What good has come out of Vatican II?

[Paul_Folbrecht]

I wonder how many people argued the same thing when the Romans switched their liturgy from Greek to Latin. “If you don’t understand Greek, get a missal!”

The implicit argument here is a non-sequitur. The main point is having a universal liturgical language, not what that language happens to be.

 

[adstrinity]

I wonder how many people argued the same thing when the Romans switched their liturgy from Greek to Latin. “If you don’t understand Greek, get a missal!”

None. None said that. It was, “If you don’t understand Greek, get a tablet.” …And, they asked the Coptics to do a, “My First Hyrogliphics Tablet,” for the children to follow along with the pictures.

Back on track: I think the, “Get a missal,” comment was off base.

 

[japhy]

However, I would not want the Mass in Latin because I really wouldn’t understand.

I’m certainly not saying the whole Mass should be in Latin, but the ordinary certainly can be, the parts that don’t change from day to day. (That’s not to say that only the ordinary should be in Latin; I would also appreciate hearing the readings chanted in Latin sometimes (because chanting them in English sounds silly, sometimes, to be honest), and there are some easy Latin hymns we could learn.)

… do not say the Mass in Latin. Why? Because it gives you a fuzzy feeling?

If you equate a “giving a fuzzy feeling” with “honoring the tradition of the Latin Rite”, then I’m guilty as charged.

When you pray to God do you pray in Latin? Or do you communicate with God in your language?

Some prayers I pray in Latin, some I pray in the vernacular. On Fridays, I say the blessing over dinner in Latin; eventually, I’ll do it more often, and then incorporate a chanted version, probably on Sundays.

 

[I_Believe]

To me, that renders the liturgy incomprehensible; hence, the message of the Mass goes unheeded. Not a good practice. Right outside our doors are Protestant ‘wolves’, as John Paul II called them, waiting to devour our flock. They exploit the theme of ‘relevance’ most skillfully.

(sigh)

You are defending keeping the Liturgy in Latin without even realizing it.

**
“The day the Church abandons her universal tongue is the day before she returns to the catacombs.” Pope Pius XII **

"In recent times, even in materialist North America, the growth of the Church was magnificent with the liturgy being kept in Latin. The attempts of the Protestants have failed, and Protestantism uses the vernacular. We ask again: Why the change, especially since changes in this matter involve many difficulties and great dangers? All of us here at the Council can recall the fundamental changes in the meaning of words in common use. Thus it follows that if the Sacred Liturgy were in the vernacular, the immutability of doctrine would be endangered.
The introduction of the vernacular should be separated from the action of the Mass. The Mass must remain as it is. Grave changes in the liturgy introduce grave changes in dogmata."
-James Cardinal McIntyre addressing the Second Vatican Council.

Consider this, from the man who called the Council in the first place…

**With the foregoing considerations in mind, to which We have given careful thought, We now, in the full consciousness of Our Office and in virtue of Our authority, decree and command the following:

Responsibility for enforcement

1. Bishops and superiors-general of religious orders shall take pains to ensure that in their seminaries and in their schools where adolescents are trained for the priesthood, all shall studiously observe the Apostolic See’s decision in this matter and obey these Our prescriptions most carefully.
2. In the exercise of their paternal care they shall be on their guard lest anyone under their jurisdiction, eager for revolutionary changes, writes against the use of Latin in the teaching of the higher sacred studies or in the Liturgy, or through prejudice makes light of the Holy See’s will in this regard or interprets it falsely.**
   adoremus.org/VeterumSapientia.html

Why do we continue to bicker about this, and argue for a venacular Mass ?

What do we embrace ? The opinions,decrees, and commands of Popes, and the pleas of Cardinals ? Or do we embrace the result of those who ignore them ? If the latter, then are we not embracing the will of the disobedient and schismatic ?

Try and find a single document decreeing and commanding that the entire Mass be prayed in the venacular. Just one.

 

[SuscipeMeDomine]

So I guess all this is saying that arguing over the language of the liturgy is something good that’s come out of Vatican II? Because that’s the topic at hand.

 

[I_Believe]

Oh, are we bashing Vatican II for a change?

One good thing is that the Eastern Churches were encouraged to return to their original usages and discipline.

Are we proseletyzing for a change ?

Just funnin with 'ya.

 

[rlg94086]

It seems to me that too much is made concerning V2 and some supposed destruction of holiness and that pre-council times were some pastoral garden where everybody was properly catechized and went to mass every Sunday.

All one has to do is take a brief stroll through history to see that even when Europe was solidly and only Catholic people weren’t living their faith.

St. Dominic practically had to reconvert all of the south of France after the Albigensian heresy gained a stronghold there.

During the time of St. Francis of Assisi churches were empty and in ruins, people rarely went to mass. God called him to rebuild the church.

The Cure of Ars arrived to find a town with one church and dozens of saloons. That particular community was practically unchurched and very few were living their faith at all.

Even Padre Pio lamented that nobody went to confession anymore and weren’t practicing Catholics.

The current state of the church (even if it’s as bad as made out to be) isn’t any necessarily new. It just shows how man has failed to live up to their calling by God to imitate Christ and truly become one of his disciples.

ChadS

I like this post. As a convert, and someone born in 1965, I’m not in a position to make a pronouncement about the changes in the Church pre- and post-VII. I have become more and more traditional in the last 18 years (I started out in a very liturgically liberal California parish - dancers, folk Mass, etc. - so there was only one direction to go ), but I don’t have the hatred for Vatican II that many seem to have.

I am happy with the direction our current Pope is taking us. I hope it continues. More Latin, more reverence, more Catholicism is good for the whole Church IMHO.

 

[rlg94086]

Regarding Latin/English in the Mass, the orientation of the priest, etc., some of you may enjoy this piece by Fr. Fessio regarding Sacrosanctum Concilium:
catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0540.html

On Latin and Gregorian Chant

I was amazed. I called Professor William Mart, a Professor of Music at Stanford University and a friend. I said, “Bill, is this true?” He said, “Yes. The Psalm tones have their roots in ancient Jewish hymnody and psalmody.” So, you know something? If you sing the Psalms at Mass with the Gregorian tones, you are as close as you can get to praying with Jesus and Mary. They sang the Psalms in tones that have come down to us today in Gregorian Chant.
…
The point is that the Council did not call for a multiplication of canons, and I think there are lots of other reasons for sticking with the Roman canon. Nor did the Council, as I mentioned, abolish Latin. It specifically mandated the retention of Latin and only permitted the use of the vernacular in certain circumstances. And, finally, the Council did not prohibit Gregorian Chant, as you might be led to think from its absence in your parishes. The Council actually prescribed Gregorian Chant to have pride of place.

What the Council Didn’t Say
That’s essentially what the Second Vatican Council actually said about the renewal of the liturgy. Let me tell you what it did not say. The Council did not say that tabernacles should be moved from their central location to some other location. In fact, it specifically said we should be concerned about the worthy and dignified placing of the tabernacle. The Council did not say that Mass should be celebrated facing the people. That is not in Vatican II; it is not mentioned. It is not even raised in the documents that record the formation of the Constitution on the Liturgy; it didn’t come up. Mass facing the people is a not requirement of Vatican II; it is not in the spirit of Vatican II; it is definitely not in the letter of Vatican II. It is something introduced in 1969.

As far as the good that came out of Vatican II, I think there is a lot of good: Dei Verbum, Lumen Gentium, Sancrosanctum Concilium and Gaudium et Spes.

 

[I_Believe]

I like this post. As a convert, and someone born in 1965, I’m not in a position to make a pronouncement about the changes in the Church pre- and post-VII. I have become more and more traditional in the last 18 years (I started out in a very liturgically liberal California parish - dancers, folk Mass, etc. - so there was only one direction to go ), but I don’t have the hatred for Vatican II that many seem to have.

I am happy with the direction our current Pope is taking us. I hope it continues. More Latin, more reverence, more Catholicism is good for the whole Church IMHO.

Chad’s post is spot on. A few days ago, SCG expressed the same viewpoint. Folks like to post charts showing declining vocations, Mass attendence, and so forth. As SCG said, it would be interesting to see the stats from the past.

I’m beginning to think these topics of debate are really useless, and do nothing but take up time that would be better spent in prayer. Arguing over these matters isn’t exactly the practice of Catholicism.

But, the beat goes on. (that poor old dead horse)

 

[Jacafamala]

KingAlfred; To me, that renders the liturgy incomprehensible; hence, the message of the Mass goes unheeded. Not a good practice.

Well, to you it renders the Mass unheeded, maybe. But certainly not to everyone. Have you ever even been to a TLM? If not, then how can you really know?

Right outside our doors are Protestant ‘wolves’, as John Paul II called them, waiting to devour our flock. They exploit the theme of ‘relevance’ most skillfully.

What are you talking about: Protestant wolves? It sounds to me like you’re misquoting our late Holy Father. I can’t imagine him having called anyone a “Protestant wolf”. Am I wrong? Show me where he said that. I’ll eat my hat if he did.

 

[ProVobis]

I wonder how many people argued the same thing when the Romans switched their liturgy from Greek to Latin. “If you don’t understand Greek, get a missal!”

They didn’t have to. The Latin Mass flourished on its own, while retaining three lines of Greek. The English Mass didn’t retain even one line of Latin nor of Greek either.

And how do we know Latin hadn’t already been used to some degree in many liturgies much before 400 AD?

 

[tobinatorstark]

I would have to say Mass in vanacular language. I do think the Vatican II can be improved on. Vatican III anyone??

 

[Cinette]

Chad’s post is spot on. A few days ago, SCG expressed the same viewpoint. Folks like to post charts showing declining vocations, Mass attendence, and so forth. As SCG said, it would be interesting to see the stats from the past.

I’m beginning to think these topics of debate are really useless, and do nothing but take up time that would be better spent in prayer. Arguing over these matters isn’t exactly the practice of Catholicism.

But, the beat goes on. (that poor old dead horse)

We have attended services at Protestant churches and find them like a concert with preaching.

I took a Jewish Mother and daughter to Schul for one of their big celebrations (can’t spell it - begins with R) and stayed. I tried to follow the service from the prayer book but it was in English and the service was in Hewbrew! I choir sang beautifully but I noticed that one guy was chewing gum throughout.

The service was very long and people were socialising - here and there there were people talking. There were a few devout people against the wall bowing constantly and there was one young woman who was deep in prayer near me. Otherwise it was a social thing. I was disappointed. Also the Rabbi was rattling the prayers off like some formula 1 racing car and even the others who read from the big book were rattling. I have great respect for the Jews and am sure that this was an exception.

I think that the people who attend Mass these days do so out of devotion, real devotion. In the old days it was out of obligation…

 

[Unitas]

I am sorry traditionalists but I like the Priest to face us.

VII never mandated that the priest is to face the congregation. This was a later innovation.

I’d rather the priest have his back to me than have his back to Christ. I’d rather the priest lead from the front, to Christ as the focus instead of himself.

 

[PrayforMallory2]

I hope no one minds what I think will be a very controversial post. I’m sure some are going to want to condemn me for it, which is fine, because I’ve done the same thing many times myself, unfortunately.
This is a discussion of Vatican II and its aftermath, so I feel my views might at least add a little something to the discussion. I believe that some good has come since the 1960’s, but I believe that it’s now time to return to tradition in order to preserve Christianity whole and inviolate for future generations.

I’ve wracked my brain to try and understand the contemporary situation. I’ve struggled for months to try to figure out why so many wise, time-tested Christian scholars defend trends which to me border on iconoclasm and obvious destructive modernism. I don’t think I’ll ever grasp it. All I know is that what they laud is diametrically opposed to my own life experiences, thoughts, values, etc. So while I am struggle to honor them as my elders, I have to oppose them at almost every turn, and that fills me with not a little pain. Since Christianity is still relatively new to me (at least trying to live by it is), I’m aware that I’m not wise.

C.S. Lewis once said, “I am a converted pagan living among apostate puritans.” The first part of the statement applies to me (though the latter does not apply to my opponents on this forum). I am a former liberal postmodernist, who denied the existence of God, objective truth, traditional gender roles, sexuality, etc. I dismissed everything Christian as social constructs. As culturally-based illusions. Unfortunately, many of these pseudo-pagan elements still flare up from time to time. I have to fight them off.

I converted to Catholicism as a teen and walked away from it almost as soon as I converted. The dogma I had been reading, the truths, the descriptions of the ancient liturgy, were totally absent. It didn’t differ all that much from the phony, tired liberalism my professors were teaching me, so I walked out. I’m not proud of it but I left Catholicism in the dust, despite being married in the Church.

The proponents of Vatican II cannot see what to me is so obvious- that the world has changed dramatically since 1970, and the Spirit of Vatican II is no longer relevant to modern life.

Most of my friends (even myself) are practically pagans. Instead of Zeus or Odin, however, we elevate our own selfish desires to practical godhood. Having seen the phony artifice that Christianity has become in most areas of the U.S., we leave it in the dust as outdated superstition.

Whereas “modern” life filled people with a sense of loss and anomie, of a desire to make relevant and renew the traditional culture, “postmodern” life, by which I mean the life of the youth in the 21st century, is a life of virtual savagery. A life completely without God, in which the idea of God is mocked, in which women and men are mere sex objects and little else, in which wealth, fame, and beauty are the only worthy pursuits, in which all traditional values are subjects of ironic mockery, and in which human beings are disposable. Relativism is not this encroaching dogma that we have to fight against- it is the established norm.

So when I analyze Vatican II and its aftermath, I don’t look to the past. I don’t care about situations in which little old ladies said their rosaries because they couldn’t understand the Mass. I look to the future and see a society that will eventually become paganized. Pope Benedict said that, “We cannot stand idly by while society descends into paganism.” Well, he was right on the money. That is happening all around us.

What do I do? When I was a postmodernist, I was praised by virtually everyone I knew. I even had the opportunity to present a paper at an academic convention in San Francisco. Unfortunately for my mentors, I started to read more about Catholicism right before I was going to submit my abstract, and changed my mind. I moved. I went to the traditional Mass, and now my friends think I am a lunatic. And I admit, sometimes I look at my child in her chapel veil at Mass and I question whether or not I am raising her in a faith for which she or her children might one day be legally persecuted by a secular society which is degenerating into paganism.

What does all of this have to do with Vatican II? Since Vatican II, we have developed what I like to call a “soft” religion. A religion in which the last four things are never mentioned, in which all are saved, in which a hard stance is looked down upon, in which doctrine and liturgy are neutered, in which the sacrificial priest is a mere celibate social worker, in which ritual is destroyed so that a democratized liturgy can flourish. And it no longer works. We see the Church in peril. We see the closed parishes, the dried up convents and monasteries, and most alarmingly, we see a future in which we proclaim Christ in a vacuum. We get on these forums, trying to spread the faith, and we end up in debates where one side supports a religion that so many of us walked out of.

Cont…

 

[PrayforMallory2]

Looking back from 2008, it seems so clear. That’s why I am a Lefebvrist at heart, because I look at the clarity of Archbishop Lefebvre’s sermons, the beauty and depth of the liturgy he promoted, the vigor and determination of his stance, and I compare them to the wet noodle religion I walked out of, which has bowed down to liberalism, at least at the local level. I look at Lefebvre’s storming of the Church in Paris, and it becomes evident he is a modern Athanasius, at least in temperament, if not in belief. Go to any Catholic university in the country. Go and see the massive, open Masonic temples present on campus, the banners for ecumenical Masses and Protestant Taize prayers. See the Church in shambles, relativism taught from the podium and even the pulpit. Go read the National Catholic Reporter and see the pro-abort viewpoint lauded. See what 1789 has become. Take all that in, and then read a sermon by Lefebvre.

There are those who say such things should be “offered up,” as if the state of the Church and the Mass is some kind of burden to be carried around with us. I say no. I say fight it. Not with sticks and stones, but with knowledge of Catholic doctrine and with the traditional Mass. Go to trad Masses where there will be no scandal for you. Where your children can hear about salvation and the saints, and not about the “new administration” we are all supposedly hoping for in Washington. In reality, my statement shouldn’t be that shocking, because if you’re like me, you grew up with no moral consciousness and the fight started the first minute you prayed the rosary and threw the condoms in the trash.

What can I say? I realize that I am offending almost all of you. For that I apologize. I know that you are all good Christians and good people, but I have to disagree with your views. To me the Church has been bending for decades. If it continues to bend in the future, it is going to break. What can I do? Though I don’t go to an SSPX Chapel, I throw my hat in with Bishop Fellay, because I want to maintain Christianity whole and inviolate. I don’t want to negotiate any more with liberals. They are forming their own Church, of which I want no part. I’d rather be a non-Christian than alter Christianity.

So peace to all, and feel free to say your peace, as I’ve said mine. Who knows? Maybe I am going to hell for it. I was undoubtedly headed for hell one year ago. If that’s true, then this is all a charade anyway. I know that doctrinal consistency, liturgical traditionalism, etc., have paved the way for my current belief. I could not have believed if I had not sought the traditional Mass. It could just be me.

P.S. Maurin- thanks again for your posts around the time of my conversion.

 

[PrayforMallory2]

“In reality, my statement shouldn’t be that shocking, because if you’re like me, you grew up with no moral consciousness and the fight started the first minute you prayed the rosary and threw the condoms in the trash.”

I want to clarify this statement. What I meant to imply is that a fight begins the moment a former atheist assents to the Church’s teaching on birth control, due to the fact that you end up being mocked for it among your peers. It might be an overly edgy and unclear statement, though, and I’d to see it deleted, along with this post. Moderator?

 

[Cinette]

“In reality, my statement shouldn’t be that shocking, because if you’re like me, you grew up with no moral consciousness and the fight started the first minute you prayed the rosary and threw the condoms in the trash.”

I want to clarify this statement. What I meant to imply is that a fight begins the moment a former atheist assents to the Church’s teaching on birth control, due to the fact that you end up being mocked for it among your peers. It might be an overly edgy and unclear statement, though, and I’d to see it deleted, along with this post. Moderator?

I read your post with great interest and appreciate your comments. I will re-read your post attentively and I do believe that you may have planted some ideas and awakened thoughts in me.

Nevertheless, I also wonder if perhaps your passion for the Church and nostalgia for the traditional format does not border a little on hysteria? Please do not be offended. I believe you have a great love for the Church - no doubt about that.

As for me I believe that Jesus will be with us always and that the Holy Spirit is there to inspire and protect. The Church has withstood the test of time and I trust that the Pope and the Magisterium are there to fulfil their mandate with the help of the Holy Spirit. :juggle:

 

[KingAlfred]

“Why do we continue to bicker about this, and argue for a venacular Mass?”

No one is ‘bickering’ about this but you traditionalists. This has been the official practice and policy of the Church since 1965. I was taught the precepts of Vatican II my entire life, *BY THE CHURCH. *Are you saying everything I was taught was wrong?

 

[Jacafamala]

Chad’s post is spot on. A few days ago, SCG expressed the same viewpoint. Folks like to post charts showing declining vocations, Mass attendence, and so forth. As SCG said, it would be interesting to see the stats from the past.

I’m beginning to think these topics of debate are really useless, and do nothing but take up time that would be better spent in prayer. Arguing over these matters isn’t exactly the practice of Catholicism.
But, the beat goes on. (that poor old dead horse)

Useless for you, maybe but I think I finally have an answer to my question. I have an answer as to what good has come out of VII on a personal level. Definately. So, for me this thread has been most useful.

I’m still a little unsure of the ultimate good VII has had for the Church as a whole, but I trust God with this. And I’ve been interested in the replies regarding this.