Interpreting Vatican II: A Handy Schematic

Catholic Insight ^ | 8/12/2003 | Christopher A. Ferrera

[traditionalist]

As the Novus Ordo establishment completes its inevitable collapse into a heap of scandal and apostasy, we are still hearing calls for a return to the "real meaning" of Vatican II as the solution to the Novus Ordo's catastrophic failure. The "return" to the "real meaning" of Vatican II is a staple of neo-Catholic thought. That Vatican II actually triggered this whole disaster is, of course, unthinkable to the neo-Catholic mind.

A typical example of the neo-Catholics' endless recourse to the Council's "real meaning" is found in a recent interview of neo-Catholic luminary George Weigel. Weigel is the author of The Latest 15-Lb. Biography Of The Pope That No One Would Even Consider Reading From Beginning To End.

According to Weigel: "Unlike other ecumenical councils, Vatican II did not provide 'keys' to its teaching in the form of creeds, canons or anathemas." In other words, we cannot tell what Vatican II teaches simply by reading what it teaches. No, the Council's documents are inscrutable without "keys" that had to be supplied later! Those "keys", Weigel claims, were supplied by John Paul II: "It has been left to the pontificate of John Paul II to provide an authoritative interpretation of the council…" An interpretation of an ecumenical council? Since when must an ecumenical council be interpreted? Since Vatican II.

But what is the "authoritative interpretation" of Vatican II? Weigel proposes the following, based on his understanding of the thinking of John Paul II:

Like Blessed John XXIII, John Paul II thinks of the Second Vatican Council as a new Pentecost-a privileged moment in which the Holy Spirit prepared the Church for a springtime of evangelization. Contrary to the conventional readings of the meaning of Vatican II proposed by both Catholic traditionalists and Catholic progressives, John Paul II has insisted that the council was not primarily about the distribution of authority and jurisdiction inside the Church. Rather, the council was meant to revivify within the Church a profound sense of itself as the sacrament of the world´s salvation: the "communio" in which we experience, here and now, a foretaste of what God intends for humanity for all eternity. In Karol Wojtyla´s experience of the council as one of its most active Fathers, and in his authoritative interpretation of the council as Pope, Vatican II was meant to prepare the Church, theologically and spiritually, to rediscover itself as a great evangelical movement in history, proclaiming to the world the truth about the human person, human community, human origins and human destiny.

So, as Weigel understands it, the "authoritative interpretation" of Vatican II developed in the teaching of John Paul II is as follows:

• Vatican II was a new Pentecost,
• to prepare for a springtime of evangelization;
• it was not about distribution of authority in the Church, but rather was meant
• to revivify the Church's profound sense of itself,
• provide a foretaste of what God intends for humanity for all eternity, and
• prepare the Church to rediscover itself as a great evangelical movement in history.

In short, George Weigel doesn't have the slightest idea what he is talking about. His description of the Council's "authoritative interpretation" reads like something an unprepared student of European History would write in his bluebook exam in answer to a question about the Thirty Years War: "The Thirty Years War was a time of great upheaval. It ushered in a new era in European history, which awakened a new self-awareness in those who had suffered through the War. The War marked a preparation of Europe for the new age that was to come. After the Thirty Years War had ended (in approximately 30 years) Europe would never be the same." The answer tells us absolutely nothing, just as Weigel tells us absolutely nothing about what is taught by the actual words of the Council's ambiguity-laden documents.

Why the Council's "true interpretation" remains elusive even to its staunchest defenders should be obvious after nearly forty years of wandering in the post-conciliar desert: Except where it simply repeated a constant teaching of the Church, Vatican II is utterly meaningless. Insofar as its supposedly "distinctive" teaching is concerned, the Council is a collection of ambiguities that tend to cancel each other out, leaving us, in essence, with nothing. It is precisely the nothingness of Vatican II that has led to the endless debate over what it means. If Weigel's attempt at describing the "authoritative interpretation" of Vatican II is any indication-and it certainly should be, given his close reading of the Pope's writings and his status as the Pope's approved biographer-not even John Paul II has been able to solve the problem of the Council's nothingness. But that problem has not prevented Weigel and others from telling us in various extra-Magisterial writings what the Council really means. In order to learn of this "real" meaning, however, one must first consult the Council document in question, then some extra-Magisterial book or article interpreting its meaning. And in some cases one must also consult a third source-a book or article that interprets the interpretation offered in the secondary source. Let me provide a handy schematic of how this can be done in one case: the search for the real meaning of the Conciliar document Gaudium et spes.

Speaking of the need for present-day "diagnoses" of Gaudium et Spes and the other key conciliar texts, Cardinal Ratzinger has observed that "The lack of clarity that persists even today about the real meaning of Vatican II is closely associated with such diagnoses." That is, in order to comprehend the "real meaning" of Vatican II, one must "diagnose" its texts. The Cardinal's oft-quoted "diagnosis" of Gaudium [et] spes is as follows:

If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus… [T]he one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely pre-revolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone will deny today that the Spanish and Italian Concordat strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone will deny today that, in the field of education and with respect to the historico-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship… [T]he text [of Gaudium et Spes] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789.

So, at least part of the real meaning of Vatican II, according to the Ratzinger diagnosis, is that its teaching serves as a "counter-syllabus" that corrects the "one-sidedness" of Bl. Pius IX and Saint Pius X, as well as the "obsolete" Church-state relation of times past, which must be abandoned so that the Church can attempt "an official reconciliation" with "the new era" that began with the French Revolution. Of course, this very reconciliation with the "new era" is condemned by the Syllabus itself, wherein the following proposition (#80) is listed as one of the principal errors of modern times: "The Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization." But that's another article.

Now, our search for the real meaning of Gaudium et spes does not end with the Cardinal's diagnosis. Given that it seems quite outrageous that Vatican II would attempt to counter and correct the teaching of two of the greatest Popes in Church history, the neo-Catholic commentators have rushed in with their interpretation of the Cardinal's interpretation. That is not what the Cardinal really meant about the real meaning of Vatican II, they say.

For example, we have an article entitled "The Counter-Syllabus Canard," by one I. Shawn McElhinney, who maintains a website decrying the errors of "ultra-traditionalists." McElhinney concedes that Cardinal Ratzinger's reference to a "counter-syllabus" is "unfortunate." But McElhinney assures us that "the intended meaning of the Cardinal Prefect was that the condemnation of errors in the Syllabus could logically be seen as being countered by positive teaching in GS [Gaudium et Spes] that encapsulates the elements of truth contained in the aforementioned errors. Seen in this light, the negative element of the summary condemnations complimented [sic] by the later positive and elaborated teaching encapsulating what elements of truth the previously condemned errors contained results in the climate moving from negative and reactive to positive and pro-active…." [Chris Ferrara refutes this contention of McElhinney's in the book The Great Facade on pp. 294-95. --Mario Derksen]

Now I know the reader will ask this question: What did he say? And I must admit the interpretation of the interpretation is quite confusing. But it seems, dear reader, that we have reached the end of this particular schematic on how to find the real meaning of Gaudium et spes. McElhinney says that Ratzinger says that the Council says that "the negative element of the summary condemnations complimented [sic] by the later positive and elaborated teaching encapsulating what elements of truth the previously condemned errors contained results in the climate moving from negative and reactive to positive and pro-active…" That is where the line ends, and so it seems the Church has spoken. Granted, this appears to be one of those "hard sayings" the Church obliges us to accept, but to whom shall we go, when, in this case, it is McElhinney who has the words of eternal life?

Or we could simply use the Alternative Rule for the interpretation of Vatican II. The Alternative Rule is as follows: Vatican II must be read in the light of Tradition. In which case, why not simply go back to the traditional teaching and forget the whole problem of Vatican II? Or am I missing something?

When Mike Matt and I were discussing the situation in which the Church now finds itself-a situation in which lay commentators tell us what the Pope or the Cardinal really means to say about the real meaning of a Council whose real meaning seems undetectable-we both began laughing uproariously. We have reached a point in this crisis where laughter seems to come naturally. The crisis has become that absurd. After we had finished having our laugh, I asked Mike: "Do you suppose that any traditional Catholics of the 4th century found the Arian crisis hilarious?" The devil's insane masterpiece of confusion in this epoch of Church history has reached such proportions that one feels impelled to laugh at the sheer gargantuan spectacle of it. And that is no laughing matter.

[traditionalist]

For your reading enjoyment.

[NYer]

To: sinkspur; Loyalist; Alberta's Child; Land of the Irish; ultima ratio

Well, this seems like a "fair and balanced" ping list - one NO vs 4 Trads. You forgot this ....

SINKSPUR

[sinkspur]

Well, this seems like a "fair and balanced" ping list - one NO vs 4 Trads.

Every article that Ferrara writes--every single one of them--says the same thing, with different invective wrapped around it.

Read one, you've read them all.

[Maximilian]

Great article.

[Maximilian]

Every article that Ferrara writes--every single one of them--says the same thing, with different invective wrapped around it.

Cicero, perhaps the greatest rhetorician of all time, said that repetition was the most effective rhetorical device. It's a simple point, but it bears repeating: Vatican II was unquestionably and without the slightest shade of doubt, the cause of the current situation in the Church, whether for good or bad. The New Mass, the collapse of vocations, pedophilia scandals, etc. etcc, whether you like them or loathe them, it is impossible to deny that they go back to Vatican II.

Ironic how the liberals like Pope JPII are more than happy to proclaim that Vatican II inaugurated a new era in the life of the Church. We are living in that era. Everything we experience in the Church is an element of the Vatican II era of the Church. The architecture, the liturgy, the fashions, the politics, all of these are individual items that make up the Vatican II Church.

Liberals at least are in a better position than neo-conservatives, because they don't need to live in a state of cognitive dissonance. They make no effort to deny that Vatican II was an ecclesiastical revolution, and they require no intellectual pretences about a split between Vatican II and the "spirit of Vatican II." Their minds are healthier since they are not trying to reconcile irreconcilable opposite, although their souls may be in even worse shape.

[sydney smith]

Thank you for the post. Ferrara is one of those rare brilliant writers that takes the absurdity of the pseudo-intellectual neo-con and exposes it for what it is----laughable. The novus ordo apologists repeatedly trip over themselves trying to explain the inexplicable, justify the unjustifiable, defend the indefensible. Deo gratias for Chris Ferrara.

[malakhi]

It is precisely the nothingness of Vatican II that has led to the endless debate over what it means.

The Seinfeld council?

[Maximilian]

The Seinfeld council?

A brilliant summary.

[dangus]

Is Vatican II to blame for the American church's crisis, or Viet Nam? I've read that seminarian populations dropped more than 90% during the late sixties through the 70's. I don't have firm numbers, but if the rate of seminarians becoming priests were the same in the 40's and 50's as it is today, that means that there was at least a five- or six-fold expansion in the number of seminarians during the '60's. Also, the vast, vast majority of '60's-era seminarians either left the seminary, left the priesthood, or are the apostatic "religious left." I've met few who were to the right of Vatican 2.

This is NOT what we see in Latin America, Asia or Africa, where the number of home-grown priests has skyrocketed.

It's also not what we see in Europe, where the 60's and '70's merely represented a continuing downward trend which started much, much earlier; probably due to a general loss of faith which occurred long before Vatican 2.

So why is the phenomenon of the spike and then collapse of the seminarian population strictly an AMERICAN phenomenon?

Consider somewhere else where we saw the same pathology:
1. An abandonment of long-standing principles in favor of leftist, touchy-feely principles;
2. A sudden spike in the '60's followed by a drastic drop in the '70's;
3. A successive generation of much more conservative people who feel shut out and oppressed by their baby-boomer superiors.

Yes, I'm talking about... LIBERAL ARTS PROFESSORS!

In the '60's, vast numbers of anti-war students joined grad schools to avoid the war. Is it possible they were also flocking to seminaries?

Consider the '60's-era priests... the homophiles, the peace-niks, the Corpus Cristi crowd. How about the famous ex-seminarians... Gene Roddenberry, Jerry Brown, Joe Biden, and do I recall correctly Dennis Kucinich?. DO they seem like the type who dropped out because Vatican 2 was too liberal?

Why didn't this happen in other churches? In many protestant churches, you don't need long grad-school preparations, so you don't get much of a deferral. In many denominations, you need to be elected (and draft dodging didn't make you popular). Or you were draft-eligible while you served under a pastor for a while. But it did happen a little bit. (Al Gore, and do I recall correctly Bill Bradley?)

Now why is the plunge worse in the seminaries than the grad schools? Simple, you don't need to be celibate to be a professor. (Although more should be :) )

Just a theory, but one I can safely espouse without calling the Pope a heretic, and one which fits the observations much better.

[dangus]

O, and just to be clear... Nothing in Vatican II called for improper use of Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers, using John Denver songs in liturgies, compulsory hand-holding, the abandonment of the sacrament of reconciliation, etc. These "reforms" were made by all those hippy priests, not Vatican II. In fact, the religious left hates JP2 because OPPOSES all these "reforms." The hippy priests just used Vatican 2 as a convenient cover.

[wideawake]

My view is this:

Both the traditionalist animus and the conservative defensiveness toward the Second Vatican Council are overdone.

The Second Vatican Council did not introduce liturgical change - it merely accelerated a process that Pius XII initiated.

Today it seems like a miniscule difference for Pius XII to have changed the Latin translation of the Psalter used in the liturgy. But we should remember that the Gallican Psalter as it was used prior to 1945 was so ingrained and essential in the Church's worship that when St. Jerome tried to introduce a more literal Hebrew version in the year 392, it was rejected in favor of the older version.

No sweeping change like it had ever happened in the Church's liturgy.

It is clear that the liturgy today would be much more solemn, traditional and reverent if the letter of the Council's recommendations had been followed. But the spirit of liturgical change was already there and the rot in the Church's administration was already firmly in place.

In the end, the more devout and more serious a Catholic is, the more receptive he is to the Church's rich theological and liturgical heritage. The teaching of the Second Vatican Council, in so far as it is vague and accomodating, will recede into the background. At the time of the Second Vatican Council, when contraception was still controversial, when abortion was illegal, when sodomy was considered a manifestation of deep-rooted mental illness or wilful turpitude, then the Church could converse vaguely with civil society.

Since then the battle lines have been drawn and Catholics will either apostatize or they will return to the sources: the Fathers, the Doctors, Trent, the old devotionals, sacramentals and liturgy.

All the Second Vatican Council did was to force the situation to a crisis - if the rot had been allowed to continue unnoticed for a longer time, then the remnant of the faithful might be even smaller than it is now.

God will make sense of this confusion in time - my job for now is to love Christ, love His Church and to make sure that my children are well-instructed and schooled in its ancient treasures.

[Maximilian]

I don't have firm numbers

That's an understatement. Your theory gets points for imagination -- it's Dennis Kucinich who is responsible for the problems in the Church, not the Pope -- now if only there were a shred of evidence to support it. Try the "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators." It has all the numbers. See if you can find any data to support your position.

Una Voce Interview with author of Index of Leading Catholic Indicators

Buchanan on Index of Leading Catholic Indicators

Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism.

Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II.

His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.

Here are Jones' grim statistics of Catholicism's decline...

[iranger]

"Everything we experience in the Church is an element of the Vatican II era of the Church. The architecture..."

Well isn't that the truth. It breaks my heart everytime a small town church feels the need to build a new "modern" church to make the suburbanites feel more comfortable. Its not long after that shorts and flipflops become acceptable attire.

[Maximilian]

Nothing in Vatican II called for improper use of Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers, using John Denver songs in liturgies, compulsory hand-holding, the abandonment of the sacrament of reconciliation, etc.

Try reading "Sacrosanctum Concilium." Or Michael Davies new book just out from TAN:

Liturgical Timebombs in Vatican II

[Maximilian]

Since then the battle lines have been drawn and Catholics will either apostatize or they will return to the sources: the Fathers, the Doctors, Trent, the old devotionals, sacramentals and liturgy.

Excellent point. This sums it up.

[RobbyS]

I prefer Jacques Maritain's Peasant of the Garonne, his critique of the Council, which--you may recall--was published just three weeks after the end of the Council. The Council was attempting to accept the positive aspects of liberal democracy and to reach out to those Christians outside the Church who remain faithful to Christ. But what happened is that modernists seized control even during the Council, and so even its main document are contaminated by a confusion of liberal politics and phenomenalism with the mission of the Church. Just as the syllabus of errors ignored the fact that a separation of church and state--properly understood--protects the Church from domination by the state, the Council seems to have ignored the dangers of the insidiuous introduction of democratic principles into the Church. If they were going to consult Protestant advisers. I wish they had bothered to read James Madison.

[Maximilian]

I prefer Jacques Maritain's Peasant of the Garonne, his critique of the Council

What do you like about it? Neuhaus also has been writing about that book lately, but I wonder what the attraction is?

[Desdemona]

Having been born in the midst of the Vietnam war, I have wondered for a long time what impact the mood of the nation had on the willingness to just up and change Mass and the educational system. Funny how the biggest proponents of this sort of change were also the biggest supporters of the peace effort.