Fr. Z's Blog

Mr. Cricket (aka Andrea Grillo) has embraced the theory of The Big Lie.  The “große Lüge” was coined by a certain 20th Austrian dictator and wielded by his propaganda minister.   The idea is that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. You keep up the lie, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.  Eventually, you push through people’s incredulity by your persistence until others begin to believe.

Alas for Mr. Cricket, he isn’t very convincing.

At Ad Vaticanum there is an account of his mendacious ravings.  Here is a little bit of their report with my emphases and comments:

[…]

Grillo argues that treating liturgy simply as ceremony [This is exactly the position of many diocesan bishops and others who think that people only want more “cow bell”, i.e., incense, ad orientem, lace, Latin, servers in cassocks, bells, a certain style of vestment, etc.  Hence, they should be perfectly content with the Novus Ordo dressed up in all those things.  This is wrong of course, but they are too ignorant of the differences in the rites to know that.] allowed the question of the older Missal to be reduced to a question of what could or could not be permitted. “If the liturgy is not doctrine, but ceremony,” he wrote, “then it is easy to reduce it to a game of ‘concessions’, ‘privileges’, and ‘dispensations’.”  [Liturgy is doctrine.  But if you oppose the Vetus and Novus you have to hold that the goal of the reform was blatant discontinuity.]

Grillo’s argument directly challenges the understanding of the older Missal’s status. He states that the arrangement established after 2007 created a form of duality within the Roman Rite that could not be reconciled with his understanding of the liturgy as the common expression of the Church’s faith. [It was the expression during V2.]

[…]

“The old rite no longer exists since the approval of the New Ordo,” Grillo wrote.  [HA!  Die große Lüge!]

He then described its continued existence over the following decades as a deliberate revival for ideological purposes. “We ‘resurrected’ it for 50 years solely for ‘anti-conciliar’ purposes,” he wrote, adding that “many must ask forgiveness, for the distortions they imposed and the illusions they fostered”. [Slimly.  99% of people who desire the older Mass are uninterested in the Council.  The 1960’s deliberations, oddly implemented, were time bound.]

He also rejected arguments that the older form could simply coexist alongside the reformed Missal as an alternative expression of the same Roman Rite. “The liturgy cannot be intrinsically contradictory if it is to be the source and summit of Christian life,” he wrote. [I suppose that if you don’t have a lot of intellectual flexibility, that could be the case.]

Grillo argued that the Church’s liturgy must instead function as a “common language of the entire Church”. [Except for…. the Eastern Churches… right?  And maybe also Churches like Milan?] The post-conciliar Roman Missal, he said, should be understood as “the form common to all, where everyone finds their sensibility, in a differentiated way”.

His conclusion was that the liturgical reform must be understood not as an optional historical development but as part of the Church’s continuing identity. [Ever changing identity requires ever changing rites.] For Grillo, the attempt to preserve the older Roman Missal as a permanent alternative has instead become a rejection of that process. “The ecclesial learning we have needed for 60 years cannot cultivate nostalgia,” he wrote.

[…]

What a jackass.