Pope Francis emphasizes that Second Vatican Council is the work of the Holy Spirit [CWN]

[Dempsey1919]

The popes from Paul VI to Francis have already said that the implementation has been a disaster. The disaster is the implementation, not the council.

Then why didn’t they do something about it?

I think it’s fairly obvious that we have a problem with Neo-Modernism. Why won’t the Pope take a heavy hand and enforce the hermeneutic of continuity and the reform of the reform?

 

[CrossofChrist]

The Church is obsessed with Vatican II. Why? As far as I’m concerned, Vatican II brought nothing productive. The Church has been in crisis since Vatican II. Why can’t the hierarchy just admit that the implementation of Vatican II was a disaster?

The Church needs to be honest and admit that the springtime promised by Vatican II never happened. In fact, Vatican II brought a deep, dark winter.

This crisis in the Church will end only when we return to tradition.

To some extent, the Church has admitted the implementation of Vatican II was a disaster. There are numerous quotes about that online that you can find if you look for them. The “obsession” with VII is to show what the Council really intended and to implement the reforms called for (better late than never ).

The 1960’s brought a deep, dark winter, not Vatican II. Mass attendance was already very low in some Western European countries before Vatican II, and the fact that so many Catholics fell away from the Church after the 1960s shows just how necessary Vatican II really was for the Church. If Catholics really were strong in their faith before the Council, they never would’ve fallen away.

That was one of the major points of the Council; a return to tradition as a means of dialogue with the modern world. Ever heard of Ressourcement?

 

[CrossofChrist]

Then why didn’t they do something about it?

I think it’s fairly obvious that we have a problem with Neo-Modernism. Why won’t the Pope take a heavy hand and enforce the hermeneutic of continuity and the reform of the reform?

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Force everything upon us and then fallen away Catholics and nonbelievers will think that we have the love of Christ and Catholicism isn’t all rules. That’s not how you win hearts, albeit with good intentions.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Force everything upon us and then fallen away Catholics and nonbelievers will think that we have the love of Christ and Catholicism isn’t all rules.

You don’t have kids, do you?

 

[Lormar]

I often feel like I am walking on egg shells here - always worried that I frame whatever it is I am going to ask in as charitable and non-confrontational way as possible. But I don’t know a nice way to ask a question that is really grating on my nerves.

What took fifty years to decide they want to straighten the mess out?

 

[JReducation]

Did the Church expect too much or did the Church think the people ought to be given grown-up responsibility?

Obviously a lot of Catholics did not behave like grown-ups.

Then why didn’t they do something about it?

I think it’s fairly obvious that we have a problem with Neo-Modernism. Why won’t the Pope take a heavy hand and enforce the hermeneutic of continuity and the reform of the reform?

Popes are not temporal rulers. They don’t have that kind of authority. As Cardinal Arinze once said, “What do you want? Do you want the pope to send Swiss Guards to arrest everyone who does not tow the line?”

Pope Benedict once said, “Many think that the pope has power. But the truth is that the pope has no power outside of Church law.”

Church law already tells us what to do and not to do.

 

[McCall1981]

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Force everything upon us and then fallen away Catholics and nonbelievers will think that we have the love of Christ and Catholicism isn’t all rules. That’s not how you win hearts, albeit with good intentions.

One might argue that the method the Church has been using has failed… for decades. Wouldn’t trying something different make sense?

 

[CrossofChrist]

Great post!

The documents were deliberately written that way. They were written so that multiple interpretations are possible. The neo-modernist peritus are responsible for this.

“Neo-Modernists” such as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Henri de Lubac?

 

[CrossofChrist]

You don’t have kids, do you?

Nah, teenager.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

Nah, teenager.

Ahh…

Then maybe its too soon to ask if you are fortunate and lucky to have your parents lay down the law for you! I know I didn’t appreciate it way back when…

That’s what the (I’m going to butcher this spelling) hierarchical structure of the Church should provide us.

To paraphrase “A Few Good Men”… we need them on that wall.

 

[JaMc]

Popes are not temporal rulers. They don’t have that kind of authority. As Cardinal Arinze once said, “What do you want? Do you want the pope to send Swiss Guards to arrest everyone who does not tow the line?”

Pope Benedict once said, “Many think that the pope has power. But the truth is that the pope has no power outside of Church law.”

Church law already tells us what to do and not to do.

True. But Pope Francis could do as St. Pius X, and take firm measures to ensure orthodoxy among the bishops, clergy, and theologians. Oftentimes stern warnings that certain things are not acceptable, and clear statements as to what is expected, can go a long way.

 

[McCall1981]

True. But Pope Francis could do as St. Pius X, and take firm measures to ensure orthodoxy among the bishops, clergy, and theologians. Oftentimes stern warnings that certain things are not acceptable, and clear statements as to what is expected, can go a long way.

Maybe, hopefully, possibly the LCWR reform falls under this catagory…

 

[ProVobis]

The 1960’s brought a deep, dark winter, not Vatican II. Mass attendance was already very low in some Western European countries before Vatican II, and the fact that so many Catholics fell away from the Church after the 1960s shows just how necessary Vatican II really was for the Church. If Catholics really were strong in their faith before the Council, they never would’ve fallen away.

OTOH, Catholicism was starting to establish itself in the U.S. and in the U.K., where prior to the mid-19th century it was basically non-existent. It’s hard to determine the exact cause for the decline in attendance after 1964.

 

[1AugustSon7]

The [Vatican II] documents were deliberately written that way. They were written so that multiple interpretations are possible. The neo-modernist peritus are responsible for this.

Which matters nothing.

Many of the Councils/Creeds were made practically worthless by semantics over a single term that had multiple interpretations and that only perhaps one in a thousand Catholics were sufficiently educated enough to detect which side/interpretation had a logical warrant and which did not; confusion and controvery over a single word in a Council document effectively negated the work or doctrine of some early Councils. One only word.

Let me repeat: one word in a Council’s creed sufficed to become a license for some to split from the Church and for others to argue that the Church/Council said something it didn’t; this went on for decades and centuries and in certain cases the wounds/schisms over what is but semantics to this day have not been healed.

ONE WORD. Let it be consubstantial or filioque : on account of one word decades and sometimes centuries of division and confusion resulted.

So what’s the difference? How can we be sure which interpretation is correct when many sides make equally attractive or plausible cases or arguments about what a Council did or did not say? Rome is the difference: it’s not what some Catholic theologian or philosopher - liberal or conservative - says what this or that phrase or term of a Catholic Council means. It is what Rome says it meant and means for Catholics that matters: from the horse’s mouth. Let us grant FTSOA that VII included many confusing and vague phrases or terms that were put there by rascals to grant themselves a license to make ruckus in the Church: it matters nothing, because it is what the Council fathers and Rome understood by those phrases and terms that qualified the sense and it was in that sense and that sense alone that was received/promulgated; and wherever there might be doubt or uncertainty, then it remains with the Church and ultimately Rome to determine what a statement means or does not mean. Remember: just one word was and is enough for rascals or troublemakers to disturb the whole Catholic world; but we have to use words -even limited human ones- to express our faith. We have to be able to communicate with others: whether that is with each other as Christians or others who are not Christians. Now if we let rascals and their troublemaking and their willingness to sink the whole Catholic world into controversy over semantics and sophistry stop us from preaching the Gospel, then we would forfeit our duty. That would be apostasy. That’s never going to happen: it behooves the Church, as it did Saint Paul, to preach Christ: to Jews and Gentiles, to believers and unbelievers alike; there has never been a period in the Church’s history where there were not people arguing (even furiously) over words- even the Apostles complained bitterly of this.

 

[celticpearl]

At Lest with the Baltimore Catechism we managed to learn whast
we needed to make our First Communion and Conformation and I
I can still remember the majoriety of it.

 

[otjm]

But here’s the bottom line: The Catholic Church in Europe is dying. And it’s fair to say that the implementation of Vatican II caused a lot of the problems we Europeans experience.

No, actually, the problems you in Europe experienced caused a lot of the problems with the implementation of Vatican 2. You have the cart and the horse in the wrong order.

Coincidence is not causality.

 

[otjm]

Great post!

The documents were deliberately written that way. They were written so that multiple interpretations are possible. The neo-modernist peritus are responsible for this.

We need a syllabus of errors for Vatican II. We need new documents to enforce a traditional interpretation of the Vatican II documents.

then please explain why the documents of Vatican 2 were implemented in Poland, for example, with nowhere near the problems experienced say, in England.

 

[otjm]

True. But Pope Francis could do as St. Pius X, and take firm measures to ensure orthodoxy among the bishops, clergy, and theologians. Oftentimes stern warnings that certain things are not acceptable, and clear statements as to what is expected, can go a long way.

That has been occurring for the last 20 or 25 years or so. The problem is, most people don’t have enough perspective to see the changes that have been occurring.

The John Paul 2 priests have been making headway - and we are now seeing a flock of new bishops, who don’t have the same baggage as the previous ones. We are seeing a growth in 24 hour Eucharistic adoration; we are seeing OF Masses without the liturgical aberrations. We are seeing a gradual increase in vocations (our seminary has 150 studying). We have had two awesome Popes and this one looks like another. The liberals are going grey, and their groups are dying out as they die off, as the younger set simply isn’t joining in.

If you want to see the same set of problems, you can always find them somewhere; but if you fail to look at anything else, you will not see the changes.

People want a smack down. Interestingly, the Pope that everyone expected to provide that, the one called God’s rottweiler, chose to write his first encyclical on love.

Did anyone read it? Anyone?

Oh, but it is so much more of an emotional jag to say “Wow! They finally got theirs!!!”

Benedict spoke of a remnant Church - was anyone listening?

 

[McCall1981]

That has been occurring for the last 20 or 25 years or so. The problem is, most people don’t have enough perspective to see the changes that have been occurring.

The John Paul 2 priests have been making headway - and we are now seeing a flock of new bishops, who don’t have the same baggage as the previous ones. We are seeing a growth in 24 hour Eucharistic adoration; we are seeing OF Masses without the liturgical aberrations. We are seeing a gradual increase in vocations (our seminary has 150 studying). We have had two awesome Popes and this one looks like another. The liberals are going grey, and their groups are dying out as they die off, as the younger set simply isn’t joining in.

If you want to see the same set of problems, you can always find them somewhere; but if you fail to look at anything else, you will not see the changes.

People want a smack down. Interestingly, the Pope that everyone expected to provide that, the one called God’s rottweiler, chose to write his first encyclical on love.

Did anyone read it? Anyone?

Oh, but it is so much more of an emotional jag to say “Wow! They finally got theirs!!!”

Benedict spoke of a remnant Church - was anyone listening?

This post is very encouraging, thank you

To go along with what you said, I saw this yesterday:

cvcomment.org/2013/04/16/ordinations-to-priesthood-in-england-and-wales-now-higher-than-the-1950s/

 

[otjm]

This post is very encouraging, thank you

To go along with what you said, I saw this yesterday:

cvcomment.org/2013/04/16/ordinations-to-priesthood-in-england-and-wales-now-higher-than-the-1950s/

Having two son-in-laws trained in engineering, I have found the old saw about the glass half full or half empty has a third option - it is twice as big as it needs to be…

All of which is to say that we have a tendency to see what we generally look for. If we are looking for grief, and problems in the Church, we can see women attempting ordination with some kook; we can see Father Happy Clappy with no clue about the sacred; we can find Sister Twitterpate talking about MotherFatherGod. In short, we can find plenty of people adrift but still calling themselves “Catholic”, only having gone through some sort of “reform”.

Then on the other side, we have Archbishop Chaput, Cardinal O’Malley, seminaries trying to figure out how to expand because they are overfull, young priests on fire with love of God and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Maybe it is because I have been around for a while; I am now on my seventh Archbishop, and seventh Pope. And I figured out, quite early on, that the crazies did not, do not, and will not represent the Church; they represent an aberration of it. I had the privilege of studying the documents of Vatican 2 as they were being released, under the guidance of priests and scholastics (I attended a Jesuit high school, college seminary and what was then still a Catholic college) and we had no problem seeing that the documents were consistent with prior Church teachings.

Maybe I was just sheltered then from all the crazies; but we accepted the fact that the Holy Spirit guided the Church (and continues to do so even today). so we didn’t tail spin over “subsist”; we didn’t look for ways of reading the documents other than with the mind of the Church. and we didn’t find a modernist twist to the documents. We were neither left nor right; we were just following the Church.