We are not worried about the Church failing, we are worried about being taken on a journey a la another Vatican II that may take a centuries to heal, if ever. I would not want to put my Church in the hands of one man. Some guarantees must precede any reunion.
You also exaggerate the negative role of the past popes. None of them had an evil intention; most abuse occurred by the faithless clergy against the backdrop of rising neo-paganism
No, I am sure they didn't but I don't believe the outcome of the Vatican II was an undesired accident, or else they were deceived. The Vatican II obviously has "holes" that allows a wide range of interpretation. Was that deliberate or accidental?
Bishop Mahoney in LA, for example is still a bishop there because he is not doing anything that is uncanonical. Otherwise I am sure he could be removed. This means the "holes" are big enough to accommodate practices seen in his church, which is just about "anything goes." Right?
Obviously the popes were not interested in annulling the Vatican II. Somehow, everyone claims the Vatican II was (a) necessary and (b) good for the Church and (c) no one wants to to go back to the old "bad" ways, but judging from the reform of the liturgical reform it is beginning to look more and more like the old ways.
Let's see..
Here are some excerpts
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html
General norms
22. 1. Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop.
2. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established.
3.Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.
In some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed, and this entails greater difficulties. Wherefore:
1) The competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, must, in this matter, carefully and prudently consider which elements from the traditions and culture of individual peoples might appropriately be admitted into divine worship. Adaptations which are judged to be useful or necessary should when be submitted to the Apostolic See, by whose consent they may be introduced.
2) To ensure that adaptations may be made with all the circumspection which they demand, the Apostolic See will grant power to this same territorial ecclesiastical authority to permit and to direct, as the case requires, the necessary preliminary experiments over a determined period of time among certain groups suited for the purpose.
3) Because liturgical laws often involve special difficulties with respect to adaptation, particularly in mission lands, men who are experts in these matters must be employed to formulate them.
On Music
“”114. The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care. Choirs must be diligently promoted, especially in cathedral churches; but bishops and other pastors of souls must be at pains to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs, as laid down in Art. 28 and 30.””
On New Churches..
“”And when churches are to be built, let great care be taken that they be suitable for the celebration of liturgical services and for the active participation of the faithful.””
On Art
125. The practice of placing sacred images in churches so that they may be venerated by the faithful is to be maintained. Nevertheless their number should be moderate and their relative positions should reflect right order. For otherwise they may create confusion among the Christian people and foster devotion of doubtful orthodoxy.
It seems the only loopholes were created by the holes in the heads of those who ignored what Vatican II actually said
I do believe Pope Benedict XVI is serious about fixing things.
Here is some excerpts from him over the years...
“[W]e have a liturgy which has degenerated so that it has become a show which, with momentary success for the group of liturgical fabricators, strives to render religion interesting in the wake of the frivolities of fashion and seductive moral maxims. Consequently, the trend is the increasingly marked retreat of those who do not look to the liturgy for a spiritual show-master but for the encounter with the living God in whose presence all the ‘doing’ becomes insignificant since only this encounter is able to guarantee us access to the true richness of being.”Cardinal Ratzinger 1992
Comments on turning around alters
“I would say that, in a certain way, the priest has become too important,” he said. “Those attending Mass must always be looking at him. In reality, he is not nearly that important.” Cardinal Ratzinger 1993
From Spirit of the Liturgy (Ratzinger, 2000)
“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church's whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?” 2000
The two reasons which are most often heard, are: lack of obedience to the Council which wanted the liturgical books reformed, and the break in unity which must necessarily follow if different liturgical forms are left in use. It is relatively simple to refute these two arguments on the theoretical level. The Council did not itself reform the liturgical books, but it ordered their revision, and to this end, it established certain fundamental rules. Before anything else, the Council gave a definition of what liturgy is, and this definition gives a valuable yardstick for every liturgical celebration. Were one to shun these essential rules and put to one side the normae generales which one finds in numbers 34-36 of the Constitution De Sacra Liturgia (SL), in that case one would indeed be guilty of disobedience to the Council! It is in the light of these criteria that liturgical celebrations must be evaluated, whether they be according to the old books or the new. It is good to recall here what Cardinal Newman observed, that the Church, throughout her history, has never abolished nor forbidden orthodox liturgical forms, which would be quite alien to the Spirit of the Church. An orthodox liturgy, that is to say, one which express the true faith, is never a compilation made according to the pragmatic criteria of different ceremonies, handled in a positivist and arbitrary way, one way today and another way tomorrow. The orthodox forms of a rite are living realities, born out of the dialogue of love between the Church and her Lord. They are expressions of the life of the Church, in which are distilled the faith, the prayer and the very life of whole generations, and which make incarnate in specific forms both the action of God and the response of man. Such rites can die, if those who have used them in a particular era should disappear, or if the life-situation of those same people should change. The authority of the Church has the power to define and limit the use of such rites in different historical situations, but she never just purely and simply forbids them! Thus the Council ordered a reform of the liturgical books, but it did not prohibit the former books. The criterion which the Council established is both much larger and more demanding; it invites us all to self-criticism! -Cardinal Ratzinger 1998
Again, I agree that the Orthodox Church should become comfortable with the Latins’ ability to heal and straighten themselves and that the comfort level today is low. When you talk of guarantees, that is a legal term. The Latin bishops in Florence thought they had guarantees, too, when the Easter bishops signed the papers. Obviously, a reunion is impossible without a council or a series of councils producing definitive binding documents, but your real concern should be with the internal disposition of the Latin Church, and I share that concern.
Vatican II is a complex phenomenon. If you study it from caricatures that some who disagree with it make it out to be, you are making the same mistake as when some Orthodox listen to Protestant caricatures of anything Catholic. Serious study takes time. It is a flawed council in that it produced several vague documents — most likely, deliberately vague — which can be read as if to justify modernism. But in its defense:
1. It is a pastoral council: it did not define any dogmas. It had to be convened to respond to the changes in the sociopolitical realities post WWII.
2. The resurgence of informed traditionally minded laity, — such as your Catholic friends here at FR, — is also a fruit of Vatican II. It had an effect of shaking up the Church and not all that came out of it was negative.
3. The abuses, theological and liturgical, took the wrong cue from the Vatican II, but the Vatican II itself is at worst vague, but never encouraged any abuse.
What happened, in short, was that there was a modernizing itch in the Church and Vatican II gave an excuse for these people to scratch the itch. At this point, the momentum is with the orthodoxy, not with the modernizers. The horrific social consequences of the 60’s are now plain to see, and alongside them we see liberal theologies crash and burn, or go Episcopalian. The traditionalist — yet loyal to Rome — wing of the Latin Church won. What remains is the mop-up operation: waiting for certain bishops to retire, certain orders to lose membership, etc. Vatican II will be remembered as the council which transformed the Catholic Church from a collection of ethno-cultural Churches that Western Catholicism was following the Reformation, into a smaller but more vibrant Church of people who chose to be Catholic and want to remain Catholic, because they understand and like Catholicism. The era of abuses is largely over. The patient is still weak, but conscious, and asked for chicken soup. Give us time.