Why is it that men like Francis, who do so much to attack the Catholic Church and its traditions, nonetheless fight tooth and nail to defend the Second Vatican Council? In other words, how can a man who partners with the leaders of the Great Reset, advances the LGBTQ movement against traditional morality, apologizes for the Church’s past missionary efforts, condemns those who “rigidly” hold to what the Church has always taught, and promotes a known heretic (Bishop Tucho Fernández) to prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have these words to say from his letter to bishops accompanying Traditionis Custodes?:
“But I am nonetheless saddened that the instrumental use of Missale Romanum of 1962 is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’ The path of the Church must be seen within the dynamic of Tradition ‘which originates from the Apostles and progresses in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit’ ( DV 8). A recent stage of this dynamic was constituted by Vatican Council II where the Catholic episcopate came together to listen and to discern the path for the Church indicated by the Holy Spirit. To doubt the Council is to doubt the intentions of those very Fathers who exercised their collegial power in a solemn manner cum Petro et sub Petro in an ecumenical council, and, in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church.”
Francis answered the question himself: aside from anything that the documents of Vatican II actually say, the Council represents the precedent for the “Holy Spirit” guiding the Church to take a different path. One of the guiding lights of the Council and the inspiration behind Francis’s Synod on Synodality, Yves Congar, was even more direct in his assessment of the Council’s importance:
“By the frankness and openness of its debates, the Council has put an end to what may be described as the inflexibility of the system. We take ‘system’ to mean a coherent set of codified teachings, casuistically-specified rules of procedure, a detailed and very hierarchic organization, means of control and surveillance, rubrics regulating worship — all this is the legacy of scholasticism, the Counter-reformation and the Catholic Restoration of the nineteenth century, subjected to an effective Roman discipline. It will be recalled that Pius XII is supposed to have said: ‘I will be the last Pope to keep all this going.’”
This is exactly what we have seen for the past sixty years, such that everything infected with the innovations of Vatican II is so flexible that it can accommodate anything other than “rigid” Catholicism.
Tragically, we can see with hindsight that the resulting documents have become the greatest weapons of the liberals: the documents have liberal passages which the Church’s enemies have interpreted to reshape the Church; and the documents also have some genuinely Catholics passages, which have been used to defend the Council.
As has been well documented, the liberal and modernist leaders of the Council accomplished the work described by Congar through a process of juxtaposing truth and error throughout the key documents. In his They Have Uncrowned Him, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre described the way in which the conservative Council Fathers (who formed the Coetus Internationalis Patrum) tried to counteract those who sought to introduce errors:
“It is certain that with the 250 conciliar fathers of the Coetus we tried with all the means put at our disposal to keep the liberal errors from being expressed in the texts of the Council. This meant that we were able all the same to limit the damage, to change these inexact or tendentious assertions, to add that sentence or to rectify a tendentious proposition, an ambiguous expression. But I have to admit that we did not succeed in purifying the Council of the liberal and modernist spirit that impregnated most of the schemas. Their drafters indeed were precisely the experts and Fathers tainted with this spirit.” (p. 167)
The Council Fathers in the Coetus never would have drafted documents in such a way — they would have composed them with a truly Catholic spirit — but they had no other choice but to try to limit, rather than eliminate, the errors in the Council documents that had been drafted by the liberals and modernists:
“What we were able to do was, by the modi that we introduced, to have interpolated clauses added to the schemas; and this is quite obvious: it suffices to compare the first schema on religious liberty with the fifth one that was written — for this document was five times rejected and five times brought back for discussion — in order to see that we succeeded just the same in reducing the subjectivism that tainted the first drafts.” (They Have Uncrowned Him, pp. 167-168)
Even with all the efforts to limit the errors in Dignitatis Humanae, Paul VI still had to add a paragraph in the introduction suggesting that the document is consistent with tradition:
“Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.”
As Archbishop Lefebvre argued, though, this introductory remark did nothing to change what followed in the document:
“Likewise, in the declaration on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, Paul VI himself had a paragraph added which said in substance: ‘This declaration contains nothing that is contrary to tradition,’ But everything that is inside is contrary to tradition! Thus someone will say, ‘Just read it! It is written, ‘There is nothing contrary to tradition!’ — well, yes, it is written. But that does not stop everything being contrary to tradition!” (pp. 168-169)
In his 1966 Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger had essentially the same thing to say about Dignitatis Humanae and the paragraph added by Paul VI:
“Most controversial was the third newly emphasized aspect. The text attempts to emphasize continuity in the statements of the official Church on this issue. It also says that it ‘leaves intact the traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and communities toward the true religion and the only Church of Christ’ (n. 1). The term ‘duty’ here has doubtful application to communities in their relation to the Church. Later on in the Declaration, the text itself corrects and modifies these earlier statements, offering something new, something that is quite different from what is found, for example, in the statements of Pius XI and Pius XII. It would have been better to omit these compromising formulas or to reformulate them in line with the later text. Thus the introduction changes nothing in the text's content; therefore, we need not regard it as anything more than a minor flaw.”
Thus, it was the belief of the future Benedict XVI in 1966 that the addition by Paul VI did nothing to change the fact that Dignitatis Humanae truly deviated from what the Church had taught.
The liberal and modernist architects of the Council won because they obtained much of what they wanted in the heterodox passages and pacified the conservatives with the orthodox passages that have been completely ignored since the Council other than by those who wanted to defend it.
Tragically, we can see with hindsight that the resulting documents have become the greatest weapons of the liberals: the documents have liberal passages which the Church’s enemies have interpreted to reshape the Church; and the documents also have some genuinely Catholics passages, which have been used to defend the Council. In his The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty, Michael Davies cited one of the Council’s influential Protestant observers, Oscar Cullmann, on the weaponization of the Council’s “compromise texts”:
“On far too many occasions they juxtapose opposing viewpoints without establishing any genuine internal link between them. . . There is nonetheless as the basis of all these documents an intention of renewal from which reforms can emerge after the Council. . . . All the texts are formulated in such a manner that no door is closed and that they will not present any future obstacle to discussions among Catholics or dialogue with non-Catholics, as was the case with the dogmatic decisions of previous Councils.” (p. 174)
The liberal and modernist architects of the Council won because they obtained much of what they wanted in the heterodox passages and pacified the conservatives with the orthodox passages that have been completely ignored since the Council other than by those who wanted to defend it.
Over the past few years, and especially with the Synod on Synodality, we can see clearly why the Church’s enemies need Vatican II. Because the leaders of the New World Order must have Catholic support for their anti-Catholic initiatives, they need to divorce Catholics from the pre-Vatican II period which condemned their ideas. They need a Church that can be “guided by the spirit” away from God’s immutable truth. Vatican II serves that function — yes, the Council absolutely caused real problems with its ecumenism, religious liberty, and confusing the nature of role of the Church; but the most disastrous reality is that it abandoned the path of “rigidly” adhering to what the Church has always taught.
Today, the enemies of the Church cite Vatican II itself (rather than its “spirit”) as the justification for calling into question “the Catholic doctrines most hotly disputed today — regarding contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia, women's ordination, etc.” Were it not for faithful Catholics having defended Vatican II for decades, the Church’s enemies would not have so much ease in advancing their wicked agendas!
Knowing all of this, it should be obvious to all faithful Catholics that we must reject the Council’s novelties, if not the entire Council. The tragic reality, though, is that there are still some faithful Catholics who actually believe that the Church, and thus their Faith, would be shattered if they acknowledge that there were actual errors with Vatican II. Many of these defenders of Vatican II have indeed studied the Council’s documents, but their conviction that the Council was free from actual error depends predominantly on their belief that an ecumenical council of the Church must be protected by the Holy Ghost from error.
For a sincere and articulate exposition of this position, we can look to Fr. Brian Harrison’s review of Michael Davies’ 1992 book, The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty. Fr. Harrison has written fine pieces for The Remnant, and has long fought for Catholic orthodoxy, so this truly appears to represent the pro-Vatican II position of the actual “good guys”:
“Davies' newest work seems to me to present once again the aforesaid strengths and weaknesses. It is an important book about an even more important (but much neglected) subject: the question as to whether (and, if so, how) the doctrine of Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae, can be reconciled with that of pre-conciliar Popes regarding Church-State relations and religious tolerance. If it cannot (as is claimed by many of its liberal supporters as well as its traditionalist opponents), then we are faced with a disaster unprecedented in two thousand years of Church history. If an Ecumenical Council can reverse the doctrine of weighty papal encyclicals, then none of the Catholic doctrines most hotly disputed today — regarding contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia, women's ordination, etc. — is secure. All of them will appear to be equally open to subsequent reversal by some future Pope or Council. And this alleged precedent for radical change is now being wielded as a very dangerous-looking weapon by liberal dissenters.”
As Traditional Catholics, we can appreciate the faithful Catholic mindset animating this position, even if we disagree with it. But we can see from the latter portion of this passage at least some hints of the tragic irony of this position: today, the enemies of the Church cite Vatican II itself (rather than its “spirit”) as the justification for calling into question “the Catholic doctrines most hotly disputed today — regarding contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia, women's ordination, etc.” Were it not for faithful Catholics having defended Vatican II for decades, the Church’s enemies would not have so much ease in advancing their wicked agendas!
The greatest weapon of Satan and his globalists to subdue the Church is Vatican II, which is why Francis is adamant that we accept the Council even though he obviously does not care if we accept much else connected with the Faith. Ultimately, if you want to help end the crisis in the Church and world, expose the Council’s errors; if you want to prolong the crisis, keep defending the Council.
We therefore have the “disaster unprecedented in two thousand years of Church history” not because Michael Davies and Archbishop Lefebvre questioned Vatican II but because the good guys devoted so much of their God-given talents to attacking those who questioned the Council. And for what reason? Why do they feel such a tremendous need to defend a Council for which Cardinal Ratzinger offered the following description in 1988?:
“The truth is that the Council itself did not define any dogma, and limited itself to a more modest level, simply as a pastoral council. In spite of this, numerous are those who interpret it as if it involved a ‘super-dogma’ that alone has importance.”
It is blasphemous to insist that, even though the future Benedict XVI made it clear that the Council did not define any dogma, Catholics are nonetheless required to believe that the Holy Ghost guided and protected the devious machinations of the liberal and modernist architects of the Council. Moreover, as described in a recent article, God gave us many indications on the first day of Vatican II that John XXIII ostentatiously rejected the protections of the Holy Ghost for his Council: by appointing heretics as experts, by refusing to condemn errors, and by explicitly reformulating Catholic teaching to accommodate the modern (anti-Catholic) world.
What are the stakes involved in this debate today? Satan and his globalists need to subdue the Catholic Church to advance their initiatives because a strong and faithful Church is powerful enough to overcome their devious plans. The greatest weapon of Satan and his globalists to subdue the Church is Vatican II, which is why Francis is adamant that we accept the Council even though he obviously does not care if we accept much else connected with the Faith. Ultimately, if you want to help end the crisis in the Church and world, expose the Council’s errors; if you want to prolong the crisis, keep defending the Council. God and the immutable Catholic religion He gave us are on one side of the battle; Satan, the globalists, Francis and the Council are on the other. Pick a side. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
