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It comes to very few to predict the consequences of something and for their words to be quoted nearly verbatim many years later as the consequences of what they predicted conic to pass.

During the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 1967, after seeing a demonstration of the proposed new Mass, Cardinal Heenan told the Synod: At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to Mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel we would soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children. His words of warning went unheeded.

Come forward 32 years to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 1999. After much debate on "somewhat problematic situations" besetting the Church, the Synod Fathers declared: "In many countries of the West, liturgical celebrations are frequented almost exclusively by children and older people, especially women. The young and middle-aged are few in number Such a situation runs the risk of projecting an image of a Church which is only for the elderly, women and children". Art.69 One can, almost hear Cardinal Heenan's voice from the clouds: "I told you so30 years ago but you wouldn't listen."

What is to be done? In normal circumstances, most people of moderate common sense, not blinded by dreams of what might be, or what they might like it to be, would take a cold hard look at what is failing and abandon it, and identify what is working and embrace it fully. Unfortunately we are living in times when rational thought and analysis has been replaced by a process devised by Lewis Carroll for Alice in Wonderland.

In one English diocese, for example, the figures for Mass attendance for 1998 have just been published 59,971 (or 25.11% of the Catholic population). In 1974 it was 119,115 (or 42%). The bishop has just written to his people and said: "We live  an exciting and demanding time when the vision of the Second Vatican Council is beginning to be realized"' This is plainly nonsense; how can such a dramatic collapse in Mass attendance be proclaimed as a great triumph of the Second Vatican Council, yet this is the prevailing wisdom' with many of our prelates.

Winston Churchill made a very astute observation when he said: "the further back you look the further forward you can see." This is the traditionalist argument. We look back over the sweep of the centuries; we learn from 2,000 years of tradition and have an instinctive feel for the direction of God's Church. The traditionalist priestly orders are being obedient to tradition and are flourishing. Those that are ignoring tradition are failing, and failing catastrophically.

Those who wilfully look back no further than the 1960s have no sense of history, no sense of purpose, no sense of direction, no feel for the past or the future, and no guiding principles. The ultra-Modernists (whose existence is sustained entirely on a bunkered and one-eyed interpretation of Vatican II), through this deliberate rejection of established Catholic culture, have cut themselves off from the realities of Catholic life and the great mass of the faithful, and sadly, it is the great mass of the faithful that is suffering. For the modernists, only the present is important, because the' live in the present day. Nothing will change until our bishops grasp the nettle and order a root and branch examination of what the Fathers of Vatican II actually desired and implement their wishes "in the light of sound tradition". Leo Darroch -- Editor.