I agree that this is the issue; however, I do think it’s fair to ask…why have these documents been misinterpreted so badly? Was there something about them that caused so much confusion? Have we ever had Church documents cause so much confusion?
One needs to understand what the status of the Church was at the time Vatican 2 occured; and one needs to further understand what the status of the world was (and in particular, since most of us herein live in the United States, that area) in order to understand what happened.
We had had an issue in Theology (and not exclusive to the Church) called Modernism. I intensely dislike any such phrase, as it is one of those which are difficult at best to define (and given that theologians and philosophers cannot define it with any fairly specific detail, lay people are at an even greater disadvantage). However, for lack of any better way of defining things, we proceed: Modernism, at least in part, denied that there was unltimate Truth, from which through revelation the Church had defined doctrines and dogma. In short, Modernists held (in part) that doctrines and dogmas were not lasting, permanent truths, but were malliable and changeable.
Priests were to take an oath against Modernism (which by the way was something like 200 years old). However, for whatever oath they may have taken, it was alive and well in some if not many institutions of higher education, incvluding some seminaries.
Coupled with this, Vatican 2 occured at a time of tremendous upheaval in the US. We were in an interminable war in Souteast Asia; we had recently seen the introduction of a new form of birth control (starting from research at least in the 1940’s and continuing into the 1950’s); we had a population that was first generation post World War 2 that had access far, far greater to post-high school education than their parents did (and all that is attendant with); we saw major changes in society due to emigration of people from local enclaves (Polish, Italian, etc., etc.) relocating because of jobs and the subsequent breakdown of the extended family to the nuclear family and its subsequent breakdown due to divorce (no fault, a new idea); we saw during WW2 the massive influx of women into the workforce during WW2 and the subsequent change after it with women continuing to take jobs out of the home; and the list goes on and on. Sexual behavior had changed, with the significant weakening of attitudes towards brith control; and the Pill only exacebted that change. The net result was a tremendous weakening of authority across the board - familial, political, social and religious.
So out come some documents from the Vatican, saying that we need to take a new look at sacraments, the Church, the Church as it relates to other faiths, etc.
AAnd right on top of that, we had a release of one of the most prophetic documents the Church has produced - Humanae Vitae. A majority report from the commission was leaked before Paul 6 wrote; and when he wrote HV, the backlash was immediate and nuclear. The reaction was from theologians, priests, bishops and the laity, and was so fast and in such stunning ferocity that Paul 6 pretty much folded up and quit writing.
In short, I do not think you can find another such papal document previous to this that received such strong and immeditate rejection. And I would submit this act of rejection of Papal authority did more to give credence to those priests and theologians to go off on their own tangents than did anything in the Vatican 2 documents themselves.
Bishops came back from Rome, and all too often had no plan as to how they would bring these documents to the faithful; leadership was more than sorely lacking.
Subsequent to that we saw the opening up to a far greater degree than before of graduate schools to laity to become theologians; and whatever control the Church might have had before (and that truly is questionable - see the issue of the oath, above) pretty much went up in smoke.
Next came the issue of revising catechesis; and what we ended up was a wholesale tossing of the Baltimore Catechism; but instead of replacing it with something that would teach the Faith and assist in growing faith in the individual, we ended up with a “Jesus is my buddy” watered down, devoid of any understanding of sacraments or doctrine, cut out butterflies and color them excuse for catechesis.
Again, a massive failure on the part of bishops to lead.
The issue, however, is that not all have mis-interpreted the documents. John Paul 2 said repeatedly that the documents of Vatican 2 1) have to be interpreted in the light of 2000 years of Tradition, and 2) there is a lot more work still to be done in order to implement the documents. And the whole Church has not wandered down the wrong path; however, a large portion of the last two generations in the pews has had little effective catechesis, and not a few have had the ideas from Modernist inspired priests and theologians fed to them.
On the other hand, many Catholics have bought and read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and are doing their best to follow the Magisterium. Their best does not include much in the way of following the Church re: ABC, but birth control was not an issue of the documents anyway.
