What do you think the state of the Church would be if there was no Second Vatican Council?

[mrsdizzyd]

If not Vatican II there likely would have been some other council convened to address the same issues…

 

[RCIAGraduate]

Do you think traditions like the devotions are coming up nowadays (did they ever really leave)? Do you think Vatican II actually hurt or hindered the visibility or presence of devotions and devotional life in general like propagation about the Devotion to the Saints and the Sacred Heart, Eucharistic Adoration, the Rosary, Spiritual Reading and Sacramental Life? Or have they never really left (but maybe fell to the wayside due to greater changes like secularization)? Are some devotions going extinct or will they always have the place in the hearts of some Catholic even if they’re not the most well-known?

 

[Reuben_J]

Vatican II is the move of the Holy Spirit, a faithful God that led His Church so that the Gate of Hell will not prevail against it. We believe that the Church is led by God and that her leaders are His anointed ones, especially when they come together as corporate body.

Vatican II came at a time when there were drastic changes socially and societally after the World Wars which caused lots of changes in people’s thinking as a result of the traumatised wars. New discoveries of technologies had changed the equation on how people lived.

All of these could only give one result – the trend of moving away from God.

The response of the Spirit was Vatican II. It was really a saving grace which came from time to time when the Church was faced with challenges.

Without the Vatican II, it could only be worse to the Church and the people of God, considering all the conditions said.

 

[Dovekin]

The problem with speculating on alternative history is that there cannot possibly be any evidence, making all such questions more philosophical than practical. I prefer to look at this type of question like a Rorschach ink blot, where the answers that people give reveal information about the person who is answering, and nothing about the inherent nature of the blot.

I thought that was the strength of the question, not the problem.

 

[Onthisrock84]

That’s all interesting stuff to ponder as well. I love alternate history novels. Bring the Jubilee and The Man in the High Castle are some of my favorites.

 

[Gingersnaps4]

I feel like it would be worse. The Holy Spirit led the church into Vatican II and it had to be for a reason.

 

[Onthisrock84]

So it was actually a response to modernism?

 

[PetraG]

There were a number of crappy catechism teachers before and during V2 as well as after.

There were also inattentive students during all 3 periods of time as well.

If one considers what was happening in education generally and in Christendom generally, I think a lot is blamed on Vatican II that would still have happened if no Council had been convened, including a lot of unauthorized experimentation. Question Authority was a very active force everywhere in the 1960s and forward.

 

[Onthisrock84]

Why did the Mass have to be completely reformed though? I actually read the documents where the Psalm 42, Last Gospel, and Leonine Prayers were " suppressed " and also saw that from say 1965-1970 the EF was just really said in the vernacular mostly and the laity had much more involvement in the mass. Why did they need to release an entirely new one? I often ponder that.

 

[AndrewAxland]

So it was actually a response to modernism?

It was actually a response to the reactionary politics and antisemitism that had infected a significant part of the Church.

 

[pnewton]

I thought that was the strength of the question, not the problem.

Consider this. Can you guess how a traditionalist will answer the question? A progressive?

If I think about it, I would say Vatican II did not do as much as people think, but was a reflection of the changes that were taking place. Without the council, I would have looked for most changes to be made anyway. St. John Paul would have issued is catechism. The vernacular would be the primary language of the Mass. Many of the re-formulations of doctrines would have come in encyclicals instead.

 

[Augustinian]

Without the council, I would have looked for most changes to be made anyway.

I would agree with this, people were ready for the changes when it came down. It might not look exactly as it does today without a council, but it would look closer to today’s reality than the early 1960’s.

The Catholic Church wasn’t alone in changing its liturgy during the 1960’s and 70’s. It is a reflection of the times.

 

[Onthisrock84]

Heres one thing I don’t like which Orthodox and even Anglicans still have. Instead of calling it Ordinary Time I wish we’d go back to weeks after Epiphany or Pentecost etc. I feel like calling it Ordinary Time is just to dull. There is no ordinary time in the Church.

 

[Rob2]

While @Rob2 prefer to hear what John Paul II said, I prefer to hear what Archbishop Lefebvre said back in Lille, 1976:

You are welcome to prefer Archbishop Lefebvre to my Pope John Paul II , but I will stay with Pope John Paul II who did not die in a state of excommunication .

 

[PaulfromIowa]

What then is your theory of the recent upsurge of youth being attracted to the EF? Is it just because it is different to them or is there some genuine thing that attracts them to it?

What percentage of young Catholics in the US prefer the EF over the OF? Half of one percent? One percent? Is that the “upsurge”?

 

[Genesis315]

To be fair, the Church has been really devastated since the Council and those doing the devestation claim the Council as the basis for their actions, continually appeal to it, say anyone who is trying to change course is acting opposed to it (even if that person is also claiming to be following it), and generally consider it the best thing ever. I don’t think people who don’t like the devstation they see can really be blamed after all that for thinking “hmmm, maybe without the Council, we wouldn’t have all this devastation.”

Personally, I don’t think a docile application of the texts in accordance with Scripture and Tradition as it had been handed down prior necessarily leads to this result, but the fact remains that as an event it was a catalyst for a lot of bad stuff.

 

[AndrewAxland]

Is that the “upsurge”?

Half a percent would be phenomenal, and would have generated serious press.

The “young people are flocking to the TLM” is a classic “fake it till you make it” marketing mantra with no real numbers to back it up. No more than that.

 

[Ann_Stanton]

I wonder if I would have been Catholic if Vatican II had not existed.

 

[Augustinian]

The “young people are flocking to the TLM” is a classic “fake it till you make it” marketing mantra with no real numbers to back it up.

I think that’s about right. The SSPX claims a weekly attendance of 25,000 in the United States across dozens of states.

Just not a very large group at all, about the same size as the Thomas Road Baptist Church out in Lynchburg Virginia.

 

[Gingersnaps4]

Me too. I doubt that my husband would have been interested in converting if the mass were not in English. I might not have either as it feels to unapproachable as an outsider looking in.

I think a lot of things that people are blaming on Vatican II are actually due to the sexual revolution and the complete loss of morals that society has adapted in response to that. I think that even fewer Catholics would be going to mass these days if nothing had changed. I do wish that the OF were always more of a “high mass” but I feel like the vernacular, ecumenism and increased participation have helped the Church rather than hurt it.