The Catholic Church’s Enemies are Feasting on the “Fruits” of Vatican II

One of the most important things about Vatican II, that both its defenders and critics can agree upon, is that it had a “pastoral” focus. Paul VI made this clear at various times, including during his August 6, 1975 general audience:

“Differing from other Councils, this one was not directly dogmatic, but disciplinary and pastoral.”

From Paul VI’s words, it is evident that Vatican II is unlike other councils in that it “was not directly dogmatic.” His words also suggest that there is a real distinction between a dogmatic approach and a pastoral approach. However, as Professor Roberto de Mattei wrote in Apologia for Tradition, there is no real tension between pastoral and dogmatic objectives:

“There is and should be no contradiction between pastoral and dogmatic, as if the Councils of Nicaea, Trent, or Vatican I were purely dogmatic and not pastoral. So what did the Second Vatican Council intend when it defined itself as pastoral? No more and no less than what John XXIII proclaimed in his inaugural allocution Gaudet Mater Ecclesia on October 11, 1962. The Council had been convened not to condemn errors or to formulate new dogmas, but to propose, with a new language, ‘the truths that are contained in our venerable doctrine.’ This was theoretically legitimate, and this was why many conservatives enthusiastically participated in the pope’s initiative.” (p. 108)

It was theoretically legitimate to want to express the truths of the Catholic Faith in a way that was more understandable and inspiring for both the Catholic laity and non-Catholics, who might be drawn to the Church. However, Professor de Mattei continued by describing what happened in reality:

“What happened in reality is that the Johannine ‘primacy’ of pastoral ministry was interpreted in a way similar to Marxist categories of the ‘primacy of praxis.’ The pastoral dimension, which in itself is accidental and secondary with respect to the doctrinal dimension, became the top priority, creating a revolution not primarily in content but in style, language, and mentality. This was expressed in the drafting of ambiguous and ambivalent documents that can be read both in continuity and in discontinuity with Tradition. Even those who accept or propose the ‘hermeneutic of continuity,’ that is, who maintain the possibility or necessity of reading the conciliar documents in light of Tradition, must admit, however, that hermeneutic ambiguity is not an advantage but a shortcoming of the conciliar documents.” (p. 108)

Clearly, there is a problem to the extent that the ambiguities in the Council’s documents could be interpreted in a way that contradicts immutable Catholic teaching, and even the most fervent defenders of Vatican II concede this. Setting aside that question of whether the Council’s documents could be read as favoring error (which has been thoroughly debated for decades), though, we can isolate a few questions which are arguably more pressing: first, as Professor de Mattei expressed, the problem of ambiguity; second, the need to evaluate the pastoral results of the Council; and, third, the uninterrupted trajectory of the Council’s pastoral focus.

The Problem With Ambiguity

Leo XIII’s 1899 encyclical regarding Americanism, Testem Benevolentiae, contains some of the most eloquent descriptions of why Catholic truth must be stated clearly and completely rather than ambiguously:

“The underlying principle of these new opinions [of the bishops] is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. . . . They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: ‘For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them.’ – Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv. We cannot consider as altogether blameless the silence which purposely leads to the omission or neglect of some of the principles of Christian doctrine, for all the principles come from the same Author and Master, ‘the Only Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father.’ – John i, 18. . . . Let it be far from anyone’s mind to suppress for any reason any doctrine that has been handed down. Such a policy would tend rather to separate Catholics from the Church than to bring in those who differ. There is nothing closer to our heart than to have those who are separated from the fold of Christ return to it, but in no other way than the way pointed out by Christ.”

Like other pre-Vatican II popes, Leo XIII certainly understood the arguments in favor of softening or obscuring certain difficult truths of the Catholic Faith. Nonetheless, he denounced the idea that “the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions.”

We can see from Leo XIII’s words that clarity and precision must be pursued and that, correspondingly, ambiguity must be avoided. As he explained, suppressing or obscuring Catholic truth tends to separate Catholics from the Church. This is the case even when ambiguous passages are not subject to being interpreted in a heretical way. As such, it is never a legitimate “pastoral” objective to promote ambiguity about the Church’s teachings. Anytime settled Catholic teaching is rendered ambiguous, the pastoral outcome is to diminish Catholic beliefs and lead souls away from the Church.

The Need to Evaluate the Pastoral Consequences of the Council

In a 1967 essay from his In Defence of the Roman Mass, Fr. Raymond Dulac asserted that we should evaluate the liturgical “reforms” flowing from Vatican II in terms of their consequences:

“As a matter of fact, since this Council and especially this [liturgical] reform wanted to be essentially ‘pastoral,’ when carrying out our analysis we have considered ourselves obliged not to separate official acts from the historical circumstances (foreseen or otherwise) which accompanied them. Indeed, in order to be soundly assessed from a pastoral standpoint, every human decision must be considered, not only in itself, but also in its de facto consequences, even those which are unintended and abusive. The leader must foresee them before enacting his law.” (p. 54)

While we may disagree with the notion that “abusive” and truly unforeseeable consequences must be considered when evaluating a pastoral initiative, Fr. Dulac’s overall point seems entirely reasonable and fair. This is, of course, akin to judging a tree by its fruits, which Our Lord told us to do (Matthew 7:16-20).

Evaluating Vatican II based on its pastoral fruits is especially reasonable in light of the fact that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre intervened at the Council in an effort to eliminate the ambiguity that was being promoted in the name of the pastoral objective:

“The ambiguity of this Council was apparent from the very first sessions. What was the purpose of our meeting together? It was true that the discourse of Pope John XXIII had mentioned the way in which he intended to direct the Council, towards a pastoral statement of doctrine (discourse of October 11, 1962). The ambiguity, however, remained, and through the interventions and discussions the difficulty of knowing what the Council was really aiming at could be perceived. This was the reason for my proposal of November 17 . . . . This could have been the opportunity to provide a clearer definition of the pastoral character of the Council. The proposal met, however, with violent opposition: ‘The Council is not a dogmatic but a pastoral one; we are not seeking to define new dogmas but to put forward the truth in a pastoral way.’” (I Accuse the Council!, pp. 3-4)

Thus, Archbishop Lefebvre’s proposal to draft two sets of documents — one more dogmatic, for theologians, and one more pastoral in tone — was rejected. Even if he could not yet foresee the precise dangers of the ambiguities promoted in the name of the Council’s pastoral focus, he already grasped that such an approach was highly problematic. Tragically, the Council’s architects did not want the theological precision that Archbishop Lefebvre sought to promote, which simply coincides with Leo XIII’s holy wisdom above. They instead wanted the Council to achieve pastoral objectives that would have been undermined by presenting Catholic truth in an unambiguous way. There is no logical way to avoid this conclusion.

And so we absolutely must evaluate the pastoral fruits that emerged as a result of the Council. One of the most striking descriptions of those fruits came from Frank Sheed, in his Is It the Same Church? from 1968, three years after the close of the Council:

“Consider how things would strike a Catholic wrecked in 1958 on a desert island and only just now brought home. His Catholic friends have him in their houses. In all of them he finds the conversation beyond him. It circles, sometimes heatedly, around two words which mean nothing to him — Ecumenism and the Pill. . . . The weeks that follow are full of shocks. The priest facing the congregation takes some getting used to. And Mass in English even more. He remembers arguments with Protestants in which his trump card had been the use of Latin as proof of the Church’s Catholicity — ‘one language everywhere in the world.’ . . . Whichever way he looks, the Catholic world he knew seems to have turned upside down — and so quickly: after all, he was only away ten years. He hears of priests getting married, with other priests performing the ceremony.” (pp. xi-xii)

Defenders of Vatican II tell us that these things have nothing to do with Vatican II because the Council did not change dogmas, but that misses the point almost entirely. If we reread Leo XIII’s words above from Testem Benevolentiae, we can see that even “toning down” the meaning of Catholic teaching tends to separate Catholics from the Church. But Vatican II did more than just “tone down” Catholic teaching: it stopped condemning errors even though it did not refrain from referring to them throughout its documents. Catholics and non-Catholics alike got the message: the errors opposed to the Faith are no longer all that problematic. And we wonder why we have seen such an immense proliferation of anti-Catholic errors from supposedly Catholic sources since the Council?

The Uninterrupted Trajectory of the Council’s Pastoral Focus

Finally, we can reflect on the fact that the problems that Frank Sheed and countless others identified shortly after Vatican II have generally gotten worse since the Council closed. In almost any other realm of life, when competent men recognize that they have made changes that have led to unfortunate consequences they did not want, they change course. They fix the problems. But we see the exact opposite from Rome for the past sixty years — all of the worst fruits are carefully cultivated to make them more prevalent and putrid.

Let us take one example that has such far-reaching consequences that it would render the Council disastrous even if everything else about it had been perfect: false ecumenism. In reality, essentially all of Vatican II’s pastoral work has contributed to the work of false ecumenism. To see its progress over the past sixty years, we need only consider four snapshots during that period:

Warning from the Council. Servite Bishop Giocondo Grotti intervened at the Council in defense of presenting the Catholic truth about the Blessed Virgin Mary even though it would displease Protestants: “Does ecumenism consist in confessing or in hiding the truth? Ought the Council to explain Catholic doctrine, or the doctrine of our separated brethren? . . . Hiding the truth hurts both us and those separated from us. It hurts us, because we appear as hypocrites. It hurts those who are separated from us because it makes them appear weak and capable of being offended by the truth.” (from Fr. Ralph Wiltgen’s The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber)

Frank Sheed’s 1968 Assessment. Frank Sheed continued his description of the shocks one would feel in 1968 from witnessing the changes that followed from Vatican II: “And Protestants. He had known that Protestants need not go to hell — he remembers his surprise when a priest ran into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities on this very topic. But things seem to have gone far beyond that while he was on his desert island. He learns that when John XXIII died, an Episcopal Church had a requiem in its Cathedral, and a Cardinal sent his Vicar-General to be present at it, and would have been there himself only that he had to be in Rome. . . . He remembers when his own Episcopalian grandfather died, and just what the parish priest said when he asked permission to go to the funeral service — that was the first time he had heard the phrase communicatio in sacris: he heard it at least twenty times, he was not sure what it meant, but it was unmistakably a mortal sin.” (p. xii)

Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1986 Assessment. In his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Archbishop Lefebvre offered the following assessment: “Ecumenism in the strict sense, i.e., as practised among Christians, has motivated joint Eucharistic celebrations with Protestants, such as at Strasbourg. The Anglicans were invited to Chartres Cathedral to celebrate ‘Eucharistic Communion.’ The only celebration which is not allowed, either at Chartres, or at Strasbourg, or at Marseilles, is that of Holy Mass according to the rite codified by Saint Pius V. What conclusion can be drawn from all this by a Catholic who sees Church authorities condoning such scandalous ceremonies? If all religions are of equal value, he could very well work out his salvation with Buddhists or Protestants. He is running the risk of losing faith in the true Church. This in fact is what is suggested to him.”

2021 Synod on Synodality Letter. A 2021 letter from Cardinals Grech and Hollerich detailed the way in which the Synod advances false ecumenism: “‘The dialogue between Christians of different confessions, united by one baptism, has a special place in the synodal journey’ (Vademecum of the Synod 5.3.7). Indeed, both synodality and ecumenism are processes of ‘walking together.’ Firstly, if ‘a synodal Church is a Church which listens’ (Pope Francis, 17 October 2015), this listening should concern the totality of those who are honoured by the name of Christian, since all the baptized participate to some degree in the sensus fidei (cf. International Theological Commission, Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church, 56). Secondly, as ecumenism can be understood as an ‘exchange of gifts,’ one of the gifts Catholics can receive from the other Christians is precisely their experience and understanding of synodality (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 246).”

We have progressed from condemning ecumenical initiatives to no longer noticing, let alone caring, when the Synodal architects tell us that Protestants participate in the sensus fidei of the Catholic Church. All along this path of false ecumenism there had been warning signs, such as the 1986 Prayer Meeting at Assisi. With each sign of pastoral corruption, though, Rome continued to move further away from what Pius XI taught in his 1928 encyclical on religious unity, Mortalium Animos, about the precursors of today’s false ecumenism:

“Certainly such [interreligious gatherings] can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion, they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion. . . . So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.”

Almost one hundred years ago, Pius XI saw exactly where false ecumenism would lead. Today, we are near the end of the path of false ecumenism — when far too many bishops have effectively abandoned the divinely revealed religion — and Rome shows no inclination to reverse course. By all appearances, mass apostasy within the melting pot of the Synodal Church was the desired pastoral destination of Catholicism’s enemies. For those who are comfortable with this, the good news is that the only tenet of the Synodal Church that you absolutely must believe is that Traditional Catholicism is rigid, backwards, and wrong. For the rest of us (however small in number), the past sixty years have offered daily confirmations that God loved His Church dearly by giving us the holy wisdom of the pre-Vatican II popes, who taught us that there can be no truly pastoral work that sacrifices the unadulterated Catholic Faith. We can return that love in some small measure by adhering to the immutable truths that God has entrusted to His Church, especially when we are ostracized by Rome for doing so. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

With each sign of pastoral corruption, though, Rome continued to move further away from what Pius XI taught in his 1928 encyclical on religious unity, Mortalium Animos, about the precursors of today’s false ecumenism:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Pope Leo XIV calls Algiers mosque ‘space proper to God,’ makes silent prayer with imam

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The Catholic Church’s Enemies are Feasting on the “Fruits” of Vatican II

Sixty years later, Catholics can no longer ignore its rotten pastoral “fruits” of Vatican II. Robert Morrison examines how ambiguity, false ecumenism, and Rome’s post-conciliar trajectory have fueled confusion, weakened Catholic identity, and emboldened the Church’s enemies.

The Problem With Ambiguity

The Need to Evaluate the Pastoral Consequences of the Council

The Uninterrupted Trajectory of the Council’s Pastoral Focus

Pope Leo XIV calls Algiers mosque ‘space proper to God,’ makes silent prayer with imam