Clearing up the myths and truths about Vatican II

[JustaServant]

I know we have had enough V2 threads here. It’s like OSAS on Apologetics or Non-Catholic religions.
But I want to give people here an opportunity, not to argue, but to clear things up as to what V2 said and didn’t say.
I want this to be a POSITIVE thread. So stay away from the “spirit of” arguments.

So tell us how the Church has benefitted from the actual documents and implemination of Vatican II?

Go!!

 

[dominic_aquinas]

Well, I believe according to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, that Vatican II was never really implemented correctly. The liturgical abuses and the resulting decline in faithful and vocations was due to incorrect implementation. So, your question cannot be answered since there never was a widespread correct implementation of Vatican II. The question would then be “would a widespread correct implementation have led to a different outcome?” I believe only God knows.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

If some good and honest scholar would write a full book length HISTORY of the Vatican II Council, including the Renewal that followed it (and which I presume has not ended yet), I think THAT ALONE would enable lots of people to better understand what that Council was and is.

As any investigator knows, the first thing is to know and see WHAT HAPPENED. Only then can you make a judgment about what happened.

The history of the Vatican II Council is not just the period when the popes and bishops met in Rome from 1962 to 1965, but is also the history of what those very same bishops and that very same pope did in the 10, 20, and 30 years following 1965 to IMPLEMENT the Council.

Some people talk and write as if some persons other than the Council’s bishops implemented that Council. How can that be, unless aliens invaded the body’s of the bishops and controlled them after 1965? It seems really ridiculous to claim, as some seem to do, that the Council’s bishops knew the true meaning of the Council when they were meeting together in Rome, but then someone immediately forgot the true meaning when they left to go back to their home dioceses, and that Pope Paul VI somehow forget the real meaning to after the Council ended. To say that the Council was wrongly implemented is an absurdity and sheer, ludicrous historical revisionism.

The Council and its effects on the Church and the world are the same thing.

After a doctor gives a medicine to a patient, and the patient’s health is changed obviously in response to the medicine, no one can later that the medicine had nothing to do with the changes.

It is WAY, way too late now to claim that the Vatican II Council COULD have been such a great thing IF ONLY the popes and bishops hadn’t all gotten amnesia right after the last session of the Council meetings ended. If you don’t like the Renewal that the popes and bishops implemented, then you don’t like the Council. Period.

To claim that the Vatican II Council can be divorced from its effect is like the old heresy of Docetism that said that Jesus Christ did not have a real body.

We NEED a good, in depth, honest HISTORY OF THE RENEWAL OF THE VATICAN II COUNCIL.

We all need to see clearly and fully WHAT HAPPENED from 1962 to 2012.

 

[Megan7]

If some good and honest scholar would write a full book length HISTORY of the Vatican II Council, including the Renewal that followed it (and which I presume has not ended yet), I think THAT ALONE would enable lots of people to better understand what that Council was and is.

As any investigator knows, the first thing is to know and see WHAT HAPPENED. Only then can you make a judgment about what happened.

The history of the Vatican II Council is not just the period when the popes and bishops met in Rome from 1962 to 1965, but is also the history of what those very same bishops and that very same pope did in the 10, 20, and 30 years following 1965 to IMPLEMENT the Council.

Some people talk and write as if some persons other than the Council’s bishops implemented that Council. How can that be, unless aliens invaded the body’s of the bishops and controlled them after 1965? It seems really ridiculous to claim, as some seem to do, that the Council’s bishops knew the true meaning of the Council when they were meeting together in Rome, but then someone immediately forgot the true meaning when they left to go back to their home dioceses, and that Pope Paul VI somehow forget the real meaning to after the Council ended. To say that the Council was wrongly implemented is an absurdity and sheer, ludicrous historical revisionism.

The Council and its effects on the Church and the world are the same thing.

After a doctor gives a medicine to a patient, and the patient’s health is changed obviously in response to the medicine, no one can later that the medicine had nothing to do with the changes.

It is WAY, way too late now to claim that the Vatican II Council COULD have been such a great thing IF ONLY the popes and bishops hadn’t all gotten amnesia right after the last session of the Council meetings ended. If you don’t like the Renewal that the popes and bishops implemented, then you don’t like the Council. Period.

To claim that the Vatican II Council can be divorced from its effect is like the old heresy of Docetism that said that Jesus Christ did not have a real body.

We NEED a good, in depth, honest HISTORY OF THE RENEWAL OF THE VATICAN II COUNCIL.

We all need to see clearly and fully WHAT HAPPENED from 1962 to 2012.

Thanks for the thread & post. Will read later on.

 

[latingirl]

We have more Scripture readings! That I like very much. RCIA ia also a wonderful thing. Helped me come into the Church 5 years ago.

 

[latingirl]

…and I’m sorry but alot of the Second Vatican Council wasn’t properly implemented. This is coming from a person who has read all 16 documents. Look at Sacrosanctum Comcuilium and tell me how many parishes closely follow it. Maybe it’s just a thing in the US… I’m not arguing against the validity of the Council and as you can see above I stated it has done good things. But to say some of the things that have happened like liturgical dance or the removal of all Latin for example, were intentional by the Church, is ludicrous. You can read plainly in the documents such drastic changes weren’t intended.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

…and I’m sorry but alot of the Second Vatican Council wasn’t properly implemented. This is coming from a person who has read all 16 documents. Look at Sacrosanctum Comcuilium and tell me how many parishes closely follow it. Maybe it’s just a thing in the US… I’m not arguing against the validity of the Council and as you can see above I stated it has done good things. But to say some of the things that have happened like liturgical dance or the removal of all Latin for example, were intentional by the Church, is ludicrous. You can read plainly in the documents such drastic changes weren’t intended.

Everything that goes on in public in the Catholic Church is done by the decree or permission of the bishops and the pope. No bishop or pope can claim they have been ignorant of what’s been going on, what is still going on. So, anyone who dares to say that the Vatican II Council was wrongly implemented is indicting and charging John Paul II and all the bishops with episcopal negligence, malfeasance, or even “high crimes and misdemeanors.” We must use REASON, and not be “apologists” in the worse sense of that word.

 

[edwest2]

Pope Benedict gave us significant information this year:

ncregister.com/daily-news/benedict-and-the-second-vatican-council-calming-the-storm/

ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-media-spread-misinterpretations-of-vatican-ii/

These two articles clearly tell us confusion and misery occurred because the true Council was buried under a media cloud. But dissidents inside and outside the Church were hard at work to destroy family life for the average Catholic in the pew and to create problems within the Church right after the end of the Council in 1965. It would be necessary to create a series of messages for spokesmen and organizations to spread confusion, divide the flock, and send them in the wrong direction. The three-pronged attack focused on women, Catholic education and deceiving the media.

1966 The radical, anti-family National Organization for Women is founded.

The fruit: www.now.org/

1967 Catholic higher education was somehow convinced that freedom meant a break with the Church hierarchy. The fruit: A big mistake as shown in later years.

catholichistory.net/Events/LandOLakesStatement.htm

Comments by George Weigel writing 40 years later:

"As I read Ellis, though, he was urging Catholic colleges and universities to play-to-strength by making themselves into first-rate liberal arts institutions with a distinctively Catholic character; he wasn’t urging Catholic colleges and universities to imitate every contemporary fashion in the wider world of American higher education.

“The Land O’Lakes signatories would deny that that’s what they wanted; but that’s largely what they got, thanks to the statement’s call for “true autonomy,” which was read in many quarters as invalidating any significant relationship between Catholic colleges and universities and the teaching authority of the Church. The new “magisterium” to be followed would be the vision of higher education defined by elite American schools. Alas, this was precisely the moment when Harvard, Berkeley, Cornell, and other trend-setting universities were in intellectual, cultural, and moral meltdown.”

1967 Although The Pill was first approved in 1960, it did not see widespread marketing until 1967 when Time magazine ran a cover story titled: “Contraception: Freedom from Fear.” Fear of what? Babies. And who would be taking The Pill? Women. Like any product, it had to have a selling point. This was another false freedom. It was to remove the idea that a baby was a “bundle of joy” or a “gift from God.”

1968 Pope Paul VI saw the clear message of the sex without love revolution and decided to reaffirm constant Church teaching against artificial birth control. One would think that the Pope’s clear explanation of the meaning of marriage and the responsibilty for having children were underscored by his prediction that if his words were not heeded, there would be an increase in promiscuity. I mean, Catholics in the pews would certainly listen to the Pope, but certain theologians were very upset about it.

"Within 24 hours, in an event unprecedented in the history of the Church, more than 200 dissenting theologians signed a full-page ad in The New York Times in protest. Not only did they declare their disagreement with encyclical’s teaching; they went one step further, far beyond their authority as theologians, and actually encouraged dissent among the lay faithful.

"They asserted the following: “Therefore, as Roman Catholic theologians, conscious of our duty and our limitations, we conclude that spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the values and sacredness of marriage.”

Source: Regnum Christi

Here was the turning point. A blatant rebuke of the Pope!

1969 But there was one more form of birth control to be promoted, abortion. How it was done and how much deception and falsehood were involved is clearly explained here:

catholicnewsagency.com/resources/abortion/articles-and-addresses/an-ex-abortionist-speaks/

As you can see, the Catholic Church had to be painted as the enemy. Later, Dr. Nathanson would become a Catholic.

1970s So, how do you get Catholics to see human sexuality in all the wrong ways? In 1968, the worst you could do legally was Playboy and it just featured photos of partly or fully nude women.

The strategy was simple: take away the privacy and sacredness of the moral sexual act of the married couple and present it for the world to see. An underground media was created and it costs millions of dollars. By opening Adult Bookstores, strip clubs and topless bars everywhere, it was all put right in front of us. It was the beginning of porn addiction, sex addiction and masturbation addiction at a new, increased level. If Playboy was a soft drug, this was the new opiate of the masses.

Then “Head Shops” began to appear in our neighborhoods. They sold underground anarchist/marxist/leftist newspapers and underground comix that featured perverse sexual activity. They also sold paraphernalia to help you identify with the dope and Hippie culture that recognized no authority.

The 1960s and 1970s were identified as the golden age for dissidents inside the Church. And what do dissidents do?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654282563939764.html

continued…

 

[Megan7]

…and I’m sorry but alot of the Second Vatican Council wasn’t properly implemented. This is coming from a person who has read all 16 documents. Look at Sacrosanctum Comcuilium and tell me how many parishes closely follow it. Maybe it’s just a thing in the US… I’m not arguing against the validity of the Council and as you can see above I stated it has done good things. But to say some of the things that have happened like liturgical dance or the removal of all Latin for example, were intentional by the Church, is ludicrous. You can read plainly in the documents such drastic changes weren’t intended.

I have been to many different states, countries, and I am puzzled by the fact, that
a Church that belongs to the LATIN RITE, there is no Latin in the Masses at all.

My grandmother tells me, how you used to be able to travel anywhere in the country, world, and find Masses, where you would hear Latin prayers, Greek prayers, etc.

Its like when you visit a McDonalds anywhere in the world, its the same old,
same old food (not that its good for ya, LOL) but you know what to expect,

Same as with a US Embassy, you visit any part of the world, and they all speak
English, you know how comforting that is when you are in Brazil or Germany
& you do not speak the native language, but you feel right at home at the
Embassy. That is how the Catholic Church used to be…Now, everywhere you
go, you do not know what to expect:bighanky:

Now, imagine going to Mass anywhere in the world, and hearing the same prayers, in Latin & Greek. WOW!!
Well, that is what my grandmother had the blessing to enjoy.

Now, do not get me wrong, I have visited one Church in New York City,
with the most wonderful Priest. Father George Rutler.
God bless this Holy Priest. A protestant convert. He has the most BEAUTIFUL REVERENT Mass in the OF, as well as a Mass in Latin that I have had the blessing of attending.
ALL of the different Masses he prays, have Latin, Greek & REVERENCE.
If you ever have the chance to be in New York,
please visit his Church.
Church of Our Saviour on 59 Park Avenue, NY NY 10016
There is a 3 minute video in link with a view of the inside of this Church, with Father
Rutler speaking.

oursaviournyc.org/

Father Rutler’s Church of Our Saviour is the exception…

So, why is it that we do not have Masses with Latin & Greek all over the world,
in the OF like this wonderful Church has?

Now, I love the EF Mass as well, but it would be nice to have both forms with
LATIN & GREEK all over the world to enjoy.

And it would also be nice to have access to the EF form of the Mass all over the
world, when in fact Pope Benedict XVI said clearly that the Mass in the EF
should have never been eliminated…

God bless.

P.S:

1. Dear Brother JR. I wish you would help me understand, why the Latin prayers
   were eliminated from the LATIN Rite in so many parishes
   around the world. THANK YOU.
2. BTW I am NOT comparing our Church to McDonalds, just that if McDonalds
   can deliver a uniform feeling of service & food all over the world, how can the
   Universal Catholic & Apostolic Church (that has been around longer than McD),
   of the LATIN Rite not do the same? Please help me understand. Thanks. PAX.

 

[ProVobis]

…and I’m sorry but alot of the Second Vatican Council wasn’t properly implemented. This is coming from a person who has read all 16 documents. Look at Sacrosanctum Comcuilium and tell me how many parishes closely follow it. Maybe it’s just a thing in the US… I’m not arguing against the validity of the Council and as you can see above I stated it has done good things. But to say some of the things that have happened like liturgical dance or the removal of all Latin for example, were intentional by the Church, is ludicrous. You can read plainly in the documents such drastic changes weren’t intended.

As it happens, we now have our first Pope in recent times who was not in attendance at Vatican II. So all he really has (as well as the rest of us) are the documents (and some hearsay, perhaps). But we can always hope that a fresher look at the documents results in some good fruits.

 

[edwest2]

So there you have it, directly from Pope Benedict, the Church spoke clearly but was drowned out by the media and sabotaged from within. Catholic education was subverted in a non-coincidental moral meltdown of secular universities. Dissidents inside the Church also caused confusion for the flock.

Anyone reading this must understand that the period from 1965 to 1968 was a time where we had strong Christian communities, neighbors were neighbors and marriage and being chaste before marriage were very important. We trusted our government more, but by 1968, with the arrival of the radicals, and the Vietnam War, which had been officially raging for four years and with no end in sight, and the sex without love revolution distracting us, it was the only the beginning of the atrocities to come:

1973 With the legalization of abortion, I lost faith in my government. With the legalization of graphic pornography, I lost more. The Vietnam War was winding down and the Hippies left their followers with no Woodstock Nation, just porn, fornication and dope. The regular media began a gradual slide into degeneracy and immorality. I watched it unfold, so I began to look at some media with distrust.

1980s Porn on cable. Movies and television becoming more and more sexualized and portraying the dysfunctional. What began in the late 1970s was solidified by the media - all media - in the mid 1980s.

And it would just get worse until just recently, as the anarchists, radicals and marxists believed - wrongly - that they would consolidate their gains, but now, thanks to Pope John Paul II and the recent clear statements of Pope Benedict, the ship is being set right and the cloud of confusion is being lifted. The truth about Vatican II is going forth.

Vatican II is coming to be fully revealed as it was meant to be by all. The works of the devil are becoming visible by all, and Catholic renewal is occurring in the seminaries:

ncregister.com/daily-news/benedicts-men-u.s.-vocations-strengthen-during-his-eight-year-papacy/

To my brothers and sisters in Christ, just as he was stepping down as Pope, Pope Benedict has left us with two key guides and cleared up the myths and how they came to be spread. Have hope.

The tide is turning, right now.

God bless,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

As far as the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form, Pope Benedict explains it clearly here:

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070707_lettera-vescovi_en.html

Once again, have no fear. Our last two Popes have cleared the air.

Peace,
Ed

 

[october_baby]

Where is brother jr when you need him?

 

[MarkThompson]

I have been to many different states, countries, and I am puzzled by the fact, that
a Church that belongs to the LATIN RITE, there is no Latin in the Masses at all.

The Latin Church (or Latin Rite) is not – you may be surprised to hear – named after the Latin language, any more than the Greek Orthodox Church is named after the Greek language. Rather, the Church and the language are both independently named after Latium, the ancient name for the region of central Italy inhabited by the Latins, where Rome is located. The Latin Church was the church that arose in central Italy, and the Latin Rite is simply its rite.

My grandmother tells me, how you used to be able to travel anywhere in the country, world, and find Masses, where you would hear Latin prayers, Greek prayers, etc.

Its like when you visit a McDonalds anywhere in the world, its the same old,
same old food (not that its good for ya, LOL) but you know what to expect,

Ah yes, the argumentum ad turismum. The problem with the argument as you present it is that you are not really arguing for the existence of a McDonald’s in any city in the world, but rather that every restaurant should be McDonalds – complete uniformity, so that “everywhere you go, you . . . know what to expect.”

I’ve always wondered: who exactly are these globetrotters who are always jetting off to far-flung lands but still expect and even need everything to be exactly like it is back home in Topeka? Do these people exist? Is it worth changing the worship lives of every Catholic in Portugal so that if someone goes there on vacation she won’t have to put up with so much as an hour of Portuguese on Sunday?

 

[Elizabeth502]

Everything that goes on in public in the Catholic Church is done by the decree or permission of the bishops and the pope. No bishop or pope can claim they have been ignorant of what’s been going on, what is still going on. So, anyone who dares to say that the Vatican II Council was wrongly implemented is indicting and charging John Paul II and all the bishops with episcopal negligence.

Many Catholics do think there was negligence. OTOH, that does not necessarily mean deliberate negligence. One of the problems of the Council was the misreading of the intentions, to wit, there should be less oversight (i.e., more autonomy of local priests, along with the supposedly greater autonomy for laity). So it’s very possible that the intention and the result (on the part of some bishops) were not connected, at least not consciously. I think many clergy were not thinking things through.

Also, I read something some time back that said that the bishops were essentially overwhelmed, and as a result, some had no idea what direction in which to go, a factor which produced a different kind of “negligence” – a negligence of paralysis. Other bishops tried various things according to how they individually interpreted the documents; such independent and differing responses contributed to confusion, and furthered the illusion that the result (diversity of teaching, liturgy, etc.) coincided with the intent of the Council – IOW, that one of the purposes of the Council was supposedly to further practical plurality in the Church, which was then perceived by poorly catechized and poorly led laity as ultimate diversity and allowable difference of opinion on practically everything.

The bishops, immediately after the Council and the death of John XXIII, had no central avenue in which to combine, sort, and get clarification to proceed. (Again, I read that from a summary of reflections by bishops who were there and a part of it.) Things were not solidified before the Pope’s death. Some have even described it as “chaos.”

 

[LINVS]

So tell us how the Church has benefitted from the actual documents and implemination of Vatican II?

Go!!

Sarcasm?

Anyway, Vatican II is still being “interpreted” and debated.

 

[larsont7]

I’ve always wondered: who exactly are these globetrotters who are always jetting off to far-flung lands but still expect and even need everything to be exactly like it is back home in Topeka? Do these people exist? Is it worth changing the worship lives of every Catholic in Portugal so that if someone goes there on vacation she won’t have to put up with so much as an hour of Portuguese on Sunday?

Personally, I don’t see a problem with the Catholic (universal) Church having a catholic (universal) liturgy. And since Latin remains the official language of the Church, why not have Latin be universal in liturgies throughout the Latin rite?

As for changing the worship lives of every Catholic not only in Portugal but around the entire western world, isn’t that exactly what happened after Vatican II? If the Church survived it 50 years ago, I think they could handle it again.

 

[Tony_the_mad]

I have no personal experience of Vatican II. I was born in 1968. But everyone I know of who lived through Vatican II thought it brought a breath of fresh air into the church.

I cannot speak too much about the changes, since it is not my place to judge. If I was the one in control I would do some things different. (I like the priest facing the same direction as the congregation for instance.) But there is a good reason God did not put me in control .

I grew up under the reforms of Vatican II and cannot imagine myself in a pre-Vatican II church. I truly enjoy the ability to participate not only in spirit but in mind as well. I can understand the liturgy and I participate in all aspects of it. Vatican II may have removed some of the splendor and awe but it replaced it with a more personal relationship to God. Before Vatican II very few people received communion in a weekly basis. The Church placed too many barriers between the people and Christ. The Church was like the apostles in the new Testament who were continuously trying to keep people from bugging Jesus. Yet, without fail Christ would say, ‘let them come to me’. Vatican II, as far as I can tell, removed or reduced those stumbling blocks such as 24 hour fasting, if I recall correctly, Latin masses, altar rails, etc. It is as if Christ’s voice finally broke through.

I have seen people on this board blame the problems of the modern age on Vatican II or its implementation. But most of those changes were well on their way to occurring before the council. The flower children and hippies hardly invented promiscuity or drug use. (Just as important they also issued in some good changes such as civil rights. The real problem was the complete lack of communication between the generations in my humble opinion.) With every change there will be those who push too hard the limits of their new found freedom and will be those who resent the change.

A big problem for the latter is that they were taught that the Church was constant and that it would never change, in particular the liturgy would never change. To have that source of strength suddenly yanked out was extremely detrimental. I have strong sympathy for them. But I cannot blame Vatican II for that change. For if the Church had changed gradually to keep up with the times, while remaining true to her history and mission, it would not have needed the sudden lurch.

Too many conservatives even today think that their job is to preserve the Church complete in every detail like a moth caught in amber or a mummy wrapped in cloth.
But the only way to preserve every detail is to kill it. People loose track of which details are critical and which are unimportant when treating each the same. Vatican II got rid of much of the unimportant cruft that was holding back the Church from growing.

It is hard to say whether or not the dwindling of the Church since that time in certain areas was helped or hurt by Vatican II. I would like to think that overall it was a net win from my very positive experience with the reforms. But even if it was a loss, the alternative would be worse.

 

[bslorence]

I’ve always wondered: who exactly are these globetrotters who are always jetting off to far-flung lands but still expect and even need everything to be exactly like it is back home in Topeka? Do these people exist? Is it worth changing the worship lives of every Catholic in Portugal so that if someone goes there on vacation she won’t have to put up with so much as an hour of Portuguese on Sunday?

You don’t really have to be a globetrotter. I just have to drive across town to be in a parish where no one speaks much English, and I live in the middle of Kansas. When I lived in California I could walk about six blocks to a parish where every mass was celebrated entirely in Spanish.

For people on almost any other continent in the world, this sort of linguistic diversity is much more the rule than the exception. Great Britain has four major native languages in a land area roughly equal to that of Kansas – and that doesn’t begin to touch on immigrant languages.

I certainly don’t think that unity in the faith requires uniformity, but I think it would be pretty nice, particularly in modern American where immigration is such a sensitive topic, if every Catholic knew at least the basic responses of the mass in Latin, no matter what his native language happened to be.

There’s a great story about two groups of displaced French and Germans meeting on a train platform in the 1940s shortly after the end of WWII – very tense, until someone intoned “Credo in Unum Deum”. Then they all sang the entire Creed together, in Latin. Hard to imagine that without choking up. And it’s nothing more than what Vatican II called for.

 

[Elizabeth502]

I certainly don’t think that unity in the faith requires uniformity, but I think it would be pretty nice, particularly in modern American where immigration is such a sensitive topic, if every Catholic knew at least the basic responses of the mass in Latin, no matter what his native language happened to be.

There’s a great story about two groups of displaced French and Germans meeting on a train platform in the 1940s shortly after the end of WWII – very tense, until someone intoned “Credo in Unum Deum”. Then they all sang the entire Creed together, in Latin. Hard to imagine that without choking up. And it’s nothing more than what Vatican II called for.

Totally agree. And I think there should be at least one Latin Mass per weekend in every diocese, minimum. It wouldn’t be achieved instantly, but is it not something that could be achieved within 10-15 years?