Posted on 07/25/2020 4:18:06 PM PDT by ebb tide
Sandro Magister, a prominent critic of the current pontificate—with good reason aplenty— seems to have abandoned his critical faculty when it comes to the suggestion by Archbishop Carlo Viganò that, for all the trouble it has caused, the best approach to the Second Vatican Council is not the endless pursuit of Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of continuity,” whose meaning remains elusive, but rather simply “to to drop it ‘in toto‘ and forget it.”
My co-author Tom Woods and I made the same argument back in 2002 in our book The Great Façade, citing the historical example of the disastrous Second Council of Constantinople (553), whose ambiguous treatment of the Monophysite heresy (no human but only a divine nature in Christ) led to confusion and outright schisms in the Church. Constantinople II defended the true doctrine but tried to placate the Monophysites by condemning the writings of three of their prominent opponents. Defending theological truth on paper while placating its enemies. Sound familiar? If it does, that is because it has been the ruinously irenic program of the entire post-Vatican II epoch.
In this article on his popular blogsite, Magister goes so far as to suggest that the Archbishop is on the “brink of schism”—not that again!—merely because he advocates abandonment of the fruitless “hermeneutic of continuity” along with the Council that, per Benedict, requires it—whatever it is. Who knows? And we still don’t know after more than fifteen years of hearing about the idea.
Magister does admit, however, that when it comes to the Council’s novel teaching on “religious liberty,” what we have is “a clear discontinuity, if not a rupture, with the ordinary teaching of the Church of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was strongly anti-liberal.” So, thanks to Vatican II the Church today is not strongly anti-liberal? Well, that much is obvious, but then is the “hermeneutic of continuity” not really a hermeneutic of discontinuity?
Yes, says Magister! Unperturbed by this double-talk, Magister, concerning Benedict XVI’s address on the subject in 2005, writes that the “hermeneutic of continuity” is more precisely (to quote Benedict) a “hermeneutic of continuity in reform.” Meaning, said Benedict, a “combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that [is] the very nature of true reform…”
Ah, no. True reform never involves “a combination of continuity and discontinuity” but rather precisely the elimination of discontinuity so as to restore—that is, re-form—the proper order of things. That is why, for example, reform schools are called ‘reform schools’: the wayward youth is brought back to the path from which he strayed. That is, he is brought back into continuity with the right way of living.
And, in the Church, reform means exactly that: restoration of the Church’s good order when, for whatever reason, some aspect of her life has fallen into corruption. Hence the great reforms of the Church after the Council of Trent—producing what today’s neo-Modernists sneeringly dismiss as “Tridentine Catholicism.” Meaning orthodoxy and orthopraxis. Meaning the Faith in its integrity.
In his 2005 address, Benedict XVI lamely attempted to explain away the abandonment after Vatican II of the Church’s entire stance against the errors of “liberty” in the modern sense—the errors condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, including separation of Church and State, unlimited freedom of conscience, and unlimited freedom of opinion, whose final results are nothing less than what we now witness: the end of civilization.
But according to Pope Benedict in 2005: “In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church’s faith and a radical liberalism… had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age.”
Bitter? This is how Benedict describes the teaching of the Magisterium in opposition to fatal errors whose consequences we now suffer?
But then, if the anti-liberal teaching of the great Popes before Vatican II can be diminished as “bitter”—indeed something to be surpassed by some new, more accepting attitude, as Benedict suggests—how does Vatican II escape the same sort of psychoanalysis? Why can we not say, after more than fifty years of bitter experience with the Council’s novelties, that its approach to the “modern world” was foolishly irenic or fatuously optimistic?
With this difference, however: the anti-liberal papal pronouncements that Benedict belittles as “bitter” represent the constant teaching of a long series of Popes of which Blessed Pius IX was merely one. Their repeated and insistently condemned errors against the Faith, meaning that their constant teaching was doctrinal in character, so that the anti-liberal encyclicals of Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X and Pius XI must be considered well-nigh infallible as an exercise of the universal ordinary Magisterium.
Whereas, when it comes to the Second Vatican Council—a Council like no other in Church history—we are still arguing over how exactly it can be reconciled with the prior teaching of the Magisterium. This much is certain, however: the very need for this endless attempt at reconciliation is a powerful argument in favor of Archbishop Viganò’s position that the obviously fruitless effort be abandoned and that Vatican II, like Constantinople II, simply be left behind as an epochal misadventure that is best forgotten.
Whereas, when it comes to the Second Vatican Council—a Council like no other in Church history—we are still arguing over how exactly it can be reconciled with the prior teaching of the Magisterium. This much is certain, however: the very need for this endless attempt at reconciliation is a powerful argument in favor of Archbishop Viganò’s position that the obviously fruitless effort be abandoned and that Vatican II, like Constantinople II, simply be left behind as an epochal misadventure that is best forgotten.
Ping
There are some very good things in some of the documents. It was long winded.
As Pope Francis said in the middle of an extremely long interview some years past:
“He who speaks too long is bound to be misunderstood”
at the same time, he almost inevitably will manage to say something that is correct. Unless he is Joe Biden.
Were not those "things" obvious prior to the Council?
Fifty years ago Thursday, the fourth child from a family of Italian sharecroppers convened a epochal meeting of Roman Catholic Church leaders designed to “open the windows” of the nearly 2,000-year-old institution and let some of the modern world’s “fresh air” inside.
Many of them were, but restating them can be useful.
Mixing a teaspoon of sugar with a gallon of cyanide is never useful.
By the way, you said “many” not “all”. What “good things” did the Council produce that were not obvious prior to the Council?
Was one of them that Catholics worship the same “god” the murderous muslims kill in the name of?
And there was harsh criticism of Islam in past centuries by saints such as Thomas Aquinas, or John of Damascus, who called Islam “diabolical.”
Thomas, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, does take what can be seen by reason, with an emphasis on what the Muslims are able to see from reason, and works from there.
This work was written who was written at the instigation of St. Raymond of Penafort, who was very big on the mission to the Muslims (IIRC, which I do not guarantee he for a time oversaw the Dominican missions to the Muslims of the 13th century, which are the only such missionary effort to this group that has had substantial success.
There is such a thing as bitter zeal; there is also such a thing as false irenicism.
I think that well-formed theologians need to continue to read Vatican II and all of the other counsels. I think people who haven’t read the Catechism several times or something like the Imitation of Christ and the Bible should focus on these things rather than delving into Vatican II. I also think that my thoughts are going to have a minimal impact on people’s actions.
And what Catholic missions to the muslims have occured since VCII?
We now have a pope claiming proslytism is a sin and signing documents with muslims claiming God wills a plurality of religion. All in the “Spirit of VCII”!
And I don’t recall any preconciliar catholic catechisms teaching Muslims worship the same God that Catholics worship or that proslytism is a sin.
I’ve only looked over a few pre-conciliar catechisms, and don’t recall them mentioning Muslims one way or the other.
Prostelytism, traditionally understood, is a work of Mercy. If Francis is defining Prostelytism differently than traditionally understood and saying that something else is a sin, he is only sowing confusion. Unless he sticks it in a work addressed specifically to me, I am not going to parse his position, and will pray that he be granted a happy death at the appropriate time, whatever that may be.
Francis speaking off the cuff (or in an encyclical) isn’t Vatican II. I am willing to spend some amount of my discretionary time defending Vatican II, but the spirit not at all. There is a point where one needs to stop attempting to put lipstick on a pig unless one has a special vocation to do so.
As far as attacking the Spirit of Vatican II, there are times where it is a corporal work of Mercy, but I can’t ever recalling anyone defending the Spirit of Vatican II, and it has been about two years since I’ve seen any active Catholic on FR seriously try to defend Francis on anything of greater significance than a misquote. A few of our separated brethren have risen to his defence at points during this time.
3 Q. Why do we call God the Father?
A. We call God the Father because by nature He is the Father of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, that is to say, of the Son begotten of Him; because God is the Father of all men, whom He has created and whom He preserves and governs; finally, because by grace He is the Father of all good Christians, who are hence called the adopted sons of God.
4 Q. Why is the Father the First Person of the Blessed Trinity?
A. The Father is the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, because He does not proceed from any other Person, but is the Principle of the other two Persons, that is, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
The muslims do not adore the God described above as Nostra Aetate falsely states they do.
Francis invokes the Spirit of Vatican II quite often to justify his revolutionary actions.
Francis will have to answer for himself.
I will have to answer for myself.
And the Fathers of Vatican II will need to answer for themselves. They are responsible for the documents of Vatican II. “The Spirit of Vatican II” is a post-Conciliar phrase that cannot be attributed to them, or at least all of them, whether individually and certainly not collectively.
While I am not the world’s biggest fan of the Fathers of Vatican II, I refuse to conflate them with Francis.
I don’t recall N.A. going so far as claiming that the muslims explicitly worship the Trinity.
God is one. They have that right. God is three-—rimshot for team Islam.
One out of two is better than zero out of two.
No it's not, when it comes to one's salvation.
Thanks for posting. Vigano is the voice of God.
The Francis refuses to disengage himself from Vatican II, however:
Pope (Francis0 urges theologians to be ‘faithful, anchored’ to Vatican II
If the muslims don’t acknowledge the Holy Trinity, which they are quite aware of, they are not worshipping the One, True God.
It’s shame many Catholics can’t see that.
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