[Max Combined]

"But Vatican II did not invent the Catholic faith."

No, it attempted to reinvent the Catholic faith and what were the results of this reinvention? Were they as promised by those who championed these reforms or were the results similar to what those who warned against the reforms thought they would be?

"Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good." -- Thomas Sowell

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

There was another book which covered similar territory by a liberal Fordham University sociology professor:

The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism
Michael W. Cuneo

Again, I think the difficulty posed by splintering within the church is there are many different groups and movements which could be lumped into the "extreme" category. The Spanish authoritarianism and neo-conservatism of Opus Dei, for instance, have come in for some attention by critics. All the different quasi-Marxist and liberal groups on the Left, Liberation Theology circles, have their own extreme styles. This "Paulist Center" that John Kerry attends. Now, supposedly, that is in line with Vatican II and is part of the official church. Go figure.

The so-called "Charismatic" movement which is derived in some way from Protestant Pentecostalist styles of behavior...how is that "Catholic"? There have been a lot of of wild and unusual religious movements since Vatican II which have very eccentric ways of presenting Catholicism.