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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting data, some dubious positions
Review: "The Great Facade" purports to be an expose of what has really been going on in the Catholic Church since Vatican II. Rejecting sedevacantism, its authors forcefully deny that the conciliar Popes have been heretics, since they do not seem to be guilty of any "obstinate post-baptismal denial or doubt of an article of divine and Catholic faith" (p12.) However, being pillars of The Remnant, a magazine that belongs to the hardest core of Catholic traditionalism, they denounce alleged "conservatives" as "right-wing liberals" who, by focusing their defense on a handful of essential doctrines, have tragically negotiated away an enormous amount of so-called "non-essentials", thereby letting the Church destroy its own immune system.
Ferrara and Woods' thesis, therefore, is that the Conciliar Chuch is not dead, it merely has AIDS : it is still the Catholic Church, since none of the "articles of divine and Catholic faith" have been rejected, but it is doing such a thorough job of self-destruction with the liturgical reform, the oecumenical movement and inter-religious dialogue that it has become necessary for true Catholics to "resist it to the face" and urge a "total restoration of the ecclesiastical and apostolic traditions ... and a return ... to the uncompromising Scholastic clarity and vigor of the preconciliar Magisterium" (p26.)
This whole position rests on the belief that the "postconciliar novelties" have failed to "rise to the level of formal, binding doctrine", thereby stopping short of heresy, but have merely gnawed away at "non-propositional" traditions. Heresy, say the authors, "is a propositional offense." Therefore, so long as you have not "declared" anything and have merely misbehaved, which is what they hold the Conciliar Church to have been doing, you cannot be guilty of it.
This, I think, is a half truth. Orthodoxy implies orthopraxy, and conduct itself may be a sure sign of heresy. A friend of mine once told me that the Conciliar Church no longer believed in the real presence. This sounded extreme to me, for I have heard few explicit denials of this doctrine from Church officials (for instance, a priest from the Netherlands once said he did not participate in processions because he could not see the point of "walking behind a piece of bread.") But then my friend said : "Just look at the way they treat the Host." That made me think. And if you do not find communion in the hand blatant enough, the authors of the book themselves have very good anecdotes about the way hosts are dealt with during the World Youth Days (p389.)
Another problem I have with the book is that it is not always fair to its opponents. For instance, quoting Ratzinger as saying that "Paul teaches not the resurrection of physical bodies but of persons" (p270), Ferrara and Woods launch into an indignant defense of the Catholic doctrine of bodily resurrection, as if Ratzinger had just denied it, while it seemed to me he had just been saying that Resurrection Day would not be a remake of "Dawn of the Dead", that we would not be zombies or revivified meat, but true persons, i.e. minds integrated to bodies.
Third, I was also appalled by the two or three pages attacking the doctrine of evolution and the idea that modern humans are bodily descendants of pre-sapiens hominids. The authors suddenly turn sarcastic and very unpleasant towards the defenders of theistic evolution, mocking the "grotesquery that Adam (and Eve) had animal parents- which would mean that Christ himself is descended from animals" (p270.) I find this attitude irresponsible in the extreme, all the more so as Mr Woods, whom I greatly respect as an economist and an historian of ideas, has written articles condemning the social doctrine of the Church in the name of Austrian economics, and thus seems to respect the authority of science within its own sphere. I for one see nothing wrong with Jesus Christ being descended from australopithecines. After all, wasn't he like us in everything but sin ?
It might seem unfair of a reviewer to condemn a whole book for a mere three pages that might be considered peripheral to its main thesis. However, I am beginning to realize that virtually all the traditionalists I know of hold to Ussher-like chronologies and consider Adam to have been created from inanimate matter around 4000 BC, with the Deluge being a complete drowning of the globe in water. I do not know if this is what Ferrara and Woods actually believe, but this is certainly what their attacks on paleoanthropology seem to entail : if Adam did not have animal parents, and he was the first human, where could he possibly have come from, except a literal lump of clay? And this, I think, is not only anti-scientific, but anti-Catholic in its dogmatic self-certainty, since even such an orthodox , pre-Conciliar work as Ludwig Ott's "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" leaves open the position Ferrara and Woods laugh at. So is it truly the "preconciliar Magisterium" they want Catholics to return to, or some sinister collection of doctrines of their own concoction ?
To conclude, "The Great Facade" has failed to convince me that the Conciliar Church is historically continuous with the Catholic Church, though it has reinforced my belief that it has done a lot of evil ; and it has made me even more uncomfortable with Catholic traditionalism, as I realize its most vocal defenders are guilty of the same denial of reality as their Protestant counterparts- including those who, like Thomas Woods, are capable of perfectly rational thinking in their own scientific fields.
Rating: 
Summary: The Great Facade: well done, Ferrara & Woods
Review: An excellent book, and one worth reading for two important reasons: not only does it comprehensively and lucidly address many of the contemporary problems of the Church (to the benefit of Catholics who are already familiar with these issues), but it also serves as an excellent guide for Catholics who are unaware of or unclear about these problems. I live in Canada, which has many more Roman Catholics per capita than the United States. In this sense, the need for this book north of the 49th parallel is even more urgent. I commend Christopher Ferrara and Thomas Woods for their work, and I thank God that I live in an archdiocese which provides the Tridentine mass!
Rating:
Summary: If I were rich...
Review: For some reason, there is a belief shared by both conservatives and liberals, that the Roman Catholic Church is a reactionary institution, intent on squelching all dissent. John Paul II is represented as an extreme reactionary who advances Catholicism in its most traditional form. Yet what isn't so well known, is that the Roman Catholic Church underwent a cataclysmic event in the 60s: the Second Vatican Council. Although initiated to update the church in the "modern world" it was taken over by the left. One of the leaders at Vatican was John Paul II. While no one denies that there have been dramatic changes since Vatican II, Woods and Ferrara argue that these changes were a direct result of the novelties introduced by Vatican II. Woods and Ferrara outline the changes since then and show that many have little basis in pre-Vatican II teaching. As a few examples, John Paul II opposes the death penalty, doesn't know if there is anyone in hell, supports evolution, permits altar girls and women serving communion, supports the UN, and holds ecumenical confabs that welcome Voodoo priests. Some reactionary. As our authors point out, had anyone other than John Paul II does these things, he wouldn't be considered much of a conservative. Yet when John Paul does these things, the "neo-Catholics" feel obligated to support him. Not only is John Paul II something of a progressive, but also what he permits is even more shocking. For example, John Paul named Walter Kasper a bishop and then a cardinal, even though Kasper doesn't even believe that Jesus performed the "nature miracles" of the Scripture, or raised anyone from the dead. [Kasper, JESUS THE CHRIST p. 90.] Even supposed champions of orthodoxy such as Cardinal O'Connor were leftists compared to pre-Vatican II Catholicism. This book has a few flaws. It started out as a collection of articles and it could have been edited a bit better. Some of the language will strike non-Catholics as a little overblown. Nonetheless, it is one of the more eye-opening books that one could read.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Facade... a great read!
Review: I found this book very useful in helping me understand Catholic Traditionalism, the reasons for it, and the arguments in its favour. Mr Ferrara and Dr Woods write in a very clear and convincing style, which can be greatly refreshing to those of us who are used to muddling our way through the confused and impenetrable writings issued by the Catholic Church since Vatican II. Unlike other books on the subject, Ferrara and Woods avoid the temptation to focus solely on one area of post-conciliar controversy (e.g., the Mass, religious liberty), instead they skilfully navigate the reader through the many foundational issues raised by traditionalists, and this with the help of the limp arguments raised by what they describe as 'Neo-Catholics'. Not being an American I was quite unfamiliar with Neo-Catholicism beforehand, but Ferrara and Woods give a very informative outline of the movement before going on to demonstrate just how contradictory and error-riddled it is. I found their analysis both brilliant and devastating, and it even includes great flashes of humour, many of which had me literally laughing out loud! I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone seeking a good general treatment of Catholic Traditionalism and the arguments in its favour. Because of its comprehensiveness and assessable style I believe the book would be very useful for those seeking a good thorough introduction to the whole Catholic Traditionalist movement.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Facade... a great read!
Review: I reply to the "review" of my book by James Likoudis. Mr. Likoudis fails to make a disclsoure he ought in fairness to have made: That he is strongly criticized in my book (co-authored with Tom Woods) for his erroneous and obfuscationist views on various aspects of the postconciliar crisis in the Church, for which he endlessly finds excuses whenever it comes to the policy decisions of Rome that have brought on the crisis. Mr. Likoudis is no "reviewer" but rather a prominent example, cited as such, of the book's very thesis: that "neo-Catholics" like himself have prolonged the post-conciliar crisis in the Church by counseling Catholics, out of false obedience, to accept the ruinous changes approved by the Vatican in the name of the Second Vatican Council, when Catholics have every right to object to the changes and to refuse to adopt them. For example, no Catholic was ever obliged to attend the New Mass. Mr. Likoudis's opinion (expressed 20 years ago in his The Pope, the Council and The Mass) that the Old Mass had been legally prohibited has since been demolished by Vatican prelates, including no less than Cardinal Ratzinger, who now concede that the Old Mass was never abrogated by Paul VI. To counter Mr. Likoudis's bogus "review" I have assigned five stars to the book. That resets the average review to reflect what truly indepedent readers may think of the work pro or con. It is the only way I can think of to counter this defect in the Amazon.com review system. Let the buyer beware that "reviewers" of products on Amazon.com are very often people with a very personal stake in the "review." I do not, of course, claim that this "review" has been posted for any other reason than to counter Mr. Likoudis's less than candid failure to disclose his adverse personal interest in the matter. Christopher A. Ferrara
Co-author
Rating:
Summary: To Conservative Catholics
Review: If you are a Conservative Catholic who has just witnessed another clown Mass, or had to put up with a "homily" from Sr. Snakebite, or if you are sick of seeing laypersons handling the True Presence with their grubby hands, here is my advise: buy this book, and try a traditional Roman Rite Mass (Tridentine). Try to go to an FSSP Mass, but you can go to an SPX also. Do some research on the web and you will see that you can attend an SPX Mass and fulfill your Sunday obligation - it is not a sin to attend. As for the bad review from the neo-Catholic, please consider this statement which the Church has decreed heretical: "17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. (Condemned in the Syllabus of Errors)". Does JPII still condemn this? If not, then he is in error.
Rating:
Summary: To Conservative Catholics
Review: If you are a Conservative Catholic who has just witnessed another clown Mass, or had to put up with a "homily" from Sr. Snakebite, or if you are sick of seeing laypersons handling the True Presence with their grubby hands, here is my advise: buy this book, and try a traditional Roman Rite Mass (Tridentine). Try to go to an FSSP Mass, but you can go to an SPX also. Do some research on the web and you will see that you can attend an SPX Mass and fulfill your Sunday obligation - it is not a sin to attend. As for the bad review from the neo-Catholic, please consider this statement which the Church has decreed heretical: "17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. (Condemned in the Syllabus of Errors)". Does JPII still condemn this? If not, then he is in error.
Rating: 
Summary: A "Traditionalist" Screed Against Vatican II and the Popes
Review: It is a sad fact that the postconciliar disorders in the Catholic Church have resulted in the disorientation of some Catholics who vent their spleen against the Second Vatican Council and the Popes who amidst great difficulties have sought to implement correctly the Council's 16 documents. Such is the case with authors Ferrara and Woods who in the name of their own presumptious understanding of "Tradition" violently attack the doctrinal orientations and disciplinary directives decided by an Ecumenical Council.The measures of Vatican II intended to strengthen the Church against the "acids of modernity" threatening historical Christianity are judged by these extremist writers to have betrayed Catholic Tradition. They therefore engage in a fierce polemic on behalf of a "militant traditionalism" in Lefebrvist fashion and full of sound and fury against those Catholics who have steadfastly defended Vatican II and the Popes from mindless charges of having contradicted past Catholic doctrine. They refuse to acknowledge that the Church is one in all her Councils and wallow in their direct opposition to the mind of the Church which calls for acceptance of and obedience to the teachings of Vatican II as set forth in its authentic declarations and decrees. The Ecumenical Council and the Popes are simplistically blamed for all the abuses and scandals and evils which have disfigured the life of the Church since the close of the Council. Our authors add their own spirit of disobedience to complement the disobedience to
Vatican II by unabashed neo-Modernist dissenters. It is the negative aspects of liturgical reform (admittedly poorly carried out in all too many dioceses and parishes) which have especially provoked the ire of the authors who engage in one long rant against any changes in the Roman liturgy. They betray great confusion concerning the meaning and scope of the Church's infallibility, and their relentless attitude of negation, contestation, and doubt registered towards the teachings of Vatican II results in a volume that constitutes a distinct disservice to the Church. Readers of this volume will find it contains many distortions concerning the work and teachings of Vatican II- distortions that are fueled by a "hermeneutics of suspicion" towards the modern Papacy that is characteristic of romantic reactionaries wishing "this confusing and divisive Council" had never happened. There result denunciation and castigation of the Popes for the alleged misuse of Papal authority. The authors'main message to their readers is straightforward but wrong: Vatican II was evil and the Popes implementing it are to be blamed for the present corruption in the Church.Pope Paul VI long ago stigmatized the exact mentality and attitude manifested by our authors: "There are those, who, under the pretext of a greater fidelity to the Church and the Magisterium, systematically refuse the teaching of the Council itself, its application and the reforms that stem from it, its gradual application by the Apostolic See and the Episcopal Conferences, under our authority, willed by Christ. Discredit is cast upon the authority of the Church in the name of a Tradition, to which respect is professed only materially and verbally.The faithful are drawn away from the bonds of obedience to the See of Peter and to their rightful bishops: today's authority is rejected in the name of yesterday's...It is painful to take note of this: but how can we not see in such an attitude-whatever may be these people's intentions- the placing of themselves outside obedience and communion with the Successor of Peter and therefore outside the Church." (Address, 24 May 1976)
This unfortunate book will only serve to cofirm those already theologically confused in their alienation from the Catholic Church. Readers seeking a far more objective evaluation of the Second Vatican Council, the need for real reform, and the real causes of the Crisis of Faith sweeping the entire Christian world can be found in Philip Trower's "Truth and Turmoil: The Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church" (available from Amazon.com).
- James Likoudis
Rating: 
Summary: Show me the money
Review: The book is a facile kind of look at the break down of the belief and discipline of the Catholic Church following the close of Vatican II. Our authors begin with the traditional traditionalists' charge of double standards. "MOM!! How come Timmy gets a bigger slice of lemon cake than me!!?? YOU LOVE HIM BETTER THAN ME!!! WAAAAAAAHHHH!!!" For instance, they bemoan the fact that the Vatican came down with both feet on the head of the SSPX, denouncing them as in "schism", while showing excessive paternal indulgence for the open denial of Petrine authority on the part of the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) of China. From there, the authors make hay by claiming a double standard. Unfortunately for the reader, the authors leave off certain interesting facts that might otherwise disturb the rosy image they paint of the SSPX. For one thing, Bishop Fellay openly admitted that the SSPX had begun granting annulments, something over which it has absolutely no jurisdiction, pre-1962 or otherwise. Woods and Ferrara paint the SSPX as just faithful Catholics interested in preserving the liturgical norms and customs of the pre-Vatican II Church. If this is true, why won't the priests just begin transitioning into the FSSP and the Society of St. John? Why do they continue to operate outside of the authority of local ordinaries? Why do they insist on granting annulments when their founder, Lefebre, never claimed such a purpose for his fraternity? Lefebre intended his illicit consecrations to be for the purpose of preserving valid sacraments, not in supplanting the prerogatives of the Roman Rota.
Just the other day, I came across a web site of Michael I, a character elected to be the true pope by six of his fellow Kansans, including his mum and dad. Habemus papam after 30+ years. Guess where he and his family hailed from? The SSPX schismatics out in Kansas. Turns out that Pope Michael I was raised in the SSPX and even attended an SSPX seminary in Europe before being booted out. These sorts of nut jobs abound within the SSPX but you'd never know this from reading the account of victimized traditionalists in this book. The authors say that the priests of SSPX pray for the real pontiff and the local bishop during the Mass, but they fail to mention the various sedevacantist conspiracy theorists who make up the membership of the SSPX. I've no idea whether the SSPX is truly and technically a schismatic group; I'm not a canonist and neither are the authors, but I do know from talking to some of its members that they harbor and promote a spirit of schism in their chapels. Many of them insist that the Novus Ordo is invalid. They continue to operate one of their chapels only twenty minutes from an approved FSSP parish in my diocese. Why? Whining about the unfair treatment of the CPA is especially disingenuous; we've no idea what circumstances or factors are guiding the Vatican in its mission to fix the schism in China, but I'd like to remind Catholics that on the day of judgment, they will be accountable for their own actions, not those of their bishops. You're not likely to run into the CPA in your local neighborhood in Anywhere, USA, but you might run into a kook waving pictures of the real Paul VI versus his body double (the nose is the giveaway btw). The authors never share the letters and testimony of SSPX priests like Robert Neville who finally reject the cafeteria Catholicism of the SSPX and enter into ecclesiastically-approved religious institutes; the authors' interminable whine just drowns out all fair introspection. According to Neville, the spirit of schism among the priests is such that a number of them, as a matter of principle, alter the Roman Canon, omitting prayers for the pope and the local ordinary. These are not the only alterations taking place.
As a previous reviewer noted, the authors go off on a bizarre tangent regarding evolution vs. biblical creationism. What the reviewer doesn't note though is that Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is himself a partisan of the view that the Church is non compos mentis when she addresses secular sciences like economics. Dr. Woods has established minor notoriety for his rather immature non-defense of the compatibility of Catholicism with Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism; according to him, "churchmen", a pejorative sounding term used to describe a number of popes, can be safely ignored when they talk about the need for the state to provide for the poor, children and the sick. However, on p. 271, Woods and his partner describe St. Pius X's Pontifical Biblical Commission as a part of the "ordinary Magisterium". Really? Granting this, does it follow that Pius X's teachings regarding creation are binding as well, even if at odds with scientific evidence and theory? Is Pius good enough to declare authoritatively and definitively on science but not on the morality of capitalism? We would certainly hope so, lest it hurt Dr. Woods' position within the anarcho-capitalist parallel universe.
The authors' rather puerile theological investigations lead them to conclude that Ratzinger's understanding of matter and form in the resurrected bodies is heretical, but they seem completely unaware that the glorified body of the Lord evinced special properties even in the New Testament. The issue has also been taken up by St. Thomas and other learned doctors of the Church. Bi-location and hovering are part and parcel of hagiographical studies. St. Thomas Aquinas levitated, Padre Pio is rumored to have bi-located, the list goes on. Ratzinger's a very mature theologian capable of sifting through the heretical and the orthodox, but Woods and Ferrara can't make it that far without falling into hysterics. The authors provide a few sentences from Ratzinger and then conclude that he is somehow denying the physical resurrection of the body. The authors manage to sum up the prodigious theological output of a private theologian in two or three paragraphs; and the conclusion of course is that Ratzinger flirts with heresy. Woods himself is a convert from Lutheranism and had only been a Catholic for -- what? -- a few months or a year before laying waste to the cardinal! Woods and Ferrara easily condemn and castigate on the thinnest evidence sometimes, evincing a lack of good will and charity while giving creedence to the charge that traditionalists are inevitably just angry formalists.
Rating:
Summary: Understanding the Traditionalist movement
Review: This book gives insight into what the whole traditionalist fuzz is about. Why do some people long for the restoration of the Latin mass? What has happened to the Church over the last 40 years? The answers while interesting are a bit one sided.
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