What fruit do you believe has come from Vatican II?

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Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the “False Vatican II” right here:

 
It’s true, we don’t know. However we do know the Holy Spirit will never leave the church and one beautiful fruit seems to be the recognition of all the ways the Spirit expresses himself within the Church. We seem much more aware of the Eastern Catholic churches, very culturally traditional Catholicism, and then Charismatic expressions which I realise are anathema to some traditionalists (!) but as long as they are rooted in Catholic teaching, prayer, the sacraments can be a powerful conduit for the Holy Spirit and Jesus’s love. Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans and many other old, old orders still going strong. It is possible to find many spiritual paths within one unified church.
 
joyfulandactive said:
I know many people have the opinion that Vatican II caused too many changes in the church too fast and meant we lost many Catholics.
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It’s wasn’t Vatican II itself that was the problem. It was the implementation of some of the changes that was the problem.

For example: not allowing Parishes to keep Latin if that’s what the people wanted. In hindsight, phasing in the new Mass may have been a better option. And there was one proposal that was rejected that I think would have made things a lot better - it was to require at least one mass each Sunday in Latin. If that would have happened, I’m sure there would have been less fallout because the changes would have felt more gradual.

So it was the implementation of the council that was the issue, not the council itself. For example, when Pope John Paul II was still a Bishop, he implemented the changes of the Council in a very good way, educating the people and with limited issue (granted the Communists were there too - indirectly pushing people towards the Church).

Many bishops assumed that devout Catholics would simply obey. And most did, however, MANY / if not MOST couldn’t explain the theological changes. The people didn’t understand the “why,” and this fact eventually had many negative impacts on cradle Catholic Baby Boomers.

Yes, Vatican II has many fruits - Asia and Africa being the largest.
 
Very true. No-Fault Divorce made things too easy. The Supreme Court legalizing abortion in 1973 meant millions of deaths would follow. The world as presented by the media keeps getting worse and worse. Observe what the media is doing but do not participate. Observe what is happening on TV but do not be influenced. Stay strong in Christ and do not let the World change you.

And know Catholic history. Our voices became muffled after a series of attacks from groups like the ACLU. Example: We used to visit the Nativity in front of the City Hall. The ACLU woke up one day and said that was wrong. What happened? The next year, a civic group leased land from the City that was nearby and that’s where the Nativity was moved to. This didn’t happen overnight but over decades. I watched as a priest lay prostrate across stone steps as a carved in stone, open Bible was carried out of a ‘public building.’
 
So you would say that Vat II caused the decline in the number of priests?
 
Must be nice for those folks who can consider Vatican II the big bad boogeyman instead of having to confront the fact that Catholics are no more immune to modernism than any other group. Y’all have certainly fought it best, thanks to the Church’s hierarchy, but the same things that destroyed the vestiges of orthodoxy in the mainline Protestant denominations are quite real in the Catholic Church, and it was real before Vatican II.

But the fact that y’all now refer to us as “separated brethren” instead of “heretics” definitely helps with evangelization. Don’t discount how effective the decision to simply be nice to people can be.
 
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The statistics show (and when I am not so distracted helping children I could look for them!) marriage to a Catholic is one of the major means of bringing people into the church. I know many faithful Catholic marriages. After my conversion I married a cradle Catholic and we have been happily married for 22 years. So yes I agree, we need to continue to promote and support marriage which of course has also been under tremendous attack.

Standing strong against abortion brings people into the church. I have been an RCIA sponsor a number of times and TWICE I have had the woman I am sponsoring confess to me halfway through RCIA that they want to become Catholic to receive healing from abortion. They found it to be the only place that took their pain seriously and they also wanted absolution from God because they were tortured by the decision they made and were unable to forgive themselves. One woman’s (non-Catholic) marriage was on the rocks because her husband had joined the doctor in pressurizing her to have an abortion due to apparent abnormalities, it was so sad. They didn’t know how to relieve what had happened except they knew the answer was in the church.
 
To all reading.

Regarding abortion. Take that pain to God and go to Church. Go to Confession and tell the priest that you are sorry. Or talk with a priest first. I was there when the new legal and poisonous atmosphere began to appear. God knows you and His mercy is infinite.
 
Methodist here (with many Catholic family members), so this is an outsiders’ perspective. This also just applies to the USA, things are different in other parts of the world. ‘Mainstream Protestant’ denominations have seen a similar drop over the same period, as noted, so that may be a sign that it’s “just part of the times”. However, those same denominations have also made some ‘liberalizing’, ‘simplifying’ changes over that same time period. At the same time, we’ve seen a lot of growth in ‘nondenominational’ churches, some of the megachurch variety, but in my experience many other nondenominational churches advocate a highly active Christian lifestyle with a focus on orthodoxy and thorough religious understanding as well as passionate worship. These usually have members meeting in small groups multiple times a week, and I’ve seen them grow like wildfire in a very short period of time.

So, in my opinion, the desire is there, it’s just not getting fed by the traditional Christian institutions, which I think have watered things down too much in the hopes of not turning people off. I can’t say whether this would mean returning to something like pre-Vatican II or something different, but I think instead of guessing at what people want we can look at what kind of churches are growing, and what about them attracts people.

A lot of things that Vatican II did were, in my opinion, very, very badly needed. Like the attitude towards Jews in particular. So maybe best to talk about specific changes we’d like to see rather than sweeping generalizations about Vatican II.
 
on_the_hill said:
So you would say that Vat II caused the decline in the number of priests?
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Not the Council directly. But the implementation of it, the ,“spirit of Vatican 2”, allowed people to misuse the council to eliminate most doctrinal content, especially supernatural content of the Faith.

people claimed the Mass was primarily a community gathering, offered by the community, with the priest sort of a community facilitator. But why should a young man go to seminary to achieve social progress? He can go into social work, Civic action or media.
 
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Of course our beloved Pope Benedict was absolutely correct. If you read the actual documents of Vatican II they are completely sound, whilst being revelatory. I studied the documents on the New Evangelism with Petroc Willey (who now teaches at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and has been recognized by the Vatican as a profound teacher of catechisis) and they were incredible in their richness.

The liberalism and misinformation in catechisis following Vatican II, spurred the church to issue the new catechism, which as someone earlier mentioned at the beginning of the thread has been an incredible gift to the church.
 
Beyond_Reason said:
In my opinion, very, very badly needed. Like the attitude towards Jews in particular. So maybe best to talk about specific changes we’d like to see rather than sweeping generalizations about Vatican II.
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Always good to focus on specifics. We aren’t living in the 1960s, the council happened, for better and worse, it won’t be undone. But some implementation of it can be tweaked.

Where do we go in 2019?
 
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Beyond Reason, I believe your points are very valid. Some of the most on fire Catholic parishes I know added small faith sharing groups to enable more direct pastoral support and discipleship to all the other traditional riches of the parish.

As an atheist convert who passionately loves the Catholic church I do believe some Christian communities outside the church can gasp have gifts to offer the Catholic church. I only see Christian’s being drawn closer in the future, as long as we all stay orthodox in belief.
 
From The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

“The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is locked into itself. The common turning toward the East was not a “celebration toward the wall”; it did not mean that the priest “had his back to the people”: the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian Liturgy the congregation looked together “toward the Lord”. As one of the fathers of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy , J.A. Jungmann, put it, it was much more a question of priest and people facing in the same direction, knowing that together they were in a procession toward the Lord. They did not lock themselves into a circle, they did not gaze at one another, but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens , for the Christ who comes to meet us….”

“On the other hand, a common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of accidentals, but of essentials. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue, but of common worship, of setting off towards the One who is to come. What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle, but the common movement forward expressed in a common direction for prayer….”

Me: Speculation about the future has no basis until an understanding of the past is achieved.
 
joyfulandactive said:
Beyond Reason, I believe your points are very valid. Some of the most on fire Catholic parishes I know added small faith sharing groups to enable more direct pastoral support and discipleship to all the other traditional riches of the parish.

As an atheist convert who passionately loves the Catholic church I do believe some Christian communities outside the church can gasp have gifts to offer the Catholic church. I only see Christian’s being drawn closer in the future, as long as we all stay orthodox in belief.
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Yes, this is key. There will be a lot of temptation to ‘loosen’ orthodoxy to attract members, because I think a lot of people will fall away in the next few decades. There are a lot of people who identify as Christian, who go to church once or twice a year if at all, who will go where the wind blows as it becomes more socially acceptable to be openly nonreligious.
 
commenter said:
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phil19034:
, Vatican II has many fruits - Asia and Africa being the largest.
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The Church was growing in Asia and Africa before V2. The growth continued after the Council.
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Never claimed otherwise.
 
Another fruit are the Ordinariates for Anglicans crossing the Tiber as communities, pastors and people. Fr. Ed Meeks will be on The Journey Home 1/28/2019 telling the story of his and his congregation’s entry into the Roman Catholic Church. The Ordinariates seem very prophetic, they show in constructive, concrete ways how entire communities can be reconciled and we can be One.
 
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