Fr. Scanlon (like Mueller) complains about the “bad” Catholics on the right and left, and indeed, sites some very legitimate concerns advanced by the liberal wing of the Church; to wit: birth control, abortion, gay agenda, female priesthood. But notice his complaints about the “dissenters” on the right. The only issue he raises is the SSPX support of the the Latin Mass––as though there’s no one on the “right” but the SSPX, and that’s the only issue. He could have mentioned religious liberty or ecumenism, but he feared doing so, because, it was the Council who abandoned Church teachings in those cases, and the those catholics who are determined to continue to follow the true, Dogmatic teachings of the Church.
It seems to me that the modernists of our Church who have bought into the new Theology of the Second vatican Council, are hearing the footsteps of dissent from both the right and the left and they’re very concerned. They see the Church fracturing before their very eyes. I suspect Benedict may have sensed this and decided he couldn’t handle it, since it was at least, in part, of his own making. I further suspect that the book “Rediscovering Catholicism” distributed in most Catholic Churches around the country in the last few weeks is a tacit acknowledgment of this concern and they’re hoping that it will work like Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life worked for his organization. I don’t think so.
Personally, I think it’s too late for any of that. If the bishops stay the course, the modern Catholic Church will continue to splinter into as many versions of left-driven philosophies one can imagine. The fragmented points of view voiced the bishops of the USCCB make this point clear. But even if by some incredible miracle a great number of the bishops were to somehow return to the teachings of pre-Conciliar Church, it would still be meaningless at this late date. I sense that the split would still happen as the left has tasted the blood of Satan and they like it. And since they have the atheistic, media leading the charge for most of the same agenda being pushed by the bishops today, they will not be denied.
There was no “precouncilar Church,” at least what you seem to have thought it was. The American Church was very different from the Church in Europe, who was the survivor of the explosion that took play in the 16th Century. The Latin mass that I knew growing up was heavily shaped by baroque arts forms, and while it was a thing of great beauty and in so many ways superior to what we have now, it was a Church of the Clergy, with everyone else left out. With the Council, that all became yesterday. Pius X had known when he institute HIS reforms,opposing Modernism because is was an yet another example of what happens when then the junior clergy act as if they had this gnosis that makes THEM the Church. One reason why he opened communion to all;. Then we have the reaction, led by laymen like Maritain et al, which then made neo-thomism the alternative, and which Pius XI and Pius XI used as a means of somehow integrating the Church into modern life without accepts its very different notions, but it was hardened into simply a part of the clericalclergy. Then came the council and we get again, modernist clerics leading us into the bushes. The furor over Humanae Vitae, more significant than the Council, more so than any event all the way back to Trent, or maybe to the Reformation. That’s what we have got to take a close look at: what THAT was all about. IMHO, it was that moment when the Good Lord intervened and said STOP, and we see the purpose of the papacy, which is to keep us from going over the cliff. This encyclical is more important than any of the documents of the Council.