TPJCatholic:
I personally believe that thre great “pulling away” applies mainly to Catholics…which is why I listed the many things Catholics no longer believe…that is an enormous pulling away or watering down of the faith.
I was just reading through a speech given by Cardinal Ratzinger back in 1988. I thought I would post part of it for you to read. I am not posting it to confirm anything I have said, or refute anything you have said; I just thought you would find it interesting, if not informative. I am going to underline the parts I found most interesting.
Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI: "…In a similar way they [the liberals who have been disobedient to the magisterial declaration of the past 20 year] would claim that the Vatican has conceded a right to dissent to Lefebvre which has been obstinately denied to the promoters of a progressive tendency. In reality, the only point which is affirmed in the agreement [with Lefebvre in 1988], following Lumen Gentium 25,** is the plain fact that not all documents of the Council have the same authority. **…
"While there are many motives that might have led a great number of people to seek a refuge in the traditional liturgy, the chief one is that they find the dignity of the sacred preserved there. After the Council there were many priests who deliberately raised ‘desacralization’ to the level of a program… I do not want to develop this point any further now; I confine myself to coming straight to this conclusion: we ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy.
The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties… The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment… The essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it.
Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director.
"Aside from the liturgical questions, the central points of conflict at present are Lefebvre’s attack on the decree which deals with religious liberty, and on the so-called spirit of Assisi… For Lefebvre what is at stake is the warfare against ideological liberalism, against the relativization of truth.
"… There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.
"The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero.
The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and
yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.
"This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy – the form in which the liturgy was handed down – suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited.
It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have been taken since the Council; on the other hand, if men make question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the Faith – for instance, the corporal virginity of Mary, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, etc. – nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation. I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the Council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the Council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the Faith.
"All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.
"
In the spiritual movements of the post-concilar era, there is not the slightest doubt that frequently there has been an obliviousness, or even a suppression, of the issue of truth (Speech given 13 July 1988, in Santiago, Chile).
