Announcing “Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy”

As I’m sure most everyone remembers, between September and November 2022, Church Life Journal published a series of articles on the liturgical reform coauthored by Dr. John Cavadini, Dr. Mary Healy, and Fr. Thomas Weinandy [= CHW, brevitatis causa]. The series sparked much criticism of the authors’ perplexingly inadequate scholarship, grandiose generalizations, and pastoral callousness.

I’m delighted to announce today the release of Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass and the Faithful Who Attend It.

This volume gathers into one convenient place the best critiques of CHW, comprising the work of nine authors. The Table of Contents is as follows:

Preface by Peter Kwasniewski
Abbreviations
Summary of the Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy Series

Part 1. Janet Smith’s Critique
1 • Sacrificing Beauty and Other Errors
2 • Misrepresentation of Mediator Dei, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI
3 • The Genesis of the Novus Ordo and “Theological and Spiritual Flaws” of the TLM
4 • Unity, Charismatic Masses, and Africa
5 • Mischaracterization of the TLM, Then and Now

Part 2. Peter Kwasniewski’s Critique
6 • Unconvincing Propaganda against the Latin Mass
7 • Noble Patriarchs, Wayward Grandchildren: A More Realistic Appraisal of the Liturgical Movement
8 • Is the Laity’s Offering of the Mass a Postconciliar Rediscovery?
9 • Offspring of Arius in the Holy of Holies
10 • Was Liturgical Latin Introduced As, and Because It Was, the Vernacular?
11 • The Dubious Legacy of Leonardo’s Last Supper
12 • Games People Play with the Holy Spirit

Part 3. Additional Commentary
13 • Alexander Battista, “Church Life Journal Insults Eastern Liturgies with Amateur Scholarship”
14 • Fr. Samuel Keyes, “The Failures of Reform”
15 • Roland Millare, “Joseph Ratzinger and the New Liturgical Movement”
16 • Fr. Peter Miller, OSB, “Bible by the Pound: Would the Holy Spirit Agree that More Bible is Better at Mass?”
17 • Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB, “The One Thread by Which the Council Hangs”
18 • Joseph Shaw, “The Art of Missing the Point”

Epilogue by Gregory DiPippo
Acknowledgments
Select Bibliography

Alexander Battista writes on behalf of Eastern Christians; Fr. Samuel Keyes represents an Ordinariate point of view; Roland Millare writes as an expert on the liturgical thought of Joseph Ratzinger. Fr. Peter Miller's chapter, "Bible by the Pound: Would the Holy Spirit Agree that More Bible Is Better at Mass?" — a masterful and highly entertaining critique of the new lectionary and defense of the old one — has never been published before in any form, so it is available only in this collection.

In refuting CHW from many angles, Illusions of Reform ends up serving as a convenient guide to nearly all the common arguments given in favor of the Novus Ordo or against the TLM, as well as a compact summary of historically and theologically informed responses to them.

In 3 minutes this video sums up the reasons why this anthology is so important and, specifically, what readers will find in its pages:

Here is the cover plus a few photos (the text is crisper in real life; my beat-up pocket camera’s not great):

“Illusions of Reform” (254 pages, 22 illustrations) may be ordered in paperback, hardcover, and ebook at the publisher's site, or, alternatively, the paperback and hardcover (but not the ebook) may be obtained from any Amazon outlet.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

By now, I am sure that all of our readers have heard of the various reports that further restrictions of the celebration of the traditional Roman Rite may be coming, within perhaps a few months. Rorate Caeli reported some days ago that their sources have heard nothing of it, while Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican reports that it certainly exists in some form. I have heard other reports contradicting and agreeing with them both, including one denial that any such restrictions are planned, and another that gave an outline of them which, if even partially true, would be disastrous. I have no information of my own to offer. It remains only to encourage everyone to pray fervently and constantly that God in His infinite mercy and wisdom avert such a calamity from the Church, and prevent the useless infliction of even greater suffering and sadness on followers of the traditional rite, such as is narrated in this video by a couple from Wisconsin, who recently lost their traditional Mass, one which predated Summorum Pontificum.

In the meantime, I also vehemently encourage all of our readers to read and share as widely as possible this absolutely superb column by Dom Alcuin Reid, published last week on One Peter Five, to which no summary can do justice:

https://onepeterfive.com/response-cavadini-healy-weinandy/

This article is written in large part as a response to a series published last fall by the University of Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal, written by Professors John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy OFM Cap. The five articles, later republished as a unit, offer a defense of the post-Conciliar liturgy which relies heavily on the same combination of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi that all such defenses rely upon. Dom Alcuin is right to point out the “paucity of their liturgical history and the lack of range of sources in their footnotes”; I do not hesitate to assert, more bluntly, that the presentation is selective throughout, and simply ignores mountains of evidence that contradict its narrative.

Dom Alcuin outlines out a few of the broader points on which Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy (henceforth CHW, brevitatis causa) run aground. Simply put, they accept the false premise that to question the reform is to question the Second Vatican Council. (We will return to this later.) “... the intellectual and pastoral argument about the theological, liturgical, and most especially the pastoral superiority of the reformed liturgical rites has long since been lost. ... it is a well-established fact that the new rites promulgated by Paul VI after the Council were not the modest, organic development of the heretofore Roman rite for which the Council called (see Sacrosanctum Concilium 23) but were a radically new product of the body entrusted by Paul VI to implement the Council’s liturgical Constitution ... The Consilium intentionally went beyond the Constitution—with, in the case of many of its members, the best of intentions, and certainly, in the end, with the backing of papal authority. ... it is intellectually false to assert that to question or reject the reformed liturgy is in some way to ‘undermine Vatican II,’ as our three authors, and others, would have us believe.” (Or, as this fellow rightly put it:)

Their second major flaw (by far the most common with this particular genre of post-Conciliar apologetic) is to ignore the fact that the reform has not been the success that the Church was promised. Dom Alcuin writes: “... as repeated statistical studies from various countries demonstrate, the reformed liturgy has simply not delivered the ecclesial renewal promised. Promised? Yes: the assumption that guided (‘motivated’? ‘sold’?) the introduction of the new rites was that if the liturgy were simplified, modernised, made more contemporary, then people would participate in it more fruitfully and a new springtime in the life of the Church would be ushered in. Alas, the opposite has proved to be true. ... the modern liturgical rites have not of themselves proved to be part of the solution (to the problem of the decline in religious practice); of themselves they have not retained, let alone attracted, people to the practice of the Faith. Today we may, then, legitimately raise questions about their pastoral utility and about the wisdom of following the policies of sixty years ago that led to their production.”

The CHW narrative also relies on the idea that the entire process of liturgical reform, going back to the original Liturgical Movement, was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore, to question its value is to “inherently den(y) the validity of the liturgical renewal as a genuine work of Holy Spirit in the contemporary Church.” (I make bold to insert here an observation of my own and my colleagues, that their presentation of the Liturgical Movement in their first article is inexcusably sloppy, since it falsely treats it as if were ONE movement with ONE set of ideas, which then flowed perfectly into Sacrosanctum Concilium and the post-Conciliar reform. This ignores both the range of ideas within the Liturgical Movement, and the flagrant contradiction between its aspirations and the results of the reform.) As Dom Alcuin rightly points out, this simply assumes too much: “they are practically making the liturgical reforms themselves a matter of faith, of Divine Revelation, to be believed in by all the faithful. But the reforms are not. They are the product of prudential judgements of men... Certainly, these men did (we hope) fervently invoke God the Holy Spirit to assist them in their work—and in this life we shall never know to what extent He did so assist them. (Could God the Holy Spirit really have been personally responsible for all the errors that resulted in Eucharistic Prayer II?) It is therefore not the sin of blasphemy to question the liturgical reform any more that it is blasphemy to assert that the College of Cardinals is perfectly capable of invoking the Holy Spirit at the beginning of a conclave and then of electing a truly bad pope, as any history of the papacy more than clearly demonstrates.”

Esto. It has been more than fifty years since the reforms were promulgated, and at this point, it would be unreasonable to expect anything else or anything better. In regard to CHW specifically, it remains only to note that they are open to the idea of a future correction of some of the more infelicitous aspects of the reform. However, as Dom Alcuin notes, this puts them, of course, into direct conflict with the current party line that the reform is “irreversible”, which either means that the Church is stuck with (e.g.) Eucharistic Prayer II forever, or it means nothing at all.

All that being said, it is the introductory section of this essay that really makes it a permanently valuable contribution to the on-going debate in the Church about reform and renewal, and the reason why I urge you so strongly to read and share it. Simply put, there is a healthy, reasonable, theologically sound approach to Vatican II, which is to treat it as one among many ecumenical councils, which (Dom Alcuin writes), “outlined policies which were judged to be expedient at the time and which were to be interpreted in a hermeneutic of continuity with the Church’s Tradition, including the dogmatic definitions of the other twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Church.”

But there also exists an unhealthy, unreasonable, and theologically unsound version of Vatican II which can be summed up in six words: “Vatican II changed all of that.” Dom Alcuin explains more fully: “Vatican II changed all of that, radically, irreversibly,” where ‘that’ stands for any previous liturgical, doctrinal, moral, or pastoral teaching or practice that is deemed inapplicable (read ‘inconvenient’) to contemporary man.” This is what he calls the “super-dogma.” The post-Conciliar reform is the most immediately tangible sign of this super-dogma, and the unhealthy grip which it has on the Church, and therefore, to question the reform is to question not the legitimate Vatican II, one council among many in a line of continuity that goes back to Christ and the Apostles, but the super-dogma wrongly built out of it.

“When we recognise this super-dogma for what it actually is—a lie upon which generations of clergy and laity have built their ecclesiastical careers ... we can begin to understand the manic severity that is meted out to those who refuse to subscribe to it and, indeed, we can begin to comprehend the extreme lengths to which its devotees will go in propping up and jealously defending everything that they have built upon this foundation, most especially the reformed liturgy. For the new liturgy is the touchstone of Vatican II. It is the single thread by which (in the minds of many) the Council (of their own conception) hangs.”

As I said above, I do not pretend to do this essay justice by summarizing it here, and it is important to qualify that Dom Alcuin does not ascribe the fullness of this super-dogma to CHW. However, whether they will it so or no, their attempt to brand the embrace of the historical Roman Rite as a rejection of Vatican II cannot stand UNLESS Vatican II is accepted in its super-dogma version, which is unhealthy, unreasonable, and theologically unsound, and now, after sixty years, possibly THE single greatest obstacle to authentic reform in the Church as a whole. I therefore congratulate Dom Alcuin for his elucidation of this very important point, and repeat my encouragement to everyone to read the essay in full.

ADDENDUM: just today, One Peter Five has another superb article, this time by Mr John Byron Kuhner, a fitting commemoration of the octave of Dom Alcuin’s piece. This paragraph gives a neat de facto summary of the most basic problem with CHW’s article.

https://onepeterfive.com/paul-vi-refounder-catholicism/

“That the (Novus Ordo) Mass is a papal rather than a conciliar creation does not make it any less valid for Catholics, of course; but it does make it clear that discussions of it should be separated from discussions of the Council. (my emphasis) And whereas Paul permitted resistance from clerics of a modernizing tendency, even to his own decrees, Chiron is able to document his forceful crackdown on the use of older form of the Mass. He was capable of resolve against Tradition more than resolve against experimentation.”

Offspring of Arius in the Holy of Holies: Recent False Claims about the Roman Rite

Detail of French MS, ca. 1360–1370 (Master of Jean de Mandeville; full image here)

Imagine my surprise when I read, in the second installment of the (now finished) five-part series at Church Life Journal by Drs. Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy [CHW], the following claim:

Significantly, while the faithful [before The Council] knew and believed that the one God is a Trinity of persons, their liturgical and personal prayer often primarily consisted of praying to the one (generic) God. Only after Vatican II, with the revision of the rite and the use of the vernacular, did the faithful become more cognizant of the trinitarian nature of the liturgy and of their own ability to pray in a trinitarian manner.

Apart from the authors’ remarkable ability to know intimately how millions of Catholics prayed and engaged with the liturgy prior to the 1960s — and in particular, their ability to know that widely-available and popular devotional materials, explicitly Trinitarian in content, in fact must not have been used by anyone who bought them — together with their crystal-ball glimpse into the Trinitarian literacy of modern Catholics (which I am sure a Pew Research survey could quickly establish, together with their literacy in Eucharistic doctrine) and their intimate Trinitarian prayer lives, we should, with discipline, zero in on the central claim: that it was specifically “the revision of the rite and the use of the vernacular” that brought about this renaissance in Trinitarian knowledge and prayer.

Archbishop Lefebvre in one of many flourishing preconciliar missions run by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Africa; sadly, their liturgy did not help them much in their conquest of the continent for Christ.

In my book Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis, published in 2014 — a book frequently reviewed, and easily available, for those with a taste for liturgical studies — I devote one of the chapters to documenting the systematic removal of Trinitarian and Christological confessions from the reformed liturgy, demonstrating that the vernacular rite Catholics were given after 1969 was far less centered on the mystery of the Trinity than the Tridentine liturgy to which the faithful were accustomed (especially from the unofficial vernacular versions they would have encountered in widely-used hand missals — unless CHW somehow know, once again, that the millions of copies of such missals that were sold over many decades were never actually used by anyone).

Given the magnitude of this claim — that, essentially, the Church had allowed her faithful for centuries to be deficient in their knowledge and devotion to the Trinity (!) — it seems opportune to share this chapter online, in the interests of making the truth better known.

Offspring of Arius in the Holy of Holies

(Chapter 6 of Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis, Angelico, 2014)

In the New Testament two basic “orientations” of prayer are displayed and inculcated: first and foremost, in keeping with Jewish tradition, prayer addressed to “God” or “Lord” (into this category may also be placed the altogether novel way in which our blessed Savior intimately addresses his “Father,” as we see, for example, in the farewell discourses in the Gospel of John), [1] and occupying a secondary but still important place, prayer addressed to Jesus Christ himself.

To the former and more familiar Jewish practice, Jesus adds a new and crucial element that concerns the very essence of the revelation he embodies: God is to be invoked in Jesus’ name, for the Son of God is now the Son of Man, the one and only Mediator between God and man, through whom all our prayers ascend to the Father and all his graces are given to us in the Mystical Body. Hence the Lord teaches his disciples: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you” (Jn 15:16), and again: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (Jn 16:23–24). Such teachings are the revealed foundation of the Church’s custom of concluding her prayers per Christum Dominum nostrum, a formula we already see frequently in St. Paul, whose letters are full of liturgical language: “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” [2]

Nevertheless, our Lord also taught his disciples to address him, the Son and Savior, in prayer: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (Jn 14:13–14). [3] When Jesus says: “You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am” (Jn 13:13), he affirms that his followers are right to turn to him as the ultimate authority, the Holy One of Israel. Events, especially miracles of healing, confirmed the truth of these words. “The centurion answered him, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed’” (Mt. 8:8). [4] “The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent; but they cried out the more, ‘Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!’” (Mt. 20:31). There are the words of the thief: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42), and the words of the doubter: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).

Pietro da CORTONA, The Stoning of St Stephen (c. 1660)

Again, the spontaneous exclamations of the early Christians are a precious witness that Christ, as true God, was the addressee of many prayers, not only a mediator through whom one had access to the Father. “As they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’” (Acts 7:59). “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:2–3). More important than any one verse, however, is the general tenor of a number of texts, for example chapter 10 of the Epistle to the Romans, where St. Paul writes:

If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . . . The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” (vv. 9, 11–13)

Here, in typical rabbinic fashion, the Apostle to the Gentiles weaves together citations from the Old Testament that are manifestly speaking about the one true God, the God of Israel, and applies them to Jesus Christ. In this way he is not only clearly asserting Christ’s divinity, but also urging the Christians who receive his letter to confess this mystery with their lips (a reference to liturgical worship) and to invoke Jesus as God in their prayers.

In the end, both ways of praying are given a succinct endorsement in the solemn words of Jesus that have echoed down the centuries: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me . . . He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:6, 9). By saying that he is the way, he self-effacingly presents himself as Mediator, the Word made flesh, the only way to reach the Father; by saying that he is truth and life, consubstantial with the Father, he presents himself as he truly is in the Father’s glory — namely, as the Son who, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever. Hence, there can never be any tension, much less contradiction, between praying to the Father and praying to Jesus. For Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us, and whoever sees or speaks to him has seen or spoken to the Father.

Icon of the angelic visitors to Abraham, representing the persons of the Trinity

In regard to ways of praying, it comes as no surprise that traditional liturgies of all rites, Eastern and Western, closely adhere to the witness of the New Testament and the practice of the ancient Church. The classical Roman liturgy — viewed in terms of ethos, ceremonial, spirituality, and the dogmatic theology expressed in the texts — shares much more in common with the Byzantine liturgy than it does with the Novus Ordo Missae. [5] Perhaps nowhere is this fact more obvious than in regard to the presence, in liturgical texts and ceremonies, of solemn Trinitarian affirmations and their counterpart, a thoroughgoing Christocentrism.

Indeed, there could hardly be a more insistently Christ-confessing liturgy than the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. In this liturgy there is a constant hymning both of Christ as the one true God and of the indissoluble unity of the Trinity: “Let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God”; “For You, O God, are gracious and You love mankind, and to You we render glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever.” Right before the Nicene Creed is recited, the priest sings: “Let us love one another, so that with one mind we may profess” — and the people finish his sentence: “The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in substance and undivided.” Immediately after the consecration the priest sings: “We offer to You Yours of Your own, on behalf of all and for all,” to which the people respond: “We praise You, we bless You, we thank You, O Lord, and we pray to You, our God.” One of the most beautiful texts in the Divine Liturgy is an ancient hymn that perfectly illustrates the point we are making:

O only-begotten Son and Word of God, Who, being immortal, deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, and became man, without change. You were also crucified, O Christ our God, and by death have trampled death, being One of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us.

The Byzantine liturgy is overflowing with such texts, boldly confessing the divinity of Christ and the perfect unity of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Now, even if the classical Roman liturgy, with its comparative sobriety and simplicity, is not “overflowing” in the same way as Eastern liturgies tend to be, it too conveys the same theological message, and with many of the same expressions and gestures. It clearly belongs to and derives from the same ancient Christian heritage, where chanting the praises of the divine Word-made-flesh and falling in adoration before the Most Holy Trinity were the pith and purpose of liturgical life.

In marked contrast, the Novus Ordo Missae displays an insistent “Patricentrism” or generic Theocentrism that is characteristic of no historically well-established liturgical rite. In its official texts and ceremonial the Novus Ordo exhibits what can only be called a certain Arianizing appearance or tendency. [6] The presbyter Arius of Alexandria (ca. 256–336), after whom the heresy of Arianism is named, taught that Jesus Christ is not truly and properly divine, but rather, a highly exalted creature and specially favored servant of God — a “son” or “god” by grace, not by nature.

St Athanasius Triumphs over Arius, by Jacob de Wit (after Peter Paul Rubens); public domain image from the website of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD).

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Sinite Parvulos (Part 2) - An Excellent Column about Children at Mass

Judging from our viewing statistics, people really liked comedian Jeremy McLellan’s take on the recent discussion over bringing young children to Mass. (McLellan was responding to a piece on the blog of Fr Michael White, pastor of Nativity Church in Timonium, Maryland, entitled “Why We Don’t Encourage (Little) Kids in Church.”) On the same topic, I strongly commend to our readers’ attention a superb piece entitled “The Liturgy is for (Little) Kids” at Church Life Journal, written by founding editor Timothy O’Malley, who is also the director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy. Here are a few excerpts; you should definitely take the time to read the whole thing.

“From my perspective, Fr. White’s argument is flawed not simply because he argues for the exclusion of young children from the act of parochial worship. Rather, the blog post reveals a misunderstanding of the nature of the liturgical act itself. This misunderstanding is not unique to Fr. White, but has infected most Catholic parishes in the West well before Vatican II. When one reduces the liturgical act to “understanding,” then there is an erasure of the contemplative, aesthetic, and thus embodied formation that is integral to a worshipful existence. ...

Young children perceive the mystery of divine love in the mode that is appropriate to an infant or young child. To deny them this act of perception is in essence to say that God can only communicate in the mode that we find appropriate for our sophisticated, intelligent, rational, and adult faith. ...

In this sense, Fr. White’s blog post is but endemic of Catholic worship in the United States at this stage. Liturgies are cacophonies of verbal proclamations, of sermons, of explaining rites and the meaning of feasts. There is so little to behold in churches that have been built as suburban shopping malls. Music is chosen not because it provides something to perceive, the beauty of ordered sound used to worship God, but instead to get across a “message” in hymn texts that are often more ideological than aesthetic or theological. There is often so little gravitas to the activity of worship, a sense that we have to adjust ourselves to adore God, since what we long for is a pleasing and meaningful act of worship.

Perhaps, what we need to do is not exclude children from the act of worship. Instead, we must understand liturgical worship as if the primary participants in the act of worship will be infants. Instead of relying on endless speech, on communication media including video screens, we must create spaces where all the senses are involved in worship. Emphasizing understanding through speech brackets out a good deal of what it means to be a human being.

So rather than create a special liturgy for children appropriate to their understanding, let us have music that is worth listening to and singing along with. Let us build altarpieces and reredos that actually give both infants and adults something to behold in worship. Let us attend to the way that light sanctifies space, how color delights the eye. And perhaps some of the children are bored at Mass, not because they are incapable of understanding what is going on, but because there is too much speech and not enough silence, not enough embodied action, not enough to behold.”

Laudate, pueri, Dominum!