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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.

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.