Recently Jimmy Akin posted on his blog an analysis of Paul VI's Smoke of Satan Homily, which, having authored book on the wisdom of the homily, is spot on. In Chapter 1 I write:
During the course of my research for this
book, Cardinal Virgilio Noe, the chief Vatican liturgist during the pontificate
of Paul VI, in an interview with the Roman Petrus website, related that
when Paul spoke of the “smoke of Satan” entering the Catholic Church, he was
referring to liturgical abuses. In that denunciation, he said, the Pope “meant
to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render proper
worship to the Lord, celebrating Holy Mass badly because of an errant
interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council.” While I
agree this was indeed a concern, I believe that the Holy Father’s subsequent
remarks on this subject discussed above do not take away from the book’s
argument, and, were the Pope alive, he would agree with his former master of
ceremonies when in the same interview he stated, “Now it is necessary to
recover—and in a hurry—the sense of the sacred in the ars celebrandi, before
the smoke of Satan completely pervades the whole Church.”
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