There are many in the church today who dabble in the heresy of archeologism which means that we all must go back to the early church to be right in things. That is not true because the Holy Spirit is with the church all the time and not just in the early church.
What is also not true is that there is no value in going back to the early Church to review how the church worshiped and prayed. One example is the reinstatement of the RCIA program, and while its implementation could be more even, the Church has felt it to be a very valuable addition. It is far too easy to simply write off liturgical scholarship as the “work of liberals” simply because one either does not understand why something has been changed (usually a sign that one does not like change, and therefore it is not good).
There were abuses in the early church, too. Just read the scriptures and you will find drunkeness and squabbles and divisions and all sorts of things going on that had to be severely reprimanded by the apostles. There have been heresies in the early church and break away groups like the gnostics and other groups from within that caused problems.
That, however, is not a reason to avoid reviewing liturgical practices.
The purpose of the councils was to clarify doctrine and settle troubles within the church so the church goes on and does not stop at the fourth century or so. The only reason liberals like to go back to the beginning is so they can reinvent the church to suit liberal agenda before the early councils dealth with things or before certain doctrines were clarified. That almost appears to be a slam on 100 years of scholarship. I presume you do not mean to paint anyone who has studied liturgy as a liberal; it is for certain the Church has not done so.
It is an evil ploy to destroy the church from within. One example is that deaconesses in the early church were not actually ordained people but women who helped out in service to the church such as in female baptisms and works of charity,etc. They were not ordained clergy at all. The orthodox swear to that also. In the early church there were not nuns yet so the deaconesses predated the nuns in service to the church. Today, nuns should do all this work and we should not need deaconesses now.
I presume you mean sisters, as nuns are cloistered. Unless one is doing full immersion baptism, there is no need for anyone’s involvement, and there are probably ways of handling full immersion without needing some individual’s involvement. It is the fault of liberals taking over after the council that caused the lack of vocations. That is simply nonsense. It is a post hoc, ergo propter hoc statement without any supporting evidence whatsoever, and ignores everything else that was impacting the Church after Vatican 2. Furthermore, worldwide vocations are up significantly and they are dealing with Vatican 22; just not having to deal with what Europe and North America have had to deal with, which was secularism and the moral degradation that has occurred - and not caused by Vatican 2.
Liberal clergy pushed things that the council never even mentioned and certainly did not authorize, and depending on the ignorance of many laity, were able to push forth practices that caused terrible problems in the church and much division, etc.
Granted. Interestingly, places like Poland implemented the documents of Vatican 2 with minimal problems.
Your worry about liberals is about thirty to forty years late and ignores that things have been turning around. Granted that it is slow, but most things in the Church occur slowly. The JP2 priests are having an impact; the liberal clergy for the large part have either died off or are retiring, and the newer priests simply don’t have the older generation’s agenda.
