Liturgy and Sanit Conference

On Saturday November 4, an outstanding conference was held in Anaheim, California entitled “Liturgy and Sanity — The Catholic Mass and the Order of the New World (Old and New).”

Organized by the Committee for the Traditional Liturgy and held in the massive Anaheim Convention Center, it featured three prominent Catholic priests who are dedicated to the Tridentine Mass, to the exclusion of the Novus Ordo: Father Stephen Somerville, Father Paul Kramer, and Father Patrick Perez.

The day began with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated by Father Paul Stretenovic, a young priest who left the Novus Ordo to celebrate the Latin Tridentine Mass exclusively.

I was privileged to be Emcee for the event, and opened the conference with some thoughts on the standard pre-Conciliar reverence for the Eucharist that was found everywhere before the liturgical aggiornamento. I contrasted this with the widespread irreverene for the Blessed Sacrament that was the product of the Vatican II's liturgical revolution. I also used the occasion to quote once again from the famous Ottaviani Intervention wherein we read that the The Novus Ordo Mass “represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the holy Mass as it was formulated in Session XXIII of the Council of Trent.”

Father Stephen Somerville, the only surviving member of ICEL (International Committee on English in the Liturgy) was the first speaker of the day. His lecture was entitled “An Insider’s View of ICEL: Accomplishing the Subversion of the Roman Liturgy.” It was this ICEL that gave us the mangled English translation of the Mass. Five years ago, as Father Somerville reminded us in his talk, he wrote an Open Letter to the Catholic Faithful renouncing his affiliation with ICEL.

He said in his Anaheim speech that ICEL translations had been criticized from the very beginning – that is, even before the New Mass arrived on the scene – and some of this well-founded criticism came from the more orthodox members of ICEL itself.

Father Somerville had these comments about his early years with ICEL: "I remember Father Gerry Sigler, our first ICEL Executive Secretary, (who knew some German) would let us know at our meetings via some inside track what German word was going to be used for ‘pro multis’ or ‘mea culpa’. Somebody else would show us a leaked copy of the French rendering, daringly creative, of the 'orate fratres'. It was all rather confusing, exciting and conspiratorial; especially for me, the youngest member of the group, a mere 33 years of age. I felt troubled and disturbed and unequal to the task. There was a whiff of dishonesty and revolution in the air…”

In this historic talk, Father Somerville also spoke of the various ICEL mistranslations, and of the trans-Atlantic struggle between the US run ICEL and clergy from the British Isles who were disturbed by ICEL’s revolutionary work. He also said that ICEL was ultimately under the direction of the revolutionary Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, architect of the Novus Ordo, whom Pope Paul VI exiled to Tehran when he found evidence that Bugnini was a Freemason.

Father Somerville summed up what ICEL was really about: “We were all members of a revolutionary team engaged by our bishops in the radical subversion of that magnificent Holy Catholic Roman liturgy that had stood substantially unchanged for over fifteen centuries. Most Catholics still do not realize that their liturgy and their Church were in the process of destruction.”

Father Paul Kramer delivered a provocative talk entitled “The Novus Ordo is the Preparation for a One World Religion as Foretold by St. Pius X”

This lecture coincided with the release of Father Kramer’s long awaited book The Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy, but Father Kramer’s talk contained different and complimentary material from what is in his book.

Father Kramer said that in 1983, a priest friend with whom he had been the seminary, showed him a copy of the journal, Chiesa Viva published by Father Luigi Villa in Italy.

Don Villa had published Masonic documents going back to 1920s. Father Kramer said that these Masonic documents "outlined exactly what changes they [Freemasons] wanted to have made in then liturgy — how they wanted the Mass to be reformed. This was the first time I really began to understand just how wrong were the reforms in the liturgy that took place after the Second Vatican Council. Because every single thing that was outlined in that document — what kind of changes the brethren of the Lodge wanted to have made in the Mass — these were precisely the changes that were introduced in the Novus Ordo Missae. ... The liturgical reform point-by-point carried out exactly the liturgical reformed outlined by Freemasonry.”

Father Kramer spoke of the “gravity of the danger and the madness of having replaced the received and approved rites that had been customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments and the Holy Mass for so many centuriese, with a concocted liturgy made precisely according to the specifications set forth by Freemasonry."

Father Kramer went on to describe the true pagan, satanic nature of Freemasonry; how the liturgical reform is related to the Third Secret of Fatima; he discusses the ancient axiom: “Let the law of prayer govern the law of belief’’; and emphasizes the truth that all Catholics are bound to adhere to the “received and approved rites customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments”, which precludes the modern concoction of the New Mass. In other words, Catholics of the Roman Rite are duty bound to adhere to the Latin Tridentine Mass and to reject the protestantized Novus Ordo.

Father Patrick Perez, pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians in Garden Grove, California, delivered the lecture "Liturgy and Sanity", a title that plays off of Frank Sheed’s famous book, Theology and Sanity.

Father Perez, not without a good bit of humor, points out that Catholics have been turned on their heads because of the diabolic disorientation of the post-Conciliar period. They are not seeing things realistically, and do not understand faith and liturgy realistically. This is a kind of insanity.

He explains that the sane man will eventually ask himself: "Is there a specific way that I should worship the God who created me? A way that He prefers over all others? If there is, then it stands to reason that it will be findable by the application of our God-given reason; the faculty He gave us for the very purpose of finding Him."

The man seeking the truth about worship will come to realize that sacrifice is essential to religion; that the Old Testament Sacrifices prefigured the New; and that the Old Testament prophesied a new and eternal sacrifice.

Father Perez spotlighted a central Old Testament prophecy from the Prophet Malachi: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 1: 10-11).

This is a prediction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the re-presentation of the Our Divine Lord’s Sacrifice of Calvary. This is the true worship to which all people are bound.

Father Perez goes on to explain in detail why the Novus Ordo Mass, built on a Protestant structure, is not the sacrifice foretold by the Prophet Malachi. It does not contain any prayer that is specifically sacrificial. Basing his arguments on the famous Ottaviani Intervention, Father Perez concludes, “The Novus Ordo Missae for its lack of any resemblance to a true sacrifice is not the authentic sacrifice foretold by the prophet Malachi … It is therefore not pleasing to God.”

The more than 400 people who attended were thrilled with the conference. They benefited greatly from the instructive talks and from the camaraderie of like-minded Catholics.

The Committee for the Traditional Liturgy, a group of staunch lay-Catholics, deserves public congratulations for organizing this splendid and impressive event.

All lectures, including the Question and Answer period, are now available on Audio cassette and CD. (see below).

Audio Recordings of "Liturgy and Sanity" Conference
Audio Cassette or Audio CD

(also available: Fr. Kramer's new book The Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy)

Father Stephen Somerville: "An Insider's View of ICEL: Accomplishing the Subversion of the Roman Liturgy"

Audio Cassette: $8.00

Audio CD: $8.00

Father Paul Kramer: "The Novus Ordo is the Preparation for a One World Church as Foretold by St. Pius X "

Audio Cassette: $8.00

Audio CD: $8.00

Audio Cassette: $8.00

Audio CD: $8.00

Audio Cassette: $8.00

Audio CD: $8.00

New Book: The Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy. The long awaited book by Father Paul Kramer Explains that the Latin Tridentine Mass is the "received and approved rite" to which all Catholics are bound to adhere. Also covers the novelties of Vatican II, modernism, what truly constitutes "schism", much more. (204 pages • Well-documented).

"This is a superb book. Using clear definitions and sound reason and the traditional teachings of the Popes and the Church Fathers (as well as common sense) Father Kramer brings clarity and truth to the muddled confusion of the post-conciliar Church..."
- David Allen White, Ph.D.

Book: $13.95

Order on line through PayPal (all major credict cards accepted)
or mail order to:

Oltyn Library Services
2316 Delwawre Ave, PMB 325
Buffalo, NY 14216
Please add $2.50 postage and handling.

• "More Glorious than the Seraphim" - Unique Series of Lectures on our Blessed Mother
on Audio Cassette or CD
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