Customer Reviews

The Renovation Manipulation: The Church Counter-Renovation Handbook

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The Renovation Manipulation is an essential tool for bewildered Catholics whose churches are under attack by a small but powerful cartel of contemporary iconoclasts.

Over the past 30 years, as the tempo mounted in a drive to drastically remodel churches, few laymen and women had the relevant Church documents at hand to defend their territory when the professional liturgical designer hit town. Faithful Catholics were thus largely helpless before claims that the Second Vatican Council mandated the proposed flood of innovations in church architecture, design and liturgical practice.

Normally docile though they are, most Catholics do not want their houses of worship to look like high school gymnasiums. They are uncomfortable when commanded to watch each other pray across a central table altar, rather than to gaze reverently at a crucifix above the altar. They are offended when the tabernacle in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved disappears into a broom closet beside the furnace room. But they have lacked the documentation to prove that these orders represent merely idiosyncratic interpretation by a self-designated elite.

In The Renovation Manipulation, Michael Rose explicates the problem and provides exactly the documents needed to enable the faithful -- both lay and clerical -- to defend and preserve the liturgical forms, art and architecture of the Catholic church according to the authentic norms of her tradition and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

He has done his Church a great service, and done it thoroughly, articulately and with civility. His book is highly recommended.

For the past thirty years dissident elements in the Catholic Church have been stripping parish churches, cathedrals and basilicas alike of their distinctive Catholic iconography and liturgical furnishings, all in the name of non-existent Vatican II "mandates". Faithful Catholics, most of whom have never read the documents of Vatican II, have watched in dismay, or even horror, as these self-styled "liturgy experts" have swooped into their parishes and ripped out Communion rails, marble altars, magnificent pulpits, and baptismal fonts. These liturgical vandals, often sporting impressive-looking "credentials", have torn tabernacles off high altars and hidden them in side rooms, back rooms, or even in former janitor closets. After reducing elegant marble high altars to shards, they have installed table altars in the middle of churches, surrounded by kneeler-less folding chairs arranged in theater-in-the-round fashion. Stations of the Cross have been dismissed as irrelevant and either thrown out or else reduced to abstract smudges. Beautiful statues of the saints have been removed from their places of devotion, smashed into pieces, and thrown into the dumpster. For thirty years faithful Catholics have known in their hearts that these liturgical demolitions were contrary to the Faith, but most remained silent in the face of pastors and bishops who told them that Church law "required" these wholesale destructions of irreplaceable church interiors that had lifted up their hearts and minds to God. Now, at last, comes Michael Rose's book The Renovation Manipulation which is aptly subtitled "The Church Counter-Renovation Handbook". Author Rose prints all the devious canards used by the so-called Liturgical Design Consultants on unsuspecting or poorly catechized parishioners, and then proceeds to demolish them with concise and copious references to authentic Church documents. With this book in the hands of the laity, no longer will the so-called liturgy "experts" be able to invade a parish and remain unchallenged when they attempt to bamboozle the faithful into accepting the liturgical deconstruction of their churches. This book is absolutely required reading for any Catholic who sees a notice in his parish bulletin that certain "changes" "may be necessary", or that a capital fund drive is in the offing. Buy several copies of this book and get them into the hands of the movers and shakers in your parish. Do it before they are co-opted by your pastor!

This is an absolute essential handbook for any parish that is going through, or about to go through a Restoration, Rennovation, and Renewal process. Michael Rose has done all the homework to combat the LDC's archi-liturgical psychobabble that is meant to disarm and demean faithful parishoners.Rose sites official church documents whenever available to prove that we do not have to stand for letting our beautiful churches be stripped and whitewashed, or be told the way we practice our faith is outdated and wrong according to Vatican II. We are in the fight of our life to preserve the one, true, holy, Roman Catholic Church. Rose's book is critical information for those who want to win the battle!

Michael Rose does an excellent job in exposing the architectural renovators who have come in and dismantled many beautiful Roman Catholic Churches. Even to this day, with examples such as the new Cathedral in Los Angeles and the many round Churches, we continue to see the renovations continue.
This book is a great manual for any parishoner who may be in a parish which is about to undergo a major overhaul or a new Church is in the process of being built. Once you read through this book, one will understand how to defend against the Protestant renovations being discussed. Manipulation has become a key in replacing the tabernacle with a chair or removing the altar rails or side altars, and this book will show that these renovations have no precedence in the history of the Catholic Church.

After suffering through multiple "renovations" where art was destroyed, churches re-arranged and organs thrown out, it is nice to finally have a concise guide to combatting the unnecessary and in some cases, unlawful, renovations of our churches.

A previous review said the book was completely out of context and served to divide. What the author failed to acknowledge is that the arguments explained in Rose's book are all real and all wrong. Division is good when the truth is brought forth. "Consensus" based on falsehoods is never right.

The quotes used by Rose show that what we currently experience is not what the council intended. Even when adding the caveats to them that the previous reviewer did, the quotes still speak volumes against the church stripping we see today.

I subscribe to Rose's St. Catherine Review journal for faithful Catholics, so was familiar with his well-documented stories of how some members of the "American Church" have been teaching errors in Archdiocese of Cincinnati and other places in nation. I've seen the physical destruction of churches and spiritual tearing-apart of souls over church "renovations," and was happy to read there is a "General" who knows what battle plans parishioners can implement to stop the heathen among us. Bravo for Michael Rose and his well-written, very helpful and insightful book which belongs in every diocese.

This book does a good job of explaining why faithful catholics resist the changes being promoted by new age liturgists. These changes reduce the worship of Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament and enhance the worship of ourselves as the "community". This book is easy to read, and is well doccumented.

Michael Rose puts clarity to the issues of the modern American Church renovation movement. He clearly lists the issues which are driving this group of people forward and the damage they do the the Church as a whole and how they seek to use renovation as a means to changing the precepts of the Church itself.

The archi-liturgical movement has clear advocates and lines of defense and attack. The rest of the people have books like this and not much more. If this is happening to you, best of luck and prayer may be your last defense. This book can help you see what may be happening in your parish. Not too much on how to stop it.

Michael S. Rose places in words what we American Catholics have been noticing for decades--our rich Catholic heritage has gone down the tubes!

This is a nicely written book that exposes a process to change the architecture of Catholic churches. It is well referenced. More than anything it exposes an agenda of undermining the majesty and reverance of the Church manifest by secularizing the appearance of design and minimizing the presence of the tabernacle.