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Consequences of Vatican II
Volstead and the Mass
Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.
In 20th century America, the 18th Amendment, followed by the Volstead Act of 1919, made it a crime to manufacture, transport, sell or consume alcoholic beverages. Embodied in this Act was one of a destructive error imposed on mankind. At the core-level the Act was dualism, which denies that body and soul work as a harmonious unit not to be separated, two in one. Once this truth is modified, disorder follows, it becomes difficult to understand God's creation of man. It often ends in serious sin.
Above, the cartoon reads: Making Millionaires out of Criminals, and Criminals out of Honest Men. Below, officials destroy barrels of beer
Vatican II inspired ceremonies and churches without ambience which form souls without Catholic spirit |
The belief was that in a "dry America" a host of crimes would disappear from society: prostitution, gambling, fighting, spousal and child abuse, to name a few. Instead, crimes increased exponentially, because Prohibition was the best thing that ever happened for criminal gangs, transforming them into a powerful criminal network. Besides the spilling of blood that followed, one of the worst aspects of the Act was to make everyone who used alcohol a criminal; it also created a terrible temptation for local police, many of whom took payoffs regularly. As for the dream that alcoholic consumption would drop, again the opposite happened. Before the Act, in New York there were 15,000 bars, which soon doubled to 32,000 speakeasies, or illegal bars.
On the home-front, the healthful ambiance created in a family enjoying together the legitimate pleasure of a glass of wine was eliminated. The wine even had to be eliminated from the kitchen. What can replace the aroma of wine added to the cooking, which perfumes the air like nothing else? Wine in the dish itself adds distinction to the taste. In fact each kind of wine gives its own gift of flavor. With its removal, the air became dry and poisoned with Calvinism.
These considerations on the elimination of wine in the home lead me to a parallel reflection. It is the removal of the traditional ceremonies of the Mass enforced after Vatican II.
The elimination of the traditional Mass brought a Cartesian inversion of subject and object – man and God – with its dualism. In the Mass, by a heavenly force, everything is directed to the Object, the Crucified Savior. We humans hunger and thirst to witness mystery and beauty, which enter through the senses and into the soul. In the Mass, this takes place because the priest and the people are focused on the altar, an implement of sacrifice. Within this milieu, beauty and mystery are created through a whole complex of ceremonies, genuflections, bows, symbols, chants, texts, appealing to the eye, the ear, the feelings, the imagination, the intellect, and the heart.
The new rite is subjective by its very nature. The table-and-chair atmosphere in the New Church rituals place the Object in a casual and familiar setting, even jovial, which severs the people ipso facto from the suffering of Calvary and its overpowering mystery.
Like the Calvinism that enters the kitchen sans wine, it entered the New Church services like a grand mal sickness. And, like Volstead making criminals of imbibers, for decades after the removal of the Mass, those Catholics who attended it were considered veritable criminals. Even today, the Mass is only attended by a tiny fraction of all Catholics.
The Platonic notion that the soul is a "captive" in the body can easily be overcome by traditional Catholic thinking. The remnant of faithful Catholics understands this. As for the rest, most let the foul winds of Vatican II and the new-rite determine their course, sailing them farther and farther out into the treacherous waves of spiritual shipwreck.
To pedal away from this subject with a smile, I might add a short bon mot. After the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933, Americans came to their senses and returned to their anti-dualistic drink. The oneness of gin and vermouth in the martini is a tribute to the 21st Amendment that overthrew the 18th.
Posted February 5, 2007
Related Topics of Interest
The New Mass: A Flavor of Protestantism
Liberals, Modernists and Progressivists
Crisis in Catechesis
How a Catholic Should Act in Face of Bad Popes
Yes, Crisis in the Church!
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