How Can It Have Happened?
Cyril B. Andrade, M.D.
The remnant of true Catholics is now a small minority indeed. Outside this tiny fold, authentic Catholicism is being simply and literally forgotten. If the true Mass were to be officially restored  — which cannot be done until the new “Mass” has been anathematized and proscribed and the new (most probably invalid) rite of ordination scrutinized  —  it is most unlikely that Catholics would return en masse to the Faith. Too many are attached to the new, permissive ways. The Church will have to be rebuilt. The question that still baffles is how can it have happened?
How can the historic, majestic Catholic Church have crumbled so ignominiously?  Nemo repente turosfit (No man becomes wicked suddenly).
The decline of Catholicism came about gradually. The faith of Catholics was eroded, step by step.  Changes — debilitating changes — were introduced by degrees. And pressure for change began long before Vatican II.
Demands for changes in the Mass, were being made in the 1940s. In 1948 a Commission for Liturgical Reform was set up. Its secretary was one “Father” Annibale Bugnini, who was eventually to launch the notorious new “Mass”.
In 1950 a new Easter Vigil service was proposed. Some use of the vernacular in place of Latin was initiated. The celebrant could sit while the lessons were read by someone else. In 1955 the new Holy Week ceremonies were brought in: they were shorter and simpler than before.
The Good Friday Mass of the Presanctified was replaced by a simple Communion service. The Last Gospel and the prayers for Russia’s conversion after Mass were omitted. The Collect “against the persecutors of the Church” was suppressed.
The feast of the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, was replaced by a kind of Labor Day.
The Breviary, the priest’s daily “Office”, was shortened. In 1958 came clear signs of the desire to reduce the distinction between priest and laity. The laity    were to recite parts of the Mass with the priest. The separate Confiteor for the people before their Communion was eliminated. Lay commentators appeared on the scene.  
In 1950 John XXIII announced that    the changes thus far were introductory for more important changes to be considered by the coming Council (Vatican II).
As you can see from this short review, the truth was that the changes were to culminate in the abominable new “Mass”.  more important changes in the abominable new “Mass”. In 1964, the priest, facing the people, was to read the first and last parts of the Mass in the vernacular. The Eucharistic fast was reduced to one hour.
In 1965, Saturday evening Mass would satisfy the Sunday obligation. That same year (1965) a sufficient number of Catholics were so disconcerted that they formed the Latin Mass Society, a society founded entirely by the laity. In the years before Vatican II, the English Liturgical Society (founded.1943) agitating for English in place of Latin, attracted about 300 members. The Latin Mass Society soon had 3000, but the gradualism of the modernist infiltrators of the Church succeeded — as like a Pied Piper — in luring the bulk of Catholics into blind obedience and servile submission.
In those early stages, changes were introduced very gradually and seemed, at the time, innocent, extreme care being taken to avoid affording reason for any suspicion of the destructive intrigue that was afoot. Many other changes followed, changes depreciating reverence for the Blessed Sacrament.
It has been objected that we who resist the innovations ought not to have adopted the “dialogue” Mass.  It was introduced in 1922 when Pius XI offered Mass in St. Peter’s, having authorized and requested the whole congregation to join in the responses. It has always been customary for anyone in the congregation, man or woman, to make the responses in the absence of a Mass server. At a dialogue Mass, the Mass remains intact and unchanged. The real aberrations were subtle and deceptive. Some changes were indulgent and flattering to the laity.
Friday abstinence was discontinued.  Fasting and abstinence were all but abolished.
Many changes, conspicuously in the new “Mass”, were conciliatory to enemies of the Faith. Why suppress the prayer “against the persecutors of the Church” and the prayers for Russia after Mass? Both are offensive to Communism.
Why omit the Last Gospel?  Simply because the 16th century reformers did so? Or because its verse “He came unto His own and His own received Him not” is offensive to Jєωs?
Vatican II, from which the new “Mass” was ultimately an outcome, was an unmitigated disaster. What “should have been the anti-Communist Council, as the Council of Trent was anti-Protestant, was taken over by Liberals and became the instrument for the destruction of all moral and spiritual barriers against Communism.” (Archbishop Lefebvre)
Vatican II was plainly an attempt to make a non-aggression pact between the Catholic Church and heresy, between the Church and the world, between Catholicism and Satan. Paul VI’s lamented “Smoke of Satan” in the Church (June 29, 1972), smoke emitted by his own machinations and his Council, has the stench of heresy, immorality and Godlessness. No true and informed Catholic will claim that either the Council or the new “Mass” has brought benefit of any kind to anyone but Satan.
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Originally written in about 1975 – scanned into electronic format in 2009

Cyril wrote the article in the seventies. He died last year, well into his nineties.

We have been losing the Old Guard for the last 10  years or so-it's pretty scary - bound to happen, but still.