A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

“The Tale of Those Nasty Liberals Who Hijacked Poor Ol’ Vatican Two” August 19, 2014

I am dreadfully short on time this week, being virtually forced to devote essentially all my time towards improving the speed and reliability of the internet I have a much better claim to inventing than Al Gore, but wouldn’t you know Eliot Bougis would come through with a great post on VII for me.  It’s more than just a discussion on Vatican II, EB asks some very trenchant questions regarding famous hermeneutics and inexplicable conspiracy theories.  I add a lot of emphasis (because of the general awesomeness) and a few comments:

When the spirit of a council dictates, almost from day one, how the documents of a council are to be read and applied, then that spirit is the true fruit of the council, regardless what the documents may say. Luckily, the Church has never fallen into this trap, so keep calm and party on, right? [heh]

This is the conservative paradox: the same people who are blamed for “hijacking The Council” are those to whom pious submission must be given in the implementation of The Council.  [Can it be said Paul VI hijacked Vatican II?  But if you read some actual history, rather than opinion of the same, it becomes clear very quickly that Paul VI was a major proponent of that “spirit.”]  Conspiracy theories are generally taboo among conservatives, but The Tale of Those Nasty Liberals Who Hijacked Poor Ol’ Vatican Two is one conspiracy theory still very much in vogue. The documents have borne the fruits we see (and will probably keep seeing, for a long time to come) because the seeds of said fruit are embedded in the documents themselves. This is why, as Bp. Schneider reminds us, the documents must be subjected to a thorough magisterial pruning, so that the vigor of the Pastoral Mandate can be matched by the tradition of doctrinal security.

Meanwhile, the unrelenting cry for MOAR COUNCIL has a bizarre way of leading to the very abuses which The Council is supposed to have saved us. [Like, for instance, an insidious and deep-seeded tendency towards clericalism, shut up and do as your told, etc.  Certainly, some avenues have opened for more lay involvement, but either question those or step outside the new boundaries, and one finds a clericalism that its seems hard to imagine could have been much worse in the bad old pre-conciliar days]  The Council cannot be a final harbor. It was a milestone, but the Church keeps moving, and I think the Church needs to either enforce the documents with a zeal that any “rad trad” would admire, or needs to admit that The V2 Experiment has failed. The Church will–and must–go on, but, pragmatically speaking, The Spirit of The Council is the clear winner these days. It is heroic of laymen to hold the magisterial line, but it is properly the duty of the episcopal college to get the led out and get our house in order. No “pastoral” strategy is guaranteed infallible immunity. [It’s frankly a sad joke for laymen to try to “uphold” Doctrine.  How can we?  We can cajole, scream, embarrass, shame, but we have no power whatsoever.  We are a flea on an elephant’s butt.  But I do wonder, somewhat in disagreement to the above, whether it might not be better to shun this non-dogmatic, pastoral Council?]

At the same time, I’m floored that unflinching defenders of Vatican II at least admit that the V2 documents shouldn’t but in fact can be read in a discontinuous, heterodox way. Can the same be said of any prior council? [Yes, yes, YES!  That’s the other million dollar quote.  I can’t think of any other Council that is full of texts so ambiguous, open to interpretation, and available to be abused as so many of the documents of Vatican II, even – or perhaps especially – the more “official” ones like Apostolic Constitutions, etc.  In fact, the texts from other Councils from Trent to Nicaea are remarkable for their clarity, and precision.  Compare Trent or the Syllabus to significant parts of Vatican II, and it’s like night and day.  That fact alone makes Vatican II an entirely novel departure from the preceding Magisterium. ]  And even if it could be, it was the purpose of a later council authoritatively to rectify such problems. No one in the hierarchy is seriously calling for such a correction. Everything Is Awesome. Except, darn it, this time we need to really implement The Council. There’s that creeping conspiracy theory again. [Yes, it certainly does seem that Vatican II, for all its awesomeness, is the most difficult to implement Council in the history of the Church.  One main problem being, there remains massive disagreement over what such an implementation would even look like, due to the vagaries of the texts themselves.  Modernists thrive on ambiguity and lack of clarity, they detest precision and hard definitions.]

[I really shouldn’t steal so much, but it’s just so darned good……] I don’t see how we can have it both ways. If V2 is to be judged not as a dogmatic intervention but as a pastoral endeavor, and should therefore not be held to such rigorous intellectual standards as prior councils, then the manifest deterioration and disorientation of the Church in certain ways should suffice to show how the pastoral endeavor has been derailed on its own terms. [Indeed.] Rather than being read in an orthodox sense, the conciliar ambiguity in question reverses the entire hermeneutic by subjecting past teaching to endless debate and doubt in the superdogma event horizon that V2 has, despite its intended “humility”, become. [Everything is read through the prism of Vatican II or anything post-conciliar.  Therefore, Casti Connubbi gets frequently cast aside in favor of Humanae Vitae. The Mass of Ages replaced by a manufactured (and clumsily, at that) product.  Everything that existed prior to VII, from vestments to the role of laity to Dogma (in practice) to music to the Liturgy, etc., ad nauseum, had to be re-examined, “renewed,” and generally reshaped, often from the ground up, in light of the Vatican II supercouncil. Just a brilliant summation.] To cite prior councils is to be labeled a rad trad, which is pretty astounding a charge. As Brunero Gherardini had persuasively argued, what is need is not a declamation of continuity, but a demonstration of it, and the only possible resources for such a demonstration reside in the very things that get one labeled a rad trad. [That is, reference to all the other ecumenical Councils and everything “pre-conciliar”] V2 is the most self-referential council in the Church’s history, which is why, like any spiraling mass, it sucks everything else into its gravitational pull, and contorts it all into a shape of its own making.

———–End Quote———–

Just fantastic, Mr. Bougis.  Have mercy on me for going well beyond fair use.

I cannot help but note but it was the dawning realization of so much of the above, especially as evident in their willingness to honestly examine the work of Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, that led to the sacking of the Franciscans of the Immaculate.  Apparently, the ultimate super-dogma of the day, the new first and highest commandment, is: “Thou shalt not question, doubt, or cast umbrage on any sacred jot and tittle of Vatican II.”  And viewing Vatican II as the super-dogmatic prism through which all else must be viewed is the fundamental assumption of those who defend that sacking and insist that the founder and previous leadership were deadly threats not just to the “poor, deluded souls” who made up the vast majority of the the membership of the FIs, but the entire Church Herself.

Which gets back to a theme I’ve been pressing of late, which is that the “new” Church, the “post-conciliar Church,” gives every indication of being something radically different from, and irrepressibly hostile towards, the “old” or “pre-conciliar” Church.  This is evidenced in 100,000 different ways and is something, I have said, that must simply be acknowledged, accepted, and then dealt with as best as we can in our individual states in life.

I’m not saying I have an answer or a solution, other than to pray that someday (soon!) we have a Pope that is “beyond” the Council, if you will, that was not directly involved in it or predominately shaped by that “spirit,” and who is willing to examine and clarify its many, many claims against the great guide God has given us in the Magisterial Tradition of the Church.  That’s the only way doctrinal orthodoxy and catechetical clarity can ever really be restored in the Church.