Is it a fact that nothing has changed…? Is it true that an ample sector of the modern Church, the part which is most exposed to the contemplation of the world –neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick[1]—, does not look different from what it used to be? More yet, does it not give the impression of being even another Church?

            The progress achieved by publicity and mass manipulation techniques is incredible. Through these means, people are barely allow to think about this problem; at best, they are being convinced that we are in the most flourishing ecclesiastical springtime.

            Following here are quotes from several short –due to editorial limitations— fragments of one of Father Malachi Martin’s books[2]. It may seem a long extract, but it is more eloquent than anything I could say.

            “…When the violence of the winds had passed and the new day dawned, people looked about and found that suddenly the universal Latin of the Mass was gone. Stranger still: The Roman Mass itself was gone. In its place, there was a new rite that resembled the old immemorial Mass as a lean-to shanty resembles a Palladian mansion. The new rite was said in a babel of languages, each one saying different things. Things that sounded un-Catholic. That only God the Father was God, for example; and that the new rite was a community supper, not an enactment of Christ’s death on the Cross; and that priests were no longer priests of sacrifice, but ministers at table serving guests at a common meal of fellowship…

            “The devastation of those hurricane winds had not stopped there. Churches and chapels, convents and monasteries had been denuded of statues. Altars of sacrifice had been removed or at least abandoned, and four-legged tables were planted in front of the people instead, as for a pleasant meal. Tabernacles were removed along with the fixed belief about Christ’s Sacrifice as the essence of the Mass. Vestments were modified or laid aside completely. Communion rails were removed. The faithful were told not to kneel any longer when receiving Holy Communion, but to stand like free men and women, and to take the Bread of Communion and the Cup of the Grape of Fellowship in their own democratic hands. In many churches, members of the Congregation were immediately expelled for public disturbance of worship if they dared to genuflect, or worse still, to kneel, for Holy Communion in the new rite…

            “Outside the churches, altar cloths, Mass vestments, Communion rails, even pulpits, statues, and kneelers as well as Stations of the Cross were either consigned to bonfires and city dumps or sold off at public auctions where interior designers picked them up at bargain prices and launched an ecclesiastical look in the decoration of high-rise apartments and the elegant homes of suburbia. A carved oak altar made such an unusual vanity table…

            “Very many teaching nuns simply doffed their religious habits, quickly acquired lay clothes, cosmetic, and jewelry, said good-bye to the local bishops who had hitherto been their major superiors, declared themselves now constituted as ordinary, decent, straightforward American educators, and carried on their teaching careers…

            “Those who remained –lay and clerical—were not satisfied with the attempted abolition of the traditional Roman Mass, with the overall changes of Catholic ritual and worship, and with newly exercised freedom to cast doubt on all dogmas. It wasn’t enough. A clamor arose in favor of the use of contraceptives, of legalizing homosexual relations, of making abortion optional, of premarital sexual activity under certain conditions, of divorce and remarriage within the Church, of a married clergy, of women’s ordination, of a quick patchwork union with Protestant churches, of Communist revolution as a means not only of solving endemic poverty but of defining Faith itself.

            “A new form of blasphemy and sacrilege came onto vogue. For homosexual Catholics, the disciple whom Jesus loved took on new meaning. Hadn’t that beloved disciple rested on Jesus’ bosom at the Last Supper? Man-love-for-man was thereby consecrated, wasn’t it? Lavender-robed homosexual priests said Mass in the new rite for their homosexual congregations…

            “Backing up this motley array of changes and changers and changelings, there came marching in a whole phalanx of feisty experts. Theologians, philosophers, liturgical experts, facilitators, socio-religious coordinators, lay ministers (male and female), praxis-directors –whatever their pop-up titles, all were looking for two things: converts to the new theology, and a fight with the battered and retreating traditionalists. A flood of publications –books, magazines articles, bulletins, newsletters, plans, programs, and outlines—inundated the popular Catholic market. The experts questioned and reinterpreted every dogma and belief traditionally and universally held by Catholics. Everything, in fact, and especially all the hard things in Roman Catholic belief –penance, chastity, fasting, obedience, submission—were subjected to violent, overnight change…”

            And all this is just the beginning and the summary of an inventory which could continue almost indefinitely, a veritable tip of the iceberg. And I did not want to delve into the theological and philosophical roots of the hurricane in the Church which have been merely sketched here. While everything seemed to indicate that Pope Saint Pius X had finished off the Modernist heresy, now is was patent that the heresy had been hibernating in order to reappear in our time with unsuspected strength. One must hope that Divine Providence provides His Church with a new Saint Pius X who will put a stop once and for all to the problem. But I will deal with that next.