Now I might be just hearing from a few bad apples in a group or have just misunderstood something, but it seems like traditional Catholics have nothing to good to say about V2. Isn’t that heresy?
Maybe you could be a bit more specific Ben Sinner?
It seems difficult to take the position that every ecumenical council meets with good success. If it was heresy to “have nothing good to say” about Vatican II, it would follow that to “have nothing good to say” about any ecumenical council would be heretical. The Fifth Lateran Council was called by Pope Julius II in 1512, who was tardy in fulfilling an oath he made upon his being raised to the pontificate to call a council. Many cardinals and bishops were strongly urging needed reforms and eventually called their own council which was held in Pisa. This finally prompted Pope Julius to call for a general council at which the following calls for reform or action were decreed:
- The stricter regulation of of pawn shops
- Excommunication of anyone who prints anything without permission from the local bishop
- Condemnation of France for recent military actions
- A Call for tithes to finance a crusade against the Turks which never took place.
You can read through every word here.
piar.hu/councils/ecum18.htm
I could not consider anyone a heretic who has misgivings about the decrees of this council which sprang into action unwillingly and finished haltingly. I am suggesting that just as we are permitted to scrutinize and possibly have “nothing good to say” about a council from 500 years ago, so may we do the same for a council 50 years ago.
I have a very studious friend who I sponsored into the Catholic Church in 2002, who has subsequently left the Catholic Church because he thinks he cannot believe in the infallibility of the popes and the ecumenical councils. The problem is that he and many other Catholics have an exaggerated, all-encompassing, non-historical, and ultimately non-Catholic view of infallibility. This makes them vulnerable. If they happen to get into the sometimes less than edifying histories of ecumenical decrees and how they came about, they are scandalized. I am not going to spend one second trying to spin history so that it will appear that the Holy Ghost inspired the Catholic Church to raise funds for a crusade that never took place. I can be a good Catholic without doing that. The only actions of ecumenical councils that MUST be defended are those where dogmas are being defined infallibly.
For the record, I have been repeating myself over and over here about the decrees of the Council in regard to seminary training with priority given to the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. I like this. I have “something good to say about the Council”. But if somebody disagrees, as 99% of the bishops apparently do, it is still not an infallible proposition. It is not dogma. It is practical strategy…just like the tithes for a Crusade that never materialized. A practical strategy is neither true nor false. Only doctrinal propositions can be true or false. Practical strategies can be either prudent or imprudent. In my opinion, faithful Catholics cannot be called heretics merely for having opinions about the prudence of practical strategies one way or the other, even if they should be decreed in an ecumenical council. I hope I have illustrated why I believe it is essential that Catholics have this liberty to respectfully scrutinize practical conciliar decrees, and recognize the historical necessity of it.
