Editor’s note: This is Part One of a two-part essay on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom.
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One of the constant criticisms from traditionalist Catholics of Vatican II’s document on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae (henceforth, DH), is that it contradicts previous Church teachings on that topic and so undermines the doctrine of the social kingship of Christ. Furthermore, it is alleged that when this “novel” teaching is paired with the Council’s robust affirmation of the importance of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, you end up with an overall theological ethos of religious relativism and indifferentism.
The FSSPX represents an extreme case of this dissent from DH. But it is also a central complaint from many otherwise observant and faithful Catholics who self-identify as members of one of the varieties of “traditionalism”. And to make the point that they are not dissenting from anything dogmatic, they frequently point out that the Council as a whole was a pastoral one and did not issue any new dogmas.
Therefore, they argue, since DH is not an infallible text, it can be rejected as contrary to previous teachings and will hopefully be repudiated by a future pope or council. This seems, for example, to be the view of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who prefers to call such teachings “ambiguous” rather than “heretical,” although he makes it quite clear that he thinks DH teaches error on the matter of religious freedom.
The focus on coercion
I reject all of these criticisms. Obviously, I cannot untie so many thorny knots in a short essay such as this. Therefore, I will focus on the three main questions in play. Namely, that DH contradicts previous Church teaching, that it undermines the concept of the social kingship of Christ, and that dissent from it is allowed due to its “merely pastoral” nature.
If one reads DH as a direct repudiation of the very idea of a confessional Catholic State, or a direct rejection of the moral duty of every person to pursue the truth about God, or of the obligation of civil society to acknowledge and promote this duty as central to the life of the polis, then it would indeed be in contradiction to previous teachings. Fortunately, DH does none of these things and instead states clearly that its teaching “leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” (§1)
The true focus of the text is clearly spelled out in the opening sentence of DH: “Religious freedom, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society.” The issue at hand is not at all about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of Catholic confessional states. Drawing from some of the deepest theological wellsprings of the Tradition, DH reaches a pastoral conclusion in terms of how the Church should approach the question of forced coercion in religious matters. And it is making the thoroughly traditional argument–an argument that goes back to the Church Fathers–that true faith must never be coerced.
Prescinding from the actual history of the Church’s checkered praxis in this regard (since that would take another article in its own right), the point here is a simple one. DH is not teaching error in this matter and even leaves open the possibility of some level of punitive action from civil authority in the religious domain when “public order” is threatened. This latter point was a matter of great debate during the Council, and if there is any “ambiguity” in DH it is that it leaves open just what “public order” means. But at the very least, it is simply not true that DH is embracing modern notions of religious relativism in a social sense and is focused instead on the specific issue of the essence of true faith as non-coerced.
In short, what DH teaches is that even if you have a Catholic confessional State–or better, especially if you have a Catholic confessional State–you must still avoid coercive and punitive laws that are designed to repress the freedom to pursue one’s moral conscience in religious matters. Furthermore, none of this entails the rejection of the idea of a State enshrining Catholicism as the preferred religion and granting it privileges, such as state-funding, which other forms of religion do not enjoy. This might be viewed as a form of coercion, and it probably is, but it is not oppressively so since it affirms a wide right to religious freedom in the civil sphere for any religion that does not threaten public order in dangerous ways (e.g., one can envision restrictions on religions that advocate for forms of race-based murder).
Criticism of pastoral practice
Thus, it can be clearly discerned that DH is in subtle ways questioning some aspects of the Church’s previous pastoral praxis. That would include the Inquisitions, which—although not as awful as the anti-Catholic mythmakers would have us believe—were still bad enough in themselves and are still a part of our Western cultural memory. The Council wanted to make it clear that no matter the actual historical severity of such things, the Church repudiates strong-armed coercion as a means for saving souls. And going beyond the issue of the violation of religious consciences, the pastoral reality is that such measures are counterproductive in the long run since they breed resentment and hostility toward the Church, which is now viewed, not as a bearer of a liberating message, but as an oppressor of freedom. The Enlightenment used this hostility toward the Church and perception of the Church to great advantage.
The Australian theologian Tracey Rowland, in Introducing Communio Theology deftly argues therefore for a minimalist reading of DH wherein no major political theory regarding an “establishment of religion” is put forward, and certainly not a full-throated endorsement of an American-style “separation of Church and State”. She endorses the minimalist reading of DH put forward by the philosopher Russell Hittinger, who rejects the notion that DH is attempting to articulate a broad new political theory about Church and State. He states: “It might prove surprising, if not frustrating, that DH puts to one side any theoretical treatment of the complexus of issues which directly touch, in American terms, upon establishment of religion” (quoted in Rowland, p. 104).
Hittinger then goes on to criticize those who see in DH a favorable “reckoning” with modern liberalism:
The correct answer is that [this] isn’t possible because DH does not undertake such a reckoning. … DH should not be made to resolve every kind of theoretical or practical issue which might touch upon the relationship between the Church and governments. … My point is that DH should not be made to carry freight it wasn’t meant to bear. (Rowland, p. 105)
Unfortunately, after the Council, many Catholic thinkers spun this differently and viewed DH as an endorsement of the views of the American theologian John Courtney Murray, who viewed it as a conciliar approval for the American constitutional arrangement. This is but one example of the many ways in which false readings of the Council were allowed to take root and spread like a cancer through the Church. Traditionalists such as Athanasius Schneider claim that it is precisely the ambiguity of the Council on many such issues that led directly to these ruptures with Tradition. And even Rowland acknowledges that such “spinnings” constitute a part of the Council’s reception tradition.
But there is also such a thing as the deliberate manipulation of the facts. There can also be a deceptive mendacity at work by those who harbored ill will toward traditional Church teachings and wanted them changed, by hook or by crook, to suit the liberal aggiornamento project of cultural accommodation. This was the point made by Pope Benedict when he contrasted the actual texts of the Council with the false Council of the media. And regarding the specific example of DH, one sees clearly that its minimalist teaching was falsely inflated beyond its narrow intentions to mean more than it meant.
Past the current impasse
I remember reading the actual documents of Vatican II for the first time in 1978, after entering minor seminary. I had grown up in the 60s and 70s and been fed a certain narrative about the Council, which implied that it was a revolution that had broken with the “old bad Catholicism” and had “finally” embraced the modern world. To my shock and surprise as I read the texts, I discovered beautiful and theologically profound documents, fully traditional and orthodox, and therefore I saw no evidence of the revolution I was told was in its pages.
And that is an analysis I stand by today. I am fully aware of the fact that the Council had flaws. All councils do. I am not reading it through “Boomer rose-colored glasses,” and I think it is okay to critique elements of the Council, as even Pope Benedict did at times. The issue then is not the oft-repeated meme by some, in the context of the current SSPX debate, that the Church “does not allow for any criticism of the Council.”
This is simply false and is easily refuted by anyone with even a passing knowledge of the theological literature on the Council from all ideological quarters. Many very orthodox and sound theologians have questioned some aspects of the Council, and yet they remain in good standing with the Church.
The issue, rather, is truth. The issue thus goes beyond the “traditionalists vs. progressives” impasse, as if those are our only real options. That has become such a tiresome distraction. The issue is, beyond all the ideological spinning, what did DH actually teach? I think that matters. Call me old-fashioned and quaint, but I still think that the truth of the Council matters. And I further think that it is not as difficult as some make it seem to determine what it was that the Council actually taught, including what it was that DH taught.
And the fact is, we are not without sufficient scholarly resources to make such adjudications about what it is DH actually taught. There are numerous examples to choose from, but one in particular stands out from the rest. And that is the book, titled Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Eerdmans, 2015), by the late David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy Jr., that provides all of the various drafts from the Council that led up to the final text of DH. [Editor’s note: See CWR’s 2015 interview with Schindler and Healy about their book.]
And those drafts are instructive since it shows clearly how much the Council Fathers desired to remain within the Tradition and how their focus was on the question of coercion and the manner in which the moral dignity of the human religious conscience must be valorized as an essentially free act of the person when embracing the truth of religion.
The text also contains lengthy and helpful commentary from both Schindler and Healy that draws out these essential features of DH and places them in continuity with the Tradition. One can perhaps disagree with their analysis, but the entire text gives the lie to the notion that DH is this hopelessly ambiguous thing that opens the door to religious relativism.
Contrary to previous magisterial teachings?
Of course, there is also still the issue of whether any acknowledgment of the necessity of religious freedom is contrary to previous magisterial teachings. The text also deals with that issue. Suffice it to say that there can be no denying that, superficially at least, DH seems to contradict previous Church praxis and the teachings of 19th-century popes who explicitly rejected religious freedom as a danger to be avoided.
Regarding Church praxis, all I can say is that if you think that torturing and/or executing heretics is something that the Church has every right to do “for the sake of souls, then DH is going to disagree with you. Likewise, if you think that the State should enforce Catholicism in draconian ways via the punitive criminalization of all other religions, then DH is going to disagree with you. But more than DH actually, since even many pre-conciliar popes began the process of rethinking such hard integralist tactics as pastorally disastrous exercises in oppression. It makes the Church appear publicly as the enemy of freedom, which, ultimately, comes back to bite the Church in various anti-clericalist political programs governed by a spirit of retribution.
As for the religious freedom teachings of the 19th-century magisterium, what becomes clear is that for the popes of that era, they had in mind the particular version of religious freedom that had gained widespread popularity in Europe and which was the poisoned fruit of the French Revolution. The magisterial teaching of that era concluded that there was no way to allow for religious freedom that did not entail the relativistic and indifferentist consequences that they saw rising all around them.
Take, for example, the encyclical Mirari Vos of 1832, promulgated by Gregory XVI, which explicitly ties together the blight of religious indifferentism with allowing for liberty of conscience in religious matters. But what if such assumptions are not true? What if it is possible to have religious freedom and to avoid religious indifferentism? Or, what if the indifferentism that Gregory noted was not caused by religious freedom but was instead the result of a multi-focal set of cultural, scientific, philosophical, and political causes reaching back to the fratricidal self-immolation of Christian Europe in its various post-Reformation fractious conflicts?
What if the indifferentism, therefore, was more the result of an exhausted laity, fed up with ecclesial debates that were beyond their ability to understand, and who chose instead to focus on the mundane affairs of life and to enjoy the new affluence of bourgeois Europe?
What DH is saying is that those popes were correct to condemn secular, Enlightenment-based concepts of religious freedom, and indeed of a false sense of freedom in general. But the unspoken assumption of DH is that these same popes were empirically in error to view religious freedom as such in its proper Christian sense as inextricably intertwined with these false views. This indeed constitutes a kind of “correction” of previous teaching, not on the level of central principles (since DH affirms the duty to seek the truth about God) but on the level of the empirical adjudication that religious freedom always entails the result of indifferentism.
As such, this is what Pope Benedict was referencing in his now famous remark that a “hermeneutic of reform” involves at times certain “micro corrections” but always within an overarching continuity with the tradition.
In Part Two of this essay, I will explore the question of the pastoral nature of DH as well as the consequences of all of this for a proper concept of what we mean by the social kingship of Christ.
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About selectively misreading one of the Council Documents, two additional points:
FIRST, reading all of the Documents together, as an interrelated unity, we find this about possible ambiguity in lines lifted from “Dignitatis Humanae,” and taken out of this total context:
“Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force of universal natural law [!] and the all-embracing principles, Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal [!]” (Gaudium et spes, n. 79).
Is Econe engaged in Sola Documenta cherry picking?
SECOND, the Council speaks mostly in the Westernizing context of personal and institutional freedom from coercion “either in the whole of mankind or in a particular country or in a specific community” (“Dignitatis Humanae,” n. 6). However, is this generic reference to countries and communities prescient now–especially with regard to resurgent Islamic jihadist “countries” and the pre-Western, transnational, and invasive umma “community”?
In defense of the transcendent dignity of the human person, does the Council anticipate the next couple of centuries of Christophobia? Thinking interculturally, does Econe fiddle ecclesiastically while all the post-Christian West kowtows, so to speak?
Robert Louis Wilken answers your last question with another:
“The question to be asked, then, is whether, face to face with Islam, Christians will be able to sustain, rebuild, and create strong and resilient communities that provide institutional anchorage for the faith to endure and flourish. Will they have the imagination to form the spiritual architecture of the societies of which they are a part?”
In his FT essay of 2009, he suggests the continual deconstruction of Western institutional Christianity has no foundational grounding or strength to counter Islam.
Rome fiddle-faddles, seeking to update tradition since that prism is so pretty, though elusive and illusive. SSPX stands its ground. So says a clear-eyed pessimist.
Wilken concludes: “Augustine’s metaphor for the new life in Christ was not that of an individual’s being born again but that of becoming part of a city with its own form of governance.”
Dear Peter, I hope you are well. I wanted to reach out here to let you know that I am shifting my focus away from the comboxes of friendly outlets like CWR to dedicate my time to defending Catholic truth on hostile YouTube video threads. It is a challenging mission field, but I feel called to go where the need is greatest. I want to thank you for our wonderful correspondence over time; your deep insights have always been a source of edification. Please keep my new endeavor in your prayers, as I will keep you and your writing in mine. In Christ, Mary and Joseph.
The problem for tradition is that the Church needs to say if DH contradicts Mirari vos and pre-Vatican II Popes in general, and how that can be justified. Opinions like the one expressed in this post are just that.
For Catholicism, errors have no rights, and no person has the right to profess them per se. This has nothing to do with being coerced into “believing”. The issue is the public expression of false religions. Perhaps the notion of false religion has also been phased out. The Church needs to explain why because in its absence, its own raison d’etre is seriously compromised, creating another ingredient of that famous state of necessity.
Of course, that doesn’t mean people must be prevented from publicly expressing these religions. Francisco Suarez S.J. at the height of the Counter-Reformation distinguished between suppressing those who invented new religions and destroyed the faith of believers, and regions where new religions were well-established,like Denmark. Saint Augustine would come to support the suppression of Donatism, and the Church also enthusiastically supported the suppression of Arianism. The Church had never assumed that man’s freedom of will and the dignity of his nature entailed the right to do anything objectively wrong. Obviously, with religious freedom, we’re concerned with the public sphere and civil society, but religious belief is very much the concern of any society concerned with public morality and the duty of society to recognise Christ (as Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, 1925). The Church has always been aware of the need to deal with people as they are, not as they ideally should be, but it has never spoken of rights for things which are not right. DH is the first time there is a question of this. It’s precisely because the confessionality of the state is not directly involved here that it’s such a problem.
Ahh, time again for Chappy to bash the “traditionalists”, while simultaneously undermining his own claims and repeating the tired claim that the problem has nothing to do with the council and the documents themselves, but all from a hi-jacking of the council. For one, note that chapp tends to frame the concerns over the document as being largely about coercion in religious matters and infers that “traditionalists” might support torture or draconian efforts to force people to believe! Second, The council itself defined many of the documents, including D. Humanae, as pastoral & practical guidelines, yet neo-cons want to invoke them as binding teaching when it suits them. While Chapp criticizes the likes of Bishop Schneider’s take on the document, Chapp goes on to unwittingly admit it is ambiguous, i.e., open to various interpretations: the whole piece is his own interpretation and those of others- Rowland, Hittinger, and indeed an entire book. (If you have to write entire books and have “scholars” spill tons of ink to tell people what some text really means, it must be ambiguous, confusing, and a failure as a readily understood document.) He even admits that people are more or less left to draw their own conclusions, with assistance from “scholarly resources.” So, there are varying interpretations of the same text after all, but it’s wrong for the likes of Schneider to publicly say so and to take a different view than Chapp. In other words, as long as you take Chapp & co.’s view as the correct one, there’s no problem, but if you don’t, there must be something wrong with you, you must be one of those nasty traditionalists who is misreading things. And Chapp has no authoritative basis for claiming that his view or those of fellow “communio” types is the correct one, certainly no official, magisterial interpretation to coincide with it. Chapp even goes so far as to actually repudiate a primary author of the document, J. C. Murray, and claims that it’s a misreading of the council for people to see Murray’s views represented in what is essentially his document!? Who are the ones spinning things here? Don’t believe one of main contributors himself but trust our “interpretation” of what he “really” means! Is the arrogance of academics?
There is also the fact that after 65 years and supposedly erroneous views, there has still never been an official magisterial interpretation to rule out the supposedly false ones, and for other VII documents too. One could reasonably argue this is because Rome knows there are problems with the documents. In fact, we have now had two popes who have given what are supposedly erroneous interpretations of such documents- e.g., religious relativism & indifferentism. Likewise, if after 65 years you have people from across the spectrum “misinterpreting” the same text, in all probability the problem must be with the text. Finally, as D. Humanae was based upon historically conditioned thought present at the time, and precisely because it consists of practical guidelines formulated from such, it may be outdated 65 years later. Perhaps saying that too would be to insult the golden calf of VII. Even if there was no sspx the problem with various council documents would still exist, and it will continue until that is admitted and documents are revisited and clarified, perhaps even re-written.
Thank you, David, for the clear-eyed analysis.
Ridiculous twaddle, more like.
Any comment that claims that DH is JC Murray’s “document” is hilariously misinformed about the actual history of the text.
Sane Catholic,
Just about every source imagineable attributes significant, even “primary” authorship to Murray, most especially sources at the time. He was a member of the drafting committee under the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. He was called to help with the third and fourth drafts, the fifth being the final, with a few months in between the 4th and fifth. The fifth included some last minute additions to pacify opposition. It has been reported that he physically wrote significant portions of the later text. He also undertook other efforts to defend the text against skeptics. The idea of shifting the whole emphasis for religious liberty to human dignity is attributed to Murray and has even been described as “Murray’s doctrine” by fellow scholars who knew him. His contribution was also indirectly testified to by the “conservative” forces- the Coetus Internationalis Patrum- who were opposed to the document. If I’m correct I think they even sometimes referred to it as “murray’s text.” Also of note is that these critics thought the document contradicted the Church’s prior teaching, meaning that this notion was not created by the sspx or some small number of supposed cranks. It seems to be mostly neo-con sources who now try to discount murray’s contribution so many years later. Can you offer proof/references showing that Murray did not author good portions of the text or his ideas excluded or his contributory text was excluded from the final document?
What IS the history of the text?
You are of course free to disagree that VII was a “suggestion” or binding. What you cannot correctly do is call the council a “golden calf” while making an idol out of a medieval form of Mass.
As usual you have it backwards-the effort is to eradicate the “Old Mass” in favor of the Novus Ordo.
“Make an idol” out of a “medieval form of the mass” Give us a break.
You know that the mass is the worship of god, right? And the traditional mass that makes its purpose of the worship of god explicitly obvious, while the new rite in most cases has the resemblance and feel of a PTA meeting. Proper liturgy is not a minor issue, it’s central to the formation / nourishment of the faith. People who emphasize its importance and demand access to the TLM do so because they CARE about the continued propagation of the faith itself
Which Pope Benedict declared had never been been prohibited and any priest was free to say, yet so many bishops do try to ban.
David,
I am not able to read and analyze what I think may be germane. Professor Thomas Pink, Cambridge, at Nova et Vetera, 2013, V.11, No. 3, “The Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae: A Reply to Martin Rhonheimer.” Basically, I think Pink sees several aspects to Dignitatis Humanae; most of us lump its confused teaching into a confused lump. I don’t know if you have time to delve into this….If so, I’d be interested in your thinking.
Meiron,
This reply is a little late but I don’t have time to read the full 46 page article. Back at the time, Pink had a shorter version posted at the rorate caeli site. One main idea seems to be that Rhonheimer admits the document gives indication of contradicting prior teaching but he gets around this by arguing the teaching is not infallible, so was capable of change. Another very helpful thing to know is that opposition to the document, including the notion it contradicts prior teaching, was made during the council itself by a fair number of bishops. This would mean that hundreds of VII Fathers apparently “misinterpreted” the document! As far as I know, their concerns were never substantially addressed and refuted, either. Instead, some last minute changes were made to pacify critics and to get it passed and to provide supposed safeguards so people would not misuse the text. The latter is thus a sort of unwitting admission the text is problematic and prone to various interpretations/ambiguous; and the whole process itself shows it- opposition, changes to pacify people and get enough votes. (It was said to be in danger of passing at first and Paul VI personally intervened to push for it.)
The usual narrative we’re given, of course, such as in this piece and by healy and schindler (cf. the book chapp cites), is that objections were done outside of the council using the media or were later creations by the likes of the sspx. Knowing these dynamics is a game-changer, of course: it was problematic/prone to certain interpretations from the start vs. the idea that a small number of supposed cranks have been reading something into it that was never thought to be there. It’s also interesting that it was the conservatives at the council who objected, whereas today’s “conservatives” are the ones who deny there’s any problems; while yesterday’s conservatives are now viewed as “traditional.” So the issue is also about the shift that has occurred over time- what was then conservative is now seen as fringe traditionalism, while the neo-cons have shifted toward progressivism, though they like to think they are the ones in the middle.
Near the end of a separate Council history and near the end of a short account of “Humanae Dignitatis,” we have the two different but not-contradictory positions: that error has nor rights, but that people do:
[….] On December 3 [1964], Monsignor Giuseppe di Meglio, and Italian specialist on international law wrote: “…the fundamental principle of the schema has remained unchanged despite the [several dozen] amendments that have been introduced: that is, the right of error….Since the declaration on religious freedom has no dogmatic value, the negative votes of the Council Fathers will constitute a factor of great importance for the future studies of the declaration itself, and particularly for the interpretation to be placed upon it.
“Father Courtney Murray described Monsignor di Meglio’s position as the ‘tolerance’ theory, based on the principle that ‘truth has exclusive rights and error has no rights.’ Those who held this position, he said, were of the opinion that Catholicism should be the State religion wherever possible. Where this is not possible, non-Catholic religions were merely to be tolerated as the ‘lesser evil.’ By contrast, the supporters of what FatherCourtney Murray called ‘the more contemporary theory of religious freedom’ were convinced that this freedom was ‘an exigency of the dignity of the human person.’ They favored religious freedom not for opportunistic reasons, but because it was sound doctrine. [….] On this ballot [December 7], the negative votes dropped to 70, and 2308 Council Fathers voted in favor of the text [….] And ultimately they [the minority] went along with the majority view, when this finally became clear and was promulgated by the Pope as the common doctrine taught by the Second Vatican Council.”
Source: Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, SVD, “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II, Tan, 1966, pp. 247-252. “Wiltgen published a daily news service, in six different languages, of the proceedings of the Council (through his Council News Service, which went out to over 3,000 subscribers in 108 countries)…” (from be book cover).
Thanks, David. I have not much time to reply but…
The classic “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber” is online at Archive Internet. Its reporting is objective, clear, concise. Pages 159-166 paint a picture of the DH problematic controversies from the beginning in 1963 with the suppression, of its chapter ‘on the relations between church and state.’
Stark that the ‘declaration’ underwent more revisions and returned for more votes more than any other VCII document.
On the penultimate day of the Council, it finally had votes to pass. Wiltgen posits its passage as the desire for unity, not because it was free of problem. (Exhaustion at the end of the Council may have allowed its passage….participants likely wanted to get home.)
On the following day, Pope Paul VI “…rose to give his blessing….Throwing both arms high in the air, he cried out, ‘In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, go in peace!'”
In light of what thereafter began as horrid aftermath and continues to this day, the words seem extremely worrisome and ironic (if that be possible for a papal blessing).
“Then the bells of St. Peter’s began to ring.” (?as if a death knell for a papal funeral).
You lost me at “Chappy.” Why not be polite?
Certainly we must fairly, accurately, and fully depict the other side’s objection, which includes practice. In practice, the Holy See has teamed up with Communist China. And under the previous Pope, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, then-Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, after his visit to China, stated that the country was the “best implementer of the social doctrine of the Church,” which would include religious liberty unless you’re excluding religious liberty from social doctrine. Now let’s remember that Pope Francis never corrected him. This is but one example of where Vatican II documents themselves either say something that the SSPX finds contrary to perennial teaching or that the implementation of the Council by the Holy See, including the major staff, is contrary to the faith. Kissing the Quran, worshipping Pachamama idols, and other praxis is necessary to include when describing the SSPX or other critics of traditionalists. Then again, the rot within the Church is far worse than the boogeyman SSPX. We might also describe the Society’s description here as Strawman.
About the “whole truth,” your raise an undeniable perspective, but the case can be made that things are even worse than you report.
Three historical points:
FIRST, on the Provisional Agreement with China (2018, renewed in 2020, and then in 2022 for four years), this is up for review again this year…After the first signing, Cardinal Zen remarked that he thought the Secretariat of State had misled Pope Francis. So, partly, we have the likely cobweb of incoherent and manipulative bureaucracy.
But in any event, the Chinese situation decorates a huge part of Catholic church-state conflict since the beginning. It wasn’t until the Investiture Crisis was more-or-less resolved in A.D. 1122 that the Church claimed its place in selecting its own internal bishops. Still, it was as late as A.D. 1908 when the Emperor Frans Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire still exercised his privilege to veto a papal candidate from consideration.
SECOND, the Church is even more of an outsider in the modern world than today we might feel. But SSPX decided to claim that the last Council is an outsider from the true Church, itself, and that it is inseparable from the infiltrated, yes, and later mutiny and other post-council abuses (Pachamama, etc. etc. etc.) which all of us disdain.
But, today, where the still indwelling (!) Holy Spirit might be intervening: der Synodal Weg was also self-scheduled to cross the red line on July 1, likewise inflicting self-excommunication, for formally/liturgically blessing homosexual couples as “couples”. Like an amoeba, Cardinal Marx et al must have sensed the lights being turned on. All is quiet on the Western Front…11,000 German priests instead of 732 for SSPX, and 20 million Catholics instead of half a million.
We might be reminded of the year A.D. 496 when King Clovis I converted to Orthodox Christianity rather than the spreading Arianism, and founded the Merovingian Dynasty including the western and southern half of Germany. Maybe history will record that in the 21st century, under Leo XIV, the conversion finally took even in Germania.
THIRD, our current moment is no longer about the nature of the Triune One (Nicaea A.D. 325), but rather about the nature of Man—the Council affirmation of the “transcendent dignity of the human person” (and as binary/complementary, and not with subjective license but with “immunity from coercion” in religion ). And, about the original commission from the incarnate Jesus Christ to his Apostolic Succession, to engage in a fallen and always hostile world. The validity of Vatican II as completing the “suspended” and never adjourned Vatican I, now with the very same “collegiality” (Lumen Gentium, Ch. 3 with the clarifying Prefatory Note), and focused on ressourcement and aggiornamento, both.
SUMMARY: While planted in a supposedly “post-modern” world, are we still at the very beginning? Think our current and still pre-Christian civilization, and the transplanted 7th-century Islam)? And, when Napoleon taunted Cardinal Consalvi that he would destroy the Church, the Secretary of State replied: “Your Majesty, the Catholic clergy have been trying to destroy it for 1,800 years and haven’t succeeded.
Lifeboat Econe is not the Barque of Peter.
Truly, thanks are due to God for the ability to fully recognize and understand traditional, orthodox, and theologically profound documents at age 20. Or at any age.
A question to be reckoned with emits from paragraph 3, immediately prior to paragraph 4:
“leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men”.
Paragraph 3: “This Vatican Council likewise professes its belief that it is upon the human conscience that these obligations fall and exert their binding force. The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power”.
Although the document in respect to freedom from State coercion within a civil society is correct, it does not adequately respond to the coercive nature of truth “by virtue of its own truth”. First, external to the purpose of Dignitatis Humanae Catholics are nonetheless obliged to believe what is said every Sunday when reciting the Creed.
Insofar as the SSPX argument there is an underlying validity to their argument that all are morally obliged to submit to the truth of Christ. Although we’re no longer in the age of Christendom.
Otherwise we are conscientiously obliged to respect the positions of other faiths if not in all instances their presumed conscientious beliefs. Since there are religions that hold beliefs that in themselves reject civil and religious freedoms, and the sovereign right of the so-called infidel to live.
At the theological level, also this from Ratzinger/Benedict:
“Equality, which is a presupposition of interreligious dialogue, refers to the ‘equal personal dignity of the parties’ in dialogue, not to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ–who is God himself made man–in relation to the founders of the other religions” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, 2000, n. 22).
And, about “freedom from State coercion within a civil society,” the freedom of persons from coercion within a non-civil (!) society–the mosque/state of Islam–is also affirmed. Yes? On this point, Dignitatis Humanae was way ahead of its time.
Yes, there’s further reference to that:
“All the more is it a violation of the will of God and of the sacred rights of the person and the family of nations when force is brought to bear in any way in order to destroy or repress religion, either in the whole of mankind or in a particular country or in a definite community” (DH 6).
Also, Your quotation of Ratzinger/Benedict regarding the exception of doctrinal content during interreligious dialogue is excellent.
Can’t see how anyone can respect a falsehood, only the person professing it. His right to do so publicly is not a matter of “universal law” as DH seems to infer.
The SSPX is right. Vatican II must be revisited and authoritatively interpreted. It’s not the end of the world. The Church did it with the Council of Constance.
You don’t have to respect the content of another’s speech but he, as do you, posses the natural right to express it. You cannot coerce faith and certainly not by suppressing speech.
The SSPX is dead wrong. Vatican II has been authoritatively promulgated and interpreted. The fact that some prefer their own will to that of the Church is the cause of their separation from salvation.
Nobody has the natural right to do anything wrong, including express religious falsehood. Potential restrictions on the expression of religious falsehood do not mean coercing people to believe. The Church has always rejected coercing people into “believing.
The natural right to free speech holds that the freedom to express ideas, opinions, and beliefs is a fundamental, inalienable human right that exists prior to any government, rather than a privilege granted by the state.
From Rorate Caeli:
7/09/2026
Écône: A Sign of Contradiction? – by Côme de Prévigny
Hostile commentators have canceled their vacations. Videos, op-eds, analyses, and public statements have been arriving in rapid succession. On X, priests are speaking of almost nothing else, sometimes replacing their Sunday preaching with impassioned admonitions. And yet, if one is to believe these same critics, the SSPX is merely an insignificant fringe group — practically a sect on the verge of extinction. So why this disproportionate relentlessness? Why this feverish mobilization over a handful of priests and faithful who, we are told, amount to nothing? Does it really require this expenditure of energy to deal with a few unhinged sheep?
Could this not be, at bottom, a diversion? A way of numbing oneself in an internal ecclesiastical controversy rather than confronting reality: the advance of radical Islam in Europe, the spread of wokism, the generalized moral and cultural degradation, or the imminent vote on euthanasia in France?
The SSPX thus becomes, despite itself, a sign of contradiction. Not out of any desire to provoke, but because everything said against it ends up contradicting itself. It lays bare the incoherences, the fears, and the blind spots of its adversaries. Through their extraordinary mobilization and their passionate interest, those adversaries are paying the Society, entirely against their will, a resounding tribute. These troubled days are forcing questions that many would prefer to avoid.”
The SSPX is a diversion. A diversion from living the Gospel message and spreading the good news. It is therefore a worse threat to the salvation of souls than the boogeyman of so called woke or radical Islam. The gates of hell may not prevail against His Church but His so called followers might just yet.
“diversion from living the Gospel message and spreading the good news”
We have self-professed Bishop quoting that blithering idiot John Lennon (if there’s no God, why the hell should I care he was shot?) saying “Imagine” is the most beautiful song and he imagines a world without religion. For that matter, if there’s no God and no religion, why should I just act on my baser impulses and reduce his carbon footprint to zero, nada zilch?
We’ll see if he’s told the end of religion starts with his excommunication and loss of station.
In the movie “The Scarlet and the Black (1983)”, the monsignor (Gregory Peck) ventures to the painted line, beyond which he would be outside of the Church and immediately seized by the Nazi occupiers and assassins. He waves his toe over the line, but does not cross…
As anywhere in the secular world, so to within the Church: The artform is “how to commit truth…and to get away with it.” Being right in a way is not enough; it’s critical to be right in the right way.
The SSPX would be a great witness within the Church, bright lining its grievances, (too selectively gleaned from the Documents of Vatican II as a whole), but also engaging is a more surgical approach to see, truly, whether the fault lies (a) with the Council itself, OR whether (b) the lies lie (!) with the termites who have exploited wording that could always have been less imperfect. (What Benedict termed the “real” Council of the Documents versus the “virtual” Council of Hans Kung et al working the media circuit.)
The current outcome is like a bomb squad who has just cut the wrong wire. It could have been different…
The possible benefit seems to be that Der Synodal Weg ringleaders, with at least ten times the clerics and at least 30 times the total membership of SSPX, seem to still respect or at least fear the line. Eventually, how might a defused discussion with SSPX about details that do matter still help in reversing the overall ecclesial and moral freefall exemplified by the likes of Cardinals Marx and Kasper and their line of second rate lieutenants and ZdK mimics of 1789?
Last year alone the Church in Germany lost more members than the SSPX has in total.
Furthermore, it is alleged that when this “novel” teaching is paired with the Council’s robust affirmation of the importance of ecumenical and inter religious dialogue, you end up with an overall theological ethos of religious relativism and indifferentism.”
The issue is this, Christ Has Revealed that the purpose of Catholic ecumenical and inter religious dialogue, is not to worship false idols by denying The Divinity of Jesus The Christ and thus deny The Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Salvational Love of The Blessed Trinity; the purpose of Catholic ecumenical and inter religious dialogue is to bring others to Christ, so that they can freely come to Know, Love, And Serve The True God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love in this life, and, hopefully, if in dying, be restored in Christ, In The Unity of The Holy Ghost, and be with The Blessed Trinity, Forever, In Heaven.
Authentic Love is not coercive, nor is it possessive, nor does it serve to manipulate for the sake of self gratification; Authentic Love is a Gift, given purely from one’s Heart. That is why you can know we are Christian because we affirm God’s Divine Love and thus God’s Divine Law do not compromise through any form of lukewarmness.
We can know through both Faith and reason that Aristotle was wrong to suggest that Virtue is a means between two extremes, one of excess and one of deficiency.
Only God, The Ordered Communion of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) Is Perfect Truth And Perfect Love and Virtuous, because Virtue requires The Truth Of Love.
“I Give you a New Commandment, Love One Another As I Have Loved you.”- The Way, The Truth, And The Life (Light) Of Perfect Divine Eternal Salvational Love Incarnate, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ.
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
And thus we can know through both Faith and Reason, if you do not desire Salvation for yourself and your beloved, you are not following Jesus The Christ, and affirming God’s Divine Will and thus God’s Divine Law.
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Behold your Mother.” Christ On The Cross
The modernist heresy denies that The Sacrifice Of The Cross, The Sacrament Most Holy, The Sacrament Divine, Is The Sacrifice Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, and Christ Is The Fulfillment Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
“Only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been Baptized and profess The True Faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the Unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Coporis 22).”
To be a legitimate authority, one cannot possibly deny as the modernists do, in order to create a god in their own image, according to their own, conscience, apart from The True God, that our Call to Holiness , to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and our deeds , is a Call to be virtuous in all our relationships and experiences, by accepting God’s Grace And Mercy, As Temples Of The The Holy Ghost.
Jorge Bergoglio’s “refusal of submission to the supreme pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him“, was evident, prior to his election to the Papacy, when his heresy was manifested and made public ,in his book, On Heaven And Earth, on page 117, when he stated, in regards to same sex sexual relationships and thus same sex sexual acts, “If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected. Now, if the union is given the category of marriage, there could be children affected. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help shape their identity.”
Jorge Bergoglio defected from The Catholic Church , prior to his election to The Papacy, by denying sin done in “private” relationship is sin, denying The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and that we, who are Baptized Catholic, are Called to be, “Temples of The Holy Ghost”. (God’s Universal Call To Holiness), and thus deny The Unity of The Holy Ghost, making it appear as if it is Loving and Merciful to desire that we or our Beloved remain in our sin, and not desire to overcome our sinful inclinations and become transformed by accepting Salvational Love, God’s Gift of Grace and Mercy. If it were true that it is Loving and Merciful that we desire that we or our beloved remain in our sin and not desire to overcome our disordered inclination , and become transformed through Salvational Love, God’s Gift of Grace and Mercy, we would have no need for our only Savior, Jesus The Christ.
The golden mean of Aristotle makes sense to me. For example, the virtue of fortitude has recklessness as its extreme and cowardice its deficiency. A courageous person should not be foolishly rash or impetuous, rushing in to solve a problem without judging its nature and whether he has the best means to solve it. A person with fortitude should not be timid in confronting a problem; he should not lack perseverance when a task becomes difficult.
Prudence, or practical wisdom, is the virtue which can help us know whether our acts of fortitude (or temperance or justice, in practice) tend toward excess or deficiency. It goes without saying that God’s grace is necessary to help us improve and perfect each virtue as God would have them be perfect, and that includes perfecting prudence too.
Blessings to you ND. Thanks for all your goodness.
I accept Vatican II just as I accept all of the Councils. That would include Lateran V which was valid but not helpful, as it finished the same year that Luther posted his 95 Theses.
Vatican II was valid but not helpful. Why else would we be having articles like this one (and I am not criticizing this particular article) 60 years after the council. Every measurable item such as clergy and religious leaving, churches closing, millions of Catholics no longer practicing their faith, are much worse than prior to the council.
And, this is just one of so many articles about how we should read the documents in continuity with previous Church teachings.
Does this say something about how the documents were written? Does this maybe say that doctrinal councils were good, but pastoral councils are not?
When Trent says that if any one says that Jesus is not really and truly present in the Eucharist let him be anathema, there is not much room for what does it really mean.
It is not that pastoral documents can’t be helpful, but maybe they should not be part of a Church Council.
The two popes involved with Vatican II said that it was A pastoral council not a dogmatic council. The SSPX said they accept all of the doctrines prior to the council, but the Vatican says they have to accept the doctrines of Vatican II. Isn’t this confusing?
And finally I would add for those who say we must adhere to all of the Vatican II documents I would say fine – let us start with the document on the liturgy, because the Mass we have today is definitely not the Mass described in that document. I would suggest that if we had the Mass described in Vatican II, something of a hybrid with latin retained and some vernacular, and without all the additions such as priest facing the people, receiving communion standing and in the hand, we may not have had the whole SSPX issue.
Some of Vatican II was helpful.
The dogma the SSPX do not accept is Papal authority. We have the Mass described in Vatican II and you can receive Communion in the posture you feel is best. The problems you decry have to due with the sexual abuse scandal. All of them.
SSPX recognizes the validity and authority of the Pope. They chose to disobey that authority.
The NO Mass is not the Mass prescribed in Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) in many respects. For example, SC says: “In order that the faithful may more actively participate in the sacred liturgy, let them be once again made to sing Gregorian Chant as a congregation.” Have you ever attended a NO Mass where you heard Gregorian Chant from the congregation? I’ve heard it only at TLM.
For more examples, see Fr. Fessio (founder of Ignatius Press and CWR)’s analysis at
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/12/07/the-mass-of-vatican-ii/
In the article, he discusses what “actual participation” means. I would add only that Aquinas talked about it too–as participation in God’s grace during Mass–and it has little or almost nothing to do with neighborly hand-shaking, peace-signing, or chattering among parishioners before, after, and sometimes during Mass. It has nothing to do with putting kneelers up and putting kneelers down at various parts of the Mass. It has nothing to do with wearing immodest dress, gum chewing, or checking scores of sports teams on cell phones while Mass is in progress. If your NO Mass is like those in my area, you WILL see and hear these behaviors, guaranteed most all of them, on any random Sunday. But hey. There is the Eucharist, and all is forgiven if not forgotten.
You clearly have not assisted at Mass outside of your bubble. Our Parish is quite good at Kyrie Eleison. Visit us we are very welcoming.
What in God’s good name are you talking about? I don’t care if you are welcoming.
I do not assist at any Mass in any bubble, so if that is what you see, you either need new glasses or new psychiatrist.
I’m very glad to hear that your ‘Parish’ is quite good at Kyrie Eleison.
You do know there is a difference between Greek and Latin, right?
As Meiron says, we do not have the Mass of Vatican II, which is self evident by reading the document.
Also, problems existed well before the sexual abuse crisis.
To Steveb: I am not saying that you are wrong, but could you list the measurable items from Vatican II that are helpful?
@ Crusader
I have read the documents and can assure you that I attend the Mass described in VII.
@ Meiron
Chant can be in different languages. It’s a musical form, not a dialect.
The difficulty with ‘Dignitatis humanae’ is not that it says that no one should be coerced to embrace the practice of a given religion, but that it says categorically: “Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious” (DH, 3). The first part is sound Catholic teaching; the second part at the very least LOOKS like a contradiction to previous teaching. There is a big difference between being FORCED TO ACT and being PREVENTED FROM ACTING, and it was the clear teaching of the Church before Vatican II that the PUBLIC religious acts of non-Catholics (especially things like proselytizing or blasphemy) could at least potentially undermine the common good in a Catholic society and thus could licitly be limited. We cannot claim that Vatican II is simply reacting to changed conditions in modern times because Leo XIII and Pius XII (for example) were already very clear that TOLERATING public expressions of false religion could be permitted prudentially in order to avoid greater evil. But Vatican II establishes this “right” as a matter of principle. Again, we are not talking about the question of being coerced to practice Catholicism, but just the narrow point of whether non-Catholics have an innate right not to be prevented from the public expression of their false religion. On this single point there is, at the very least, an apparent contradiction.
Although it is praiseworthy for Catholic authors to seek continuity when texts of the magisterium seem to be in tension (and indeed, it should even be a Catholic’s first instinct to do so), it is reassuring that the author at least seems to accept the possibility that ‘Dignitatis humanae’ may be one of those “Magisterial documents [which] might not be free from all deficiencies ” (‘Donum veritatis,’ 24), even though he himself obviously does not see it this way (and seems not fully to appreciate the criticism of those who do, like Bishop Schneider). After all, Vatican II itself stated: “the sacred Council defines as binding on the Church only those things in matters of faith and morals which it shall openly declare to be binding,” adding that “the mind of the Council becomes known either from the matter treated or from its manner of speaking, in accordance with the norms of theological interpretation” (‘Nota praevia’ of 16 November 1964). Such norms of interpretation would surely include taking into account “the fact that not all documents of the Council are of the same rank,” as Cardinal Ratzinger himself admitted (Address to the Bishops of Chile, 13 July 1988). ‘Dignitatis humanae’ is ranked as a “declaration,” not in itself the highest degree of teaching even in terms of Vatican II.
It is true that adherents of the SSPX are too quick to attribute outright error to Vatican II, but partisans of Vatican II are sometimes stubborn in their refusal to acknowledge that Vatican II itself is indeed occasionally problematic — not just the “Council of the Media”. And if DH 1 does pay lip service to the “traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ,” one would be hard pressed to find full-throated affirmations of this traditional doctrine in the conciliar and post-conciliar preaching of the popes.
True. It’s as if expressing, however gently, that it’s the moral duty of men and societies to acknowledge “the true religion and the one Church of Christ” is somehow always a violation of another’s privacy.
Does the Right to Privacy in government settings like the DVA, and in other areas including the private sector, hospitals and nursing homes where there are restrictions on proselytizing violate that moral duty?
There must be a balance in which attesting to the one, true faith is practiced with intelligence and respect of who, and where that attestation is done.
There is a dude in a white dress,
He knows right from wrong.
It’s bad to disagree with him.
You’d better go along!
He is “our sweetest Christ on Earth”
(St. Catherine’s famous phrase)
So genuflect and show your worth
And give the dude his praise.
He waves from windows, blesses crowds,
And tweets his daily thought.
Catholics everywhere, devout,
Must do what they’re taught:
Obey the things he tells you all,
For his intentions pray,
Among the world’s divergent ways
His soul is clear as day.
“Do not forget the human”, warns
The dude in a white dress.
To him, advances in AI,
Although the may impress,
Put profit over the soul,
Remove our limitations,
Which turns us all into machines,
With bland optimizations.
But, since the Spirit is his guide,
His teaching is quite true.
The message of this humble dude
Is meant for me and you.
Indeed, to people of good will
It is an awful sight,
To see schismatics rebel from
The dude in pearly white.
There is a dude in a white dress,
He’s yappy in his preen,
And when he speaks, the planet shakes
And snow plains turn green.
“I welcome everyone”, he says,
“No, we do not exclude!”
What other faith has even got
Such a majestic dude?
Brava Signorinella.
Righteous! Way to Go!
Or as US teens say: Your aura points are adding up.
1) The article seems everywhere to implicitly admit that there ARE ambiguities in DH. The very nuances between minimalist and maximalist readings that he does point out are evidence of this ambiguity
2) While Chapp seems to favor a minimalist reading of it, others (including many prelates) disagree. DH was used as a reason for the Vatican itself to encourage Italy, Columbia etc to change their constitutions to remove remaining aspects of being confessional states.
3) Chapp seems to not quite grasp the the reality the preclude conciliar teaching had long already established the idea of tolerance for other religions in ways that very much were in continuity with prior tradition (which even the SSPX would agree with and champion. No one is advocating pursuing violent oppression of other religious groups). The novelty that DH introduced was an apparent “right” a person has to choose their religion. Perhaps it’s possible (Thomas pink style) to insist DH was speaking only about state coercion, but the way DH is written very much seems to introduce a god-given right to reject god himself, and the most common interpretation is exactly that, mirroring the enlightenment idea of religious liberty found in the US constitution.
If you want traditionalists to discontinue their loud uproar over DH, the church must eventually explicitly deal with the common errors associated with it, and even admit its own practical decisions in DH’s aftermath (eg getting Italy to amend its constitution) were problematic
And also, it is true that DH has no infallible authority on the matter. And if we are to read the papal magisterium in continuity with itself, one must recognize the continuity on the explicit subject of religious liberty found in the pontificates of roughly 1820 through the 1950s. Because of this consistency over time, the burden is on DH and the post conciliar papal magisterium to be read in light of it, rather than the other way around
There have been (more or less plausible) attempts to show that D.H. does not (necessarily) contradict the previous magisterium. I am thinking of Professor Thomas Pink, Professor John Lamont, Pere Basile from the Abbey of Le Barroux, Father Brian Harrison, and several others. Some of these attempts are more plausible than others; and of course, some of these proposed explanations mutually contradict each other. So: (1) the teaching of D.H. is not necessarily erroneous, and one should even take as the starting point the probability that it is not erroneous, but (2) if it takes hundreds of pages of articles and books to demonstrate that a teaching of an ecumenical council is not erroneous, and even after 60 years it is not even clear which explanation (if any) is the correct one … then there is still a major problem. Both the SSPX and V2 apologists like George Weigel and Dr. Chapp seem not to realize that Vatican II can be BOTH free from heresy AND nonetheless still problematic.