When it comes to Vatican II, the kidney stone of Church Councils, the balm of oblivion over time is perhaps the best solution. That at least would free us from the sickening lies of what a blessing Vatican II has been for the Church. I have been hearing this since 1965, and repetition does not make it a whit truer.
Thought for the Day
- 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.
Spot on.
As a kid of the 80’s and 90’s, the amount of abuse I saw in the name of Vatican II was horrendous, both liturgically and at the parish level.
This is such an on the nose example of Chesterton’s Fence, but way too many people who were desirous of “reform” would rather watch everything burn than admit it was wrong to knock down the proverbial fence.
What the Council actually called for has been largely ignored. So blaming the Council seems a bit out of sorts.
The Second Vatican Council is, almost entirely, what Mr. McClarey says it is. The part about the Eastern Churches reestablishing their identities and throwing out Latinisms is a good thing, but most of the rest of it could be sent to history’s ash heap.
The new liturgy has been a disaster. EWTN celebrates the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI as it should be but it seems almost nobody else does. Liturgy is at the core of Catholic worship and identity.
As for the documents, I read that Bishop Fellay of the SSPX had no problem with about 95% of it. The disagreements over what is left are unresolvable.
It would not have hurt to take the Missal of 1955 or 1962 and celebrate a part of it in the vernacular and leave the Roman Canon in Latin.
The Missal Paul VI promulgated was not what the Council called for.
The Missal Paul VI promulgated was not what the Council called for.
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Christopher Ferrara has offered that you need to read the Vatican II documents as if you were a lawyer reviewing a contract and looking for what it allowed the other guy to do to your client. It’s his thesis that the swill we were served was in fact what the documents allow.
I wonder if it’s time for another council. It’s been 60 years. I know i’d be nervous if they announced one, but there have been a lot of changes in recent generations that the Church hasn’t addressed at least in their current form.
I’d love to see a document addressing post-modernism, with the traditional teachings about the soul and the sexes. Maybe even make some of JP’s theology of the body more official. Address sexual and medical ethics. We already have those teachings, but a clear new statement of them would carry weight.
One document I’d be afraid of could be on trade, immigration, and internationalism. But the Church has teachings about these subjects, and the international system has changed a lot since the 1960’s. A lot of people care about this.
Liturgical norms. Obviously. The TLM and the jurisdiction over it, innovations, specific rules on reception of Communion, and recognition of the Anglican Ordinariate.
Maybe the biggest one, addressing evangelical “non-denominational” Protestantism. There are potentially some new heresies in the movement. A lot of these people think they’re “Christian”, practicing like the early Church, and maybe they used to be or still consider themselves Catholic. Mainstream Protestantism is a shell of what it was, and anathemas provide clarity.
Just some thoughts.
Because the last one worked out so well.
Art-
100% agree.
In the 60s you had a good showing of orthodoxy in a council and we *still* got documents that actually (or seemed to) allow modernists to run rampant like an angry teenager – with a flamethrower.
Any orthodox at a council would be numerically overwhelmed by the modernists, the lukewarm and the secularists.
I don’t know the way out of the post V2 carnage, but I take comfort that He does.
So no more councils? Just synods with ambiguous authority?
For Eastern Catholics, it was a true renewal according to tradition. If only the Latin Church had followed the same path.
I do love TLM, but…
1. The issue(s) with Novus Ordo… are the abuses of Novus Ordo… not the Novus Ordo Itself.
2. And the root of the abuse, is most commonly a mistaken focus on human performance(s).
3. Too often amplified by a gay or effeminate clergy who demand attention on themselves rather than Christ.
4. While ignoring what Christ Teaches through the Church, then thinking “a performance” will bring people back.
V2 abuse by human agents is “the problem”.
Proposing that a return exclusively to TLM as “the only solution” is an equal and opposite error for then V2 was not Guided by the Holy Spirit.
In my experience, the mess of the liturgy stems from the preference of the pastor / administrator and / or a desire by the pastor / administrator to accommodate constituencies within the congregation. I’ve come across the occasional twink-type playing a keyboard (Manlius, NY) or acting as a eucharistic minister (Blessed Sacrament, Rochester). As far as I can tell, the people being placated are a small corps of late-middle-aged women (or are the husbands of late-middle-aged women). I attended one parish where as far as I could tell the purpose of the music program was to please the music director, who had recruited no choir and played ditties on an upright piano that sounded like scores of Hallmark Channel productions. One of the durable parishioners tells me that the parish hired a local music professor to improve the music program and he departed in despair ‘ere long. (The music director was evidently quite a dynamo in her younger years. She also kept playing the piano there until age 77, departing with a retiring pastor. One curio. She died at the age of 89 a few years back. A chatty obituary presumably composed by one of her five surviving children concluded with ‘no services are planned’).
Art:
“Small corps of late-middle aged women” and their husbands.
The same ones “teaching” religion in too many Catholic high schools. (Sigh).
The Fruits of Vatican II:
-The emptying of churches & sale of the properties given to the Church many years before – sold to prop up dioceses in penury.
-The abandoning of their priestly vocation by thousands of priests over the two decades following the close of the council. I had 5 friends form college years in the late 1950’s who did so, and I can’t understand why. Oh – hang on……
With any hope, the Spirit of Vatican II will die with those who promulgated it and then, and with them answering for what they destroyed, the orthodox core can set about righting the barque over the next 100 years. I’ll never live to see it but I and my ilk had far more children then they did and my children and grandchildren will stamp out the embers of their legacy.
With his sociologist hat on and making reference to his own survey research, Andrew Greeley estimated about 20% of the priest corps as it was in 1965 were released from their vows. IIRC, he attributed it to demoralization derived from ‘the belief we do nothing well’.
That loss of priests after V2 also may have been a result of many in the hierarchy assuring priests that one of the “reforms” would be allowing men with Holy Orders to marry. When that didn’t materialize, many simply gave up and left, as “marital relations” were more important to them than their vocations. Such was the theory of one elderly priest at my first parish 20 years back, anyway. Interesting thought.
I always think about something St. Thomas More said, that we don’t need more priests, we need fewer.
The Novus Ordo liturgy was the work of Cardinal Bugnini. He lied to Paul VI and he lied to the committee on the liturgy. This has been documented. Paul VI rewarded Bugnini for his liturgical work by shipping him off to Iran.
Bugnini wanted to remove “stumbling blocks” for Protestants to become Catholic. I believe there were Protestant pastors who worked on the liturgy. Might be wrong about that.
Again:
The Novus Ordo missal was not called for by the Council;
Anibale Bugnini lied about it;
For over 50 years, the Mass of Paul VI has been a lump.of Silly Putty, contorted to whatever the celebrating priest, Bishop or “liturgical committee” wants. Atrocious music, Communion in the hand, Eucharistic ministers, wreckovations….the fruits of the Counci.
English speaking countries should use the Anglican Ordinariate missal to pray the Mass in English.
The Congregation for Divine Worship issued an instruction in 2004 that Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist were not to be used in circumstances which were…ordinary. It was ignored in the Diocese of Syracuse at the instruction of Bp. James Moynihan. A priest who promoted communion on the tongue was called in and reprimanded by the Bishop and his auxilliary for doing that. He tells me that after the meeting he never wanted to see those two again.
Maybe some enterprising priest can work on getting called in for such meetings so often that the chancery office lacks the time to harass the rest.
Throw out all the ECs.
Meeting
Ad orientem
Meeting
Preach the four last things
Meeting
Say at Christmas “We’re open all year”
Meeting
Good men and bad men only have 24 hours in a day 😁
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