Can someone please explain? I know some info on the second Vatican council but people, especially traditionalists, talk about how much they despise Vatican II etc… Can someone explain?
One of the issues, which is rarely, if ever, brought up, is that most people are not trained in critical thinking. They are not trained to look at an issue from several perspectives; they are not trained to probe and ask questions; and all too often, they are not trained sufficiently in a matter in order to make objective distinctions.
Where am I going with this? For starters, many, if not most who have issues with the documents of Vatican 2 have not read them; and for those who have read them, many are not trained sufficiently in the varying areas of theology to be able to even understand what the issues are which individual documents address; they also lack seriously in historical perspective, including what was actually going on in that area prior to the convening of the Council.
Additionally, many, if not most of the complainers play an ad hoc, ergo propter hoc game with causation, choosing to blame Vatican 2 for changes that had nothing whatsoever to do with the documents themselves.
To which can be added that much of the basis of complaints is from an emotional standpoint: “I don’t like it, therefore it is bad” approach. They hear someone who says something that they take to be supportive of their emotional reaction, and use that as justification for their position, often parroting what was said, without any clue as to its truthfulness, relationship to the documents themselves, or how it varies from what the Church actually is or has been doing.
And many of the people who complain, or dissent, are doing the exact same thing they are blaming the people on the other end of the spectrum of doing - picking and choosing what they want the Church to be, rather than following what the Church is and does.
And finally, in many of the complaints which they have concerning the documents, they fail to recognize one critical element: the documents were not written for them, for their deification, or for that matter, necessarily for their understanding. The documents were written for the bishops of the world, who were then to go out and implement the changes which the documents identified. It was not, and still is not, up to the laity to implement the changes the documents called for.
And not to make too fine a point of it, it took about 100 years for the documents of Trent to be reasonably well implemented.
And none of the above should be in any way construed as ignoring the damage that any number of theologians did soon after the close of the Council; if you feel a need to find out who, take a look at the signers of the ads against Humanae Vitae and that should give a running start. And yes, there were many priests who got caught up in experimentation; but that had nothing to do with the form of the Mass so much as their buying in on what the theologian “experts” were espousing. And yes, there were many bishops in the US who failed miserably to lead; in part because for all too long, the office of bishop had drifted into a bureaucratic model, as opposed to a shepherding and evangelical model.
And some of the complaints, at least in part, get down to a matter of form of spirituality. Just as there is a Benedictine spirituality, and a Jesuit one, and a franciscan and Dominican and (fill in your favorite) spirituality, there is a spirituality that favors the EF, and one that favors the OF. Both are legitimate in the Church, but some fail to understand that while they favor one, the other is also legitimate. Much of that can be seen in comments in these threads, particularly where some posters seek to denigrate the form they do not like. Some people do not seem to remember what Thumper’s mother said.
