Read the Documents!

In my book I note that one catalyst for writing it was that when I actually read the documents of the Second Vatican Council, I was surprised to learn that what I had been told they said, and what they actually said were not one and the same. Thus, it is with great pleasure that I welcome Jared Silvey's article for Crisis. Silvey states: 

"it is good for Catholics to familiarize themselves with what the council actually said in its official promulgations. While not everyone has the leisure to read through the hundreds of pages of conciliar material, there are certain passages which should be highlighted, in part because they counter attempts by those who try to ground their dissent in the council and its supposed “spirit.” 

This is precisely why I wrote my book, so I would like to reflect on his choice of passages fron the VII documents:

1)  “Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop…. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, #22).

 My bet is that whomever was responsible for the event in the photo above was in woeful ignorance of this passage, all the while claiming "Vatican II changed our approach to liturgy," or words to that effect. This development resulted from the failure of those bishops who, perhaps because they felt intimidated by the liturgical “experts,” allowed them to propagate teachings at odds with Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Council’s document on the Sacred Liturgy. In effect, the bishops allowed the imposition of newfangled liturgical “reforms” on their flocks, resulting in a liturgy which has proven spiritually destabilizing in many cases. The question which continues to puzzle is, why such poor shepherding? If the maxim lex orendi, lex credendi is true, and it is, then the lack of resemblance between what the Church teaches concerning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the reality of what is taking place in its celebration in parishes in the United States today warrants that we come to understand those developments in the Liturgical Movement under the influence of modernist thinking, and their impact on the Church. Read more.