Stop Blaming Vatican II

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Excellent! Thanks for sharing.

Can anyone write down the names of the 4 documents he challenges us to read?
@(name removed by moderator)?
 
I lived through the 1960s and 70s when V2 was credited as the source of every good thing since the invention of the wheel. Every one who wanted to push some new agenda wrapped it up as “in the Spirit of V2” and it was implied if you dared question any part of it you were anti V2.

I think the irrational hype in one direction prepared the way for the irrational hype in the opposite direction.
 
I saw some documents quite ecumenism about V2, however I not blame V2 for everthing bad that happens in Church nowdays, during the pandemic many people yells the clergy was coward because V2, because the churches do not open for the eucharistic.
 
I don’t “blame” Vatican II for ALL the ills of the Church. Just the poor modern stripped down liturgy, and the effect that had on the life of the Church.
Are we saying that the mass exodus of priests and religious can’t be blamed at all on Vatican II?
Poor quality of catechesis --. That has nothing to do with Vatican II?

I think a good bit of this video is what you might call a “straw man” argument.
 
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The latter part of the video goes downhill. He seems obsessed by “relevance” with no importance whatever to doctrine.

But the Church is really relevant when she affirms whatever truths are currently forgotten, and condemns whatever errors are currently fashionable. In other words, the Church should be relevant, but not regarded as relevant, except in hindsight.

Without doctrine, Catholics have no ability to discern what’s truly important, or how to respond productively. Within mainline Protestantism there are no absolutes of truth and morality, just a reflection of the Media. They are applauded as relevant, but are shrinking rapidly.

Likewise the LCWR.
 
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He makes a good point about “post hoc ergo propter hoc” but that still doesn’t mean Vatican 2 was flawless.

After V2, for all intents and purposes fasting doesn’t exist anymore in Catholicism. (I don’t want to hear about “meatless Lent Friday” - the single, pitiful vestige of the Four Holy Fasts.) It’s puzzling that one can now eat a T-bone steak and ice cream for 6 out of 7 days in Lent and still be considered “fasting” by Catholic standards. At that point, honestly I’m not sure I should bother 🤔

There was no reason for these changes. Medieval Christians worked in fields all day and still fasted from all meat and dairy in Lent; there’s no reason why we can’t.

While I’m on a rant, the “Eucharistic fast” proscribed by V2 also doesn’t seem to be very helpful: people regularly go 1, 2, or 3 hours without eating; it isn’t extraordinary. But right now it’s a 1 hour fast with the Mass-time counting towards it, so essentially a 15-minute “fast” before service starts.

Maybe the church can consider a little more “heavy lifting” here - Just an opinion.
 
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One problem I see with arguments like this is that none of us can know with any certainty what the alternative timeline would have been like had Vatican II not occurred. All we can do is speculate. Then some of us reject what we’ve decided is the negative outcome of the council, and in some cases we attempt to go back in time. Others of us accept the council, changes and all, and move forward.

My personal example in this regard is my older sister. She received her Catholic indoctrination in the pre-Vatican II Church, and for intellectual and perhaps cultural reasons she was on her way out of the Church long before the council convened.
 
christofirst said:
All we can do is speculate.
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I’m almost certain that we would’ve been stuck with Urban VIII’s awful hymns for another century. It took some 300 years for them to be restored (at least partially) to their pre-Urban state, and every hymnologist of note was complaining about how bad they were for 300 years.

In all honesty, I think it’s very difficult to generalise about Vatican II due to its enormous scope except, perhaps, that it was a mixed bag like every other Ecumenical Council. The Acta Synodalia (that is, council records) are 26 anvil-like volumes that are completely in Latin, excepting Patriarch Maximos IV who addressed the council in French. The debates are complex, highly contextual and frequently punctuated with the presiding bishop having to say ‘tempus finitum est!’ (time’s up!).

Perhaps in 250 years, our successors will convene Vatican N and say ‘Deus meus, haec agentes cogitabant?’ (My God, what were they thinking when they did this?).
 
ReaderT said:
After V2, for all intents and purposes fasting doesn’t exist anymore in Catholicism.
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This is one of the saddest aspects of Catholic modernism. We went from restricting our diets for half the year to maybe giving up chocolate for Lent. Even in traditionalist circles, fasting is rare. We’re quick to seek joy in bourbon, meat, tweed, and Tolkien, but our feasting loses its meaning in the absence of fasting.

Our other biggest loss, in my opinion, is the liturgical hours. Some people pray the hours as a private devotion, but when was the last time your church had them publicly? An FSSP parish might celebrate them on special feasts/occasions.
 
Lobster_Johnson said:
Even in traditionalist circles, fasting is rare.
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How do you know? “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Mt 6:17-18)
 
It’s interesting, but I’ve tried to give up two things for Lent in the past several years, even before returning to Church, God, Jesus. I do think that my sacrifices have pushed me forward, even if I lacked the faith at the beginning of them.

I will have to agree that fasting helps immensely with drawing one closer to God.

@ReaderT makes some great points. I would really like to see an 8 hour fast (with medical reasons only for exemption), which can make more sense for those that attend Mass in the evening or when on an unusual schedule due to life or work. No eating after midnight doesn’t work for every schedule, but that isn’t good enough reason to drop the fast to one hour. One hour is laughable and very easy, requiring hardly any obvious effort or suffering. How can you receive while spiritually hungry if you had a meal 90 minutes prior? Spiritual hunger occurs when we lack.
 
Vatican II’s documents themselves are mostly banal (in the good sense), but the Council as an event clearly inspired much more both officially (e.g. a more radical liturgical reform, fasting/abstinence diminishment, more radical ecumenical and interreligious practices, etc.) and unofficially (“spirit of Vatican II” stuff)

Vatican II was also a gathering of bishops. Ideas and influences were exchanged as well which led to changes being imposed on priests and people who didn’t ask for them. See this NYT article from 1964 on the US bishops:
More than one [US bishop] has admitted that he finds himself voting for changes in ecclesiastical practices and doctrinal interpretations he would have deemed totally unacceptable only two years ago.
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The “progressive” changes wrought in the American hierarchy in the past two years are, of course, due initially to Pope John, who made aggiornamento an acceptable idea as well as a universal word. Yet other factors have played a role. One is the day‐by‐day exposure to new ideas.
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After three sessions of daily meetings with fellow bishops from other lands, a swelling confidence in their own ability to discern the good of the church, the airing of many long pent‐up frustrations and doubts about traditional practices, exposure to the thought of the best and most forward-looking theologians in the Catholic world, the encouragement of two Popes, a groundswell of critical comment from parish priests, nuns and the articulate laity, the comfort of one another’s company, and the privacy afforded in a city where 2,300 other prelates are gathered and one bishop more or less goes unnoticed — with all this, plus the help of the Holy Spirit, which the bishops themselves would put first, the American bishops have found themselves.

The big problem facing them now is that they are ahead of both their priests and their people. Normally, a hierarchy lags behind the intellectual leaders in the church. New ideas come from below and with great difficulty are recognized by the authorities. This process has been reversed during Vatican II. Now, new ideas have to be presented by the bishops themselves, who will certainly run into many of the same difficulties that traditionally have faced other forerunners.
Vatican II Re‐educates The American Bishops - The New York Times
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Vatican II, like certain other ecumenical Councils, was ultimately intended to address a particular time and set of circumstances. The fact is, those circumstances changed almost immediately rendering its pastoral approach in each document ineffective in every case. We shouldn’t be rigidly clinging to the outdated and failed reforms of that era. No one still clings to the decrees of, say, the First Lateran Council. The approach geared toward those past times should not be clung to with rigidity-- which Pope Francis defines as “intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past”–in the face of new circumstances. Sometimes new approaches are needed, and sometimes a return to older, proven practices are needed (Vatican II itself did each for its own time, and each can be done again).
 
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Posters are referring to events that happened after V2, such as changes in fasting minimum regulations.

First, one can still fast as much as one wants.

Second, I don’t think changes in fasting are in the documents of V2. I would ask anyone to cite specific wording in V2 to make their point about V2.
 
MarkRome said:
Remember, you don’t need the Church to tell you when to fast.
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It doesn’t need to tell us when to go to Mass or confession either. And yet we wouldn’t say once a year is acceptable for either.

What benefit was brought by getting rid of the Ember Days, for example? What precisely was the net good we gained?
 
Yes, none of the disciplines like fasting are now forbidden, and I still see plenty of cases where asceticism is still recommended. Did we only fast because we were compelled to do so, and if so, where is the great merit in that?

On another personal note, one of the major reasons why I haven’t “thought my way out of the Church,” like too many of my other loved ones and family members, is specifically because of Vatican II documents like Nostra aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
 
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