In his encyclical, Aeterni Patris, which called for a renewed study of St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy, Pope Leo XIII referred to the faith as a “friendly star” for philosophers. What he meant by this metaphor was that Catholic dogma should serve as a constant reference point so that any philosophical thesis contradicting the faith had to be in error.
Now Pope Leo XIV has stated that the Magisterium of the Second Vatican Council constitutes the “guiding star” for the Church’s journey today. At his January 7th General Audience, the Pope went on to encourage the faithful to read the Vatican II documents, saying that “it will be important to get to know the Council again closely, and to do so not through ‘hearsay’ or interpretations that have been given, but by rereading its documents and reflecting on their content.”
Aeterni Patris was a great success. It led to a revival of interest in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and the twentieth-century Neo-Thomist movement, which gave rise to philosophical giants like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Will Leo XIV’s exhortation yield similar results? Those who blame the follies and errors of the 1960s and 70s on the Council itself are unlikely to think so. They subscribe to the dubious logic of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after which, therefore because of which).
However, one cannot find in the specific Vatican II teachings any warrant for the bad liturgies, distorted moral doctrine, blatant dissent, and other abuses that took place after the Council was completed.
Progressives might also take issue with Pope Leo’s project because reflecting on the content of these documents reveals that the Council was not as revolutionary as we have been led to believe. Some theologians, usually those anchored to progressive creeds, read these documents to understand “the spirit” of the council, believing that what was said is less important than how it was said.
Thus, they prefer to concentrate on what was “un-said” in these magisterial documents but was somehow still made manifest. However, if Vatican II is to be a reliable guide for the universal Church, it is essential to prioritize the letter over the spirit, the objective over the subjective. Trying to discover what the documents did not directly say but supposedly conveyed through allusion, tone, and style threatens to make theology a completely subjective and arbitrary affair.
If the faithful read these documents to comprehend what the Council actually said, they will be surprised. This claim is not meant to suggest that the Council’s teachings are devoid of ambiguities or other problems. Ratzinger once criticized certain paragraphs of Gaudium et Spes for sounding “downright Pelagian.” But, for the most part, the doctrinal content of the Vatican II documents is fully in line with Sacred Scripture and the traditions established by previous Councils.
Those who accept Pope’s Leo’s invitation to engage the texts of Vatican II should begin with Pope John XXIII’s 1962 opening speech to the Council participants which makes clear that while the truths of the faith can be reformulated or expressed differently, they cannot be changed in substance: “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 judgement, is another thing.” Thus, the Pope unequivocally reaffirms the immutability of doctrine and conveys that his intention was certainly not to modify the core teachings of the faith.
Given what Catholics have been told about the Council, many are apt to be, again, surprised by Pope John’s speech. What other surprises might one find in the texts of the Council?
One of the most elegant documents that deserves careful reading and contemplation is Dei Verbum about Divine Revelation. Although some progressives argue for the idea of ongoing public revelation through sources like the sensus fidelium (“sense of the faithful”) or the “signs of the times,” Dei Verbum makes it abundantly clear that such revelation has been completed in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ and passed down to us by the apostles. “Jesus completes the work of revelation. . .and no new public revelation is to be expected” (§ 4). In addition, this Revelation, “the source of all saving truth and moral teaching,” cannot be changed, for “God in his goodness arranged that whatever he had revealed for the salvation of all nations should last forever in its integrity” (§ 7). We find not even the slightest hint of modernist historicism in Dei Verbum or in any of the other documents.
Some theologians have pointed to Vatican II to justify their claim that there are many pathways to salvation other than Jesus Christ or even that God Himself established a plurality of different religions, both Christian and non-Christian. Once again, a careful reading of the documents will easily dispel this myth. We read in Ad Gentes, the document on missionary activity, about the great importance of missionary work for the history of salvation. “Through the work of preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, whose center and summit is the holy Eucharist, missionary activity makes present Christ who is the author of salvation” (§9).
Similarly, Gaudium et Spes declares that “it is the church’s belief that Christ. . .and no other name under heaven is given to people for them to be saved” (§ 10). There are traces of goodness and truth in other religions, but they are “a preparation for the gospel and bestowed by Him who enlightens everyone that they may in the end have life” (Lumen Gentium, §16).
Some moral theologians and influential clergy, especially during the papacy of Pope Francis, have spoken of a paradigm shift in moral theology. They have also sought to marginalize the Church’s traditional moral framework of natural law. During Pope Francis’ Synod on the Family, one key cardinal said, “Natural law doesn’t mean anything anymore.” Moral truth, we’re told, is historically conditioned and not something permanent or immutable because human nature itself changes in ways that negate moral premises that were once true.
Can this paradigm shift find some justification in the texts of Vatican II? On the contrary, a careful examination of Dignitatis Humanae reveals a reaffirmation of a universal and unchanging natural law: “The supreme norm of human life is the divine law itself, eternal, objective, and universal” (§ 3). To reinforce this statement, there is a reference to Part I-II, Question 93 of Aquinas’ Summa, which explains that “the eternal law is the unchangeable truth, and everyone knows this truth in some sense … the general principles of the natural law.” For the authors of Dignitatis Humanae there was no doubt that this divine, eternal law included the morally binding precepts of the natural law.
Similarly, Gaudium et Spes (§74) speaks of “the natural and Gospel law” (lex naturalis and evangelica). Dignitatis Humanae also explains that these unchangeable “principles of the moral order derive from human nature itself” (§14). And the Council’s conception of this immutable human nature as a “unity of body and soul” (corpore et anima unus) clearly derives from Aquinas’ hylomorphic anthropology with all its important implications (Gaudium et Spes, §14).
Finally, given the heated debate over the traditional Latin Mass, it is instructive to read what Vatican II had to say about liturgy and the Latin language. We are often given the impression that the Council abolished Latin from the sacred liturgy in favor of the vernacular. But that is not the case. In Sacrosanctum Concilium the council fathers wrote that “the use of the Latin language is to be maintained in the Latin rites, except where a particular law might indicate otherwise” (§ 36) While the council fathers recognized that there was a suitable place for the local language in the liturgy, especially for the Scripture readings and common prayers, they also insisted that “steps should be taken so that Christian believers can at the same time also say or sing in Latin appropriate parts of the Mass” (§ 54). Sacrosanctum Concilium also recognized the unique importance of Gregorian chant, which “should be given a place of primacy in liturgical activity” (§ 116).
We have only scratched the surface in this essay, but there are many more examples of how the Council has been misunderstood or misrepresented. Unfortunately, too many theologians (and others) have abused the texts of the Second Vatican Council as a means of arguing in favor of modifying defined Church doctrine. But the Council did not proclaim an ecclesial paradigm shift, signal the need for a revolution in the Church, or question the transcendent order of nature. It did not say that we can find God’s message in new forms such as cultural trends or “signs of the times.” Instead, it emphasized the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy and the mission of transmitting the deposit of the faith.
Perhaps we can hope that if, as Pope Leo indicates, the real Vatican II does become a “guiding star” for the Church, it could one day sound the death knell for the progressive agenda that the whole Church will hear.
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“Perhaps we can hope that if the real Vatican II does become a ‘guiding star’ for the Church, it could one day be the death knell for the progressive agenda that the whole Church will hear”.
Can’t come soon enough.
The crux is thus: “…the Council did not proclaim an ecclesial paradigm shift, signal the need for a revolution in the Church, or question the transcendent order of nature. It did not say that we can find God’s message in new forms such as cultural trends or ‘signs of the times.’ Instead, it emphasized the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy and the mission of transmitting the deposit of the faith….if the real Vatican II does become a ‘guiding star’ for the Church, it could…sound the death knell for the progressive agenda that the whole Church will hear.”
Amen.
Excellent essay. Thank you!
The Council documents are too long, too ambiguous, and therefore provide too many opportunites for cherry-picked quotes and other confusion, for them to be correctly interpereted except by those who are well-catechized, and honest, and who read them. For Sacrosanctum Concilium, they would also need significant TLM attendance. Most laity are not well-catechized people with the time and inclination to read them all.
Vatican 2 cannot be a guiding star without being a source of light, clear and not bounced all over the place with smoke and mirrots. That requires some sort of simple, clear, and authoritative interpretation in many particular cases. With cardinals and Popes in disagreement over the meaning of it, that’s a big ask.
Let’s rephrase that, shall we?
“The Summa Theologica is too long, too ambiguous, and therefore provide[sic] too many opportunities for cherry-picked quotes and other confusion, for it to be correctly interpreted except by those who are well-catechized, and honest, and who read them.”
Interestingly, your argument parallels a lot of criticisms about the Cathechism when it first came out in 1992, by liberals who thought John Paul was imposing too much on the Church with such a big catechism.
The Suma enriched catholic theology, whereas VII…..
The Summa’s long and can certainly be cherry-picked, but I don’t think it could be called ambiguous. When the Angelic Doctor addressed a question, he was quite clear, for his intended audience of people who’ve studied Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine (among others). I can’t say I’d recommend everyone read the Summa. I also wouldn’t recommend that everyone read the Vatican 2 documents or the CCC. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone recommend that everyone read the Summa, but I’ve repeatedly heard the suggestion that every Catholic must spend a year or more studying V2 documents and commentaries on them.
At any rate, if you’ll look again at my suggested solution, it is very obviously not ditching the Council. I want to be clear about the necessary background for understanding the documents, and called for providing a simple, clear, and authoritative interpretation, at least on the issues where there’s a lot of disagreement. If that interpretation is that both sides are perfectly within their rights to think as they do, I am willing to consider that a clear interpretation, that the Council has not spoken on the question. I still think it’s a big ask. After all, it hasn’t been done in over 60 years, and it requires someone to tell a lot of cardinals and bishops they are wrong, and make it stick. So far no one has been able to tell the German Synodal Way that they are wrong, and make it stick.
The best place to look for faithful interpretations of the Vatican II documents would be in the issues of the journal Communio (one of its founders was Cardinal Ratzinger). There were, I believe, three conferences on V2 documents co-sponsored with the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The summer-fall 2013 issue reprinted the presentations of those speaking at the conference on “Dignitatis Humanae and the Rediscovery of Religious Freedom”. The 2014 session was on Lumen Gentium – I believe only D.L. Schindler’s talk was published as “In the Beginning Was the Word: Mercy as a Reality Illuminated by Reason” but videos are available at the Institute website – and the 2015 one was on Gaudium et Spes (These were published in book form as “Enlightening the Mystery of Man: Gaudium et Spes Fifty Years Later”. Then there was a double issue in 2012 called “Keeping the World Awake to God: The Challenge of Vatican II” with a number of articles. There simply are no better analyses than by the members of the Communio circle, and they deserve much wider reading.
Have the V2-related articles been published in book form? I’ve poked briefly at the Communio website, and they aren’t exactly collected and easily accessible.
Twenty years after the Council the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops was convened as a pulse check and largely to guard against “divergent interpretations.” At this real synod it was explained, for example, that the Church is both institutional and charismatic, and that a “we cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral [behold, a semi-synodal “paradigm shift”?].”
The 1985 Synod even called for a “wider dissemination of the Council Documents” (meaning an effort at functional literacy (!) and for a Catechism (!!) which first appeared in 1992 after enormously broad at iterative review of drafts.
So, now, Pope Leo XIV resurrects the Documents (in Benedict’s words the “real” Council as distinguished from the “virtual” council of Hans Kung et al and the media) rather than to what in too many ways became an insular and hamster-wheel synod on Synodality engineered, some say, to mainstream such a non-“backwardist” moral theology plus—the homosexual lifestyle as an exemption from the undenied moral law. Not much functional memory there of Veritatis Splendor (1993) or even of the Catechism.
Very encouraging, the non-amnesiac consistory of cardinals, with more to come.
Yawn.
Yawn?
“If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and then make fun of it” (Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881).
Yawn to the constant articles about the Vatican II.
You’re right—or is it Left?—history does not exist. Or…
It might even be that, with Leo’s catechesis, informed commentaries might appear as with other successful archeological digs…the real Dead SEE Scrolls!
It might even be that those who claim to have access to the original and allegedly mutilated 70 schemas will supply the discarded language on key points….is it really true that popes have the authority from good to depose kings or whatever?
Autospell! I typed “from God”!
Vatican II . . . neither a guide nor a star.
“The Second Vatican Council: A guiding star for the Church?”
No. Not in a million years. Only the willfully blind can dismiss 60 years of catastrophic collapse and the now widening and deepening schism and apostasy of the Church.
If Vatican II was not a break from the past, then it seems to me that any previous Council would serve just as well as a Guiding Star, but seems not to be the case.
Excellent point MrsHess
Probably not, as most Councils were called to address specific doctrinal or disciplinary problems, and did not attempt to discuss anywhere near as much as Vatican 2 did. I think Trent is the only one that comes close.
I wouldn’t say Councils are meant to be guiding stars. Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition is the guiding star. Councils are more like a sextant. But nobody appointed me the metaphor police.
Spinello apparently alludes to the multitude of progressive carpetbaggers who misused the Counsel’s documents to promote their new paradigm.
Reaction to the new paradigmers by traditionalists is that they, the radical left, are drawn into the alluring glitter of the death star only to be gripped by the devil. Whereas new paradigmers will contend it is the traditionalists who have closed their ears to the voice of the Spirit of the Council.
Ironically, Vat II has unfairly become a cause for distancing within the Church. Both reject what the Council actually teaches, injuring their faith in obedience to the Magisterium. Taking themselves to extremes that freeze compassion and Christian brotherhood.
For a test of manifest devotion to Christ present in the Holy Eucharist turn around at the consecration and note how very few are looking directly at the Eucharist, and are rather looking down piously or at a missalette. This is a hangover from the TLM. So the NO was intended to engage the parishioner in what is actually occurring before their eyes.
Professor Spinello analyzes all the pertinent Council documents to clearly demonstrate, one would wish once and for all, that both are out in Left Field. That if read properly sans a preconceived agenda will find the Council is indeed a Guiding Star.
We will actually NEVER know the real merit of the Council as the 91 original theses that over 900 trained and able CATHOLIC Theologians prepared, refined and distilled, for the 3-years prior to the opening of the Council were all JETTISONED [contrary to the strictures in place to guide the development of the material of the Council] by the (clearly compromised) Bps. situated along the Rhine. If you want to understand how the council tanked into what has been the disaster that the church has suffered for 60 years, develop the original schema along side this new look at the documents of VII. I’ve read and studied the VII documents. Implementation would not have been difficult, it would have been impossible. They’re full of vagaries, subjective and soft-minded wishful thinking and evince a total lack of clarity about human nature vis-a-vis the tremendously clear and concise work of St. Thomas Aquinas. P.S. As a further note, when 78-85% of registered Catholics are weekly attending Divine Liturgy in 1968, Catholics are ACTIVELY PARTICIPATING in the Mass. Compare those numbers that prevail in the US and in the world today. “Active participation” has GUTTED the churches. RETURN TO TRADITION! Return to sanity – enough with this mealy-minded Masonic “brotherhood of man” crap. IT’S NOT WORKING PRECISELY BECAUSE IT’S NOT CATHOLIC. (Yes, I’m yelling!)
Excellent points!
Excellent points! Myself having lived at the time I can say with assurance I know experientially that we were led into the council after the pontificate of Pius XII with no idea that the Church could be derailed. All of us, including the supreme Pontiff and the episcopate were obedient to nothing other than the perennial Magisterium of the Church until it was trashed, as it surely was and purposefully on October 13, 1962 by Cardinal Liénart of Lille who boldly grabbed the microphone at the opening working session of the council and with contempt called for the jettisoning of the schema. He and his league of the rogue heterodox which included Montini, with the wink and the nod of John XXIII, broke the protocols to the stunned silence of cowards and the applause of the nefarious. Trust vaporized by moronic left-wing clerics.
Any enterprise is known for what it is by its fruits. The mid-century council does not have a informed critique by those who did not know the Church before it and during it. Those who lived through it and care about the Church know it for what it was: a thoroughly misguided stab at engaging with the modernity of the past, not what was then upon the culture. A portion of the episcopate was well-intentioned but largely not up to the task. A critical element of the episcopate had only the ambition to deconstruct Catholicism and render it a sandbox for leftists of every stripe in support of secular materialism, primarily soft Euro-Marxism and worse. Finally this theme is beginning to find a voice in the broader media, beyond Taylor Marshall. Peter Schweizer’s new book “The Invisible Coup” casts a raking light upon the Bergoglian pontificate and the broader episcopate’s involvement in the undermining of Western Civilization. It is a scandal that contextualizes the sexual misconduct small potatoes — unless that too is a tool of the broader endeavor. Far, far beyond time to see the ecclesial catastrophe we inhabit in its totality. Shed the rose-colored glasses and clean up this mess. Half measures don’t do.
I have a few thoughts on this article, and others like it.
The bishops, along with their theological advisors, wrote the Vatican II documents. After the Council it was their job to return to their diocese, teach the documents, and correct anyone who was distorting the meaning of the documents. If this did not happen then Pope Leo should exhort the bishops to read the documents and implement them.
The statement that just because B follows A does not necessarily mean the A caused B is correct. But it does not mean that we can automatically rule out that A is at least partially responsible for B.
I did just reread Dei Verbum and to the extent there are doctrinal statements in it they are not new, and are not anything that I was not taught in the 1950’s.
The author States that some theologians point to Vatican II to justify their claim that there are many pathways to salvation. No, I believe that would be Pope Francis who said that God willed many religions.
We are told that we should read what Vatican II had to say about the liturgy. Absolutely agree. Let us read Sacrosanctum Concilium and have the Mass that it describes, because the Mass we have now is not that Mass, but a Mass designed by a 1969 committee approved by Pope Paul VI.
We have seen what changes a government leader can make to correct previous errors, even when under judicial and congressional restraints. A pope has none of these restraints and can act as he wishes. For example, the TLM/NO issue could be settled by Pope Leo tomorrow if he wished to exercise his authority.
And finally, when I read Pope Benedict (who I greatly admire) say that Vatican II is in hermeneutic continuity with previous councils I can’t help visualizing Thomas Jefferson saying that the Declaration of Independence is in continuity with the colonies previous declarations of loyalty to the King. Just saying.
“And finally, when I read Pope Benedict (who I greatly admire) say that Vatican II is in hermeneutic continuity with previous councils I can’t help visualizing Thomas Jefferson saying that the Declaration of Independence is in continuity with the colonies previous declarations of loyalty to the King. Just saying.”
So good Catholics should just disregard the studied opinion of a man who not only knew the council inside and out, but was also protected by the gift of Papal Infallibility, and listen instead to some rando on the Internet. Gotcha.
Well David B, Papal infallibility is actually somewhat limited – pronouncements on faith or morals intended for the whole Church.
With regard to my fantasy statement re: Thomas Jefferson, I thought it was somewhat amusing, but if not – fine.
We read: “I did just reread Dei Verbum and to the extent there are doctrinal statements in it they are not new, and are not anything that I was not taught in the 1950’s.”
Exactly so…
Cardinal Frings had a role in this solid document, and his peritus was Ratzinger. Ratzinger explains that from the beginning it was necessary to dig deeper than the proposed schema, because the need then and now was to ground the document directly into the historical fact of the real Incarnation. And, not in references to former Church document about the Incarnation.
All of this is explained in part of the recent two-volume interview and analysis with Peter Seewald, “Benedict XVI: A Life” (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2020/2021). For example, Benedict: “Really, Scripture and tradition are not the sources of revelation. God revealing himself–his speaking and self-disclosure–is the ‘unis fons’ from which the two ‘rivuli,’ Scripture and tradition, flow” (Vol. 1, p 367).
Seewald notes that Ratzinger “underrated the power of a developing mass-media society,” but that he and Frings both understood that the initial schema needed more deeper work. All the other schemas were also vastly reworked, with varied results, but still served at least as references as the Council extended its work from an expected three weeks to three years.
About the “real Council of the Documents” versus the “virtual Council of the media,” “Ratzinger would never tire of saying ‘if they are construed carefully and clearly, then extremism in either direction is avoided. Then a way really opens up which still has a lot of future before it [….] It is always worth going back to the Council itself, to its depth and its vital ideas” (Vol. 1, p. 463).
SUMMARY: Unlike some critics even on this site, yours truly is encouraged that Pope Leo is “going back to the Council itself” rather than to the very mixed bag of diffuse, simulated, and even unhinged “synods ‘of bishops’”—in the rear view mirror the swan song of the “virtual” Council.
We have the Gospel and Francis rightly reminded us to focus on that with his first solo work, not that he was the first Pope to encourage us to focus on the Gospel (!). When I go back and read Vatican II documents, some resonate and others repulse. Having gone to the Novus Ordo my whole life and also having gone to the Older Mass almost my whole life, the abuses are present in each (or at each might be more accurate). But the two are worlds apart. When I go back and read SC, I’m angered because my most prayerful experiences of the majesty and mercy of God the Father have been at the TLM, causing me to hope SC will be removed or that the NOM won’t be so imposed on the faithful, because experience of decades shows that SC is not essential for salvation. When I read GS, I scratch my head at some of the profoundly stupid commentary on “modern man” now that we’ve lived in the postmodern or even post-postmodern world for so long. And when I read GS on abortion, I roll my eyes at the clergy, theologians, and online renters who suggest that “Trads” reject Vatican II as though the vast majority of NOM-going Catholics accept the council’s teachings on faith and morals. No, consistently polling tells us with eyes to see and ears to hear that the vast majority of church-going Catholics approve of abortion for at least a few stages of pregnancy, which is an utter rejection of the dignity of the human person. When the majority of Mass attending Catholics poll consistently in favor of murdering babies, they don’t believe the council — they don’t believe the Faith. So let’s not pretend that it’s the Vatican II documents that will save us. The Lord will save us. Focus on preaching the Gospel, and if there’s a line or two worth quoting from one or more Vatican II documents, include the quotation in the effort. But let’s focus more on salvation and not on what might or might not have been prudent or practical pastoral provision in the mid 1960s. We’re in 2026 where the faithful sitting in the pews too often think there are more than two genders or that it’s possible to be in the wrong body. Scratching our heads over whether to include the Gospel chanting in Latin first and then spoken in the vernacular before preaching in the vernacular seems petty and wildly removed from reality.
Agreed with most of what you said. How we worship matters and would be an obvious asset to Catholic restoration. Worshiping God instead of ourselves, our “faith community” as they say, is made clearer not only for the mind but for the soul during the TLM.
Many Protestants hate Catholic liturgy and doctrine because they refuse to see that we don’t get to determine whether we are saved. It’s God’s judgment, not ours. Jesus promises us hope, but He demands vigilance and humility.
The single problem with VII, which did not necessarily intend a rupture, is that some progressive theologians made subtle concessions to secular belief systems, which would eventually be held by many Catholics post VII, that deny the permanent imperfectability of the human condition. Scattered weak sentences in the documents, accommodating a false faith in human progress, can tempt the marginal to doubt their need for “organized religion” like a small distribution of cancer cells can consume a life. The documents occasionally acknowledging original sin do not balance implicit denials of original sin elsewhere.
We need sacramental life because we never cease being sinners. And we need to preach the Gospel that does not and can never be corrupted with utopian fantasies of eventually finding a global “system” that promises our own deification.
Guiding star??? LOL. Lets build churches that are stripped of any sign of Jesus, and look like Office lobbies! Move the tabernacle out of the way and off to the side someplace. Lets make changes so that tens of thousands of priests and nuns resign from their vocations and leave. Make it hard/impossible for those who want to kneel to receive. Have laity who dont have a clue take over more and more functions from the priests. Attendance percentage at church drops like a stone. Belief in the Real Presence drops like a stone.(Not a shock, should have been an anticipated result.) Allow young Catholics to sleep around and move in with each other prior to marriage but dont trouble them about it by preaching against this. Marry all live in lovers, no questions asked, therefore act like this behavior is OK. Because after all, this is what secular society supports, we dont want to seem “mean”, and we want to look like we are “with it”, right?? Guiding star??? Seriously??? Not so much.
Absolutely none of that was in the Council.
An awful lot of it was either supported by some bishops and members of the Curia in the wake of V2, and more bishops and Curial officials refrained from correcting it, often on the basis of not wanting to seem mean, keeping up with the modern era, or being attractive to Protestants. Those actions (and inactions) are downplayed too much, imo. But they do not constitute a vote for a Magisterial document by a majority of worldwide bishops.
Amanda, it might not have been in the Council, but, “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” and to this day, nothing has been done to prevent the continued denigration and decomposition of Catholicism. The SOS will work as a “force multiplier” turning what little remains of Catholicism and the Catholic Church into the Bride of Frankenpope. We’re nearing the end of this epoch, thank God. Leo will be the second of the “worm-ridden” popes in succession. The next, will be Holy. Why? Read the words of our Lady of LaSalette. Also, “the things Our Lady has been warning us about will begin after the Synod”, according to Conchita – seer/child when Our Lady appeared at Garabandal. Things have swung so far off axis that God’s intervention (to our eternal shame) will be required to rectify it. Will we, when all is said and done, be like the 9 that never showed gratitude to Our Lord for the healing? “Were not all healed, where are the other nine?” Let us pray, pray, pray and not stop praying, for it seems obvious that many within the curia have stopped doing just that.