No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Vatican II, Defense of the Novus Ordo Missae, Five Smooth Stones (1 Sam. 17:40) – On Modern Trends and How to Deal with Them: The Selected Works of Frits Albers, Vol. 2 by Frits Albers
Vatican II, Defense of the Novus Ordo Missae, Five Smooth Stones (1 Sam. 17:40) – On Modern Trends and How to Deal with Them: The Selected Works of Frits Albers, Vol. 2
by Frits Albers, edited with a Foreword by Frank Calneggia
Selected for publication in this second volume of the works of Frits Albers are the following three written in the 1970s.
- Vatican II;
- In Defense of the Novus Ordo Missae of His Holiness Pope Paul VI;
- Five Smooth Stones (1 Sam. 17:40) – On Modern Trends and How to Deal with Them
A principal reason for publishing anew these books written almost fifty years ago can be gathered from the author’s own words taken from his Vatican II.
“It is from our era, and from the Church of our era, still so close to us, that we must wrestle to partly unlock the mystique contained in the very essence of Vatican II. For our own immediate benefit as well as for the benefit of the Catholics to whom Catholic Tradition must be handed over in its entirety. No doubt Vatican II has a clear message for the Church of the future, but this great Council happened in our time, and future generations of Catholics depend on us – on how well we understood that time. How well our Catholic children will comprehend the past which happens to be our present, depends entirely on us.”
Many of the Catholic children of that era (and now their children also) hold positions of responsibility in society and in the Church. The younger generations of Catholics who were born after Vatican II and the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, if they take to heart the author’s words quoted above, should derive no little profit from the works presented in this volume. May the three works included in this present volume bring instruction, guidance and hope to Catholics in their quest to advance in knowledge and love of holy Mother Church and its life giving Teaching and to dispel the dark clouds of confusion, error and subterfuge they have to deal with in modern day ‘catholic’ environments, and finally to give them sound practical guidance on how to overcome and defeat the real enemy.
Paperback: $19.95 | Kindle: $9.99
REVIEW BY DR. DONALD G. BOLAND
This is the second volume of the collected works of Frits Albers. The first volume has been published only recently. The works concerned first appeared as articles dating from as early as the 1970s but with later editions appearing as late as AD 2000.
I have provided a testimonial to the first volume and what I said in it applies to the present works. There are three books that are included in this second volume. Put shortly, the first two are defences of Vatican II and the Novus Order of the Mass, and the third is a guide to how to deal with the threats to the Faith by the controversies surrounding what the changes are, let alone how they are to be interpreted.
As may be expected, Frits Albers has embarked upon quite a task, for as he himself notes in quoting St. Paul, such are the profundity and eternal consequences of the issues involved, we are up against “Principalities and Powers”. However, as I see his effort as a man of strong faith, he is well up to the task. One indication of the pointed truth of what he says may be gathered from the fact that his books have been neglected to be widely published for nigh on 50 years since they appeared at the very time when the theological errors and their related sinful practices were begun to be promoted with an enthusiasm that would be gratifying to their evil originators.
Indeed, such has been the forcefulness of this promotion, reaching even to the highest levels of the religious and hierarchical life of the Church, that their malign influence is today deeper and wider than ever.
The publication of Albers’ works could not be more urgent. His assessment and refutation of the modernist error (presented most insidiously in Teilhard de Chardin’s writings) that underlies the whole push to change the doctrinal basis of Catholic life and practice is so thorough and telling, that it is hard to see how any person of honest disposition, prepared to give him a fair hearing, would not be won over by his clear exposition of the positions of the parties to the controversy and even clearer determination of the issues. There is much in this volume to be digested and we have space to make only one point, hopefully to give the reader some idea of the value of his work.
With regard particularly to the first two books included we need to note a problem of language which is to do with the inability of the modern mind to make distinctions, so that even in ecclesiastical Latin phrases there is a hidden prejudice to taking the word in a sense that favours the modernist position. As is clear from what we observe about his work, Frits Albers is one who has been able to make the distinctions needed to avoid the modernist mind-set that sadly even afflicts “not a few” modern Catholic theologians. (cf. Fides et ratio n. 61)
The problem of language use, or rather misuse, can apply even to words used by popes, such as Pope John XXIII’s use of the Italian aggornimento. Words such as “renew” and “reform” are used constantly in the modern era to close down opposition to the hidden intent or real meaning of “deform” or “destroy”. Even the word “deconstruction” is used openly to imply some sort of constructive change instead of simple destruction.
So too the Latin Novus Ordo is subtly taken to mean the rejection of the old rite. Then, the Magisterium has to go to great lengths to explain the distinction between what in the liturgy is capable of change and what is not. So, as regards the latter, there is no new rite replacing the old. The Novus Ordo has to be the same in essence, or in substance, as the old, or it is not Catholic. Of course, those who are opposed to the “new rite” are keen to find differences of substance.
The Novus Ordo is the same in essence as the one it has replaced and the Mass is the same as it was from the beginning. This problem of preference for taking any change as an essential (or substantial) change is applied throughout. It is applied to the fabricated distinction between Vatican II and “Pre-Vatican II”. Confusion reigns all round, including among “well educated” Catholics at University level.
The Magisterium is occupied constantly in explaining that there is no discontinuity between the teachings of Vatican II and previous doctrinal positions in the long history of Catholic Tradition. One wonders however, with the barrage of loud voices to the contrary, how much effect these magisterial “interventions” have.
A poor education in the use of language and logic (which are intimately connected) hampers the one side of the argument and favours the other (no prizes for guessing which is which).
Without making any criticism of Frits Albers himself, for his intent is clear where he does so, he uses the word “community” in a way that could be problematic. There is nothing wrong with the ordinary meaning of the word itself. Indeed, transferred to the order of grace and the divine it can be used of the Trinity. But, precisely because of its soundness and sacred application, it is used or rather misused in the most profound way in modern political and religious life.
As to the former, it is as if we confused it with Communism, whereby the very notion of civil community is destroyed and citizens brutalized. This misuse has become insinuated even into Catholic thinking (and practice) in most recent times. (The word “synod” can be misused in the same way)
A more appropriate word in the place concerned would in my view be “collective”, for Albers is referring to a grouping where there is no true unity but a kind of herd-like gathering that tries to bully individual Catholics who are deprived of the leadership they deserve. (This is not a condition peculiar to Catholic congregations but is a general condition of modern political life)
It is quite remarkable that Albers picked up this abusive application of the word so early. The malign connotation exploited by them, some clergy were referring to the “parish community” when a good portion of the congregation were losing their faith in central doctrines, especially with regard to sexual morality, and so did not really have unity with those that had kept them. It became almost impossible to use the word in its right sense.
We put this comment then only to show how difficult it is in modernist (which equates with “fashionable” – those people Chesterton called “Thursdayites”) controlled conversations to have any intelligent/ intelligible dialogue at all.
In connection with this we might note that the very word “Thomist” was coming to be given a fabricated connotation that suited the modernist climate of thought, and used as opposed in some way to a less “rigid” Catholic Franciscan sentiment. This is very subtle in that it is designed to undermine the unity of mind and spirit that existed (and still exists in Heaven) in relation to the two great saints, when it might apply to some of their not so holy or learned followers. Read the two wonderful books of Chesterton on the saints to get the balanced view of their holy relationship.
Despite the linguistic difficulty, which all the faithful have to contend with, this collection of books of Frits Albers is powerful in all respects and one can only pray that it reaches the audience that needs it, which is all of us today.
— Dr. Donald G. Boland, author of Rev. Fr. Austin M. Woodbury, SM, PhD, STD and the Aquinas Academy (1945 – 1975); also see his Compendium
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frits Albers Ph. B (1921-2000) was born in Holland and studied under the Jesuits at Nijmegen during the 1940s. He emigrated to Australia in 1951, and travelled extensively within the south-east region of the ‘lucky country’. He joined the Department of Education in Victoria and worked as a high school teacher who specialised in mathematics, French and English.
In the early post Vatican II period he realised that the strange interpretations of the recently concluded Council that were being forced upon Catholics were under pinned by the same philosophy he had been taught in the 1940’s by the Jesuits at Nijmegen in the name of St Thomas Aquinas, but which in reality was the systematic Modernism of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, S.J. Thus, in the early 1970’s he began writing articles and books to expose the philosophical root of these errors and aberrations of Teilhard De Chardin, and to defend Catholic Faith, clear thinking, and right philosophy.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
The editor is a retired electrical engineer who worked for most of his professional career in the specialist area of power generation. In a sabbatical year, he completed post graduate research in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. He has long loved the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas.
Michela Beatrice Ferri, Ph.D. in Philosophy, born in Italy, is a Roman Catholic professor and writer and teaches for Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, CT, USA.
Tonino Vicari is a husband, father, author, and educator. He received his Master of Arts in Theology from Sacred Heart Major Seminary. He has been involved in teaching the Catholic Faith for the past 12 years. He lives in the Coachella Valley with his wife, and two children. His hobby includes fine art landscape photography.
Marguerite A. Peeters directs 
Robert Cardinal Sarah is a Guinean prelate of the Catholic Church. A cardinal since 20 November 2010, he was prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 23 November 2014 to 20 February 2021. Sarah previously served as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples under Pope John Paul II and president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum under Pope Benedict XVI.Sarah has been a vocal advocate for the defense of traditional Catholic teaching on questions of sexual morality and the right to life, and in denouncing Islamic radicalism. He has called gender ideology and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) the “two radicalizations” that threaten the family: the former through divorce, same-sex marriage, and abortion; the latter with child marriage, polygamy, and the subjugation of women. [from