Posted on 07/16/2025 10:02:45 AM PDT by ebb tide
Is there a relationship between the Council of Nicaea, celebrated in the year 325, and the Second Vatican Council, the last of the twenty-one councils recognised as ecumenical, concluded on 8 December 1965?
In a letter written on 29 June 1975 to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was criticising Vatican II, Pope Paul VI stated that “the Second Vatican Council is no less authoritative, indeed in some respects it is even more important, than the Council of Nicaea” (cf. La Doc. Catholique, 58 (1976) p. 34). The statement left many astonished at the time. The Council of Nicaea transmitted to us the fundamental truths of the Catholic faith, afterward expressed in what is called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is recited every Sunday at Holy Mass. Vatican Council II did not define any truth, nor condemn any error, presenting itself as a pastoral and not dogmatic Council.
How can a controversial pastoral council be given greater importance than the Church gives to its first ecumenical council?
Yet, from the historical rather than theological point of view, Paul VI’s statement is not without its truth, even if it is different from how the pope meant it. To try to explain this, I will base myself on an interesting article by the Belgian philosopher Marcel de Corte (1905–1994) that appeared in 1977 in the French magazine Itineraires, with the title “Nicée et Vatican II” (no. 215, pp. 110–141).
In the fourth century after Christ, at the beginning of the Constantinian era, the fashionable philosophy among the pagan elites was the Neoplatonism of Plotinus (203–270). Although Plotinus’s Roman disciple Porphyry (234–305) had revealed the strongly anti-Christian character of this religious system, there was no lack of those who hoped for an encounter between the Christian faith and Plotinian philosophy. In particular, the Alexandrian priest Arius sought to combine Plotinus’s Trinitarian system of hypostases with the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity.
In the Christian Trinity there are three divine Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This central mystery of Christianity is revealed by God, and while it does not contradict reason, it is not created by it.
Plotinus instead developed a philosophical system according to which there are three hypostases: the One (to Hen), which is the first principle, abstract and indeterminate; the Intellect (nous), which is the level of being and thought; and the Soul of the world (psyche), which connects the intelligible world to the sensible. These three hypostases derive from each other by necessary emanation, without having the same degrees of being. We are faced not with a supernatural reality, but with a cerebral construction of reason.
Arius, steeped in Neoplatonism, affirmed that the Person of the Son emanated from that of the Father, and placed the person of the Holy Ghost on an even lower level, refusing to attribute to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost one and the same divine substance. The Son and the Holy Ghost were not consubstantial with the Father, but simply similar to him. The Council of Nicaea condemned this attempt to “remodel” Trinitarian dogma according to the philosophy of the time, and proclaimed that the Son is not “similar” to God, but is truly God, “consubstantial with the Father”. In Greek the difference is a single iota; “consubstantial” is homoousios, while “similar” is homoiousios. The Nicene Creed uses the famous adjective homoousion — “consubstantial” — with the Father, to oppose Arius, who used the term homoiousion (“similar to the Father”), drawing direct inspiration from Plotinus. For this iota Athanasius was exiled six times and was excommunicated by Pope Liberius: the consubstantiality of the three divine Persons is at the heart of the Nicene Creed and of our Christian faith.
Vatican Council II, unlike Nicaea, Trent and Vatican I, presented itself as a pastoral council, but there cannot be a pastoral council that is not also dogmatic. Vatican II declined to formulate new dogmas, but it dogmatised pastoral care, adopting contemporary philosophy, according to which it is in action that the truth of thought is verified. Traditional dogmatic theology was set aside and replaced with a “philosophy of action”, which necessarily brings with it subjectivism and relativism.
The pastoral theology of Vatican II represents a break with the dogmatic theology of the Council of Nicaea, precisely because of its claim of adapting to the immanentism of modern philosophy. To enter into harmony with the world, the Church must set aside its doctrine and entrust to history the criterion for verifying its truth. But it was the results of the new pastoral theology that demonstrated its failure. It would be enough to ask how many go to church on Sunday, and in what they believe, to understand this.
Marcel De Corte saw in the modernist philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949) the one who introduced immanentism and the primacy of action into the pastoral theology of Vatican II. If, as Blondel states, no speculative demonstration of the existence of God or of the divinity of Catholicism is possible, the slide into subjectivism and into the philosophy of praxis is inevitable. Well then, on 4 June 2025 the archbishop of Aix and Arles, Christian Delarbre, officially opened the cause of beatification of Maurice Blondel, in the church of Saint Jean de Malte in Aix-en-Provence, which was Blondel’s parish church, recognising his theological and philosophical paternity in the development of post-conciliar Christianity.
Let us return to the phrase of Paul VI according to which “Vatican Council II is no less authoritative, indeed in some respects it is even more important than the Council of Nicaea”.
Vatican II was certainly a valid Council, and in this sense authoritative, but its historical relevance is due not to the benefits it brought to the Church, as happened with the Council of Nicaea, but to the very serious damage it produced. If Vatican Council II is destined to leave a greater mark on history than that of Nicaea, it is because the religious crisis of our time is more serious and more profound than the Arian one. The harms, which Archbishop Lefebvre foresaw and which Paul VI denied, are today an objective and evident fact. The pastoral theology of Vatican II has refuted itself over the course of the sixty years that have passed since its conclusion, and the historian cannot but take note of this.
Ping
“Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen”
The Benefits that VatII provided the Church is ridiculous. VatII has destroyed the Church. An example is 2024 Italy closed 150 Churches. Muslims are taking over Europe because people feel the Churches has left them without the Sanctity they expect from Christ’s teachings.
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