‘Politically correct’ modifications to prayers do not help the Church to know the truth by PETER KWASNIEWSKI for Life Site News
In the reformed liturgy, to the detriment of the people, the language is softer and ‘nicer.’
May 12, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — If one pays close attention to the differences between older (pre-Vatican II) and newer (post-Vatican II) prayers that are supposed to be for the same intention, one sees ample evidence of a disturbing tendency: the “doctoring” of prayers to say something softer and “nicer” than they used to say. This was no mere accident; it was part of a deliberate program to encourage a vaguer sort of ecumenism — one that did not have conversion as its goal — and to downplay real differences between Catholics and other Christians, between Christians and Jews, between believers and unbelievers, and so forth. The problem is that in downplaying the differences, one also downplays their serious consequences for the sanctification and salvation of souls. In other words, one risks betraying Christ Himself, who is the Truth and who calls us to a total assent to the full truth.
I will illustrate this problem with three striking examples: two drawn from the sacred liturgy and one drawn from popular devotion.
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My first example is the Collect for the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, the great Counter-Reformation Doctor of the Church whose feast is traditionally celebrated tomorrow, May 13th. (In the revision of the general calendar in 1969, his feast was moved to September 17th.) In the traditional Latin Mass, the Collect goes as follows:
O God, who didst adorn blessed Robert Thy Bishop and Doctor with wondrous learning and virtue that he might lay bare the snares of error and maintain the rights of the Apostolic See: grant by his merits and intercession that we may grow in love of the truth, and that the hearts of the wayward may return to the unity of Thy Church.
In the Novus Ordo Missae, the foregoing prayer, dating from 1932, was replaced with this:
O God, who adorned the Bishop Saint Robert Bellarmine with wonderful learning and virtue to vindicate the faith of your Church, grant, through his intercession, that in the integrity of that same faith your people may always find joy.
