Why is there opposition to Vatican 2?

[gracepoole]

Please note…going to Mass out of fear of popular momentum is not faith.

Eek. Many people don’t feel their faith constantly. Part of dealing with spiritual dryness, however, is following the proscriptions of the Church anyway. Mother Theresa is a great example of this. I myself have continued to participate even when I’ve questioned God’s existence. Faith is an act. It’s not passive.

So how did the uniformity of practice work out? If uniformity of practice were so compelling, we should have all the legions of former Catholic school students and their children attending Mass. Where are they?

Given your earlier statement, they now have the “freedom to make a choice for the faith.” More’s the pity for their souls, I should think.

 

[goout]

Given your earlier statement, they now have the “freedom to make a choice for the faith.” More’s the pity for their souls, I should think.

Faith, hope, and love only flower in human freedom.
So, whether one lives in a predominantly Catholic culture or mission territory, faith is the free response of a human being to God’s grace.
Observance is not the same thing as faith. Observance is part of the response to and the expression of faith.

 

[goout]

goout:

Please note…going to Mass out of fear of popular momentum is not faith.

Eek. Many people don’t feel their faith constantly. Part of dealing with spiritual dryness, however, is following the proscriptions of the Church anyway. Mother Theresa is a great example of this. I myself have continued to participate even when I’ve questioned God’s existence. Faith is an act. It’s not passive.

Who is disputing that? Who even brought it up?

 

[glencor63]

Christianity is not about religion. It’s about having a relationship with the living God. I think many Catholics in the past observed the faith out of cultural tradition. They knew what to believe, but not why. Theologian, Frank Sheed lamented that the laity was not encouraged to study theology. Vatican II and the general cultural changes in society empowered the laity to question their faith. That’s a good thing. Jesus said to be hot or cold, but not lukewarm.

I think some people hate Vatican II because the Catholic Church is no longer a strictly Western Centric church. Latin, Gregorian chant, the organ, etc., these are Western, i.e., European in origin. Vatican II put the universal in Catholicism, truly opening it up to the world. For example: Why should drums and traditional African dress be any less Catholic than Latin and Gregorian chant? Drums and African dress aren’t less Catholic, but they are less European. I suspect this is in part the opposition in some circles to Vatican II.

"For this the layman must be equipped, above all with the truths about God and the soul and the next life and Christ Our Lord. It is not necessary that he should be trained in argument, able to prove the existence of God, for instance, or the spirituality of the soul. What is essential is that he know what the truths themselves mean, and what difference they make; and not only know these things, but be able to utter them.

Without utterance, truth lies mute within us, helping no one but our own self. We first learn the doctrines, then we start all over again to learn to say them; for there is a great gap between the seeing and the saying of spiritual realities. We must above all study the mind to which the doctrines must be offered — what it already contains and what it lacks, how it works, the words it knows.

But the mode of utterance is not the immediate problem: too many laymen do not know these great truths well enough to utter them even badly. They know, or at least they have been taught, the wonderful formulas of the Catechism in which the truths are enshrined, but they do not grasp what the formulas are actually saying; therefore they cannot possibly so present them that another man will be won to see their beauty, still less the difference it would make to his own life if he accepted them".

(“Theology for Beginners” by Frank Sheed)

 

[otjm]

I will assume you are not reading the Church documents, nor the Church explanation as to why the Council was called, and it would sound as if you may not have read the 16 documents.

Your comments about the Protestant observers would be hilarious if it were not based on pure, unadulterated speculation and repeated lies. There was nothing in the Council that was aimed at “Protestantizing” the Church, or meeting them “halfway”.

It was based significantly on the fact the Trent, in reacting to the multiples of heresies at the time and previous to the calling of that council, reacted in large part in a minimalistic way; it in essence defined the doctrines and practices which were at the minimum necessary to counter the Reformation. In that, it did a great job; but while it most definitely needs the doctrines of the Church clarified, doctrines are not faith. they guide and shape the faith, but they are not faith. And the Church spent then next 400+ years approaching its mission of spreading the Gospels, by falling back on stating doctrine.

Vatican 2 had no intent on getting rid of doctrine or minimizing it; it intended to take a different approach to evangelization.

Your examples show an inability to distinguish what was intended solely as a broad brush picture, for example, of liturgy, and you see the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy as setting out the disciplinary rules of it, rather than as a document intended to guide forward. You see in in absolutest terms, and it was never intended as such

I can appreciate you may not like the liturgy today; I suspect that you would not like the liturgy of the Church in, say 600 AD either. Liturgy was most definitely not hadned over to the laity; the GIRM comes straight from Rome. If bishop does not fulfill their role in guiding the liturgy, laity on the parish level might have some influence on liturgical matters; if the bishop does what he is supposed to do (and the vast majority do) then whatever minimal room for the laity’s (name removed by moderator)ut is allowed, and the rules are followed. Given there are over 17,000 parishes in the US, please do not provide me with anecdotal commentary; I am familiar with what has happened over the last 67 years (I am 72); I am also aware that in most dioceses, most Masses follow the GIRM.

It is hilarious that you think removing Latin was eliminating the unifying elements of the Mass; given that there are something like 23 eastern churches/rites within the Catholic Church, unity has never in 2000 years meant uniformity. I have attended Masses in Vietnamese and in Spanish and within the Roman rite, there is unity - and a high degree of uniformity, since they all, in the US, follow the same GIRM, a point with which you seem to be unfamiliar.

 

[AngelusDomini]

Totally. From both sides. There are some who claim it (whatever IT is) is in the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ and then those who fight against anything remotely related to Vatican II because they believe Vatican II ivented it (again whatever IT is).

Always amuses me when people claim certain things ‘weren’t like this before Vatican II’ but in actual fact were changed by Pope Pius XII.

 

[goout]

In regard to organ, or any music of quality for that matter…
prepare to open your pocketbooks, because excellent liturgy does not happen by accident, and finding competent people is next to impossible anyway Those preparing liturgy need to live like everyone else. They need to be paid fairly, and have a lot of schooling and associate bills.

Musical training is expensive. We are blessed to have a gentleman who was in seminary a few years, then left to marry his wife, then went to music school.
He can play the pipe organ, piano, has a great voice, and most importantly, the music always matches the liturgical setting.

Our Hispanic community is a more spontaneous music ensemble, but that’s the nature of their style of worship anyway. It’s more charismatic than western European style. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just different. Very vibrant, incorporates a lot of younger people.

It’s just important to remember that pipe organists do not grow on trees.
Ours is paid in the 40’s or low 50’s, and he does A LOT of work.

 

[Augustinian]

In regard to organ, or any music of quality for that matter…

prepare to open your pocketbooks, because excellent liturgy does not happen by accident, and finding competent people is next to impossible anyway Those preparing liturgy need to live like everyone else. They need to be paid fairly, and have a lot of schooling and associate bills.

Musical training is expensive

The instruments themselves are very expensive as well. A pipe organ for a church has to be custom made, fitted and tuned for its home and doesn’t last forever. Maintenance is very expensive. as well.

I was reading in the paper a few years back about the cost to the East Liberty Presbyterian Church to replace its organ, and the price was crazy. That’s an 80 year old church.

 

[otjm]

Many, although not al who protest against Vatican 2 and against the Ordinary Form were born at or after Vatican 2. So there are two subsets of people who get their dander up over both.

Of the older set, many were raised in the “pray, pay and obey” era where participation in Mass was most definitely not a matter of common discussion nor of leadership of the Church. During the reign of Pius 9th, he in reaction to linger Jansenism promoted frequent Communion, a mater that within some circles in the 1950’s still had some ground, particularly among individuals with little education in the Faith. I remember comments made by some people of my grandparents age when I was a child, tut tutting over daily communicants. Heresies die hard.

Mass by altogetherr too many was considered an obligation; you went and endured. A sociologist in the 1950’s found well more than half of the congregation at a Sunday Mass engaged in reading pious tracts and novenas, saying the Rosary, and as he noted, some men in the back of the church reading the bulletin or the local church (diocesan) paper. Well fewer than half had a missal to follow along with the priest. Clearly, participation meant showing up, and possibly going to Communion.

But Vatican 2 in general spoke about the laity and its role in evangelization, and that was news to a lot of the older people who thought that showing up to Mass on Sunday was the limit; evangelization was for priests and sisters. People had never been encouraged to learn more of their faith; theological books simply were not available and while the Church did not oppose reading Scripture, the general tenor of leadership on that matter was tenuous at best.

There is a great deal of beauty in the EF (having served at weekday Masses, Sunday High Masses and having had every position in our Solemn High Masses up to and including Master of Ceremonies), and I was part of a schola in 1965 or 1966 which cut a record of Gregorian Chant so i get it. The aesthetics of the Ordinary Form focus more on the incomplex line. The bishops of the world wanted the Mass to be revised; and they said that they wanted things which had been added over the centuries to be removed, and those which had been lost, replaced.

And so we have younger people, some of whom either have been in parishes where the OF was not properly celebrated, or are attracted to the aesthetics of the EF. Their desire to attend the EF is not wrong. but it certainly is not the direction which the Church took, with Vatican 2, and subsequently in providing the OF. And there appear to be some who either reject or criticize Vatican 2, but do not go to SSPX chapels. Much of their antithesis to Vatican 2 and anything associated to it does not appear to be factually based on what the Church teaches and holds, but that is subject to this thread.

 

[AngelusDomini]

They need to be paid fairly, and have a lot of schooling and associate bills.

I’m always amazed that the UK has so many amazing organists given that so many are not paid a penny, except in cathedrals or the most prestigious of churches. In fact it’s rare to find anyone who is paid for anything in a parish. Is it widespread in the USA to pay for organists, liturgical planners (whatever they are), etc. as I’ve seen a few posts which refer to such appointments?

 

[StarMapp]

This is the exception rather than the rule. If we remove those groups who are voicefully at odds, made the tabloids, and have consummated their disapproval, there remains only a small residue, and in that group most are Opinio Tolerata.

These do not pose a barrier to being obedient to V2. They share in common a caring for the Mother Church and pray for it’s spiritual prosperity.

 

[dochawk]

You, you mean…Latin was once an innovation?

For those not catching the irony . . . that is exactly what I mean.

hawk

 

[Pup7]

The employment of the piano is forbidden in church

Good heavens. Nice to know they thought every church could either afford an organ or have a place to put one.

Not every church is a cathedral. Not every parish is wealthy.

 

[Augustinian]

Good heavens. Nice to know they thought every church could either afford an organ or have a place to put one.

Not every church is a cathedral. Not every parish is wealthy.

A cappella music is also allowed

 

[Pup7]

And not everyone has a choir capable of leading a cappella in a way that will keep people in the pews.

 

[dallas_r]

ood heavens. Nice to know they thought every church could either afford an organ or have a place to put one.

“Although the music proper to the Church is purely vocal music, music with the accompaniment of the organ is also permitted.”

Saint Pope Pius X is saying the music proper to the Church is purely vocal music. If available, one could play the organ.

“In some special cases, within due limits and with proper safeguards, other instruments may be allowed, but never without the special permission of the Ordinary”

Saint Pius X clearly states it must be a special case, almost an emergency, to use other instruments. In addition, one must obtain special permission from the Ordinary. I doubt any Church today even asks the Bishop, it’s taken as an automatic thing which is complete ignorance of Pius X’s motu proprio, Tra Le Sollecitudini.

He clearly states the piano is not at all welcome.

“The employment of the piano is forbidden in church”

 

[dallas_r]

And not everyone has a choir capable of leading a cappella in a way that will keep people in the pews.

The capability of the choir is not an excuse to show disregard towards Church documents.

 

[Pup7]

Pup7:

And not everyone has a choir capable of leading a cappella in a way that will keep people in the pews.

The capability of the choir is not an excuse to show disregard towards Church documents.

Then you better start reporting churches and pretty much every military chapel I’ve ever set foot in. I’ll help you formulate a list. I hear what you’re saying, but there are more important things to enforce in my opinion if you want participation and actual attendance by a wide number of people.

 

[dallas_r]

Then you better start reporting churches and pretty much every military chapel I’ve ever set foot in.

Time to build some FSSP Churches am I right? Put my church first on that list.

 

[Pup7]

Fork out the cash and I’m sure you’ll have participation. Until then, though, I think there are far more important matters at hand than the use of a piano or a guitar.