Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass and the Faithful Who Attend It

by Peter Kwasniewski, Janet E Smith, Gregory DiPippo

Between September and November 2022, Church Life Journal published a series of articles on liturgical reform, coauthored by Drs. John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy. With its rosy view of the Liturgical Movement, its caricature of the Catholic faithful prior to Vatican II, its forensically questionable affirmation of Sacrosanctum Concilium ’s paternity of the Novus Ordo (not to mention its solemn chrismation of both by the Holy Spirit), and its severe rejection of the “Tridentine movement,” the series sparked ample criticism of the authors’ perplexingly inadequate scholarship, grandiose generalizations, and pastoral callousness.

Because the innovationist and anti-traditionalist arguments of Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy are perpetually recycled in seminaries and degree programs around the world—the “commonplaces” of countless bulletins, homilies, blogs, and workshops—the appearance of the series offers a providential opportunity to present Catholic counterarguments. This handy book makes a persuasive case in favor of immemorial tradition against yesterday’s novelties at a time when a growing number of priests and faithful are longing for the sacred and the authentic.

After an initial careful summary of the Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy series, Illusions of Reform gathers the critiques of nine in Part 1, Dr. Janet Smith’s own five-part series; in Part 2, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s rejoinders on several major issues; in Part 3, further responses by Alexander Battista, representing the point of view of Eastern Catholics; Fr. Samuel Keyes, a priest of the Anglican Ordinariate; Roland Millare, an expert on Joseph Ratzinger; Fr. Peter Miller and Dom Alcuin Reid, liturgically knowledgeable Benedictine monks; and Dr. Joseph Shaw, president of the International Una Voce Foundation. An epilogue by Gregory DiPippo and a select bibliography round out the volume.

254 pages, Hardcover

Published May 5, 2023

About the author

Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in California and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Austria and for the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austrian Program, he joined the founding team of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, where he currently serves as Professor of Theology and Choirmaster. He is a board member and scholar of The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, which is publishing the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, and a tutor for the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies.

Kwasniewski has taught and written extensively on a wide variety of subjects, especially Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church. He has published two books with The Catholic University of America Press and a volume of music for liturgical use, Sacred Choral Works (Corpus Christi Watershed, 2014). His latest book, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis: Sacred Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church (Angelico Press, 2014), is being translated into eight languages.

Dr. Kwasniewski writes for several major weblogs, including New Liturgical Movement and Rorate Caeli.