Pope Paul Vi Quotes

If you want peace, work for justice.

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the year and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.

To love can mean 'to love oneself,' and often love is no more than a juxtaposition of two solitudes.

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” - Pope Paul VI

Lay Catholics and priests alike expected that Vatican II and the deliberations of a fifty-eight-member commission appointed to study the birth control issue would result in an end to the ban on artificial contraception. Instead, Pope Paul VI, negating the majority report of his own commission, issued the 1968 Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church's birth control prohibitions. Garry Wills asserts that Humanae Vitae was based on a minority report from the commission that emphasized the need for continuity in Church teachings. The teachings could not change because it had been the teaching for so long, and, if it changed, the Church would have to acknowledge that it had been in error about the teaching, and how would they explain what had happened to all the souls supposedly in hell for using artificial birth control?

In accordance with the centuries-old tradition of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in the divine office.

Every mother is like Moses. She does not enter the Promised Land. She prepares a world she will not see. Pope Paul VI

He met with Pope Paul VI, and they found common ground in their conviction that faith brings meaning to life regardless of the belief system.

In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long. Pope Paul VI

It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.

[On married love] This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment. It is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.

Truth Matters   “Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.”   Pope Paul VI Italian Pope 1897-1978

The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility... Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile.

November 15, 1972, Pope Paul VI spoke out on the matter to a general audience, saying that “evil is not merely a lack of something but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, [and that] it is contrary to the teaching of the Bible and the Church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality.

The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action.

Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the light of its varied legitimate and interrelated aspects.

No desperdicies el recuerdo del camino recorrido. Ello no retrasa vuestra carrera, sino que la dirige; el que olvida el punto de partida, pierde fácilmente la meta.

The sweep of the hierarchy’s betrayals, in scope and depth, is staggeringly new. And to gauge the likelihood of that hierarchy’s facing the truth of what it has done and what it has become, consider this: The two contemporary maestros of denial, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, have, in the very years of the scandal they enabled, been named as saints of the Catholic Church.

The foundation of the liturgy must remain the search for God. We can only be dismayed by the fact that this intention of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and of the Council Fathers as well, is often obscured and, worse yet, betrayed. . . .

Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

If every man, as much as he can and as best he can, will work for justice and peace in the world, then each Christian will have at heart the request that Mary pray with us and for us, so that the peace the Lord alone can give may be granted us.

This Church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people.” What the Pope is signaling here is that the Church, as his predecessor Paul VI put it, doesn’t have a mission; it is a mission, for its purpose is to cause the merciful face of Jesus to gaze upon everyone in the world. It is not an exclusive club where only the morally perfect are welcome, but, rather, a home for sinners, which means a home for everybody. And

In 1968, Pope Paul VI responded instead with an encylical Humanae Vitae. The encyclical reaffirmed the Church's rejectionist stance: Contraceptives were evil and against God's law...In the West, many if not most Catholics ignored the ban. For them, however painful, the decision of whether to conceive or not was rarely a life-or-death issue. Unfortunately, for women in the poorest parts of the world, it often is. There, the right to choose whether or not to conceive was vitally linked to a woman's prospects for freeing herself and her family from poverty. It is in this context that the inherent and deeply rooted misogyny of the Church has taken its greatest toll on the lives of women. Pope John Paul II spent a considerable part of his pontificate propagandizing on behalf of a doctrine that tells ppor and illiterate women that to use a condom is the moral equivalent of murder and that each time they use contraceptives they render Christ's sacrifice on the cross 'in vain'. He said:'no personal or social circumstances have ever been able, or will be able, to rectify the moral wrong of the contraceptive act.

choose to identify with the underprivileged,” he said. “I choose to identify with the poor,” he said. “I choose to give my life for the hungry … This is the way I am going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.’” 43 “Not an Easy Time for Me” IN 1964, IN a Gallup public opinion survey, Americans had named King the fourth most admired man in the world, behind Lyndon Johnson, Winston Churchill, and Dwight Eisenhower, and ahead of Robert Kennedy, Billy Graham, and Pope Paul VI.

would like to quote also words by Paul VI, spoke on June 29, 1972, during a Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica. The pope did not hide his pain and anguish: “Given the situation in the Church today, we have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no confidence in the Church. Instead people put their trust in the first secular prophet who comes along to talk to us about a newspaper editorial or a social movement, and they run after him to ask him whether he has the formula for true life, ignoring the fact that we already have it, that we are the owners of that formula.

My group had a papal audience at four. I couldn’t miss it, not only because no one stands up the pope but also because he and my father had been friends for years. They had met when my father was studying medicine at the University of Rome and Paul VI, then the young Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, was chaplain of an anti-Fascist student group. In his pre-pontiff days, he would visit us whenever church business brought him to the States. Somewhere I still have the photograph of his cat, taken on the balcony of his Vatican apartment, that he sent to me when I was nine or ten. He had to give the cat away when he was elected pope, and I had written to say how sad it was that the pope could not keep a pet.

The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord's supper.

When Pope John's successors — Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI — adamantly refused to alter anything having to do with the patriarchal and deeply misogynistic structure of Catholic power, and when they shored up a broad Catholic suspicion of every erotic impulse, the Church sacrificed the ongoing project of a humanely reformed Catholicism. Even under Francis, the us-against-them bipolarity that John XXIII stood against remains firmly in place, and it is still epitomized by men against women.

This state of affairs, which bodes ill for the future, causes Us great distress and anguish. But We cherish this hope: that distrust and selfishness among nations will eventually be overcome by a stronger desire for mutual collaboration and a heightened sense of solidarity. We hope that the developing nations will take advantage of their geographical proximity to one another to organize on a broader territorial base and to pool their efforts for the development of a given region. We hope that they will draw up joint programs, coordinate investment funds wisely, divide production quotas fairly, and exercise management over the marketing of these products. We also hope that multilateral and broad international associations will undertake the necessary work of organization to find ways of helping needy nations, so that these nations may escape from the fetters now binding them; so that they themselves may discover the road to cultural and social progress, while remaining faithful to the native genius of their land.

How can we not thank Paul VI for the courage he had in issuing the encyclical Humanae vitae? This document was prophetic in developing a morality that could defend human life. Despite many pressures within the Church herself, the pope saw what John Paul II called “the culture of death” forming on the horizon. I have not forgotten the violent critiques aimed at him because he refused to abdicate the elementary principles of life. In his turn, John Paul II lavishly produced a very rich teaching on the human body and sexuality. Despite the respect that he enjoyed, especially after his decisive interventions to free the peoples of Eastern Europe from the yoke of Communist dictatorship, how many bitter critiques have not been made against his view of morality? He had understood, nevertheless, that the Church must not lower her arms. By his steadfastness, he obeyed Jesus, who once said to Peter: “And when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk 22:32). I

Os homens rectos poderão convencer-se ainda mais da fundamentação da doutrina da Igreja neste campo, se quiserem reflectir nas consequências dos métodos da regulação artificial da natalidade. Considerem, antes de mais, o caminho amplo e fácil que tais métodos abririam à infidelidade conjugal e à degradação da moralidade. Não é preciso ter muita experiência para conhecer a fraqueza humana e para compreender que os homens - os jovens especialmente, tão vulneráveis neste ponto - precisam de estímulo para serem fiéis à lei moral e não se lhes deve proporcionar qualquer meio fácil para eles eludirem a sua observância. É ainda de recear que o homem, habituando-se ao uso das práticas anticoncepcionais, acabe por perder o respeito pela mulher e, sem se preocupar mais com o equilíbrio físico e psicológico dela, chegue a considerá-la como simples instrumento de prazer egoísta e não mais como a sua companheira, respeitada e amada. Pense-se ainda seriamente na arma perigosa que se viria a pôr nas mãos de autoridades públicas, pouco preocupadas com exigências morais. Quem poderia reprovar a um governo o facto de ele aplicar à solução dos problemas da colectividade aquilo que viesse a ser reconhecido como lícito aos cônjuges para a solução de um problema familiar? (...) A doutrina da Igreja sobre a regulação dos nascimentos, que promulga a lei divina, parecerá, aos olhos de muitos, de difícil, ou mesmo de impossível actuação. Certamente que, como todas as realidades grandiosas e benéficas, ela exige um empenho sério e muitos esforços, individuais, familiares e sociais. Mais ainda: ela não seria de fato viável sem o auxílio de Deus, que apóia e corrobora a boa vontade dos homens. Mas, para quem refletir bem, não poderá deixar de aparecer como evidente que tais esforços são nobilitantes para o homem e benéficos para a comunidade humana.

he then coined the term ‘desecularization’ (Entweltlichung). Indeed, a church becoming more like Christ necessarily had ‘to differ sharply from the world around it’, he quoted from Pope Paul VI. It had to ‘distance itself’, we could say ‘desecularize itself’. Jesus became human ‘not just to confirm the world in its worldliness and be its companion’ and then leave it as it was. No, a church that ‘settles in this world, is self-satisfied and conforms to the world’s standards’ contravened its founder’s mission, ‘to be an instrument of salvation, imbued with God’s word’ and thus ‘be not of the world’. The pope expressly made clear that necessary ‘desecularization’ also included the church’s charitable works and its ‘organization and institution’. For ‘a church freed from material and political burdens and privileges can devote itself to the whole world better and in a truly Christian way. […] It opens itself to the world, not in order to win people for an institution with its own claims to power, but to bring them to themselves.

The stations begin with Pilate’s condemnation and end with Jesus’s burial, but traditionally include some episodes that are not found in the New Testament. Because of this variance from scripture, in 1975, Pope Paul VI authorized a new set of stations based more closely on the Gospels, beginning at the last supper and ending with the resurrection. While the stations are ordinarily accompanied by pictorial illustrations, an absolute requirement is that each includes the figure of the cross.

Mary is not only an example for the whole Church in the exercise of divine worship but is also, clearly, a teacher of the spiritual life for individual Christians.

Modernism is an error which is still making its appearance under various new guises, wholly inconsistent with any genuine religious expression. It is surely an attempt on the part of secular philosophies and secular trends to vitiate the true teaching and discipline of the Church of Christ.

The causes of the decrease in vocations to the priesthood are the be found in the fact that individuals and families have lost their sense of God and of all that is holy, their esteem for the Church as the institution of salvation through faith and the sacraments. The problem must be examined at its real source.

Racism is not the exclusive attribute of young nations where sometimes it hides beneath the rivalries of clans and political parties, with heavy losses for justice and at the risk of civil wars. It is still an obstacle to collaboration and a cause of division and hatred within countries whenever individuals and families see the inviolable rights of the human person held in scorn as they themselves are unjustly subjected to a regime of discrimination because of their race or their color.

Look down with maternal clemency, Most Blessed Virgin, upon all your children. Consider the anxiety of bishops who fear their flocks will be tormented by a terrible storm of evils. Heed the anguish of so many people, fathers and mothers of families who are uncertain about their future and beset by hardship and cares. (Christi Matri Rosarii)

Anyone who has a special devotion to the sacred Eucharist and who tries to repay Christ's infinite love for us with an eager and unselfish love of his own will experience and fully understand how worthwhile it is to carry on a conversation with Christ, for there is nothing more consoling here on earth, nothing more efficacious for progress along the path of holiness.

For if the sacred liturgy holds first place in the life of the Church, then the Eucharistic Mystery stands at the heart and center of the liturgy, since it is the font of life that cleanses us and strengthens us to live not for ourselves but for God, and to be united to each other by the closest ties of love.

Untainted by overbearing nationalistic pride of any trace of racial discrimination, experts should learn how to work in collaboration with everyone else. They must realize technical knowledge does not give them superiority in every sphere of life. Their own culture does contain certain universal human elements, but it cannot be regarded as the only culture, nor can it regard other cultures with a haughty disdain.

The modern woman will note with pleasant surprise that Mary of Nazareth, while being completely devoted to the will of God, was far from being a timidly submissive woman or one whose piety was repellent to others. On the contrary, she was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God vindicates the humble and the oppressed and removes the powerful people of this world from their privileged positions. (Marialis Cultus)

Pope Benedict XVI: Let us pay homage to the evangelical wisdom with which my beloved predecessor was able tomguide the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic intuition he perceoved the hopes and anxieties of the people at that time; he strove to make the most of the positive experiences, seeking to illuminate them with the light of the truth and love of Christ, the one redeemer of humanity.

Pope Benedict XVI on Pope St Paul VI: Let us pay homage to the spirit of evangelical wisdom with which my beloved predecessor was able to guide the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic intuition he perceived the hopes and anxieties or the people at that time; he strove to make the most of the positive experiences, seeking to illuminate them with the light of truth and the love of Christ.

From the time of his passing, there was a movement to promote Paul’s canonization. While criticized in some quarters for his response to the crises after the council and vilified by dissenting theologians for Humanæ Vitæ, Paul was nevertheless loved and respected by those who knew him for his intellect, his gentle courtesy, his humility, and above all, his personal holiness.

Beloved sons and daughters! Let us maintain the desire for a life modeled after the Christian lifestyle. The Christian lifestyle is not always easy. It is, we know, a demanding style of living, sometimes inconvenient, and not always fashionable. But remember: it must not be judged only by what it takes away, but evaluated by what it gives. And if it is engraved on us by the law of sacrifice, that is, by the Cross, remember, or rather, experience for yourselves the paradox characteristic of the Christian way of life. It consists in an extraordinary and simultaneous fusion of braking and thrusting, of moderation and vitality, of sorrow and joy. The present life finds in this lifestyle its highest and fullest expression, as Saint Paul said: I am overjoyed in all our affliction. (Pope St Paul VI)

My hope, O Lord, is in you. You are my Way, my Truth, my Life; my one and supreme good. Help me to never lose sight of my ultimate destination or be detoured by the maze of slogans clamoring for my attention. Keep my heart and my gaze fixed on you, who give meaning to everything in and around me.

Pope Paul VI stoked the fire of my own love of Christ. More by his life than by his words, he taught me what it means to be a disciple of the Master. His weekly addresses illuminated my theology studies, and as I studied Scripture I began to recognize that he was indeed a contemporary prophet. He became my pope.

I was thrilled when I heard that Pope Paul VI was going to be canonized; he has been a mentor and model to me for more than fifty years. This mentoring started-even though I wasn't aware of it-when I was just a teenager. I entered the congregation of the Daughters of Saint Paul on June 29, 1963, the same day that Pope Paul VI was crowned. The coronation ceremony was fascinating, but foreign to me. It was like opening a time capsule. Little did I know, I was witnessing the elaborate ceremony for the last time. The coronation was just one of the many trappings of aristocracy that would be removed, prompted by subsequent decisions of Pope Paul VI to simplify the papacy and render it more evangelical.

C’è un grande turbamento in questo momento nel mondo e nella Chiesa, e ciò che è in questione è la fede. Capita ora che mi ripeta la frase oscura di Gesù nel Vangelo di san Luca: «Quando il Figlio dell’Uomo ritornerà, troverà ancora la fede sulla terra?».

Ciò che mi colpisce, quando considero il mondo cattolico, è che all’interno del cattolicesimo sembra talvolta predominare un pensiero di tipo non cattolico, e può avvenire che questo pensiero non cattolico all’interno del cattolicesimo diventi domani il più forte. Ma esso non rappresenterà mai il pensiero della Chiesa. Bisogna che sussista un piccolo gregge, per quanto piccolo esso sia.

Paul VI stated in an address that since the Church begins with God's call, the Church establishes a supernatural religion. Other religions are "unilateral human efforts." While other religions are incomplete and often 'inefficacious and wrong,' the Church creates a safe relationship with God and effects salvation.

Our desire would be to confirm and increase in you love for the Church, the Holy Church of Christ which is the mystical Body of Christ, the extension of the mystery of the incarnation in humanity and in time.

The question of the teaching authority of the bishops in general was followed by that of Vatican II in particular, upon which the judgment of Fr. Pierre Marie, editor of the French Traditional Dominicans' quarterly magazine, Le Sol de la Torre, was quite severe. Proceeding in logical order, he examined first whether the Council documents come under the Church's extraordinary or ordinary infallibility - not under extraordinary infallibility, he argued, because both Pope John XXIII and Paul VI explicitly said the Council was making no definitive declarations; nor under ordinary infallibility, both because (see above) the Church's bishops were no longer scattered at Vatican II, but gathered together in such a group as to expose them to group pressures which could and did falsify their judgments; and because the bishops of Vatican II presented none of their doctrines as requiring defectively to be believed. Nor, Fr. Pierre Marie went on to argue, are these doctrines even part of the Church's authentic (i.e. ordinary, non-universal) teaching, because the bishops expressed no intention to hand down the Deposit of the Faith, on the contrary their spokesmen (e.g. Paul VI) expressed their intention to come to terms with the modern world and its values, long condemned by true Catholic churchmen as being intrinsically uncatholic. Therefore, concluded Fr. Pierre Marie, the documents of Vatican II have only a Conciliar authority, the authority of that Council, but no Catholic authority at all, and no Catholic need take seriously anything Vatican II said, unless it was already Church doctrine beforehand. Letter #148 March 1996

Later, when Bergoglio was already a provincial of the Argentine Jesuits, he was shaped by the violent dialectic opposition dividing the Argentinian church and society during the 1970s.222F[224] In 1975, he would also be deeply influenced by Pope St. Paul VI’s exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN), about evangelization in our times. In this papal document, Paul VI mentions several dichotomies presented to the Church as a false choice, namely: between God and the Church,223F[225] between the gospel and human development,224F[226] and between personal conversion and structural change.225F[227] For all of these dichotomies, Paul VI’s answer is: do not choose between one or the other, do not divide what God has united.226F[228] According to Paul VI, the power of evangelization is considerably diminished if the gospel is rent by doctrinal disputes and ideological polarizations.227F[229] This had a significant impact on Bergoglio’s ideas, still resonating to this day on his concept of evangelization.

Pope Paul VI had conspired to implicate him.

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.

Pope Paul VI, addressing the members of the Congress on the Apostolate of the Laity on October 15, 1967, wishing to summarize what lay spirituality must be, stated: 'It will suffice to tell you in a word: only your personal and profound union with Christ will assure the fruitfulness of your apostolate, whatever it might be.

Montini had a dark side, as demonstrated by his friendship with Saul Alinsky.

A heavy morning of audiences had neither tired nor depressed him. In a black cassock with no decoration, his neck enclosed in a Roman collar, but at ease, he appeared young, slender, elegant, above all available, lively, calm, in possession of himself and also of that French which he evidently enjoyed speaking, unfolding it like a roll of cloth, rather slowly.

The Christian message is not a prophecy of condemnation. It calls to penance in order to call to salvation. It is not bitter. It is not ill-tempered. It is not discourteous. It is not ironic. It is not pessimistic. It is generous. It is strong and joyful. It is full of beauty and poetry. It is full of vigor and majesty. Indeed, it raises the Cross: suffering, sacrifice, death, but only to bring comfort, redemption, and life." (Paul VI)

After the recent canonization of Pope Saint Paul VI, would it not be appropriate to meditate upon the example of that prophetic pope? In publishing the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ, on the one hand, and Credo of the People of God on the other, Paul VI gave us the example of a prophetic government, contrary to currents and pressures.

Without a strong reaffirmation of Christ's teaching as it has always been handed down by the Magisterium of the Church, there is no ecumenism. Who remembers the words of Pope Paul VI at his General Audience on August 28, 1974? He fearlessly declared: 'What sort of ecumenism could we construct in that way? Where would Christianity end up, and moreover, where would Catholicism be if today, under pressure from a specious but admissible pluralism, we accepted as legitimate the doctrinal disintegration and therefore also the ecclesial disintegration that it can bring with it?

How ironic that an extraordinarily articulate diplomat with unparalleled cultural sensitivities and a gift for making compelling gestures would end up being the most misunderstood pontiff of modern times.

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it, I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.” —Pope Paul VI

La Chiesa maestra non inventa la sua dottrina; ella è teste, è custode, è interprete, è tramite, e per quanto riguarda le verità proprie del messaggio cristiano essa si può dire conservatrice, intransigente; e a chi la sollecita di rendere più facile, più relativa ai gusti della mutevole mentalità dei tempi la sua fede, risponde con gli Apostoli: "Non possumus, non possiamo (Act 4,20)

Esiste in molti uno stato d'animo di radicale insofferenza verso lo "ieri" della Chiesa: uomini, istituzioni, costumi, dottrine, tutto è senz'altro accantonato, se porta l'impronta del passato. E' così che uno spirito critico implacabile condanna in questi irrefrenabili innovatori tutto il "sistema" ecclesiastico di ieri: essi non vedono più che colpe e difetti, inabilità e inefficienza nelle espressioni della vita cattolica degli anni trascorsi; con conseguenze che si presterebbero a molte e gravi considerazioni e che oscurano quel senso storico della vita della Chiesa, ch'è pur preziosa caratteristica della nostra cultura. Esso è sostituito da una facile simpatia a tutto ciò che è fuori della Chiesa; l'avversario diventa simpatico ed esemplare, l'amico antipatico e intollerabile. Se questo processo non è moderato, esso dà luogo perfino alla persuasione che sia lecito prospettare l'ipotesi d'una Chiesa del tutto diversa da quella odierna e nostra; una Chiesa inventata, si dice, per i tempi nuovi...Questa deviazione è purtroppo possibile.

From this Catholic center of Rome, no one, in principle, is unreachable; in principle, all men can and must be reached. For the Catholic Church, no one is a stranger, no one is excluded, no one is far away. Every one to whom our greeting is addressed is one who is called, who is invited and who, in a certain sense, is present. This is the language of the heart of one who loves. Every loved one is present! And we, especially at this moment, in virtue of our universal pastoral and apostolic mandate, we love all, all men.

On several occasions, whether the scuttling of the liturgy of the dead or even that incredible enterprise to expurgate the Psalms for use in the Divine Office,102 Bugnini ran into an opposition that was not only massive but also, one might say, close to unanimous. In such cases, he didn’t hesitate to say: “But the Pope wills it!” After that, of course, there was no question of discussing the matter any further. Yet, one day when he had made use of that argument I had a lunch appointment with my friend Msgr. Del Gallo, who as privy Chamberlain had a flat right above the papal apartments at the time.103 As I was coming back down—after the siesta, of course—and came out of the lift onto the Cortile San Damaso,104 Bugnini in person was emerging from the staircase on his way in from the Bronze Gate. At the sight of me, he didn’t just turn pale: he was visibly aghast. I straightaway understood that, knowing me to be notus pontifici,105 he supposed I had just been with the pope. But in my innocence I simply could not guess why he would be so terrorized at the idea that I might have had an interview with the pope regarding our affairs. I would be given the answer, though weeks later, by Paul VI himself. As he was discussing our famous work with me, work which he had finally ratified without being much more satisfied with it than I was, he said to me: “Now why did you do [x] in the reform?” At this point, I must confess that I no longer recall specifically which of the details I have already mentioned was bothering him.106 Naturally, I answered: “Why, simply because Bugnini had assured us that you absolutely wished it.” His reaction was instantaneous: “Can this be? He told me himself that you were unanimous on this!

As Mark Lombardi would discover to his eternal disillusionment, Pope Paul VI not only worked the Nazi ratlines while managing the Vatican’s intelligence operations but directly assisted in installing highly placed Mafiosi in key political positions to extend US influence in Italy. He paved the way for Sindona to enter the Vatican Bank. Beatified in 2014 because of an alleged miracle attributed to his intercession, Montini was a highly compromised figure in more ways than one.

Bishop Mamie made clear the reason for his action: ". . . we shall continue to demand that the faithful as well as the clergy accept and apply all the orientation and decisions of the Second Vatican Council, all the teachings of John XXIII and of Paul VI, all the directives of the secretariats instituted by the Council, including the new liturgy." What of the "orientations and teachings" of earlier Councils? What of all the "teachings" of earlier popes and the "directives" of previous secretariats? What of the tradition liturgy, the prayer of the Church for many centuries? Into the dust bin of history with them and do not look back. No Marxist committed to historical inevitability and the utopia future could be more exacting. The new belief was rooted in progress, the only truth was the necessity of change. Onward! Out with the Old Church, in with the New!