Discussions on Traditionalism: The Council
So you were going to tell me a few things about Vatican II and why you oppose it.
I think it would be inaccurate to say that I "oppose" the council.
But you believe it was a bad thing for the Church, right?
I think the evidence proves that the results of how the Council was implemented are unquestionably bad. The raw data does not lie.
And what raw data is that?
Kenneth Jones wrote a book in 2003 called Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II - and in this little book he pulled together and reported on all the data that describes what's been happening in the Church since the council.
Without going into every single boring statistic, I'll just throw a few major figures out there:
1) The number of priests in the US is down 35% (and steadily declining)
2) The number of new ordinations in the US is down 70%
3) The number of men studying for the priesthood is down 90% (and thus, 60% of the seminaries have closed their doors)
4) The number of nuns went down 60%
5) Catholic Marriages are down 30%
6) Annulments, on the other hand, are up by the unbelievable rate of 14,700%
7) Attendance at Mass is down 50%
8) The number of conversions (adult baptisms) is down 35%
In addition to those grim numbers, consider these facts about the Modern Church: 90% of Catholics think contraception is ok; 53% of Catholics think abortion is ok; 77% of Catholics think not going to Mass on Sunday is ok.
Wow! What's happening to the Catholic Church?
I think it's safe to say that the Church since the council is deteriorating at an incredible rate. In fact, I know it's safe to say this, because I'm only repeating the words of Pope Paul VI himself. In 1968, just three years after the close of the council, he gave a speech at the Lombard Seminary in Rome, and he said:
If the pope can say that the Church is in the process of "self-destruction" and "attacking itself," certainly I can echo that same sentiment - and the numbers are there to substantiate that claim.
I can see that.
And Pope Paul VI wasn't the only one who publicly admitted that the council was a failure.
Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was certainly in favor of the council, and was in fact invited to attend the council as a peritus (an "expert" who served as a theological advisor), wrote:
And no less an authority than our current pope, when he was still a Cardinal in 1984, said that the results of the council seemed
And remember, Ratzinger, like Bouyer, was at the council as a peritus, and all in favor of the council. So basically everyone who was in a position to know what was going on, from the inside, says the same thing: the council was a disaster.
So what does this mean for you?
It means I'm going to steer clear of the council and anything that resulted from the council (including the New Mass). If the pope himself looks and says, "the Church is in a process of self-demolition," and I see that the undeniable trend in the Modern Church is loss of faith and holiness, then I need to find a safe harbor until this storm is over.
"Storm" is one way to put it. "Crisis" is another way to put it, as our current pope actually did put it some years ago. Listen again to what he says, and how he ties the crisis in precisely with the liturgy:
Let's go back to the council, though. You never did explain how it is that you don't "oppose" the council. It sounds to me like you oppose it very much!
Here's the question, though: which teaching of the council, solemnly promulgated and proposed for the assent of faith, do I reject or oppose?
None of them. Because there are none.
That's the trick of this whole deception! It was an Ecumenical (in the sense of "worldwide," not in the sense of "put aside all your religious differences") Council of the Church, and under normal circumstances those councils are infallible. But under normal circumstances, those councils define very clearly some proposition to be believed as a dogma; and then they state the reverse of the dogma and say, "if anyone believes this, he is accursed."
So you see, the other 20 councils of the Church all explicitly taught and defined some dogma, and required it to be accepted as part of the faith. Vatican II simply did not do that.
How can a council come together for three years and not teach anything?
Oh, the council documents have plenty to say - no doubt. But nothing in those documents is explicitly defined, or proposed as a dogma - and it goes without saying that there are no anathemas in there either. So I can't really be accused of being a "Vatican II heretic" if there are no anathemas in the council.
You know what I mean? The Council of Trent said, for example, "if you don't believe that Jesus is substantially present in the Eucharist, you're a heretic" (I'm paraphrasing, of course); but Vatican II never once says, "if you don't believe that the Muslims worship the same God as we do, you're a heretic," or, "if you don't believe that holding ecumenical services with Protestants is right, you're a heretic."
The council defined nothing, and it anathematized nothing.
So what did it do, then? It must have done something, if it caused all this trouble.
Yes, it did. It promulgated 16 documents - which, I think it was Michael Davies who cynically referred to them as "sixteen essays" - that wax quite poetic on a number of subjects. The problem is that the documents are so ambiguous and imprecise that you walk away doing one of two things: either you're scratching your head and thinking, "huh?", or you're walking away with a vaguely warm and comfortably fuzzy feeling about religion - which probably means you weren't reading it carefully.
You said earlier that the New Mass' biggest problem was that it's ambiguous - now you're saying that Vatican II was ambiguous as well?
What, are you beginning to sense a theme?
Pope St. Pius X wrote an encyclical against Modernism in 1907 called Pascendi Dominici Gregis, and he said in this encyclical - and I'm really paraphrasing here - that the fastest way to unmask a modernist is to get his opinion on the scholasticism championed by St. Thomas Aquinas.
Modernists hate scholasticism. St. Pius X said - no paraphrasing this time - that Modernists "show ... contempt for scholasticism," that they "recognise that the three chief difficulties for them are scholastic philosophy, the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium of the Church," that they "have only ridicule and contempt" for scholastic philosophy and theology, and finally, that "the passion for novelty is always united in [Modernists] with hatred of scholasticism." (Pascendi, 41-42)
Then he says what I alluded to a moment ago:
Why the Modernist hatred for scholasticism? This gets to your question about ambiguity. Scholasticism is precise. It doesn't leave big question marks or room for a thousand varying interpretations. Modernism literally thrives and feeds on ambiguity.
Again, St. Pius X put it best, when he condemned the Modernists in France:
You don't have to read too far into the Vatican II documents before you find precisely this "dynamic language" which conceals "vague notions and ambiguous expressions with ... high-sounding words," but which most definitely lacks "clarity [and] logic."
So the council was Modernist?
It certainly appears that way from the outside. Probably a more accurate way to say it is this: there was a large faction in the council made up of Modernist bishops and/or bishops who were too trusting of their Modernist periti, to whom they turned for answers. The result is that these 16 documents are loaded with ambiguous phrases which may at first glance look Catholic, but on second glance could actually support a liberal interpretation. The reverse is also true: some phrases look blatantly liberal at first pass, but the more you look, you realize you could understand it in a Catholic way.
And that was entirely on purpose.
Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx was yet another liberal peritus at the council, and he once said something that revealed both the purpose of the ambiguities, as well as the critical role played by the periti:
So the liberals at the council snuck a few things into the documents in an underhanded way? You're saying they fooled everyone?
Some were probably fooled by the ambiguities, thinking, "that sounds strange, but I guess it could be interpreted in a Catholic sense"; some were not fooled, but they were in the minority and were simply out-voted.
So much for your idea of the infallible ecumenical council then!
Whoa, there. Who said anything about the council teaching positive error?
Well, come on - all these ambiguities being sneaked in under the cover of deceit ... I thought the Holy Spirit protected the Church from stuff like that.
The Holy Spirit did protect the Church from Vatican II. With all of those liberals at the council, how on earth do you think the council managed to run its course without once promulgating as dogma some heresy?
The Holy Spirit showed His protection for the Church in this case in a very unforeseen manner: by ensuring that the council would not be a dogmatic council at all.
What's that mean? How can a council be anything but dogmatic?
Well, this is definitely a first, that's for sure. With the previous 20 councils it was assumed that they were being held for the purposes of defining dogma. That's what a council is for. But there really was no purpose for Vatican II.
Cardinal Pellavicini once expressed a very wise sentiment when he said, "To convoke a General Council except when absolutely demanded by necessity is to tempt God." (quoted in New Jersey Catholic News, Summer 1984, p.1)
So this council was entirely different from the rest. It was called at a time when the Church was doing well, when conversions were up, vocations were on the rise, etc. There was no pressing need, and the one dominant heresy of the age (Communism) wasn't even condemned at the council!
Anyway, we were talking about how a council can be non-dogmatic, and I guess I'm saying that it's a strange contradiction - because "council" is synonymous with "dogmatic" in a lot of ways.
Then why are you saying it wasn't dogmatic?
Because that's what the pope and council fathers said. Once again, I'm not inventing things here, I'm just repeating what the ecclesiastical authorities have said.
Cardinal Felici said at the council:
"We have to make reservations"?
What else are you going to do? Some of these teachings had a "novel character" about them, but since they were not dogmatically defined ... what are the faithful supposed to do?
Why do you keep saying that these teachings were not dogmatically defined?
Because that's what the popes said who ran the council. John XXIII opened the council and said this at his opening speech:
According to Pope John, the council had no intention of condemning anything, but only of "demonstrating the validity" of the Church's teaching by revising "the way in which it is presented." So he labeled the council as "pastoral."
Then, in the year immediately following the council, Pope Paul VI (who closed the council and promulgated its 16 documents) said this at a General Audience:
There's that word again: "pastoral."
Yes, and here Pope Paul VI sets "pastoral" in contrast to dogmatic - he said the Council "avoided pronouncing ... dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility."
No dogmatic pronouncements. No exercise of the charism of infallibility. Just 16 documents that very ambiguously re-packaged the teaching of the Church, sometimes doing so with a "novel character," about which we must "make reservations."
So this is how you can say you don't oppose the council.
I can't oppose what hasn't been proposed first. These 16 essays are riddled with obscurities and equivocations, so that's the first problem: someone would have to go through the whole council and formulate, with some precision, exactly what these statements mean and what exactly is being proposed; then the pope would have to make it clear that these things were being defined dogmatically, and that anyone who refused to believe them is a heretic.
But I can't be accused of rejecting something that hasn't even been defined.
Ok, this is a lot of extra information to digest, so let me deal with this first, and then we'll talk about some of the specific problems with Vatican II - I want to see proof of some of these "ambiguities" you keep talking about.
As you like it.
I think it would be inaccurate to say that I "oppose" the council.
But you believe it was a bad thing for the Church, right?
I think the evidence proves that the results of how the Council was implemented are unquestionably bad. The raw data does not lie.
And what raw data is that?
Kenneth Jones wrote a book in 2003 called Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II - and in this little book he pulled together and reported on all the data that describes what's been happening in the Church since the council.
Without going into every single boring statistic, I'll just throw a few major figures out there:
1) The number of priests in the US is down 35% (and steadily declining)
2) The number of new ordinations in the US is down 70%
3) The number of men studying for the priesthood is down 90% (and thus, 60% of the seminaries have closed their doors)
4) The number of nuns went down 60%
5) Catholic Marriages are down 30%
6) Annulments, on the other hand, are up by the unbelievable rate of 14,700%
7) Attendance at Mass is down 50%
8) The number of conversions (adult baptisms) is down 35%
In addition to those grim numbers, consider these facts about the Modern Church: 90% of Catholics think contraception is ok; 53% of Catholics think abortion is ok; 77% of Catholics think not going to Mass on Sunday is ok.
Wow! What's happening to the Catholic Church?
I think it's safe to say that the Church since the council is deteriorating at an incredible rate. In fact, I know it's safe to say this, because I'm only repeating the words of Pope Paul VI himself. In 1968, just three years after the close of the council, he gave a speech at the Lombard Seminary in Rome, and he said:
The Church finds herself in an hour of anxiety, a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what would even better be called self-destruction. It is an interior upheaval, acute and complicated, which nobody expected after the Council. It is almost as if the Church were attacking itself. We looked forward to a flowering, a serene expansion of conceptions which matured in the great sessions of the council ... It is as if the Church were destroying herself. (Pope Paul VI, Address to the Lombard Seminary of Dec. 7, 1968, printed in L'Osservatore Romano, Dec. 19, 1968)
If the pope can say that the Church is in the process of "self-destruction" and "attacking itself," certainly I can echo that same sentiment - and the numbers are there to substantiate that claim.
I can see that.
And Pope Paul VI wasn't the only one who publicly admitted that the council was a failure.
Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was certainly in favor of the council, and was in fact invited to attend the council as a peritus (an "expert" who served as a theological advisor), wrote:
Unless we are blind, we must even state bluntly that what we see looks less like the hoped-for regeneration of Catholicism than its accelerated decomposition. (Louis Bouyer, The decomposition of Catholicism [Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1969], p. 3)
And no less an authority than our current pope, when he was still a Cardinal in 1984, said that the results of the council seemed
... cruelly opposed to the expectations of everyone ... expected was a new Catholic unity and instead we have been exposed to dissension which - to use the words of Pope Paul VI - seems to have gone from self-criticism to self-destruction ... we find ourselves faced with a progressive process of decadence which has developed for the most part precisely under the sign of a calling back to the Council ... The net result therefore seems negative. I am repeating here what I said ten years after the conclusion of the work: it is incontrovertible that this period has definitely been unfavorable for the Catholic Church. (Cardinal Ratzinger in L'Osservatore Romano, Dec. 24, 1984; quoted in Michael Davies, "God Bless Archbishop Lefebvre!", The Angelus, November 1985, Vol. VIII/11)
And remember, Ratzinger, like Bouyer, was at the council as a peritus, and all in favor of the council. So basically everyone who was in a position to know what was going on, from the inside, says the same thing: the council was a disaster.
So what does this mean for you?
It means I'm going to steer clear of the council and anything that resulted from the council (including the New Mass). If the pope himself looks and says, "the Church is in a process of self-demolition," and I see that the undeniable trend in the Modern Church is loss of faith and holiness, then I need to find a safe harbor until this storm is over.
"Storm" is one way to put it. "Crisis" is another way to put it, as our current pope actually did put it some years ago. Listen again to what he says, and how he ties the crisis in precisely with the liturgy:
I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy, which at times is actually being conceived of ... as though in the liturgy it did not matter any more whether God exists and whether He speaks to us and listens to us ... the community is only celebrating itself without its being worthwhile to do so. (quoted in Paul Likoudis, "Cardinal Ratzinger Blames Church Crisis on Liturgical Collapse", The Wanderer, May 8, 1997)
Let's go back to the council, though. You never did explain how it is that you don't "oppose" the council. It sounds to me like you oppose it very much!
Here's the question, though: which teaching of the council, solemnly promulgated and proposed for the assent of faith, do I reject or oppose?
None of them. Because there are none.
That's the trick of this whole deception! It was an Ecumenical (in the sense of "worldwide," not in the sense of "put aside all your religious differences") Council of the Church, and under normal circumstances those councils are infallible. But under normal circumstances, those councils define very clearly some proposition to be believed as a dogma; and then they state the reverse of the dogma and say, "if anyone believes this, he is accursed."
So you see, the other 20 councils of the Church all explicitly taught and defined some dogma, and required it to be accepted as part of the faith. Vatican II simply did not do that.
How can a council come together for three years and not teach anything?
Oh, the council documents have plenty to say - no doubt. But nothing in those documents is explicitly defined, or proposed as a dogma - and it goes without saying that there are no anathemas in there either. So I can't really be accused of being a "Vatican II heretic" if there are no anathemas in the council.
You know what I mean? The Council of Trent said, for example, "if you don't believe that Jesus is substantially present in the Eucharist, you're a heretic" (I'm paraphrasing, of course); but Vatican II never once says, "if you don't believe that the Muslims worship the same God as we do, you're a heretic," or, "if you don't believe that holding ecumenical services with Protestants is right, you're a heretic."
The council defined nothing, and it anathematized nothing.
So what did it do, then? It must have done something, if it caused all this trouble.
Yes, it did. It promulgated 16 documents - which, I think it was Michael Davies who cynically referred to them as "sixteen essays" - that wax quite poetic on a number of subjects. The problem is that the documents are so ambiguous and imprecise that you walk away doing one of two things: either you're scratching your head and thinking, "huh?", or you're walking away with a vaguely warm and comfortably fuzzy feeling about religion - which probably means you weren't reading it carefully.
You said earlier that the New Mass' biggest problem was that it's ambiguous - now you're saying that Vatican II was ambiguous as well?
What, are you beginning to sense a theme?
Pope St. Pius X wrote an encyclical against Modernism in 1907 called Pascendi Dominici Gregis, and he said in this encyclical - and I'm really paraphrasing here - that the fastest way to unmask a modernist is to get his opinion on the scholasticism championed by St. Thomas Aquinas.
Modernists hate scholasticism. St. Pius X said - no paraphrasing this time - that Modernists "show ... contempt for scholasticism," that they "recognise that the three chief difficulties for them are scholastic philosophy, the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium of the Church," that they "have only ridicule and contempt" for scholastic philosophy and theology, and finally, that "the passion for novelty is always united in [Modernists] with hatred of scholasticism." (Pascendi, 41-42)
Then he says what I alluded to a moment ago:
... there is no surer sign that a man is on the way to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for this system [of scholasticism]. (Pascendi, 42)
Why the Modernist hatred for scholasticism? This gets to your question about ambiguity. Scholasticism is precise. It doesn't leave big question marks or room for a thousand varying interpretations. Modernism literally thrives and feeds on ambiguity.
Again, St. Pius X put it best, when he condemned the Modernists in France:
[Our Apostolic Mandate] requires ... that We protect the faithful from evil and error; especially so when evil and error are presented in dynamic language which, concealing vague notions and ambiguous expressions with emotional and high-sounding words, is likely to set ablaze the hearts of men in the pursuit of ideals which, whilst attractive, are none the less nefarious ... such are even today the theories of the Sillon which ... are all too often wanting in clarity, logic and truth. (Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique, 1)
You don't have to read too far into the Vatican II documents before you find precisely this "dynamic language" which conceals "vague notions and ambiguous expressions with ... high-sounding words," but which most definitely lacks "clarity [and] logic."
So the council was Modernist?
It certainly appears that way from the outside. Probably a more accurate way to say it is this: there was a large faction in the council made up of Modernist bishops and/or bishops who were too trusting of their Modernist periti, to whom they turned for answers. The result is that these 16 documents are loaded with ambiguous phrases which may at first glance look Catholic, but on second glance could actually support a liberal interpretation. The reverse is also true: some phrases look blatantly liberal at first pass, but the more you look, you realize you could understand it in a Catholic way.
And that was entirely on purpose.
Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx was yet another liberal peritus at the council, and he once said something that revealed both the purpose of the ambiguities, as well as the critical role played by the periti:
We have used ambiguous phrases during the Council and we know how we will interpret them afterwards. (quoted in Archbishop Lefebvre, An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, online source)
So the liberals at the council snuck a few things into the documents in an underhanded way? You're saying they fooled everyone?
Some were probably fooled by the ambiguities, thinking, "that sounds strange, but I guess it could be interpreted in a Catholic sense"; some were not fooled, but they were in the minority and were simply out-voted.
So much for your idea of the infallible ecumenical council then!
Whoa, there. Who said anything about the council teaching positive error?
Well, come on - all these ambiguities being sneaked in under the cover of deceit ... I thought the Holy Spirit protected the Church from stuff like that.
The Holy Spirit did protect the Church from Vatican II. With all of those liberals at the council, how on earth do you think the council managed to run its course without once promulgating as dogma some heresy?
The Holy Spirit showed His protection for the Church in this case in a very unforeseen manner: by ensuring that the council would not be a dogmatic council at all.
What's that mean? How can a council be anything but dogmatic?
Well, this is definitely a first, that's for sure. With the previous 20 councils it was assumed that they were being held for the purposes of defining dogma. That's what a council is for. But there really was no purpose for Vatican II.
Cardinal Pellavicini once expressed a very wise sentiment when he said, "To convoke a General Council except when absolutely demanded by necessity is to tempt God." (quoted in New Jersey Catholic News, Summer 1984, p.1)
So this council was entirely different from the rest. It was called at a time when the Church was doing well, when conversions were up, vocations were on the rise, etc. There was no pressing need, and the one dominant heresy of the age (Communism) wasn't even condemned at the council!
Anyway, we were talking about how a council can be non-dogmatic, and I guess I'm saying that it's a strange contradiction - because "council" is synonymous with "dogmatic" in a lot of ways.
Then why are you saying it wasn't dogmatic?
Because that's what the pope and council fathers said. Once again, I'm not inventing things here, I'm just repeating what the ecclesiastical authorities have said.
Cardinal Felici said at the council:
We have to distinguish according to the schemas and the chapters [of the council documents] those which have already been the subject of dogmatic definitions in the past; as for the declarations which have a novel character, we have to make reservations. (quoted in Archbishop Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics, online source)
"We have to make reservations"?
What else are you going to do? Some of these teachings had a "novel character" about them, but since they were not dogmatically defined ... what are the faithful supposed to do?
Why do you keep saying that these teachings were not dogmatically defined?
Because that's what the popes said who ran the council. John XXIII opened the council and said this at his opening speech:
The Church has always opposed ... errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations ... The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character. (John XXIII, Opening Speech at the Council, Oct. 11, 1962)
According to Pope John, the council had no intention of condemning anything, but only of "demonstrating the validity" of the Church's teaching by revising "the way in which it is presented." So he labeled the council as "pastoral."
Then, in the year immediately following the council, Pope Paul VI (who closed the council and promulgated its 16 documents) said this at a General Audience:
There are those who ask what authority ... the Council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions engaging the infallibility of the ecclesiastical Magisterium ... given the Council’s pastoral character, it avoided pronouncing, in an extraordinary manner, dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility. (Pope Paul VI, General Audience, Jan. 12, 1966)
There's that word again: "pastoral."
Yes, and here Pope Paul VI sets "pastoral" in contrast to dogmatic - he said the Council "avoided pronouncing ... dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility."
No dogmatic pronouncements. No exercise of the charism of infallibility. Just 16 documents that very ambiguously re-packaged the teaching of the Church, sometimes doing so with a "novel character," about which we must "make reservations."
So this is how you can say you don't oppose the council.
I can't oppose what hasn't been proposed first. These 16 essays are riddled with obscurities and equivocations, so that's the first problem: someone would have to go through the whole council and formulate, with some precision, exactly what these statements mean and what exactly is being proposed; then the pope would have to make it clear that these things were being defined dogmatically, and that anyone who refused to believe them is a heretic.
But I can't be accused of rejecting something that hasn't even been defined.
Ok, this is a lot of extra information to digest, so let me deal with this first, and then we'll talk about some of the specific problems with Vatican II - I want to see proof of some of these "ambiguities" you keep talking about.
As you like it.
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