The revision of the Liturgical Calendar in 1969, under the pontificate of Paul VI, represents much more than a mere administrative reorganization of worship. It is an acute symptom of the penetration of modern thought—Gnostic and secularizing—into the heart of the Church. Under the pretext of a purification based on "historical truth," we are witnessing a capitulation of the truth of faith and of centuries-old tradition before the tribunals of historicism and relativism. This process is not a strengthening but an emptying of the Cross of Christ, where the piety of centuries is judged and condemned by the profane mentality of the contemporary world (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 329).
🏛️ Sacred Tradition Subjected to Secular JudgmentThe fundamental premise of the liturgical reform is that the validity of the cult of a saint depends on its verification according to the methods of profane historical science. This approach represents a radical inversion of the Catholic order. The Church, throughout its history, never based the veneration of its martyrs and saints on the documentary certainty required by secular archives, but rather on living Tradition, on the piety of the faithful people, and on the authority of its Magisterium. The truth of a saint did not lie in the biographical accuracy of every detail of his life, but in the spiritual reality that his story—whether historical or legendary—conveyed: the victory of Christ over the world, sin, and death.
By subjecting the sacred to the criterion of the profane, the Church adopts the Gnostic principle that there is a "higher knowledge"—in this case, modern historical criticism—capable of judging and correcting the "simple" faith of the past. This is the same error of modernism, which seeks to reform the concepts of Christian doctrine to adapt them to the "progress of the sciences" (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 409). The result is the replacement of the certainty of faith with the uncertainty of human erudition, and the transformation of the calendar of saints into a provisional catalog, subject to constant revisions according to the fluctuations of academic opinion. Truth, which for the Catholic faith is immutable, becomes as mutable as man himself (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 409).
⚖️ The Emblematic Case of Simon of Trent: A Symbol of Capitulation
The case of the suppression of the cult of Saint Simon of Trent is the most revealing. The modern narrative summarily classifies it as an "anti-Semitic blood libel," uncritically adopting the perspective of the historical adversary of the Church. From the point of view of Catholic tradition, Simon of Trent was venerated as a martyr of the faith, a symbol of innocence victimized by iniquity. The decision to remove his cult cannot be seen in isolation but as part of a broader movement of "dialogue" and "reconciliation" with the Synagogue, a dialogue that often requires the Church to disown its own past and remain silent about truths that have become "inconvenient" for the modern mentality.
The removal of the cult of a martyr whose story is intertwined with the denunciation of Jewish perfidy represents a symbolic victory for the Synagogue in the historical dialectic that opposes it to the Church (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 458). It is the manifestation of a Church that, instead of seeking the conversion of the world and its enemies, seeks to be accepted by them, even if the price is the sacrifice of its own saints and its historical memory. It is a clear episode of secularization, where the Church, to conform to the "modern world," adopts the worldview of its detractors, in a process that culminates in its own dissolution into the immanence of the world (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 408, 423).
🌍 The Disintegration of the Sacred and the New Hagiography
The same logic applies to the removal or reclassification of saints such as St. Christopher, St. Ursula, and St. Nicholas. Their stories, filled with legendary elements, nurtured the faith and imagination of generations of Christians, serving as vehicles for profound theological truths about divine protection, martyrdom, and charity. By discarding them for "lack of historical proof," progressivism reveals its contempt for popular piety and its adherence to a sterile rationalism.
This process aims to create a new hagiography, suitable for a "secularized Christianity": a gallery of purely human figures, stripped of their supernatural and miraculous character, whose holiness lies no longer in their union with the transcendent God, but in their "commitment to the world" and to the "construction of the secular city" (Meinvielle, 1970, p. 384, 396). The final result is the transformation of the communion of saints into a humanist pantheon, where man, and no longer God, is the measure of all things. The revision of the calendar is, therefore, not a reform, but a demolition. It is a decisive step in the transformation of the Catholic religion into a modern gnosis, where mystery is replaced by criticism, faith by opinion, and eternal Tradition by the incessant flow of historical becoming.
📚 References
Meinvielle, Julio. De la Cábala al Progresismo. Salta: Editora Calchaquí, 1970.