SOON AFTER the New Mass appeared in 1969, a group of Roman theologians and liturgists met to discuss producing a critique of the new rite, which would then be submitted to Paul VI by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, former Prefect of the Holy Office. Fr. M.L. Guérard des Lauriers OP wrote the text of the critique, which became known in English-speaking countries as The Ottaviani Intervention and which served as a sort of “charter” for the traditionalist resistance to the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.
The English translations of the Intervention suffered from a number of serious defects. In the early 1990s, I therefore set to work on a new and more readily comprehensible English translation. I used as my base texts the French and Italian versions that Mgr. Guérard himself had published in 1983.
In 1992, TAN Books published my new translation, together with my Introduction, which provided the historical background to the affair of the Intervention.
The above conversation with Stephen Heiner of True Restoration Media, filmed in December 2011, tells the story of the Intervention, one which every Catholic faithful to the traditional Latin Mass should know.
The 2010 re-release of the Intervention is now available from sggresources.org.
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