Vatican II: What were the intellectual origins?

[Bubba_Switzler]

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council? What problems was it intended to solve?

I have noticed, in particular, that Vatican II seemed to be, in part, a deliberate shift toward (restoring?) lay responsibilities relative to the role and authority of the clergy. The most obvious example of this was the introduction of vernacular mass but time and again I have come across documents from Vatican II that seem to suggest a rethinking of the role of the laity. But I’ve never seen this discussed generally.

Usually Vatican II is presented as something like bringing the Church into modernity. I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to mean, but there seems to be another theme at work.

How would you characterize the pre/post changes from Vatican II and what where these changes intended to accomplish?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Vatican_II

 

[Belloc_Fan]

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council? What problems was it intended to solve?

I have noticed, in particular, that Vatican II seemed to be, in part, a deliberate shift toward (restoring?) lay responsibilities relative to the role and authority of the clergy. The most obvious example of this was the introduction of vernacular mass but time and again I have come across documents from Vatican II that seem to suggest a rethinking of the role of the laity. But I’ve never seen this discussed generally.

Usually Vatican II is presented as something like bringing the Church into modernity. I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to mean, but there seems to be another theme at work.

How would you characterize the pre/post changes from Vatican II and what where these changes intended to accomplish?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Vatican_II

I’ve only read bits of it, but Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Razing the Bastions seems to have anticipated Vatican II almost perfectly, ten years before the Council began. Here’s the Ignatius Press write-up:

Written in the 1950s, this book defines and anticipates, in a prophetic way, the role of the laity in the Church, and the intimate relationship between the Church and the world. These two themes were recognized by the Second Vatican Council especially in the two constitutions “On the Church” and “The Church in the Modern World.”

Von Balthasar’s “bastions” are barriers erected over the centuries which separated the laity from the clergy and the Church from the world. He pleads for a Church that interprets “the signs of the age,” grasps them and answers them, allowing herself to be awakened by the Holy Spirit and by the age “from the bed of historical sleep for the dead of today.” The new function of the Church is to be the “yeast of the world”–she must understand herself as the “instrument of the mediation of salvation to the world.” Stressing that the hour of the laity is sounding in the Church, von Balthasar makes it clear that the “true program of the Church for today is: the most powerful radiance into the world through the most immediate imitation of Christ.”

The fact that von Balthasar was (a) a faithful Catholic, and (b) prescient on this issue makes this worth a second look, I think.

 

[PA650]

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council? What problems was it intended to solve?

I have noticed, in particular, that Vatican II seemed to be, in part, a deliberate shift toward (restoring?) lay responsibilities relative to the role and authority of the clergy. The most obvious example of this was the introduction of vernacular mass but time and again I have come across documents from Vatican II that seem to suggest a rethinking of the role of the laity. But I’ve never seen this discussed generally.

Usually Vatican II is presented as something like bringing the Church into modernity. I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to mean, but there seems to be another theme at work.

How would you characterize the pre/post changes from Vatican II and what where these changes intended to accomplish?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Vatican_II

A thorough analysis of the Second Vatican Council and a study of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is found in the work, Iota Unum by Romano Amerio.
wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/the-return-of-iota-unum-by-romano-amerio/

Moreover,

“A complete critique of the crisis, covering the conduct and documents of Vatican II, the priesthood, catechetics, religious orders, feminism, ecumenism, faith, morality, Catholic culture, liturgy, and more from the time of John XXIII to 1985. Romano Amerio (†1997) was professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus at the Council —a scholar and an insider!”

amazon.com/Iota-Unum-Changes-Catholic-Twentieth/dp/0963903217

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

I had meant to include an example but had trouble finding the one most recently on my mind but it was Gaudium et Spes:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudium_et_Spes

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

I’ve only read bits of it, but Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Razing the Bastions seems to have anticipated Vatican II almost perfectly, ten years before the Council began. Here’s the Ignatius Press write-up:

The fact that von Balthasar was (a) a faithful Catholic, and (b) prescient on this issue makes this worth a second look, I think.

I think this is exactly what I was looking for.

Of course one author didn’t ignite Vatican II, I presume this is representative of a larger movement within the pre-Vatical II Church?

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

A thorough analysis of the Second Vatican Council and a study of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is found in the work, Iota Unum by Romano Amerio.
wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/the-return-of-iota-unum-by-romano-amerio/

Moreover,

amazon.com/Iota-Unum-Changes-Catholic-Twentieth/dp/0963903217

Thank you, I will investigate this as well.

Have you read this? Could you summarize it in a few short sentences?

 

[Warrenton]

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council? What problems was it intended to solve?

I would review prominent existentialist writings from post WWI through the early 60’s.

Perhaps the questions “what problems was it intended to solve” will not quite fit into this philopsophy. The council was convened less to address problems than to address a question of authenticity.

In this regard, V2 was unlike a council convened to address a heresy (“how do we reply to the Arians?”).

I would argue that is why the results of the council have been unsatisfactory.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

The council was convened less to address problems than to address a question of authenticity.

Could you elaborate on this?

 

[Warrenton]

Sure. Existentialist thinking posits that a fully human life entails living in accordance with one’s “true self” as opposed to the expectations society has for us. Google the Wikipedia entry, which seems to offer a fairly accurate and succinct discussion of it. I agreed with the entry that Sarte’s (though I would also add Camus’) novels demostrate the philosophy most accessibly.

During V2, some people believed that the Church, while fulfilling society’s expectations, was not being true to its “true self.” In other words, there was no crisis in vocations, or involvement of the faithful, or finance. Instead, they perceived the Church was not “authentic,” and hence was living a kind of lie.

So, to combat what was really just their own subjective feelings, they convened a council that unleashed an endless series of subjective “cures.” The basic error was to project their personal feelings of authenticity onto a group of millions of people, many or most of whom did not share their feelings. It was an error of personification, if you will.

That is why while some people love the “sign of peace” as a token of brotherly affection, others hate it as a false and shallow intrusion into the mass.

However, one can readily perceive that the quest for authenticity is fundamentally different than responding to a a heresy. One may agree with the Arians or not, but clearly, one cannot deny that the Arians disagree with the Orthodox. Or in the case of Trent, Catholics could agree with Luther and Calvin or not, but no sane person could deny that Luther and Calvin disagreed with the pope.

That is what differentiates V2 from previous councils.

 

[Bigcat71]

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council? What problems was it intended to solve?

I have noticed, in particular, that Vatican II seemed to be, in part, a deliberate shift toward (restoring?) lay responsibilities relative to the role and authority of the clergy. The most obvious example of this was the introduction of vernacular mass but time and again I have come across documents from Vatican II that seem to suggest a rethinking of the role of the laity. But I’ve never seen this discussed generally.

Usually Vatican II is presented as something like bringing the Church into modernity. I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to mean, but there seems to be another theme at work.

How would you characterize the pre/post changes from Vatican II and what where these changes intended to accomplish?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Vatican_II

Actually if you look at the history of the Council you will find that at the beginning there were, I guess you could call them sets of guidelines as it were that had been put in place for the Council to follow. They were summarily voted down and new ones put into place. So from the start, the Council in a Vaticanesque kind of way rebelled against tradition… Had the Council followed the original guidelines, I doubt that much of the insanity that has ensued since ever would have happened.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

What are the particular complaints about Vatican II? (I’m familiar with the complaints about the end of the Latin mass, the priest facing the congregation, etc., but I’m guessing that’s not the essential matter.)

Warrenton, Bigcat71, what do you see as the (dare we say) mistake of Vatican II?

What led me to the question of this thread was examples such as Gaudium et Spes (Post #4) which, to me, seem like good thing. Am I mistakenly attributing that to Vatican II or are we disagreeing that it was a good change or are you complaining about something else?

 

[SouthpawLink]

A thoughtful analysis by James Larson of von Balthasar’s Razing the Bastions:

waragainstbeing.com/partii-brokencisterns
Bubba Switzler:

What were the intellectual origins of the Second Vatican Council?

Neo-Modernism (a.k.a. the Nouvelle Theologie: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Th%C3%A9ologie )

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Where is the New Theology Leading Us?: cfnews.org/gg-newtheo.htm

Fr. Greenstock, Thomism and the New Theology: u.arizona.edu/~aversa/modernism/Thomism%20and%20the%20New%20Theology%20(Greenstock).pdf

In short, the neo-modernists wanted to return to the Church Fathers (“ressourcement”) and cull from them obscure passages which would support their pet doctrines (or re-interpretations of long-standing doctrines, such as original sin); they also had an aversion to Scholastic theology and terminology, as did their Modernist forebears.

One example of the triumph of neo-modernism has been the reinterpretation of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. In 1993, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity put out a document which in effect stated that the Eastern Orthodox no longer have to convert to the Catholic Faith in order to be saved: vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19930624_lebanon_en.html

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

A thoughtful analysis by James Larson of von Balthasar’s Razing the Bastions:

waragainstbeing.com/partii-brokencisterns

Neo-Modernism (a.k.a. the Nouvelle Theologie: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Th%C3%A9ologie )

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Where is the New Theology Leading Us?: cfnews.org/gg-newtheo.htm

Fr. Greenstock, Thomism and the New Theology: u.arizona.edu/~aversa/modernism/Thomism%20and%20the%20New%20Theology%20(Greenstock).pdf

In short, the neo-modernists wanted to return to the Church Fathers (“ressourcement”) and cull from them obscure passages which would support their pet doctrines (or re-interpretations of long-standing doctrines, such as original sin); they also had an aversion to Scholastic theology and terminology, as did their Modernist forebears.

One example of the triumph of neo-modernism has been the reinterpretation of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. In 1993, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity put out a document which in effect stated that the Eastern Orthodox no longer have to convert to the Catholic Faith in order to be saved: vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19930624_lebanon_en.html

Thanks, this was very helpful and thanks, particularly, for saving me from reading a book dense with flowery euphemism.

Would it be unfair to characterize Vatican II as the clergy granting itself license to reopen revelation? Or is that too simplistic and harsh? Is the spirit of Vatican II this idea of an open and continual reinterpretation of Scripture and Tradition? This does seem to fit with Warrenton’s idea of Vatican II as an existentialist exercise.

Is it safe to describe Catholic traditionalists as not simply those who pine for the Latin mass but, more generally, for the closure of theology? Is this a debate about closure of revelation or about the method by which revelation is investigated and understood?

Also, I’m still unclear on what is the Nouvelle Théologie criticism of scholasticism. However, this does help to explain why post-Vatican II education denigrated scholasticism. The usual complaint is that the scholastics were arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Is this simply relativism vs. immutability?

You mentioned Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and I have run into this before. Although I very much hope that non-Catholics are not condemned to hell it does seem to me that the “reinterpretation” of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is problematic, to say the least. And this is, of course, a much bigger issue than latin vs. vernacular mass.

This seemed to me to be a particuarly interesting paragraph:

But there is something here which is even more devastating. The reader will remember von Balthasar’s contention that what is presently known about Revelation is a “miserable little heap, scarcely the ABC of Revelation”, and that in terms of exploring and understanding Revelation, “as yet almost nothing has been done.” And where is the rest of this vast store of yet unknown Revelation to be found? It is to be found in the world – in all those religions, systems of philosophy, every kind of literature and intellectual discipline that man has ever concocted. It is precisely through the Church’s and the individual Christian’s descent into this world – in dialogue, encounter, and in fellowship and unity of aspiration towards the fullness of truth (which the Church does not already possess) – that this fullness of Revelation is to grow and evolve

 

[otjm]

A thorough analysis of the Second Vatican Council and a study of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is found in the work, Iota Unum by Romano Amerio.
wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/the-return-of-iota-unum-by-romano-amerio/

Moreover,

amazon.com/Iota-Unum-Changes-Catholic-Twentieth/dp/0963903217

The difficulty with this answer is that it is non-responsive to the question. It discusses what went wrong after the Council, rather than what was going on before the Council. That is not to suggest in the least that the study is of no value; only that it is an entirely different topic.

 

[otjm]

I would review prominent existentialist writings from post WWI through the early 60’s.

Perhaps the questions “what problems was it intended to solve” will not quite fit into this philopsophy. The council was convened less to address problems than to address a question of authenticity.

In this regard, V2 was unlike a council convened to address a heresy (“how do we reply to the Arians?”).

I would argue that is why the results of the council have been unsatisfactory.

I would disagree that the reason the results of the Council were/are unsatisfactory is because it was not a Council called to answer a heresy. In fact, I would disagree that the results of the Council are unsatisfactory; what is unsatisfactory is that a large majority of priests, religious, and bishops, rather than trying to implement the Councils decrees, went off on their own tangent. Neither John Paul 2 nor Benedict 16 have called the results of the Council unsatisfactory; in fact both of them have said that the Council still has not been fully implemented.

Most people confuse the changes in hte Mass with the results of the Council. We can all agree that the Mass as changed under Paul VI went much further, and in directions the Council did not request (and if one reads what the Council actually said, may find that they were not all that specific in what they wanted).

One of the reasons for the calling of the Council is that Vatican 1 focused on the Pope; and in fact the Council was ended more as a result of war than as a result of finishing all they set out to do; specifically, the role of the bishops was not treated, and part of the purpose of Vatican 2 was to take up that issue specifically. It was not for no reason that bishops were being treated as mid-level managers rather than focusing on the fact of their Apostolic Succession.

The issue of ecumenism was also critical to the sorting out that Vatican 2 was to do. And for lack of a better example, previous to V2, our Protestant brethern were viewed as the “glass half empty”; V2 took the view that the glass was half full. Previously, the focus was on what they all had wrong; and without denying they had things wrong, V2 focused on what they had right.

The rest of the documents at least hint at the issues pre V2 which needed to be addressed.

 

[otjm]

Actually if you look at the history of the Council you will find that at the beginning there were, I guess you could call them sets of guidelines as it were that had been put in place for the Council to follow. They were summarily voted down and new ones put into place. So from the start, the Council in a Vaticanesque kind of way rebelled against tradition… Had the Council followed the original guidelines, I doubt that much of the insanity that has ensued since ever would have happened.

Hogwash. What was loose in the world - secularism - would not have been slowed down one iota no matter what guidelines were used. It is a fools errand to presume that the people in the Church are not impacted by what is going on in society; any reading of Church history will show that whatever is going on in society in general will be reflected by those within the confines of the Church.

The Council in no way “rebelled against tradition”. It decided that a minority of bishops and Cardinals were not going to determine the scope and direction of the Council.

Unless you want to call the current Pope and the last one fools and “rebelling against tradition”, you might actually want to read what they have both said about the Council and how they have both thoroughly and emphatically supported the Council, and have intended to carry on the work of fully implementing the Council’s documents.

 

[PA650]

The difficulty with this answer is that it is non-responsive to the question. It discusses what went wrong after the Council, rather than what was going on before the Council. That is not to suggest in the least that the study is of no value; only that it is an entirely different topic.

Well, I attempted to at least be helpful even if my response was a slight digression.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Well, I attempted to at least be helpful even if my response was a slight digression.

I appreciate every response.

 

[otjm]

Well, I attempted to at least be helpful even if my response was a slight digression.

I am not trying to nit pick. There is a difference, however, in what the Magisterium of the Church intended to do at Vatican 2 and the history behind that, and a discussion of what the non-Magisterial members of the Church did in ignoring the documents, misreading the documents, and simply going off in their own directions.

Part of the issue, as fara s I am concerned goes back to a very basic premise, and that is that the Holy SPirit guides the Church (the Magisterium). Some of the discussions (not this one) attack Vatican 2 and most of what they perceive as being caused by Vatican 2 as if the magisterial decision to have Vatican 2, and the Council itself wre guided by someone or something other than the Holy Spirit. Further, they flat out ignore any and all statements by John Paul 2 and Benedict 16 concerning the work of the Council, the need to continue working to implement the documents, and the need to interpret the work of the Council in light of the previous 1900+ years of history of the Church.

The fact that there have been innumerable twits who have decided to “interpret” the Vatican 2 documents (often simply by ignoring them) in a manner that suggests a reinvention of the Church is not evidence that the Council was not the work of the Holy Spirit guiding the Church. Many, though, take it to be.

The question the OP posed is a very valid question and deserves answers, although that really amounts to a a semester or two of college level theological history, depending on how deep one really wants to go. Too often we have the rose colored glasses on, presuming that the Church was doing just fine, say, up to the start of the Council. There were problems then, although much if not most of the laity was fairly oblivious to it.

An example: how long was the oath against Modernism in place and how many took that oath? And how many who took that oath then went on to become professors in seminaries, teaching seminarians directly contrary - or indirectly - contrary to the oath? I have to laugh when someone comes along and says it needs to be put into place again - like it did any good the first time.

And the other side of the coin: how many legitimate theologians, true to the Magisterium, were censored on the last 100 years, only later to be vindicated? When Benedict 16 took over the dicastery as Cardinal, it was not for no reason that he made changes; he was there prior to being made Cardinal when reputations were being destroyed.

I appreciate you were trying to be helpful, but it is a digression; I think it would be more helpful to stay on the OP’s question; there are plenty of other threads dealing with post-Vatican 2 issues.

 

[Warrenton]

Part of the issue, as fara s I am concerned goes back to a very basic premise, and that is that the Holy SPirit guides the Church (the Magisterium). Some of the discussions (not this one) attack Vatican 2 and most of what they perceive as being caused by Vatican 2 as if the magisterial decision to have Vatican 2, and the Council itself wre guided by someone or something other than the Holy Spirit. Further, they flat out ignore any and all statements by John Paul 2 and Benedict 16 concerning the work of the Council, the need to continue working to implement the documents, and the need to interpret the work of the Council in light of the previous 1900+ years of history of the Church.

I am skeptical about the “guided by the Holy Ghost” argument. It sounds like magic.

As it is often practically applied, it is used to justify the “need” to go on implementing the council. We “need” to do this because the Holy Ghost guided us in this direction…"

But the “need” is never explained in rational terms.