved in a process of organic development. Dr. Kwasniewski argues, however that the Novus Ordo can in no way be viewed as an organic development of the Roman rite. Its content has been largely changed and the basic features of the rite have been altered as well. Dr. Kwasniewski further argues that the traditional Latin mass and the divine liturgy of the East are much more closely related to each other then either of them is to the Novus Ordo. Kwasniewski profoundly disagrees with Pope Benedict’s “two forms of the Roman rite” solution of Summorum Pontificum – if that is to be understood not just as a political solution but as a statement of liturgical theory.

Kwasniewski finds support for his conclusions in a series of key addresses by Pope Paul VI between 1965 and 1969. Our author quotes them in full instead of taking selective passages to support foreordained conclusions. It is very clear from these documents that Paul VI  viewed the new mass as superseding the old, that it represented a revolutionary change, and that even the earliest so-called abuses (such as universal use of the vernacular or the discarding of Gregorian chant)were intended and modeled by Paul VI himself. This completely undermines the theories of conservative Catholics and other “reform of the reform” advocates who wish to dissever the Novus Ordo as it was created and imposed in 1969 from the conciliar documents themselves or from the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes.

Dr. Kwasniewski proceeds to a definition of a liturgical rite. He finds that the Novus Ordo is in no way the same as the Roman rite because:  the Roman canon is not used, mass is not offered in Latin, the liturgical texts are not recited or chanted, most of the prayers of the Latin mass have been eliminated or extensively reworked and reordered, a multi-year lectionary has been introduced, the calendar of the saints has been a severely reduced,  the traditional offertory  has been eliminated, mass is not said ad Orientem, the liturgy is celebrated in a sequential manner,  and the communions of the priest and of the faithful are mingled. Note that this description fits the Novus Ordo as it is usually celebrated, not unusual adaptations in favor of Catholic tradition such as we find in the Oratory churches in the UK.

Indeed, for Kwasniewski the presence (or absence) of the Roman canon is decisive.  A memorable chapter of this book is the author’s detailed analysis of the text of the canon and the theological meanings of each sentence. Kwasniewski argues that this ancient text inculcates a whole series of  theological truths that are downplayed or even absent in the Novus Ordo, e.g., that the Church’s unity and her other perfections are gifts for which we must pray to God; that the sacrifice of the mass is offered for Catholics who hold the true faith and they are its beneficiaries; that faith and devotion are prerequisites for participating in the mass; that we are protected by the intercession of the saints; and that there is divine predestination (only not in the Calvinist sense!). And the optional version of the Roman canon found  in the Novus Ordo – which is rarely used – has been altered in significant respects. Dr. Kwasniewski devotes a whole chapter to the fate of the mysterium fidei (the mystery of faith) in the Novus Ordo.

Dr. Kwasniewski believes the liturgical aberrations of today did not start with Vatican II and Paul VI but with the revision of the Holy Week ceremonies under Pius XII. For it was then, after 1948,  that the great themes of the liturgical revolution first received concrete application. It was with the changes to the Triduum that the modus operandi of centralized liturgical renewal was first consolidated.

In this book, depending on the subject,  Dr. Kwasniewski takes up the role of a theologian, a liturgist,  a historian, or a spiritual advisor. Parallel to his main arguments, he touches on a multitude of other issues and facts.  In so doing,  Dr. Kwasniewski is not afraid to clear up errors and misinterpretations that have gained currency among traditionalists – even if they support their cause.  This book is a gold mine of facts and arguments for the traditionalist seeking to better understand his own position and to respond to his adversaries.

The overall conclusion that Dr. Kwasniewski draws should be obvious: to adhere fully to the traditional Latin mass. In a sense, the pontificate of Francis has been liberating. The Catholic traditionalist no longer needs to feel any residual obligation to be a politician  –  the pope has clearly rejected that possibility. Thus, the only option remaining is to “do the right thing,” without any fear or hesitation. But wasn’t this conclusion already foreshadowed in the Heresy of Formlessness by Martin Mosebach (who has written a superb foreword to The Once and Future Roman Rite). When I reviewed Heresy almost twenty years ago what struck me was the universal application of the author’s arguments. The traditional mass was no longer merely an aesthetic pleasure, or a concession sought for by a small minority – it was a vital rule of faith than should be extended to the whole Church. So it is with Peter Kwasniewski. The traditional liturgy needs to be restored in full to the Church so that the Faith may flourish once again.