HOW THE PILL EXPLODES THE MYTHOLOGY of VATICAN II

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Something to think about for all those who insist that Vatican II is the cause of all the woes in the Church today.

" The Second Vatican Council did not undermine either the Church or the culture. It was rather the deteriorating culture that undermined the Church, and with it the effort to implement the renewal outlined by the Council. For the Council necessarily operated under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Western culture, while seemingly a greater and a stronger thing, sadly had no such guarantee."
 
FWIF.

It’s quite obvious, but for the new methodology of the Council, Church discipline would have kept heretical teachings out, and squashed them where they sprung up.

A simple knowledge of Catholic history demonstrates it — Before the Council, Church discipline was different, after, Pope Paul VI’s new methodology based on collegiality, allowed disobedience and heresy to flourish under the name of that freedom and collegiality.

This was perfectly forseeable – loosen discipline to allow freedom of expression of potential heresies so as to further theological discussion and progress – and everything that the lid was kept on beforehand, would inevitably spring out as well.

A good way to demonstrate the cause/effect of before and after for people who haven’t read a few books on the subject is to simply look at such things as the Index of Leading Catholic Indicators.

That’s not to say it’s -all- the Council, it was both the decision of Pope Paul VI and the words of the Council that were the two main changes that allowed for the ‘auto-demolition’ to succeed. A less timely Council for handling this, it would seem one would be hard to find, considering what a tight and well run ship the Church was in regards to these things beforehand.

Certainly Modernism was present before the Council. It was the work of the Council and Pope Paul VI that allowed it to change from an underground movement, to instead be acceptable and take over all the power bases.

So now of course, you have all these ‘theologians’ petitioning for heresies, bishop Conferences, ditto, etc. When previously if they squawked too loudly, they would have been censured and booted, and trembled in fear of losing their jobs.

I’m not talking about motivations here, I’m just talking about what was said and done and what resulted. And it was foreseeable.
 
Loosening up of the rules didn’t do the Church any favors…
 
Well, some of the above is opinion, FWLIF, but I must say, whenever I think of Pope Paul VI and the way all sorts of nonsense gained free rein under his pontificate, I think of St. Catherine of Siena, warning a previous Pope:

‘. . . Pardon my presumption in what I have said to you and am saying; I am constrained by the Sweet Primal Truth to say it. His will, father, is this, and thus demands of you. It demands that you execute justice on the abundance of many iniquities committed by those who are fed and pastured in the garden of Holy Church; declaring that brutes should not be fed with the food of men. Since He has given you authority and you have assumed it, you should use your virtue and power: and if you are not willing to use it, it would be better for you to resign what you have assumed; more honour to God and health to your soul would it be.’

St. Catherine of Siena, ‘Letter to Pope Gregory XI’

But then I think about how well disciplined the crack down was on the TLM, and I wonder what exactly was happening behind the scenes.
 
jay29 said:
Loosening up of the rules didn’t do the Church any favors…
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That’s what I’m thinking too. Relaxation of the meat abstinence and fasting rules, removal of the Index of Forbidden Books, use of conscience, etc. were very well welcomed at the time but it appears that they were to have some serious repercussions on our daily lives. This was then evidenced in the growing corruption of the liturgical discipline as well. The 60’s were not exactly fun times as no one really knew what was going to happen next.
 
I don’t think the council was the source of all our present problems in itself, but the way things were handled was. Loss of discipline and loss of respect for authority was a sign of the times and unfortunately infiltrated into the church. V2 was thus in many aspects following secular trends. Vandalising the liturgy certainly didn’t help matters, as we can see today.

I wonder why God allowed all this to happen. There must be a good reason for it but I don’t think I’ll live to see the good that comes out of it. 😦
 
We can say that the deteriorating decadence of the 1950’s and the rebellion of the 1960’s affected the Church. These events stained everything, of course! The problem here is identifying the plague of the modern era in opposition to the Conciliar Spirit of “opening windows”. How can a house be in opposition to swamp gas when its owner opens all the windows wide? The stench of the foul pit will always waft upwards on columns of hot air.

We may not directly blame Vatican II for the insanity of the resulting decades, for the insanity was nascent before 1960. Be vigilant, though, in discovering how little the Church seems to have opposed the evil. After Humanae Vitae revealed how many Pope-hating Papists there are, it seems poor Paul VI just gave up on them. He had a very sad face in the 1970’s… 😦
 
Shin said:
A good way to demonstrate the cause/effect of before and after for people who haven’t read a few books on the subject is to simply look at such things as the Index of Leading Catholic Indicators.
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I think it is a very poor method. Why? The years chosen as a dividing point are 1965 and 1968. These odd years can only have been chosen dileberately to point the at these years as being significant. We are all aware that science that attempts to prove a point is poor science indeed. Here is a Gallop poll that contains no “watershed” years. If you note, the decline of Catholics in America was well underway a decade prior to Vatican II. This shows this idea that Vatican II as the root of problems in the Church is not only a logical fallacy (post hoc ergo prompter hoc), but that it is also false. The data, when not slanted, simply does not bear it out.

4thepriests.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/gallup-us-catholic-church-attendance-now-even-with-protestants/

We also have the data that the decline was never worldwide, yet Vatican II was worldwide.

speroforum.com/a/42113/Statistics-show-worldwide-increase-of-Catholics-and-Catholic-priests

I guess people can believe what they want, but I do not see how the data bears out the claim of Vatican II being destructive.
 
GloriousOrder said:
We may not directly blame Vatican II for the insanity of the resulting decades, for the insanity was nascent before 1960. Be vigilant, though, in discovering how little the Church seems to have opposed the evil. After Humanae Vitae revealed how many Pope-hating Papists there are, it seems poor Paul VI just gave up on them. He had a very sad face in the 1970’s… 😦
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Going back to the relaxation of strict disciplines mentioned before, there was a big window of opportunity to get the “pill” mentality of the secular world firmly ingrained within the Church membership. After all, it was now a “welcoming Church,” Paul VI issued his Progressio Populorum (the one with the “conscience” clause in it), and priests were instructing their parishioners accordingly. Furthermore, the Pope had assembled his team of theologians who publicly disclosed their majority support of the pill. Is it a surprise then that Catholics didn’t take Humanae Vitae seriously (or misinterpreted it) and just went with what they had been previously told? Yes, they were disobedient and Pope-hating, but human nature is such that you’re not easily going to give up those “rights” that you figured you earned. Just saying.

One can draw his own conclusions as to the connection between Vatican II and the relaxation of the strict rules which, in my opinion, led to the decline of the Church’s moral leadership worldwide. Was it a coincidence or was there a causal relationship, even if slight? What if Pope Paul had never reconvened the council? Would the decline have been worse?
 
The modernism started in the middle of the 19th century and took over Europe by the end of that century. In the US the mainstream protestant churches became modernist in the first half of the 20th century. The Catholics were saved for a while, because they seemed to have no political influence; but together with the other churches were excluded from the public life, most importantly from the schools before the XXI Ecumenical council, and before the pill.

When the first Catholic President Kennedy was elected he brought also the Catholic Church into the spotlight, and the American Catholic Church deteriorated too, in some way even faster than in Europe

Naturally the evil ones who are behind the modernism make everything to cover their influence so this article in the topic makes the pill responsible, and others make the XXI Ecumenical council responsible to the deterioration.

As for loosing the standards the Holy Inquisition stopped to burn heretics in the 18th century. Law w/o sanction is not only worthless but even counter-effective. We got to the point that censured people simply declare that they know good and evil, and act according to their will.

Today is the feast of St Cyril, the moving forc behind the III (Ephesus) and IV. (Chalcedon) ecumenical councils. Lets bow our head to the honor of him, and to the honor of the Ecumenical councils, including the last one.
 
The fact is the Church knew The Pill was entering widespread use. Before Humanae Vitae was published in 1968, its contents were leaked and dissenters gave voice to their dissent. Manufacturers of The Pill certainly needed sales and too many Catholics not using The Pill would have been a bad thing. Send in the Hippies, Woodstock, “Don’t trust anybody over 30!” and smoke dope. The Church was behind this?

Not eating meat on Friday became optional. As a Catholic who was there before and after Vatican II, I was not inspired to sin once the option of not eating meat on Friday was introduced.

None of the changes usually associated with Vatican II were even suggested by Vatican II. None of the strip clubs, adult bookstores or topless bars that appeared in the 1970s were either. And let’s not forget legalizing abortion in 1973. Vatican II caused none of this but it had a poisonous effect on our neighbors and our neighborhoods. Porn on cable in the 1980s?

catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=1145

The truth is, Vatican II can no longer be used as a valid scapegoat for the ongoing sexual slavery occurring in America. This “freedom” was one of the founding principles of the time period in question. Yes, we’re all sinners - God knows, but it’s time to look at how and why we’ve reached a point where the West has become so hypersexualized.

It’s difficult to look at how far down we’ve gone, but we must.

God bless,
Ed
 
I wonder why God allowed all this to happen. There must be a good reason for it but I don’t think I’ll live to see the good that comes out of it.
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Because it was a festering wound beneath the surface that needed to be exposed and lanced in order for a genuine purification and healing to commence.

You are already living to see the good that is coming out of it, but you are too close to it now to notice it. 🙂
 
Shin said:
Well, some of the above is opinion, FWLIF, but I must say, whenever I think of Pope Paul VI and the way all sorts of nonsense gained free rein under his pontificate, I think of St. Catherine of Siena, warning a previous Pope:

‘. . . Pardon my presumption in what I have said to you and am saying; I am constrained by the Sweet Primal Truth to say it. His will, father, is this, and thus demands of you. **It demands that you execute justice on the abundance of many iniquities committed by those who are fed and pastured in the garden of Holy Church; declaring that brutes should not be fed with the food of men. Since He has given you authority and you have assumed it, you should use your virtue and power: and if you are not willing to use it, it would be better for you to resign what you have assumed; more honour to God and health to your soul would it be.’**St. Catherine of Siena, ‘Letter to Pope Gregory XI’

But then I think about how well disciplined the crack down was on the TLM, and I wonder what exactly was happening behind the scenes.
Click to expand...
I’ve thought about that “crack down” many times myself. The Mass I’d known all of my life just DISAPPEARED overnight, in 1969. Twenty-eight years I attended the TLM. & suddenly it was replaced. There were no explanations given in my area…just this is the New Mass, the Novus Ordo. There were no classes offered to explain the reasons why the **one ** Roman Canon became 4 Eucharistic Prayers (now 13, I think), nor why the Last Gospel, the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, etc. were no more. The “suddeness” of it all was
mind-blowing.

I’m trying to remember whether we were ever told that the old Mass had been abrogated & I can’t recall. All I remember hearing is that the “council decided that this was the way the Mass would be prayed from now on”.

I have always been a believer in “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” which, of course, translated means roughly how one prays is how one believes. I do believe that more should be added to this law of prayer. It should be Lex Orandi, Lex credendi, Lex Vivit…how one prays is how one believe, is how one LIVES. I definitely believe that when our Liturgy became more & more sterile and bland, when our pious prayers & acts (the Rosary, kneeling for the Eucharist, Novenas, regular confession, fasting, abstaining from meat on Fri., etc.) were down-played & thought of as silly “old Catholic nonsense”, we became more & more influenced by the secular culture. There is no doubt in my mind that the council’s desire to make our faith more palatable
to “our separated brethren” was primary. That has not brought them “home”…most Protestants that I know are quite happy where they are…& has damaged the Church.

The bland “homilies” replacing actual teaching sermons sure didn’t help either. Thanks for the quote from St. Catherine. You’re right in saying that we sure could have used someone like her, during the reign of Pope Paul. I don’t believe that he was guilty of consciously hurting the Church, but the last few years of his life were very difficult for him…as I believe that he saw that the council had been hijacked & he was powerless to stop the on-coming train wreck. I think Humana Vitae is/was right on target. Every prophecy he made in that encyclical came true. I think that was his courageous (very courageous) redemption & will someday be looked at as one of the historically GREAT documents in Catholic history.
 
CradleCath said:
There is no doubt in my mind that the council’s desire to make our faith more palatable to “our separated brethren” was primary.
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Did Vatican II desire to make our faith more palatable to “our separated brethren”. Can you please point this out in the documents, or is this just another urban myth of the “spirit of Vatican II”. All sorts of outrageous abuses were done to make the church more acceptable to protestants and the secular world, all done in the name of Vatican 2.
 
CradleCath said:
I’ve thought about that “crack down” many times myself. The Mass I’d known all of my life just DISAPPEARED overnight, in 1969. Twenty-eight years I attended the TLM. & suddenly it was replaced. There were no explanations given in my area…just this is the New Mass, the Novus Ordo. There were no classes offered to explain the reasons why the **one ** Roman Canon became 4 Eucharistic Prayers (now 13, I think), nor why the Last Gospel, the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, etc. were no more. The “suddeness” of it all was
mind-blowing.

I’m trying to remember whether we were ever told that the old Mass had been abrogated & I can’t recall. All I remember hearing is that the “council decided that this was the way the Mass would be prayed from now on”.

I have always been a believer in “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” which, of course, translated means roughly how one prays is how one believes. I do believe that more should be added to this law of prayer. It should be Lex Orandi, Lex credendi, Lex Vivit…how one prays is how one believe, is how one LIVES. I definitely believe that when our Liturgy became more & more sterile and bland, when our pious prayers & acts (the Rosary, kneeling for the Eucharist, Novenas, regular confession, fasting, abstaining from meat on Fri., etc.) were down-played & thought of as silly “old Catholic nonsense”, we became more & more influenced by the secular culture. There is no doubt in my mind that the council’s desire to make our faith more palatable
to “our separated brethren” was primary. That has not brought them “home”…most Protestants that I know are quite happy where they are…& has damaged the Church.

The bland “homilies” replacing actual teaching sermons sure didn’t help either. Thanks for the quote from St. Catherine. You’re right in saying that we sure could have used someone like her, during the reign of Pope Paul. I don’t believe that he was guilty of consciously hurting the Church, but the last few years of his life were very difficult for him…as I believe that he saw that the council had been hijacked & he was powerless to stop the on-coming train wreck. I think Humana Vitae is/was right on target. Every prophecy he made in that encyclical came true. I think that was his courageous (very courageous) redemption & will someday be looked at as one of the historically GREAT documents in Catholic history.
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I was there in 1969 and I was in Catholic school. The nuns explained that the new smaller altar, with the priest facing the people, and the Mass in English was designed to bring greater participation. We had Masses in Polish as well.

I was there to worship God. If my Church and authorities within the Church said that this was how it was to be done now, fine. I was there to worship God. I was not taking notes. I trusted those who were leading our Church community. It was not mind blowing.

What was mind blowing was seeing a “Head Shop” open in my neighborhood selling underground anarchist/subversive newspapers and dirty underground comic books and roach clips. The Jimi Hendrix black light posters were cool but I couldn’t afford them.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
I was there in 1969 and I was in Catholic school. The nuns explained that the new smaller altar, with the priest facing the people, and the Mass in English was designed to bring greater participation.
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Well they certainly didn’t bring more nuns. 🙂
 
edwest2 said:
I was there in 1969 and I was in Catholic school. The nuns explained that the new smaller altar, with the priest facing the people, and the Mass in English was designed to bring greater participation. We had Masses in Polish as well.

I was there to worship God. If my Church and authorities within the Church said that this was how it was to be done now, fine. I was there to worship God. I was not taking notes. I trusted those who were leading our Church community. It was not mind blowing.

What was mind blowing was seeing a “Head Shop” open in my neighborhood selling underground anarchist/subversive newspapers and dirty underground comic books and roach clips. The Jimi Hendrix black light posters were cool but I couldn’t afford them.

Peace,
Ed
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I totally agree. We just followed the directions given by our Pastor and carried on. Everyone that I knew trusted the Church implicitly. I still do, warts and all.
 
Every earlier Council was called to solve a problem, to combat some heresy. This Council unleashed them. The declared purpose of the Council called by John XXIII was “aggiormento”. get with the times. That certainly happened. It was called a pastoral council. That was a first. What one pope in recent times has not had his cause for sainthood opened? Ever wonder why. After all he is the man who concluded the Council and is responsible for the biggest revolutionary change in the Church in centuries, the new Mass. Rome never mentions him as a possible saint. There is not the slightest stir or suggestion that he be canonized. Hmmm!
 
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