Constantine312:
This conversation has gotten off the point of the original post, but two things: 1. To say that Mary would STOP practicing her religion because of her Son’s death is ridiculous. It was for her also that He came and for her people. If anything He would have encouraged her to continue to be a good Jew.
- The issue of Vatican II came up. An ugly truth has been brought up that I thought I was the only one to notice. Vatican II hopelessly liberalized the Church. I find it disgusting. Anyone in agreement?
And btw, I was born 20 years after V2. Not to make anyone feel old but I think that says something when even a person born in more ‘politically correct’ times acknowledges the disgrace of V2.
Am I alone here?
VII didn’t liberalize the Church. It WAS used wrongfully as a tool of those who wanted to liberalize it. speaking from someone who’s looked into it and from someone who’s seen a number of presentations on it on EWTN (especially a program which is devoted to reading through the VII documents), I can tell you what happened.
In 1,500, everybody was Catholic and had the truth. Then came along the reformation. Now, all those who would join the reformation were already Catholic and just plain should have known better. They were being insincerely, in a certain sense, converted away from the truth by those who should have known better.
Fast forward to 1960. In 1960, people are being born both Catholic and also being born into Protestantism. Protestants are growing up thinking they have the truth. They aren’t being drawn away, they are being raised to think they have the truth just like Catholics were raised to think they had the truth in 1000. That’s really why a person thinks he has the truth: he’s brought up that way. The vast majority of Protestants, other than those who had been presented the facts about Catholicism and simply had hard hearts, were not ignoring or leaving the truth but living it as best they knew.
In 1960 to today, we also have a world where society looks upon disagreeing with another’s religion as some horrible thing. People are brought up to think that. Today, flat speaking the truth directly as in the past wouldn’t help bring people around, it would push them further away. This isn’t the right attitude, but unfortunately everybody now have been conditioned to believe that it is, so we have to work around that and to a CERTAIN degree go about preaching our faith based on that principle. We mustn’t just sell out to it and submit to it, but we have to consider it.
So VII comes along, and they write up some documents which teach this unfortunate truth, but always, always asserting that the same orthodox truths that had always been taught MUST be held and must not be abandoned as they are obviously still true.
Then comes the hippy movement. This starts to permeate our enture culture to varying degrees. A lot of the people going into the seminaries are people who were influenced by it.
They become Priests and start preaching “I’m ok, you’re ok, everybody’s ok.” They start taking down the crucifixes in churches and replacing them with Jesus-less crosses. They start preaching that we are all fine and every religion is fine and whatever you want to do is fine.
So in part, it’s just coincidence that VII came before this stuff started happening.
What else happened was that all those ecumenical statements of VII then started to be taken and cited out of context by these hippy priests to support their views. You have some faithful Catholic come and say, “Father why are you teaching this?” and the priest says, “Well Vatican II says I must.” This simply wasn’t true, and if the priests had quoted entire passages or entire documents, they would have had to quote the parts affirming that the orthodoxy was still true and to be taught, and that the ecumenicism had its boundaries and was a disciplinary adaptation to the world but not a change in teaching.
Also, a lot of these hippy priests didn’t just take it out of context, but they read the documents and truly thought they saw these teachings there because they wanted to, and as you know we tend to read what we want to out of things.
This is changing, because in the 80s and 90s, JPII, and especially now with B16, a lot of reforms were put in to make sure the seminaries taught things properly, and to weed out the hippy priests from formation.
I happen to know a few folks from the seminaries, and believe me the future is INCREDIBLY bright.