The Angelus bell on RTÉ

Another post for the benefit of overseas readers.

RTÉ (which stands for Radio Teilifís Éireann in Irish, meaning ‘Radio & Television of Ireland’) is Ireland’s national broadcasting company. Their website may be viewed here.

RTÉ began broadcasting in 1961. The first televised programme on RTÉ 1 was a Mass celebrated by the then archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. John Charles McQuaid, CSSp.

In those far-off days Irish people were generally devout and God-fearing, and the bishops could afford to throw their weight around, since the flock was invariably so docile and pliable. RTÉ also was prepared to acquiesce to the will of the bishops regarding the sort of programming which was considered acceptable viewing for the Irish public.

In the early days, certain things could not be shown on Irish television. These included programmes hostile to the Catholic religion as well as programmes featuring (among other things) nudity, sexual activity, unacceptably coarse language, an unreasonable level of violence, or anything that might be construed as promoting immorality.

One of the unique features of RTÉ radio and television at that time was that the sound of the Angelus bell was broadcast at noon and again at 6pm just before the evening news, chiming for one minute—about the time it takes to recite the Angelus if one is quick about it—before the beginning of the scheduled news bulletins. On the television the sound of the bell would be accompanied by an image of the Virgin and Child. Melancholicus is not aware of any other Catholic country in which this was done, although he is open to correction on this matter.

Today, most constraints on RTÉ programming have been removed. RTÉ television does not yet transmit hardcore pornography, but that’s about the only depth to which they have not yet stooped. RTÉ is today a fiercely anti-Catholic company, which has no problem broadcasting items which are offensive to Catholics, or items which promote foreign religions or ‘alternative’ spiritualities. The tone of religious programming on both radio and television is exceedingly slack, mostly of the interfaith mish-mash variety, and regularly features contributions from dissenters, scoffers, and nay-sayers. RTÉ has by now wholeheartedly embraced the New Ireland^TM of materialism, anti-clericalism, free love and gay rights.

In the midst of this sea-change, however, what is most remarkable is that the Angelus bell has survived. It still sounds on RTÉ radio 1 every day at noon and again at 6pm, and also on television on RTÉ 1 every evening before the six o’clock news. In a concession to the ‘ecumenical’ spirit of the times, the traditional Catholic image of the Virgin and Child has been replaced on television by a montage of images of persons engaged in various activities, none of which might have anything to do with the Catholic religion, but the Angelus is the Angelus nonetheless.

Given the exceedingly strong and visceral reaction by the bright young things of the New Ireland^TM against all things Catholic, the survival of the Angelus bell on RTÉ is a miracle in itself, for Melancholicus cannot account for it otherwise.

It is hard to imagine that it will not at a future date finally be withdrawn on the initiative of some secularising zealot or some self-appointed PC watchdog worried that the Angelus bell might be ‘offensive’ to religious minorities, but at present it remains, a nugget of spiritual tradition in the midst of an ocean of frenetic change.

Archbishop Ranjith: bishops who defy Summorum Pontificum are instruments of the devil

A word to the wise from the good archbishop secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship:

“The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum on the Latin Liturgy of July 7th 2007 is the fruit of a deep reflection by our Pope on the mission of the Church. It is not up to us, who wear ecclesiastical purple and red, to draw this into question, to be disobedient and make the motu proprio void by our own little, tittle rules. Not even if they were made by a bishops conference. Even bishops do not have this right. What the Holy Father says, has to be obeyed in the Church. If we do not follow this principle, we will allow ourselves to be used as instruments of the devil, and nobody else. This will lead to discord in the Church, and slows down her mission. We do not have the time to waste on this. Else we behave like Emperor Nero, fiddling on his violin while Rome was burning. The churches are emptying, there are no vocations, the seminaries are empty. Priests become older and older, and young priests are scarce.”

It is refreshing to hear a senior prelate speak so frankly on the abject state to which holy mother Church has been reduced, and of the foot-dragging by the conciliar establishment in their attempts to forestall all efforts to repair the damage sustained by our Lord’s mystical body on their watch. And what archbishop Ranjith says is true; the bishops are indeed fiddling while Rome burns. While the new conciliar religion holds sway, the churches continue to empty, as do the seminaries. The hour is getting late. And yet, the bishops will not surcease from being part of the problem, never mind refusing to contribute to a solution.

Letter from the abbé de Nantes to His Holiness Benedict XVI

From the October edition of the CRC journal:

Most Holy Father,

The pride of the reformers who, in past centuries, always came up against the holy fidelity of the apostolic Magisterium to Christ her Founder, has received today from the supreme Authority full scope to «renovate» our traditional Church and, by means of a conclusive «aggiornamento», to bring her back to the Gospel, to purify her of all in her that bore the trace of age-old imperfection, to correct all that repelled the modern world and contravened its demands. Thus, the glorious pioneers of this reform of the Church plan to present her at last to men in conformity with the Utopia of which they have long dreamt. The modern pioneers have succeeded the alleged Reformers of the sixteenth century, Protestants driven out of the Church on account of their schism and heresy, and thus reduced to attacking her from without. They have succeeded the Modernists who secretly plotted to change the Faith and the institutions of the Church by acting from within, but against a Hierarchy that reproved them – in the encyclical Pascendi (1907), in the Letter on the Sillon (1910), and in the encyclical Humani Generis (1950). Since 11 October 1962 these commissioned Reformers have succeeded. The work of these conciliar Fathers or periti (theologians) consists of reinterpreting the dogmas, revising morality, and modernising rites and discipline, and the Hierarchy itself considers it in its principle and in its most general form of «renewal» as inspired and directed by «the Spirit». The Roman Church, which yesterday was still «one, holy, Catholic and apostolic», is thus «in a state of permanent reform».

In this drift that is carrying her far from her place of origin, in this transfiguration (or disfigurement) of her historical being, in this opening to the world, one fact requires the attention of Your Holiness, that of the division of the Church, in hearts and in minds. The understanding of a concept cannot evolve without its extension varying to the same degree. The «people of God» of the New Reform is no longer exactly the same as the faithful Catholic people of not so long ago. Those who claim to find the rule of their mentality and of their new habits in Man’s Future necessarily separate themselves from those who have forever and fully found it in the Christian Past. Let us leave the indistinct mass of the flock that accepts everything – the old and the new – with blind obedience and blind faith. Their unthinking consent, whether passive or solicited by the authorities of the hour, proves nothing significant. The fact of the division is blatant at the extremes.

... This division is not material or superficial. It is spiritual and formal. There exist among us two religions in a single Church: the unchangeable dogmatic one and the modern pastoral one, that of Catholicism and that of ecumenism, that of the cult of God in Jesus Christ and, in the words of Paul VI, your predecessor, that of the cult of Man in the world. These two religions are not identical; the latter does not emerge from the former by logical development. Moreover, it claims to manifest better than the other one the true and pure Gospel.

... We must acknowledge the fact that there is a rupture in historical Tradition, by the superimposition or substitution of one religious faith for another. No «hermeneutic of continuity» can preclude the fact that there is a dramatic split in Catholic society between the adherents of the ancient allegiance and the devotees of the new.

Modernism cannot be brought into conformity with the deposit of the faith; the New Church is built on the ruins of the Ancient one. This Reform is opposed in general and in detail to Tradition, just as its so-called new “good” and pastoral “perfection” is opposed to the age-old “evil” and ancient “sin” of the Church. Thus, there is salvation only in casting into oblivion, abolishing, retracting all these worldly fashions and fables that will have momentarily overshadowed the divine Mystery of the Holy Church.

Retract the Second Vatican Council? Yes!

... The whole work of the Council was warped. Theologians, a council, even a pope, St. Paul would say “an angel”, no one has the inspiration nor the grace to reform what Jesus Christ himself instituted and to abolish what the Holy Spirit created throughout the centuries. The religious power of the hierarchy ends at the threshold of this sacrilege, which in itself is null and void. Guardians and Doctors of the faith, Pastors entrusted with bringing about the salvation of souls through the grace and the law of Christ, the reigning Pope and bishops alive today are not, according to St. Francis of Sales, the landlords of the Church but its administrators. They have not received, nor will they ever receive the mission to carry out the metamorphosis of her, and the revolutionary formula repeated everywhere of a “new Church for a new world” does not come from God. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church, and no one else. A single Pentecost sufficed; any other one could only come from another Spirit, from an Antichrist.

... One should leave no room for revolution. The wind from so many speeches will soon raise a storm that no one will be able to boast that he can calm. All that remains is to retrace one’s way from this whole programme of reform in order to disavow and abandon it as an unprecedented, impracticable and, what is more, illegitimate endeavour.

One does not reform the Church.

Read it all.

The centenary of Pascendi

... in September of this year has passed by very quietly, with almost no notice whatever being taken at official level of so important an encyclical.

In the time of St. Pius X, modernism was an underground movement, the adherents of which had to take careful note of what they dared say or publish. To support or promote this movement in 1910 took guts; rectors of seminaries, professors of the sacred sciences, theologians and a whole host of other clergy could be—and often were—removed from their positions on suspicion of modernism. By comparison, today’s soft modernists, who seem to have discarded every last shred of the Christian faith, have it easy. They are free to say and print what they like without fear of the consequences. Only a handful of the most egregious contemporary heretics has ever been disciplined by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and in almost all instances, the punishment has been far lighter than ought to have been warranted by the offence. The doyen of heretical theologians, Hans Küng, was in 1979 deprived of the faculty to teach as a Catholic theologian. This amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist, since Küng’s teaching career was not affected; he continued to teach at the same university and as a theologian—just not as a Catholic theologian. Instead of accepting the penalty and reforming himself by abjuring his errors, Küng whined and complained—just as St. Pius X had said of the behaviour of the modernists whenever they were taken to task for their crimes—that he was being deprived of his liberty. There is no doubt, however, that Küng profited from his punishment, as his standing among the theologians of the heretical community was thereby immeasurably increased. His notoriety led to increased sales of his books. He was in ever greater demand in the secular media as a spokesman on Catholic affairs. He became one of a few privileged dissenters much sought after as a religious affairs consultant by the BBC. All in all, the trifling discipline meted out to Hans Küng only had the effect of turning him into a celebrity. To this day he is canonically a priest in good standing in the Swiss diocese of Basle.

More recently, the Sri Lankan oblate Fr Tissa Balasuriya published an heretical book which, in the words of the Sri Lankan bishops’ conference, “contained statements incompatible with the faith of the Church regarding the doctrine of revelation and its transmission, Christology, soteriology and mariology”, in other words, a medley of modernist errors. When called to task for this, Balasuriya actually dared to assert that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had falsified his position. Balasuriya continued to insist that everything he had written in his book was within the limits of orthodoxy. This was denied by the Congregation.

Melancholicus is not a trained theologian, but to his mind, if there exists such serious doubt about whether a given work is orthodox or not, then it clearly isn’t orthodox. Orthodoxy should be clearly and instantly recognisable as such. Fudging and ambiguity, both in speech and in writing, are characteristic of heresy.

Balasuriya failed to satisfy the Congregation on the disputed points and was declared in January 1997 to have incurred excommunication latae sententiae.

Guess what happened?

Balasuriya was instantly lionized by the news media, the Magisterium of the Church was ridiculed, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was singled out for special attack. The excommunication was declared lifted in 1998 after Balasuriya had signed a profession of faith, even though he had not substantially modified his position, nor had admitted to the presence of error in his writings. The most he was willing to concede was that “serious ambiguities and doctrinal errors were perceived” in his writings—yes, merely perceived; not actually there. He also regretted the fuss, stating that “the entire episode has been very painful” for him, overlooking the fact that he had caused the fuss himself by publishing his book in the first place.

Balasuriya has been restored to full communion in the Church, and he continues to poison the minds of the faithful with his errors, none of which he was obliged to recant. He wormed his way out of trouble by denying that the error was there; it only appeared to be there. So the Congregation is now widely viewed as having been mistaken, not to mention dictatorial and cruel, and Balasuriya is lauded as a hero for his stand against a tyrannical Church.

That this state of affairs should even have been possible is owing to the fact that modernism—once described by Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies”—has in the intervening decades mushroomed to such an extent that it covers the entire Church. Not even the See of Peter is immune from its poison, as the pontificate of John Paul II bears ample witness. Modernism is so entrenched that it is now the norm; orthodox Catholicism, once the faith of the entire Church, is now a minority position, widely regarded as the banner of disobedient reactionaries and dissidents on the right. The true situation is even more dire than that, as modernism is now generally regarded as the true orthodoxy, for there is something less than Catholic about the old religion in the eyes of many of our contemporaries.

Perhaps the conduct of those responsible for vigilance against modernism in the early twentieth century was, as is often claimed, over-zealous. It may be that many clerics who were otherwise innocent suffered as a result of being suspected of modernism. Persecution is not a pleasant thing; save that today, it is the modernists who hold all the reins of power and authority, and it is the orthodox who are persecuted. The wheel has come full circle.

Far from being a mistaken endeavour that damaged the Church or that restricted the researches of theologians and Scripture scholars, the encyclical Pascendi was in 1907 a necessary intervention on behalf of the supreme pastor. It is even more relevant today. It ought to be read thoughtfully and carefully by all preparing to receive holy orders or to make religious profession. It should be mandatory reading in every seminary and house of formation. One cannot do anything to solve a problem—much less a problem with a scope as vast as that of modernism—without admitting from the first that the problem exists.

It is necessary that the Church recognize that the ‘renewal’ of the Church in the wake of Vatican II was nothing of the kind, but a disaster without precedent in ecclesiastical history. It is necessary that the council be recognized as having opened the floodgates that permitted a resurgent modernism to overwhelm the Church. In the words of the Dominican theologian J. P. van der Ploeg, “the rise of neo-modernism is historically connected with the Second Vatican Council.” We shall have no peace in ecclesia Romana until this historical fact—and it is a fact, not a matter of interpretation or perspective—is finally generally recognized.

Sancte Pie X, ora pro nobis.

Restoring Tradition: Pope Benedict's initiative on sacred music

News from Sandro Magister’s Chiesa:

Melancholicus remembers with a vivid clarity that momentous day of the 19th April 2005, when he saw Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s basilica to announce to the world that the 266th successor of St. Peter had been elected to succeed the late John Paul II. He remembers the unbearable tension before his eminence named the new pope; he remembers the tremendous shout of his fellow seminarists as the community leapt to their feet as one man, cheering and applauding, and he remembers afterwards weeping with a mixture of joy and relief. The results of the conclave might have been very different, but almighty God had not forgotten his Church, which for forty years had suffered unremittingly from the torments of the devils unleashed at the council.

He has been only two years in office, but already there is a sense of a change in the air. A glimmer of light can be seen in the east, and we wonder in hope if it might be the light of dawn, at long last, after forty years of night—and what a night it has been, impenetrable and inky black. When the name of the new pope-elect had been announced, we were all delighted: Benedict XVI. A traditional name. A pre-conciliar name. Many of us privately thanked God that he had not called himself John, or Paul, or John Paul. Before the conclave Melancholicus was resigned, without much hope, to the gloomy reign of a John Paul III, one which would be every bit as much business as usual, and every bit as damaging to the Church as the previous pontificate. He muttered as much, in a spirit of sour discontent, to his brethren in the days leading up to the election of the new pope. He was never so blissfully happy—nor so tremendously relieved—when the Holy Ghost proved him wrong.

The Holy Father has been slowly, painstakingly and with great care trying to repair some of the damage done to Christ’s holy Church over the previous four pontificates. Melancholicus is relieved that at last we have a pope who understands the liturgy — a subject of which his predecessor apparently was ignorant — and who appreciates how important to the inculcation of the faith is right order and praxis in the celebration of the liturgy.

How encouraging have been the Holy Father’s first steps in reforming the mess that is the post-conciliar Mass! A new translation of the Roman Missal is currently in preparation, a translation faithful to the Latin original and correcting the errors of the 1970 ICELese foisted by the liturgical revolution upon English-speaking Catholics throughout the world. We hope too that this new translation, when it appears, will be beautiful, especially since the current translation of the Mass is so pedestrian and banal.

Furthermore, what words of ours can possibly do justice to the Holy Father’s generosity in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, in which he gave to the Church an inestimable gift, namely the restoration of the traditional Roman rite of the Mass, which, in the face of so much opposition from corrupt and worldly episcopates throughout the world, demonstrates his tremendous pastoral concern for the spiritual welfare of those who love the Church?

Now the Holy Father seeks to restore the majestic musical heritage of holy Church to its proper place. The Roman curia will have a new office with authority in the field of sacred music, and the choir of the Sistine Chapel will receive a new director, to foster the rebirth of sacred music:

The first of these events took place on Monday, October 8. On that morning, Benedict XVI held an audience with the "chapter" of Saint Peter's basilica – meaning the bishops and priests who, together with the archpriest of the basilica, Angelo Comastri, celebrate Mass and solemn Vespers each Sunday in the most famous church in the Christian world.

The pope reminded them that "it is necessary that, beside the tomb of Peter, there be a stable community of prayer to guarantee continuity with tradition."

This tradition goes back "to the time of Saint Gregory the Great," the pope whose name was given to the liturgical chant characteristic of the Latin Church, Gregorian chant.

One example the pope gave to the chapter of St. Peter's was the celebration of the liturgy at the abbey of Heiligenkreutz, the flourishing monastery he had visited just a few weeks earlier in Austria.

In effect, since just over a year ago, Gregorian chant has been restored as the primary form of singing for Mass and solemn Vespers in Saint Peter's basilica.

The rebirth of Gregorian chant at St. Peter's coincided with the appointment of a new choir director, who was chosen by the basilica chapter in February of 2006.

The new director, Pierre Paul, a Canadian and an Oblate of the Virgin Mary, has made a clean break with the practice established during the pontificate of John Paul II – and reaffirmed by the previous director, Pablo Colino – of bringing to sing at the Masses in St. Peter's the most disparate choirs, drawn from all over the world, very uneven in quality and often inadequate.

Fr. Paul put the gradual and the antiphonal back into the hands of his singers, and taught them to sing Mass and Vespers in pure Gregorian chant. The faithful are also provided with booklets with the Gregorian notation for Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and the translation of the texts in Italian, English, and Spanish. The results are liturgically exemplary celebrations, with increasing participation from a growing number of faithful from many nations.

There's still much to do to bring back to life in St. Peter's what was, in ancient times, the Cappella Giulia – the choir specifically founded for the basilica – and to revive the splendors of the Roman musical style, a style in which the sacred polyphony pioneered by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Gregorian chant, also sung in the Roman manner (virile and strong, not like the monastic models inspired by Solesmes), alternate and enrich each other.

But there has been a new beginning. And Benedict XVI wanted to tell the chapter that this is the right path.

Deo Gratias. Ad multos annos, Most Holy Father!