“Was Vatican II infiltrated by Marxists? Vatican II is a subject I am totally unfamiliar as there is . . .”
No. There is much propaganda out there hoping this is the case. The most reverent Churches(parishes) adhere to Vatican II and do so while invoking sacred music, Latin use, boys only on the altar, no Eucharistic ministers, etc. The most attendance of new orders, seminarians and nuns, are those which adhere to Catholic teaching and are fully cognizant of Vatican II.
the best way I, a lay person, can explain it to you is that Vatican II was brought about at a period of time in Western culture that was/is exploring the use of Communism. Many of the people within the Church brought in some practices of the outside secular culture that were damaging. The sex scandal is so extreme it bears another heading. In any case, Vatican II was, in a way, misinterpreted.
Many practicing Catholics have been separated from the teachings of the Church. But true catholic teaching is not communist nor is it in any way accepting of homosexual practices (its teaching on this is hate the sin live the sinner and help those afflicted with temptations)
Vatican II gave a lot of people excuses for leaving the church and for hating the Church when they know nothing about it.
Below are some recent citings on the pope, current and former.
also, there are encyclicals. Pope John Paul II wrote extensively in “Theology of the Body”, check, “Humanae Vitae”, and “On Human Sexuality”, all easily available with a google search all post Vatican II and all written by people who know the issues of the culture with extensive education in Western History.
Pope Benedict had regularly used the power of his pulpit to condemn marriage equality in the harshest of terms, most recently using the annual message of peace to say letting gays and lesbians marry is “an offence against the truth of the human person.”
and from the Huff Post, march 13, 2013:
“He was the visible face of the Catholic Church’s opposition to equal marriage and he approached it from a fundamentalist position, posturing that he had to wage a war of God against what he considered a plan of the devil,” said Esteban Paulon, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals.
. . . He recalls, for example, that when Bergoglio served as head of the Argentine conference of bishops for several years, he was a die-hard opponent of abortion, and argued against sex-education laws that permit free access to contraceptives and allow Argentines to determine their gender based on their self-identity instead of their biology.
Your post adds great impact to the discussion. Since the Catholic Church has done much to encourage the Boy Scouts in its parishes, how it deals with this latest turn of events will be one to watch. I have confidence they are not taking it lightly.