Vatican II- Please Critique Me

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Most people don’t realize that much of the teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church come directly from Vatican II. To reject Vatican II is to reject many teachings of the Catechism. The problem is not Vatican II. The problem is that theologians do not even understand the most fundamental teachings of Vatican II and the Pope, instead they have mislead people so badly that we cannot understand what Vatican II is trying to say.

A perfect example.
Vatican II and the Catechism teach that the Gospel is the source of ALL SAVING TRUTH AND MORAL DISCIPLINE.
Vatican II says the primary duty of priests is to proclaim the Gospel. This is only logical, since the Gospel is the source of
ALL SAVING TRUTH AND MORAL DISCIPLINE.

The problem is that NO ONE knows what the Gospel is. NO ONE knows the content of the Gospel.
How can priest proclaim the Gospel if they don’t know what the content of the Gospel is? How can they teach the Gospel if they don’t know exactly the content of the teachings of the Gospel? This is the exact reason why the laity is “not being fed”.

This is not the Church’s fault. It is the fault of theologians and experts. Because as far back as 1915 when the Catholic Encyclopedia was written, the “experts” wrote in the Catholic Encyclopedia that
"The word Gospel usually designates a written record of Christ’s words and deeds."

This understanding has been promoted, accepted and used in writings as if it were correct. This is the usual understanding and it is FALSE.
In Vatican II and in the Catechism, the Church constantly teaches that the Gospel is ALL the teachings the apostles learned from Jesus. And Jesus taught them all that the Father made known to Him. Then they handed this Gospel down to their successors. The whole and complete Gospel was handed down to each generation, in the Church’s teaching, life and worship, that is in Tradition. The Church teaches that some elements of this Tradition were written in the four Gospels.
Thus, while Catholic theologians believe the Gospel is “the written record of Christ’s words and deeds”, the Catechism, quoting Vatican II states that the Gospel is EVERYTHING the apostles learned from Jesus and handed down to us. And this whole Gospel has been handed down in Tradition. And, what is the content of this Gospel the apostles handed down? It is not written in the bible. There is no book of the bible or even a chapter of the bible that claims to have a summary of the Gospel the apostles taught and preached. So how do we know the content of the Gospel? Even an atheist can know. All he has to do is learn what the Christians in the first few centuries believed to be handed down, since they all learned these teachings from the apostles or their successors.

What did they believe? They believed the same teachings the Church teaches today. They had all the sacraments, they had the mass, prayer to the saints, teachings about mortal sin, purgatory, the sinfulness of contraception, and the necessity of keeping the commandments, etc.

In other words, the Gospel the apostles handed down was the entire Catholic faith. The sacraments, the mass, prayer to the saints, teachings about mortal sin, purgatory, the sinfulness of contraception, and the necessity of keeping the commandments, etc. are all part of the Gospel the apostles handed down.
We say at every mass, “the Catholic faith which comes to us from the apostles.” The Catholic faith does not come from the bible. It comes from the apostles. How? It is the Gospel they handed down. It is the Gospel they learned from Jesus. This Gospel is "the source of **ALL SAVING TRUTH AND MORAL DISCIPLINE. The Gospel the apostles proclaimed is the entire Catholic faith. **

**So the only way to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim the entire Catholic faith. The only way to teach the Gospel is to teach the entire Catholic faith. ****That is why the Church teaches that the Catechism “is a sure norm for teaching the faith” **

Thus, the reason we have all sorts of errors is not Vatican II. It is theologians who have misled everyone about the Gospel. So they all teach priests that the Gospel is the words and deeds of Jesus in the Gospels and that to proclaim the Gospel they only have to comment and teach on the words of Jesus in the Gospels. Not a single one understands that the correct meaning of the Gospel is the whole Catholic faith that the apostles handed down. Thus, to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim the entire Catholic faith, in an organized and systematic manner, as presented in the Catechism. Thus, the teachings on purgatory, on contraception, on mortal sin, on confession, on the mass, on the 10 commandments as taught in the Church catechisms, etc, are ALL TEACHINGS OF THE GOSPEL. They all come from the apostles, who learned them all from Jesus. The apostles handed them all down as the Gospel when they taught and preached.
 
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Lazerlike42:
If you truly mean to embrace the Catholicism of the past, you ought to be aware that in the past it was considered a mortal sin to speak to a person as you have spoken to me.
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This is a good point. Prior to Vatican 2, lay people were generally not allowed to participate in dialogue or debate with non-Catholics.

hurst
 
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dcdurel:
The problem is that NO ONE knows what the Gospel is.
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This is an excellent point.
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dcdurel:
Because as far back as 1915 when the Catholic Encyclopedia was written, the “experts” wrote in the Catholic Encyclopedia that
"The word Gospel usually designates a written record of Christ’s words and deeds."

This understanding has been promoted, accepted and used in writings as if it were correct. This is the usual understanding and it is FALSE.
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Well, not quite.

There is the “Gospel of Jesus Christ”, and there is the “Gospel of the Kingdom of God”. There is even “Paul’s gospel”.

The term Gospel is often used to refer to one or all of the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Another is used by Paul when he speaks of “his” gospel.

Romans 2:16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.

1 Corinthians 15:1 Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; 2 By which also you are saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures: 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen by Cephas; and after that by the eleven…

Sounds like the “mysteryof faith” we proclaim in Mass “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”.

However, When Christ preached, He had not yet died. What was He preaching?

Matthew 4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom: and healing all manner of sickness and every infirmity, among the people.

Mark 1:14 And after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying: The time is accomplished, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the gospel.

He said the Kingdom is like a seed that is planted. The seed is the Word of God that He preached. What is the Word that is being planted? For that would be the Gospel of the Kingdom.

What I have come up with so far is this:

God sent His only Son into the world to reconcile the world to Himself and welcome us into His Kingdom.

Yes, that is the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus said to repent and believe this good news! We must follow Him into the Kingdom. Of course, to do that, we must give up everything is this world, and He likewise said we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.
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dcdurel:
**So the only way to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim the entire Catholic faith. The only way to teach the Gospel is to teach the entire Catholic faith. **
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But you can’t plant the whole set of Catholic teachings into someone like that at once. The Gospel is a simple message at heart: God has come to get us and invite us to His Kingdom! So believe and accept it, put off anything that hinders, and prepare!

Meanwhile, grow in understanding all the ramifications of having God’s Kingdom on earth - obedience, charity, humility, etc. In this we see the wider context of the explicit teachings of the faith that we are called to follow.

hurst
 
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hurst:
This is a good point. Prior to Vatican 2, lay people were generally not allowed to participate in dialogue or debate with non-Catholics.

hurst
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Well I was referring to her being rude. I didn’t know this, where did this prohibition come from?
 
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hurst:
This is an excellent point.
Well, not quite.
There is the “Gospel of Jesus Christ”, and there is the “Gospel of the Kingdom of God”. There is even “Paul’s gospel”.
The term Gospel is often used to refer to one or all of the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Another is used by Paul when he speaks of “his” gospel.
Click to expand...
For years we have been told that all the faithful, even the laity are called to hand on the Gospel “from generation to generation.” CCC 3 Vatican II and the Catechism calls the Gospel the "source of all saving truth and moral discipline".

Thus, for the laity the Gospel is extremely important.

Obviously, the Church thinks the Gospel is highly important if it is the “source of all saving truth and moral discipline.” DV7 and CCC 75. And since the primary duty of priests is to proclaim the Gospel, as the Church teaches, then this Gospel is extremely important to priests.

The problem is that all Catholics in this country anyway, have been misled by Catholic theologians, who say “**The word Gospel usually designates a written record of Christ’s words and deeds.” **This is the definition from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, and it is the prevailing understanding today by all Catholics, especially Catholic scholars, especially the ones who teach priests.

Well, this never made sense to me. If that alone is the Gospel, what is sacred Tradition, what are the teachings of the Catholic faith? The written record of Christ’s words say nothing about prayer to saints, about mortal sin, venial sin, how to make a good confession, exactly how to worship, etc. etc. Thus, are the teachings of the Catholic faith only secondary, since many are not found explicitly in the Gospel?

What are the teachings of the Catechisms? Are they just the teachings of scripture put in an organized form? How can we sum up the most important teachings of the Gospel itself. Are the teachings in the Catechism only secondary, if the Gospel is only the words and deeds of Jesus written in the bible? If that is so, then no wonder people think nothing of calling themselves Catholic, and at the same time they vote for pro-abortion politicians. After all, Jesus said nothing about abortion in His Gospel. Thus how can abortion be important if Jesus never mentioned it and if this Gospel is the source of all saving truth and moral discipline?

By this time I had given up on scholars to explain all this. They have failed miserably. They have taught so many errors that I never trust any of them. Since the Church has never taught error I resolved ONLY to study what the Church taught.

So I began to study Pope Paul VI encyclical on evangelization in the modern world, since evangelization is proclaiming the Gospel.

And I studied the beginning chapters of the new Catechism and the encyclicals Pope JP II wrote that are usually included in the new Catechism. And I studied the General Directory for Catechesis, since it also was approved by the Pope, thus it teaches without error. I studied all this every day at Eucharistic adoration, since Father Hardon says Jesus educates our mind when we come before Him in adortation.

Well, all these documents put out by the Popes teach one thing over and over that I could not understand. They all teach that the Gospel is not only the words and deeds of Jesus written in the bible, but the Gospel was ALL the teachings that Jesus taught to His apostles either directly or through the Holy Spirit and that this Gospel was essentially the same as the Catholic Faith.
 
So naturally I thought the Popes were crazy, since I KNEW the Gospel was only the words of Jesus in the bible. Well after about 9 months begging Jesus, in the adoration chapel, for an understanding I began to realize that the Popes were right.

In other words, lets set up a scenario, where the apostle John is proclaiming the Gospel in a new town. Some pagan comes up and asks John “who is this Jesus I have been hearing about?”

So how does John proclaim the Gospel? Does he start reading the geneology of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew? I doubt if that would answer the pagan’s question. Well, does John start reading the beginning of his own Gospel, “In the beginning was the word and the words was with God and the word was God…”

etc. etc. I doubt it. The pagan would then ask, who is God. Who is Jesus. Who is the word?, etc. It is just impossible to proclaim the Gospel to a pagan by reading scripture. It can’t be done. The pagan would ask, how is Jesus God, the Father God and who is the Holy Spirit? There is no way anyone can proclaim the Gospel to a non-christian by reading the “words and deeds of Jesus” as written in the scriptures. John would have to at least start off by explaining the Trinity, using his own words, based on what he learned from Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

But, we don’t have any written record of what John or any other apostle taught when they proclaimed the Gospel. There is not a single book of the bible, not a single chapter of the bible that has a summary of the Gospel that the apostles taught and preached. Yet, only the apostles received the entire and full Gospel from Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And this Gospel is the “source of all saving truth and moral discipline”.

Since this Gospel that the apostles taught and preached was NOT written down, then how do we know the content of it?

We can know the content of it by finding out what the first Christians believed, the early Church fathers, since they all learned this Gospel from the apostles. And, as anyone who knows the beliefs of the early Christians, their beliefs that they said they learned from the apostles were the same teachings of the Catholic Church today. In other words, the Gospel the apostles taught was the entire Catholic faith.

Does everyone understand this? Every day at mass we pray for those who hold to “the Catholic faith which comes to us from the apostles.” How does it come to us from the apostles? It was the Gospel the apostles taught and preached.

The apostles did not preach the Gospel, then teach separately the Catholic faith. Remember, the Gospel is the “source of all saving truth and moral discipline” There is no source of the Catholic faith outside the Gospel. Everything the Catholic Church teaches comes to us from the Gospel. The teachings on the sacraments come to us from the apostles. They are NOT teachings that have been derived from scripture. They are part of the Gospel the apostles handed down. The same with the teachings on abortion, on prayer to the saints, on purgatory, on how to worship, on everything the Church teaches. All these teachings are part of the Gospel the apostles handed on. And since the apostles learned all from Jesus, we can then say that the Gospel Jesus taught was the Catholic faith. While we can find parts of these teachings in the old testament, these teachings themselves did not come from the old testament scriptures. They came directly from Jesus through the apostles.
 
Since the Gospel the apostles taught is the Catholic faith, then every thing the Popes teach begins to make sense. For example, Paragraph 3 of the catechism says that Catholics are to hand on the Gospel by “by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer.”

Professing the Catholic faith, is the same as professing the Gospel, because the Gospel the apostles taught was the Catholic faith. “Celebrating it in liturgy and prayer” because the liturgy comes from the apostles, as part of the Gospel. Prayer comes from the apostles, as part of the Gospel.

Pope Paul’s “Evanglelization in the Modern World” essentially says that we proclaim the Gospel, by proclaiming the entire Catholic faith. Why? Because the Gospel the apostles proclaimed was the Catholic faith.

The new General Dirctory for Catechesis says “Catechesis is nothing other than the process of transmitting the Gospel, as the Christian community has received it, understands it, celebrates it, lives it and communicates it in many ways.”

Isn’t catechesis an education in the Catholic faith? Of course it is. Then why is it called “transmitting the Gospel”? Because the Gospel the apostles trasnmitted was the Catholic faith. Thus, when we teach the Catholic faith, we are “transmitting the Gospel”

The General Directory also says.131 "In local catechisms, the Church communicates the Gospel in a manner accessible to the human person so that it may be really perceived as the “Good News” of salvation."

How do local catechisms, such as the Baltimore Catechism, communicate “the Gospel”?. Because the Baltimore Catechism trasmitts the very fundamentals of the Catholic faith, and the Gospel the apostles handed down is the Catholic faith.

In other words, it is NOT Vatican II and the new Catechism which are misleading or wrong. It is Catholic theologians and experts who have failed miserably by restricting the Gospel only to the written words and deeds of Jesus. By doing so we have a false understanding of the Gospel in which we think the Gospel is only the four Gospels. Thus, priests think that by explaining the readings of the four Gospels they are proclaiming the Gospel. Thus, they seldom go through all the commandments as the catechisms do. They don’t teach about mortal sin, confession, and the Eucharist as the catechisms do, and like all priests used to do before Vatican II They don’t explain the parts of the mass as the Catechisms do. All this because Catholic theologians have failed miserably to make clear that the Gospel the apostles proclaimed was the entire Catholic faith. It is not Vatican II that changed anything. It is the Catholic theologians who have no idea what the Popes are talking about when they teach that we hand down the Gospel by professing the Catholic faith. It is Catholic theologians who have misled everyone into believing the Gospel is not the entire Catholic faith, but only the written words and deeds of Jesus.

The only way the entire Gospel can be proclaimed is by proclaiming the entire Catholic faith, just as the apostles did it.

And the Church teaches that it must be done in an organic and systematic way, based on the Catechism.

From now on, we must learn from the Popes, and put theologians on the back burner, until they wise up.
 
Lazerlike42,

Here’s a translation of CIC 1325 § 3…§ 3. Caveant* catholici ne disputationes vel collationes, publicas praesertim, cum acatholicis habeant, sine venia Sanctae Sedis aut, si casus urgeat, loci Ordinarii.*

§ 3 Catholics must avoid taking part in discussions or controversies, especially public, with non-catholics, without the permission of the Holy See or, in the event of urgency, the local Ordinary.

This prohibition was abrogated by the 1983 Code of Canon Laws.
 
itsjustdave1988 said:
Lazerlike42,

Here’s a translation of CIC 1325 § 3…§ 3. Caveant* catholici ne disputationes vel collationes, publicas praesertim, cum acatholicis habeant, sine venia Sanctae Sedis aut, si casus urgeat, loci Ordinarii.*

§ 3 Catholics must avoid taking part in discussions or controversies, especially public, with non-catholics, without the permission of the Holy See or, in the event of urgency, the local Ordinary.

This prohibition was abrogated by the 1983 Code of Canon Laws.
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Thanks Dave, for finding that :).

hurst
 
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