Most of us are familiar with the fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a naive emperor is bilked out of a great sum of money and made to look like a fool by a couple of hucksters who convince him to invest his money in the latest in a new line of fabrics. The punch is that the fabric doesn’t exist at all; it is completely imaginary. But the emperor is sold on the idea because of the fact that the con men tell him that it is magical cloth that can only be seen by people of great intelligence. Not wanting to admit that they lack intelligence, everybody in the court, even the emperor himself, goes along with the farce and pretends like they can see the nonexistent clothing. They even lavish praise upon it, commenting upon the intricate and delicate nature of the material. In the end, it takes the innocent and impartial eye of a little child to fearlessly declare the plain truth: “The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!”

If the history of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath were to have an official fairytale, this should be it. Like the tricksters selling the emperor and his court on the beauty of the illusory fabrics, Catholics have been sold on the concept of a great many “fruits” and “riches” given to us by the Second Vatican Council, particularly its liturgical reforms. From bishops, theologians, apologists and even the Vatican itself we are told that the reforms were a wonderful thing for the Church and that we are still reaping the riches of them today. Of would agree that we are still reaping the fruits of the liturgical reform, but I question what kind of fruits they are.

The late John Paul II, in his typical optimism, told us in 1988 that “we should give thanks to God for the movement of the Holy Spirit in the Church which the liturgical renewal represents...”[1] Twelve years later, while the abuses and rebellion within the Church were simply allowed to multiply unchecked, the Pope again told us that the liturgical reform “has given us many fruits in these 35 years of life and it will give us many more in the years to come.”[2] Towards the end of his life, in 2003, John Paul II reiterated this point yet again in Ecclesia de Eucharistia: “Certainly the liturgical reform inaugurated by the Council has greatly contributed to a more conscious, active and fruitful participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar on the part of the faithful.”[3]

The Pope was not completely blind to the abuses rampant in the Church. In the same 2003 encyclical, he said: “In various parts of the Church, abuses have occurred, leading to confusion with regard to sound faith and Catholic doctrine...”[4] It is inconceivable what John Paul could have meant when he said that abuses have occurred “in various parts of the Church.” A more appropriate phrase would be that abuses occur daily throughout the entire Church, and that these endemic abuses are inherent in the Novus Ordo Mass due to the elastic and ambiguous nature of the rite and of the documents of implementation and interpretation churned out in the 1970’s. To say that in abuses have occurred in various places is the biggest understatement of the century. But to say that anything has gone wrong, to acknowledge that what we are doing is anything other than basking in the warm light of the liturgical reform would be to tacitly admit that the “fruits” of the reform endlessly promised to us have simply failed to materialize.

John Paul’s upbeat comments are a world away from the reality experienced by Catholics in the pews. Consider the following statistics for the Church in the United States: In 1965, we had 65,000 priests. By 2002, that number had dwindled to 45,000, most of them over age 70. Ordinations went down from 1,575 in 1965 to 450 in 2002. While in 1960, only 1% of parishes went without a priest, in 2002 that number was 15% and is expected to jump to 25% by 2020. Since the close of the Council, seminarians have dropped from 49,000 to 4,700. A 1958 Gallup poll revealed that close to 74% of Catholics went to Mass every Sunday. In 2000, that number was 25%. Religious orders plummeted, as well. One example is the Jesuits, who in 1965 had a total of 5,277 priests and 3,559 seminarians, compared with 3,172 priests and only 38 seminarians in 2000. These numbers are the same with every other religious order in the United States. There is one area in which the numbers have gone up, however. In 1965, there were only 338 annulments in the entire country. In 2002, there were 50,000.[5]

In every statistically verifiable area, the polls all show that the Church is in a major crisis, a fact that contrasts sharply with the picture of the Church painted by those who would believe that we are reaping a rich harvest of fruit from the liturgical reforms and that we are much better off as a Church now. All statistical indicators say that we are not in any Promised Land but still wandering in the wilderness. What is the cause of this crisis?

Ultimately, it is a problem of identity. Because of the ever-changing nature of today’s liturgy (which we are told must adopt, evolve and “inculturate”), the faithful no longer have a solid, definite understanding of what it means to be a Catholic. For generation upon generation, it was axiomatic that the Catholic Mass is the same everywhere and never changes. Never changes. This formed the backbone of Catholic identity. Under the new order, a non-Catholic could go to a Traditionalist parish one Sunday and then attend the local circus-Novus Ordo parish down the road and, other than the sign outside, have not even the slightest conception that the two parishes belong to the same religion, let alone purport to be celebrating the same rite.

The struggle in the Catholic Church is the struggle for the Catholic soul. It is a battle wherein every Catholic, whether priest, prelate, pope or pew-warmer, must ask himself whether he wants to stand with the saints and the martyrs in the traditional faith of the Apostles, or to stand with the 21^st century progressives in a novel Catholicism unknown to anybody before the 1960’s. As Traditionalists, we like to believe that the beauty of the Church’s Tradition will win out; that sound doctrine will prevail over watered down, modernist psychobabble; that the traditional forms will rise to prominence again as easily as wood floats to the surface in the water, even after it has been held down for a great length of time. Ultimately, our final and firmest hope rests in the comforting reality that the Church belongs to Christ, not to us, and that in the end He will purify His people. The words of our Lord to the church at Laodicea apply well to this generation: “Because thou sayest, ‘I am rich and have grown wealthy and have need of nothing,’ [thou] dost not know that thou art the wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked one” (Rev. 3:17)

Like all Christians who lived in troubled times, our response can only be to pray, do penance and speak the truth in love. But the one thing we must not do is lie to ourselves about what is going on. Though our fellow parishioners think us odd, though our bishops continue to frown upon it, though we stand alone in the entire Church as did Elijah against the hosts of Baal long ago, let nothing hinder us from proclaiming the plain truth: “The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!”

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Notes:
1 John Paul II, Vicesimus Quintus Annus, par. 12 2 Quoted march 5, 2000 in The Catholic Times, cited in Michael Davies Liturgical Timebombs (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Publishers), 80

3 John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, par. 10

4 ibid.

5 Statistics taken from Kenneth C. Jones, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II, available on the web at www.catholicindicators.com