Posted on 02/11/2011 11:06:52 AM PST by verdugo
I think Vatican II helped weaken church standards and discipline and thus helped laid the groundwork for the homosexual pedophile priest scandal.
I don’t think I agree.
There have been extremely important Councils of the Church, and there have been obscure or ineffective Councils of the Church. But none of them teach heresy.
My own take on Vatican II is that God kept them from teaching anything heretical, as I’m afraid some of the participants hoped and intended. But it was not the kind of major, transformational council that they had hoped for. Not a Council that changed the course of history, such as the Council of Jerusalem, the Council of Nicea, or the Council of Trent.
Important as it has seemed to many in the Church in our day, whether positive or negative, I think it will recede into history as one of those forgotten Councils. It did not teach teach heresy, but it did not teach anything terribly useful, either.
“Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolates Vatican II and which provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it, which give the impression that from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II. […] 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.” (Address to the Chilean Episcopal Conference, Il Sabato 1988)
Another translation of same Address:
“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.”
No council is, in every jot and tittle of its proceedings, infallible.
Straw man.
The issue is not infallibility of a council.
The destructive stuff came after the council. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy.
Of course, actually to analyze both the Council and its aftermath, one would have to do real historical analysis.
And that would take effort.
Nicea was followed by 50 years of chaos. If you had lived in 370 (the same timepoint after Nicea as we are today after Vatican II), you’d have said, the council was disastrous.
But it wasn’t. The aftermath was disastrous, for a time.
What is infallible is not a council but the Church of Jesus Christ whose fullness subsists in the Catholic Church in communion with the bishop of Rome. It is indefectible, even if many bishops and lots of professors and laymen defect. For a time things may seem awful, as they have for a few decades. But already in 1985 with the Ratzinger Report the signs of a reversal of the destruction were at hand.
Be careful, because you can defect from the Church of Christ just as easily from the “Right” as from the “Left.”
Denouncing the entire 2nd Vatican Council as destructive is foolish. If you aren’t careful, you may end up defecting.
So back off, take a deep breath, and, out of love and loyalty for Christ’s Church and her earthly vicars since Vatican II (all of which, to the present, were shaped and formed before the council, with the present Holy Father giving powerful means of upholding continuity with 2000 years of Catholic life), stop shouting that the Council was bad and begin distinguishing between bad fruits of those who dishonestly claimed the Council on their behalf, on the one hand, and the actual fruits, good, worse, better, best that have come from the Council.
Jesus did not want disciples who lack discernment. It’s time to start discerning instead of sweepingly dismissing.
No council is, in every jot and tittle of its proceedings, infallible.
Straw man.
The issue is not infallibility of a council.
The destructive stuff came after the council. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy.
Of course, actually to analyze both the Council and its aftermath, one would have to do real historical analysis.
And that would take effort.
Nicea was followed by 50 years of chaos. If you had lived in 370 (the same timepoint after Nicea as we are today after Vatican II), you’d have said, the council was disastrous.
But it wasn’t. The aftermath was disastrous, for a time.
What is infallible is not a council but the Church of Jesus Christ whose fullness subsists in the Catholic Church in communion with the bishop of Rome. It is indefectible, even if many bishops and lots of professors and laymen defect. For a time things may seem awful, as they have for a few decades. But already in 1985 with the Ratzinger Report the signs of a reversal of the destruction were at hand.
Be careful, because you can defect from the Church of Christ just as easily from the “Right” as from the “Left.”
Denouncing the entire 2nd Vatican Council as destructive is foolish. If you aren’t careful, you may end up defecting.
So back off, take a deep breath, and, out of love and loyalty for Christ’s Church and her earthly vicars since Vatican II (all of which, to the present, were shaped and formed before the council, with the present Holy Father giving powerful means of upholding continuity with 2000 years of Catholic life), stop shouting that the Council was bad and begin distinguishing between bad fruits of those who dishonestly claimed the Council on their behalf, on the one hand, and the actual fruits, good, worse, better, best that have come from the Council.
Jesus did not want disciples who lack discernment. It’s time to start discerning instead of sweepingly dismissing.
re:I don’t think I agree
I don’t know what you disagree with since I agree with everything that you wrote thereafter. Please explain what you don’t agree with.
re:No council is, in every jot and tittle of its proceedings, infallible.
No one ever said that all councils are infallible “in every jot and tittle of its proceedings”,therefore the strawman is your comment.
Vatican II was not a dogmatic council, and did not declare any new dogmas. That’s the simple of it.
The US seminaries at the time of Vatican II time were half-full or more of homosexuals, and previous classes had yielded their share of homosexual priests which had replaced the aging Irish and Belgian priests sent over in the 1920`s. The diocesan stats for 1950-70`s show that trend of priests being transferred around, wheras from 1840-1950, almost 100% of priests usually retired or died in the first parish they were assigned to, or they retired to their home countries in their 90`s.
I did research on this when I found out that several priests were known to be predators and were merely transferred to other parishes in the late 1950`s and early 1960`s when I was doing community liason work for the local bishop as a college project and had access to the Chancery records and archives.
Upon the quickest of glances seems to be a ‘traditionalist’ site. Dont have time now but usually these kind of sites are two or three steps removed from sedevacantism and the faith.
Well, maybe you have more info than I do. I just don’t recall reading or hearing about thousands of depraved priests slipping into the priesthood prior to Vatican II. I think in the 1960s, you had a perfect storm attack the Church—First the Vatican II conference which lowered standards, then the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the finally the rise of left wing Marxist Theology which infected the Church at about the same time. All of these came together to form a perfect storm which I think allowed so many depraved individuals to slip into the priesthood.
All mythologies are fallible.
In all honesty, the problems weren’t, at least here, so much with the council, although there are some vagaries and questions. The problems lay with the “spirit of Vatican II” innovations subsequently thrust upon people. While I’m not entirely happy with some of that which came from Vatican II directly, there’s a lot of good there, too. Here, it was seized upon as a moment for change of another sort, in a number of ways. That was, and still is, a tragedy. But not insurmountable.
No, the aritcle fallaciously used the term infallible. Applying it to councils without further clarification is straw man and you did it.
Moreover, your article concluded by quoting Paul VI on the smoke of Satan:
“the tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.” (Address on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Fatima Apparitions, October 13, 1977)”
Then YOU went on to write: “But is that not what the Council was intended to do!”
This implies that Paul VI’s smoke of Satan statment said that the Council brought the smoke of Satan about. Paul VI did not attribute the smoke of Satan to the council but to what happened afterward.
Then you went on to your final claim:
“So we see that Vatican II was admitted to have been a disaster of immense proportions, initiating a process of destruction of the Church, even according to Paul VI who promulgated it – which of course begs the question of whether Archbishop Lefebvre was justly and prudently excommunicated.”
You blame the council for all that happened. You went far beyond merely saying it was not dogmatic. You say it “initiated a process of destruction.”
That’s classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Put your energies to work examining what happened after the council, distinguishing between good and bad, worse and best. To refuse to do that is to cease to be Catholic and become a “baby-with-the-bathwater” Protestant, which is the source of a lot of tragedy in human history.
The Roman Catholic Church capitulated to the Revolution of 1789 at the Second Vatican Council
For later consideration.
God and the Lord Jesus Christ is not ONLY with the Catholics - but most importantly - God and our Savior Christ Jesus IS with all GRACE believers IN CHRIST as Christ is thee Head of the Church (Colossians 1:18). All GRACE believers who received IN CHRIST truth are real Saints as declared by God in His Word (Jesus Christ). See and read all the Pauline epistles, as Paul clearly calls ALL All GRACE believers SAINTS.
I didn’t write any of those quotes, they are part of the article.
This is a Catholic Caucus, for Catholics only.
You posted it under your name. How about giving the name of the author, next time??
Nor did you in any way distance yourself from the article’s contents. The link goes to an anonymous article. Now you respond to criticism by saying you don’t agree with the article.
Why then did you post it if you did not agree with it.
It’s a disingenous, misleading, false article.
You posted it. Without disclaimer.
Stop weaseling.
Sheesh.
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