June–July 2026
MICHAEL DAVIES: THE GREAT DEFENDER OF CATHOLIC TRADITION by Leo Darroch. Arouca Press, March 2026, pp. 488 (ISBN-13: 978-1998492725 ISBN-10: 1998492729). Available in paperback on Amazon or from the LMS website.
Mr Darroch's work serves as an introduction to Michael's influential body of work regarding the post-conciliar liturgical crisis. As a measure of the man and his defence and promotion of the Old Faith, at once tireless and inspirational, herewith a review of one of his landmark publications—penned by another late giant of Catholic Tradition for our June/July 1981 number.
Guilty Men
Pope Paul's New Mass by Michael Davies;
Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, U.S.A.; pp. 673.
Some years ago, when the defences of this country were being reduced steadily to a deplorable state, I was responsible for the remark that there was justification for the assumption, as a not unreasonable hypothesis, that the reduction in question was not haphazard, but deliberately sought. I am not saying that it was deliberately sought and, therefore, conspiratorial; simply that it was a not unreasonable hypothesis to file away in the back of one's mind that this might be the case. For, had anyone set out deliberately to destroy Britain's defences, he could not have done it better than those responsible for their destruction at the time, whatever their motive might have been. Andrew Boyle's excellent study, The Climate of Treason, certainly lends support to this view. Kim Philby was not the only victim of what came to be known as the "Cambridge penetration" (by the K.G.B.) in the thirties. How many victims that penetration claimed we do not know. Certainly, more than Philby.
The same thought came to me when making my way through Michael Davies' third, final and very fair volume of his three under the general heading of "The. Liturgical Revolution". The volume in question is entitled, Pope Paul's New Mass. In it the story of the progressive destruction of the Old Mass and the enthronement of the New is there told in full. The story is devastating. Reading it, I was compelled once again to say to myself as, indeed, I had said before with regard to the liturgical revolution: "I lay no wild accusations with regard to liturgical plotting; but, had any group set out deliberately to destroy the Faith, they could not have done it better than through the destruction of the Mass, which is central to the Faith. If worship is an expression of belief, the way to shatter belief is so to shatter worship that it no longer expresses belief at all or in anything like adequate fashion". This precisely is what has been done.
I am in no way denying the validity of the New Mass; no more is Michael Davies. I am saying simply that it is inadequate in its expression of Catholic Belief—as Davies shows most clearly—and that, as offered in not a few individual cases—there is reason for doubting its validity; the reason being that the New Mass is so constructed that it can be celebrated very easily without the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Indeed, the retired Anglican Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, has expressed himself as most happy with the new Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Mass—to the point where he makes use of it himself with a very good conscience indeed. Apart from this question of validity, it would be fair to say that, nowadays, it is, in fact, incorrect to speak of the New Mass in the singular, so varied has its form become. Present eucharistic activities within the Catholic Church would be described much better if the plural was substituted for the singular. "New Eucharistic Celebrations" are what we ought to speak of. The New Mass is multiform and. for that reason alone, increasingly disruptive. .
What, then, happens to belief under the circumstances just described and which are in no way news to anyone? Where are we? Few seem to know these days·and fewer still seem to care. Progressive clerics, high and low, bolt from the answer like so many frightened rabbits. Under the circumstances, it is no coincidence that a new and bogus theological pluralism has come in to parallel its liturgical counterpart. As unity of worship is shattered, unity of belief follows suit.
Michael Davies' exposure—a better word here than "exposition"—is brilliant and brave; brilliant in its perceptiveness, brave in its willingness to take on the Progressive Liturgical Establishment, commissars and all, in defence of the Old Mass and the Old Faith, of which the Old Mass was so sublime an expression. His courage is supported by an ability to marshall facts in support of his case, which I would rate as unequalled. I have found nothing like it anywhere. You name it and Davies will produce it, chapter and verse, like a rabbit out of a hat, and he is never wrong. It is for this reason, presumably, that Progressives—they include a Cardinal abroad—will not respond to the challenges he throws at them—in no way arrogantly, but with confidence and a quiet puckish humour; the kind of half-smile on his face that makes them uneasy.
It is entirely understandable that this should be so. No one, after all, wants to go into an argument from which he will emerge with the loss, not only of his case, but of his clothes as well. Tin-pot emperors, in particular, are averse from displaying their nudity in public; but this is what they will be forced to do when Davies has finished with them. The Progressive Establishment is full of these people. If they strip off at all, it is in the privacy of their chambers and nowhere else. The last thing they want is the public realisation of what they already know in their hearts—that they have no case. No one knows this better than Davies himself. This is why they refuse public debate with him. This is why they will not read his book. They know it will blow them, along with their case (if they ever had one), sky-high when they do. When you link your life to a lie, the truth is hard to bear. That is why the Progressives run from it. Guilty men are embarrassed when they know they are seen through. And Davies sees right through them in this book. They emerge from his pages, perfect images of their own, slightly ridiculous, selves.
For this reason, no doubt, members of the Progressive Establishment, liturgical and otherwise, have resorted to the kind of duplicity that has led them, again and again, to employ half-truths, ambiguities, more than half-truths and every kind of double-speak in their disruptive progress, which appears to have for its ultimate objective the dismantling not only of the Mass, but of the Church itself. To read Michael Davies' pages is to see laid bare the deceitfulness, to say nothing of the cruelty that has accompanied so much of the so-called liturgical reform. The mark of these abuses is laid bare in Davies' pages and, everywhere, Davies supports his indictment of the whole, unlovely progressive, liturgical "progress" with irrefutable fact. With courage, confidence and quiet humour he lays bare the game of those who may not, indeed, be conspirators in the true meaning of the word, but who most certainly constitute a conspiratio, a breathing together of like-minded revolutionaries, who remain still entrenched in positions of power within the Church and who are still frenetically concerned with the unlovely business of deforming into total destruction what remains of what was once the glory of Christendom; the ancient and splendid liturgy of the Catholic Church.
I am conscious at the end of this review of having said so little. But what can I say of a work of 673 close-packed and detailed pages written in defence not only of the Old Mass, but of the Old Faith, which is our Faith, and of which the Old Mass was so perfect ah expression? I place on record my thanks to the Author not only for his present work, which is so remarkable, but for the two, in the Trilogy, that preceded it. The three are indispensable for an understanding of the troubles of our times. Together, they constitute the finest and most telling commentary that has yet been written on the deformation inflicted on the Catholic Church during the past decade and a half. I commend this third volume of Michael Davies' Trilogy most warmly and very particularly to readers of Christian Order. The least return we can make to the Author of this last magnificent work is not only to buy it, but to read it as well and pass it on to others to read. This way the truth will come out—as it becomes clear in the minds of individual readers. Already it is beginning to emerge. It will grow in strength as we grow strong in our appreciation of it and gather in its support. To read this book is to grow in the truth and to take to ourselves the strength that comes with its possession. The end of that road, under God, is the triumph of the truth. For this we must not only pray but do: "Magna est veritas et prevalebit".
PS:—With reference to the first paragraph of this review-article, readers may be both interested and amused to know it was written well before the storm that broke at the end of March with the publication of Chapman Pincher's, Their Trade is Treachery. — Paul Crane, S.J.