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From: Progressivist Bishops Hijack Vatican II

Vatican II

We will take a quick look at an episode that demonstrates Modernism at work at the Second Vatican Council, and Modernism at work in those Churchmen for whom Vatican II is new center of the universe.

As is well-known, Pope John XXIII established a Central Preparatory Committee prior to the Council. This Committee spent two years preparing the schemas for the Council. These were to be the main drafts the bishops would discuss once Vatican II opened.

These first drafts were in splendid accord with the traditional teaching of the Church. Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office oversaw the drafting of the documents, and the work was carried out with great care. If these documents had been followed at the Council, the discussions of the bishops and theologians would have been forced to proceed along traditional lines.

Of the original schemas on Vatican II, Archbishop Maracel Lefebvre said:

“I was nominated a member of the Central Preparatory Commission by the Pope and I took an assiduous and enthusiastic part in its two years of work. The central Commission had the responsibility of checking and examining all the preparatory schemas which came from the specialist commissions … This work was carried out very conscientiously and meticulously. I still possess the seventy-two preparatory schemas; in them the Church’s doctrine is absolutely orthodox. They were adapted in a certain manner to our times, but with great moderation and discretion.”37

As is also well known, however, immediately after the Council opened, the liberal bishops from the Rhineland countries protested against the original documents. They complained that they had no input in them, and put forward other specious objections. The entire matter was put to a vote, and the documents that had been two years in preparation were scrapped.

Archbishop Lefebvre recalls,

“Everything was ready for the date announced and on 11th October, 1962, the Fathers took their places in the nave of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. But then an occurrence took place which had not been foreseen by the Holy See. From the very first days, the Council was besieged by the progressive forces … fifteen days after the opening sessions not one of the seventy-two schemas remained. All had been sent back, rejected, thrown into the wastepaper basket.”38

This scrapping of the Council’s agenda left 2500 bishops in Rome with nothing to talk about. The original agenda had been trashed. The bishops then relied on the liberal theologians at the Council to draft new documents in order to steer the Council away from a traditional framework, and towards a more progressive, ecumenical orientation.39

37. Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, [Kansas City: Angelus, 1992], p. 102.

38. Ibid., p. 102.

39. Two of the finest books on this subject are The Rhine Flows into the Tiber by Father Ralph Wiltgen, SVD, and Pope John‘s Council by Michael Davies. Also, for even more information that shows that the progressivist takeover of Vatican II was effectively planned prior to the Council, see “The Tiber Flows into the Tiber: Who Was Responsible for the Liberal Hijacking of Vatican II?”, J. Vennari. Two part series, June & July, 2008. (Reprint RP0807-12 available from CFN).