THE NEW LAITY AND THE ANTI-CLERICAL FACTOR

The laity are often enemies of the clergy, because, not content with their own limits, they seek to obtain that which is forbidden, rejecting that which should restrain them in order to obtain that which is not permitted, and not judiciously considering that they are forbidden all power over clerics or ecclesiastical goods and persons. They rather impose heavy burdens on prelates of the Church, on churches and ecclesiastical personages, both regulars and seculars. [1]

For whom the bell tolls

Many people are familiar with John Donne's phrase "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and the answer, "It tolls for thee." But not so many realise that when Pope John Paul II said "The hour of the laity has struck", the bell does indeed toll for thee and for every Catholic wishing to remain faithful to Tradition. With these words uttered in Rome on 26 November 2000 in a homily to mark the Jubilee of the Lay Apostolate, Pope John Paul II urged all lay Catholics to delve into the documents of Vatican II in order to discover a new awareness of what it means to be a lay person in the Church. That he meant the words to convey a new way of "being Church" is clear from his explanation that "the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council marked a decisive turning-point" which would radically alter people's understanding of the lay state and surpass all the Christian witness of previous centuries. In this he echoed Cardinal Leo Suenens, a great favourite of Pope Paul VI, who rejoiced that Vatican II marked the end of the Tridentine epoch and the era of Vatican I. [2] So we have official confirmation that Vatican II marked the end of Tradition, a new start from zero that wipes out the legacy of the past, a "New Pentecost" that promises to outshine in brilliance the first Pentecost.

Let us take a look at the new laity formed and renamed by Vatican II as the People of God on the March. But, judging by the fruits of that Council, where are they marching to if not to apostasy under the banner of Vatican II, and against what if not the institutional Church founded by Our Lord?

The New Laity

One of the most visible fruits of the Second Vatican Council is the sudden emergence of a new generation of dynamic, can-do lay people who want a greater role in the sacramental life and the decision-making structures of the Church. They first sprang into existence in the mid 1960s, having been elevated to unrealistic heights by Vatican II and entrusted with a "mission" supposedly derived directly from God through their baptism. According to this thesis, lay people are sent by the Spirit to take their "rightful" place in the Church by performing ministries hitherto reserved only for the clergy: lay men and women can enter the sanctuary to distribute Holy Communion with their unconsecrated hands, read the Scriptures to the congregation, lead prayers, "preside" at Eucharistic services, bless individuals, distribute ashes, conduct baptisms and funerals and even address the congregation in a homily. As if that was not enough to satisfy their ambitions, they can also act as parish administrators, hospital and prison chaplains, lecturers in theology to seminary students (thus representing the Magisterium), and participate in both an advisory and executive capacity at diocesan synods, pastoral councils, diocesan and parish finance committees and on liturgical committees.

The Camel in the Tent

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has recently drawn up plans to empower lay people to take on "huge new responsibilities" in the Diocese of Westminster which would involve supplanting the priest's presence. The arrangement is for full-time lay ministers to live in the presbytery in parishes where the priest is no longer resident and routinely preside at weekday services. Ever since the Council the hierarchy has surrendered more and more priestly roles to the laity under the guise of encouraging all "the gifts of all the baptised" until there will finally be nothing left in practice to distinguish the priesthood from the lay state. If Communion in the hand is the camel's nose, occupation of the presbytery represents the complete ousting of the tent's occupant by the camel.

Traditional Catholic teaching reinforced the concept of the hierarchical Church founded by Christ with the ordained clergy as the indispensable ministers of the faithful, preaching in His name and administering the sacraments in order to communicate the supernatural Life of Grace. From the earliest days of Christianity the distinction existed between the clergy (the "ecclesia docens") who had a divine commission to teach, and the rest of the faithful who received the Word as it was transmitted to them (the "ecclesia docta"). It is easy to understand such a concept; it has a clear organisational structure based on hierarchical authority with a clear appreciation of "vocation" and a clear division of labour. And it has a rational appeal in making sense of Our Lord's provision for shepherds to feed His flock by preaching the Gospel and providing the graces of the sacraments for our salvation. The divinely appointed arrangement ensured a stable and tranquil ecclesiastical institution.

And the walls came tumbling down
...with the help of the Second Vatican Council. It was Paul VI who promulgated its texts and approved and mandated all of the major reforms which the Council had adopted. Vatican II's new emphasis on the laity gave rise to

•a structural change which would bring the Church into line with the worldly spirit of the times
•an attitudinal change — the acquisition of a new set of values
•a behavioural change — the adoption of a new way of acting.

His Apostolic Letter 'Ministeria Quaedam' (1972) was a virtual manifesto for the popular Protestant motto of the "priesthood of all believers", the war-cry of revolt against the supernatural order of priesthood instituted by Our Lord.

•By greatly expanding the role and function of the laity he aided the enemies of the Church to tear down the visible walls that separated the ordained from the lay state.

•By abolishing the tonsure and the subdiaconate and by reducing what were formerly called "minor orders" so as to give them to lay people under the name of "ministries", he drew up a new blueprint and put his authority behind the construction of a new Church.

•With his words: "Ministries may be committed to lay Christians. They are thus no longer to be regarded as reserved to candidates for the Sacrament of Orders", the edifice established by Our Lord was demolished and rebuilt to facilitate the empowerment and eventual ascendancy of the laity.

Accordingly, with great alacrity the bishops of the world (who said they were disobedient to the Pope?) set about expanding the role of the laity to include conducting baptisms and funerals, preaching, distributing Communion, presiding at Eucharistic celebrations, performing chaplains' duties, running parishes etc. It was not as if the laity had to surge forward from the pews to seize power from the clergy: even before they would get half way up the sanctuary steps the priests were on their way down to relieve themselves of their sacred duties. After all, where is the need to storm the sanctuary when the guardians of the Blessed Sacrament had already left the key in the tabernacle for the taking?

'Ministeria Quaedam' proved to be a double whammy calculated to raze two of the most vital bastions of the Catholic Faith concerning the sacramental priesthood and the unity of the Mystical Body of the Church. Not only was it a blow directed at the preparation to the priesthood to which the minor orders were consecrated steps, but it opened the door for all "lay Christians" to usurp the roles traditionally reserved to the ordained, especially those of reading the Epistle and Gospel, giving the homily and distributing Holy Communion. It is to be noted that in the ecumenical climate of Vatican II ecclesiology in which the Church of God is thought to include non-Catholics, no grounds can be found for excluding "lay Christians" of other denominations from taking part in Catholic ceremonies with official, even papal, approval. The net result was that Paul VI produced a tectonic shift in the organisation of the Church that was to profoundly transform the traditional image and adversely affect the way people understood the concept of the Church. Today people understand the sacrament of Holy Orders and the ordained priesthood only within the context of the "common priesthood" which "all believers" (regardless of exactly what they believe) are supposed to share through baptism.

Out of nowhere

Vatican II subverted the traditional concept by introducing the notion of the Church as a "communion" of people all with shared competencies and equal responsibility for carrying out a "mission". It is only to be expected that confusion would follow as holders of ecclesiastical offices had to revise their relationship with the laity who were transformed from "subjects" of the hierarchy to "active participants" in collaboration with them.

There is not the slightest evidence that either priests or laity before Vatican II were dissatisfied with their status in the Church or that lay people were clamouring for greater involvement in Church affairs and in the liturgy. When Fr Francis Ripley was Editor of Catholic Truth, the official journal of the Catholic Truth Society [3], he mentioned that in all his travels around the country which brought him into contact with hundreds of priest from every diocese, he had never come across any signs of revolutionary ferment among the clergy. And as for the laity, shortly before the promulgation of the New Mass, Douglas Woodruff, former Editor of 'The Universe' stated:

To judge by the 'Universe' editor's mailbag, the great majority of the readers of The Universe felt no need for liturgical experiments, and were deeply happy in the Church as She was up to three or four years ago. [4]

The situation on the eve of the Council was one of liturgical peace, remarkable vitality in vocations to the priesthood and in sacramental life, and genuine progress in terms of conversions to the one true Faith. There was certainty about the Faith - Catholics knew what they had to believe and do in order to be saved. The laity knew that their calling is:

1.First and foremost to save their soul by striving to attain holiness through the Mass and Sacraments and through daily prayer.

2.To defend the Faith

3.To keep the Commandments and respect and obey the Law of God in every aspect of their life and avoid the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil to which they are unavoidably exposed.

4.To practise Christian charity in the service of others, especially towards the poor and the disadvantaged.

5.To promote the Reign of Christ and His Law in society by upholding respect for Divine Law and for the rights of the Church.

That was surely enough to occupy a whole lifetime! It was all perfectly understandable and rational. Those who advocated change were regarded at worst as troublemakers, and at best as cranks. Evelyn Waugh summed up the general opinion in 1964:

We had looked upon them as harmless cranks who were attempting to devise a charade of second-century habits. We had confidence in the abiding Romanità [5] of our Church. Suddenly we find the cranks in authority. [6]

Unfortunately, ”Romanità” was not destined to abide very long. Within a year of his remark, the faithful would be deprived of their baptismal birthright, the traditional Latin Mass, and given a new baptismal "mandate" to revolutionise the constitution of the Church in the name of Vatican II. The cranks were certainly in power, and they were anything but harmless. Anti-clericalism was the breeding ground of the revolution, and it was bound to spawn its own kind among the laity.

REVOLUTIONARY TACTICS

Who, or what, was responsible for putting an end to the stability that characterised the pre-Vatican II era and turned the laity into the enemy of the clergy? Few people were aware of the true extent of the revolution that was to take place with the resurgence of Modernism particularly among the ranks of the intellectuals who were already massing on the horizon before Vatican II with an agenda for radical change. These luminaries believed that the “old religion” with its unchanging dogma, its strict observance of discipline and ritual had to be wiped out in order for the “new springtime” of Vatican II to succeed, that the Church of the Counter-Reformation was a serious block to the "new Pentecost" promised by the Council. Above all, the Mass of Catholic Tradition was an obstacle to the implementation of a Modernist agenda. It had to be suppressed. Why? because anything that is dependent on a valid Catholic priesthood is unacceptable to Protestants.

1. A theology of the laity

As in all revolutions, the mass of people had to be mobilised and given a rationale for overthrowing the status quo. The French Dominican scholar, Yves Congar, one of the foremost devotees of the "New Theology" and peritus (expert adviser) at Vatican II [7], did much to foster a revolutionary spirit among the laity. Well before the Council he had been silenced for his unorthodox views. But he was to become one of the stars of the post-conciliar firmament and a representative of official theology (for which he was later made a cardinal). Congar proposed the view that the development of a "theology of the laity" was essential to bring the Church out of the Middle Ages and find a place for it in modern world. He stated that the process would involve no mere adjustment of inherited views but rather a reorientation of the whole ecclesiological vision. [8]

2. Emancipation of the Laity

"What was the position of the layman in the Catholic church?" asked Yves Congar, and answered his own question in a burlesque fashion: "He kneels before the altar....He sits below the pulpit [and] he puts his hand in his wallet"[9], otherwise expressed in the threefold slogan "pay, pray and obey".

It was with caricatures such as this that the reformers succeeded in spreading the blasphemous notion that the Church before the Council was an organisation devoted to the domination and oppression of the laity by a clerical hierarchy on the model of pagan, tyrannical kingdoms of old. (That explains one of the great obsessions of the modern Church that all reference to domination should be expunged, and the satisfaction with which our spiritual leaders view the disappearance of all "symbols of domination" such as the papal tiara.) In order to secure the acceptance of a new ecclesiological vision, it was necessary to spread a few further falsehoods, such as the notion that the Church had always been defined in terms of the hierarchy alone and that the laity counted for nothing. Consequently, the lie goes, the laity must stop being "sheep" and regain their rightful place in the Church.

Nothing could be more subversive to the constitution of the Church than to reorder the relationship between Christ, the Chief Shepherd, and the flock whom He entrusted His priests to lead and feed. But the promotion of the laity from being "mere sheep" was the basis of the new image of the Church as a "communion" proclaimed by Vatican II in Lumen Gentium: instead of maintaining the traditional concept of the Church as a "pyramid" with the pope and the hierarchy at the apex and the laity forming the base, ALL were now to be called the People of God, a deliberately vague, amorphous concept which would eventually reach out to include by extension not only other religions but the whole human family. The important thing to note about this "communion" is that, apart from extending the visible boundaries of the Church, it deliberately blurs the distinction between the clergy and the laity so as to conciliate those who deny the existence of a spiritual aristocracy within the Church and, more importantly, the powers that go with it.

This distinction had been challenged and overturned by Martin Luther who denied the sacramental priesthood and replaced it with the "priesthood of all believers". The natural consequence of this levelling process was to change the concept of a "vocation" to the priesthood. For if all the faithful are called to be priests in their daily lives by ministering to one another and if they can approach God on a basis of equality without the need for any other human mediator, no one "vocation" is more "sacred" or more elevated than any other.

While not openly adopting this heretical concept of the "priesthood of all believers", Vatican II nonetheless perverted the minds of the faithful by insinuating a rapprochement with it. This was accomplished first by equalising the two sorts of priesthood that exist in the Church - that of the ordained ministers and that of the laity who are incorporated in to the priesthood of Christ through baptism:

Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood are none the less ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.[10]

In others words, and contrary to Tradition, the ministerial priesthood is conceived of as existing within the general priesthood of the faithful, as one manifestation of it. We look in vain for any mention of the sublime dignity of the priest or the spiritual superiority of the clerical state above the lay. Under the slogan "All are called to action", the same document springs upon us the novelty that all the baptised "share a true equality with regard to the dignity and to the activity common to all in the building up the body of Christ".[11]
The impression is given that the priest is not the only human mediator and that the laity share in the church's mission of bringing Christ to the world by mediating between God and the world. It gives one an uncontrollable urge to say "Stop the Merry-go-round - I want to get off". Not everyone wants to become a Carousel Catholic and join in the carnival atmosphere of the new liturgy!

Secondly, having succeeded in knocking the priest off his pedestal, the EQUALITY rhetoric is abandoned and the true purport of Vatican II is advanced, albeit still camouflaged under another cover - SERVICE. The new priesthood is called ministerial or serving, because it is entrusted with empowering the general priesthood of all the baptised faithful (clergy and laity, Catholics and non-Catholics) for the building up of the Body of Christ (which is equated with a utopian "Civilisation of Love" in a new world order). So now you have the priest as a personification of an oxymoron - a SERVANT-LEADER of the community. In this new image the priest would no longer be the "man of God" ordained principally to offer the Holy Sacrifice, but a "man of the people" (in fact the whole of humanity), at their service and necessarily subordinate to them. This shift in focus, intended to deflect attention away from the sacerdotal "power" which was unacceptable to Protestants, is a profanation - it pollutes and diminishes the sacredness of the priest's calling and demotes him in the eyes of the laity.

At the same time, an exaggerated emphasis was laid on the dignity and rights of the laity. We read:

They are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Christ. They carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian people with respect to the Church and the world.[12]

and, incredibly, "as worshippers whose every deed is holy, the laity consecrate the world itself to God."[13]

In their new priestly, kingly and prophetic function, the first task of the laity will be to make the ordained priest "move over" and let them into the sanctuary, and then to "consecrate the world" by the work of their "priestly" hands. How absurd to entrust a "mission" to the laity (all automatically endowed with "holiness" regardless of their state of soul) that is independent of the graces mediated by the sacramental priesthood. It is nothing less than naturalism masquerading in supernatural garb, while the true supernatural role of the priest to prepare the laity for their eternal destiny is reduced to that of enabling and encouraging them "to build a better world" here below. The Mass then becomes a peg on which to hang any number of worldly celebrations, material aspirations and humanitarian concerns.

It was clear from the beginning of Christianity that priests were given the mission of Good Shepherd to feed the faithful, to seek and find the lost sheep who do not know the way to eternal life and to lead them to salvation, and that the faithful were on the receiving end of their ministry. Such is the significance of the pallium with which popes have been invested at the conferring of the Petrine ministry since the 4th century.

Catholics before Vatican II were far better versed in theology and generally understood the superiority of the spiritual over temporal power, and how there could never be a legitimate lay apostolate that could be released from the authority and guidance of the hierarchy. This doctrine was clearly expressed by Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century in a remarkable letter to the Emperor Athanasius:

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honourably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will.[14]

It is pathetic to see our spiritual leaders discarding what they contemptuously refer to as "symbols of domination" such as the papal tiara and various other insignia of royalty, expressing delight that the pope and bishops strike what is euphemistically called a "more humble, modest and open note", but which in fact is a visual betrayal of their true position and spiritual power to rule, teach and sanctify in the name of Christ the King. It is significant in this regard that in the new Mass and Office of Christ the King this doctrine has been considerably altered so as to expunge all references to the dominion of Christ the King over all nations and all consciences.

The primacy of the hierarchy and the clerical state does not involve an onslaught on the dignity of the laity. There is nothing to feel "sheepish" about in being a lay person!

3. Denigration of the historic Church

The previous situation in the Church is now seen as a pathology. Clerical domination, male chauvinism, outdated patriarchy, anti-woman bias…every conceivable image of oppression has been mustered to arouse resentment against the Church of the past. Such anti-clerical rhetoric has given rise to a hostile predisposition, an inability to tolerate the privileges of the clergy. There is a non-stop effort to build resentment in the ranks of the laity with a long recitation of the "crimes" that the pre-conciliar clergy have supposedly committed against them by excluding them in one way or another, accompanied by a call for the need to end this "clerical oppression". And, worst of all, priests oblige by going through a verbal ritual of self-flagellation, general condemnation of their "triumphalist" past and vilification of their fellow clergy. Their excuse is that they do so because they believe it is their duty [15]and that they have faith in Vatican II. However, it is difficult to reconcile these words with the pursuit of policies aimed at bringing about "a complete Copernican Revolution in the Church" - to use an expression of Cardinal Suenens - which would exalt the status of the laity at the expense of the sacramental priesthood.

An important ingredient in the denigration of pre-conciliar times is the mocking sarcasm to which the priest's role is subjected. The traditional liturgy is now denigrated as a "private devotion" of the priest at which the laity are "passive spectators" peripheral to the proceedings and excluded from participation. It is even alleged that lay people unversed in Latin never understood the Mass until it was vernacularised. What a lie and a caricature invented by anti-clerical reformers and believed by the gullible masses! In the traditional liturgy the laity unite themselves spiritually with the priest in reverent silence as he offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

4. The "universal call to holiness"

Another lie invented by the reformers was that for centuries prior to the Council it was customary to think that holiness could be achieved only by those who had entered the consecrated life, that it was only for priests and nuns and a contemplative elite and that there was no such thing as sanctity for the laity.[16] The Church had to wait for Vatican II to give its "universal call to holiness" before this situation was rectified. But that is just obvious nonsense, as in the New Testament Our Lord Himself tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, "In a word, you must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:48). Furthermore, St. Paul insists, "It is God’s will that you grow in holiness." (1 Thes. 4:3) And St Peter wrote: "According to Him that hath called you, Who is holy, be you also in all manner of conversation [i.e. your conduct] holy: Because it is written: You shall be holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:15-16).

Outstanding spiritual writers such as St Augustine, Fray Louis of Granada[17], St Ignatius Loyola, St Francis de Sales wrote treatises and preached sermons on sanctity for lay people so that they could live lives pleasing to God by lovingly doing their duty to God and to their neighbour and thereby attain holiness and "be made worthy of the promises of Christ", that is their eternal reward.
"Serve God where you are"[18], wrote St Francis de Sales, meaning in the everyday circumstances of life, and explained further:

Every state of life must practise some particular virtue. A bishop’s virtues are of one kind, a prince’s of another, a soldier’s of a third kind, and those of a married woman are different from a widow’s. All men should possess all the virtues, yet all are not bound to exercise them in equal measure. Each person must practise in a special manner the virtues needed by the kind of life he is called to.[19]

There is abundant evidence that prior to Vatican II lay people were trying to cultivate the interior life and the pursuit of sanctity, and were no strangers to asceticism. They heard Mass reverently, adored the Real Presence, made visits to the Blessed Sacrament (locked churches were unheard in the pre-Vatican II period), and venerated Our Lady and the saints. There were long lines of penitents outside the confessionals. Sunday Mass attendance was extremely high. Daily Mass was often well attended (some churches in city centres had Masses starting at 5 a.m. to accommodate people going to work and others who were free to come throughout the morning). Popular devotions were Benediction, the Forty Hours, Sodalities, Stations of the Cross during Lent and weekly novenas. Then there were the Corpus Christi processions, the May crownings and the annual parish missions often given by the Redemptorists (what did they preach about if not the ascetical struggle for holiness and the certainty of hell for those who did not achieve it?).

For many lay Catholics their whole life was a continuous ascetical struggle, often to bring up a large family on little financial resources. They made sacrifices in order to conform to God's holy will. They learned how to turn difficult circumstances into occasions of grace by "offering it up". They kept days of fasting and abstinence including Ember days and the tough Lenten fasts, as well as the long Communion fast.

In order to reinforce the necessity for holiness, the laity were exhorted from both pulpit and confessional to combat temptations and keep a tight lid on their carnal appetites which are always at war with the spirit, and which, if allowed free rein, would lead to the Seven Deadly Sins. They were likewise reminded to say their morning and evening prayers every day and to pray the family Rosary. Catholic schools had prayers before every lesson, the Angelus at midday and the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the end of the school day. For those whose circumstances allowed a greater involvement in the life of the Church, there were the various Third Orders, the Legion of Mary, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Knights of St Columbus, the Catholic Evidence Guild and societies in support of the foreign missions.

So who says that before Vatican II holiness was not considered for the laity? Only those who have an ecumenical axe to grind against the priesthood and who wish to downplay the doctrine of Justification in order to conciliate Protestants. That is why certain subjects are taboo, such as the priest as mediator between God and man, the "merit" that can be applied to our souls from "good works" and the superiority of the consecrated life over the lay state. Clergy and religious who have consecrated themselves exclusively to God's service are called to a life of greater perfection than lay people[20] , but this is strongly contested in the egalitarian atmosphere of the modern Church. According to the egalitarian spirit that prevails in the Church, a priest saying Mass is not doing something in itself higher, holier or spiritually more acceptable to God than a lay man or woman “celebrating” the Mass with him!

The idea that all the People of God are holy is incredible. Who would believe it except the vain and worldly? What an inducement to fantasy and what limitless scope for human pride there is in the notion that we are all holy! After forty years of experimentation, where are all these saintly beings, these paragons of holiness that Vatican II is supposed to have produced? Without the continual help of grace, St. Paul calls all people "bodies of sin" (Rom. 6:6) and speaking of the soul, St. Louis de Montfort wrote:
We are naturally prouder than peacocks, we cling to the earth more than toads, we are more vile than goats, more envious than serpents, more gluttonous than hogs, more furious than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more capricious than weathercocks. We have within ourselves nothing but nothingness and sin, and we deserve nothing but the anger of God and everlasting Hell.[21]

A "new holiness" has been invented that consists in politically correct good works, not in professions of authentic Catholic faith, or in the practice of Christian worship as traditionally handed down in the Church, or in the worthy reception of the sacraments, as if an unholy heart could be in communion with a holy God. The "new holiness" has no room for pious customs or external displays of reverence. Transcendence has been replaced by worldliness, the worship of God by the worship of Man. Gone also from the Catholic scene are the doctrines of meriting grace and gaining indulgences. It is considered sufficient to transform the world by contributing to its temporal success, its cultural and technological development. But that is to overlook the struggle for sanctity that was part of the preparation for eternal life for which holiness in this world is meant to equip us.

Moral inversion

The gross imbalance and error of the new views can only be explained by an anti-clerical prejudice. As a result of the Council documents, we are witnessing a wholesale moral inversion in which manifest lies are automatically believed as representing the truth. To suggest that altar rails should be restored or that the spiritual superiority of the clergy should be considered as normal, that the "active participation "of the laity in the liturgy is not the innocent thing that it claims to be but an aberration, is to lay oneself open to the charge of "clericalism".

Indeed this moral inversion has itself become the norm among liberal Catholics and has infected the traditional teaching on the clerical-lay distinction to the point of silencing it. Morally inverted Catholics have the backing of the liberal hierarchy and the official documents of Vatican II which use the language of virtue to promote an immoral cause - a kind of hate propaganda directed against an identifiable group - priests. That is the basis of their confidence that they are right, and it also explains how disapproval formerly directed against the "promotion of the laity" has become directed instead at the people who still disapprove of it. It is interesting to note how the process of moral inversion has helped priests ordained in the traditional rite to protect themselves from their previous beliefs and from the guilt of discarding them.

Conclusion

The new "pastoral" approach which Vatican II wanted the Church to adopt is an invitation to ignore previous teaching and act as if it did not exist. The practical result is a widespread confusion which has given rise to a generation of churchy laymen and worldly clerics, as perverse as it is grotesque. It is useless for the Holy See to issue warnings against the "clericalisation of the laity" which has taken root in the Church throughout the world [22]: no other outcome could have been expected from the disastrous policy of endowing the laity with a "mission", giving them "ministries", dishing out "charisms" to them on a free-for-all basis and placing a halo on every head. Not only does this novel teaching fail to find validation in Tradition, but in the intervening decades since Vatican II it has become obvious that the lay activism envisioned by the Council is not the answer to the problems in the Church but a new addition to them.

The promotion of the laity has led to decline in respect for the priest who is now seen as one worker among others around the "altar-table". Even though, as a concession to Tradition, Vatican II reiterates - cursorily - that the priest is different in essence from lay people, this makes no difference to anything. The priest's sacral functions have been "de-mystified"; his role might still be regarded as indispensable for the Consecration, but he is treated as a mere technician of the Eucharist, and vastly inferior to the laity with their charismatic gifts and their infinitely more "exciting" role for the transformation of the world. In other words it is the laity who do the work that matters. Such an argument implies that the dynamics of lay activism, continually begetting new and unpredictable demands, undermines the theological premises of that same liberalism on which the post-Vatican II Church has built its legitimacy. A house divided against itself cannot stand, for the moment that the past is declared irrelevant, the present becomes an absurdity, cut off from its roots, as if the Church could somehow negate her own teachings and her own history.

So much for the fate of the priest at the hands of the laity. But what of the laity themselves? Under the impact of their unheard of role as priests and kings and prophets, the new laity are buoyed up on a wave of ambition and arrogance, convinced of their own sufficiency and intrinsic goodness. What if Vatican II, instead of inciting us to megalomania, had brought home to us the reality of our condition as miserable sinners and that we can do nothing of value without the grace of God mediated by Catholic priests? The trouble with explanations of this sort is that they fail to appeal to the envy of the masses and so cannot be used as a catalyst for revolution. And by pinpointing the true causes of our human problems - our own sinful nature - they do not provide the enormous psychological satisfaction of revolutionary ideology which suggests that our status as "sheep" is the outcome of clerical domination. That kind of talk would provide no grist to the revolutionary mill, no incitement to cast off the yoke of subjugation with which the laity are supposedly oppressed. The same ideology also offers a flattering "solution" - promotion of the laity to prominent positions and an inflated notion of their status - which is far more appealing to mob mentality and human pride than the dreary prospect of a lifetime of obscurity, humility and sacrifice.

There will be no return to Tradition until anti-clericalism ceases being a threat to the stability of the Church and has been relegated to its proper sphere as the pastime of cranks and impotent modernists. The priest should be restored to his rightful place of honour as the man chosen and called by God and anointed for His service, and the laity should be restored to their rightful place - outside the sanctuary.

Footnotes
[1] Pope Boniface VIII, Clericis laicos, 1266
[2] Cited from Guimarães, Animus Delendi - I, p. 60
[3] Editorial, Spring 1962, p. 6
[4] The Universe, 28 March 1969
[5] The "Roman thing" to do, i.e. the essence of Catholicism
[6] The Tablet, 15 February 1964
[7] His "new thinking" was enormously influential in the preparation of the documents of Vatican II, especially the chapter on the laity in the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Lumen Gentium, 1963)
[8] Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of the Laity, Christian Classics, 1985, first published 1953
[9] ibid. p. 11
[10] Lumen Gentium #10
[11] ibid. #32
[12] Lumen Gentium #31
[13] ibid. #34
[14] Letter of Pope Gelasius I to Emperor Anastasius (494).
[15] But they have failed in their moral duty to object to innovations which distort the Faith.
[16] Our Lady, who was a lay woman, has always been held in veneration as she surpasses the angels and saints in the splendour of her sanctity. As the Mother of God, she possessed the highest dignity among all creatures and so it is fitting that she should also possess the greatest degree of sanctity.
[17] Louis of Granada was a 16th century Dominican friar who lived at the time of the Council of Trent. As a preacher and writer he devoted himself to encouraging lay people to attain holiness in their everyday lives, but in a very different way from the programme of Yves Congar and Vatican II.
[18] St Francis de Sales, Thy Will Be Done: Letters to Persons in the World, (the English translation of the letters of St. Francis de Sales originally published in The Library of St. Francis de Sales, translated by the Very Reverend Henry Benedict Mackey London: Burns & Oates, Ltd.; New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger Brothers, 1894), Sophia Institute Press, New Hampshire, 1995, p. 15
[19] St Francis de Sales., Introduction to the Devout Life, Doubleday, New York, 1989, p. 35
[20] "The clergy should lead a holier life interiorly and exteriorly than the laity and be an example to them by the standard of their virtue and right conduct."(1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 124)
[21] St Louis Grignon de Montfort, True Devotion to Our Lady, Chapter 2.
[22] This is the essence of a letter by Cardinal Sodano, the Secretary of State, on behalf of Pope John Paul II and published by the Vatican Press Office on 28 August 2001 in which he states that, thanks to their liturgical ministries, "the laity have a clearer awareness of their vocation." In saying this he adds to the confusion by implicitly denying the clericalisation of the laity which the letter is supposedly meant to combat. The letter was addressed to an Italian bishop leading a Liturgical Week in Trent, of all places! This theme also features in the Vatican Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum signed by Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on 25 March 2004.