Chapter 1

The wound in the left hand off holy Church:
the division between
people and clergy at public worship(1)

5. The author of the gospel is the author of the human race. Jesus Christ came to save the whole person(2), a being composed of body and spirit. The law of grace and love had therefore to enter and take possession as it were of both the spiritual and bodily elements of human nature; it had to be presented to the world as capable of so doing, and hence had itself to be composed partly of ideas and partly of action. Its obligatory and enlivening force had to appeal equally to intellect and to feeling, so that everything human, even dry bones, might hear the will of the Creator and spring to life.

6. It was not sufficient for the good news to penetrate each individual human being. Because the gospel was intended to save all mankind, it had both to act on the elements which make up human nature, and to accompany it with its divine action in all its developments. It needed to support mankind in all its possible states so that human nature's bias or tendency to evil might not plunge it to destruction; it needed to oversee human development according to a beneficial law of progressive improvement; it needed to relate with men and women and unfold itself as they developed. In this way it would take its place in the societies they formed, regenerating and saving every human association - family, nation, mankind itself - after saving individuals. It was to impose saving laws on all these groups, and rule them in the name of God the peacemaker. Societies are the work of human beings, and because divine law rules and governs men and women, it is also the natural governor and ruler of all their work.

7. The apostles, taught by the word and example of their Master, were sent by him to instruct and baptise all nations. Conscious of their responsibility, they went into the world displaying the plenitude of spirit which necessarily corresponded to such a mission.

They had no intention of founding a school of philosophy. Even in a school which taught only the truth, few people would have accepted such preaching from them. The philosophy schools in Greece did not depend for the number of their students upon the quantity of truth taught, nor the amount of error avoided. Speaking every possible language would have been insufficient for the successful outcome of their undertaking. And the gift of tongues alone would only have expressed ideas in different ways to persons in need of facts. The apostles, unlike philosophers, brought reality to mankind, not words alone. At one and the same time, therefore, while unveiling luminous truths and profound mysteries to human understanding, and offering the heroic example of their lives for imitation, they were able to give a powerful impetus to action through the new direction and life they brought to the world.

I must make myself clear. When I speak of the works which the disciples used to illustrate their words and render them fully effective, I am not referring simply to the wonders they imposed on external nature to prove the divinity of their mission. The power they possessed enabling them to subject the laws of nature in homage and witness to the truths they proclaimed could only convince people that their teaching was true. But the truth of the teaching could be proved in other ways, and people could be convinced without being satisfied. As I said, although human nature longs to discover truth in the order of ideas, and cannot rest until it finds truth, yet another exigency is present in human hearts: they long for happiness in the real order of things, and gravitate towards it by a law of their nature.

8. Did the apostles reinforce their sublime words with the virtues they practised? Were these the works of which we are speaking? Certainly virtue is an essential need for human beings. Without moral dignity they are despicable in their own eyes and consequently unhappy. And the apostles did indeed reveal to corrupt mankind all the virtues they themselves had seen in their divine Master and imitated.

Did this prove effective?

As a matter of fact, virtue as a human necessity had been oppressed and suffocated in mankind by idolatry and the fictitious needs of evil. There could be no approval of the apostles' virtue at the deepest level of human nature because that depth had become an abyss, guarded by the Cerberus of human perversity, into which light could not penetrate. Virtue in the Lord's apostles was repaid by the cruel ferocity of the sons of men who tore the apostles to pieces and delighted in shedding their blood. The distinguishing features of virtue were either unrecognised, or known only as an incitement to hate. Some amongst the better disposed might have glimpsed traces of its beauty, or felt attracted by its divine fascination, but the unattainable perfection with which it was practised by Christ's ambassadors could only lead to desperation in good persons as they beheld their own moral weakness. From desperation, they would have descended to degradation which in its turn leads to the torpor of death wherein, overcome by depravation, human nature extinguishes its own activity and acquiesces in known vice.

Such an effect would only be reinforced by the sight of the supernatural virtues, new to mankind, which appeared in the lives of these new messengers of Christ. Virtue of this kind was unintelligible and unjustifiable without the wisdom whose first step is to declare insane all that human enlightenment seemed to have conquered to its own advantage and self-congratulation.

9. Neither the stupendous miracles nor the virtuous example which accompanied the teaching of the gospel were sufficient to enable it to penetrate and rule the essential elements and development of human nature. Miracles could only indicate the truth of what was practised which, of itself, remained sterile and ineffective; virtue could not be appreciated nor desired by persons immersed in vice. At best, virtue could be admired vainly and in part only by the few who looked upon it as prodigious but beyond imitation by ordinary mortals.

What was the source of power that made the apostles' words more than mere words, and distanced them so effectively from the words available to the teachers of human wisdom? What was the source of the saving strength which forced its way into the human heart and triumphed there? What did the apostles add to their words in order to save the whole person, intellect and feeling, and to submit the entire world to a cross?

If we wish to answer these questions, we have to recall the text of the mission received by the apostles from Christ Jesus who said: `Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'(3). No human teacher had ever spoken in this way to his disciples. The command they received from Christ determined the manner in which the apostles were to act relatively to the passive and active elements in human nature. Relative to the intellect, which is passive insofar as it has to receive truth, they were to `teach all nations'; simultaneously, they were to regenerate the will, which embraces all human activity and indeed the whole human being, by `baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' A sacrament was instituted in which a hidden, re-creative force of the one, triune God would bring about the renewal of the earth and the revitalisation of humanity immersed in sin and eternally lost. This sacrament would be the gateway to all the others.

10. The sacraments, the greatest of which originates in the sacrifice of the Lamb who had said to his apostles in feeding them with his flesh before dying: `Do this in remembrance of me'(4), were the mysterious rites and powerful works with which the apostles reformed the whole world. The sacraments were words, this is, signs, but not words ever heard in the schools of Greek wisdom; they were words which not only taught the understanding, but revealed to the heart the undying beauty of truth and the factual rewards of virtue; words which unveiled to human feeling the hidden God who had concealed himself in order to remain uncontaminated by impure humanity. The sacraments were words and signs of God, creating a new soul within the old, creating new life, new heavens and a new earth. The apostles added to their preaching catholic worship, which consists principally in the sacrifice, the sacraments, and the prayers in which these are expressed.

11. The teachers spread by preaching were of themselves abstractions; the practical operative power aroused by worship was the source through which human beings were to attain the grace of the Almighty. Normally speaking, the two words moral and practical are confused, and given a common meaning. Moral philosophy, for example, is synonymous with practical philosophy. Hence when a philosopher teaches moral precepts, he is easily persuaded that this makes him virtuous, just as his disciples by hearing and learning the definition of vice and virtue imagine themselves to possess virtue and be unstained by vice. What unhappy arrogance! Diabolic intellectual pride believes that good resides totally in the intellect; it is unaware that knowledge is only a tenuous, elementary beginning to good. It fails to see that true, complete good appertains to real action and effective will, not to simple understanding. Nevertheless such intellectual arrogance is a perpetual seduction for mankind, as alluring today as it was when humans heard the tempter say: `Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God'(5).

12. Consequently, when the author of mankind decided to reform human nature, he was not satisfied with proclaiming moral precepts to the understanding; he also bestowed upon the will the practical strength to carry them out. He united this strength to external rites to show that he was giving it to men and women freely, and could condition it as he wished. These rites were also sacraments, that is, signs, because they were to harmonise with the nature of the intelligent being they were to save, and communicate life and salvation through fitting signs and words.

13. Grace, which strengthens the will, is communicated through the understanding. It is an intellectual feeling enabling a christian to sense his God, live on this sense, and be vigorous in action. The apostles and their successors followed the example given them by their divine Master: to the few sacraments instituted by Christ they added prayers, ceremonies, outward understanding and noble rites so that public worship of mankind's Redeemer might be more fitting for this Incarnate God and the assembly who believed in his word. They introduced nothing devoid of meaning into his temple; everything said and done had to signify sublime, divine truths. There could be nothing mute or shadowy in sacred assemblies gathered together for the purpose of adoring and petitioning the Being who enlightens the understanding of intellective creatures. Divine intelligence leaves its mark where it receives rational worship, and of itself penetrates and enlivens rational natures. Those ceremonies and sacramentals which the Church adds, according to the power she has received, to the worship instituted by Christ - worship which is the foundation of all catholic worship - not only have their own meaning as the sacraments do, but share in the vital strength of the sacrament by which sacred truths made known to the mind descend through faith to the heart, diffusing the healing virtue that regenerates and reanimates the will for good.

14. But another observation may be made about the worship introduced together with christian preaching. This worship, to which God united the grace to render men and women capable of practising the moral precepts they had received, was not simply a spectacle for the people to behold. The people were not to be present simply to look at what was happening without genuinely participating in this drama of religious worship. Christ's faithful people could indeed have been taught solely by watching what takes place in church like spectators at a sacred play, and God, as absolute Lord of his gifts could, if he so wished, have united the enlivening influence of his grace to the mere sight of the functions exercised by the priests. This was not his intention. He wanted to adapt everything for mankind in the most fitting way; the people in God`s temple were themselves to be an important element in worship. Sometimes what was done would be applied to them, as in the case of the sacraments and ministerial blessings; sometimes the people, united with the clergy as much through their own understanding as in will and function, would act with the clergy, as in the prayers they said, in their responses to the priests, in the exchange of peace, at the offertory, and even as ministers of the sacrament at weddings. In the catholic Church the clergy sometimes act as God's representative, speaking to the people and directing them in God's name; at other times the clergy mix with the people and, forming part of the Head of mankind united with his Body, speak to God, awaiting his mysterious, divine action of moral healing and restoration. The sublime worship of holy Church is thus a single action of clergy and people together, the result of orderly, reasonable accord working to bring about a single, combined homage.

15. All the faithful, clergy and people, represent and form in the Church the marvellous unity indicated by Christ when he said: `Where two or three are gathered in my name, in agreement about everything they ask, there am I in their midst'(6). Elsewhere, speaking to the Father, he says: `The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one'(7). This unity in spirit, of which Christ speaks in such sublime words, often repeated, has its basis in the `clarity of intellective light' imparted by Christ so that the faithful might be one with him, and cling to the identical truth, or rather to him who is truth. In order to be in perfect agreement about their petitions to God, it is necessary or at least very helpful for those coming together for prayer to understand what they say before the throne of the most High. Perfect unanimity of feeling and desires is, as it were, a condition imposed by Christ on the worship rendered him by christians if their prayer is to be acceptable and he is to be in their midst.

It is worthwhile noting the emphasis Christ lays on this condition in order to distinguish between true christian prayer and prayer springing as it does from material worship and unformed faith. He is not satisfied with affirming that his faithful people be united at prayer, nor that they pray with united will. He states expressly that he wants them to be united `in everything they ask of him.' This is a measure of Christ's care for those belonging to him. He does not seek material unity, but the unity of mind and heart which forms one person of the entire christian faithful of every condition gathered around the altar of our Saviour - Israel which fights and advances as `one man', as Scripture puts it. But the people are in harmony and perfectly united when christians in God's temple carry out divine service generally speaking with one accord through understanding of their own role and through their realisation of what is being done in church. All will then have the common interest at heart and be present not only materially speaking, but with perfect understanding of the sacred mysteries, prayers, symbols and rites which make up divine worship. Hence it is necessary or at least highly useful that the people understand what is said and done in the holy sacrifice, in the administration of the sacraments, and in all church services. Their separation from the Church at worship through lack of comprehension is the first of those gaping wounds dripping with blood in the mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

16. I do not mean to say that a Christian cannot pray well or offer acceptable prayer to God if without any fault on his part he remains ignorant of the meaning of the Church's rites or unable to understand explicitly what is said and done at public worship. I know indeed that `the Spirit', as St. Paul says, `likewise helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words'(8). I realise that the voice of simple, uneducated people, if prompted by the Spirit, penetrates heaven itself. If it were not so, mankind would be lost! I simply want to affirm that Christ and the Church have instituted divine worship, composed of words and meaningful signs, for the christian people in order that they may respond and take an active part in it. It follows, and is in conformity with the intentions of Christ and the Church that the people, generally speaking, should assist at and fulfil the functions assigned them with as much understanding as possible.

In this way fervour, appreciation, reverence and devotion increase at worship, and above all the people are united to the clergy through better understanding of the clergy's true dignity. Love grows between clergy and people, and amongst the faithful making up the people, through unanimity of holy desires and religious feeling. Communication in spirit allows all to feel truly united in one heart and soul as the family of God the Father. This in its turn contributes very effectively to the diffusion in the hearts of the faithful of the very Spirit who prays and beseeches the Father with sighs too deep for words. Such unity helps to keep the christian people warmly attached to their teachers in Christ, and submissive and obedient to the clergy whose duty it is to direct them in the way of salvation.

17. There are two principal reasons, it would seem, for such a painful and unhappy division in the Church.
The symbols instituted by Christ and the rites added by the Church express and reflect all the dogmatic and moral teaching of the gospel in language common, as it were, to every nation, that is, the language of signs which visibly manifest the truth. However, in order to understand fully this natural, universal language, those to whom it is spoken need first to know the truths of which they are reminded by that language. Hence, the christian people understand and grasp the sublime meaning of their worship only in so far as they have been instructed through the preaching of the gospel. Consequently, Christ wanted the truth to be taught prior to the practice of worship. He said first: `teach all nations'; then, `baptise them.' Lack of full, living instruction amongst christians (impeded by the pagan prejudice that it is better to keep them half-ignorant, as incapable of absorbing the great truths of faith) is the first cause of the wall of division raised up between the people and the ministers of the Church.

18. I have mentioned full, living instruction. There is, of course, no lack of material instruction of which we have perhaps more today than in any other age. Everyone has learned the catechism by heart, and we know that the catechism contains in its formulas the simplest, most exact and final expressions of dogmatic truth. Such concise formulas are the combined work of the learned of all ages, assisted especially by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Councils and in the Church scattered throughout the world. Precise dogmatic formulas are certainly a sign of progress: every word in them reflects the truth; through them teachers possess a sure method, without much study on their part, of imparting the most profound and sublime mysteries to the faithful whom they instruct. But is it altogether an advantage for teachers of christian truth to be dispensed from the study of what they teach?

Although the faithful can easily be taught exact formulas, is it equally easy for teachers to penetrate the understanding and subsequently reach the heart with such means? Doctrine has been synthesised; its dogmatic expressions have been refined to perfection; formulas have been fixed and rendered unique; but has this led to greater understanding for ordinary intelligences? On the contrary, multiplicity and variety of expression would seem to offer a more suitable method for making the truth available for ordinary people. One expression clarifies another, and what is unsuitable for one person is very acceptable to another. The riches abounding in the divine word enable every path and gateway to be used in the effort to make the word assimilable by the spirit of the hearers. A solitary, fixed expression stands immobile and lifeless, and leaves the mind and heart unmoved. The teacher who repeats by heart what he does not understand may recite exactly what he has learned, but his frozen teaching will chill rather than warm his listeners.

Full, perfect expressions and formulas require greater understanding and better explanation if they are to be grasped adequately. For the majority of people they are like dry bread which a baby will only digest after it has been made into pap. Imperfect formulas, used long ago to teach christian dogma, possessed one advantage in their imprecision. They did not communicate the truth whole and entire to humanity, but allowed it to be assimilated a little at a time. Defects in these expressions, if there were any, were remedied by lengthy comments which brought together and united those parts of the truth apparently separated by the external word. Perhaps we should say that the truth came together and united of itself in the minds and hearts it had entered, before confirming and completing itself therein. Certainly the truth cannot operate in the human spirit if people are satisfied with its dead image. Words expressing the truth exactly, but barely arousing attention, die in the listeners' ears. It is true that we examine our children in the principal mysteries before admitting them to the great sacraments of the Church; in turn the children recite the formulas, and this is accepted as proof that they know them. Yet it is extremely doubtful whether children who say the catechism by heart know the mysteries any better than those who have never heard of the catechism.

Must we say then that the modern use of the cathechism does more harm than good to holy Church? If it did, this would be a strange result for a method which, considered in itself, showed so much promise. However, what St. Paul said about the law of Moses must be applied to these exceptional compendia of christian doctrine: `They are certainly holy, just and good, and helpful when used lawfully'(9). The defect lies in the user, not in the catechism, good in itself and excellent for modern purposes because it is the outcome of inevitable progress affecting everything human within the ambit of christianity. Conscientious and spiritual teachers can indeed use it well. The clergy must realise that the good or evil produced by the catechism will be their responsibility. They will be held to account for this, as they will be for all the other wonderful discoveries with which the Holy Spirit continually enriches the Church of the Word. Dead in themselves, they await their life from the wisdom of the clergy.

19. But it is not only the rites which speak to christians. Actions and visible signs were accompanied by the spoken word added by Christ in founding his worship, and by the Church. At the beginning language had to vary from one nation to another. Nevertheless Providence prepared the Roman empire in order to overcome obstacles to prompt communication, and Latin was taken almost to the ends of the earth. The peoples called to the gospel possessed a common language enabling them to understand the words accompanying, explaining and, more importantly, forming the sacraments and the rites. Words become the form of the sacraments because Christ wished to speak clearly to the understanding through very determined signs. His mystical work would depend upon the way in which he spoke to the intelligence. It was fitting, therefore, to unite the power of the sacrament to the words used, not to the matter of the sacrament which of itself is changeable and undetermined. The words indicate to the understanding the use to which the matter is put. In this way the intelligence is enlightened by the meaning of what it sees, and strengthened by the grace administered in the sacred rite. The grace of the sacraments, which work ex opere operato, is not of course impeded by ignorance of the meaning of the words in persons who receive the sacraments, although understanding their meaning enables christians to co-operate more effectively with grace itself.

But wars and migrations changed languages. The Church's tongue ceased to be the language of the people who, as a result of this immense change, found themselves in darkness. Intellectually, they were cut off from the Church which continued to speak to them, about them and in them. Like strangers in a foreign land, they were unable to reply to the unintelligible sounds whose meaning they had long forgotten.

20. The diminution of living instruction and the demise of Latin were two calamities falling simultaneously and for the same reason upon the christian people. Barbarian invasions flooded southwards. The pagan spirit, and paganism itself, still formed the core of society; till then, christian teaching had only taken hold of individuals. The conversion of the emperors brought powerful people into the Church, but only as individuals. Christianity, however, was destined to receive total obedience, and it was ordained that the word of Christ should penetrate society, judge both learning and the arts after judging human beings, and be the seed bed for every culture, every human achievement, and every social bond.

Providence condemned ancient society to destruction and shook it to its foundations. Judgment was carried out by successive waves of barbarians, guided by the angels of the Lord. The Roman empire was ruined, and its very ruins swept away by the invaders who thus prepared a clear site for building the new society of believers.

In the history of mankind, the middle ages are an abyss separating new and ancient worlds, divided from one another like two continents with an endless sea between them. On the scales of divine wisdom, the two calamities of ignorance and of the loss of Latin which fell upon mankind in these circumstances weighed less than the good intended through the radical destruction of social institutions and habitual idolatry. This was the terrible judgment by which the eternal God hastened the arrival on earth of a society baptised in blood and regenerated by his living Word.

21. Although God allowed the Church to be pierced by this agonising wound of separation between priesthood and people at divine service and worship, is such a wound irremediable? Is it true that the people, who took a very active part in christian worship when it was first instituted, are now to have scarcely a material presence at worship? I say `scarcely' because it is very difficult for civilised people to be present at rites which they neither understand nor share(10). Their repugnance to attendance in christian churches then becomes an excuse for human imprudence to interpret falsely our Redeemer's word `compel them to enter.'

If nations are capable of being healed, the ills suffered by the Church are certainly more curable. It seems to me an insult to the divine Creator to imagine that Jesus, who begged his eternal Father to make `his disciples one as he and his Father were one'(11), would permit such a wall of separation between people and clergy to remain intact, and everything said and done at the celebration of the divine mysteries to be overlaid with artifice. He cannot permit the people upon whom the light of the Word has shone, and who have been reborn for the worship of the Word, to be present at the great acts of worship as though they were statues or pillars in the Lord's temple, deaf to their mother the Church at those solemn moments when she speaks and acts in her own person as Church. Nor can he permit the priesthood, cut off from the people on some inaccessible, enclosed and injurious height, to degenerate into an elite separate from church society as a whole, with its own interests, laws and customs. For such are the inevitable consequences of an apparently slight cause. They are the inevitable results of a priesthood retaining its material presence among the people, but in fact cut off from the popular assembly of the faithful.

22. But if the wound can be healed, what dressing is to be used, and who will apply it?
Although we have shown the disadvantage resulting from the people's inability to understand Latin, we do not think that the liturgy may fittingly be translated into the vernacular. Latin, Greek and Oriental Churches have consistently retained their liturgies in the ancient languages in which they were written, and we know that divine wisdom assists the catholic Church in her disciplinary rulings as well as in her dogmatic and moral decisions. We accept this divine wisdom fully(12), and recognise that the disadvantages of an unknown language in sacred services is compensated by other factors. Putting the sacred rites into the vernacular would induce problems greater than the remedies imposed.

The principal advantages of ancient languages are: they reflect the immutability of the faith; they unite many different christian peoples in a single rite with the same sacred tongue, and thus impress more surely the unity and greatness of the Church, and its common brotherhood; they give an other-worldly, superhuman atmosphere through their sense of age and mystery (which explains pagans' constant use of ancient, hence sacred and divine, languages in their religious ceremonies and prayers); they offer a solid sense of reassurance to the people who realise that they are praying to God in the same words employed for centuries by the holy men and women who preceded us in Christ; they have been adapted by the saints to express fittingly all the divine mysteries.

The disadvantages of putting the liturgy and the prayers of the Church into modern languages are principally as follows - in addition to the loss of the advantages mentioned above. The great number of modern languages, besides entailing immense work, would be the cause of severe division amongst the people; unity and concord, the very aim of this book, would suffer accordingly. Modern languages are variable and unstable, and would bring constant changes to the essentially stable character of what is sacred; such changes could not be given the sufficient continual consideration needed to ensure they were not dangerous to the faith itself. The people, understandably attached to the uniformity and stability of the worship they imbibed as children, would be unnerved by these changes and disposed to think that religion varied according to language. Modern languages would not always have developed sufficiently to express fittingly the entire religious content of the ancient languages formed for this purpose by the spirit of christianity through the work of the saints. I have not enumerated all the advantages of ancient languages, nor all the disadvantages of modern languages, but what I have said is sufficient to show conclusively that the damage caused by the separation of clergy from people in the sacred services cannot be remedied by introducing new languages into the Churches. The use of these languages in place of those consecrated by centuries would imply a cure worse than the disease.

23. If modern languages are excluded, only two solutions are at hand. First, the study of Latin amongst the faithful should be encouraged as much as possible. Better teaching methods would be of great help here. Second, the christian people should be given a thorough grounding in the meaning of the sacred functions, while the literate faithful (and all should be able to read) need to be introduced habitually to divine services with the help of books containing a translation of the Latin used in church.

But we asked who would apply the dressing to the wound. The clergy. Only the catholic clergy can prepare the remedy and then heal the wound we have described. The clergy have received a mission involving every kind of loving work; their lips speak the work of life; Christ has made them an instrument of salvation for humanity; they are salt, light, healers. What prevents the immediate application of the remedies? Another wound, dripping blood like the first; that is, the insufficient education of the clergy themselves.

Notes.

(1) "Division" here does not indicate separation in that communion and spirit which can never be lacking in the Church of Jesus Christ, but absence of the strong, actual union springing up between clergy and people when the latter understand fully the rites and prayers that the former carry out or say in the divine services.

(2) John 7. 23

(3) Matt 28. 19

(4) Luke 20. 19; I Cor 11. 24-25 [Luke 22. 19]

(5) Gen 3. 5

(6) Matt 18. 20

(7) John 17. 22

(8) Rom 8. 26-27

(9) Rom 7. 12; 1. Tim 1. 8

(10) The foundation of oratories and marian associations was the work of holy men who saw that the Church's public worship did not provide sufficient nourishment for the piety of the christian people. Such foundations were vigorously opposed by the rigidity of persons more interested in theory than in new circumstances. According to such opponents, these novelties in the Church, unknown in ancient days, were almost an insult to normal church services, as though what had been sufficient for the Church in the first centuries was sufficient no longer. These harsh, unbending critics were unaware that sacred functions had become inaccessible to the people. St. Philip Neri, St. Ignatius and men like them, whose only desire was the good of the people, are formidable witnesses to the truth of what we say.

(11) John 17. 11 [John 17. 22]

(12) The following was defined in the dogmatic Bull: Auctorem Fide, promulgated by Pius VI: "The proposition of the Synod [of Pistoia], which purports to show that the causes blamed in part for the demise of principles relating to the good organisation of liturgy should be eliminated by reinstating greater simplicity in the rites, by the use of the vernacular, and by speaking aloud, is rash, offensive to pious ears and devisive in the Church where it encourages heretical gatherings."