Open Windows: Why Vatican II Was Necessary

Crisis Magazine | March, 2004 | George Sim Johnston

[CatherineSiena]

Although the council did not issue a decree on moral theology, its documents are shot through with a "personalism" that set a new course for teaching morality.

The most radical departure from history in the council’s teachings concerned religious freedom.

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George Sim Johnston's Crisis Magazine apologia pro Vatican II. Although I certainly contend many of his assertions and disagree with most of his conclusions (and his naive optimism, even now, is downright amusing), this is about as reasonable and intelligent of an argument defending the Second Vatican Council as one will find

I personally am a big fan of George Sim Johnston, as he's the most honest conservative I've ever read. While many conservatives will complain and contest even the most obvious observations of traditionalists as to what the Council changed (asserting that the changes are merely figments of our imagination), Johnston freely admits, defends and celebrates those changes (ala Yves Congar). Dialogue is much more productive when the participants are not having to waste time arguing about basic facts and definitions, and get to the heart of the matter - the results and effects of said changes.

[sinkspur]

Thanks for posting this. It is one of the most concise and precise defenses of Vatican II I've ever read.

I shall have to investigate more of this man's writing.

[ultima ratio]

Johnston argues why Vatican II was necessary--but he does not argue that it was successful. Nor can he. In almost every instance in which he cites the need for change, the change was delivered into the hands of modernists who made bad situations far worse.

1. There was a need for the Church to encounter modernity in order to redeem the modern world. But the end result has been that modernity itself has swept away the very defense mechanisms that the Church had constructed to protect itself from the world's corruption. Its monastic isolation destroyed, the Church is now far more worldly and humanistic. But this has not spiritualized the world a bit. It has instead grown bolder in its attacks on the Church. The more the Church has humbled itself and sought to accommodate to the world, the more the world heaps scorn on the Church. The Church has, in fact, lost the high ground in its fight against the encroachments of the world. What's happening now is far worse that what was happening before the Council.

2. Johnston argues the Church had a need to present its case more convincingly to the intellectual community, to utilize a less ossified philosophic system. But the result has been to incorporate existential and phenomenological rationales which have relativized the Church's own belief in the immutability of its truths. The rock on which the Church has been built has been fast turning into quicksand as a result. Not even the most established truths are immune from an ever more skeptical scrutiny.

3. It is true the Church had been identified with the Curia bureaucracy before Vatican II. But at least that identification was justified, since the Catholic Church and the Curia reflected the same faith. Vatican II has changed all this. It now speaks in separate voices. It is difficult to know exactly what is true any longer just by attending to the Vatican. Is indifferentism still a heresy? Then why have Assisi prayer meetings been organized? Is faith in the Resurrection passe? If not, why has a bishop been awarded the red hat for thinking so? The point is, the separation between the Catholic Church and the Vatican has been radical and disturbing--even alarming. This has endangered the faith of millions.

4. Johnston speaks correctly of the formation of priests before Vatican II which caused many good men to give up their vocations. It is probably true they were treated as schoolboys--though it should be remembered they entered the seminary back then at very young ages--some in their mid-teens in pre-seminary institutions. But this was not universally true. Some of the great orders had magnificent formation programs--the Jesuits, in particular. They developed men of integrity and high-mindedness, with first-rate intellects. And at least all seminaries everywhere had a vigorous prayer life and developed habits of daily prayerfulness. All this has changed for the worse. Seminaries are now not only located on college campuses, but seminarians are indistinguishable from other college students. They cruise the bars. They watch R-rated movies. They have affairs. What they don't do is pray much.

5. Johnston argues the Council wished to give lay persons more amplitude to fulfill their vocations in the Church. This was certainly a need in the preconciliar Church. But the postconciliar solution was bizarre. Instead of the laity Christianizing the world, it entered the sanctuary of our churches, blurring the distinction between the priesthood of the ordained and the priesthood of the baptized--in the Protestant fashion. This reminds me of Christ's parable of the possessed man whose soul was swept clean of devils, only to have it repossessed by devils even worse than before. Lord spare us from such fixes!

6. Johnston glosses over the liturgical problem. Yes, there was the matter of lay participation in the Mass. But the solution of Paul VI has been to destroy the ancient liturgy and to substitute an abomination. The new liturgy is Protestant, rather than Catholic, in its theology. What is worse, it contravenes the Council of Trent. It is the single most destructive force in the Church today, reducing belief in major dogmas of the Catholic faith. As such, it is a danger to the faith.

My point is this: whatever the weaknesses before Vatican II, these were miniscule when compared to what the Council has actually achieved. If before the Council there were problems, after the Councils there were only disasters. And this was because the Council delivered the Church to the hands of its enemies, to the very people the preconciliar popes had warned us to avoid. They seized the opportunity to do what they had been eager to do for centuries--destroy what had been so zealously guarded by the Catholic Church for two millenia.

[sinkspur]

whatever the weaknesses before Vatican II, these were miniscule when compared to what the Council has actually achieved. If before the Council there were problems, after the Councils there were only disasters

There were more than "problems" and "weaknesses" before the Council. There was an ossification of the Faith, a childish Catholicism that crumbled under the kleig lights of modern philosophy.

The crumbling simply happened sooner, rather than later.

The problem now is that catechesis is still focused on children, rather than adults. The Catholic Church teaches children, and plays with adults.

Jesus taught adults, and played with children.

[CatherineSiena]

Johnston argues why Vatican II was necessary--but he does not argue that it was successful.

I agree with you to some extent. Whether or not the Council was needed is a different argument than whether it succeeded in adequately addressing those needs. Due to the laxity employed in the formation of documents, and the subsequent manipulations of those same documents to justify all sorts of aberrations, it seems in hindsight to at least be ill-advised. Most coming to the Council shared the same sense of optimism and devotion to renewing the Church. Unfortunately, a not insignificant group came with their own agenda, and achieved successful results. At least, the Fathers at future Counsils cannot claim to be ignorant of the liberal's tricks. They will have books like The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber to use as guidebooks for tactics to be on the lookout for. Knowing the liberals though, they'll come up with all new tricks by then.

I think some traditionalists overstate (and weaken) their case by making the claim that the Church before Vatican II was flawless and the state of the Mass in 1962 was the height of perfection. It should be readily admitted that certain improvements needed to be made, even if convening a "new type Council" to address these particular needs during the cultural environment that was the 1960's, was not the most successful undertaking in Church history.

[ultima ratio]

You know very little of modern philosophy if you think the Church's perspective crumbled because of its "kleig lights". Modern philosophy is primarily epistemological and inevitably leads to a subjective cul-de-sac from which there is no way out. Philosophy itself becomes ultimately impossible. This is why modernists affirm the relativity of truth--because for them truth is whatever you personally experience it to be. Otherwise it's unknowable.

For the Church to have embraced such a self-defeating process could only have led to disaster. And it has. Because what's new is not necessarily better. It is typical of the arrogance of modernist thinking to think otherwise. Yet in fact, not everything new is better, sometimes it's far worse than the status quo--as every true conservative realizes. We will soon learn the truth of this if liberals get their way on the issue of gay marriage.

The fact is, wisdom and high intelligence are not the same. The ancients like the Church Fathers had less information, less science, but had far more actual wisdom than we. The difference between being intellectual and being wise--judging soundly according to a well-founded discernment of reality--has always been critical--and until very recently the Church had always appreciated the difference.

[sinkspur]

"The substance of the ancient doctrine is one thing, and its formulation is another."

[Conservative til I die]

Wow, this was coherent, intelligent and largely dead on. I'm surprised.

[Conservative til I die]

I'm not sure what you're saying here. The Church shouldn't teach children the faith?

[sinkspur]

The Church shouldn't teach children the faith, to the exclusion of adults.

In our parish, we have just as many Catholics in our catechumenate course as we do those who are actually catechumens.

There is a hunger for catechesis and knowledge among Catholics, and Catholic parishes need to teach adults as well as children.

[ultima ratio]

"There was an ossification of the Faith, a childish Catholicism that crumbled under the kleig lights of modern philosophy."

Don't you ever tire of speaking nonsense? It was not the Faith itself that was ossified. The article speaks of an ossified philosophic system that was incapable of communicating with the modern world. But the faith itself was strong. These practicioners of what you dare to call a "childish Catholicism" built great churches all over the western world; they developed school systems and universities; they ran hospitals; their young priests and nuns--tens of thousands in the prime of life--went off as missionaries to remote corners of the planet to feed the hungry and to tend the sick and to spread the Gospel, not seeing friends and family for decades at a time. They put modern Catholics to shame. All this was fueled by an army of lay people saying their rosaries and attending Mass with far more frequency than anything known today. It is today's Catholics who seem childish in comparison.

[Tuco Ramirez]

The biggest problem with the Council was that the Pope died without finishing it, and the Church was exposed to abuses "in the spirit of Vatican II". Given that the Pope who convened the Council was dead, just about anything could be proclaimed to be "in the spirit...".

Many people who hail John XXIII as a liberal hero have no concrete evidence that he was such; so much of the garbage that happened since the Council has been attributed to him (often years after his death).

I believe he was a staunch defender of Pius IX; hardly a "progressive" figure.

[independentmind]

There is a hunger for catechesis and knowledge among Catholics, and Catholic parishes need to teach adults as well as children.

You are right about this, and if I had access to such a class in my parish, I would take advantage of it.

[ultima ratio]

"In our parish, we have just as many Catholics in our catechumenate course as we do those who are actually catechumens"

And I dread the thought of what you're teaching them.

[sinkspur]

All this was fueled by an army of lay people saying their rosaries and attending Mass with far more frequency than anything known today

Lay people saying the Rosary DURING Mass.

A comparison would be the Apostles over in a corner, muttering Jewish prayers during the Last Supper.

You can't stand that some Catholics, indeed the vast majority of Catholics prefer the Novus Ordo. I'm all for the wider availability of the Tridentine Mass, and I've never derided it, except its exclusion of participation.

But, you and I have been around this tree before.

[tiki]

Is there not an OCIA class in your parish? It's not only for new converts and if you have a good teacher, you can learn a lot.

[sinkspur]

And I dread the thought of what you're teaching them.

Do you teach? If you don't, you're wasting a talent.

I'm doing something for my parish, and for the Church. I'm sorry you don't appreciate that.

[sinkspur]

We've got three different Scripture study courses, the Catechumenate (primarily for catechumens, but open to interested Catholics), and a "Re-membering Church" group, which has swelled to 65 people. It is aimed at Catholics who have fallen away from the Church. Lots of discussion, and lots of listening to WHY these people fell away from the Church. I've done one of these classes, and I was totally exhausted at the end of the two hours.

The class has grown so large, we're going to have to split it in two.

There's a separate track for the high-school children of these fallen away Catholics, and it's well attended as well.

[Publius]

It is one of the most concise and precise defenses of Vatican II I've ever read.

Also read Avery Dulles' writing on the subject. Father Dulles, the son of John Foster Dulles, was given the red hat by JP2 because of his writing on Vatican II.