The "dialog Mass" predates Pius XII. Which only makes your point stronger, but I just wished to clarify. At least in concept it goes back to the major liturgical reforms of Pius X, and it certainly was already beginning to be implemented during the pontificate of Pius XI. It's true though, that it became much more ubiquitous during the reign of Pius XII.
This guy is a real piece of work. Really...
Thursday, November 04, 2004
One More, Then I'm Done for the Day
To everybody who is trying to figure out an orthodox way to say "Vatican 2 was a mistake and should never have happened":
Rather than me having to hop to it and step and fetch it to meet the insatiable demands of reactionary dissenters with more and ever more "proof from magisterial documents" for the faith of the Church that an Ecumenical Council is fundamentally the work of the Holy Spirit, how about you give me "magisterial proof" that the Church has ever denied that an ecumenical council is fundamentally the work of the Holy Spirit?
I already cited my documents. They were not, of course, good enough for the reactionary dissenters who seek loopholes and can always find them. However, the burden of proof is not on me. The burden of proof is on those who wish to argue that councils or papal elections they don't like are not the work of the Holy Spirit. Good luck showing that from the teaching of the Church.
Okay. Now I've got work to do.
posted by Mark Shea at 11:36 AM
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One more on the Alternative History business
A reader more or less sums up several complaints when he writes:
Mr. Shea takes a true idea (the Holy Spirit protects the Church from requiring the laos to believe what is not true) and by filtering it through his ultramontism arrives at something that is not true (the situation of the Church after an infallible council is necessarily better than the previous situation).
I never said this. I said that, since an Ecumenical Council is first and foremost the work of the Holy Spirit (who is, after all, God and who knows what's best) we can safely say that the Council is the best thing that could have happened. This is not Panglossian. This is common sense. It does *not* follow from this that "the situation of the Church after an infallible council is necessarily better than the previous situation". One may, for instance, reasonably say that the situation after Nicaea was not "better" than before Nicaea. The Church slid into Arianism for the most part and finally the Empire was ruled by Julian, who said, "Forget the whole thing" and tried to reinstitute paganism. Was the situation of the Church "better" or worse?
Well, because of the teaching of the Council, the Church was equipped to deal better with a worsening situation--and weathered the storm. I more or less think this is going to be the long term effect of V2, once Catholics stop jabbering about the "Spirit of Vatican 2" and start paying attention to the teaching of Vatican 2. I am most emphatically not a Pangloss. It's just that I'm also not somebody who says an Ecumenical Council is not fundamentally the work of the Spirit when things don't go the way I think they should go.
posted by Mark Shea at 10:29 AM