Fr. Ray Blake surveys the loss of “Catholic” in the Church

Fr. Ray Blake has an interesting post up that examines the nature of the Church, or, to be more precise, just what constitutes being “Catholic.” As I have also noted on my blog, St. Vincent of Lerins defined the term “Catholic” as: “catholic is that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”  Fr. Ray Blake notes the existential crisis in the Church – the vast majority of Catholics simply no longer believe not only what their forefathers in the Faith once did, but what the Church today proclaims to be true. He also notes that those two things no longer seem the same, even if it requires squinting one’s eyes, and holding the paper just right, one can get the various documents of VII and, even more so, various post-conciliar statements, to align with Tradition.  But to many people in the pews (or not), the content of the Faith seems to have changed a great deal.

Fr. Blake (I add emphasis and comments):

If the worship after 1968 could be changed, so could the content of ‘the faith’ and if the changes were enforced from above, from Rome then surely this is also the source of ‘the faith’, Again, if the liturgy could vary so widely from Mass at the High Altar of Brompton Oratory, with traditional vestments and music and in Latin to Father X sitting on a bean bag wearing just a stole making it up as he went along, why could ‘the faith’ not also be variable.  [This gets back to Fr. Rodriguez, and many other traditional priests, stressing Lex Orandi Lex Credendi – we believe as we pray.  When the Mass was changed, it was inevitable that the belief and practice of the Faith in other areas would change, as well.  Coupled with the terrible timing of the Council and it’s changes viz a viz the revolution in the culture (both occurrred at the same time), the change in the Mass left not a small window, but a yawning maw, in the Church by which revolutionary ideas could enter and be adopted en masse.  The “aggiornamento” wound up much less with the Church influencing the world, than the world influencing the Church.] Despite its intention VII taught, subliminally at least, especially through the liturgy, that Catholicism was what Ratzinger would define as ‘Relativistic’, most importantly of all by Father quite literally turning his back on that which was held holy by past generations, if not smashing it with a sledgehammer.  [I think we really, really need to get past looking, as a Church, at the Council as some untouchable, sacrosanct event.  All previous councils are studied, argued about, and criticized.  VII has to be appraised honestly, understood in context of Tradition (esp. via formal clarifications), and then propely disseminated through formal, priest-led catachesis.  This is utterly vital to arrest the collapse in orthodoxy and orthopraxis.]

‘The faith’ post VII, was not the faith of the previous generations, it was in a state of flux.  [Can this statement be seriously refuted? And if not, does not this fact alone cry out for formal clarification of all that was unleashed on the Church in the period ~1953-1973? How many cardinals do we have to quote saying “Vatican II was deliberately ambiguous,” or “all the documents are 100% dogmatic,” followed by “no they’re not! Only a few are, and only when they confirmed prior dogma!”  All the above have been stated by cardinals in the past year!] The movement of the Blessed Sacrament in some diocese from the centre of the apse to a side chapel or a tabernacle in the corner of the sanctuary and rubrics restricting the genuflections of the priest, said what we believed yesterday about the Real Presence is not what we believe today, similarly the change in funeral rites from sombre black, the Dies Irae, intercession for the dead to Mass in thanksgiving for the life of the dead person brought in a serious undermining of one of Catholicism most important certainties about death and judgement, again it said what we believed yesterday, we do not believe today.……

  …….The curriculum in seminaries and houses of formation were often aimed at rooting out that which was passed on, hence scripture was more about teaching the untrustworthiness of scripture, moral theology became how to get around traditional Catholic morality, liturgy became a justification for ditching past practices, theology rather than deepening faith tended to undermine it, theology tended to emphasise rupture and to be based not on the liturgy but non-Christian philosophical notions, Rahner supplanted Aquinas. [Pretty much all of which is true, or was true for a while. I pray things are better today.  Given the above, perhaps we should thank God pur priests are as good as they are, or not nearly so bad as they could have been.]  An apparently new theology with apparently new set of doctrines alienated many clergy. The great boom in vocations in the fifties ended with a whimper in the sixties, and I suspect left many clergy traumatised, trying to explain something which they didn’t understand or necessarily belief in, to people who didn’t understand or want what was now offered.

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Look, it can be said 400 different ways, but, in essence, a revolution was executed within and/or against the Church by a limited cadre of Her own members.  This revolution had been a possibility since the disastrous idea of “personal judgment” trumping all became widespread in the latter half of the 16th century, and became increasingly likely as the protestant-revolt inspired endarkenment transpired in the late 17th and 18th centuries.  When materialist evolution and the religious expression of that, modernism, began to spread like wildfire in the late 19th century, the possibility of revolution became a probability.  Only extreme vigilance and, probably, severe measures of the type taken by Pope St. Pius X, could have continued to stave off the revolution in the culture from entering into the Church. But as the 20th century developed, and more and more in the Church began to absorb, consciously or not, certain “enlightened” ideas like “tolerance” (meaning indifference) and “the rights of man” (as against the rights of God), there was less and less support for such strong action, and more and more voices opposed to such “cruel,” “totalitarian” measures.  By the late 50s, the Church had a large cadre of priests, heads of religious orders, and even some bishops, who were thoroughly modernist and just itching for a chance to radically change the Church.  They got that chance.

I’m not saying the documents of VII themselves are revolutionary, but those seeking to upend the Faith and replace It with a wholly different paradigm, a much more humanistic paradigm, certainly took advantage of them to their own ends, and did play a role in making those documents quite open to interpretation.  So, to Fr. Blake I would say, the reason why you and others were taught so very differently in seminary is because that was the conscious intent of those who desired to force the Church into some kind of accord with modernist, endarkenment beliefs.

But this “Church makeover: modernist edition” was always doomed to fail, and terribly.  So long as the Church continues on this path, She will continue in ever-deepening crisis.  The Church cannot be what She is not: a worldly institution that accords with the anti-Catholic, humanist, materialist ideals of the present culture.  The Church has to be what she is, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, the only vehicle of salvation, and the source of all Grace and Light in the world. It has to stand athwart the culture and shout “Stop!”  It has to tell an increasingly broken and amoral world the Truth, which more and more souls will eventually respond to as they realize the hollowness and emptiness of the falsities that underly the present culture.  The Church, in short, has to be Her historical, traditional, mystical, Sacramental, Papal, priestly, Eucharistic self.  That is what God intends, and He will not be fooled.