George Weigel’s new book To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022) is a tour de force in its study of the hermeneutics—that is, the manner of interpretation—of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
Weigel knows that the Church is at a crossroads, between two forks in the road: the liberal/progressive and conservative/neo-traditionalist. There is a conflict of interpretations here that had an effect within the Council itself and its ongoing reception in the last sixty years. And, in many ways, this conflict has been exacerbated by the pontificate of Francis, as I have argued at length in my book, Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II (Lectio, 2019; 2nd edition). Since there is no mention of Pope Francis in Weigel’s book, evidently his writings, unlike the authoritative writings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are not taken as a subordinate criteria or hermeneutical key contributing to the deepening of our understanding and implementation of the vision of Vatican II and its documents.
The necessity of the Council
Weigel does three things that mark his book as a watershed study of the hermeneutics of Vatican II. One, he explains the necessity of the Second Vatican Council. “Pope John XXIII announced his intention to summon the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican . . . to address the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ amid the civilizational crisis of a modernity that had cut itself loose from some of its deeper cultural roots.” What is the nature of the crisis to which Weigel refers?
This was fundamentally a challenge, Weigel argues, “in the order of ideas and culture.” In particular, there was the rejection of the worldview of biblical Christianity, the nature of man, his origin and destiny, and this rejection had serious historical consequences. Gradually, immanentism dominated the culture—the world is self-sufficient, autonomous, denying the essential dependence of the world on God. But: “When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself grows unintelligible” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 36). Human nature has now been rendered unintelligible—hence, for example, transgenderism.
Furthermore, there is the decline of the ecclesiastically unified culture—the Old Christendom. Secularization contributed to this decline with the result that cultural life, political and economic life, now broke loose from the Church’s unifying grasp. Over time, science, art, ethics, and the faith of the individual followed suit.
In reaction to this decline, the Church sometimes slipped into the mode of a citadel or fortress mentality. Therefore, says Weigel, “the Church itself needed renewal and reform.” Over time, the Church, Weigel adds, “With Leo XIII, [opened] a new Catholic era: an era in which the Church would engage modernity in an effort to convert it—and perhaps, thereby, help the modern world realize some of its aspirations to freedom, justice, solidarity, and prosperity.” In sum, this new Catholic era called for a renewal of the Catholic mind, that is, a renewal refining “the intellectual tools needed to offer the world a new Christian and indeed Christocentric humanism in response to the defective ideas of the human person.” What was required was a New Christendom: the sanctified laity in the transformation of the full spectrum of the culture, indeed, of the fallen world through the redemptive work of Christ. Explains Weigel, “[T]he Church [is called] to proclaim the Gospel, convert the world to Christ, and sanctify the human condition.” He adds, “The Christocentric Church must always be an evangelical Church, a Church permanently in mission.” (Hence, the title of Weigel’s book.)
The Second Vatican Council focused not only on the dynamics of the hermeneutics of reform and renewal in the life of the Church but also on the development in her understanding of the truth. “[T]he Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes. … For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. … For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.” (Dei Verbum, no. 8)
Accordingly, Vatican II’s hermeneutics are, arguably, a form of retrieval theology, or ressourcement, meaning thereby a style of theological discernment and argument looking back to the authoritative sources of faith, Scripture, and tradition, in order to move faithfully forward. Moving faithfully forward involves “aggiornamento,” the meaning of which is best captured in Vatican II’s claim: “We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often-dramatic characteristics.” Significantly, as the late French Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullman rightly stressed, “aggiornamento should be a consequence, not a starting point,” of renewal, of ressourcement. Indeed, he adds, aggiornamento should not be understood as an “isolated motive for renewal.” Therefore, in the interplay between ressourcement and aggiornamento, the former has normative priority.
Weigel makes clear that St. John XXIII’s original intention for calling Vatican II was Vincentian in inspiration. This refers to the fifth-century theologian St. Vincent of Lérins’ account of doctrinal development in the Commonitorium. Regarding the enduring importance of Vincent’s thought at Vatican II, it is important to note that he influenced St. John XXIII in the opening address to Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia. St. John argues, like Vincent, that the Church must “transmit whole and entire and without distortion Catholic doctrine.” He adds: “As all sincere promoters of Christian, Catholic, and apostolic faith strongly desire, what is needed is that this doctrine be more fully and more profoundly known and that minds be more fully imbued and formed by it” (emphasis added).
Importantly, in this connection, John XXIII depends on Vincent, as well as the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), by implicitly distinguishing between propositional truths of faith and their linguistic and conceptual formulations in reflecting on the sense in which a doctrine, already confirmed and defined, is more fully known and deeply understood. Weigel cites John XXIII:
For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our venerable doctrine, are one thing; the fashion in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], is another thing.
The subordinate clause, which I have cited in its Latin original, is part of a larger passage from Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution on Faith and Reason, Dei Filius (1869-70), which is earlier invoked by Pius IX in the bull of 1854, Ineffabilis Deus (and also cited by Leo XIII in his 1899 Encyclical, Testem benevolentiae Nostrae). And this formula in Dei Filius is itself taken from the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lérins, as I cited above:
Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only within the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment” [in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu eademque sententia].
The Vincentian project is not at all about changing the truths of the Catholic faith, but rather about communicating those truths “in a vocabulary that the people of the late twentieth century could hear and engage.” Weigel concludes, then, about John XXIII’s original intention:
What was needed was a fresh presentation of the truths of the Catholic faith, fashioned so that those truths could be grasped as lifelines: as answers to the great questions of contemporary human life; as demonstrations that human beings were not merely congealed stardust and that humanity’s destiny was not oblivion.
The master key to interpreting the conciliar documents
Secondly, what marks Weigel’s book as a watershed study of Vatican II is that he identities the master key to the interpretation of the sixteen documents of Vatican II that was forged by the bishops of the Extraordinary Synod of 1985, on the twentieth anniversary of the close of Vatican II. John Paul II convened an extraordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops with the aim of encouraging a deeper reception and implementation of the Council. The Synod set forth in the document, A Message to the People of God and The Final Report, a proper framework, that is, six hermeneutical principles, for soundly interpreting the conciliar texts: the four constitutions, nine declarations, and three decrees are interpreted in light of the master key.
I have elsewhere discussed the various types of Vatican II interpretations (see my book Revelation, History, and Truth: A Hermeneutics of Dogma.) Here, I will briefly explain the principles, what Weigel calls the master key, for interpreting Vatican II texts:
- The theological interpretation of the conciliar doctrine must show attention to all the documents, in themselves and in their close inter-relationship, in such a way that the integral meaning of the Council’s affirmations – often very complex – might be understood and expressed.
- The four “constitutions” of the Council (those on liturgy, the Church, revelation, and the Church in the modern world) are the hermeneutical key to the other documents – namely, the Council’s nine decrees and three declarations.
- The pastoral import of the documents ought not to be separated from, or set in opposition to, their doctrinal content.
- No opposition may be made between the spirit and the letter of Vatican II.
- The Council must be interpreted in continuity with the great tradition of the Church, including earlier councils. The Church is one and the same throughout all the councils.
- Vatican II should be accepted as illuminating the problems of our own day.
Weigel correctly argues that all would-be interpreters of Vatican II, who make claims about what the Council actually teaches, should adhere to these principles. These hermeneutical principles are important, particularly in our time, since we are living in an ecclesial culture where there is not only a conflict of interpretations of the Council, but also amnesia about the Extraordinary Synod’s master key as well as the authoritative writings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI about the interpretation of Vatican II.
The hermeneutical norm of the first and second principles is twofold: one, intratextuality, meaning thereby interpreting the meaning of a particular passage within the context of the whole document; and two, intertextuality, meaning thereby interpreting any specific document in the context of the whole body of documents, particularly attending to the authoritative priority of the constitutions. In short, an integral understanding of the council texts is required.
The third principle states the unity and interdependence of the doctrinal and pastoral dimensions of the council documents. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses this principle:
There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith” (no. 89).
This third principle is particularly important today where some Catholic theologians, such as French theologian, Christoph Theobald, S.J., advances a so-called “pastoral orientation of doctrine.” That orientation is historicist in perspective. It collapses the dogmatic distinction of unchanging truth and its formulations into a historical context, meaning thereby, as Theobald puts it, “subject to continual reinterpretation according to the situation of those to whom it is transmitted.” Thus, rather than the unity and interdependence, some interpreters of Vatican II have wrongly made, as Aidan Nichols, OP, rightly notes, “the superordinate criterion in judging the conciliar texts the ‘signs of the time’.”
By contrast, the documents of Vatican II are interpreted in another way, which I will call Neo-Traditionalism. The Neo-Traditionalists are anti-Modernists to the degree that they do not acknowledge that theological Modernism had actually identified a real problem in upholding the permanence of meaning and truth. Therefore, the Neo-Traditionalists absolutize continuity of dogmatic truth without displaying any appreciation for the historical nature of those truths’ human expression. As the late Jaroslav Pelikan once wrote: “Tradition without history has homogenized all the stages of development into one statically defined truth.”
The fourth principle pertains to the relationship between the “spirit” of Vatican II and its “texts,” that is, the “letter.” On a predominant—but incorrect—view of this relationship, the “spirit” of the Council pertains, according to the liberal view, to the deep motivating forces of the council, its reforming energy, the conciliar consciousness of the Church where the content of Christianity is always up for discussion in light of the “signs of the time.” Weigel cites Benedict XVI on this matter. “‘A council was not a ‘constituent assembly’ called to write a new constitution. No council ever has such a mandate, and Vatican II certainly didn’t, ‘because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and . . . be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.’”
This predominant view runs the risk of undermining the normative status and authority of the Council’s final texts. Contrary to this view, the true spirit of the Council is, according to Weigel, “[T]he Church [is called] to proclaim the Gospel, convert the world to Christ, and sanctify the human condition.” Thus, the unity between the “letter” and the “spirit” must be understood in light of the hermeneutical circle. In the words of Walter Cardinal Kasper, “Every individual statement can ultimately only be understood in the light of the whole, just as, conversely, the spirit of the whole only emerges from a conscientious interpretation of individual texts.” So, we can’t play off the “spirit of the council against its actual texts.” He adds,
The spirit of the whole, and hence the meaning of an individual text, can only be discovered by pursuing the textual history in detail, and from this extracting the council’s intention. And this intention was the renewal of the whole tradition, and that means the renewal, for our time, of the whole of what is Catholic. . . . Vatican II itself belongs within the tradition of all previous councils, and it is this tradition which it wished to renew. The council must therefore be interpreted in the context of that tradition.
This assertion brings us to the fifth principle of the master key: all the Vatican II texts must be seen in the light of the standpoint of Tradition as a whole. This is the superordinate criterion in interpreting and assessing these texts. Finally, the sixth principle is that Vatican II illuminates contemporary problems.
According to Weigel, the subordinate criteria in interpreting the texts of Vatican II is the authoritative writings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Benedict’s reference to the hermeneutic of reform and renewal in the continuity of the Church takes seriously “John XXIII’s original intention for Vatican II.” Weigel rightly notes that both men “gratefully accepted as a living heritage the abiding and constituting truths that Christ had given the Church. [They] sought to find a ‘new and vital relationships’ to those truths in a synthesis of fidelity and dynamism that would help resolve the ‘great dispute’ about the human person that ‘marks the modern epoch’.”
Instructive interpretation of other texts
Thirdly, Weigel gives us an instructive interpretation of the constitutions, declarations, and decrees of Vatican II in light of the master key and the authoritative writings, both pre-papal and papal, of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.
He argues that this interpretation “requires another kind of exercise in ressourcement: a ‘return to the sources’ of Vatican II, to Pope John XXIII’s statement of purpose [original intention] for the Council, and to the Council’s principal documents.” Finally, this retrieval, ressourcement, calling for the necessary renewal and revitalization of the Church and its evangelical mission, its vital legacy, stands on the first principle formulated by Benedict: “The Church, both before and after Vatican II, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, journeying on through time.”
In concluding, Weigel brings us back to the conflict of interpretations between the progressives and neo-traditionalists. They do not grasp the Vincentian inspiration of Vatican II, and hence John XXIII’s original intention. Therefore, they remain mired in the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, “understanding neither the Church nor the Council.”
I heartily recommend Weigel’s book for helping us through the quagmire of contemporary debates about the meaning of the Second Vatican Council.
To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II
By George Weigel
Basic Books, 2022
Hardcover, 353 pages
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We read from Weigel: “Pope John XXIII announced his intention to summon the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican . . . to address the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ amid the civilizational crisis of a modernity that had cut itself loose from some of its deeper cultural roots.”
Without detracting an iota from either Weigel or Echeverria, the situation today is both this crisis of modernity, and a crisis of pre-modernity…Echeverria writes that “[g]radually, immanentism dominated the culture—the world is self-sufficient, autonomous, denying the essential dependence of the world on God.”
It is precisely on this point of autonomy that resurgent and believing Islam regards the West (and even autonomous laws of nature) as an apostasy against the one autonomy of Allah. Not much room there for distinguishing inborn and universal natural law, nor a distinction of Church (Mosque) and State, nor for legitimately deepened human understanding (St. Vincent of Lerins, Newman) of inviolate and eternal divine truths.
Islam was influenced partly by early Christian heresies (Nestorianism, Monophysitism) and by Mohammad’s added revulsion toward pagan triads (read now the self-disclosing Triune God). So how is the missionary Church to address simultaneously our atheistic post-modern anti-civilization plus the premodern and pre-Christian (not chronologically) beliefs of Islam’s 1.5 billion adherents—Muslims who believe in a totally inscrutable, fatalistic, and even arbitrary (not Incarnational) God?
As in our own time, in the early Reformation both the Emperor and the Pope were partly distracted by the advance of Islam into eastern Europe, and paid attention too late to an obscure Augustinian monk who, initially, only had a problem with Tetzel’s marketing style for indulgences.
Today is déjà vu all over again. A 21st-century/post-modern, synodal plebiscite on the one hand and, on the other, superficial dialogue with an eclectic natural religion pushed forward from 7th-century Arabia. So, agreeing with Weigel and Echeverria—the timing/basic thrust of the real Second Vatican Council was prescient for multiple reasons.
Weigel’s hunt-for-the-snark of Vatican II in yet another massive tome of 353 pages, purportedly proffering 6 self-anointed “master key” interpretative principles, is a mountain that produces a mouse.
In actual fact what Vatican II itself produced was a series of 16 separate documents that contained no official or authoritative “master key” of connection or interpretation whatsoever. In the 60 years since their emergence, which span no fewer than five radically different pontificates, widely divergent and often wildly conflicting interpretations of their many deliberate ambiguities, inconsistencies, and novelties have emerged and continue to propagate. The objectively verifiable results of these interpretations have been catastrophic, whether doctrinally, morally, or pastorally, and are dutifully chronicled on a daily basis by this publication among many others, both inside and outside the Catholic world.
The time has come, and is already overdue, to leave Vatican II behind with the rest of the 1960’s and 1970’s and recognize it as what the popes who summoned and continued it explicitly defined it to be: the unique pastoral ecumenical council among the Church’s 21 ecumenical councils.
The world of today is not the world of 1962 that Vatican II addressed, as those of us who have lived in both worlds can testify. It is incontrovertible, and today increasingly recognized explicitly, that the time-bound “aggiornamento” of Vatican II has failed to meet any of the expectations and the goals set for it. If Vatican II be thought to have been a noble experiment, let it at least be recognized and accepted now as a failed experiment whose time has passed.
Yours truly would have to agree with Paul up to a point. The warp and woof of the Documents is finely woven and not easily apparent to non-scholars like myself. But, the Documents are not an incoherent stamp collection, although the handiwork of countless committees and interventions, and 2,500 bishops, accumulated over three years. A bit Baroque, perhaps.
Three Examples from this beady-eyed non-theologian:
FIRST, take, for example, Dignitatis Humanae, which is easily misunderstood to give license to personal conscience when the key wording (a few words!) is actually “freedom from coercion” by governments or other social groups. (The term “freedom of conscience” does not even appear.) Then, for example, it’s elsewhere in one of the four higher-level Constitutions (Gaudium et Spes) that we find this buried “key”:
“Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force [!] of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal” (n. 79).
SECOND, and similarly, in anticipation today’s very alloyed “synodal” stamp collection, we find this in the Constitution on Revelation (n. 4):
“The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation [!] before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13).” Not much margin there for the novelties of Bishop Bats-sing and his lyric that he wants to be Catholic “but in a different way.”
THIRD, and probably central the Council’s foundation in ressourcement (return to Church Fathers and Scripture) is this master key Gaudium et Spes—refuting the insinuation that the Deposit of Faith is just a set of ideas (Emmanuel Kant and his cerebral offspring), not more, and now ripe to be replaced by one fashionable “paradigm shift” or another: “Christ the Lord, Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery if the Father and His love, fully reveals [!] man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (n. 22). Real self-understanding.
So, yes, the “keys” are too-much massaged into obscurity, as nuanced corrections to this and that possible misunderstanding, and even to a few brief probes of Teilhardian whimsy and subversion. Easily exploited in following years, and Paul and I and others fully agree.
Indeed, Paul. If there is something in the often prolix pronouncements of VII which might useful in the present situation, then by all means avail ourselves. But it is beyond foolish to continue tilting at windmills and pretending that the Council is the North Star of all Church policies and direction, the Greatest Thing Ever, as George Weigel and a number of other regular writers here at CWR continue to insist. That they continue to do so is more than mystifying.
Mercy sakes! My brain is reeling over all these Big Words! As a convert to Catholicism (2004) from Evangelical Protestantism (my Baptist church pastors included Harold Christenson, husband of Evelyn Christenson, my youth group buddy was John Ortberg, and regular speakers at our church included Dr. Bill Bright–Evangelical Protestants will recognize and say a PTL for each of these names!), I can understand why Evangelical Protestantism is so appealing to so many Americans. All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart, then your sins are forgiven and you’re on your way to heaven! No “big words” like synodality, immanentism, ressourcement, aggiornamento, etc., and no need to scrutinize 2000 years of world history and call together hundreds of bishops, archbishops, and cardinals! Just read the Bible and pray and try to find a church home that has a Spirit-filled worship leader! It’s all good as long as you’ve said and believe The Sinner’s Prayer. I love George Weigel’s books and I pray for the Catholic Church to find their way through all the conflicts–but I also think that in the U.S., at least, while we Catholics are waiting for our Church leaders to study, discuss, and make decisions about these esoteric-sounding issues, thousands of our fellow Catholics are quietly exiting the Church and walking into Evangelical Protestant churches where they can spend a half hour enjoying praise and worship music (consisting of a few simple phrases from the Bible repeated dozens of times with a dynamic rock band accompaniment–and yet, the Rosary is considered “vain repetitions”) and another half hour listening to a well-trained professional speaker/pastor challenging them to “read the Bible, pray, and trust in the Lord Jesus! Can I get an Amen?!” I’m not suggesting that the Catholic Church needs to abandon their discussions about important issues, but…in the meantime, at the local level in the U.S. (and perhaps other countries as well), the neighborhood parishes, which include me and other non-intellectual laypeople, need to continue to evangelize in a way using words and methods that resonate with regular people who consider watching televised sports (Go Ravens!) and listening to Taylor Swift (and are willing to spend $1500 on a ticket to her next concert) great ways to spend their free time.
This is irritating and irrelevant. The VII was high-jacked. It has made a mess of the Church. There is no end in sight. It is null and void.
This is a great academic exercise, but I believe that is all that it is.
90+% of mass going Catholics could not tell you the definition of ressourcement, aggiornamento, Commonitorium, or hermeneutical.
For weekly mass going Catholics Vatican II meant that the mass is in English, the priest faces the people at mass, and the alter rails are gone and we receive the Eucharist standing and in the hand. Of course, none of this was actually in the Vatican II documents.
I just reviewed the results of a several year old Quinnipiac poll. Only 61% of Catholics who attend mass weekly thought abortion should be mostly or entirely illegal.
53% of Catholics who attend mass weekly support same sex marriage.
And we know that about 50% of Catholics vote for militant pro-abortion politicians.
Exit polls showed that 60% of Catholics in my state just voted against a pro-life addition to the state constitution.
What is needed is strong moral teaching/preaching from bishops, priests, and teachers. We are not getting it.
And we aren’t likely to get it, either.
Crusader above – Academic/philosophical discussions may be necessary, even if those on the ground aren’t up on them.
I do agree that for the vast majority of Mass-attending Catholics, VII means the Mass is in English (i.e. it is just the “old” Mass translated into English), the priest faces the people and we receive Communion in the hand. I would add that priests and nuns left their posts in droves and marriage annulments became common. Also popular devotions such as the rosary, forty hours and those honouring the saints were left by the wayside. Yes, on the ground, it was a disaster.
“I do agree that for the vast majority of Mass-attending Catholics, VII means the Mass is in English (i.e. it is just the “old” Mass translated into English), the priest faces the people and we receive Communion in the hand.”
And herein lies some of the problem, as the 16 texts of the Council never eliminated Latin (quite the contrary), or mentioned the priest facing the people, or had people receiving the Holy Eucharist in the hand (in fact, this came a few years late, when Paul VI caved in to various pressures and allowed exceptions that quickly became a rigid rule). In my experience, when Catholics actually read, say, Lumen Gentium or Dei Verbum, they almost always come away pleased and perplexed: pleased because there is so much richness to the texts and perplexed because those texts are often so contrary (in both content and spirit) to what they’ve experienced. In some ways, it’s as if the Council discussed and reflected on gourmet meals served in a 5-star eatery and then, soon after, the people were being fed cheap burgers in a fast food joint and being told that it was soooo much better than anything they’d ever experienced.
As a member of an Archdiocesan Pastoral Council (2001-2004) I found myself at a round table that included a known-to-be solid young priest. In front of him was the Abbott edition of the Documents of Vatican II (1966). A 1977 seminary graduate, he spoke thusly unto me:
“You know, there’s a lot of good material in here; we never had any of this in the seminary!” Never even read the documents, but in the Council’s followup decade and more, a whole generation of priests indoctrinated by questionable theology professors inebriated in Kung’s (et al) vaporous “spirit of the Council,” and groomed into the social gospel not as a well-grounded extension, but as a substitute for moral theology.
A really bad-hair day all around, and some of these priests are now bishops, and some even cardinals.
Carl, I actually don’t think that Paul VI “caved to various pressures,” particularly where the drastic liturgical reforms were concerned. He often took the lead, as when he completely disregarded the negative reactions and reservations expressed by many bishops at the 1967 Roman Synod where the New Order of Mass was demonstrated. Instead, the Pope simply proceeded unilaterally and imposed the New Missal without further consultation. I don’t think anyone needed to pressure him – he was already a convinced enthusiast.
I’ll say it again: Bring back the altar rails and you’ll solve half the problems. Let the people kneel and adore Christ and you will bring back reverence for the Eucharist.
Amen!
Francis will condemn you for the sin of backwardness.
Excommunication at the hands of Francis could very well lead straight to the beatitude of heaven.
When the Lord calls us to do good works, He equips us to fulfill them. To do works that God has not called us to perform causes us frustration and diminishes our witness.
Only Christ can be all things to all people, we have our limitations! Prayer guides and prepares us to be of aid to a suffering world. The Catholic Church is a vital component n leading people to Jesus. Let us do our best to serve God and His creation.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Hebrews 13:21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
2 Corinthians 3:5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,
Blessings
Review of Weigel’s six premises that comprise the key to interpret and implement Vat II number 3 stood out as the converse key to its existential, problematic implementation.
Weigel’s key 3. The pastoral import of the documents ought not to be separated from, or set in opposition to, their doctrinal content is the key to correctly assessing the current dilemma, capsulized in Pope Francis’ proposal that discussions were underway [Synod on Synodality] to advance pastoral solutions not necessarily in compliance with doctrine. Echeverria, indeed, at once attacks the problems related to 3. And just as immediately points to the Catechism. The Catholic Catechism has been the subject of this Vatican’s attempts to effect what is perceived as pastoral advancement, the first the inadmissibility of the death penalty [Pope Francis], presently the reversal of teaching on homosexuality [Card Hollerich SJ Synod relator].
Echeverria quotes theologian, Christoph Theobald, S.J. who perceives “advances in pastoral orientation of doctrine as historicist in perspective. That it collapses the dogmatic distinction of unchanging truth and its formulations into a historical context”. Herein is the key in its converse sense of understanding the dilemma of the turn from resourcement to pastoral advancement. To complete Weigel’s exacting thesis is the need to address what he left out, the pastoral approach to doctrine underway by Pope Francis.
Exactly so, Fr. Morello….On the current fallacy of disconnecting “pastoral advancement” from truth (e.g., through a synodal plebiscite under the delegated Grech/Hollerich & Co.), from Stl John Paul II we now do have what is fully part of the Magisterium—from the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (elaborating the Catechism as a “fruit of the Council”):
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [an autonomous ‘decision,’ no longer a ‘moral judgment’] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made [!] to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not!]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
And!
“This [Veritatis Splendor] is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115).
As a taproot for the above and from the Council itself, we have this clarity about the moral Natural Law:
“Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force [!] of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles [!]. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 79). And ““The Church is no way [!] the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95).
Cardinals Grech and Hollerich, quo vadis? “Stretching the grey area?,” and “Catholic in a different way?”
“Tradition without history has homogenized all the stages of development into one statically defined truth.”
Imagine, there are those of us backward traditionalists who can’t understand that the propositional truths expressed in such things as say, The Sermon on The Mount, needs to be reassessed by minds smarter than Jesus who know how to apply it to minds who can not comprehend such things as the Corporal works of Mercy, or perhaps just want to live without performing them while still contriving ways to call oneself a Christian. Neither can the modern mind grasp such matters as the intrinsic evil of looking at woman with lust, or perhaps just want to live without valuing chastity. Thank you Vatican II. Life is much more complicated that Jesus had us believe it is. Oh, I forgot, the future of society evisioned in specific texts of Gaudium Et Spes is sure to simplify everything once we’re all united in the spirit of a secular utopia.
Weigel’s hermeneutic of Vatican II’s output is an expansive and very impressive elucidation of Benedict XVI’s advocacy of a “Hermeneutic of Continuity” and his condemnation of a “Hermeneutic of Rupture” (popularly pressed, at the time, by the progressive wing) . See, on the Internet, https://adoremus.org/2007/11/pope-benedict-on-the-quothermeneutic-of-continuityquot.
Benedict’s earlier writings, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, however, seemed actually to adhere to a hermeneutic of rupture. In his Principles of Catholic Theology (Ignatius Press 1987), writing about his adventures as a peritus at Vatican II, he wrote, on page 381: “If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus.” In a footnote to that passage, Cardinal Ratzinger explained that “[t]he position taken in the Syllabus [of Pius IX] was adopted and continued in Pius X’s struggle against [the heresy of] ‘Modernism’.” He punctuated those continuity-of-rupture statements a page later in his understanding of the spirit or purpose of Vatican II: “[T]he text [of the Vatican II documents, especially Gaudium et Spes] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789 [i.e., the French Revolution].”
One can see, in Benedict XVI’s 2007 advocacy of a “Hermeneutic of Continuity” and condemnation of a “Hermeneutic of Rupture,” a very welcome attempt to correct the implications inhabiting his earlier written analysis of Vatican II’s documents and spirit. But then again, he was a very influential peritus at Vatican II and certainly must have had a keen sense of the motivations and intent behind the Council’s agenda.
What if the Council really did intend to set up something like a “countersyllabus to Blessed Pius IX’s and Saint Pius X’s condemnations of the heresy of Modernism? It is a fact that every single bishop, archbishop, and cardinal who participated in the Second Vatican Council and every single Vatican II peritus. who was also a priest, without exception, had taken the Oath Against Modernism mandated for all Catholic clergy by Saint Pius X in 1910 and not rescinded by the Vatican until 1967.
What are we to believe? Is it possible to accept that the participants in the Second Vatican Council were cooperating with the Holy Spirit when they adopted measures inconsistent with the Oath Against Modernism—the Oath that they all had taken. This fact, if accepted, casts more than serious doubt both on the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” and indeed on the very legitimacy of all of the Second Vatican Council’s “countersyllabus” documents—documents which, according to Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), were intended to “correct” or “counter” teachings which all the participants in the Second Vatican Council were oath-bound to uphold.
Food for thought.
Yes, “food for thought…”
Part of that needed thought is supplied by Ratzinger himself in the pages following the initial remark about a “countersyllabus,” in the complete Epilogue to his “Principles (1982/1987) responding to a request in 1975 for his reflections on what happened in the ten years after the Council. The initial remark refers to a “ghetto-mentality” which the Council sought to replace with the “intent on dialogue and cooperation” (p. 382, not capitulation).
Ratzinger then spends a few pages lamenting the “euphoria” of the Concilium front and the illusion of its leaders (Rahner, Congar, Schillebeeckx, Kung) who, as world events unfolded, found that they “were not as united as they had thought”—“that ‘progress’ no longer represented a unified concept and that, in many particulars, it was perilously close to dissociating itself from the core of Christian tradition” (p. 388).
Ratzinger leads up to an instructive parable and conclusion:
“[t]he arrogant certainty with which Cervantes burned his bridges behind him and laughed at an earlier age has become a nostalgia for what was lost. This is not a return to the world of the romances of chivalry but a consciousness of what must not be lost and a realization of man’s peril, which increases whenever, in the burning of the past, he loses the totality of himself [….] Certainly we cannot return to the past [the ghetto mentality], nor have we any desire to do so. But we must be ready to reflect anew on that which, in the lapse of time, has remained the one constant [!]. To seek it without distraction and to dare to accept, with joyful heart and without diminution, the foolishness of truth—this, I think, is the task for today and for tomorrow: the true nucleus of the Church’s service to the world, HER [italics] answer to ‘the joys and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time (Gaudium et spes)” (“Principles,” pp. 392-3).
Thanks–and very well explained. Any thoughts about the Oath-Against-Modernism issue? (For more complete and fully footnoted information on the Oath-Against-Modernism issue, see “The Fatal Defect in the Second Vatican Council” in the November 2022 issue of the Catholic Family News.)
You ask for my “thoughts about the Oath Against Modernism issue.” Well, as a non-theologian (etc.), here’s are two thoughts….
FIRST, if the purpose of Vatican II was to venture forth from a ghetto mentality to at least engage in “dialogue and cooperation” (Ratzinger, above), then how about this additional comment made with respect to Islam which surely applies no less to dialogue with modernism:
“I [Benedict] am urging people to realize that a war has indeed been declared on the West. I am not pushing for a rejection of dialogue, which we need more than ever with those Islamic countries that wish to live in peaceful coexistence with the West, to our mutual benefit. I am asking for something more fundamental: I am asking for people to realize that dialogue will be a WASTE OF TIME [caps added] if one of the two partners to the dialogue states beforehand that one idea is as good as the other” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam,” Basic Books, 2006, p. 45).
SECOND, the clever subversion today (and one which the Oath generally warned against) is that of (a) not actually denying dogma outright, but instead of (b) signaling and insinuating premises which bring doubt and, indirectly, obsolesce the truth in practice.
In Veritatis Splendor (a formal part of the Magisterium), St. John Paul II anticipated such a wedge between formal teaching and “pastoral” accommodation and contradictions (as for the homosexual lifestyle):
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a ‘moral judgment’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not!]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
Cardinal Hollerich, designated super-synthesizer for the Synod on Synodality, let the cat out of the bag when he announced already that the end game is to overturn nearly all sexual morality, altogether, as it exists in Natural Law and is reinforced by Revelation and, therefore, doubly affirmed in the Catechism.
Hollerich, a very amateur saboteur! You just can’t get good help these days!
Thanks for the very thoughtful and well-reasoned reply. For the record, I’m not a theologian either—just another Catholic who is old enough to remember with love and loyalty the pre-Vatican II Church.
In his address at the closing of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI actually addressed the concern that I (and perhaps others) have about the Council, i.e., the ineffable ambiguity in the Council’s dogmatic or merely pastoral stature. Paul VI’s ineffable words:
“There are those who ask themselves what the authority, the theological qualification, that the Council wanted to attribute to its teachings, knowing that it has avoided giving solemn dogmatic definitions, committing the infallibility of the ecclesiastical magisterium. And the answer is known to those who remember the conciliar declaration of 6 March 1964, repeated on 16 November 1964: GIVEN THE PASTORAL CHARACTER OF THE COUNCIL, IT AVOIDED PRONOUNCING IN AN EXTRAORDINARY WAY DOGMAS ENDOWED WITH THE NOTE OF INFALLIBILITY; BUT IT HAS NEVERTHELESS FURNISHED ITS TEACHINGS WITH THE AUTHORITY OF THE SUPREME ORDINARY MAGISTERIUM, WHICH ORDINARY AND SO OBVIOUSLY AUTHENTIC MAGISTERIUM MUST BE RECEIVED DOCILELY AND SINCERELY BY ALL THE FAITHFUL, ACCORDING TO THE MIND OF THE COUNCIL CONCERNING THE NATURE AND PURPOSES OF THE INDIVIDUAL DOCUMENTS.” (all caps added)
Those ineffably ambiguous statements may (or may not) save the Vatican II participants from the Oath Against Modernism dilemma. The Council’s pronouncements are pastoral, not dogmatic (despite the Council’s own declaration to the contrary—e.g., its Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, i.e., Lumen Gentium), but they bear “the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium and must be received docilely and sincerely by all the faithful.” The late (and great) John Vennari wrestled courageously with these issues more adroitly than I can. See his article on “The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’” at https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/P001-Oath.htm.
@ Peter Beaulieu. “Not actually denying dogma outright” but signalling. Right on. Appearance has a persuasive influence on our value judgment, here pervasive when deliberating all the conditions of right or wrong. While we may question a proposal’s moral good the proposer’s continued espousing of orthodox doctrine provokes question whether what appears immoral may be not be.
Repetition has the effect of anesthetizing the intellect. It’s a science that the protagonists are likely aware. Besides, your humor “Hollerich, a very amateur saboteur! You just can’t get good help these days!” is quite enjoyable.
Ten storms in a teacup same as one storm: if the matter or substance cited in the VATICAN II Documents were to change, it would not falsify the Documents or the Council and -at least for this era- would not out-date it either.
Or another way to put it, you can’t straight-jacket the Council any more than you may make Doctrine available to you to straight-jacket and mislay it.
Or another way I could suggest, too much straight-line deduction and/or stasis induction, of the Council, is a futility; and insisting on it is anathema.
Of all of these I mention, see how much the Council is resilient against their profligacy and prolific tendency. But see also how resistant the perpetrators.
It was recently recommended to a farmer, on the observation of his habitual practices, that before he sowed his pumpkin crop he should put in a cover crop to suppress weeds. He didn’t listen to the advice, thinking it bookish.
He proceeded with his pumpkin seeding and applied the old habits and now the weeds have overtaken the plants precisely in the rows in which the seeds were drilled.
He was fooled by the previous immediate success he had with sweet potato and couldn’t see disaster looming through the “loud hints” the land was giving him, in that time.
“Catholic anathema only damns Catholics to hell. No Papal Church bindings to sin affect the Protestants, who are outside the Catholic Church!”, a fellow Catholic told me. I replied, “Well then it is better for me to become a Protestant, where Papal Catholic anathemas cannot harm me or my family. We will just sneak into Mass for the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of reconciliation, as Protestants”. “No! No! No!, If you leave the Catholic Church you are automatically anathematized and go to hell”, my Catholic friend responded.
I see Vatican II as the day ‘No Salvation outside the Church!’, switched to Popes only using the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to only spiritually punish Catholics, not our newly accepted ‘Ecumenical’ Protestant brothers and sisters. I see this as the most tremendous injustice against Catholics inflicted upon us by Popes and the Vatican II Council. Example: Popes and Councils have bound missing Mass on Holy Days of Obligation as spiritual death ‘Mortal Sin’ upon Catholics, but the Popes and Vatican II have loost it for non-Catholics. How many of our fallen away Catholic children are fulfilling their Catholic Papal bound obligation to go to Mass on Holy Days, lest they be bound to Mortal sin by Popes, which, if un-absolved, could cause them eternal damnation?
After the German Synodal Path ended, the Belgium Bishops are now out blessing same sex marriages and other acts against Catholic doctrine, without any, potential spiritual death, specific Papal binding punishments, placed upon them. False idol Pachamama has been worshiped at the Vatican by a Catholic monk, while Pope Francis looked on, and there were no potential spiritual death binding punishments placed upon any of it by Pope Francis. We have the Pontifical Academy of life filled with pro-child murder non-Catholic members, developing what Pope Francis might be, potentially spiritual death binding on Catholics, but not on the non-Catholic Pro-child murder heretics themselves. This would be grave injustice inflicted upon Catholics for being Catholic.
If Popes and Councils are not going to use the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to enforce Christ’s Biblical Teachings and Laws on earth, Nor are they going to apply potential spiritual death bindings to all people on earth equally, then let’s have Pope Francis simply loost all Papal and Council final Synodal opinions, and maybe all Papal bindings from the past 2000 years, and make everything non-binding and optional for Catholics, as Vatican II has done for the Protestants and everyone else on earth who is not Catholic. We must not let Pope Francis discriminate against we Catholics.
Matthew 16:13
Jesus replied, “Blest are you, Simon son of John! No mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. I for my part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
John 20:20
At the sight of the Lord the disciples rejoiced. “Peace be with you,” he said again. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.”
http://www.apocalypseangel.com/married.html
Cdl. Sarah has called for priests to stop turning their backs to God when celebrating Mass. Fr. Raymond de Souza says that single action would go a long way to restoring reverence to the Mass. What in heaven’s name is the holdup?
“Hold up” is the right term.
NWO has been at work for 400 years to achieve Bergoglioism.
The idea is to maintain God’s Divine Institution in Eclipse long enough for Luciferian Freemasonry to triumph.
Albert Pike admitted in his 1871 letter that it would ultimately Fail and their plot for 3 world wars be revealed to the World.
It is called The Gagnon Report* as revealed in arguably the most important Catholic Book of 2022, even since 1958, which is appearing in translations country after country across the Catholic World:
*Charles Theodore Murr “Murder in the 33rd Degree – The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican Freemasonry.
An easy read of eye-witness diary accounts from the solution to the Smoke of Satan gifted to the Future Church as the remedy.
The 2016 interview reports do not have Cardinal Sarah saying anything about priests turning their backs to God or to man. Rather, the Cardinal suggested priests “reorient themselves to the East.” Genesis 3:24 has God driving Adam and Eve out of Eden and “…at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
The ad orientem posture assures, suggests, symbolizes and enacts the priest leading the people so all together face the ‘tree of life’ — Our Lord, Jesus, on the Cross — which is for us today the Eucharist, the Catholic sacrament of life.
Carl:
“I am bound by the secret. This secret is horrible. I would have books to write about the different conclaves. Very serious things have taken place. But I can say nothing.”
Cardinal Siri 1988.
Also constrained to step down from the Active Ministerium like his Still Holiness PPBXVI ?
http://eclipseofthechurch.com/
A point of contention frequently raised here and elsewhere that we’re turning our backs on God in the Novus Ordo, as if we were insultingly defiant of his divinity as suggested by some, even holy persons. This complaint is an insult to my faith and love of the Mass, which I offer in accord with the Church’s approval of the Novus Ordo. Similarly I too happily offer private Mass at home in accord with the comportment of the ancient Latin rite. However. At the Last Supper Christ and the Apostles reclined in a semi circle around a low table – as was the Greek custom adopted by the Jews. Can anyone imagine the absurdity of Jesus Christ reclining away from the table and Apostles when he raised the bread and said This is my Body which will be given up for you?
Perhaps this will not be understood as a provocation, rather to invite intelligent discussion for sake of a greater sense of unity.
To clarify my comment, my point is not that it is absurd for the priest to offer Mass ad orientem, rather that it’s not absurd for the priest to offer Mass ad populum.
Why keep the Real Deal for oneself in private?
Mike it seems you’re responding to my offering my private Mass in Latin. I have offered the Latin Mass previously, out West, and here in upstate New York. Unfortunately it wasn’t well received since most are used to and prefer the English Novus Ordo. On feast days I’ve offered the Roman Rite Canon I which is in English, and it was appreciated.
The primary issue I’ve experienced with laity, their expressed needs is the quality of sermons. They literally ‘crave’ for in depth explanations of Church history [especially keeping them abreast of what’s occurring in the Church regarding morality], the theological meaning of doctrine [the real presence, confession to a priest, Christ’s presence in the sacraments, sin, grace, and the Last Things]. Their major complaint are repetitive, innocuous sermons.
In addition Mike, I do not take your comment lightly, that the traditional Latin Mass is the ‘real deal’, implying the Novus Ordo rite isn’t the Mass. As long as there are Catholics who hold to that, there’ll be division and rancor within the Church. I advise you to seriously consider that for sake of charity and unity.
How does one find the comfort and assurance of Salvation?
Who died for the sins of the world? Who reaches out to redeem our eternal soul? Who gave us Holy Scripture as a fitting guide for our pathway? Yes “These things are written that we might know”! The Sacraments show our obedience and fidelity to Christ, a tangible demonstration of the salvation He has accorded us and our appropriate response.
Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Mark 16:16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Blessings.