Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
Feast of St. John at the Latin Gate: Abolished
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

In the reforms of 1960, not even the “Beloved Disciple” of Our Lord, St. John the Apostle, was spared the indignity of losing a feast day in the Calendar – the usual treatment meted out by Pope John XXIII’s Liturgical Commission (1) to Saints with the (mis)fortune of having more than one feast day. The feast of St. John before the Latin Gate (May 6) had been celebrated for well over 1500 years. It commemorates the occasion of St. John’s attempted martyrdom at the Latin Gate in Rome and his miraculous deliverance.

St. John emerged unharmed from the cauldron of boilig oil

The 2nd century Christian writer, Tertullian, recorded these events which took place in 95 A.D., (2) taking his cue from the account that had been handed down by three generations of persecuted Christians.

On the orders of the Emperor Domitian, St. John was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil from which he emerged unscathed, even reinvigorated as from a refreshing bath. From the early centuries up to 1960, the Church has celebrated this miracle in the prayers of the Mass and Office for May 6, as we shall see below.

The precise origin of the feast is unknown, but a Basilica named after it was erected in Rome in the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Gelasius I (492-496). The first written evidence of the Propers of the Mass is found in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, which have preserved many ancient Mass texts and pre-date the Tridentine Missal by several centuries. (3) These facts suggest that there must already have been a well established tradition of venerating St. John on his feast day.


The Ancient Prayers in the Breviary & Missal

In the traditional Roman Breviary for May 6, the miracle of St. John’s rescue from the cauldron of oil was celebrated in the Antiphon of the Magnificat at Vespers:

“Cast into a pot of boiling oil, the blessed Apostle John, protected by divine grace, came out unharmed, alleluia.” (4)

From this we can see how all the clergy and religious who recited the Office were made familiar with the miraculous circumstances of St. John’s deliverance from his enemies. But after the 1960 reforms when the feast was dropped from the Calendar, most Catholics have either forgotten, or have never known, or, in some cases, were positively encouraged to regard it with derision.

The Church of St. John at the Latin Gate in Rome dates from the 5th century

Although St. John did not shed his blood in martyrdom, nevertheless the Church considered it fitting that he should be regarded as a martyr. This is evident in the Propers of his feast day, which were chosen entirely on the premise that he was a martyr in desire and intention: The Mass of May 6 is Protexisti, which was the incipit of the Introit found in several other Masses of the Common of a Martyr in Paschaltide. (5)

An icon of St John “in Silence,” indicating his wisdom came from silence and meditation

Let us now examine the Propers.

• Introit: (Psalm 63:3,2) Protexisti me, Deus… (6) expresses the frailty of man surrounded by many dangers and acknowledges the need for God’s protection;

• Collect: Deus, qui conspicis… (7) is a prayer made through the “glorious intercession” of St. John for protection from the effects of our sins;

• Epistle: (Wisdom 5:1-5) Stabunt justi in magna constantia… (8) describes how worldly people deride those who accept suffering in this life in the hope of obtaining eternal goods. It is also found in the feast of Ss. Philip and James (May 1);

• Alleluia: (Psalm 91:13) Justus ut palma florebit… (9) palms, the symbol of joy and triumph over the enemies of the soul, are especially associated with the martyrs in the liturgy;

• Gospel: (Matt. 20:20-23) – This pericope, also found in the feast of St. James the Apostle (July 25), was a prophecy of the brothers’ martyrdom when Our Lord promised that they would drink of the chalice of His Passion;

• Offertory: (Psalm 88:6) Confitebuntur cœli mirabilia tua, Domine… (10) this verse gives glory to God for His miraculous powers;

• Secret: Muneribus nostris (11) is also the Secret for Septuagesima Sunday, the Circumcision and for some individual martyrs e.g. St. Hermenegild (April 13), St. James the Apostle (July 25);

• Preface of the Apostles: shared with the other Apostles, all of whom were martyrs;

• Communion: Psalm 63:11 Lætabitur justus in Domino… (12) those who have remained faithful to God’s Covenant (Jews in the Old Testament and Christians in the New) will receive due praise;

• Postcommunion: Refecti, Domine, pane cælesti… (13) expresses the hope of eternal life through the reception of Holy Communion.


Why St. John Before the Latin Gate is Not Expendable

These prayers and readings differ in every respect from those of the other feast of St. John (December 27) and, therefore, cannot be considered as a “duplication.” The Propers of the former were composed or chosen by the Church to commemorate St. John’s martyrdom and the miracle of his deliverance, while those of the latter were dedicated to his work as an Evangelist.

The May 6 feast was a constant reminder to the faithful of the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel: the truth of his personal testimony to the Divinity of Christ is reinforced by the fact that he was prepared to lay down his life over this very issue.

The two feasts are, therefore, interrelated: St. John’s willingness to be martyred at the Latin Gate provides support for his claim that his Gospel, based on what he had seen and heard in Our Lord’s presence, was an authentic account of His ministry.

Would he have been willing to enter the pot of boiling oil to defend the historicity of events that never really happened, that were merely fruits of mystical contemplation, or objects of fanciful speculation?


Why We Need This Feast Day More Than Ever

St. John, by divine grace, was preserved from the attacks of his enemies in the first century, but he did not emerge from the cauldron of liturgical reform unharmed in the 20th.

From the rise of Protestantism in the 16th century, through the so-called “Enlightenment” era of the 18th and the Modernist movement of the 19th, even into our own day, liberal theologians have challenged and rejected the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel. It was obviously too clear in its doctrine, too genuine in its witness to Christ’s Divinity for their liking.

Last Gospel of St. John: also at risk

When this scepticism about St. John made inroads into the Catholic Church, it was condemned by Pope Pius X, (14) but it was later revived by academic scholars in the Liturgical Movement. We have seen how, in all the major International Liturgical Congresses of the 1950s, the participants bayed for the abolition of the Last Gospel (John 1: 1-14) at the end of Mass.


Barbarians at the Latin Gate

The dedication of the Basilica of St. John before the Latin Gate occurred at a crucial juncture in History, which marked the defeat of the barbarian hordes that invaded Rome and the triumph of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.

Barbarians burning Rome; today the progressivists make a new onslaught

Fifteen centuries later, the Catholic Church fell once more to invasion: the liturgical barbarians were at the gates of Rome, pillaging, looting and sacking the Church’s spiritual patrimony. In place of King Alaric, the barbarian chieftain and leader of the Visigoths, there was Bugnini who masterminded the plans and mustered the forces that carried out the sack of the Roman Rite.

The abolition of the feast of St. John before the Latin Gate with its wealth of historical and doctrinal content was a flagrant breach of time-honored customs universally observed in the Church. It was yet another of those nefarious activities of the Liturgical Commission, which, as we have seen, removed several such feast days from the General Calendar in 1960 (15) that nourished the spiritual life of the faithful. Looking at the influx of worldly and pagan practices into the liturgy today, one could say that the elimination of these ancient feasts helped reverse what centuries of Catholic Civilization and Culture had built up to keep barbarism at bay.


An Afterthought

When Pope John XXIII accepted the Papacy on October 28, 1958, he made a speech (16) in which he explained why he chose the name John. Among the reasons given he mentioned his devotion to the patron Saints of his Cathedral, St. John Lateran in Rome – one of whom is St. John the Evangelist, the other being St. John the Baptist. Yet, under pressure from the Liturgical Movement, he was prepared to cast aside the feast of the martyrdom of his own name-Saint, just as he abolished a feast of his own Guardian Angel, St. Michael. (17)

We cannot fail to note that “the love of one’s own” – part of the cardinal virtue of Justice – was perceptibly lacking in the Popes of Vatican II. In the revolutionary euphoria of the 1960s, they acknowledged no particular obligation to preserve the liturgy, no special concern for the children of the household whose inheritance they sold for a mess of “ecumenical” pottage.

Continued

1. This was the same Commission which had been set up by Pope Pius XII in 1948 with Mgr. Bugnini as its Secretary.
2. Tertullian, Prescription against heretics, chap. 36.
3. The Gregorian Sacramentary, for instance, contains the Collect, Secret and Post-communion for the feast of St. John before the Latin Gate.
4. In ferventis olei dolium missus beatus Joannes Apostolus, divina se protegente gratia, illaesus exivit, alleluia.
5. Also for the feasts of St. George (23 April), St. Fidelis (April 24), St. Mark (25 April), St. Stanislaus (May 7), St. Venantius (May 18), St. Barnabas (June 11).
6. “Thou hast protected me, O God, from the assembly of the malignant…”
7. “O God, Who beholdest that our own ill deeds disquiet us on every side…”
8. “The just shall stand with great constancy against those that have afflicted them…”
9. “The just shall flourish like the palm tree…”
10. “The heavens shall confess Thy wonders, O Lord, and Thy truth in the Church of Thy Saints.”
11. “Having received our offerings and prayers, we beseech Thee, O Lord, cleanse us by these heavenly mysteries, and graciously hear us.”
12. “The just shall rejoice in the Lord…”
13. “Refreshed with the bread of heaven…”
14. Lamentabili sane, 1907, §§16-18.
15. These were the Chair of St. Peter at Rome, St. Peter in Chains, St. John before the Latin Gate, the Finding of St. Stephen, the Finding of the Holy Cross, the Apparition of St. Michael and the feast of Pope St. Leo II. All of these (except the Chair of St Peter at Rome and St. Leo II) were retained in the Appendix of the 1962 Missal under the heading Pro aliquibus locis (Masses for certain places).
16. Allocution Audiens verba tua, AAS, 50 (1958), pp. 878-879.
17. This was the Apparition of St. Michael (May 8). These two feasts have a subtle connection. The Archangel Michael also appeared to St. John as the chief adversary of Satan (Apoc. 12:7-8) – which, significantly, explains the centuries-old custom of praying to St. Michael for protection against the Evil One and his minions.

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
Fourteen Other Feast Days Abolished
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

One of the most notable – and we are compelled to add grotesque – features of the 1960 reforms is the way in which feasts that had a long and universal acceptance in the Church suddenly became the object of strong disapproval among the members of the Liturgical Commission and their allies in the Church. This was, as we have seen, the case for several feasts that were eliminated after having been in the Universal Calendar for centuries.


What One Hand Gives the Other Takes Away

The 1960 Rubrics allowed these feasts to be celebrated “in some places.” (1) No sooner had Pope John XXIII’s Rubrics gone into effect in January 1961 than the Congregation of Rites issued an Instruction on February 14 to ensure that their celebration would not be generally adopted on their traditionally observed dates. It specified that this could take place only if “altogether exceptional reasons” (rationes omnino singulares) were given to justify it. (2)

A smiling John XIII cuts away traditional feast days

That set the bar exceedingly high, making it unlikely that the “right” criteria would be fulfilled in most cases, thus discouraging requests to the Holy See from Bishops wishing to retain the traditional dates for their dioceses.

This was just the beginning of a series of increasingly harsh and restrictive measures designed to reduce the majority of feasts in the Universal Calendar.


Local Feasts Suppressed

In accordance with the February 1961 Instruction, (§§ 32, 33), the following 14 feasts observed in local Calendars were suppressed unless “truly special reasons” required their continued observance.

• The Translation of the House of the Blessed Virgin Mary (10 December);
  
• The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (18 December);
  
• The Espousals of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Joseph (23 January);
  
• The Flight of Our Lord into Egypt (17 February);
  
• The Commemoration of the Passion of Our Lord (Tuesday after Sexagesima Sunday);
  
• The Holy Crown of Thorns (Friday after Ash Wednesday);
  
• The Holy Lance and Nails (Friday after the I Sunday in Lent);
  
• The Holy Shroud (Friday after the II Sunday in Lent);
  
• The Five Wounds (Friday after the III Sunday in Lent);
  
• The Most Precious Blood (Friday after the IV Sunday in Lent);
  
• The Eucharistic Heart of Jesus (Thursday after the Octave of Corpus Christi) (3);
  
• The Humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary (17 July);
  
• The Purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (16 October).
  

The Instruction gave the following pretexts as to why these feasts should be abolished:

• They had originated from the devotion of the faithful (“e privata devotione”), had multiplied exceedingly (“nimis multiplicata sunt”) and invaded the public domain of the liturgy (“in publicum Ecclesiae cultum inducta”);
  

• They only came into existence from the Middle Ages (“inde a Media Aetate”);
  

• They duplicated themes that were celebrated at other times of the year (in aliis festis aut anni temporibus);
  

• They had relevance only to a particular location (cum aliquo tantum loco particulari).
  

It would be well to note that these pretexts were based on erroneous assumptions about the nature and relevance of the feasts listed for expulsion from the local calendars. We will take each point in turn.


Pretexts Based on Erroneous Assumptions

First, as these feasts commemorated events in the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady, they drew the faithful into an ever deeper contemplation and union with Christ and His Blessed Mother. But such Catholic devotion was perceived by the Liturgical Movement in general and the members of the Liturgical Commission in particular to be in opposition to a true sense of the liturgy.

The Five Wounds illustrate a medieval manuscript

The feasts were incorrectly treated as merely by-products of so-called “devotionalism,” as if they were para-liturgical exercises, which during the Middle Ages had been wrongly inserted into the Church’s official liturgy. Many of the faithful, certainly, were devoted to them, but the feasts themselves were – and had been for centuries – an approved part of the liturgy, having their own unique Mass and Propers in the Pro aliquibus locis section of the pre-1962 Missal.

The unnecessary suppression of these feasts, which, being optional, posed no impediment to the General Calendar, is an example of “clericalism,” the unjustified assertion of dominance of Church leaders over the rights of Tradition. It was the metaphorical equivalent of a wet blanket to dampen the fires of devotion among the faithful.

Second, it makes no sense to suggest that a relatively late origin of a feast (the Middle Ages) constitutes grounds for its suppression. At that rate, many feasts, both local and universal, added after that period would stand condemned. When, however, it suited the reformers’ purposes, they also abolished feasts that had been celebrated in the first centuries of the Church’s existence because they were “too old” to appeal to modern expectations.

The feasts on the above list may have entered the official Calendars in the Middle Ages, but the mysteries they enshrined had been the object of contemplation by the faithful from the early days of Christianity. To take one example, the Holy House of Nazareth where Our Lady received the Annunciation and where the Holy Family lived, was venerated by Christians even in the lifetime of the Apostles; and when St. Helena visited the Holy Land in about 330, she had a church built around the Holy House in order to protect it. (4)

Translation of the Holy House from Nazareth to Loreto, celebrated in many paintings

Third, it had never been an accepted custom in the Church to abolish a feast because its theme is similar or identical to that of other feasts in the Calendar. In fact, such “pairings” had always been a feature of the Roman Missal, e.g., Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi, Good Friday and the Precious Blood, the Finding and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, two feasts for an individual Saint etc.. It was all part of the richness of the pre-1962 Missal, a form of “recapitulation” that helped the faithful to contemplate different aspects of each mystery.

Fourth, it does not follow that because a feast has a special connection with a particular location ‒ whether it be Loreto or Fatima etc. ‒ that it cannot partake of a the universality of the Faith and be of spiritual value to all Catholics around the world. Who would think of abolishing Christmas because it started in Bethlehem, or Good Friday because the Crucifixion took place at a particular spot, Mount Calvary? Why, then, suppress the Translation of the Holy House (10 December), which originated in Nazareth before its miraculous transfer to Loreto?

Yet the Instruction ordered the suppression of this feast on the grounds that its relevance was limited only to a local area (tantum loco particulari), despite the fact that, by 1960, it had been held in veneration on every continent, (5) and was one of the most popular Marian pilgrimage destinations in the world.

Furthermore, with a Decree of March 24, 1920, (6) Pope Benedict XV, inspired by the aerial flight of the Holy House from Nazareth to Loreto, had named the Virgin of Loreto Patroness of aviators and flight attendants. She even achieved iconic status in Space – during the Apollo 9 mission in 1969, the American Astronaut, James McDivitt, wore a medal of Our Lady of Loreto bearing the caption “Protect my Flight.” (7)


Goalposts on Wheels

What is striking about the 1961 Instruction is that the rules and requirements of the Calendar reform kept changing this way and that to secure the outcome desired by the progressivist reformers, while making it impossible for the “other side” to score a point. Moving the goalposts would, by any standards, be considered an unfair advantage, a form of cheating – a point of special relevance to the 1960 Calendar reform, as the outcome had already been decided by the plotters on Pius XII’s Liturgical Commission more than a decade earlier.

The ancient feast of Our Lady of the Expection, or The Lady of the O

The secret deliberations of Pius XII’s Liturgical Commission were first made available to the public by Fr. Carlo Braga in 2003. In Chapter 3 of his Memoria sulla Riforma Liturgica, (1948, nn. 134-176), there are references to the Commission’s plans to eliminate “minor” feasts of Our Lord and Our Lady, and feasts “of devotion” in general, especially those of more recent origin.

But the feast of the Expectation of Our Lady (December 18) was neither minor nor recent – it originated in the 7th century and was celebrated with a solemn octave. (8) Its abolition discouraged the liturgical tradition long practised by the faithful, especially expectant mothers, (9) to make a week-long spiritual preparation for the coming of Christ in union with the thoughts of Our Lady as she awaited the birth of her Son.

In the 19th century, Fr. Frederick Faber (1814-1863), the noted hymn writer (10) and founder of the London Oratory, composed an Advent carol, which sings of the joy Our Lady felt as the time of her delivery drew near. He gave it the title “Our Lady’s Expectation,” though it was popularly known by its opening words: Like the Dawning of the Morning, and is still remembered as having been sung in Catholic schools at morning Assembly.

But so great was the reformers’ animosity to this devotion – and the feast that celebrates it – that the hymn was excised from the Westminster Hymnal and never saw the light of day in hymn books published after 1960.


‘Bin that!’

The reformers were not moved by considerations of the good of the Church, but by the desire to meet “ecumenical” targets, which are inappropriate for Catholic worship. How treacherous of them to ignore the faithful, trample on their cherished traditions and deprive them of their liturgical patrimony. The contempt with which they did so calls to mind, in modern computer parlance, the “drag and drop” method of discarding unwanted material into the place marked “bin.”

Fr. Faber's hymn celebrating Our Lady of the Expectation, also cut from Hymnals

Continued


1. Novum Rubricarum, July 25, 1960, § 305a allowed a Mass to be chosen from the Pro aliquibus locis section of the Roman Missal in place of a Mass from the Commons.
2. De calendariis particularibus, AAS 53, 1961, § 34, p. 175. (Emphasis in the original)
3. The Octave of this major feast had already been abolished in Pius XII’s reforms.
4. St. Paulinus, in Letter 31 to Severus, mentioned that St. Helena had churches built in all the places she visited connected with the principal events of Our Lord’s life; among them he specifically included the place of the Incarnation, which Tradition has identified as the Holy House of Nazareth. (See Paulinus of Nola, Epistolae, Epist. XXXI in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 29, p. 271)
5. This is evident from the proliferation of churches, chapels, schools, colleges and religious institutes dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto throughout the world, and from the popularity of the Litany of Loreto among the faithful.
6. B. Maria Virgo Lauretana Aëreonautarum Patrona Declaratur, AAS 12, March 24, 1920, p. 175.
7. The American Autograph Auction, RR Auctions, has an authenticated record of this medal. The reverse depicts an aeroplane encircled by text reading, “Patroness of Aviators & Air Travellers.” The medal is accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from James McDivitt stating: “I certify that this Our Lady of Loretto [sic] medallion was flown on board Apollo 9 on her flight in March, 1969. It is from my personal collection.”
8. It originated in Spain at the Tenth Council of Toledo (656) and was gradually conceded to other countries. The octave was from December 17 with the great ‘O’ Antiphons for the Magnificat at Vespers to December 24.
9. Dom Guéranger asserted: “A High Mass was sung at a very early hour each morning during the octave, at which all who were with child, whether rich or poor, considered it a duty to assist, that they might thus honor Our Lady’s Maternity and beg Her blessing upon themselves. It is no wonder that the Holy See approved of this pious practice being introduced into almost every other country.” (The Liturgical Year, Dublin, 1870. vol. 1, p. 514)
This feast would have had particular relevance in the modern world to reinforce respect for motherhood and the unborn child in the combat against the scourge of abortion.
10. Among his best loved hymns are: Faith of our fathers, Jesus Gentlest Saviour, Jesus my Lord, my God, my all, O Purest of Creatures, Sweet Mother, Sweet Maid , and Oh, come and mourn with me awhile.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
The Feast of the Translation of the Holy House Suppressed
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

“To us, Nazareth and its Holy House, exiled, wandering, angel-borne, Syrian, Dalmatian, Italian, all by turns, are consecrated places, doubly consecrated by their old memories, and also by their strange continued life of local graces, and the efficacious balm of a Divine Presence, awful and undecayed.” (1)

The Holy House covered by a marble screen & enshrined in the Basilica in Loreto; below, its interior

To the uninitiated, that is, those who are not familiar with the Nazareth-Loreto history of the Holy House, these words must appear as a conundrum in need of explanation. They were written in 1860 by the Oratorian priest, Fr. Frederick Faber, who had consecrated himself to Our Lady during a pilgrimage to Loreto in 1846. (2)

In this charming vignette written in his customary poetic style, he encapsulates the whole history of the Translation of the Holy House of Nazareth and the trajectory it followed to its present resting place in Italy, while also conveying a sense beyond the literal.

All the essentials are neatly summed up in Fr. Faber’s potted history of the Holy House:

• Its “exile” in 1291 when it was miraculously removed by angelic intervention to prevent its destruction by marauding Saracens who had invaded the Holy Land;
  

• Its brief stay in Dalmatia and various locations in Italy before reaching its final destination in Loreto;
  

• Its consecrated status as a relic of the Holy Family who once dwelt in it;
  

• Its call to pilgrims to unite themselves with Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a personal way;
  

• Its continuous stream of miracles and graces for many who invoke the name of Our Lady at her Shrine;
  

• Its capacity to inspire religious awe and fervor in the heart of the devout pilgrim.
  

Rejection of the Loreto Tradition

It is a remarkable fact that, after 7 centuries of belief in the miraculous translation of the Holy House of Loreto, most Catholics today have reverted to the Protestant tradition of regarding such miracles as “superstitious fables.” They now dismiss what they facetiously call the “flying house of Loreto” as the stuff of fairy tales.

Progressivists belittle the marvelous miracle of the Angels moving the Holy House to Loreto

Such skepticism was never endemic to the Catholic Church until the infiltration of the Modernist Movement in the late 19th century. Its proponents, who denied the reality of the supernatural, misled many of the faithful into believing God cannot intervene in our world and produce miracles. Thus, they impugned the authenticity of relics or any physical manifestation of Divine intervention.

As the Holy House was one of the most famous and efficacious relics in the world, it became a prime target of modernist attacks from inside the Church, perpetrated by Catholic priests at the turn of the 20th century. More details of this phenomenon will be provided later but, for the moment, it is sufficient to point out its relevance to the 1960 reform of the Calendar which suppressed the feast of the Translation of the Holy House.


The ‘De-Mystification’ of Miraculous Events

It is hardly surprising that, as Modernism came to full maturity by the middle of the 20th century, the growing Liturgical Movement was profoundly influenced by its proponents’ presupposition that everything that happens in this world must have a natural explanation. After all, it was a declared aim of the Commission of experts appointed by Pius XII to “harmonize proven traditions with the new exigencies of the times.” (3) and to establish this re-evaluation “on historical-critical bases.” (4)

In admitting this, the Commission revealed its acceptance of the so-called “historical-critical” method of the modernists, which acted as a convenient cover for those who denied, or at least challenged, the truth of miracles. For them, miracles were no more than the products of human imagination and had to be either “de-mystified” or eliminated. Consequently, the Calendar would be purged as much as possible of feasts celebrating miraculous events.


The Modernist Influence

A prime example of an influential figure who adopted the “historical-critical” method was Fr. Hartmann Grisar (1845-1932), a German Jesuit, archaeologist and Professor of Church History at the University of Innsbruck.

According to Fr. Martin García, the Superior General of the Jesuit Order from 1892 to 1906, Fr. Grisar “frequently spoke against many Roman traditions on saints and relics, calling them ... legends of ignorant sacristans and unfounded fables invented in the Middle Ages and transmitted by credulous people and later by pious writers with no sense of history.” (5)

Fr. Grisar specifically mentions the Holy House miracle as a fable

In 1900, Fr. Grisar gave a talk at the 5th International Congress of Catholic Scholars in Munich. In his speech, which was widely reported for general readership, he called for “Catholic writers eminent for scholarship and critical research” to rid the Church of some traditions concerning miraculous events, mentioning specifically the translation of the House of the Holy Family at Nazareth to Loreto. (6)

The tacit implication was that the Church, in recommending holy places and events for the veneration of the faithful, did so without employing either scholarship or critical research to enquire into the authenticity of their miraculous nature.

The veiled accusation that the faithful have been deceived by lies and fraud (a typically Protestant stance) is not only calumnious, but is easily refuted by the evidence of History – and never more so, as we shall see later, than in the case of the Holy House of Loreto.

A fellow-Jesuit historian who was present at the Congress reported that the presentation was conducted with “a certain sarcasm and flippancy” that heaped ridicule on the veneration of relics, “to the great joy of the Protestants, who already begin to crow in their newspapers.” (7)

Pope Pius X exposed such tactics as typical of the Modernists:

“If they write history, it is to search out with curiosity and to publish openly, on the pretext of telling the whole truth and with a species of ill-concealed satisfaction, everything that looks to them like a stain in the history of the Church. Under the sway of certain a priori rules they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of the people, and bring ridicule on certain relics, highly venerable, from antiquity.” (8)

Unfortunately, these anti-Catholic ideas gradually gained – to much Protestant crowing – acceptance among many of the clergy and hierarchy who considered belief in the miraculous to be a pious myth, unsustainable in the modern age.


The Modernist Roots of the 1960 Reform

This explains why the zealots on the 1960 Liturgical Commission, infected by the same derogatory spirit of the early modernists, excised so many feast days celebrating the miraculous as “unhistorical.” Thus, we can see the motive for the suppression of the feast of the Translation of the Holy House by reformers who considered it essential to address the needs of “modern man” (who, in their opinion, could not be expected to believe in miracles).

However, as such skepticism was not, at that time, representative of the Catholic faithful as a whole, it could only be imposed by force from the top down – hence the totalitarian nature of the liturgical reforms which followed.

The grand Basilica in Loreto that enshrines the Holy House

Continued

1. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem, London, Burns: Oates and Washbourne, 1860, p. 66.
2. John Edward Bowden, The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, D.D., Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1869, p. 277. Fr. Bowden records Fr. Faber’s words: “In good truth it is odd that I should go to Loreto to beg devotion to our dear Lady, and that afterwards in two solemn communions I should have vowed my life, health, strength, intellect and senses to be her slave and to spread her devotion, in great measure because I feared converts relapsing from want of that great sign of predestination; and then that it should be thought that I was like one who never ‘warmed,’ as a bishop expressed it to me, to Mary.” (Ibid., 293)
3. Sacred Congregation of Rites, Memoria sulla riforma liturgica, 1948, n. 14.
4. Ibid., n. 16.
5. Apud David G. Schultenover, “Luis Martín García, the Jesuit General of the Modernist Crisis (1892-1906): On Historic Criticism,” Catholic Historical Review 89, n. 3, 2003, pp. 445-446.
6. Alexander MacDonald, The Holy House of Loreto: a Critical Study of Documents and Traditions, New York: Christian Press Association, 1912, p. 324. The Rt. Rev. Alexander MacDonald D.D. was Bishop of Victoria, B.C., Canada.
7. Schultenover, “Luis Martín García," pp. 453-454.
8. Pascendi, 1907, § 43.

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

The Loreto Tradition Is Not a Legend

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Myth still tends to be associated with the Loreto tradition, and accusations are rife in the modern era that it was a pure invention, impossible to reconcile with the nature of historical reality. This was the position of the 20th century modernists who acted on the assumption that miracles should not be taken into account if we are setting out to do “scholarly” work on past events and determine their historicity. And it is still the prevalent view among progressivist Catholics today.

But, in cutting themselves off from the supernatural sources of divine intervention, they also severed any ties to what is most true about the world of reality, which they claim they can explain to others.

A 1520 illustration showing the translation of the Holy House to Loreto

The main charge – falsely levelled against the Loreto tradition – was that of credulity on the part of those who accepted it in the absence of reasonable proof or knowledge. To defend the tradition, we will show that there are grounds for both a truly Catholic and intellectually respectable belief that the Holy House was transported miraculously from Nazareth, with various stops along the way, to Loreto.

In the first place, it is necessary to accept that it is possible for God to operate outside the laws that govern the physical world without violating the natural order; and that the miracles He wills to perform are not contrary to nature but above and beyond nature. Once that fundamental point is accepted, we move on to the inescapable conclusion that the possibility of such an event happening cannot be regarded as absurd by anyone who believes in Divine Providence and the ministry of Angels.

We will proceed in our enquiry on the basis that this tradition has a claim to serious consideration, especially by Catholics.

Let us consider the following facts that constitute convincing evidence for the authenticity of the miraculous translocations of the Holy House at the end of the 13th century:

• Oral testimonies approved by the Church less than 20 years after the arrival of the Holy House in Loreto;
  

• The testimony of the innumerable miracles wrought in the Holy House and the Divine favors granted there;
  

• An unbroken tradition of acceptance by the Catholic world for over 700 years;
  

• The devotion of hundreds of Saints (1) and countless pilgrims who visited the site;
  

• Scholarly evaluation of the historical records;
  

• Valid scientific evidence obtained from expert analysis of the fabric of the Holy House proving its origin in Palestine and the impossibility of its being rebuilt in Loreto;
  

• Statements of over 40 Roman Pontiffs in official documents declaring the identity of the Holy House of Nazareth and that of Loreto, and granting indulgences to pilgrims;
  

• The concession of a Proper Office and Mass in 1699.
  

The miraculous statue of the Madonna of Loreto in the Basilica that covers the Holy House

Each of these pieces of evidence carries great epistemological weight; together, they have an internal consistency that confers on the whole Loreto tradition a definite logical validity. Who, indeed, with any cogency can argue against them? It has never been done, as we shall see later when examining the counter-claims of various “Loreto sceptics.”

The 19th-century priest Fr. James Spencer Northcote, (2) an expert in Christian antiquities and a noted archaeologist, having studied the history of the Holy House, concluded that anyone who poured scorn on its miraculous Translation would find himself in an invidious position:

“He is assuming that he is more intelligent than the great body of the faithful who for centuries have venerated this sanctuary and have regarded its history as true. He is assuming that he is more sagacious than the Saints, wiser than the Supreme Pontiffs who have rendered such magnificent testimonies to the truth of its history, and more prudent than the Sacred Congregation of Rites who have approved the office of the translation.” (3)

Anyone who rejects the concept of the miraculous flight – or, more correctly, multiple “flights” – of the Holy House, without first considering the accumulated evidence offered by the Church, could aptly be accused of either irrationality or ill will.


Documents May Perish, But Tradition Survives

If one expects to consult a set of contemporary documents describing the disappearance of the House from Nazareth in 1291 and its eventual appearance in Loreto in 1295, he would be much disappointed, for the original source material produced at the time of the Translation was either lost or destroyed; and there were no published historical accounts of the Translation until the 15th century.

This does not, however, give grounds for disbelief, as the credibility of miracles rests on a different sort of evidence than that provided by modern “revisionist historians” who assess the events in purely naturalistic terms.

A 16th century map showing the double translation of the Holy House

This point was made by Pope Pius X in a letter addressed through the Cardinal Secretary of State to the Archbishop of Rouen in which he mentioned “the fundamental principles and the rules of the true historical and apologetic method made, with the doctrinal authority appertaining to their persons and their mission, by those whose pride and duty it is to put themselves at the head of the defenders of pure orthodoxy.” (4) In other words, credibility rests on the authority of Church leaders who uphold orthodox doctrine.

He warned that the credibility of supernatural truths cannot be found in “the pompous pretext of a vain erudition” that comes from pseudo-science, and encouraged “well-intentioned persons … to discover, even in the absence of written documents, the manifest proofs of the truth of what is believed on the basis of tradition prudently overseen and verified.” (5)

But, what sort of evidence was there originally, and how convincing is it, given the non-survival of the first documents? Certain historians of the 15th century, encouraged by the protection and oversight of popes, had consulted and recorded many of the testimonies from 13th-century pilgrims to both Nazareth and Loreto, ensuring that these survived even after the loss of the original documents.

From these we gather that successions of pilgrims who had visited Nazareth before 1291 concurred in their testimonies that the Holy House was located in the crypt of a basilica that had been built over it by the Crusaders. It was there that St. Louis IX, King of France, heard Mass in 1251 in the same chamber where the Angel announced the coming of Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (6) The tradition of using the Holy House as a church continued after its relocation to Loreto where it, too, became a site of pilgrimage for thousands of Catholics from around the world.


What is the ‘Loreto Tradition’?

The earliest written history of the Loreto Sanctuary dates from the mid-15th century when Fr. Pietro di Giorgio Tolomei (usually known as Teramano), its rector from 1450-1473, produced his account in Latin, based on information found in the local archives. (7)

Above, first page of the 15th century manuscript of Fr. Termano, below, a 14th century tin alloy

It started life as a modest Summary hung on the wall of the House-cum-church for the information of visiting pilgrims, but achieved international fame after it was published in Italian in 1472. (8) The value of Teramano’s account was that it provided posterity with a chronicle of the living tradition of his day, which had been bruited around since 1291. This source, therefore, can be regarded as the basis of the whole Loreto tradition.

It can be divided into three main sections.

First, Teramano traced in detail the journey of the Holy House from Nazareth via Dalmatia (modern-day Croatia) and various places in Italy to its location in Loreto near the town of Recanati. His information was based not only on a thorough search into the archival documents, but also on statements, made under oath, by trustworthy locals who reported what previous generations had seen and heard at the time of the various translations of the Holy House.

The credibility of their testimony rested mainly on the medieval principle of fidedignorum assertio (a statement made by “trustworthy men”). (9) Eye witness evidence was not enough to produce moral certainty; it had to concur with faith in invisible things and corroborate the already existing tradition. This had been handed down and universally accepted by the inhabitants of the areas through which the Holy House had passed, and by the large number of pilgrims who had witnessed miracles in those places.

Second, Teramano devoted a section to the words of a local hermit of devout life who described a revelation he had received from Our Lady concerning the Holy House: that it was hers, the place of the Incarnation and the home of the Holy Family.

Third, Teramano also mentioned that a 16-man delegation was sent from Recanati in 1296 to inspect the site of the Nazareth House where, it transpired, only the foundations remained; that they took measurements and, upon their return, found that these corresponded exactly (“ad unguem”) (10) to the dimensions of the Holy House that had departed Nazareth, leaving its foundations behind.

That is the Loreto tradition in a nutshell. It may not seem much to go on, but once the implications have been drawn from the information supplied, and when further research was carried out ‒ which, as we shall see, was the work of later historians and scientists ‒ the results are simply stupendous. It means that the Holy House, contrary to the laws of physics, has stood without foundations and completely unsupported for centuries as its own silent witness to its sacred character and miraculous transportation.

What we can say so far with certainty is that the Loreto tradition, passed down from mouth to mouth as a series of known occurrences duly witnessed, signed and archived before being chronicled by Teramano, was no mere “legend” or fanciful invention.

The subject of numerous paintings and illustrations

Continued

1. Among these were St. Francis Xavier, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, St. Francis de Sales, St. Benedict Labre, St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. Teresa of Lisieux.
2. Fr. James Spencer Northcote DD (1821-1907) was a convert from Anglicanism. He was a distinguished Classical scholar with a First Class degree from Oxford University, and later became interested in archaeology. In recognition of his erudition, he received the title Doctor of Divinity in 1861 from Pope Pius IX, and he was made President of Oscott College in the Diocese of Birmingham.
3. J.S. Northcote, Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna, P.F. Cunningham, 1868, p. 102.
4. AAS, 04, 1912, Letter from Card. Merry del Val to Arch. Frédéric Fuzet of Rouen, 22 April, p. 355.
5. Ibid.
6. An account of the King’s visit to Nazareth was written by his confessor and biographer, Geoffroy de Beaulieu, OP, who accompanied him during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His biography, Vita Ludovici Noni (The Life of Louis IX) was one of the principal testimonies in the process of Louis IX’s canonization, which took place in 1297.
7. Around the same time, another history, similar in content to Teramano’s, was written by Fr. Giacomo Ricci, but it was little known because it remained for centuries in manuscript form. It was not published until 1987 under its original title of Virginis Mariae Loretae Historia.
8. As a measure of how highly Teramano’s Summary was prized by the Holy See, it was translated in 1578 on the orders of Pope Gregory XIII into Greek, Arabic, Slavic, German, French and Spanish, and fixed to the walls of the Sanctuary for the benefit of international pilgrims. It would later be translated into English.
9. In the Middle Ages, it was the common practice for bishops to gather information from statements made by witnesses in ecclesiastical courts, during episcopal visitations and before Inquisition tribunals. Such statements were held on trust based on a common background of religious faith. Bishops placed faith in local men deemed worthy of their trust who, in turn, recognized the bishop’s authority and power of jurisdiction.
10. Teramano used this expression (literally “to the nail”) to denote a perfect fit. As a metaphor drawn from architecture, it was commonly used in Roman times by sculptors and stonemasons who tested the perfection of their work by gliding a finger nail across a well-fitting joint.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
The ‘Fathers’ of the Loreto Tradition
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

So far we have established that the Loreto tradition is founded, with or without written or printed documents, on the trustworthiness of human witnesses and their testimony of miracles. It rests on the principle of justice and charity that those responsible for relating the events in question must not be presumed to be liars and deceivers.

The Translation of the Holy House to Loreto

Interestingly, that presumption was made, as we shall see later, by Protestants and Liberal Catholics who dismissed as unconvincing whatever contradicted their own opinions, and refused to accept any evidence that conflicted with their preconceived notions of miracles.

Let us trace the historical records that once existed, and give an overview of the principal historians (after Teramano) who used them to keep the Loreto tradition alive. They cited documents, still extant in their day, attesting to the miraculous translation of the Holy House in its different locations. The reasons why these writers were considered eminently worthy of belief and secured the patronage of successive Popes will also be addressed.


Girolamo Angelita

No one could have been more qualified to produce an authentic history of the Loreto tradition than the 16th-century archivist, Girolamo Angelita. As Chancellor of the Commune of Recanati from 1509 to 1561, he had access to all that remained in the archives of Recanati after many documents had been destroyed by fire in 1322. Like Teramano before him, he made a diligent examination of these; and he found other relevant documents in neighbouring towns and in the possession of private families of note.

But his greatest asset was the collection of manuscript copies of documents received by the magistrates of Recanati from Dalmatia concerning the first arrival of the Holy House in Tersatto in 1291. These were considered so important that they were sent to Pope Leo X.

The measurements of the Holy House in Italy correpond perfectly to the spot it left in Croatia

From these Angelita established that the parish priest of Tersatto, Fr. Alexander, had received a vision and a miraculous cure from Our Lady who explained the origin of the Holy House; that he went to Nazareth with three companions in 1291 to verify the dimensions of its foundations, and found them to correspond to the house at Tersatto; and that when the house disappeared, a local nobleman and benefactor, Count Nikola Frankopan, (1) ordered a church to be built over the site. By including these points in his work, (2) he established a well-documented link between mutually reinforcing testimonies from two different cultures, Dalmatia and Italy.

Angelita’s trustworthiness and integrity are beyond dispute and his reputation unimpeachable. His work was certified by local government officials, the magistrates of the town of Recanati of which he was the Secretary. St. Peter Canisius recommended him as “one remarkable for his sincerity and for his careful diligence in investigating the facts connected with the history in question.” (3) As a measure of his sincerity, Angelita dedicated and personally presented his manuscript to Pope Clement VII in 1531.


Jesuit defence of the Holy House

In the mid-16th century, Pope Julius III sent the Jesuits to Loreto to found a teaching College, and also entrusted the administration of the Sanctuary to them. (4) They remained there until the 18th century, staunchly defending papal teaching on the Holy House and looking after the spiritual and temporal welfare of the pilgrims.


Fr. Rafael Riera

Another valuable history of the Holy House was written in Latin by the Spanish Jesuit, Fr. Rafael Riera. His trustworthiness can be inferred from the fact that he was chosen personally by St. Ignatius to be one of ten men who founded the Jesuit College in Messina (Sicily) in 1548, and then to be one of the first Penitentiaries (Confessors) at Loreto in 1554. He remained there for the rest of his life, researching, collating and promoting the facts about the Holy House.

The Black Madonna of Loreto reigns on the  altar of the Holy House to Loreto

Of special significance is his declaration that he had obtained and read authentic copies of documents from the archives of the monastery of Tersatto, i.e., before these were destroyed by fire in 1629. The material he gathered formed the basis of his 1565 book, Historia Almae Domus Lauretanae, (5) written “for the glory of God and the Blessed Virgin.” (6)

Riera’s account not only corroborates the historical accounts given by Teramano and Angelita, but adds fresh evidence as well. Let us consider some of his first-hand testimonies.

One example he relates is a moving incident that took place at the Loreto Sanctuary in 1559, and which, he assures his readers, he saw and heard “hisce oculis vidi & auribus excepi” (with my own eyes and ears). He was in the process of hearing confessions when he heard a commotion outside – a loud and public display of grief accompanied by much sobbing and wailing. When he looked out, he beheld a heart-rending scene.

Hundreds of men, women and children together with their priests had arrived on their annual pilgrimage from Fiume (the town of which Tersatto was a suburb), lamenting the loss of the Holy House which had been taken from them in 1294. After the door was opened, the whole company pressed forward “turmatim” (by troops, in squadrons) on their knees, with lighted candles in their hands, and entered the Sanctuary with continuous prayers and tears.

Not knowing their language, and wishing to know what they were saying, Fr. Riera addressed one of their priests in Latin for enlightenment who responded “Revertere, revertere Flumen Maria.” (Return, return to Fiume, O Mary) (7)

Apart from illustrating the usefulness of a universal language, this episode of the “losers weepers” who came mob-handed to Loreto clamoring for the return of the Holy House to their land, provides valuable corroborative evidence of the Loreto tradition. It shows, as Fr. Riera pointed out, that the inhabitants of the Slavic region where the Holy House once stood maintained their belief in its first arrival even after the passage of over 260 years.

As another example of first-hand experience, Riera relates that after Pope Clement VII had sent three of his own chamberlains to Loreto, Tersatto and Nazareth to report back on the status quo regarding the tradition, he managed to obtain a full account of their findings from one of the delegates. (8) This was the third deputation that took on-the-spot measurements of the walls of the Holy House in Loreto and found them to be an exact match to its foundations in Nazareth.

Added to these testimonies is Riera’s personal witness of many miracles performed at Loreto and which he records and describes in his history of the Sanctuary.


Fr. Orazio Torsellino

As with Fr. Riera, the Italian Jesuit, Fr. Torsellino, was sent to Loreto by St. Ignatius of Loyola, and became Rector of the Jesuit College there in 1584. His credentials as one of the Church’s finest intellectuals of the Counter-Reformation are noteworthy,(9) and made him an outstanding defender of the Holy House.

Torsellino’s promise to go on pilgrimage to Loreto in his work Historia Lauretana

In his 5-volume Historia Lauretana (History of Loreto), published in 1597, Torsellino confirmed the accounts given by Teramano, Angelita and Riera of the translation of the Holy House by his own consultation of the archives in Recanati. He devoted a large section of his book to describing the numerous miracles that continued to be worked at Loreto and which received the all-important approbation of successive Popes.

Thus he succeeded in placing Loreto on the international stage and assuring its future not just as a shrine attached to a particular locality but, in his own words, as the “common refuge of all peoples and nations.” (10) How misguided, then, was the judgement of the progressivist liturgical reformers in suppressing the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House in 1960 on the pretext of that it was an unimportant local cult.


St. Peter Canisius

One of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s first disciples, later named a Doctor of the Church, Canisius distinguished himself as the foremost champion of Catholic orthodoxy during the Reformation. It is not without significance that he was an ardent defender of the Loreto tradition against Protestant attacks against it.

A page from the work of St. Peter Canisius praising Our Lady

This can be seen in his work, De Maria Virgine Incomparabili, where he included a whole chapter on this subject, giving special attention to the “countless miracles” performed there. (11) So great was his devotion to the Holy House that he often visited the Shrine, and in 1558 produced the first printed text of the Litany of Loreto. (12)


Fr. Franjo Glavinich

The clinching testimony of the authenticity of the Holy House was provided in 1648 by the Slavic priest, Fr. Glavinich, of the Franciscan Monastery of Tersatto where the original documents were kept before they were destroyed by fire in 1629. He averred that he had personally seen and made notes from the original document signed by the 4 delegates sent to Nazareth by Count Frangipane in 1291, and the testimony of the above-mentioned Fr. Alexander. (13)

To round off this brief account of the earliest historians of the Holy House, let us consider a fitting observation found in Illyricum Sacrum, an 8-volume work produced by Croatian and Italian Jesuits on the history of the Balkans. Having outlined the history of the Holy House on both sides of the Adriatic, the learned authors conclude:

“Apart even from all other arguments, the translation of the Holy House first into Dalmatia, and then into Italy, is placed beyond the reach of doubt by the most ancient, perpetual, constant and invariable agreement of the two nations; for it would have been impossible for Dalmatians and Italians, who are so widely divided from each other by language, character and an intervening sea, to agree together both in thought and word and writings with reference to that twofold translation, if it were not true and too certain to admit of question.” (14)

Welcome bell from the Holy House of Loreto

Continued


1. The Frankopans (sometimes referred to as Frangipane) were a wealthy aristocratic Catholic family of landowners who settled in Tersatto in the 13th century, and controlled a large area of the Kingdom of Croatia.
2. Girolamo Angelita, De Almae Domus Lauretanae in Agro Rachanatensi Mira Translatione Brevis et Fidelis Enarratio (A Brief and Faithful Account of the Miraculous Translation of the Holy House of Loreto to the Region of Recanati), in P.V. Martorelli, Teatro Istorico della Santa Casa Nazarena della B. Vergine Maria, 2 vols, Rome, 1732, vol. 1, p. 520. It had been written between 1525 and 1528.
3. “Vir valde syncerus, ac rerum ad praesentem historiam pertinentium diligentissimus explorator”: P. Canisius, De Verbi Dei corruptelis (On the Corruptions of the Word of God), vol. 2: De Maria Virgine Incomparabili et Dei Genitrice Sacrosancta (On the Incomparable Virgin Mary and Most Holy Mother of God), Ingolstadt: David Sartorius, 1577, p. 726.
4. Pope Julius III granted them a special privilege to absolve penitents of the sin of heresy, normally reserved to the Holy See. This encouraged an increase in pilgrims to Loreto from the “Reformation lands” of Northern Europe seeking forgiveness under the seal of the confessional rather than having to face the rigours of the Inquisition.
5. This was published posthumously by Mgr. Pietro Martorelli in Teatro Istorico della Santa Casa Nazarena della B. Vergine Maria, 2 volumes, Rome, vol. 1, 1732, pp. 1-150.
6. R. Riera, Historia Almae Domus Lauretanae, vol. 1, p. 21.
7. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
8. Ibid., p. 148.
9. He taught Latin and Rhetoric in the Colleges of Rome, Florence and Loreto, and compiled a Latin grammar and manuals. Among his numerous writings was the first biography of St. Francis Xavier: De vita Francisci Xaverii qui primus è Societate Iesu in India, & Japonia Evangelium invexvit (The life of Francis Xavier, the first member of the Society of Jesus to bring the Gospel to India and Japan), Rome: Gaviana, 1594.
10. Orazio Torsellino SJ, Dedication Letter to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Historia Lauretana, Rome: Aloysius Zannetti, 1557. The book was translated from Latin to English by Thomas Price, SJ, History of Our B. Lady of Loreto, St. Omer, English College Press, 1608.
11. P. Canisius, De Maria Virgine Incomparabili et Dei Genitrice Sacrosancta, Ingolstadt: David Sartorius,1577, Book 5, chap. 25, p. 730: “Ea miracula tam multa sunt, ut nullo numero comprehendi.” (Those miracles are so numerous that they cannot be counted)
12. This was published and circulated in Germany. The Dillingen copy is entitled: Letania Loretana. Ordnung der Letaney von unser lieben Frawen wie sie zu Loreto alle Samstag gehalten. (Order of the Litany of Our Lady as said every Saturday at Loreto) It is basically the same text as we have today, with a few additions over the centuries.
13. F. Glavinich, Historia Tersattana, raccolta delle antiche, e moderne historie, annali, e traditioni (History of Tersatto, a collection of ancient and modern histories, annals and traditions), Udine: Nicola Schiaratti, 1648.
14. Daniele Farlato SJ, Illyrici Sacri (usually known as “Illyricum Sacrum”), Venice: Coleti, vol. 4, 1769, p. 95.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
A Piece of Palestine in Loreto
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Now we come to the scientific evidence that established the identity of the material of the Holy House in Loreto with a type of stone that was foreign to Italy but native to Palestine. It was only natural that the Catholic faithful, while believing in the testimony of miracles wrought at Loreto, would also wish to satisfy their curiosity about the actual fabric of the Holy House and wonder if there was any tangible evidence to show that it came from the region of Nazareth.

That does not mean that they doubted the authenticity of the tradition; they were simply seeking evidence to further corroborate their beliefs. And so they were generally content to accept the assurances of pilgrims who had brought back from Nazareth samples of stone that looked, to the unprofessional eye, similar to the material from which the Holy House was built.

Dr. Stanley, second from left, on Holy Land Tour accompanying the Prince of Wales, fourth from left

No one thought to investigate the matter further until the mid-19th century when doubts about the identity of the stone of which the Holy House was built were raised by the Anglican clergyman, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster Abbey. Dean Stanley, as he was popularly known, was indeed a force to be reckoned with, being a high-standing figure in the Anglican Church and in Queen Victoria’s court where he was an Honorary Chaplain to the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). (1)

As a historian and author of Sinai and Palestine (1856), he was regarded as the foremost authority in England on the Holy Land, a distinction that led to his selection as a guide and companion to the Prince of Wales on his travels to that region. So, what Stanley had to say on the subject was taken as gospel by his contemporaries.

He described the material of the Holy House as “a dark red polished stone wholly unlike anything in Palestine,” all the buildings there being “of the natural grey limestone of the country.” (2) The outcome was potentially devastating for the Holy House tradition. It would, of course, take an expert in mineralogy (which Stanley was not) to examine the chemical and physical (including optical) properties of the stone and declare on its composition and origin.

So, at the behest of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman, a scientific examination was made of stone from the Holy House and from buildings at Nazareth. The English Prelate enlisted the help of Msgr. Domenico Bartolini (afterwards Cardinal), (3) who was then about to make a pilgrimage to Nazareth, and who obtained from Pope Pius IX permission to remove from the Holy House small portions of both stone and mortar for scientific analysis.

Stones of the Holy House of Loreto compared favorably to those in ancient buildings in Nazareth

Msgr. Bartolini brought back with him from Nazareth specimens of stones and mortar extracted from ancient buildings in the town and from the surrounding area where the original Holy House had stood. (4)

On his return to Rome in 1857, Msgr. Bartolini sent specimens from each place enclosed in separate packets, with nothing to indicate their origin, to the Professor of Chemistry at the Sapienza University, Dr. Francesco Ratti, with a request that he would analyze them. Dr. Ratti subjected the samples to a chemical and microscopic analysis, and his signed report (5) was published in full by Msgr. Bartolini in Italian. (6) It was translated into English by the Oratorian Fr. William Antony Hutchison in 1863. (7)

This showed that the physical characteristics of each of the stones were identical: calcium and magnesium carbonates together with ferruginous clay; that they were the constitutive elements of the type of limestone found in the area around Nazareth. (8) This is significant because there were no stone quarries in the whole region around Loreto, and all the houses there had to be built exclusively of brick. (9)

In a separate experiment, Dr. Ratti found that the samples of mortar from Nazareth and the Loreto house were composed of lime or chalk combined with vegetable charcoal, according to a technique used in Palestine 2,000 years ago, and unlike the volcanic substances found in the Italian soil.

As for the apparent discrepancy in color ‒ between red and grey ‒ mentioned by Dr. Stanley, this can easily be accounted for. The stones of Nazareth and Loreto were a mixture of both, i.e., a red-tinted grey, as described in Dr. Ratti’s report. (10) This, incidentally, corresponds to what a French traveller described when he visited the Holy House in 1688 and recorded having seen some “greyish or reddish stones.” (11)

If the stones of the Holy House had a “dark red polished” appearance when Dr. Stanley visited, this was produced by a combination of factors: the natural ageing process of the stone; (12) the sooty deposits of smoke from the constantly burning lamps; and contact by the touches and pious kisses of millions of pilgrims over the centuries.

The study not only convinced one Anglican scholar of the miracle, but converted him to Catholicism

Dr. Stanley brought out a new edition of his famous book in 1866, acknowledging in a footnote (but without modifying any of his objections) that certain statements of his had been questioned by Fr. Hutchison, author of Loreto and Nazareth. He took great care, however, not to breathe a word about Msgr. Bartolini. But, as Fr. Hutchison remarked: “Had it not been for the attack on Loreto by Professor Stanley, we should probably not have enjoyed the benefit of the very remarkable investigations of Msgr. Bartolini.” (13)

Whether or not Dr. Stanley was convinced by the investigations, the conversion of a fellow Anglican clergyman and Oxford tutor, Dr. Faller, was brought about by a study of the stones of the Holy House. The story, as told by the convert Fr. Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne in 1856, has a truly ironic outcome.

Faller was even more determined than Stanley to disprove the tradition of the Holy House, and he set out for Nazareth armed with a copious supply of instruments and chemical substances to conduct scientific experiments on whatever traces remained of the abode of the Holy Family. Having minutely measured and analyzed the relevant material, he embarked for Loreto and repeated the same operations, comparing the results with those obtained at Nazareth.

Then, he returned to Galilee and Loreto to double check, only to realize, to his shame and confusion, that he had been guilty of prejudice. When he returned to Nazareth for the third time, it was not as a sceptical scientist, but as a convinced Catholic. (14)


Nullius in verba (Take nobody’s word for it) (15)

To the modern sceptical mind of the “I believe in science” variety, oral tradition is to be distrusted, and only empirical evidence believed. In support of the Loreto tradition, further research has been done in modern times by experts in archaeology and architecture working to the highest professional standards with their international reputations at stake. We will see how their findings impressively corroborated the oral accounts from Tersatto and Loreto.

Between 1962 and 1965 investigations were carried out by a team of excavators under the direction of the archaeologist and specialist in medieval topography, Nereo Alfieri, Professor at the University of Bologna, assisted by the geologist, Edmondo Forlani and by Fr. Floriano Grimaldi, Archivist of the Shrine. To their surprise, they confirmed the foundational pillars of the Loreto tradition:

The Holy House had only three walls because it had stood before the mouth of a cave in Nazareth:

• Its masonry work was Nabatean, (16) native to the region of southern Palestine and unknown in the West;
  
• It had no foundations;
  
• It stood partly on a public road;
  
• It contained numerous graffiti (17) identified as those of the Judeo-Christian culture of the Holy Land. (18)
  

Stones & bricks of the Holy House carefully examined in the 1965 investigation: From the time of Christ

Alfieri showed the graffiti on the stones, without disclosing their provenance, to the internationally renowned Franciscan archaeologists, Fr. Bellarmino Bagatti and Fr. Emanuale Testa, of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum of Jerusalem, who had recently been engaged in excavations of the Nazareth site.

The two experts agreed that they were of early Judeo-Christian origin, and Fr. Testa noted that two of the hieroglyphics matched graffiti found in the grotto adjacent to the grotto where the Holy House had stood in Nazareth. (19)

In addition, the Italian architect and engineer, Nanni Monelli, performed extensive research on the stones of the altar in the Holy House, and established that they were of the same type and Nabatean workmanship as the other stones in the House. (20) This supports the oral tradition of a revelation by Our Lady in the 13th century that the Holy House had been used as a church even from the time of the Apostles. (21)


‘The very stones will cry out’

Tradition has always maintained that the three stone walls of the Nazareth house, together with its stone altar, were miraculously translated to Tersatto and Loretto. And scientific investigations have enabled the stones to speak out and declare themselves to be the house of the Virgin Mary, the very same dwelling that once stood in Nazareth, where she received Gabriel’s Salutation and the Word was made flesh, and where the Holy Family lived.

Walls of the Holy House of Loreto

Fr. Angelita, of course, had said it all centuries ago, that the Holy House of Loreto was “the great, holy and awe-inspiring place where Christ the living God and Man with His Mother and Disciples lived, prayed, rested, ate and drank.” (22)

But most people today, even in the Catholic Church, while perhaps accepting the identity of the Holy House on scientific evidence, will a priori rule out supernatural explanations for its miraculous Translation to Loreto. While the scientific evidence does not provide absolute proof of this phenomenon, as always, in matters concerning the invisible power of God’s works in our world, the faith of a small child is needed.


Continued

Transferral of the Holy House of Loreto by the Angels by Rinaldi, San Salvatore in Lauro

1. After being made a Canon of Canterbury Cathedral and a Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford University, Stanley was installed as Dean of Westminster Abbey in 1864. His connections with the Royal Household were established when he married Lady Augusta Bruce, a lady-in-waiting of Queen Victoria.
2. A. P. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, in Connection with their History, London: John Murray, 1856, pp. 441, 442.
3. Msgr. Domenico Bartolini (1813-1887) was in his own right a noted archaeologist, historian and hagiographer.
4. Domenico Bartolini, Sopra la Santa Casa di Loreto confrontata cogli accessori di essa che rimangono in Nazareth di Galilea per confirmare l'autenticità osservazioni storico-critiche, topografiche, fisiche ed archeologiche, Rome: S. C. Propaganda Fide, 1861, p. 85. These included the cave in Nazareth adjacent to the original house, St. Joseph’s workshop and the local synagogue, St. Zachary’s house in the hill country of Judea and Jacob’s Well in Nablus.
5. This report was reproduced in its original form in W. Garrett, Loreto the New Nazareth, London: Art and Book Co., 1895, pp. 27-28.
6. Ibid., pp. 76-79.
7. W. A. Hutchison, Loreto and Nazareth: Two Lectures, Containing the Results of Personal Investigation of the Two Sanctuaries. London: E. Dillon, 1863, pp. 80-82.
8. Msgr. Bartolini (Sopra la Santa Casa di Loreto, p. 72) identified these as of two varieties of limestone: one hard (Jabes), the other soft (Nahari), the former constituting most of the masonry of the Holy House, the latter only a small area.
9. Michele Faloci-Pulignani, La S. Casa di Loreto secondo un affresco di Gubbio, Rome: Desclée, 1907, p. 102.
10. The Professor mentioned various shades of grey (“palombino”) and some stones with a reddish tint (tende un poco al rosso)
11. François-Maximilian Misson, A New Voyage to Italy: with curious observations on several other countries, as Germany, Switzerland, Savoy, Geneva, Flanders and Holland, 2 volumes, London: R. Bentley, 1695, vol. 1, p. 233.
12. D. Bartolini, (Sopra la Santa Casa di Loreto, p. 67) explained that this sort of stone becomes darker with age.
13. W. A. Hutchison, Loreto and Nazareth, pp. 91-92.
14. Alphonse Ratisbonne, Annales de la Mission de Notre Dame de Sion, 1858, apud Alphonse Eschbach CSSP, Lorette et l'Ultimatum de M. U. Chevalier, Rome: Desclée, 1915, pp. 53-54.
15. Literally, “on the word of no one,” the motto of the Royal Society dates back to 1663 and expresses the Fellows’ belief that facts should not be accepted as true on authority but on empirical scientific methods.
16. The Nabateans were a nomadic Semitic tribe from the Arabian Desert who spoke both Arabic and a dialect of Aramaic and settled in southern Palestine around Jordan. Their Kingdom, whose capital was the famous “rose-red” city of Petra, was still flourishing in the 1st century A.D. The Nabateans had developed a distinctive method of stonework, which is evident in the construction of the Holy House.
17. Among the graffiti on the walls of the Holy House were crosses, chiro symbols and some Hebrew and Greek characters.
18. N. Alfieri, E. Forlani, F. Grimaldi, ‘Contributi archeologici per la storia della Santa Casa di Loreto,’ Studia Picena 35, Loreto, 1967, pp. 64-128.
19. Giuseppe Santarelli, Loreto. L’altra metà di Nazaret: la storia, il mistero e l’arte della Santa Casa, Milan: ed. Terra Santa, 2016, pp. 34, 36.
Nanni Monelli, La Santa Casa a Loreto - La Santa Casa a Nazaret, Loreto: Congregatione Universale de la Santa Casa, 1991, and Giuseppe Santarelli, Nanni Monelli, L’altare degli Apostoli nella Santa Casa di Loreto, Loreto, 2012.
20. This information comes from the testimony of Fr. Alexander, parish priest of Tersatto, that he had received a vision and miraculous cure from Our Lady when the Holy House was in Dalmatia. Copies of the documents recording this testimony and other Tersatto-related matters were sent to Fr. 21. Angelita, Secretary of Recanati, and the originals had been seen by Fr. Franjo Glavinich (see Part 94).
22. Girolamo Angelita, De Almae Domus Lauretanae in Agro Recanatensi Mira Translatione Brevis et Fidelis Enarratio (1531), p. 4: “In loco autem isto magno, sancto, atque terribili Deus & homo vivens Christus cum Matre & Discipulis versatus est, oravit, quievit, manducavit, bibit”.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
The Rise of an Incredible Anti-Loreto Legend
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Now that the translation of the Holy House from Nazareth to its final destination in Loreto has been established on a sound scientific basis, the next question to consider is how it arrived at its destination. There are only two options: by divine intervention (the constant tradition from the 13th century) or by some form of human agency alone (an explanation founded on naturalism that rejects or at least disregards divine intervention).


Post-Reformation anti-Catholic polemics

The expression “flying house,” as used by various religious skeptics, gives the impression that the Loreto tradition was simply a fantasy concocted in the Middle Ages, on a par with tales from Russian folklore or the Arabian Nights, to be believed by people whose grip on reality is tenuous to say the least. From the 16th century, it has become an assumption that the difference between Catholics and Protestants on the matter of miracles is between fantasists and realists.

Basilica of Loreto built to protect the Holy House

That is why Dean Stanley called Loreto “the most incredible of Ecclesiastical legends,” (1) and, true to Protestant form, asserted that belief in the miraculous translation of the Holy House of Loreto was the product of “the superstitious craving to win for prayer the favor of consecrated localities.” (2) This broadside against the Catholic Church would be of little interest except that it revealed his preconceived ideas. For Protestantism rejected the existence of specific places such as Loreto, Lourdes, Fatima etc. as the locus of miracles granted through the intercession of Our Lady and the Saints in response to prayers, vows and promises made by the faithful.

It was also a precept taught by Protestant theologians of the Pseudo-Reformation that miracles had ceased with the last book of the Bible. And so they concluded from this arbitrary principle that any claim by the Catholic Church to authenticate miracles was a “popish” invention designed to deceive the faithful. When applied to the Loreto tradition, Protestantism must conclude that Catholics who believed in the miraculous translation of the Holy House are over-credulous because such an event is literally impossible.

A document dated 1778 authenticating a relic touched to the walls of the Holy House

But the argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy of the sort that occurs when we decide that something did not happen, because we cannot personally see how it could happen, on the basis that it does not fit in with our understanding of the world. The fallacy lies in the unwarranted conclusion already contained in the premise. If a state of affairs (the miracle of the Holy House) is impossible to imagine, it does not necessarily follow that it is false; it may only mean that our human imagination is limited. This is especially true in the domain of divine intervention in the natural world.

Regarding the negative reactions to papal approved miracles founded on Tradition, we have seen how some people, for whom a miraculous intervention is the object of constant scorn, will instinctively reject miracles simply because they have an ideological preconception, an a priori position or bias against them. To the skeptic in this area, a fitting rejoinder would be Hamlet’s statement: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”

Under the influence of Progressivism in the Church, the official position on the Translation of the Holy House began to change from the mid-20th century to downplay any supernatural explanation. This was, incidentally, one of the reasons why – inexplicably from a Catholic point of view – the Feast of Our Lady of Loreto was suppressed in 1960.

Fr. Giuseppe Santarelli

Fr. Giuseppe Santarelli, OFM, the Director of the Universal Congregation of the Holy House, is now regarded, through his voluminous writings, as the single most authoritative voice on the Holy House. The only problem is that he does not believe in the supernatural nature of its translation. While he accepted without question the scientific evidence that the materials of the Holy House were from Nazareth, when it came to the manner of their conveyance to Loreto, he baulked at the idea of a miraculous transportation.

Departing from the 800-year-old tradition endorsed by successive Popes that the Holy House was borne by Angels to its final resting place in Loreto, he promoted a more mundane explanation. But when we examine the “proofs” for these non-miraculous claims, we will find that they are not only inconclusive but also require considerably more faith (of the blind variety) to accept them than the entirely reasonable tradition of angelic transportation.


The 'Angeli' hypothesis

The story goes that a noble Byzantine family called Angeli – or Angeloi in Greek – (meaning “angels”), wishing to save the Holy House in Nazareth from destruction by Muslim forces, dismantled the entire edifice stone by stone and transported it by land and sea to Loreto where it was rebuilt on the present spot. Fr. Santarelli uses the coincidence of the word “angels” for the family name and the celestial beings to suggest that the Loreto tradition was simply the result of a linguistic muddle: In the course of time, pious Catholics substituted heavenly Angels for the Angeli of Constantinople as the conveyors of the Holy House. (3)

But not everyone is satisfied with this glib explanation, and for good reason, as we shall see below.

The only documentary source that has been used to support all this is a copy of the long lost Chartularium Culisanense, a collection of documents named after the town of Collesano in Sicily where it was once kept in the palace of a family named De Angelis. The original documents were lost, but an unauthenticated copy of a copy is declared to exist, and was published for the first time in 1985.

Some documents of the Chartularium have recently been challenged by historians as forgeries, (4) and the issue of their authenticity continues to be the subject of scholarly debate. The balance of probability is in favor of the spuriousness of at least some of the documents, including Folio 181, which is relevant to the Holy House. But whether this particular document was genuine or not, the point is that it does not provide any convincing evidence to support the hypothesis that the Holy House was transported from Nazareth to Loreto by human agency.

Nicephorus I Comnenus Ducas

Folio 181 of the Chartularium gives details of a marriage dowry of 1294 (the year when the Holy House came to Italy) containing, among other things, “Sanctas petras ex domo Dominae Nostrae Deiparae Virginis ablatas” (holy stones taken away from the house of Our Lady the Virgin Mother of God) in Nazareth. The occasion was the marriage between Philip of Anjou, son of the King of Naples, to Thamar (Margherita) daughter of Nicephorus I Comnenus Ducas, despot of Epirus.

The bride’s father was a descendant of the Byzantine Angeli Dynasty and, it was claimed, financed the whole operation of demolishing the Holy House in Nazareth, including the cost of transporting the stones to Italy by means of Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, plus their storage in an unknown place in Italy until they were put together again in Loreto.

This story, based on documents of dubious authenticity, negates the carefully witnessed chronicle of the Holy House in its various stopping places in Dalmatia and Italy. It leaves unaddressed the absurd conclusion that the House would have had to be demolished and rebuilt four times in quick succession during its odyssey.

Nor can anyone explain how the House was rebuilt in Loreto, without foundations, in the middle of a road, against the laws of Recanati, with the same physical and chemical composition of mortar used in the first century. And all this without anyone noticing or commenting,

Surely the herculean task of transporting several tons of masonry on a hazardous 3,000-km journey by land and sea in the 13th century would have had its chroniclers, eager to relay the happy news of the rescue of the Nazareth House from imminent destruction by Muslim forces. Such an undertaking would certainly have been promoted in the literature of the time as something of a miracle in itself without the need to involve Angels.

But some Catholics today, including Fr. Santarelli, the Church’s spokesman on all things Loretan, find the recently proposed narrative of the translation of the Holy House more credible than the age-old tradition of Loreto.

In the next article, we will deal with other aspects of the anti-Loreto legend: the alleged sighting of documents in the Vatican archives purporting to show that the Angeli family paid for the shipping of the Holy House from Nazareth to Loreto, and the discovery of coins in the subsoil of the house, supposedly marking the date when it was “rebuilt.”


Continued


1. A. P. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 448.
2. Ibid., p. 443.
3. G. Santarelli, Loreto: L’altra metà di Nazaret: la storia, il mistero e l’arte della santa Casa, Milan: Ed. Terra Santa, 2016, p. 39.
4. Andrea Nicolotti, ‘Su alcune testimonianze del Chartularium Culisanense, sulle false origini dell’Ordine Costantiniano Angelico di Santa Sofia e su taluni suoi documenti conservati presso l’Archivio di Stato di Napoli,’ (On some testimonies of the Chartularium Culisanense, on the fake origins of the Angelic Constantinian Order of St. Sophia and on certain of its documents kept at the State Archives of Naples), Giornale di Storia, vol. 8, 2012, pp. 1-18.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
No Valid Objections against the Loreto Tradition
Taken from here [slightly adapted].

At the beginning of the 20th century, which marked the high point of the Modernist movement in the Church, the Loreto tradition was challenged as never before, particularly by Catholic priests intent on disproving the miraculous translation of the Holy House.


The ‘Lapponi Thesis’

This particular anti-Loreto legend started its life as a piece of ephemeral gossip, which has not yet been – and most likely never will be – substantiated by demonstrable evidence. In order to support the idea of a non-miraculous transportation of the Holy House, Fr. Santarelli recounted a curious tale first told by Msgr. Maurice Landrieux (later Bishop of Dijon) at the beginning of the 20th century. (1)

Dr. Lapponi, physician to Leo XIII, first at right, was against the miraculous Translation

In Msgr. Landrieux’s Diary, there is an entry for May 17, 1900, recording a conversation he had with Pope Leo XIII’s personal physician, Giuseppe Lapponi, concerning the translation of the Holy House. According to this account, Lapponi told Landrieux that he had seen some documents in the Vatican Archives indicating that the Angeli family, a branch of the imperial family of Constantinople, had the Holy House transported from Nazareth to Loreto in order to save it from destruction by the Turkish invaders.

No details are given about the nature of the documents, their provenance or their location, and no one can access them because they have disappeared. If this information had first appeared on social media today, it would be an example of “fake news,” i.e., a narrative that cannot be verified, eludes investigation, encourages speculation and is relayed third hand by someone with an agenda.

Msgr. Landrieux had already a parti pris [bias; literally: party taken] in the matter: He had taken his stance against a miraculous explanation of the translation of the Holy House to Loreto. (2)


The Loreto Tradition comes under Neo-Modernist Control

Whatever attempts were made in the early 20th century to strip the Loreto tradition of its supernatural element, they remained within limited circulation, and they could not exert a negative effect on public perception of its miraculous nature.

Ambassador Wladimir d’Ormesson, a sworn enemy of traditionalist Catholics

The first person to bring Lapponi’s anecdote to public notice was Wladimir d’Ormesson, the French Ambassador to the Holy See in the 1940s and '50s; he published Msgr. Landrieux’ diary note in 1959. (3) His personal Journal(4) gives some clues to his motivation.

As one of the influential figures of progressivist Catholic circles in France and Italy, d’Ormesson was a friend and defender of Jacques Maritain, an enthusiastic supporter of Fr. Augustin Bea’s ecumenical initiatives, (5) and an admirer of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini. (6) He was also, crucially, a sworn enemy of traditionalist Catholics whom he called “intégristes,” and once asked Montini, as Pius XII’s “Substitute,” to take action against them in France. Leaving his diplomatic credentials behind, he went so far as to call them “sots” (fools). (7)

Following d’Ormesson’s example, Fr. Santarelli published the same narrative in 2016. (8) Both authors were acting in their official capacity – d’ Ormesson as Administrator of the National Chaplaincy of France in Loreto, (9) and Fr. Santarelli as Director of the Universal Congregation of the Holy House, which was established in 1883 to promote the Church’s teaching on the Santa Casa. (10)

But in spite of the unbroken tradition of the organizations they headed, neither of them was prepared to promote the tradition upheld over the centuries by previous incumbents of their posts. In the hands of such progressivists, the 700-year-old tradition was bound to be overturned and many of the faithful induced to despise what their forebears readily believed. Indeed, today, the invariable message from the bien-pensants of the Loreto institutions is that the non-miraculous translation of the Holy House has been “proved,” and the case closed.

Above, the interior of the Holy House; below, in Loreto there is no foundation for the House

But nothing could be further from the truth, as the following counter-evidence shows.

• According to the Chartularium Culisanense (item 2 of Folio 181), Nicephorous of Epirus gave the stones of the Holy House of Nazareth to his daughter, Thamar, as a dowry on her marriage to Prince Philip of Taranto in 1294. But the Holy House did not belong to Nicephorus, a Greek Schismatic, to give away. It was part of the Church of the Annunciation, which at that time was administered by a few Franciscans, although the area was in Muslim hands. (11)
  
• No mention is made in Folio 181 of the quantity of stones removed, whether a few precious “souvenirs,” as some pilgrims to Nazareth are known to have taken home, or many tons of rubble from the alleged demolition. There was no need to demolish the House, as it was underground, in the crypt of the church that was built over it, and could have easily been sealed off from hostile intrusion.
  
• It has never been satisfactorily explained how an entire edifice could have been transported from Nazareth in May 1291 and, as the Chartularium claims, shipped through the port of Acre to Epirus, which was then under siege. In April 1291 Al-Ashraf Khalil had arrived with his army, estimated by the chroniclers of the time at 200,000 men, and pitched his tent in front of the walls of the city. Acre was completely encircled, and the Muslim machines of war were installed. It stretches credulity to imagine how hundreds of cartloads of stones could have travelled through a war zone and slipped through the enemy lines unnoticed.
  
• The Crusaders could not have transported the stones because they were still defending the besieged city of Acre. The Holy House made its appearance in Dalmatia on the 10th of May before the departure of the military contingents of the Crusaders.
  
• Item 3 of the dowry simply mentions a painted panel of a Madonna and Child, and the unwarranted conclusion was made that this belonged to the Holy House.
  
• If the 52 items listed in Folio 181 represented the complete dowry of Thamar – which it is generally taken to be – then it is clearly an unauthentic document. The original dowry inventory itself seems not to have survived, (12) but studies in Byzantine history have identified some of its contents from other sources. From these we gather that some items are not mentioned in Folio 181, e.g., the “gold enameled locket decorated with the fleur-de-lys of the House of Anjou and the double-headed eagle of Byzantium.” (13)
  
• As Thamar’s marriage was an alliance of political expediency, (14) her dowry included an annuity, land and fortresses. (15) Yet there is no reference to these important assets in the Folio, or to any property in Palestine owned by Nicephorus.
  

The Translation of the Holy House by Angels, a solid tradition

Another Unverifiable Anecdote

It has been alleged that in 1905 the French Oratorian Fr. Henri Thédenat confided to Professor Larquat, a former professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, that he had found in the Vatican Archives a record of the cost of transporting the Holy House on board a ship from Nazareth to Loreto chartered by the Angeli family. Some of the stones, it was claimed, were numbered to ensure faithful rebuilding.

Again, as with the “Lapponi thesis,” we are given no details of date or authenticity of the document. The danger here is over-extrapolating the evidence. If we have good reasons to doubt that these assumptions hold true, then extrapolation is not a valid inferential procedure.

Too many questions are left unanswered. The Angeli family had no historical connection with the House in Nazareth; a contingent of stones could have been later transported from Nazareth to build the missing fourth wall; the partial numbering of the stones could have had a different origin and purpose. Everything is left to the imagination to fill in the details, and some recent authors have exploited the opportunity to the full with their fanciful reconstructions of the Loreto tradition. (16)


Buried coins

Two undated coins inscribed with the words Gui Dux Atenes (Guy II de La Roche, who was Duke of Athens from 1287 to 1308) were found in the subsoil of the Holy House during the 1962-1965 excavations. [Part 95] As it was an ancient custom for a builder to plant a coin in a new foundation (much like a modern “time capsule”), and as Guy was Thamar’s cousin and a member of the Angeli family, some saw this as proof that he had rebuilt the House in Loreto.

Coins imprinted with Gui Dux Atenes

Is this true? No reasons are given to think so. Anyone in possession of such coins could have put them under the house at any time, and not all coins are buried under buildings for the same reasons.

Historical evidence shows that concealed coins were part of pilgrimage vows. And this is certainly true of the Loreto Shrine where the excavations also unearthed a variety of coins placed by pilgrims from the early 14th century onwards, often en route to the Grotto of St. Michael the Archangel in Gargano, and from there to the Holy Land.


The Loreto Tradition Stands Intact

The main problem with the official argument is not so much that its logic is flawed, or that there is no weighing and sifting of evidence, or attempt to reach conclusions that are justified by a process of deduction: it actually manipulates the reader into reaching misleading a priori conclusions.

We are presented with statements based on hypothetical guesswork that might (or might not) be supported by empirical evidence. And we are encouraged to believe that whatever it was that certain interested parties are alleged to have seen in the Archives constitutes damning evidence against the tradition of angelic intervention. But without knowing the precise nature of the evidence, no one can make an informed judgment on it.

What we can say with certainty is that no credible historic link has been established between the Angeli family and the arrival of the Holy House in Loreto.

Our Lady of Loreto in the Basilica

Continued


1. G. Santarelli, Loreto: L’altra metà di Nazaret: la storia, il mistero e l’arte della santa Casa, ed. Terra Santa, Milan, 2016, p. 39.
2. Msgr. Landrieux was prepared to acknowledge that the Holy House “mysteriously disappeared in 1291” and around the same time reappeared in Dalmatia and later in Loreto, but without mentioning a miraculous translation. Cf. M. Landrieux, Aux Pays du Christ: Etudes Bibliques en Egypte et Palestine, Paris: Bonne Presse, 1895, p. 108.
3. Wladimir d’Ormesson, La Présence Française dans la Rome des Papes, Paris: Hachette, 1959, p. 142.
4. Le Journal de Wladimir d’Ormesson, in Jean-Dominique Durand, ‘Un diplomate sans secrétaire d'État: le journal de Wladimir d'Ormesson, ambassadeur de France près le Saint-Siège (1948-1956)’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, 1998, vol. 110, n. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 542.
6. D’Ormesson envisaged Montini as one day becoming Pope: “Quel Pape il ferait!... L’Église entre ses mains serait merveilleusement conduit.” (What a Pope he would make! In his hands, the Church would be wonderfully managed). This, he opined, would be “pour le bien de L’Église” (for the good of the Church). Le Journal de Wladimir d’Ormesson, May 27 and November 3, 1949, in J.-D. Durand, ibid., p. 638.
7. Le Journal de Wladimir d’Ormesson, 26 July, 1954, apud Jean-Dominique Durand, ibid. p. 636
8. G. Santarelli, Loreto: L’altra metà di Nazaret, p.69.
9. This chaplaincy in Loreto was part of a historic legacy known as the Pieux Etablissements de la France à Rome et à Lorette (Religious Foundations of France in Rome and Loreto) established in the 17th century to look after the spiritual and temporal welfare of pilgrims visiting the Shrine. It was set up by Card. François de Joyeuse, the French Ambassador in Rome, and supported by precious gifts from the Kings and Queens of France. Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII, gave a legacy for a Mass to be said at the Loreto Shrine for the welfare of France on the feast of St. Louis. From the time of its foundation, the chaplaincy has been placed under the aegis of the French Ambassador to the Holy See.
10. With the permission of the Bishop of Recanati, Msgr. Tommaso Galucci, the management of the Loreto Shrine was taken over by the Capucins in 1883, and is still in their hands today.
11. The Franciscans arrived in the Holy Land in 1217 just six years after St. Francis of Assisi founded the Order of Friars Minor.
12. Donald Nichol, The Despotate of Epiros 1267-1479: A Contribution to the History of Greece in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 47, note 56. Only Philip’s dowry is recorded in Charles Perrat, Actes Relatifs à La Principauté De Morée 1289-1300, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1967, p. 113.
13. D. Nicol, The Byzantine Lady: Ten Portraits, 1250-1500, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 28. A photograph of the locket, kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Cividale del Friuli, Italy, is shown (between pp. 54 and 55), which distinguishes it from the golden ornament mentioned in Item 1 of Folio 181.
14. Threatened by the armies of the Byzantine Empire, Nicephorus sought patronage from the House of Anjou, and arranged a marriage between his daughter, Thamar, and the Angevin Prince Philip of Taranto. Philip was the younger son of Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples.
15. These were an annuity of 100,000 hyperpyra a year and the strategic fortresses of Lepanto, Vonitza, Angelocastro and Eulochos and all their dependencies. (Donald Nichol, The Despotate of Epiros 1267-1479: A Contribution to the History of Greece in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 47)
16. E.g., Vincenza Musardo Talò (La santa casa di Nazareth da Taranto-Brindisi a Loreto, Autopubblicato, 2019) surmises that the stones of the Holy House were first taken to Athens, where Helena Comnene Ducas lived, then to Pyli and Arta, home of Nicephorus Comnene from where they were shipped to Brindisi on the Italian coast, where Philip of Taranto lived, and finally on to Loreto.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
The Loreto Tradition Blighted by ‘Ecumenism’
Taken from here [slightly adapted].

On March 5, 2016, the seventh centenary of the foundation of the Loreto Basilica, Greek Schismatic leaders of Albania, Georgia, Greece, Romania, Russia and Serbia gathered for prayer at the Holy House together with the papal delegation and representatives of Greek Schismatics of Italy and Malta. The prayers were led by Metropolitan Zervos Gennadios, Greek Schismatic Archbishop of Italy, in the presence of Msgr. Giovanni Tonucci, Archbishop of Loreto and Pontifical Delegate to the Basilica.

The ecumenical gathering at Loreto Basilica, with Msgr. Tonucci to (with scarlet belt) representing the Vatican

The syncretist meeting was preceded by a Conference highlighting the importance of the Greek city of Arta, capital of the old Despotate of Epirus, where the stones of the Holy House were alleged to have arrived in 1291.

Metropolitan Gennadios, appealing to abstract concepts of universalism and vague ideals of global unity, described the meeting as a “glorious stage” in Byzantine history. This was a reference to the completely unsupported hypothesis that members of the Schismatic Angeli family were instrumental in transporting the Holy House from Nazareth to Loreto in the 13th century, not via Dalmatia and Italy, but via Athens and various towns in Greece.

But this represents a dilemma for religious unity. Gennadios can hardly be said to have been motivated by benevolence and brotherly sentiments. While living in Italy (his seat was in Naples), he was only interested in promoting Greek nationalism and giving credit to members of his own religion for having transported the Holy House from Nazareth. His approach was simply a form of chauvinist identity politics, an attempt to upstage the Catholic tradition.

In his address, Msgr. Tonucci referred to the Schismatic confessions as “sister Oriental Churches (“le sorelle Chiese orientali”). (1) Casting aside the Catholic tradition of angelic agency, he stated that they have “historical links with the Holy House of Loreto through the events that led to the transfer of the holy stones from the East to the western coasts of the Adriatic.” (2)


Hermeneutic of Discontinuity

A significant feature of the Loreto meeting is the complicity of the Pontifical Delegation and its leader in the task of estranging the faithful from their tradition and history of the miraculous translation of the Holy House.

Msgr. Tonucci did not evince any care or concern for the Catholic tradition that had been faithfully passed on chiefly by Jesuits and Franciscans, or any desire to acknowledge the shared allegiance of the Catholic faithful to a purely supernatural explanation.

The question arises: Was he actively working towards the demise of that tradition? As the defining issue of Loreto was the translation of the Holy House by purely supernatural means, Tonucci’s statement – echoed by Santarelli (3) – is nothing less than the destruction of that tradition. Besides, if the Holy House was transported by ship, where does that leave Our Lady of Loreto as Patroness of air travel?

Paradoxically, this crusade to downplay the miraculous element of the Loreto tradition seeks to place its interpretation in the hands of those outside the fold. It was so successful that all progressivist media outlets, from official Vatican authorities to the Catholic Press and even to secular tourist agencies, now portray the Byzantine Angeli family as the true protagonists in the translation of the Holy House. The Catholic tradition has been eclipsed.


Who Started the anti-Loreto Legend?

It will come as no surprise to find that it was the Angeli family itself, whose present head is Prince Alessio Angelo Comneno of Thessaly, Greece. He confidently asserted: “‘It was not the heavenly angels, but the Angeli family, who brought the Holy House to Loreto’ ‒ so said my grandfather Michael III [Mario Bernardo Angelo-Comneno] until the end of his days.”

Prince Alessio Comneno interviewed at the 2016 conference in Loreto

He quoted his grandfather: “You will see, Alessio, that one day we will have the joy of showing that it was our family who saved the Holy House from Muslim invasion.” (4)

So, now we know that the “Angeli thesis” was an in-house construct of relatively recent origin, designed to overthrow the centennial and universal Catholic tradition; and that the Angeli were a family with a mission to arrogate to themselves the glory of the translation of the Holy House. (Hence, we have a possible explanation of the mysterious papers rumored to have been seen in the Vatican Archives at the beginning of the 20th century).


Who Organized the Inter-Faith Meeting?

The promoter of this event was Prince Alessio, President of the Accademia Angelica Costantiniana, a cultural institute organized in Rome by his grandfather in 1949. Its self-declared aim was to “promote a bridge between the two worlds, the Latin Catholic and the Eastern Byzantine, and a mutual enrichment of spiritual and cultural values.”



The Politics of Envy

But the bridge turned out to be a conduit for the achievement of self-serving and even mercenary ambitions. The Greek news website, Epirus Gate, covering the event, revealed that the intention was not only to poach pilgrims from Loreto, but also to boost the Greek tourist industry:

“The delegation of the Municipality of Arta had on the sidelines of the Conference important meetings with travel agents, in an effort to find a way to divert the flood of visitors from Loreto to Greece and specifically Arta.” (5)

An intent to promote tourism in Arta (Mallorca) & deviate pilgrimages from Loreto?

Is this really what the Church has come to, that the official weight of the Pontifical Delegation was directed to pandering to the politics of envy? In order to meet the appropriate level of “ecumenical” targets to satisfy official Vatican II requirements, it was necessary not only to appease but also to believe and disseminate the ideas of those who intended to destroy the Catholic tradition of Loreto. This was principally the role of Fr. Giuseppe Santarelli.


A 21st-century Trojan horse Enters Loreto

In his 2016 book on Loreto, (6) Fr. Santarelli introduced and warmly recommended the work of the Greek writer, Haris Koudounas, a member of the Accademia Angelico Costantiniana, who is the mastermind behind the current promotion of the “Angeli thesis.” In fact, it was his research and published results (7) that led to the Loreto Conference and Ecumenical prayer meeting.

Let us examine the main planks of his argument which, on his own admission, are merely hypotheses.

1. An Ancient Inscription

Koudounas drew attention to a lapidary inscription he discovered in Pyli, Thessaly, in the church of Porta Panagia, (8) which had been built in 1283 by Joannis I Angelos Comneno, ruler of Thessaly.

Haris Koudounas strives to destroy the Loreto Miracle in his works and interviews

It has been erroneously translated as:

“From the foundations, Immaculate Mother of God, we raise up the saved house, a sacred work.”

Koudounas made a wild conjecture that this was a reference to the Holy House of Nazareth, and that its stones must have been temporarily stored inside this church.

But no conclusion of that nature can be drawn from the inscription for the following reasons.

First, the original wording did not say “saved house” but “saved foundations.” (9)

Second, there is archaeological evidence that the ruins of an ancient temple were located on the site. (10) And we know that recycling used building materials was an ancient and widespread practice, its historical roots going as far back as early Classical Greece. In numerous cases where the spolia from pagan temples were reused in the building of churches, the recycled material was given a Christian interpretation, often symbolizing the defeat of paganism and the victory of Christianity. (11)

Here, the obvious message of the inscription was that the church dedicated to Our Lady was raised from the foundations of the ruined temple.

2. The ‘Travelling Stones’

There are numerous other areas in his research where Koudounas displays a cavalier approach to serious scholarship, a further example being:

“The discovery of the coins of the Duchy of Athens in Loreto shows that the sacred stones passed through the Duchy, after having arrived by sea from the Port of Acre (Palestine).” (12)

This chain of reasoning is a non sequitur: there is no necessary connection between these alleged events. Besides, it has still not been proved that the Holy House had been dismantled, placed on board a ship and transported through Greece to Loreto.


Conclusion

No reasonable person can be convinced by Koudounas’s thesis. His research was carried out on the basis of “confirmation bias”: He interpreted the data in a manner that confirmed his a priori beliefs, for mixed motives. It appears that Koudounas has positioned himself as Prince Alessio’s most fervent acolyte and the Angeli family’s cheerleader.

Archbishop Tonucci promoting ecumenism at the opening of the Holy Door of Loreto in December 2016

Also, he has presented the Greek Schismatic leaders with ideas they were already predisposed to agree with, and an opportunity to override the Catholic tradition. Greece, not Dalmatia and Italy, would go down in history as the country through which the Holy House passed, while the Angeli family, not the Angels, would henceforth have full credit for effecting its removal. It seems that Koudounas was a modern Prometheus who, in Greek mythology, stole fire from the gods to give it to mortals.

Msgr. Tonucci was no doubt primarily interested in burnishing his credentials as a progressivist Vatican II Bishop by displaying his willingness to engage in “ecumenical” outreach to other faiths. But the price of doing so was the betrayal of the now 800-year-old Loreto tradition

Who can be surprised? Progressivists generally deny unwelcome truths that challenge their ideological dogma. If they cannot accept a supernatural explanation for a historical event, they decide to alter its analysis by rearranging the evidence to suit their new hypothesis.

It is only when “Ecumenism” is finally discarded and integrity restored – which means upholding authentically Catholic values instead of allowing them to be trashed – that we will once again have Catholic leaders worthy of the name.


Continued


1. The first Pope to use “sister Churches” to designate both the Catholic and Greek Schismatic religions was Paul VI in his letter, Anno ineunte (1967), to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I. The expression is misleading because it implies that there are many “true” Churches of Christ, and undermines belief in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church confessed in the Creed. Here we can see the outline of the development of Vatican II’s deliberately confusing “subsistit” theory that the Catholic Church “subsists” in the Church of Jesus Christ. Besides, the Catholic Church is the “Mother,” not the “sister”, of all particular churches, a term that does not include the confessions of heretics and schismatics.5
2. ‘Grande celebrazione a Loreto per i 700 anni della Fondazione della Basilica che ospita la Casa Santa’, La Stampa, March 13, 2016.
3. Giuseppe Santarelli, Loreto. L’altra metà di Nazaret, ed. Terra Santa, Milano, 2016.
4. Prefazione di S.A.I. e R. Principe Alessio Angelo-Comneno d’Epiro e di Tessaglia, Rome, March 25, 2019, Haris Koudounas, La sacra Sindone e la Santa Casa di Loreto. (Il Passaggio ad Atene), Rome: Edizioni Efesto, 2019
5. The article is in Greek only: ‘Συνεργασία για την ανάπτυξη του θρησκευτικού και μνημειακού τουρισμού στην Άρτα’ (Cooperation for the development of religious and architectural tourism in Arta), Epirus Gate, March 7, 2016.
6. G. Santarelli, Loreto: L’altra metà di Nazaret: la storia, il mistero e l’arte della santa Casa, Milan: ed. Terra Santa, 2016, pp. 41-42.
7. Haris Koudounas, ‘La chiesa bizantina Porta Panagià e la Santa Casa di Loreto: Il ruolo della famiglia degli Angelo Ducas Comneno di Tessaglia e di Epiro’ (The Byzantine Church of Porta Panagia and the Holy House of Loreto: The Role of the Family of Angelo Ducas Comneno of Thessaly and Epirus), Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano, vol. 18, n. 1, 2014, pp. 169-186.
8. H. Koudounas, ibid., p. 174. Panagia, literally all holy, was a customary title of the Virgin Mary among the Greek Schismatics.
9. The original wording was in ancient Greek: Εκ βάθρων σώον, πάναγνε, στόμεν δόμον, πονυμα ιερόν. The first three words are the key. As εκ βάθρων means “from the ground up,” we can see that the church of Porta Panagia was erected on the foundations of the previous building which were “saved” (σώον), i.e., kept or conserved intact.
10. Johannes Koder and Friedrich Hild, Tabula Imperii Byzantini, vol. 1, Hellas und Thessalia, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976, p. 246.
11. Helen Saradi, ‘The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: the Archaeological and Literary Evidence’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 3, n. 4, Spring 1997, p. 395.
12. H. Koudounas, Ibid. p. 178.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass
The Devil in the Rubrics
Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

As the history of the Liturgical Movement has shown, the reformers from Benedictine monk Dom Lambert Beauduin to Vatican II went to great lengths to make the faithful believe that the clergy are not the only members of the Church with a right to perform the liturgy. According to their “new theology,” responsibility for enacting the Church’s worship is entrusted to all the People of God by virtue of their common Baptism. And that is fundamentally why “active participation” of all the laity became their watchword.


The Revolution from Above

Pius XII greatly aided this new direction by officially endorsing lay “active participation” as part of what he called a “liturgical apostolate” (Mediator Dei § 109) ‒ a direction replicated and developed by Paul VI in the Constitution on the Liturgy. (1)

This consideration will help us to realize how revolutionary was Pius XII’s policy of enacting legislation to enable all the members of the congregation to take a direct and active part in the Church’s rites. Tucked away in his new Ordo of Holy Week (1956) were rubrical instructions that specifically required their “active participation” in the ceremonies.

Fr. Frederick McManus performing a Television Age Mass in 1969

Fr. Frederick McManus, a major figure in the reform, made the following statement as soon as the new Holy Week Ordo was issued:

“The rubrics of the Ordo refer constantly to the responses to be made by the members of the congregation and to their activity in the carrying out of the holy liturgy. This is of course a notable departure from the rubrical norms of the Roman Missal”. (2)

He went on to explain that the “active participation” of the congregation is “made a matter of rubrical law and incorporated into the very text of the new liturgical book.” (3)

But in the Roman Rite before the Liturgical Movement, there had never been any official rubrics assigned by the Church for the laity. The Missal of Pope Pius V (1570) contained rubrics for the priest and his ministers to perform the sacred ceremonies, but none for the people in the pews. (4) And this position was enshrined in the 1917 Code of Canon Law. (5)

As a canon lawyer, Fr. McManus would have realized the contradictory nature of Pius XII’s innovation and its full significance for the Liturgical Movement’s goals. The primary characteristic of this breakthrough was the profound challenge it posed to the foundations of the ordained priesthood, which set the clergy apart from the laity, and gave them the exclusive right to perform the Church’s official liturgy.

A priest facing the people who are now participating actively in a 1969 Mass

The new rubrical law was based on the premise that lay people were entitled to a role as “actors” in the liturgy, with an officially recognized right to active involvement in the external rites alongside the clergy. It was a reversal of Canon 1256 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which reiterated the traditional position that the Church’s public worship is a function of its legitimately appointed clergy. The wall separating the ordained from the non-ordained was now breached.

The introduction of rubrical laws into the Missal to legitimize the responses of the congregation and “their activity in the carrying out of the holy liturgy” was, as Fr. McManus observed, an unprecedented step. No Pope, least of all Pius X, had ever done anything like it before. Whereas previous editions of the Missal gave instructions only to the server, deacon or choir to give certain responses to the priest, the new rubrics included the whole congregation in this function.

Fr. Fortescue: Liturgical rubrics apply to those who assist officially the Mass, not the laity

This decision was certainly problematic in expressing as a rule of law something that had previously been considered illegitimate. The rubrics of the Missal were, by their very nature, laws requiring obedience from those who were responsible for performing the Church’s liturgy. They were never intended for the laity. Fr. Adrian Fortescue pointed out in 1920 that “lay people in the body of the church … enjoy a natural liberty,” and that the liturgical rubrics apply only to “those who assist more officially, the server, clergy, others in choir, and so on.” (6)

Such a remarkable departure from tradition surely calls for a consideration of its legal and constitutional basis. We need to be clear whether it was a just law promoting the Common Good, and in what way it can be said to reflect the constitution of the Church. This had been defined by Pope Pius X as “inherently (“vi et natura sua”) an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.” (7)


In Two Minds

Pius XII stated in Mediator Dei § 93 that the action of the liturgy was the privilege only of the priest, and that the faithful participate by uniting their hearts with his intentions. Thus he upheld the immemorial practice of the Roman Rite in which the priest performed the visible, external rite, while the faithful present joined their prayers mentally with the actions of the priest, and offered spiritual sacrifices.

But in §105 of the same document, he rendered this teaching incoherent by conferring on the members of the congregation the right to become directly involved in the liturgical action “in an external way.”


The Licensing of Disorder

The problem, therefore, with the new legislation was that it was constructed on ambivalence. The role of the priest in the Mass was no longer “fixed” but relativized by being shared on an active level with the people. It introduced the spirit of democracy into the Church years before Vatican II. One cannot interfere with the basic order observed for centuries in the Church without inviting harmful collateral consequences.

The spirit of revolutionary equality & fraternity entered the Church

There is something unreal and unacceptable from a Catholic point of view about this development on account of the insuperable ontological and doctrinal problems it poses. For priests and faithful of the Roman Rite, there was the danger that it would distort their perception of the hierarchical nature of the Church and engender confusion in their minds about the distinction between ordination and simple baptism.

And that is precisely the position in which the post-conciliar Church finds itself with the whole People of God jointly celebrating the Mass and Sacraments by reason of their “common priesthood.” Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy (§ 31), developing the principle started by Pius XII, stipulated that when the liturgical books were revised, they “must carefully attend to the provision of rubrics also for the people’s parts.”

One does not need to be an expert in liturgiology to see the likely effect this would have on a Catholic understanding of the Mass and the priesthood. It would undermine the very notion of exclusivity at the heart of the ordained priesthood: it is, after all, the Mass that makes the priest and gives him his identity.

When the General Instruction of the Novus Ordo was produced in 1969, Cardinal Ottaviani noted its “obsessive references to the communal character of the Mass,” adding that “the role attributed to the faithful is autonomous, absolute – and hence completely false,” and that “the people themselves appear to be invested with autonomous priestly powers.” (8)


Pius XII as an Agent of Change

In Pius XII’s detailed Instruction De Musica Sacra (1958) – which reads like a handbook for inserting lay participation in almost every nook and cranny of the liturgy – we see the beginnings of the so-called “community Mass” called for by the reformers.

Henceforth, the emphasis would increasingly be placed on communal responses by the whole congregation speaking aloud, which would make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to continue in their time-honored custom of individually-chosen silent prayers. It would, in other words, spell the end of the so-called “silent Mass” beloved of the people. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that for Beauduin and many in the Liturgical Movement this was a desirable outcome.

Few understood at the time that the novelty of including the laity in the rubrics of the Missal would create a paradigm shift in the liturgy that would require across-the-board new thinking in almost every aspect of it. Where this reform was heading was towards the progressivist concept of the liturgy enshrined in the Novus Ordo when “active participation” would become incumbent on all the laity as their duty and responsibility.

It was at the behest of the reformers that Pius XII began a process that had the gravest possible implications for future changes in the liturgy. His innovative rubrics for the laity were incorporated into the 1962 Missal by Pope John XXIII, and were followed immediately by a never-ending succession of desacralizing reforms, each one decreasing the role of the priest celebrant while greatly promoting the “active participation” of the laity.

It was the beginning of a new, relativized situation in the Church where the accepted distinctions between clergy and laity in the liturgy no longer applied.


Continued


1. § 45 of the Constitution on the Liturgy states that “every diocese is to have a commission on the sacred liturgy under the direction of the bishop, for promoting the liturgical apostolate.”
2. Frederick McManus, The Rites of Holy Week: Ceremonies, Preparations, Music, Commentaries, New Jersey: St Anthony Guild Press, 1956, pp. viii-ix.
3. Ibid., p. ix.
4. The rubric in Chapter 17, § 2 of the General Rubrics directing those present (circumstantes) to kneel except during the Gospel is sometimes misquoted as referring to the congregation. But as this rubric pertains to private Masses, i.e., without a congregation, the reference is to the server(s) at the altar.
5. No mention of “active participation” by the congregation was made in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which had been drawn up under the direction of Pius X; and no change was made to Canon 1256, which stipulated that the Church’s public worship is a function of its legitimately appointed ministers. Nor was any change made to Canon 818, which prohibited the addition of any liturgical arrangements not covered by the rubrics of the Missal.
6. A. Fortescue, Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920, p. 78, Footnote 2.
Pius X, Vehementer nos, 1906, § 8.
7. Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, commonly known as the “Ottaviani Intervention,” written by a group of theologians and presented to 8. Pope Paul VI by Cardinal Ottaviani (Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) and Cardinal Bacci in 1969.