Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, said this of Vatican II:
"The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest."
Those who have treated the council as a "sort of superdogma which takes away the importance" of all that went before it are wrong. As Ratzinger said, this council defined no new dogma. To go against Church teaching in the name of the so-called "Spirit of Vatican II" is just a means of political double speak designed to superimpose one's own agenda onto the Church.
The crux of the problem is stated sucinctly by Brian Mershon who quotes Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb. in an interview. [Thanks to Recta Ratio for the link.]
"The majority of the Second Vatican Council fathers and the Popes never saw the council as discontinuous and as a rupture with the past. What happened, however, is there was a para-council of periti, of experts, who all dominated through the whole matrix of media representation of what was going on at the council. Because of that, there were horrible distortions in the popular imagination, including the clerical imagination, including the priests."
This "para-council" has done so much damage to so many people's faith and continues to do so. If left to themselves, they would gladly wipe away 2000 years of Church tradition to serve their own tastes and practices. They seem blind to the fact that this has already been done by others.
Henry VIII comes to mind...
2 comments:
My HS theology teacher used to tell us not to hate Vatican II, that it did have some positive things to say, and you could see the pain in his eyes every time we talked about the Latin mass, the high altar, gregorian chant, etc. It killed him to see what had come of it, and as a theologian, he knew that the 70's were a liturgical non-sequiter. I agree with your sympathies.
MK--what a unique (to me) prespective! I never really thought of liberalism or liturgical revisionism as fundamenalism. You are right though--fundmentalism turns a vibrant faith into a fringe movement, no matter what "side" it is on. Most often, no matter what it might seem at first glance, the Church falls somewhere in the middle of whatever the "issue du jour" happens to be.
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