Vatican II, the most avoidable disaster in the life of the Church. Having a dying Pope open this kidney stone of a council was symbolic of all that was to come.
Move Over Christ, Let Us Take the Wheel
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Couldn’t agree more. The wounds are all self-inflicted.
I hope one day there will be a future Council that will completely rescind all of Vatican II.
Oh but to listen to my parents and their friends, you’d swear V2 was a fresh revelation direct from the Lord himself. The most charitable I can be about it is “they didn’t think this through” when calling it. However, I don’t generally grant that much charity for the most part
To be fair, the world of 1962 was VASTLY different than then one of 1968. That, combined with the complete naivete that evil would never coopt their efforts has left the barque of Peter adrift with neither mast nor rudder.
Lawyers, financial auditors, theologians: if they ever stray from boilerplate phrasing, it’s either because they’re frustrated creative-types or they’re hiding something. And even if they’re merely Shakespeare wannabes, that new phrasing can lead to dangers down the road.
For those of a younger age and unaware of the minutiae, Vatican II was originally supposed to close out Vatican I which was recessed in 1870. Unfortunately, as organizations tend to do, the whole thing morphed into a totally original piece of work. Just as Vatican I went to the edge with the “modernism” thing, Vatican II decided to “reform” as much as they thought they could get away with. This was a perfectly reasonable assumption from the days of pray, pay and obey but society as a whole was in the process of change giving voice to many who were silent before. This, in turn, engendered many a critical look at what had been done at the council. Many felt too much, e.g. the attack on the Latin Mass, and many too little as in not enough attention to women in Church roles, contraception, civil rights, war and peace, etc. Attempts to come up with a religious version of the unified field theory have simply made things worse. There are some things that are valid, true and not subject to change except at the will of the Almighty. Unfortunately, there are always those who think they can improve on His oversights.
Der Spiegal mentions the opponent as communism – a binary struggle.
We see now the infiltration of agents of change so adept at using Catholic words against us
Someone saw power to be had when this was instigated. I always believe when a “disruptive” type of strategy is taken to reform any institution, there is some sort of nefarious agenda behind it to benefit a few. Otherwise, things are left as is and they naturally and organically adjust themselves in increments in response to external factors. Vatican 2 was a brutal internal jolt which was deliberate and they are not being honest as to the “why”.
The thing both the “Vatican II was the New Pentecost on steroids” and “Vatican II was the worst thing to ever befall the Church” have in common is that they both overestimate the effect the Council actually had.
i don’t buy that the church’s bishops who attended the council were wrong and the few laity and clergy who oppose the council sixty years later are right.
Greg:
You are partly correct, for many of the challenges of the ’60s would have hit the Church, Council or no Council. The unwarranted trust of the more left-leaning clerics in the alleged “openness” of the era and the sometimes vague language of some documents gave more radical theologians an opening for changes and interpretations I believe John XXIII would never have countenanced, had he lived. Paul VI was no enforcer and all he did was plead his whole pontificate, to little avail.
“Did we need a council” will be an open question for longer than my lifetime. That we’ve had bad or ineffective councils (like Lateran V) is part of history. To me: we needed a rigorous condemnation of Communism and any attempt to apply Marxist ideas to theology. We needed a firm restatement of the Church’s historical teaching on morality (especially regarding the Sixth Commandment), in light of the wealth and urbanization of the West (for wealthy urban societies historically tend to loose morals). On ecumenism: we could have apologized for bad history and misunderstanding while still proclaiming “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus”. The liturgy should have been left alone.