misinterpretations and misapplications of Vatican II

[JReducation]

I’m going to make myself quite clear on this:

1.) A lot of changes made in the name of Vatican II (or in “the spirit of Vatican II”) had nothing to do with Vatican II, and a lot of people making opportune changes to what they thought the Catholic Church should be like and then used Vatican II as a scape-goat.

2.) One should not identify one’s-self as a “liberal, progressive, conservative, orthodox” or any other name to describe their faith. One should be willing to search for the truth, and in doing so one will completely submit to the authority of the church as founded by Jesus Christ Himself.

3.) Go to Poland and visit the Catholic Churches there. There was none of this tearing down of altars and putting in tables, etc that we see in western countries. They waited for the official translation of the documents, and did their best to carry them out to the letter. I have been so blessed to have had a spiritual up-bringing with Polish clergy in my own parish. They never bought into this “spirit of Vatican II” nonsense.

4.) Calling the Missal of 1962 “The Mass of Ages” is plain wrong. It is a development of the Missal of 1570, when the liturgy was reformed, and liturgies written between 1370 and 1570 were considered invalid, but older liturgical traditions from pre-1370 were permitted to be retained, hence why the Dominicans have their own style of liturgy.

5.) There are many good Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Theologians, Catechists, Seminarians, Acolytes, Altar-Servants, Teachers, and other Laity whom are seeking to correct the gross errors made during the 1970’s in the wave of post-Vatican II changes.

6.) For one thing, the New English Translation of the Missal will make things much better. At the last St Stephen’s Guild Conference we extensively trained in the new translation.

7.) Everybody get off your high-horses and realise that we are all sinners. There is no Pre-V2 and Post-V2 church. It is the same “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church”. Instead of doing what you think is right and then trying to justify your actions before God, seek out what is true, right and humble yourself before the God whom will ultimately be your judge.

8.) It’s not about you, what you like, what you want, what you think or what you feel. It’s all about GOD, and it isn’t always pleasant.

9.) You are a sinner, I am a sinner, Clergy are sinners, Laity are sinners. Don’t think of yourself as being so good as to get into heaven upon your merits. Remember that there are two main types of people out there: Saints who think themselves as sinners, and sinners who think themselves to be saints.

10.) Go and ACTUALLY READ all of the Vatican II documents, before you decide what a “post-Vatican II” church is like.

Very well said.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[CradleCath]

Is it his opinion that every sentence of the sixteen conciliar documents is de fide or even De fide ecclesiastica definita?

I don’t think so. This is a direct quote from Benedict XVI:
“In the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over the centuries and replaced it –** as in a manufacturing process – with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”**

In reply to your earlier post about scholastic language, wouldn’t it have been nice if…instead of…

“Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority”

SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM would have said:

Should any person, even if he be a priest, add, remove or change anything in the liturgy…let him be Anathema.

That way we, the laity…after close to 42 yrs. would not STILL be sitting here trying to figure out “what Vatican II really meant”. AND
so many Bishops & priests who “added” clowns, dancers, power point presentations, etc.
to the Mass would no longer be a problem, they’d be GONE!!!;

 

[StTommyMore]

Is it his opinion that every sentence of the sixteen conciliar documents is de fide or even De fide ecclesiastica definita?

This does not hold true for ANY council of the Church. Even Trent has non-infallible statements

 

[manygift1spirit]

I’m going to make myself quite clear on this:

1.) A lot of changes made in the name of Vatican II (or in “the spirit of Vatican II”) had nothing to do with Vatican II, and a lot of people making opportune changes to what they thought the Catholic Church should be like and then used Vatican II as a scape-goat.

2.) One should not identify one’s-self as a “liberal, progressive, conservative, orthodox” or any other name to describe their faith. One should be willing to search for the truth, and in doing so one will completely submit to the authority of the church as founded by Jesus Christ Himself.

3.) Go to Poland and visit the Catholic Churches there. There was none of this tearing down of altars and putting in tables, etc that we see in western countries. They waited for the official translation of the documents, and did their best to carry them out to the letter. I have been so blessed to have had a spiritual up-bringing with Polish clergy in my own parish. They never bought into this “spirit of Vatican II” nonsense.

4.) Calling the Missal of 1962 “The Mass of Ages” is plain wrong. It is a development of the Missal of 1570, when the liturgy was reformed, and liturgies written between 1370 and 1570 were considered invalid, but older liturgical traditions from pre-1370 were permitted to be retained, hence why the Dominicans have their own style of liturgy.

5.) There are many good Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Theologians, Catechists, Seminarians, Acolytes, Altar-Servants, Teachers, and other Laity whom are seeking to correct the gross errors made during the 1970’s in the wave of post-Vatican II changes.

6.) For one thing, the New English Translation of the Missal will make things much better. At the last St Stephen’s Guild Conference we extensively trained in the new translation.

7.) Everybody get off your high-horses and realise that we are all sinners. There is no Pre-V2 and Post-V2 church. It is the same “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church”. Instead of doing what you think is right and then trying to justify your actions before God, seek out what is true, right and humble yourself before the God whom will ultimately be your judge.

8.) It’s not about you, what you like, what you want, what you think or what you feel. It’s all about GOD, and it isn’t always pleasant.

9.) You are a sinner, I am a sinner, Clergy are sinners, Laity are sinners. Don’t think of yourself as being so good as to get into heaven upon your merits. Remember that there are two main types of people out there: Saints who think themselves as sinners, and sinners who think themselves to be saints.

10.) Go and ACTUALLY READ all of the Vatican II documents, before you decide what a “post-Vatican II” church is like.

I am delurking to say “thank you” for this post. To those lurkers who could not get past the bluntness I say, reread it ignoring the writer’s feeling and concentrate on the content.

Two notes. I have actually read some of the documents and they are indeed astonishingly brilliant, humbling, faithful and truth-filled. But I do fear I may never get to Poland .

 

[maurin]

I’m going to make myself quite clear on this:

1.) A lot of changes made in the name of Vatican II (or in “the spirit of Vatican II”) had nothing to do with Vatican II, and a lot of people making opportune changes to what they thought the Catholic Church should be like and then used Vatican II as a scape-goat.

2.) One should not identify one’s-self as a “liberal, progressive, conservative, orthodox” or any other name to describe their faith. One should be willing to search for the truth, and in doing so one will completely submit to the authority of the church as founded by Jesus Christ Himself.

3.) Go to Poland and visit the Catholic Churches there. There was none of this tearing down of altars and putting in tables, etc that we see in western countries. They waited for the official translation of the documents, and did their best to carry them out to the letter. I have been so blessed to have had a spiritual up-bringing with Polish clergy in my own parish. They never bought into this “spirit of Vatican II” nonsense.

4.) Calling the Missal of 1962 “The Mass of Ages” is plain wrong. It is a development of the Missal of 1570, when the liturgy was reformed, and liturgies written between 1370 and 1570 were considered invalid, but older liturgical traditions from pre-1370 were permitted to be retained, hence why the Dominicans have their own style of liturgy.

5.) There are many good Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Theologians, Catechists, Seminarians, Acolytes, Altar-Servants, Teachers, and other Laity whom are seeking to correct the gross errors made during the 1970’s in the wave of post-Vatican II changes.

6.) For one thing, the New English Translation of the Missal will make things much better. At the last St Stephen’s Guild Conference we extensively trained in the new translation.

7.) Everybody get off your high-horses and realise that we are all sinners. There is no Pre-V2 and Post-V2 church. It is the same “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church”. Instead of doing what you think is right and then trying to justify your actions before God, seek out what is true, right and humble yourself before the God whom will ultimately be your judge.

8.) It’s not about you, what you like, what you want, what you think or what you feel. It’s all about GOD, and it isn’t always pleasant.

9.) You are a sinner, I am a sinner, Clergy are sinners, Laity are sinners. Don’t think of yourself as being so good as to get into heaven upon your merits. Remember that there are two main types of people out there: Saints who think themselves as sinners, and sinners who think themselves to be saints.

10.) Go and ACTUALLY READ all of the Vatican II documents, before you decide what a “post-Vatican II” church is like.

I disagree with at least two points: it was those who enacted the “reforms” who made the distinction between pre and post conciliarisms… a browsing of OR’s archives from the seventies and eighties will show that, and the Mass of the Ages is apt. The '62 Missal is changed little from that of Trent, which for the most part only codified that which was set from the time of Pope St Gregory the Great. The Missal of Paul VI was a departure from the earlier revisions in its changes to the Mass.

 

[Thomas_Aquinas_1]

This does not hold true for ANY council of the Church. Even Trent has non-infallible statements

StTommyMore,

Have you ever read what the Church taught regarding religious liberty prior to Vatican II (right up to the time of Pius XII), and compared it to what Vatican II taught on this subject?

 

[SouthpawLink]

This does not hold true for ANY council of the Church. Even Trent has non-infallible statements

So, without dogmatic definitions or anathemas, how are we supposed to know what to accept and with which level of obedience? How are we to treat the “new points of doctrine” from Vatican II? What theological note(s) should they be given?

Did you know that some bishops are asking for a definitive clarification as well as a condemnation of the errors that arose after the Council?

Until the mess is cleared up, you’ll have to forgive me for sticking to the much clearer pre-Vatican II catechisms and theology manuals.

 

[ProVobis]

In reply to your earlier post about scholastic language, wouldn’t it have been nice if…instead of…

“Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority”

SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM would have said:

Should any person, even if he be a priest, add, remove or change anything in the liturgy…let him be Anathema.

Yes, but the fact that the documents don’t use “anathema sit,” also says something. And this is perhaps where the documents on ecumenism, where those “anathematicized” by the last council are now to be treated as “brothers,” created such murky waters, a convolution in philosophical thinking.

 

[ProVobis]

So, without dogmatic definitions or anathemas, how are we supposed to know what to accept and with which level of obedience? How are we to treat the “new points of doctrine” from Vatican II? What theological note(s) should they be given?

Did you know that some bishops are asking for a definitive clarification as well as a condemnation of the errors that arose after the Council?

Until the mess is cleared up, you’ll have to forgive me for sticking to the much clearer pre-Vatican II catechisms and theology manuals.

Precisely.

As for obedience, in the philosophical sense, only with actual commands (Ten Commandments, Papal decrees, parental commands, etc.) can we be disobedient. Obedience has no meaning if everything is allowed.

 

[StTommyMore]

What we can all agree on is this: the Church has been going through some growing pains over the last half-century. It is very easy to blame these problems on the Second Vatican Council. But I would like to propose something. Let us do a thought experiment. Given the direction the world was going in the tumultuous decade of the 1960’s, would it not be reasonable to assume that upheaval was coming to the Church, council or no council? Rather than simply assume that the upheaval was caused by the Council, would it not be reasonable to consider that the council helped to stem the tidal wave of change that was enveloping the world? In other words, could it not be true that rather than being a catalyst for the issues that arose shortly afterward, what if the Council is viewed as a preparation for the upcoming change. I am not saying it was one or the other, but I am merely pointing out a different light in which the documents can be viewed.

 

[SouthpawLink]

Prior to the Council, popes repeatedly warned that the Church had many enemies, both without and within. Pope John XXIII, however, opposed the “prophets of gloom,” despite Pius XII having been warned not to hold a Council. Pope John said that the Council didn’t need to reprove error because modern man was already well capable of doing that; fifty years later, Communism is alive and well and society is much worse than in the early '60s.

Far from stemming the tide, the Council changed the Holy Mass, redefined the Church’s attitude toward non-Catholics (paving the way for false ecumenism, which continues to this day), practically redefined the Church herself (all of a sudden she became a ‘sacrament’), blurred the lines between the priesthood and the laity, and defanged the papacy (under the concept of ‘collegiality’). And I haven’t yet mentioned Dignitatis Humanae, which, according to its authors, at least “apparently” contradicted previous Church teaching (cf. Fr. Congar).

Pope Benedict himself said that Gaudium et Spes was the Church’s way of reconciling herself with the modern world (post-French Revolution), a sort of counter-Syllabus (i.e. Ven. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Modern Errors).

The Church, far from attempting to stop the changes, allowed herself to be influenced by them (opening the windows to let some ‘fresh air’ in).

 

[edwest2]

I’m going to make myself quite clear on this:

1.) A lot of changes made in the name of Vatican II (or in “the spirit of Vatican II”) had nothing to do with Vatican II, and a lot of people making opportune changes to what they thought the Catholic Church should be like and then used Vatican II as a scape-goat.

2.) One should not identify one’s-self as a “liberal, progressive, conservative, orthodox” or any other name to describe their faith. One should be willing to search for the truth, and in doing so one will completely submit to the authority of the church as founded by Jesus Christ Himself.

3.) Go to Poland and visit the Catholic Churches there. There was none of this tearing down of altars and putting in tables, etc that we see in western countries. They waited for the official translation of the documents, and did their best to carry them out to the letter. I have been so blessed to have had a spiritual up-bringing with Polish clergy in my own parish. They never bought into this “spirit of Vatican II” nonsense.

4.) Calling the Missal of 1962 “The Mass of Ages” is plain wrong. It is a development of the Missal of 1570, when the liturgy was reformed, and liturgies written between 1370 and 1570 were considered invalid, but older liturgical traditions from pre-1370 were permitted to be retained, hence why the Dominicans have their own style of liturgy.

5.) There are many good Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Theologians, Catechists, Seminarians, Acolytes, Altar-Servants, Teachers, and other Laity whom are seeking to correct the gross errors made during the 1970’s in the wave of post-Vatican II changes.

6.) For one thing, the New English Translation of the Missal will make things much better. At the last St Stephen’s Guild Conference we extensively trained in the new translation.

7.) Everybody get off your high-horses and realise that we are all sinners. There is no Pre-V2 and Post-V2 church. It is the same “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church”. Instead of doing what you think is right and then trying to justify your actions before God, seek out what is true, right and humble yourself before the God whom will ultimately be your judge.

8.) It’s not about you, what you like, what you want, what you think or what you feel. It’s all about GOD, and it isn’t always pleasant.

9.) You are a sinner, I am a sinner, Clergy are sinners, Laity are sinners. Don’t think of yourself as being so good as to get into heaven upon your merits. Remember that there are two main types of people out there: Saints who think themselves as sinners, and sinners who think themselves to be saints.

10.) Go and ACTUALLY READ all of the Vatican II documents, before you decide what a “post-Vatican II” church is like.

Thank you so very much. I think the mystery here is basically, So, if Vatican II did not call for the changes, who made them? I am in no way interested in causing scandal, but something on the record regarding this would help to put the implementation of such changes in its proper historical context. It would then help to dispel the connection with Vatican II and the “spirit of Vatican II.”

I agree. Vatican II was made the scapegoat but who were the perpetrators?

A fellow sinner,
Ed

 

[StTommyMore]

Prior to the Council, popes repeatedly warned that the Church had many enemies, both without and within. Pope John XXIII, however, opposed the “prophets of gloom,” despite Pius XII having been warned not to hold a Council. Pope John said that the Council didn’t need to reprove error because modern man was already well capable of doing that; fifty years later, Communism is alive and well and society is much worse than in the early '60s.

Far from stemming the tide, the Council changed the Holy Mass, redefined the Church’s attitude toward non-Catholics (paving the way for false ecumenism, which continues to this day), practically redefined the Church herself (all of a sudden she became a ‘sacrament’), blurred the lines between the priesthood and the laity, and defanged the papacy (under the concept of ‘collegiality’). And I haven’t yet mentioned Dignitatis Humanae, which, according to its authors, at least “apparently” contradicted previous Church teaching (cf. Fr. Congar).

Pope Benedict himself said that Gaudium et Spes was the Church’s way of reconciling herself with the modern world (post-French Revolution), a sort of counter-Syllabus (i.e. Ven. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Modern Errors).

The Church, far from attempting to stop the changes, allowed herself to be influenced by them (opening the windows to let some ‘fresh air’ in).

Perhaps you can back up your assertions with quotes from Conciliar documents?

 

[At_Trent]

Vatican II was made the scapegoat but who were the perpetrators?

A fellow sinner,
Ed

Or "what ? " … collegiality is it imho

 

[Oneofthewomen]

What we can all agree on is this: the Church has been going through some growing pains over the last half-century. It is very easy to blame these problems on the Second Vatican Council. But I would like to propose something. Let us do a thought experiment. Given the direction the world was going in the tumultuous decade of the 1960’s, would it not be reasonable to assume that upheaval was coming to the Church, council or no council? Rather than simply assume that the upheaval was caused by the Council, would it not be reasonable to consider that the council helped to stem the tidal wave of change that was enveloping the world? In other words, could it not be true that rather than being a catalyst

for the issues that arose shortly afterward, what if the Council is viewed as a preparation for the upcoming change. I am not saying it was one or the other, but I am merely pointing out a different light in which the documents can be viewed.

A very good idea!
The world changed drastically after WWII,and I believe that it is naive to think that all the change that happened so fast would not affect the Church and I also believe that the Council was the way the Holy Spirit was guiding the Church.

Which bring me to this-

Prior to the Council, popes repeatedly warned that the Church had many enemies, both without and within. Pope John XXIII, however, opposed the “prophets of gloom,” despite Pius XII having been warned not to hold a Council.

Pope John said that the Council didn’t need to reprove error because modern man was already well capable of doing that; fifty years later, Communism is alive and well and society is much worse than in the early '60s.

Or maybe it was the Holy Spirit at work?

 

[Judge_Mental]

Are the Vatican Two documents like legal documents? If they are, and after forty years people are still arguing what they mean, they need to be clarified, rewritten or shelved.

 

[StTommyMore]

Are the Vatican Two documents like legal documents? If they are, and after forty years people are still arguing what they mean, they need to be clarified, rewritten or shelved.

So I suppose that since peole are still arguing over what the united States Constitution means after more than 200 years that should be shelved as well? Sorry, but this makes no sense to me.

 

[dmorgan]

What we can all agree on is this: the Church has been going through some growing pains over the last half-century. It is very easy to blame these problems on the Second Vatican Council. But I would like to propose something. Let us do a thought experiment. Given the direction the world was going in the tumultuous decade of the 1960’s, would it not be reasonable to assume that upheaval was coming to the Church, council or no council? Rather than simply assume that the upheaval was caused by the Council, would it not be reasonable to consider that the council helped to stem the tidal wave of change that was enveloping the world? In other words, could it not be true that rather than being a catalyst for the issues that arose shortly afterward, what if the Council is viewed as a preparation for the upcoming change. I am not saying it was one or the other, but I am merely pointing out a different light in which the documents can be viewed.

I will agree to the point that the 1960’s were a time of cataclysmic change, but I often find myself wondering: “Did the secular changes in the 60’s influence the Church, or did the changes in the Church allow the secular changes to flourish?”

Did the weakening of the Foundation cause the house to fall?

Pax Christi

 

[SouthpawLink]

Perhaps you can back up your assertions with quotes from Conciliar documents?

See Pope John XXIII’s opening address: “We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.”

ourladyswarriors.org/teach/v2open.htm

Compare his words with those of Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos), Leo XIII (Humanum Genus), St. Pius X (Pascendi Dominici Gregis), Pius XI (Divini Redemptoris) and Pius XII (Humani Generis). Did Satan take a vacation during the 1960s? Of course not!

Scroll down and you’ll see the section where Pope John mentions how the Church will now reprove error.

I’ll have to devote a later post to the other points I made. A few of the quotes I mentioned, however, can be found online (see also then-Cardinal Ratzinger calling the new Mass “a banal, on-the-spot product”).

 

[Thomas_Aquinas_1]

Southpawlink:

Pope Benedict himself said that Gaudium et Spes was the Church’s way of reconciling herself with the modern world (post-French Revolution), a sort of counter-Syllabus (i.e. Ven. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Modern Errors).

St.TommyMore asked for quotes to support several assertions made by Southpawlink. I’ll provide the source for the above statement.

A little background: From the time of the French Revolution, the Church condemned the principles it was based on. The Principles of 1789 were condemned under several names, such as Liberalism (see Libertas), Freemasonry (See Humanum Genis), and Naturalism (See quanta Cura), with many of the errors included and formally condemned in the Syllabus of Errors issued by Pope Pius IX. In the following quote, Cardinal Ratzinger states that Vatican II tried to reconcile the Church with the world based on the Principles of 1789.

Cardinal Ratzinger: "If one is looking for a global diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et spes], one could say that it (along with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-Syllabus …

This happened because, first in central Europe, conditioned by the situation, the unilateral dependence on the positions taken by the Church through the initiatives of Pius IX and Pius X against the new period of History opened by the French Revolution was to a large extent corrected via facti. But a fundamental new document regarding relations with the world as it had been since 1789 was still lacking.

In reality, the mentality that preceded the revolution [the Catholic mentality] still reigned in the countries with strong Catholic majorities; today almost no one denies that the Spanish and Italian concordats [accords between Church and State] tried to conserve too many things from a conception of the world that for a long time had not corresponded to reality. Likewise, almost no one can deny that this dependence on an obsolete conception of relations between the Church and State was matched by similar anachronisms in the domain of education and the attitude taken toward the modern historical-critical method …

**Let us content ourselves here with stating that the text [of Gaudium et spes] plays the role of a counter-Syllabus to the measure that it represents an attempt to officially reconcile the Church with the world as it had become after 1789. **On one hand, this visualization alone clarifies the ghetto complex that we mentioned before. On the other hand, it permits us to understand the meaning of this new relationship between the Church and the Modern World. “World” is understood here, at depth, as the spirit of modern times. The consciousness of being a detached group that existed in the Church viewed this spirit as something separate from herself and, after the hot as well as cold wars were over, she sought dialogue and cooperation with it.

(Les Principes de la Theologie Catholique - Esquisse et Materiaux, Paris: Tequi, 1982, pp. 426-427).

Simply put, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, Vatican II was an attempt to reconcile the Church with the world based on the Masonic Principles of 1789. Prior ot Vatican II this idea was explicitly condemned over and over again by the Popes. They said the principles of the Revolution are opposed to the principles of Catholicism, and trying to unite the two is like uniting Christ and Belial.