The Hermeneutics of Failure

Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings has a look at Vatican II as a failed council:

And now for something completely-different:

It was only sixteen months ago–but it seems like a lifetime, doesn’t it?

Remember the newsworthy joint declaration from the pontiff and the Sunni head of the Al Azhar University in Cairo? That bit about the Almighty willing religious diversity the same way He willed us to be male and female?

In defending that heretofore-unrevealed spin on Catholic teaching, the pontiff was adamant: “From the Catholic point of view, the document does not pull away one millimeter from Vatican II.”

Interpreting what Vatican II said or what the footnotes help it say is an exercise reminiscent of late-stage scholasticism: a lot of ink spilled over puzzling/ambiguous minutiae to no benefit outside of the publishing prospects or feuds of a ring of clerics or clericalized-laity who have been “initiated” and have the parchment to use the technical lingo.

No, for the purposes here, the important thing is that, once again, Vatican II is invoked. In my snarkier moments I call it “Vatican Too,” because like “too,” the council is inserted into an embarrassing number of church contexts.

No ecumenical council insists upon itself quite like the 21st.

But why do we let our thinking be dominated by a failed enterprise?

FAILED ENTERPRISE?!

How can you say any such thing about an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church?

Well, why don’t we do a couple of things before we flee to our fainting couches? First, let’s consider the stated intent of that council.

Back in 1963 Pope Paul VI restated the goals of the Second Vatican Council as follows:

“You know the purpose of this council, which has more participants than any other: As it was expressed by our illustrious predecessor [Pope John XXIII], the Church must appear in its perennial vigor, the instrument of salvation for all; to her Our Lord Jesus Christ has entrusted the deposit of the Faith, to be guarded faithfully and in an apt and convenient way. This energetic vigor of the Church, which illuminates, attracts, moves souls, can take new strength from the council, which meets at the tomb of St. Peter.”

And how has that worked out for us, three generations later? The Church is dead in Western Europe, moribund in Latin America, withering or barely holding its own in Asia and well on the way to irrelevance in North America.

Only sub-Saharan Africa is a place of consistent growth, but it can hardly be taken for granted.

Thus, according the stated goals of Paul VI, one of the presiding popes of that council, Vatican II has failed.

Go here to read the rest.  One of the problems living in the post Vatican II Church is the historical amnesia that grips both clergy and laity.  The Church has a vast history stretching for 20 centuries.  We forget how many times the Church has changed to meet some challenge, and we have forgotten what may be changed in the Church and what should not be changed.  Vatican II, ironically, has caused the Church to be sealed in amber over the past half century in a sixties mindset, forgetting what came before Vatican II and attempting to ignore all the problems that have beset the Church since Vatican II.  The order of the day has been to put on a Vatican II happy face and to babble about how the Church has done just fine since that Council of Councils.  The act is threadbare now, and it is time to recognize disturbing reality, as reality always wins in the end.  More on this theme tomorrow.