Vatican II was a good thing

  • Thread starter Thread starter edwest2
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I agree with the writer’s position, but to me, it raises as many questions as it answers.

If he is correct, we are still left to answer “how” and “why” things came to the pass they came to.

Any likely answer raises more problems. Rebellion? Disobedience? Error? Schism? Negligence? Apostasy?

It would be more fruitful to identify today’s problems, propose solutions, and leave the council out the equation.

It has happened before, that in the life of the Church councils have been convened which have dealt with matters in a way that created more misunderstanding than understanding. Both sides left the councils knowing what they knew, but not knowing what the other party understood.

The good news is, once we stop looking at a certain council as definitive on a question, we no longer need decide whether the council’s decision was erroroneous. Instead, we examine the perspectives from which it was interpreted, and look for commonalities.

I strongly suspect Vatican 2 will be seen in this light one day.
 
edwest2 said:
Having been in the Church before and after Vatican II, I have found the following article helpful when discussing the changes which occurred afterward.

catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=1145

Peace,
Ed
Click to expand...
I think this quote is very poignant.
Based on the reaction of the attendees at the conference, I can say that the Holy Spirit is prodding the “sleeping giant,” as John Paul II often called the laity. Catholics want to know the truth about Vatican II. They want to know what Holy Mass really is. They want to rediscover a sense of the sacred, and they are willing to take steps to do so. There is great reason for hope!
Click to expand...
 
Starting next fall at our Parish we are actually starting a class, similiar to RCIA I think, that will inform people to the actual changes that were suppose to happen with VII, not the stuff we are stuck with now. I wish all parishes would do this!
 
For my part, I think that the contrast between the post-Tridentine deep freeze, which saw almost no interesting theology done and almost no revision to the liturgy, and the post-Vatican II carnival simply proves that the maxim of Canning is as applicable today as it was two centuries ago: that “they who resist improvement because it is innovation, may find themselves compelled to accept innovation when it has ceased to be improvement.”
 
edwest2 said:
Here is another article that points to what is being done:

catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=1788

Peace,
Ed
Click to expand...
I believe it was Benjamin Disraeli who said, “there are three types of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

Who is to say the Church would not have “bled” greater number with out VII? It’s all speculation really. Not to mention it could just be a spurious correlation. I think so many times people try to impose their personal preferences on a particular argument.
 
Boulder257 said:
I believe it was Benjamin Disraeli who said, "there are three types of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Click to expand...
Now, what is the chance that two Americans, in two successive posts, would quote two nineteenth-century British prime ministers? :cool:
 
NorthTexan88 said:
Starting next fall at our Parish we are actually starting a class, similiar to RCIA I think, that will inform people to the actual changes that were suppose to happen with VII, not the stuff we are stuck with now. I wish all parishes would do this!
Click to expand...
Please be sure to fill us in on the info learned in the class! 🙂
 
MarkThompson said:
For my part, I think that the contrast between the post-Tridentine deep freeze, which saw almost no interesting theology done and almost no revision to the liturgy, and the post-Vatican II carnival simply proves that the maxim of Canning is as applicable today as it was two centuries ago: that “they who resist improvement because it is innovation, may find themselves compelled to accept innovation when it has ceased to be improvement.”
Click to expand...
There are some who find the conversion of the Americas interesting, some who find the Cure d’Ars interesting, some who find the liberation and renewal of the British Church interesting, some who find the Church’s response to the wars of revolution interesting, and some who find Karl Rahner tendentious and tautological.

It is quite as possible to have a marvelous liturgy, and not believe anything, as it is to have a terrible liturgy, and believe any number of things, even false things.
 
Boulder257 said:
Who is to say the Church would not have “bled” greater number with out VII? It’s all speculation really.
Click to expand...
The question is really whether the inference is reasonable.

Short of polling each of the millions of Catholics who left, one cannot derive a definite answer. But there are much data, including the immediate loss of congregants, that tend to correlate the events of the council and the exodus.

Of course, such facts can be ignored, or ascribed to happenstance. But does that establish whether the council was, in terms of its effect on the laity, a good thing on balance?
 
edwest2 said:
Here is another article that points to what is being done:

catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=1788

Peace,
Ed
Click to expand...
I don’t think anyone can actually claim that Vatican II was actually BAD. At best, they can point to bad things that happened as a result of VII and say VII caused it. But this causal relationship is hard to prove.

As someone else said, whose to say that the Church wouldn’t have bled followers if VII did not happen?

What I think is safe to say is that VII might have contributed, implicitly, towards causing a lot of confusion in faithful Catholics and the not-so-faithful Catholics.

VII gave more freedom in certain areas, especially in Ecumenism without providing much warnings to what might happen if it was done improperly. It also didn’t help that Pope JPII ended up emphasizing Ecumenism to the maximum.

Now of course, this might seem rather like a qualitative assessment, but ever since VII, we have a lot of documents on how to, when to (usually it ends up saying in all situations), etc to engage in Ecumenism. But not many apart from Dominus Iesus that spend more than two or three lines to warn against what happens when things go wrong.

So we have unbarred activity that leads to lots and lots of confusion.

We emphasize common ground between us and other Christian groups so much that for an uncatechized person (which most Catholics usually are), they all are starting look equally valid ways of salvation. Who can blame them?

They say, actions speak louder than words. When the Catholic Church tries to do everything together, even to the level of missionary work at times in co-operation with other non-Catholic Christian groups and view the success of non-Catholic evangelization as a good thing, the message conveyed can appear very simple i.e. We are all equally valid ways of reaching heaven. The church can keep repeating that it is not what they mean but actions speak louder than words for most people.

Now add to this fact the sins in today’s world like same sex marriage, abortion, pre-marital sex, contraception, euthanasia, IVF, anti-celibacy, which are presented like something a country needs to get a good human right standing. Then consider the fact that all of this is condemned by the Catholic Church alone. Finally consider the fact that there are non-Catholic Christian group that supports at least one or more of the above condemned sins as good things.

For an innocent observer who got the wrong message from ‘ecumenical’ actions that all Christian groups have valid ways to salvation, who in there right mind would not want leave Catholicism for something that is more accepting possibly of their personal predicament involving one of those condemned sins?

So I think the bleeding has just started. If something doesn’t change in the minds of the leaders of the Church, it will just keep bleeding like a Hemophiliac.
 
What good came out of it? Nothing. No dogma. All but destroyed the sacred liturgy. But, I believe it happened for a reason. Funny how it coincided with pretty well all the other garbage we’ve seen in the church. Sigh. Seems like we’re being punished? I guess we deserve it. Which one of can claim to be blameless? Now this new translation? What’s that going to solve? Novus Ordo? Give me a break.
 
The exodus of people leaving the Church could have actually had been due to Vatican II and Pope Paul VI not making ENOUGH changes to the Church. Relaxed celibacy for priests and endorsement of birth control for example, are both issues that people wanted to see dealt with. They were dealt with, but not in a way some people were hoping. They were hoping the lifestyles they wanted could be had while still retaining their cultural Catholic identity. When this didn’t happen, they left the Church (in the sense they were no longer practicing the Faith).

Interestingly enough, without Vatican II one could also say that based on societal changes people would have continued to engage in the reckless behaviors we see today, but they would have stayed within the Church. So sure, we would have fuller pews, just with even less devout people. And with even more less practicing people in the pews, even more people would grow cynical and proceed to leave the Church for a different reason - that the Pope bailed on them and the Chair of Peter being empty (which already happened in some cases, but one could say that they would happen again in larger quantities in the scenario I described).

napoli426’s seems to be blaming the vernacular and the Ordinary Form of the Mass. Blaming the vernacular doesn’t make much sense, when you consider that not only was the vernacular used in the Eastern Churches for quite some time before Vatican II, but Pope Pious XII instituted several measured to have the vernacular used. The Pontifical Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy also started in 1948. 1948 predates Vatican II by a couple of decades.

Finally, napoli426 goes so far as to blame the Second Vatican Council and the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite as the reason for the priest sex abuse scandals. I saw a couple of people do this on these boards, and each time I have to shake my head. In order to have this opinion, one needs to ignore nearly all facets of social sciences and environmental behavioral patterns that exist. You have a society:
  • That was exponentially becoming oversexed.
  • Advocated “do what you want, when you want” exponentially.
  • Were “promised” by hedonists that Vatican II would make “changes” (as stated above, these changes that the hedonists wanted did not happen).
  • Several leading French intellectuals were even advocating relaxed laws on underage relationships, including those with the same sex.
Societal changes were impacting several respects, and if the same societal changes had happened without Vatican II or the liturgical reforms the same abuses likely would have happened. Further, several of the sex abuse cases pre-dated the reforms and the Council, which means your “theory” isn’t even applicable in most cases.
 
napoli426 said:
What good came out of it? Nothing. No dogma. All but destroyed the sacred liturgy. But, I believe it happened for a reason. Funny how it coincided with pretty well all the other garbage we’ve seen in the church. Sigh. Seems like we’re being punished? I guess we deserve it. Which one of can claim to be blameless? Now this new translation? What’s that going to solve? Novus Ordo? Give me a break.
Click to expand...
Wow, I think it’s hard to say “nothing” good came out of it. I am really sorry that there are people that feel this way, because I don’t think any of the Pope’s since VII would agree with that statement. Having said that, here is a quote from the prelate of Opus Dei:

“The Second Vatican Council spoke to us about all of this. Its documents also enable us to hear the voice of our Founder, who preached many of those same ideas beginning in the 1930s. All of the Church’s councils form a unity of teaching doctrine, none of it contradictory. And so, if I may put it this way, Opus Dei finds its doctrinal patrimony in Vatican II; there one finds both what is new and what is traditional.”

Here is a link to the quote for those who want to read it in context: opusdei.us/art.php?p=8031
 
Melchior said:
The exodus of people leaving the Church could have actually had been due to Vatican II and Pope Paul VI not making ENOUGH changes to the Church.
Click to expand...
The experience of the Episcopal Church indicates that even more would have left had the Church changed her stance on sexuality.

But you are correct that the disconnect between Humanae Vitae and what was implicit either in the way the council documents were written or in the way they were interpreted or implemented provoked many to leave the Church.

Councils are tools for evangelization, nothing more or less. Asking whether they were good, in one sense, is like asking whether a donkey’s tail is a good thing. While it is attached to Eyore, it is very good. While Wole uses it as a bell pull, it is not good, even if it does ring the bell.

As Winnie the Pooh correctly perceived, the task at hand is to use the thing, or not, as best serves the needs of evangelization.

To do otherwise is to make the mistake of being merely doctrinaire.
 
Warrenton said:
The experience of the Episcopal Church indicates that even more would have left had the Church changed her stance on sexuality.
Click to expand...
The Anglican Church is a different beast as it came into being due to political reasons and the lack of respect for the marriage covenant. Due to the latter, one could argue that the lack of respect for marriage was built into the institution.

Further, the Anglicans set the tone in the 30’s by relaxing their stance on artificial birth control. Most denominations followed suit afterward. It’s entirely possible people were expecting the same change from the Church, especially considering society at the time. When the Church refused, it became “The Man”, a symbol of the oppressive regime. As a result those people left may have done so less out of protest of Church teaching, and more due to just wanting to protest and be anti-establishment in general. Ironically a couple of decades later, the Church is now counter-cultural and anti-establishment.

Fascinating stuff, this social science business.
Warrenton said:
But you are correct that the disconnect between Humanae Vitae and what was implicit either in the way the council documents were written or in the way they were interpreted or implemented provoked many to leave the Church.
Click to expand...
There’s no way around it; people were expecting the Church to change. She didn’t, and there was some blowback.

The interesting thing is that the council was completed by an expert in Canon Law. A lawyer, especially one as educated as Pope Paul VI, would have quite the attention to detail.
 
All very fascinating. But, as Paul IV said "the smoke of satan has entered the church ". Your comments regarding the Holy Mass prior to the council are grossly misrepresented. That argument gets thrown around all the time. It’s false. Are you implying that the pews would be full of the lukewarm had the council not happened? What a statement. The Church is better now after the council? I believe most of this stems from the simple fact that the third secret of Fatima was not revealed in 1960 as the Blessed Virgin had. requested. All the rest is history. We have a church barely discernible from the protestants with no leadership. God Bless you all
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top