Lefebvre´s "Letter to Confused Catholics" is awesome!

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Oh, now I understand Michael, by assigning different meanings to the WORDS of Vatican II, you can pretty much make is mean whatever you want it to mean.Maybe that is part of the problem.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium it says: "But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters."

And on the liturgy: "Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit."

So this is where you get Mass in the vernacular and “inculturated” liturgys. It seems words really do have meanings and consequences. Is this the SPIRIT of Vatican II or its WORDS.

Thomas
 
can someone post a link? I can’t seem to find it…or what I did find I’m not sure is the right thing.
 
AdvanceAlways said:
Did Jesus not say “love your enemy?” [Not insinuating that the Jews are the enemy] Did Jesus not say “Blessed are the merciful?” Neither of those statements can be said true of Bishop Williamson. The man is a monster and a horrible example for Catholics.

Back to the topic however, “Letter” was quite an enjoyable read. He [Lefebvre] does make many good points.
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I find it funny how you cite a quote “Blessed are the merciful” then in the same paragraph call the bishop a “monster”.

He may have an erroneous opinion about a historical event - but that does not make him a monster.
 
Well, first off, it would be hard to imagine a piece of writing that encapsulates the majority Traditionalist view better than that one does. Whether one thinks that is for better or for worse depends on the point of view.

As for me, I think the “they threw the baby out” complaint is entirely valid. The hidden assertion that there was nothing wrong with the bath water is some pretty heavy denial.

The world, Europe in particular, was not in a spiritually healthy state following two world wars. Even in the Church, there were plenty of problems to be dealt with. Yet the Archbishop’s tone implies to me that everything was great until these totally invented changes came out of nowhere. Unless I am mistaken and missed some key point of his, this was not true.

I grew up hearing first-hand stories about nuns that hit you if you made a mistake and little kids getting into physical fights with their Protestant neighbors over religious differences. I know about the active religious orders (we’re not talking cloistered, here) that would not let the sisters visit their families except in the case of a death. In other words, if your parent was dying, you as a vowed religious could not go to his or her deathbed…even if you belonged to an order that was quite free to send you to Africa to open a hospital. Consider on top of that how Europe was devastated by the wars, how many of our very young men, American and European, were sent to view human-on-human brutalities that had not been seen on such a scale, even during the Civil War/War Between the States. This brought everything under examination. The Church was not found without serious flaw.

In other words, if someone here tries to tell me that John XXIII and the Council broke the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule, I will strenuously beg to differ.

I don’t know about Europe, but I also find that the state of catechesis in the Church runs in uncomfortable parallel to the state of education in general. Again: the overuse of memorization as a teaching tool was reacted against by not requiring students to have to know anything by heart. I don’t think the absence of Vatican II would have kept that from happening.

OTOH, anyone who thinks that the directions in which Vatican II has been implemented just need another few decades to smooth out is also, I think, in heavy denial. Honestly, we have women attempting ordination who think it is possible to “reject” one’s ex-communication! That refects a generally profound depth of unclear-on-the-concept. When a Catholic can deny with a straight face that excommunication in non-negotiable, the level of double-think has gone beyond imagining.

As for the OF, that genie is out of the bottle. Love it or despise it, it is not going away. Any who love the EF may as well thank heaven for the very likely possibility that many of the irreverences foisted off on the OF would have otherwise landed on the EF–name even one thing in our times that has not suffered that fate, without similar insulation (including the British royal family)–and get used to the idea that co-existence of the OF and EF is to be the fate of at least the next generation. By the grace of God, perhaps the preserved reverence of the EF will re-invigorate the OF.

On that note, a bright spot is that even “the world” in general is tiring of “formal means wear socks”. The rebellion against form in the absence of reality is finally coming around to realize that form was part of reality, and sometimes the only part that holds the whole mess up when times get truly difficult. If some idea of polite formal behavior as a gesture of respect (rather than an imposition of personal distance) is more widely resurrected, that will go a long ways towards supporting reverent behavior in churches, as well.

Yes, call me nuts, but I am saying that liturgy would improve if more people took it for granted that you don’t talk on your cell phone in restaurants, that it does matter what you choose to wear to weddings, funerals, and to work, that you do need to know multiplication tables and the facts of American history, and that it is not insulting to open doors for women. I don’t place those things at the feet of Vatican II.
 
The world, Europe in particular, was not in a spiritually healthy state following two world wars. Even in the Church, there were plenty of problems to be dealt with. Yet the Archbishop’s tone implies to me that everything was great until these totally invented changes came out of nowhere. Unless I am mistaken and missed some key point of his, this was not true.
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Statistical decline of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. The following statistics are originally from Kenneth Jones’ “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators”:

Priests. After skyrocketing from about 27,000 in 1930 to 58,000 in 1965, the number of priests in the United States dropped to 45,000 in 2002. By 2020, there will be about 31,000 priests–and only 15,000 will be under the age of 70. Right now there are more priests aged 80 to 84 than there are aged 30 to 34.

Ordinations. In 1965 there were 1,575 ordinations to the priesthood, in 2002 there were 450, a decline of 350 percent. Taking into account ordinations, deaths and departures, in 1965 there was a net gain of 725 priests. In 1998, there was a net loss of 810.

Priestless parishes. About 1 percent of parishes, 549, were without a resident priest in 1965. In 2002 there were 2,928 priestless parishes, about 15 percent of U.S. parishes. By 2020, a quarter of all parishes, 4,656, will have no priest.

Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700–a 90 percent decrease. Without any students, seminaries across the country have been sold or shuttered. There were 596 seminaries in 1965, and only 200 in 2002.

**Sisters. **180,000 sisters were the backbone of the Catholic education and health systems in 1965. In 2002, there were 75,000 sisters, with an average age of 68. By 2020, the number of sisters will drop to 40,000–and of these, only 21,000 will be aged 70 or under. In 1965, 104,000 sisters were teaching, while in 2002 there were only 8,200 teachers.

Brothers. The number of professed brothers decreased from about 12,000 in 1965 to 5,700 in 2002, with a further drop to 3,100 projected for 2020.

Religious Orders. The religious orders will soon be virtually non-existent in the United States. For example, in 1965 there were 5,277 Jesuit priests and 3,559 seminarians; in 2000 there were 3,172 priests and 38 seminarians. There were 2,534 OFM Franciscan priests and 2,251 seminarians in 1965; in 2000 there were 1,492 priests and 60 seminarians. There were 2,434 Christian Brothers in 1965 and 912 seminarians; in 2000 there were 959 Brothers and 7 seminarians. There were 1,148 Redemptorist priests in 1965 and 1,128 seminarians; in 2000 there were 349 priests and 24 seminarians. Every major religious order in the United States mirrors these statistics.

High Schools. Between 1965 and 2002 the number of diocesan high schools fell from 1,566 to 786. At the same time the number of students dropped from almost 700,000 to 386,000.

Parochial Grade Schools. There were 10,503 parochial grade schools in 1965 and 6,623 in 2002. The number of students went from 4.5 million to 1.9 million.

Sacramental Life. In 1965 there were 1.3 million infant baptisms; in 2002 there were 1 million. (In the same period the number of Catholics in the United States rose from 45 million to 65 million.) In 1965 there were 126,000 adult baptisms-----converts-----in 2002 there were 80,000. In 1965 there were 352,000 Catholic marriages, in 2002 there were 256,000. In 1965 there were 338 annulments, in 2002 there were 50,000.

Mass attendance. A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 74 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the attendance rate was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000.

Is this due to the “Spirit” of Vatican II? I’ve heard all kinds of justifications for these numbers by those that deny any negative impact from Vatican II. This also does not even take into account the sex and embezzlement scandals that have cost the church billions of dollars and continue to this day unabated.

Thomas
 
Thomas58 said:
Statistical decline of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. The following statistics are originally from Kenneth Jones’ “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators”:

Priests. After skyrocketing from about 27,000 in 1930 to 58,000 in 1965, the number of priests in the United States dropped to 45,000 in 2002. By 2020, there will be about 31,000 priests–and only 15,000 will be under the age of 70. Right now there are more priests aged 80 to 84 than there are aged 30 to 34.

Ordinations. In 1965 there were 1,575 ordinations to the priesthood, in 2002 there were 450, a decline of 350 percent…Mass attendance. A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 74 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the attendance rate was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000.

Is this due to the “Spirit” of Vatican II? I’ve heard all kinds of justifications for these numbers by those that deny any negative impact from Vatican II. This also does not even take into account the sex and embezzlement scandals that have cost the church billions of dollars and continue to this day unabated.

Thomas
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You seem to be missing my point: that is, there is a difference between being the wrong medicine and being the disease itself. There seems to be a belief among some (not all) traditionalists that our seminaries would be full and our divorce statistics unchanged, if not for Vatican II. I don’t think there is evidence for that.

Besides, all those statistics don’t address the point you highlighted from my quote: Are you arguing that post-war Europe was a spiritually healthy place? Are you arguing that any problems in the Church of 1962 were a figment of the Pope’s imagination?

Can anyone really hang all the ills of the Church in our time on Vatican II with a straight face? Are you arguing that Hollywood and television did not change how they depicted priests and religious before and after 1962? Remember that we have also had, since the 1960s, the invention of modern birth control, Roe v. Wade, and the abandonment of moral codes in the mainstream media. In the fall of 1960, a Catholic from a prominent Boston family got into the White House by distancing himself from the heirarchy of the Catholic Church. Once that happened, Roman Catholics were no longer on the outside. We were* in*. We belonged, not to Rome, but to whatever America was doing. I’m not blaming the Kennedys, mind you. I am saying we were melting into the pot, though. That Kennedy won, and how he had to do it, proves that.

And frankly, I think felt banners were coming in 1970, no matter what anybody did. It was a pretty disasterous decade, in terms of aesthetic standards. Vatican II or no, there was no place safe from the invasion of “yarn crafts.” (Shall we have a show of hands on how many of us had macrame plant hangers in our homes?) Vatican II or no, educational standards were dropping. Vatican II or no, the number of women who knew how to run a sewing machine or an iron was dropping. Vatican II or no, the number of women who learned you didn’t have to join a convent to be a nurse or to have fewer than six kids were going to skyrocket.

The number of women working outside the home was going to skyrocket. The number of people who felt comfortable questioning and ignoring authority was going to skyrocket. The number of people who thought sexual restraint was somehow unhealthy was going to skyrocket. And so on. The Roman Catholics of America, unlike the Orthodox Jews, for instance, were too culturally mainstreamed by 1960 to evade that particular tide entirely.

It would also be disingenuous to take the sex scandals into account, because you have no evidence for how much of that was going on back in the days when there was zero transparency about those matters. We do know that one of the most notorious of the molesters in the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon was ordained and molesting in the 1950s. We do know that priests who molested children were not turned over to authorities, but were moved around on the theory that this was a sin that could be repented of and forgiven. Let’s face it: it was a time when no one talked about incest in families, either, and when alcoholism was considered a moral failing, without medical basis. It was a different time, before 1960. You didn’t call your pastor “Fr. Ed”, that is true. You also didn’t go to your parents, accuse Fr. Grammond of molesting you, and expect anyone to believe it. If your parents did go to the bishop, you wouldn’t expect to see that priest out of the ministry. Out of your parish was the best you could hope for.

Besides, I think it is better to consider “what will be” than “what would have been”. We are not in the 1950s any more, but we are also not in the 1960s or the 1970s. Vatican II tried to address mistakes of previous times. It is well to address mistakes, miscalculations, and new problems that have since Vatican II, or to address those problems we were blind to in the 1960s, or that we had less information to address.
 
Originally posted by **EasterJoy **
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Vatican II tried to address mistakes of previous times.
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Precisely what “mistakes” of previous times was Vatican II trying to address?

These statistics do not lie. They show almost all indicators of the health of the Church and adherence to the Faith peaked just before the changes of Vatican II were implemented and before the new Mass was promulgated. Almost immediately after the changes of Vatican II and the implementation of the new Mass, all of the indicators began to dramatically decline.

I am not saying that some of the ongoing things in society and culture did not have some impact on the loss of Faith, but I would certainly place more of the blame of the dilution of the Faith and its disciplines on the dramatic changes that Vatican II brought, than say, on “yarn crafts.”

Thomas
 
aicirt said:
I have problems with him because of Bishop Williamson. I totally disagree with him re. his anti-semitism. Simultanelously, I don’t understand why, after all these years, the Vatican wasn’t aware that Williamson was a loose canon. I don’t believe his excommunication should have been lifted until he renounced his anit-semitic beliefs.
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You have problems with Lefebvre because of Bishop Williamson? Not sure if that’s what you were trying to say, but if so…Doesn’t make sense.

Also, I’d just like to point out that if you watch the recent video of +Williamson’s interview you’ll see that he is mistaken, but he’s no anti-semite. This lie has been perpetuated for far too long. An anti-semite would say “In my opinion only 300,000 Jews perished, but I wish it were 6 million”. Just watch the video and you’ll begin to understand that this condemnation that you’re burying him under is groundless. That’s why the media stopped showing clips of it, and started just reporting some of his words. There’s no hate in him. There’s a good fight in him, and there’s a love of souls in him, but there’s no hate! Please choose your words more prudently and don’t give into the folly that the MSM constantly does. Not everybody who disagrees with Jews or Jewish policy or who questions an historical event is an anti-semite. Sometimes people are just looking for truth and goodness, and sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong.

Summary: misinformed → probably. Hater → definitely not. Loving and faithful servant of Christ, Who loves all men → absolutely.

Don’t forget to pray for his excellency, Tricia.
 
Thomas58 said:
Precisely what “mistakes” of previous times was Vatican II trying to address?

These statistics do not lie. They show almost all indicators of the health of the Church and adherence to the Faith peaked just before the changes of Vatican II were implemented and before the new Mass was promulgated. Almost immediately after the changes of Vatican II and the implementation of the new Mass, all of the indicators began to dramatically decline.

I am not saying that some of the ongoing things in society and culture did not have some impact on the loss of Faith, but I would certainly place more of the blame of the dilution of the Faith and its disciplines on the dramatic changes that Vatican II brought, than say, on “yarn crafts.”

Thomas
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Can you really look upon Christendom in the first half of the 1900s and argue that the Catholic Church had no room for improvement and no reason to change? Because if we’re going to blame the societal ills of Catholics on the current Church, what is to prevent us from blaming two World Wars on the Church then? The Holocaust? The pogroms? Hitler was raised Catholic. Bismark? Catholic. Stalin and Castro went to seminary. Do you want to blame Stalin’s atheism on the seminary? He was there when he became an atheist. The facts can be twisted in either direction.

Oh, my goodness, statistics and correlations lie all the time, especially in the hands of those with an agenda. And excuse me, if you never go outside your pet theory on why something happens and try to find other reasons that could account for the numbers, then statistics will lie to you every time. They will tell you what you want to hear. This is why there is every half-decent scientific journal on the planet is peer-reviewed. Statistics prove nothing, when they can be interpreted a half-a-dozen ways. You can tie the divorce rate among Catholics to the rise in the Federal Budget as a percentage of GDP, if you want to. The Orthodox have better statistics for their seminaries, but you could tie that to the existence of a married priesthood in an age demanding marriage, if you wanted to. Do you see what I’m getting at? The sword cuts both ways.

I have actually heard Vatican II blamed for the plethora of felt banners made in catechism classes of the 1970s. No matter that dilution of education and emotionalism was replacing real scholarship at every level of education, and that felt and yarn were the weapons of choice.

I have heard Vatican II blamed for the drop in respect for authority for our heirarchy. Never mind that the respect for authority plummetted everywhere and that the media not only quit protecting those who abused power but, in favor of selling newspapers, trashed those in authority and in the public eye at every opportunity, coarsening our aspirations.

But more to the point, we can’t know what would have happened if Vatican II had not happened any more than we can know what would have happened if the Mass had remained entirely in Greek. We can look at how different the history of the Greek Orthodox Church has been than the Roman Church, but what would have been is what was. The West wasn’t the East, and the Greek language had limited power to change that. Could retained use of Greek by the heirarchy have prevented the schism? Maybe. But maybe not.

We have lived through a time of societal cataclysm, during which we in the American and European arms of the Church were not insulated as a community that held itself apart from secular society. As the Kennedys illustrate, we were right in the middle of it, and Vatican II did not cause that. It is hard to believe that it had a single cause…for even the world wars happened for reasons that went beyond the single persons of Hitler or Bismark.

I think there were changes coming, and Vatican II failed to stop them. I think that if the Mass had not changed, then there would have been girls with skirts too short and boys with hair too long at Traditional Masses in the 1970s, and they would have been listening to rock-n-roll afterwards. I think Billie Joel would still have sung, “you Catholic girls start much too late…sooner or later, it comes down to fate…I might as well be the one…because only the good die young…It’s better to laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints…the sinners are much more fun…and only the good die young.” I think that without Vatican II, we would still have seen “The Exorcist” at the movie theatre instead of “The Bells of St. Mary’s”. Don’t tell me that turning the priest around and removing the altar rails caused all of that. I don’t believe it.

Just as the Church’s unchanging stance on artificial birth control did not stop Catholics from using it, refusing to any of the changes of Vatican II would not have stopped the changes we have seen. Might the cure have made things worse? Perhaps. But there is ample evidence to suggest that it did not cause it.

And we needed to be told to evangelize the world and read the Bible, because the Protestants were knocking at our doors. We were going to be taught the improper way to read it, no matter what happened. We needed to be told that the sisters were not to be left to do all the heavy lifting. We needed to be told that lay Catholics have a role in world politics and world peace, that not only the professed have a vocation. The problem is, the message was taken backwards…that the sisters should be more like us, rather than that we should be more like them, for instance. I’d rather they had been left with at least some form of their habits and the rest of us told to wear crucifixes, so that we ALL stuck out in public. Maybe that is what we should try next.
 
So, I have to be off-forum for awhile, but I want to toss this out.

Lefebvre’s letter stated essentially that all of a sudden all of his fellow bishops were saying different things, and he was left standing with what was original. To me, he sounded mystified as to what was working on them. I would not be surprised if he was.

This is not meant as a criticism of him, but what if he had gone out and somehow seen what it was that was bringing these changes in the Church? Give him a crystal ball, let him see what was going on at the time…the insight of all the change since then, both inside the Church and out. The wars, the assassinations, a man on the moon, Nixon, how Communism played out, the popularity of Theresa of Calcutta and pop Buddhism, the victim altar boys being molested speaking up and being believed, the whole works. Everything you can think of.

What changes do you think he would have made in his Vatican II, if he had been running the council in 1962? Would he have changed anything about the Church, in response to the onslaught that was upon the Western Church? Would he have sent the rest of the heirarchy home, and discussed nothing? Could the bishops and religious superiors have prepared for what was to come? What do you think?

Does that tell us anything about how to course-correct now? What are the alternatives other than trying to put the genie back into the bottle by brute force?

My two bits is that the last suggestion will not work. Period. But maybe something you think of now will…
 
Easter Joy , I must encourage you to do more historical research on the subject , the previous Popes had in advance condemned the very things that came out of this council despite all the language, translation, spirit, intensions, excuses or what have you . Sure, times were going to get tougher ,but removing the safeguards was not the answer . Did you know the Tridentine Mass was referred to as the barrier against heresy , and Pope Pius II when asked to call a council said that if he did the (internal) enemy’s of the church would take over ?. What was the real reason the Leonine prayers were removed after Mass ? Wasn’t the reason he started them a vision he had of the devil making havoc in the sanctuary . Why do the liberals like to give the council more authority than the council asked for ?
The disobedience that allegedly took down Archbishop Lefebvre was started when certain Popes disobeyed the binding statements of the previous ones, the Archbishop disobeyed JPII in “operation survival” to keep alive that which never should have been tampered with . +AMDG+
 
I know the statistics traditionalists use to back their cause, but I have yet to see a logical connection between Vatican II and the statistics.

I am confused, is the bishop excommunicated or not?

There are problems with the Church, but there always have been issues. The Church is led by humans. Sorry if this off-topic, but I couldn’t read this thread and be silent.

It was the OF that drew me back into the Church, just saying. I’m game for whatever the Church prescribes:).
 
As a confused catholic, I find this passage of the letter, in chapter 11 on religious liberty, especially troubling. I wish to know what you all think of it:

"Religious liberty cannot be applied to false religions; it does not allow of being split up in this way; the only right that must be recognized by the state is that of the citizens to practice Christ’s religion.

This will certainly seem an exhorbitant claim to those who do not have the Faith. But the Catholic uncontaminated by the spirit of the times will find it quite normal and legitimate. Unfortunately many Christians have lost sight of these realities: it has been so often repeated that we must respect other people’s ideas, put ourselves in their place, accept their point of view. The nonsensical “everyone to his own truth” has become the rule; dialogue has become the highest cardinal virtue, dialogue which necessarily leads to concessions. Through misplaced charity the Christian has come to think that he must go one step further than his interlocutors; he is usually the only one to do so. He no longer sacrifices himself for the truth, as the martyrs did. Instead, he sacrifices the truth."

I have tried hard to find the flaw in the Archbishop´s reasoning, but so far I have been unsuccessful. The implications of this position are enourmous, and undermine what almost everyone takes for granted these days; muslims have a “right” to build mosques in Europe and the US, catholicism should not be the only protected religion, etc. Here in Spain the socialist government is even preparing a new law called the Freedom of Religion Act, designed to remove all privileges of the catholic religion. If you disagree with Lefebvre you have no argument against such a law, which evidently seeks to debilitate the CC, the arch-enemy of socialism, and to place the CC on the same legal footing as any crazy, heretical, pagan sect.

I will be interested to hear from you all. I am feeling very CONFUSED!
 
santodomingo said:
Does anybody else, who is not a member of SSPX, also think that Archbishop Lefebvre´s “Letter to Confused Catholics” is an extraordinary, indeed prophetic piece of writing?

I have read several threads about the SSPX here, but when I went to the source (the founder) I was agreeably surprised to discover that I agreed wholeheartedly with him. There were so many things he says that I hadn´t even managed to formulate coherently in my head, but when I read them they rang true. As George Orwell said, “a great writer tells you things you already knew”.

His explanation for the diminishing religiosity in the West I think is spot on. The spirit of reverence has all but disappeared from the Novus Ordo masses. What differentiates a catholic Mass from a Lutheran service? In too many cases, almost nothing.

I´d be interested to hear what other traditionalists (not necessarily members of SSPX) think about this letter. I know at least half a dozen priests who have preached heresy in my presence, ranging from the denial of Purgatory, Hell, Judgement, sanctifying grace, the infallibility of Scripture, to the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Yet they are respected and promoted. Archbishop Lefebvre spoke the truth as has always been taught by the Church, and he was excommunicated. (I understand he was excommunicated for an act of disobedience.) It just seems incredible that the one man who fought heresy with all his strength is considered a pariah in the Church.
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Yes, Lefebvre is sympathetic in many of his observations about what is happening around us in the Church and, God help us, most if not all Catholics here can tell horror stories of diminished and heretical faith abounding many places around us. But Lefebvre’s problems and errors were not in that he noticed things happening around him and decried them; his error was in the fact that he threw the baby out with the bathwater. Many others, throughout history, who had sound basis for their initial disatisfactions, did the same. That’s where the problem came in and comes in.

blessings…
 
Thomas58 said:
Archbishop Lefebvre saw the destructive changes that resulted from Vatican II.
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The 1960’s culture which emphasized selfishness is good, do whatever you want, sexual morals are optional, and the other retarded beliefs they engendered was the cause of the destructive changes. The hippies just used Vatican II as a cover. And it gets blamed unnecessarily.

Nice.

Can’t blame the 1960’s mentality, we gotta blame the council…yeah, that’s it.
 
aicirt said:
I don’t understand why, after all these years, the Vatican wasn’t aware that Williamson was a loose canon. I don’t believe his excommunication should have been lifted until he renounced his anit-semitic beliefs.
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The same reason the Vatican is “unaware” of all the other heretic bishops and priests in the world.
 
This is quite amusing. As stated by a previous poster, we have the warnings of the Popes of the past, going back to at least to Pope Pius IX’s “Syllabus of Errors”, written in1864. We have the great Pope Saint Pius X, who warned specifically, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, about the infestation of Modernism and Liberalism within the Church itself.

Then we have a Council called by John XXIII, which was dominated by modernists such as Hans Urs Von Balthusar, Karl Rahner, Yves Congar: the very type of Modernists with liberal theological ideas which the past Popes had warned against. This Council dramatically changed the Catholic Faith and its practices, especially its highest form of worship; the Mass.

Statistics show that the practice of the Catholic Faith peaked just before the changes of Vatican II were implemented. Things such as Mass attendance, number of Priests, number of Sisters, number of Brothers, number of Catholic schools, Religious orders and other indicators. Almost immediately after the changes of Vatican II were implemented, the practice of the faith began to decline.

The deniers list a host of unrelated events; from the election of a Catholic President, to man walking on the moon to the raising popularity of “yarn crafts”, as the reasons for the decline, and the continuing decline, of the Catholic Faith when the answer is staring them right in the face.

Thomas
 
Sadly, the Bishop’s writings, as well as this thoughts, are all tainted with the spirit of disobedience. Consider that Luther also wrote things that were inspiring, but which lead others only to divide the Body of Christ. In the mass, the spirit of reverence emanates from the individuals who are gathered. As to the form of the mass: Are clandestine masses done in prison camps unworthy or diminished in holiness because they must be extremely elemental in nature? Many of them are holier than the finest of the pre-VII masses! You may rest assured that many Catholics were also “bored” at the pre-VII masses, as human nature does not change. The physical form of the mass should not determine or affect the spirit of those participating. It is the timeless Lord we celebrate, no matter how He is celebrated.

Unfortunately, VII coincided with the most profound and dark changes in society and the world. VIi was certainly poorly implemented, and liturgical abuses have been many, but that is a matter of prayer and patience on our parts. We fool ourselves if we think that the novus ordo is solely responsible for the deleterious effects upon the Church. The cause is as old as evil itself.

The novus ordo is not boring. WE are boring.
 
I completely agree that there are some deep problems in the Church today, and far too many priests are not teaching the beautiful truths of the Church and not helping the souls in their parishes. But yet, I think in most cases, the ultimate responsibilty is on each one of us. I am a recent re-convert to the Church, coming back after 38 years away. I am completely blown away by all the fantastic spiritual resources that are available to Catholics, including many beautiful books written by saints and to-be saints, all the beautiful devotions in the Church, EWTN, Catholic radio, the many resources on the internet, and on and on. If I was just depending on what I was going to get from a 45 minute Mass each Sunday (and alas, many times, an almost spiritually devoid Mass), yes, I would be spiritually lost. But being willing to put in the time and energy to take advantage of all that is offered to us as Catholics, I have been able to learn and grow despite all the problems in the Church, and I know many, many others who are spiritual giants in the Church despite all the problems. We in the western world really have no excuse if we don’t know our Church. We all have access to Bibles, and many spiritual books. We can all say the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, pray to the Sacred Heart. And many, many could have access to the Liturgy of the Hours if they really wanted to.

Fr. Groeschel said the worst time of the Church has come and gone long ago, and that was when Christ died on the Cross. The apostles and disciples had all lost hope and completly abandoned everything. There seemed no hope for anyone at that time. The Church in the past 2000 years has seen many crises come and go. What we are experiencing now is nothing new. We live in a fallen world, in a world where Satan is vying for each and every soul. But our Lord came and died for each and every soul as well. We just have to say yes as our Blessed Mother did.

I have seen many things in the Church that upset me greatly, but I really believe it’s up to the people to, excuse the expression, get off their butts and take responsibility for their spiritual lives.

I hope that doesn’t seem to harsh.

Mary
 
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