Dom Prosper Gueranger’s Explanation of the Anti-Liturgical Heresy
The Anti-Liturgical Heresy and the Protestant Revolt [1]
By Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., Abbot of Solesmes
Dom Prosper-Louis-Pascal Gueranger, founder of the Benedictine Congregation of France and first abbot of Solesmes after the French revolution, wrote in 1840 his Liturgical Institutions in order to restore among the clergy the knowledge and the love for the Roman Liturgy.
Here we present to our readers a chapter (14) of the Liturgical Institutions, [2] where Dom Gueranger summarizes what he calls the anti-liturgical heresy, a summary of the doctrine and liturgical practice of the Protestant sect, from the XIVth to the XVIIIth century. As it can easily be seen, many of these principles have a striking similitude with the post-Conciliar liturgical reform . . .
THE ANTI-LITURGICAL HERESY, THAT which opposes the forms of divine worship, can only ferment in the heart of the true Church herself. Only where there is anything worth destroying will the spirit of destruction attempt to insinuate this pernicious poison.
PRECURSORS: VIGILANTIUS, BERENGAR, PETER WALDO
The known starting point of this heresy is Vigilantius, the Gaul immortalized by St. Jerome’s eloquent sarcasms. This former declaimed against the pomp of ceremonies, grossly insulted their symbolism, blasphemed the relics of the saints, and attacked both the celibacy of the sacred ministers and the continence of virgins— all in the name of safeguarding the purity of Christianity. As one can see, this kind of thinking was not a little “ahead of its time” for a fourth-century Gaul.
After Vigilantius, the West enjoyed a period of rest for many centuries, but when the barbarian races, whom the Church initiated into civilization, started to become somewhat familiar with intellectual endeavors, men, and then sects, began to arise that denied what they did not understand. The heresy of the Sacramentarians began in twelfth-century France with the blasphemies of the archdeacon Berengar. The entire Church rose up against these monstrous teachings, but it was foreseeable that rationalism, once unleashed against the most august act of Christian worship, would not stop there. The mystery of the Real Presence of the divine Word under the Eucharistic symbols would become the focal point for every attack. God had to be distanced from man, and, in order to attack this central dogma more forcefully, it was essential to close off all avenues within the liturgy which, so to speak, lead to the Eucharistic mystery.
Berengar had only given the signal. His campaign would be reinforced in his own century and in those that followed, resulting in the most prolonged and appalling attack that Catholicism had ever suffered.
A new branch of the anti-liturgical sect sprouted up in Lyon from the trunk of Manichaeism. In 1160, the merchant Peter Waldo formed a sect of turbulent fanatics known as “the Poor of Lyon,” but most commonly as “Waldensians,” after their founder. It soon became evident that the spirit of this sect aligned with the anti-liturgical stance Berengar first propagated in France. Soon shedding their Manichaean opinions, unpopular in France, the Waldensians shifted focus to advocating for Church reform, and to achieve this, they boldly undermined the entire structure of her worship.
First of all, for them, there is no longer any priesthood; every layman is a priest. A priest in mortal sin cannot consecrate, thus making the Eucharist uncertain. Clerics cannot possess worldly goods. Churches, holy chrism, the cult of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and prayer for the dead are abhorrent. Everything must be based on Sacred Scripture.
PROTESTANTISM’S ANTI-LITURGICAL COMPONENT
At last, Luther makes his appearance. He said nothing that his predecessors did not say before him, but claimed to liberate man both from the slavery of thought to teaching authority and from the slavery of body to liturgical authority.
It is necessary now to outline the course of the so-called reformers of Christianity over the past three centuries, and to present an overview of their deeds and teachings concerning the purification of divine worship.
1. The first characteristic of the anti-liturgical heresy is contempt for the tradition regarding the texts of divine worship. Any sectarian wishing to introduce a novel doctrine unfailingly clashes with the liturgy, which is tradition at its most powerful, and he cannot rest until he has silenced this voice and torn up the pages that contain the faith of ages past. Indeed, how did Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism establish and maintain their influence over the masses? All it took was the substitution of new books and new texts for the old ones, and their whole work was accomplished. Nothing now stood in the way of these new teachers; they could preach to their heart’s content: the faith of the people was now defenseless.
2. The second principle of the anti-liturgical sect is to replace texts in ecclesiastical style with readings from Sacred Scripture. This principle offers the sect two advantages: first, it silences the voice of tradition, which it always fears; secondly, it allows this heresy to propagate and support its dogmas through selective omission or emphasis. By omission, they adroitly bypass the texts that express doctrine opposed to the errors they wish to propagate. By emphasis, they highlight truncated passages that present only one side of the truth, concealing the other from the eyes of common folk.
It has been known for centuries that all heretics prefer Sacred Scripture over ecclesiastical definitions on account of the ease with which they can manipulate the Word of God to say whatever they want, by putting it on display or concealing it as it suits them.
3. Having expelled ecclesiastical texts and proclaimed the absolute necessity of using only the words of Scripture in the divine services, heretics discover that Scripture does not always bend to their every will. Hence the third principle: to fabricate and introduce various deceptive texts to ensnare the people more tightly in error, thereby consolidating the whole edifice of their godless reform for centuries to come.
4. We should not be surprised that heresy contradicts itself in its works, for its fourth principle, or rather the fourth necessity imposed on the sectarians by the very nature of their state of revolt, is habitual contradiction with their own principles.
Thus, all sectarians without exception begin by invoking the rights of antiquity. They want to free Christianity from everything that error and the passions of men have mixed into it that is false and unworthy of God. They want only what is primitive, and claim to return the original foundations of Christianity. To this end, they prune, erase, and cut away; nothing is spared their lash. But when one expects to see divine worship restored to its original purity, one finds oneself encumbered with new texts that date only from yesterday and are unquestionably man-made.
Every sect reaches this inevitable conclusion. We have seen it with the Monophysites, with the Nestorians, and we find the same thing in all the Protestant branches.
Let us note another characteristic of the liturgical changes effected by these heretics. In their furor for innovation, they do not content themselves with pruning away the texts of ecclesiastical style that they disparage as merely human words. Rather, they extend their condemnation even to the readings and prayers the Church has drawn from Scripture. All these they change and substitute, fearing even the slightest shred of the orthodoxy that guided the selection of these passages.
5. Since sectarians undertook the reform of the liturgy with the same aim as the reform of dogma of which it was the consequence, it follows that, just as Protestants have separated themselves from unity in order to believe less, they were led to remove from worship all of the ceremonies and formulas that express mysteries. They branded as superstition or idolatry anything that did not seem purely rational, thus restricting the expressions of faith, obstructing with doubt and even negation all the paths that open onto the supernatural world.
Thus, no more Sacraments, apart from baptism, until Socinianism freed its followers from even this. No more sacramentals, blessings, images, relics of saints, processions, pilgrimages, and so forth. No longer an altar, only a table. No more sacrifice, as in every religion, only the Lord’s Supper. No more church, only a temple, as with the Greeks and Romans. No more religious architecture, since there are no more mysteries. No more Christian painting and sculpture, since there is no more sensible religion. In short, no more poetry in a form of worship fertilized neither by faith nor love.
6. The suppression of mysterious elements from the Protestant liturgy inevitably led to the total extinction of that spirit of prayer called unction in Catholicism. A rebellious heart has no love, and a heart without love can at best produce passable expressions of respect or fear, with the haughty coldness of the Pharisee. Such is the Protestant liturgy. One senses that whoever celebrates it applauds himself for not being one of those Papists who bring God down to their level by the familiarity of their vulgar language.
7. Since the Protestant liturgy fancies that it deals so nobly with God, it has no need of created intermediaries. It believes that invoking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin or the protection of the saints would show a lack of respect for the sovereign Being. It rejects all that Papist idolatry that asks of creatures what should only be asked of God. It rids the calendar of all the names of men that the Roman Church so brazenly inscribes next to the name of God. It especially abhors those of monks and other latter-day figures who appear next to the revered names of the apostles chosen by Jesus Christ, by whom the early Church was founded, which alone was pure in faith and free from all superstition in worship and from all laxity in morals.
8. Since one of the main principles of this liturgical reform is to abolish mystical acts and formulas, it necessarily follows that its authors should demand the use of the vernacular in the divine service. This is a crucial point for sectarians. Worship is not a secret thing, they say; the people must understand what they are singing. Hatred of the Latin language is innate in the hearts of all Rome’s enemies. They see it as the treasure of Catholics worldwide, the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit, and the papacy’s most powerful weapon.
The spirit of rebellion that drives them to entrust the universal prayer to the tongue of each people, each region, and each age, has produced its fruits, and yet the Reformed cannot but realize every day the Catholic peoples, despite their Latin prayers, appreciate and fulfill the duties of worship better and more zealously than Protestant peoples. At every hour of the day, the divine service takes place in Catholic churches; the faithful who attend leave their mother tongue on the threshold; outside of the times of preaching, they hear only mysterious sounds, and even those cease to resound at the most solemn moment, at the Canon of the Mass. And yet this mystery charms them so much that they do not envy the Protestant’s lot, even though the latter’s ear hears only sounds whose meaning he grasps. While the Reformed temples struggle to bring austere Christians together once a week, the Papist Church sees its many altars constantly besieged by her devout children. Every day, they tear themselves away from their work to come and hear these mysterious words that must be from God, because they nourish their faith and soothe their sorrows.
We must admit that it was a masterstroke of Protestantism to have declared war on the sacred language; if it could succeed in destroying it, its triumph would be well advanced. Exposed before profane eyes like a virgin who has been violated, the liturgy, from that very moment, has lost its sacred character, and very soon the people would find that it is too much trouble to interrupt their work or pastimes to hear the liturgy spoken as if it were in the marketplace. [3] How long do you think the faithful will go to hear these self-styled liturgists call out: “The Lord be with you,” and how long will the people continue to respond: “And with your spirit”? ... Below, we will make a closer examination of the language of the liturgy.
9. By removing from the liturgy the mystery that humbles reason, Protestantism ensured that it also eliminated the practical consequences, namely freedom from the fatigue and discomfort imposed on the body by the practices of the Papist liturgy. No more fasting, no more abstinence, no more genuflecting in prayer. For the sacred ministers of the temple, no more daily Offices to perform, no more canonical prayers to recite in the name of the Church. This is one of the principal forms of the great Protestant emancipation: to diminish the sum of public and private prayers.
Events soon showed that faith and charity, which are nourished by prayer, were extinguished in the Reformation, whereas among Catholics they never cease to nourish every act of devotion towards God and man, fertilized as they are by the ineffable resources of liturgical prayer performed by the secular and regular clergy, with whom the community of the faithful is united.
10. Since Protestantism needed a rule to identify which of the Papist institutions is the most hostile to its principles, it had to delve into the foundations of the Catholic edifice and find the cornerstone that joins everything together. This heresy’s instinct led it immediately to discover the dogma that is irreconcilable with any innovation: papal power.
When Luther wrote on his banner: “Hatred of Rome and of her laws,” he was merely promulgating once again the great principle of all the branches of the anti-liturgical sect. From then on, worship and ceremonies had to be abolished en masse because they were Roman idolatry. The Latin language, the Divine Office, the calendar, the Breviary, were all deemed abominations of the great whore of Babylon. The Roman Pontiff oppresses reason with his dogmas and the senses with his ritual practices. It must therefore be proclaimed that his dogmas are nothing but blasphemy and error and his liturgical observances nothing but a means of establishing his usurped and tyrannical dominion more firmly. This is why, in its emancipated litanies, the Lutheran Church thoughtlessly continues to sing: “From the murderous fury, slander, rage, and ferocity of the Turk and the Pope, deliver us, O Lord.”
This is the place to recall the admirable reflections of Joseph de Maistre, in his book Du Pape (1819), where he shows, with such depth and sagacity, that despite the dissonances that isolate the various sects from one another, there is one quality in which they all unite, that of being non-Roman. Imagine any kind of innovation, whether of dogma or discipline, and you will see if it is impossible to advance it without, willingly or not, being labeled non-Roman, or, at best, less Roman, if it were less bold. The question remains, what kind of peace could a Catholic find in the first, or even the second, of these two situations?
11. The anti-liturgical heresy, in order to establish its reign forever, needed to destroy, both in principle and practice, all priesthood in Christianity. It understood that where there is a pontiff, there is an altar, and where there is an altar, there is a sacrifice, and hence a mysterious ceremonial. Having therefore abolished the office of the Supreme Pontiff, it was necessary to annihilate the position of the bishop, from whom emanates the mystical laying on of hands that perpetuates the sacred hierarchy. Hence a vast presbyterianism, which is but the immediate consequence of the suppression of the supreme pontificate.
From that point on, there are no more priests, properly speaking. For how could simple election, without consecration, make a man sacred? The reform of Luther and Calvin therefore knows only ministers or men of God, as one prefers. But it is impossible to stop there. Chosen and installed by laymen, wearing in the temple the robes of a bastard magistracy, the minister is merely a layman furnished with accidental functions. Protestantism is therefore all about laymen and so it was bound to be, since there is no longer any liturgy; and thus, by the same token, there is no longer any liturgy, since there are only laymen left.
12. Finally, and this is the furthest extreme of degradation, since the hierarchy is dead, the priesthood no longer exists. Consequently, the prince, the only possible authority among laymen, proclaims himself the head of religion. Thus, the proudest reformers, after shaking of Rome's spiritual yoke, will find themselves acknowledging the temporal sovereign as supreme pontiff, and number power over the liturgy among the rights of royal prerogative.
As a result, there will be no dogma, no morality, no Sacraments, no worship, no Christianity, except insofar as the prince pleases, since absolute power has been given him over the liturgy, through which all these things are expressed and applied within the community of the faithful. This is, nonetheless, the fundamental axiom of the Reformation both in practice and in the writings of Protestant doctors. This final point completes the picture and allows the reader to judge the nature of this so-called liberation, achieved with such violence against the papacy, only to give way, necessarily, to a dominion that destroys the very essence of Christianity.
It is true that, in its beginnings, the anti-liturgical sect was not accustomed to flatter the powerful in this way. Albigensians, Waldensians, Lollards, and Hussites all taught that it was necessary to resist and even attack any princes or magistrates in a state of sin, asserting that a prince loses his right to rule from the moment he is no longer in a state of grace with God. But the reason these sectarians taught this is that they were afraid of the sword of Catholic princes and had everything to gain by undermining their authority. But from the very moment that rulers, allied with the revolt against the Church, sought to make religion a national affair and a tool of governance, the abridged liturgy and dogma became confined to the borders of a region and naturally fell under the highest authority of that region. The reformers could then not help but feel deep gratitude towards those who lent the support of so powerful an arm to the establishment and maintenance of their theories.
It is true that preferring temporal over spiritual authority in matters of religion is utter apostasy, but in this case it was a matter of survival. To be consistent is all very well and good, but one must also live. This is why Luther, who so loudly broke away from the Pope of Rome, denouncing him as the promoter of all the abominations of Babylon, did not blush to declare the theological legitimacy of the Landgrave of Hesse's bigamous marriage. It is also why the Abbe Gregoire found within his principles the ability simultaneously to vote to condemn Louis XVI to death at the Convention and to champion Louis XIV and Joseph against the Roman Pontiffs.
Such are the central principles of the anti-liturgical heresy. We assuredly have not exaggerated, but simply noted the doctrine professed a hundred times over in the writings of Luther, Calvin, the Magdeburg Centuriators, [4] Rudolf Hospinian, Martin Chemnitz, and others. Their books are easy to consult— and indeed, the work that resulted from them is before the eyes of all mankind. Here, it seemed useful to outline the main features of this heresy, for it is always of profit to know error. Direct, positive teaching is sometimes less advantageous and less easy. It is now up to the Catholic apologist to refute these errors.
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NOTES:
[1] In Dom Gueranger’s terminology, the expression “anti-liturgical heresy” designates the hostility found in all true heresies towards the traditional Catholic liturgy. This term does not define a particular heresy, but a constant tendency that inevitably drives every heterodox school, from age to age, to transform and then to destroy the liturgy of the true Church.
[2] Taken from the Os Justi Press edition translated by David M. Foley and Gerhard Eger, 2025, pp. 64-70.
[3] It is unclear from the French here whether Gueranger is referring to the gathering of a specific Huguenot sect, or if he is imagining a situation where the Catholic Church in France adopts a vernacular liturgy.
[4] That is, the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries, a Lutheran work of ecclesiastical history.
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An Abridged Version of the Anti-Liturgical Heresy
-1-
The first characteristic of the anti-liturgical heresy is HATRED OF TRADITION AS FOUND IN THE FORMULAS USED IN DIVINE WORSHIP. One cannot fail to note this special characteristic in all heretics, from Vigilantus to Calvin, and the reason for it is easy to explain.
Every sectarian who wishes to introduce a new doctrine finds himself, unfailingly, face to face with the Liturgy, which is Tradition at its strongest and best, and he cannot rest until he has silenced this voice, until he has torn up these pages which recall the faith of past centuries.
As a matter of fact, how could Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism establish themselves and maintain their influence over the masses? All they had to do was substitute new books and new formulas in place of the ancient books and formulas, and their work was done. There was nothing that still bothered the new teachers; they could just go on preaching as they wished: the faith of the people was henceforth without defense.
Luther understood this doctrine with a shrewdness worthy of the Jansenists, since he, at the beginning of his innovations, at the time he still felt he should maintain a part of the external form of the Latin cult, gave the following rule for the reformed Mass:
“We approve and preserve the Introits of Sundays and of the feasts of Our Lord, that is to say Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. We should much prefer that the entire Psalms from the Introits should be taken, as was done in former times; but we will gladly conform to the present usage. We do not blame even those who would wish to keep even the Introits of the Apostles, of the Blessed Virgin and other Saints, since these three Introits are taken from the psalms and other places in Scripture.”
He hated too much the sacred songs composed by the Church herself as the public expression for her faith. He felt too much in them the vigor of Tradition, which he wanted to ban. If he granted to the Church the right to mix her voice with the oracles of the Scripture in the holy assemblies, he would expose himself thereby to have to listen to millions of mouth anathematizing his new dogmas. Therefore, his hatred for everything in Liturgy which does not exclusively derive from Holy Scripture.
-2-
This, as matter of fact, is the second principle of the anti-liturgical sect: TO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE FORMULAS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL TEACHINGS READINGS FROM THE HOLY SCRIPTURE.
This involves two advantages: first, to silence the voice of Tradition of which sectarians are always afraid. Then, there is the advantage of propagating and supporting their dogmas by means of affirmation and negation. By way of negation, in passing over in silence, through cunning, the texts which express doctrine opposed to errors they wish to propagate; by way of affirmation, by emphasizing truncated passages which show only one side of the truth, hide the other the eyes of the unlearned.
Since many centuries we know that the preferences given by all heretics to holy Scripture, over Church definitions, has no other reason than to facilitate making the word of God say all they want it to say, and manipulating it at will.
( . . . ) Protestants . . . have nearly reduced the whole Liturgy to the reading of Scripture, accompanied by speeches in which one interprets by means of reason. As to the choice and determination of the canonical books, these have ended by falling under the caprice of the reformer, who, in final analysis, decides the meaning of the word itself.
Thus Luther finds that in his system of pantheism, the ideas of the uselessness of good works and faith alone sufficing should be established as dogmas, and so, from now on, he will declare that the Epistle of St. James is a “straw epistle” and not canonical, for the simple reason that it teaches the necessity of good works for salvation.
In every age, and under all forms of sectarianism, it will be the same: No ecclesiastical formulas, only Holy Scripture, but interpreted, selected, presented by the person or persons who are seeking to profit from innovation.
The trap is dangerous for the simple, and only a long time afterwards one becomes aware of having been deceived and that the word of God, “a two-edged sword”, as the Apostles calls it, has caused great wounds, because it has been manipulated by the sons of perdition.
-3-
The third principle of the heretics concerning the reform of the Liturgy is, having eliminated the ecclesiastical formulas and proclaimed the absolute necessity of making use only of the words of Scripture in divine worship and having seen that Holy Scripture does not always yield itself to all their purposes as they would like, their third principle, we say, is to fabricate and introduce various formulas, filled with perfidy, by which the people are more surely ensnared in error, and thus the whole structure of the impious reform will become consolidated for the coming centuries.
-4-
One will not be astonished at the contradictions which heresy shows in its works, when one knows that the fourth principle, or, if you will, the fourth necessity imposed on the sectarians by the very nature of their rebellious state is an habitual contradiction of their own principles.
It must be this way for their confusion on that great day, which will come sooner or later, when God will reveal their nakedness to the view of the people whom they have seduced; moreover, it is not in the nature of man to be consistent. Truth alone can be consistent.
Thus, all the sectarians without exceptions begin with THE VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF ANTIQUITY. They want to cut Christianity off from all that the errors and passions of man have mixed in; from whatever is “false” and “unworthy of God”. ALL THEY WANT IS THE PRIMITIVE, AND THEY PRETEND TO GO BACK TO THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS.
To this end, they prune, they efface, they cut away; everything falls under their blows, and while one is waiting to see the original purity of the divine cult reappear, one finds himself encumbered with new formulas dating only from the night before, and which are incontestably human, since the one who created them is still alive.
Every sect undergoes this necessity. We saw this with the Monophysites and the Nestorians; we find the same in every branch of Protestantism. Their preference for preaching antiquity led only to cutting them off from the entire past. Then they placed themselves before their seduced people and they swore to them that now all was fine, that the papist accretions had disappeared, that the divine cult was restored to its primitive form . . .
-5-
Since the liturgical reform is being undertaken by the sectarians with the same goal as the reform of dogma, of which it is the consequence, it follows that as Protestants separated from unity in order to believe less, they found themselves led to cut away in the Liturgy ALL THE CEREMONIES, ALL THE FORMULAS WHICH EXPRESS MYSTERIES.
They called it superstition, idolatry, everything that did not seem to be merely rational, thus, limiting the expression of faith, obscuring by doubt and even negation all the views, which open on the supernatural world.
Thus, no more Sacraments, except Baptism, preparing the way for Socialism, which freed its followers even from Baptism. No more sacramentals, blessings, images, relics of Saints, processions, pilgrimages, etc. No more altar, only a table, no more sacrifice as in every religion, but only a meal. No more church but only a temple, as with the Greeks and Romans. No more religious architecture, since there is no more mystery. No more Christian paintings and sculpture, since there is no more sensible religion. Finally no more poetry in a cult which is no longer impregnated by love or faith.
-6-
The suppression of the mystical element in the Protestant liturgy was bound to produce, infallibly, the total extinction of that spirit of prayer, which in Catholicism, we call unction.
A heart in revolt can no longer love, a heart without love will be all the more able to produce passable expression of respect or fear, with the cold pride of the Pharisee. Such is Protestant liturgy.
-7-
Pretending to treat nobly with God, Protestant liturgy has no need of intermediaries. To invoke the help of the Blessed Virgin, or the protection of Saints, would be, for them, a lack of respect due to the Supreme Being.
Their liturgy excludes that entire “papist idolatry” which asks from a creature what only should be asked from God. It purges the calendar of all those names of men, which the Roman Church so boldly inscribes next to the name of God. It has a special horror for those names of monks and other persons of later times who one can find figuring next to the names of the Apostles, whom Jesus Christ had chosen, and by whom was founded this primitive Church which alone was pure in faith and free from all superstition in cult and from every relaxation in morals.
-8-
Since the liturgical reform had for one of its principal aims the abolition of actions and formulas of mystical signification, it is a logical consequence that its authors had to vindicate the use of the vernacular in divine worship.
This is in the eyes of sectarians a most important item. Cult is no secret matter. The people, they say, must understand what they sing. Hatred for the Latin language is inborn in the hearts of all the enemies of Rome. They recognize it as the bond among Catholics throughout the universe, as the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit. ( . . .)
The spirit of rebellion which drives them to confide the universal prayer to the idiom of each people, of each province, of each century, has for the rest produced its fruits, and the reformed themselves constantly perceive that the Catholic people, in spite of their Latin prayers, relish better and accomplish with more zeal the duties of the cult than most do the Protestant people. At every hour of the day, divine worship takes place in Catholic churches. The faithful Catholic, who assists, leaves his mother tongue at the door. Apart form the sermons, he hears nothing but mysterious words which, even so, are not heard in the most solemn moment of the Canon of the Mass. Nevertheless, this mystery charms him in such a way that he is not jealous of the lot of the Protestant, even though the ear of the latter doesn’t hear a single sound without perceiving its meaning.(...)
. . . We must admit it is a master blow of Protestantism to have declared war on the sacred language. If it should ever succeed in ever destroying it, it would be well on the way to victory. Exposed to profane gaze, like a virgin who has been violated, from that moment on the Liturgy has lost much of its sacred character, and very soon people find that it is not worthwhile putting aside one’s work or pleasure in order to go and listen to what is being said in the way one speaks on the marketplace. ( . . .)
-9-
In taking away from the Liturgy the mystery which humbles reason, Protestantism took care not to forget the practical consequence, that is to say, liberation from the fatigue and the burden of the body imposed by the rules of the papist Liturgy.
First of all, no more fasting, no more abstinence, no more genuflections in prayer. For the ministers of the temple, no more daily functions to carry out, no more canonical prayers to recite in the name of the Church.
Such is one of the principal forms of the great Protestant emancipation: to diminish the sum of public and private prayers.
The course of events has quickly shown that faith and charity, which are nourished by prayers, were extinguished in the reform, whereas among Catholics both still nourish all the acts of devotion to God and men, since they are impregnated by the ineffable resources of liturgical prayer as accomplished by the secular and regular clergy, and in which the community of the faithful participate.
-10-
Since Protestantism had to establish a rule in order to distinguish among the papist institutions those which could be the most hostile to its principle, it had to rummage around in the foundations of the Catholic structure to find the corner stone on which everything rests. Its instinct caused it to discover first of all that dogma which is irreconcilable with every innovation: Papal authority. When Luther wrote on his flag: “Hatred for Rome and its laws”, he only promulgated once more the underlying principle of every branch of the anti-liturgical sect. From then on he had to abrogate, ‘en masse’ both cult and ceremonies as the idolatries of Rome. The Latin language, the Divine Office, the calendar, the breviary: all were abominations of the great Harlot of Babylon. The Roman Pontiff weighs down reason by his dogmas and the sense by his ritual practices. Therefore, it must be proclaimed that his dogmas are only blasphemy and error, and his liturgical observances nothing but a means of establishing more firmly a usurped and tyrannical domination. (. . .)
One should here bring to mind the marvelous reflections of Joseph de Maistre in his book The Pope, where he demonstrates with so much wisdom and depth that, in spite of the disagreement which should isolate the diay aent sects, there is one thing in which they are all alike, namely, they are non-Roman.
-11-
The anti-liturgical heresy needed, in order to establish its reign for good, the destruction in fact and in principle of all priesthood in Christianity. For it felt that where there is a Pontiff, there is an Altar, and where there is an Altar there is a sacrifice and the carrying on of a mysterious ceremonial.
Having abolished the office of Supreme Pontiff, they had to annihilate the character of the bishopric, from which emanates the mystical imposition of hands, which perpetuates the sacred hierarchy. From this derives a great presbyterianism, which is nothing other than the immediate consequence of the suppression of the Supreme Pontiff. From now on there is no longer a priest, properly speaking. How could simple election without consecration make a man sacred? Luther’s and Calvin’s reforms only know of ministers of God, or of men, as you prefer. But this is not enough. Chosen and established by laymen, bringing into the temple the robe of a certain bastard ministry, the minister is nothing but a layman clothed with accidental functions. In Protestantism there exit only laymen, and this necessarily so, since there is no longer a Liturgy. (. . .)
Such are the principal maxims of the anti-liturgical sect. We certainly did not exaggerate in any way. All we did was to reveal the hundred times professed doctrines of the writings of Luther, Calvin, the One Hundred Signers of Magdeburg, of Hospinien, Kemnitz, etc. These books are easy to consult. That is to say that what comes out of them is under the eyes of all the world. We thought it useful to throw light on the principal features of sectarianism. It is always profitable to know error.
It is now up to the Catholic logician to draw the conclusions.
From http://catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/newmass/antigy.htm