Yes, Fr. Ratzinger did part ways with the radical progressives. However, my point remains the same as it has been throughout the thread: Pope Benedict is only conservative in relation to the new theology of the council. Even the positions he holds today are heavily influenced by that thought. As I said before, if you went back to the 1950s and showed any average Catholic the theological and liturgical ideas that Pope Bendict XVI currently holds, they would consider him to be a progressive. The terms are relative. He is a conservative in relation to the theology of the council. He is progressive in relation to the totality of tradition - in other words, he is not a traditionalist. I am not assigning any moral worth to these terms. That is a discussion for a different thread.
My overall point being: many today mistake post-conciliar conservatism as being synonymous with traditionalism. This is incorrect. They are distinct ideologies.
Actually, the average Catholic adult in the early 1960’s had not much more than a Baltimore Catechism understanding of theology - which is to say, they knew precious little theology. They knew novenas and private prayers, and about 70 % of them attended Mass on a regular basis. However, there were almost no schools of theology except for seminaries; there were few or no books on theology and the ones there were, were not widespread. there were no seminars on theological thought; there were no relatively widespread popular magazines on theology. So most of the people in the pews would have had no basis with which to judge Father Ratzinger, or Father Wojtyla, or any of the other theologians.
And as to the conservatives in the curia not being organized, I beg to differ; those following Cardinal Ottaviani made a major effort to derail the Council before it ever started; and when they did not succeed they attempted to cast the direction of it. However, when the first draft came out, it was resoundingly defeated, and the process started over.
And yes, the periti were from northern European countries; but it is hard to name theologians over the last 1,000 years who were not European. It is also a bit of a stretch to relate matters as if not much more than a handful of bishops ran the whole council; that is in effect to say that out of the 2,000+ bishops at the council, a few lead and the 1,800 - 1,900 others were not much more than stooges.
The conservatives of the curia were intransigent about change, and they were replaced, because the Church was moving on from their entrenchment. A whole lot of the Council wasn’t about making changes to the Mass; it was about making changes to the working of the Church which the majority of the bishops of the world saw as important and necessary.
Weekly, we prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the Council, and I seriously doubt we were in an extreme minority doing so; it was widespread during the time the Council was meeting.
John 23rd made no bones about the fact that the Church needed to stop fighting matters that were somewhere between several hundred and 500 years old, and start to address the world as it- the world - currently existed. It was not that doctrine needed changing; it was that the Church, after 19 centuries, had accumulated accretions upon accretions, and was far more caught up in doctrinal disputes than it was in what Christ did, and what He commanded the Church to do - and that is to preach the Gospels - preach the Good News. And that has been the theme of the last three Popes - Evangelization, not doctrinal disputation
That is not to dispute that Edward Schillebeeckx and some others subsequently went off the rails. But those who try to imply that because they were among the periti, that the whole Council was tainted, are people who try to deny that the Holy Spirit guides the Church - or else they are people who seemingly forget that, largely because they don’t like the direction the Church took. “I don’t like it, therefore it is wrong” may be too tightly stated, but seems not that far off the truth.
