MOST OF THOSE who closely follow events on the traditionalist scene are probably aware that the church where I work in West Chester, Ohio, St. Gertrude the Great, follows the pre-1955 rites for all its liturgical services. I have discussed the general rationale for this in my recent book on the New Mass, Work of [...]
THE New Oxford Review, a monthly with a conservative take on many issues in the post-Vatican II church, recently reviewed Nicola Giampietro’s The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948 to 1970 (Roman Catholic Books, 348 pages, $33.75). Antonelli was a liturgist and Vatican official who from 1948 onwards [...]
EVER SINCE the post-Vatican II revolution began, the liturgical change that faithful Catholics regarded as most horrifying was communion in the hand. It overthrew everything — everything — we had been taught to believe about the ineffable holiness of the Real Presence and the sacred character of the priesthood. The 16th-century Protestant heretics who abolished [...]
I AM PLEASED to report that Work of Human Hands has received its first formal review in a periodical. This came in a lengthy piece by Dr. Geoffrey Hull in the October 2010 issue of Christian Order. One advantage of the Internet age is the opportunity it offers an author to engage with and respond [...]
MUCH TO my surprise, the first non-traditionalist writer to weigh in with a review of Work of Human Hands (albeit brief) was a liturgist who actually had a hand in creating the New Mass. Rev. Mathias Augé, a Claretian priest and liturgical scholar, worked in the 1960s for Consilium, the Vatican agency headed by Rev. [...]
RECENTLY I CAME across the musings of a young Jesuit, Father Mark Mossa, about the phrase “work of human hands” which occurs in the Preparation of Gifts (= Offertory) in the New Mass. This prompted a brief correspondence the meaning of the phrase. The full text of the priest’s blog posting is here, and the [...]
AN ARTICLE in a recent issue of The Wanderer resurrected the old accusation, often heard in the 1960s and 1970s, that ICEL (the International Committee for English in the Liturgy), bore almost exclusive responsibility for the post-Vatican II mistranslations of the Mass of Paul VI. English-speaking Catholics, we were repeatedly told, never had the opportunity [...]
THE Rorate Caeli blog recently posted a translation of The Reform of Holy Week in the Years 1951-1956, an excellent and detailed study of the Pius XII Holy Week rites, written by Fr. Stefano Carusi. As we noted in Chapter 3 of Work of Human Hands, these rites constituted the third stage in a process of [...]
A PREVIOUS post, The Novus Ordo and Corpus Christi “Lite,” noted that the new lectionary (cycle of scripture readings) for the Mass of Paul VI omitted a scripture passage which appeared in the old Missal, apparently because the passage was at odds with various tenets of modernist theology. Needless to say, the reformers couldn’t possibly [...]
IN A previous post, The World, the Sacred Heart and the New Mass, I noted how the old Postcommunion for the Feast of the Sacred was changed in the Missal of Paul VI in order to accommodate modernist theology on the world and earthly things. Many of the changes in the Propers of the new [...]
