Vatican II

[rfournier103]

Can anyone make the case that had it not been for Vatican II the Church’s problems today would have yet been worse than what we have seen?

The fact that there is a resurgence of Mass attendance among the young where the traditional Latin Mass is offered, for example, suggests the mass-exodus from the Church over the last 40 years could have been avoided. Still, we’ll never know.

I think the mass-exodous is the result of a change in society; and not a change in the Church. People are just different today. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are of little importance to many modern-day people, regardless of what form the Holy Mass takes (or the language).

 

[ElectricMayhem]

My two cents…

Vatican II did of course not err. But it is a product of its times, and certain passages wear with the of years (surely no one would deny this of, say, the council of Vienna). We can explain how they do not contradict previous infallible teaching, but I do not believe it necessary to always continue emphasizing the particular insights Vatican II gave. 500 years from now it will just be another council, and the deposit of faith will not have changed fundamentally one bit. I am a great lover of Pope Benedict’s hermeneutic of continuity, which, I hope, will lead more to study and embrace the councils before Vatican II.

A related point: Sacrosanctum Concilium called for reform to the liturgy. Reforms were enacted by the Consilium beyond what it called for. Now we are 50 years later and the Church is not in the same position as it was before, so that conciliar mandate, as far as I am concerned, no longer applies to us now. If anything, we need to work on recovering and restoring all that was thrown out in the destructive “Spirit of the Council”. That which was sacred to us before cannot now be lain aside, but must be held on to and preserved for future generations. Who else is going to do it?

Nonsense. If we reach back and to the rediscover something, wouldn’t that imply it’s stagnate? Reforms to the liturgy started loooooong before December of 63. And with your logic, would you be in favor of undoing the Liturgical Calendar?

 

[clem456]

Nonsense. If we reach back and to the rediscover something, wouldn’t that imply it’s stagnate? Reforms to the liturgy started loooooong before December of 63. And with your logic, would you be in favor of undoing the Liturgical Calendar?

NO I think he’s recognizing that we come from somewhere, from someone, and did not land in the present in a vacuum. What has gone before is just as much a part of tradition (or Tradition) as what is happening now, and change should not be implemented for it’s own sake without reference to it’s foundation.

God does not live in one time zone, he lives in eternity, which includes past, present, and future.

 

[ProVobis]

I continue to prefer the ordinary form in English because I can participate more and there is a sense of joining in community to offer this sacrifice to the Father, and to include ourselves as a part of that. I find the OF at our parish very reverent. I also found the Latin Mass reverent.

I don’t see that sense of joining in community in my local bi-lingual (English/Spanish) parish. And when you factor in the music and average age and that in one Mass you have virtually everyone receiving and in the other only half receiving, there’s not very much they have in common at all.

 

[Brendan_64]

I think that it was the interpretation of the Vatican II documents by liberal priests, bishops, and laity that led to the problems that we see today.

Yes, and a great deal of the laity, and even clergy, that make such erroneous claims don’t appear to have a great deal of knowledge of what is actually written in the documents of Vatican II. The use of Latin is to be preserved in the Latin rites, popular devotions of the Christian people are to be highly commended, etc. all seem to have passed by those who claim the ‘spirit of vatican II’ as support for liberalising.

 

[steymard]

Nonsense. If we reach back and to the rediscover something, wouldn’t that imply it’s stagnate? Reforms to the liturgy started loooooong before December of 63. And with your logic, would you be in favor of undoing the Liturgical Calendar?

Thanks clem456 for the support.

Electricmayhem,

What specific suggestion is nonsense?

I am not concerned with “implying” anything. Reaching back to rediscover our rich doctrinal, liturgical, and devotional patrimony only happens because it has been forgotten by so many.

I find the word “stagnant” unhelpful. That word gives a negative connotation to staying still. Yet the Church is the only thing that has ever stayed still, resting upon the words of Christ whose words will never pass away and who remains unchanging in his Church, calling all men to him. Especially in these times, when change for its own sake is lauded by the modern culture as its highest good, anything we can do to keep the faith of the ages will be helpful to those around us and to our own souls - and this includes pointing to teachings of Holy Church that have never been abrogated and that will in their revival and proclamation be a holy sign of contradiction in the world and a rock upon which to stand, in union with Peter.

The liturgical calendar promulgated in 1970 objectively lacks many elements of the earlier calendar which had grown in organic continuity for well over a millennium. It is my opinion that these elements would be of the greatest service to the Church wherever they are used and deserve a re-consideration, not only in light of the service of preservation that I noted above, but also because liturgical scholarship has moved on since then and engaged in constructive critical analysis of the 1970 reforms. But that is getting further away from the topic of Vatican II so I will leave it there.

Edit: regarding the language of movement, I also think that by remaining with Christ and with the infallible and unchanging words of his Church that will never fail, we do in fact move - we move beyond ourselves, drawn from the morass and boredom of sin into the freedom of the love of the Trinity. Underneath it all, the world in its impulse to change cannot seem to move beyond this self-obsession and slavery to earthly desires. That is because its prince is Satan, who is the most enslaved and static of all.

 

[ElectricMayhem]

You say:

The liturgical calendar promulgated in 1970 objectively lacks many elements of the earlier calendar which had grown in organic continuity for well over a millennium. It is my opinion that these elements would be of the greatest service to the Church wherever they are used and deserve a re-consideration, not only in light of the service of preservation that I noted above, but also because liturgical scholarship has moved on since then and engaged in constructive critical analysis of the 1970 reforms. But that is getting further away from the topic of Vatican II so I will leave it there.

Interesting, I would love to hear what you think we should recapture that has been lost.

I offer six musings of the good of the current calendar…please indicate which should be objectively voided because of their lack on continuity to the past…

1. The reform of the general Roman calendar of 1969 placed a major emphasis in the celebration of the liturgical year or the temporal cycle. The goal of the reform was to bring out in sharp relief the centrality of Easter, especially the celebration of Sunday, and to clear out much of the debris that inevitably settles in a communal calendar. One of the most striking effects of the reform was to greatly reduce the number of saints in the universal Roman calendar and to simplify the classification of days by dividing them into three categories (solemnities, feasts and memorials- both obligatory and optional).
2. Priorities were set on the paschal Triduum, Eastertide, Lent, and Sunday. Very few saints were assigned solemnities: Mary- 1/1, 8/15, 12/8; St. Joseph- 3/19; John the Baptist- 6/24; and Peter and Paul- 6/29.
3. The celebration of time when used every day loses its force. Celebration is equivalent to festivity and festivity is an exuberant manifestation of life itself standing out in contrast to the background rhythm of daily life. Because of the centrality of the Eucharist to the celebration of Christian mystery, feasts and commemorations at Mass are only assigned a few sentences, prefaces and maybe a reading outside the daily cycle.
4. The General Roman Calendar indicates the days of the year to which are assigned the liturgical celebrations of saints that are to be observed wherever the Roman Rite is used. National and diocesan liturgical calendars, as well as those of religious congregations and even of continents, add other saints or transfer the celebration of a particular saint from the date assigned in the General Calendar to another date.
5. The proportion of the Bible read at Mass was greatly increased. Prior to the reforms of Pius XII, 1% of the Old Testament and 16.5% of the New Testament had been read at Mass. Since 1970, Sundays and weekdays (leaving aside major feasts) have been 13.5% of the Old Testament and 71.5% of the New Testament. This was made possible through an increase in the number of readings at Mass and the introduction of a three-year cycle of readings on Sundays and a two-year cycle on weekdays.
6. In addition to these changes, the Roman Missal noted that the revision considerably modified other sections of the Missal, such as the Proper of Seasons, the Proper of Saints, the Common of Saints, the Ritual Masses and the Votive Masses, adding that “[the] number [of the prayers] has been increased, so that the new forms might better correspond to new needs, and the text of older prayers has been restored on the basis of the ancient sources”.

 

[Brendan_64]

But what Vatican II did not mandate was a changing of the orientation of the priest from ad orientem to ad populum, the removal of Latin from the Liturgy, or grant leaway to adapt the Liturgy. Vatican II confirmed the Gregorian chant and the organ as the being of particular reverence within the Liturgy.

If Vatican II documents were implemented to the letter of the documents then there would not be the mess that we saw in the 70’s and 80’s, before John Paul II stepped in and enforced some discipline, with adaptation of the Liturgy all in the ‘spirit of Vatican II’. Pope Benedict XVI was quite right in saying that the true spirit of Vatican II was in the wording of Vatican II, not in a reading of what isn’t actually written.

 

[steymard]

Interesting, I would love to hear what you think we should recapture that has been lost.

I offer six musings of the good of the current calendar…please indicate which should be objectively voided because of their lack on continuity to the past…

For me to respond and go any further in the discussion of liturgy and calendar would probably end up violating forum rules pitting the Novus Ordo and the Vetus Ordo against each other, so I will leave my comment as is. Thanks for the discussion.