Reckoning with Vatican II

Published on by D. G. Hart

In Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After, edited by Adrian Hastings, Enda McDonagh writes the following about Gaudium et Spes:

. . . the Council endorsed a document unprecedented in conciliar history and quite radical in Church history. Its unprecedented character derived from the pastoral concerns of the Council as originally conceived by John XXIII. Its openness to the world of its time built on social and other encyclicals, various episcopal and lay initiatives and on the pioneering theological work of Chenu, Congar, Rahner and many others. In the face of the flat rejection of the ‘modern world’ by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors just a century before its continuing influence to the very eve of the Council, the Council’s shift in perspective may well be describes as revolutionary. It was certainly profoundly liberating. . . .

The second limitation must be the absence of the cross from the gospel reflections: social sin, mass oppression, a sheer conspiracy of evil needed to explain so much of human history, all that is largely absent. The world it portrays is one needing development rather than liberation. It is one whose problems seem rather easily resolvable with a bit of goodwill and a renewal of Christian idealism. And this from a dominantly European-American gathering whose members had been through two world wars in this century and still had to live with the responsibility of the Holocaust. The sense of the tragic is largely missing from its world-view as the cross is from its theology.

There are limitations and confusions too in its understanding of the way Christ related to the world, because it concentrates on the mediating symbol of the Church and largely ignores that of the Kingdom. Any attempt to discuss the Church in the world without spelling out the Church’s role in discerning, promoting and realizing the Kingdom in the world is bound to be limited and frustrated. . . (96, 110-111)

And they keep saying that Rome doesn’t change.

22 thoughts on “Reckoning with Vatican II”

  1. Darryl,

    And they keep saying that Rome doesn’t change.

    No, we’ve never claimed that. Development is precisely a kind of change. But not all change is development. Tom explained that distinction in the very article you linked. The particular way in which the Catholic Church does not change, and cannot change, is by denying or abandoning any previously held dogma. But she does change by developing in her understanding of the deposit of faith.

    In the peace of Christ,

    – Bryan

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  2. Come on Darryl,
    You got to know that this is just Edna’s opinion.
    If not your opinion of Edna’s.
    Or mine of your of . .

    And I ask you. Does a chameleon change just because its colors change? Come on, stop hunting around in the largest catechism and give us your opin….
    Never mind.

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  3. It’s eels on wheels.

    I notice over at the linked to article the author slips in ‘material’ or ‘materially’ when speaking of union with the RCC; there’s no salvation outside of material union with the Catholic Church.

    That’s an interesting gloss. If the issue is whether or not one can be saved outside of union with the Catholic Church there is world of difference between gloss present and gloss absent.

    But yes, development is a kind of change. So what? Maybe Dr. Hart (mind your P’s and Q’s) was talking about a different kind?

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  5. The roman apologists project continues to rely upon a supernaturally enabled judgement of charity regarding its claims of authority and doctrinal pronouncements. IOW, you don’t believe and charitably reconcile seemingly contradicting or ‘convenient’ assesments, ultimately, because you have not been enabled to. Your invincible ignorance waits upon your enabling by the Holy Spirit and willingness to be led by such. Of course, there are many such within her bounds who likewise suffer from a similarly appraised and satanically inspired incredulity. Thank goodness the prot-Catholics arrived to help us rightly understand our ‘dinner-table, family originating, inside jokes and dialogue’. Yea, you might wanna be cynical and ask questions such as; ‘umm how would they know since they weren’t part of the family’ but that just reveals your resistance to the leading and movements of God upon his people.
    This breed of the prot-catholic is so anointed as to within days of being received by her new mother, who always was her mother, they just didn’t know it; imperfect union and all, that they are able to synthesize the thomistic tradition with the scriptural tradition with the mysterious and equally authoritative oral tradition as expounded through the centuries by our holy mother and teach even cradles trained in the bosom what they really need to embrace. All hail the prot-catholic who after failing to adequately grasp and embrace their own Protestant heritage, seeks now to lead you into an true understanding of the Roman Catholic faith of which some have been a part of for a whole 2 and 3 months now. Brilliant.

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  6. Sean, as I suggested to Stellman over at Greenbaggins, only Evelyn Waugh could make up this kind of gullibility in the figure of Rex Mottram. You get a perpetual indeed yourself.

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  7. Bryan, I forgot. I have to have the right paradigm to use the word “change.” But then again, if Ignatius was right about papal authority — white is black and white is black — change can mean whatever those with the right authority want it to mean.

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  8. It gets better Darryl, the prot-catholics would argue that father mowbry fails to rightly distinguish between an official papal pronouncement which is divinely protected, and the supporting argumentation, including the exegesis, which may be faulty, yet nevertheless the conclusions promulgated in the papal pronouncement are mysteriously yet divinely protected from error. Also, not provided or protected from error is ANY and ALL interpretation and application of same pronouncement. So Rex is exactly the kind of convert they’re aiming to create. In the meantime the cradles and Jesuits have determined the infestation of prot-Catholics is some sort of ‘chick publications baptist’ plan to discredit and embarrass the RCC and have opened up dialogue with Mormons offering amnesty and refuge for full quiver, polygamist Mormons in exchange for relieving them of the prot-Catholics. As part of a double pronged approach Sister Simone is conducting Clockwork orange type immersion therapy of Vatican II pastoral interpretation and application in an effort to cure the prot-catholic apologist of his mysoginistic devotion to the all-male magisterium. Having been a victi…errr…needful student of the nun’s direction and discipline, my money is on Sister for ultimate control of popular opinion of and adherence to Rome’s decrees. Something along the line of; ‘tell us again holy father how it is you know so much about the reproductive rights of women or their sexual mores and yet struggle to balance your checkbook and screen the help?!’ ‘Hello, hello, holy father?’ What, you’ll call back during the Holy See telethon? ‘Right. Got ya Holy father, the check is in the mail.’ The American RCC, the See’s fall back financial plan. ‘Just send money’ love Rome. This is some of the dinner table conversation and inside jokes of the RC ‘family’ that make us suspect of CTC’s ‘insider’ status.

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  9. I had a vision of Sean doing his last posting. I say him close his eyes which started twitching, slowly at first. Blowing past REM like it was slow-mo, the twitch then began in his upper forearms, travelling down into his hands that flung themselves on the keyboard as he begin to type, twitching eyes still closed.

    Finished, Sean slumped forward, his sweaty forehead crashing on the keyboard, somehow punching the “post comment” button.

    Dude, you’re re-inventing the blog comment.

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  10. Sean,

    That last rant was Jesse Pinkmanesque. Either that or something out of a James Ellroy novel.

    It would seem a lot easier for these guys to just affirm Sola Scriptura. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

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  11. D.G.,

    I skimmed that 200+ comment thread at Greenbaggins and found your comments about Rex Mottram. It’s been awhile since I saw “Brideshead”, but I remember Rex being rather shrewd. How was he gullible? He was pretty much converting so he could marry Julia, wasn’t he?

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  12. Sorry, Iphone takes my already poor sentence structure to a whole new level. That, and I suffer a bit from an Irish predilection for stream of consciousness thought and writing mixed with a little Edie Brickell sensibility; “I know what I know if you know what I mean……” Mix all that with more than 5 minutes at my disposal and you get a train wreck.

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  17. I need to watch Brideshead again. The last time I watched it it was on VHS in the kitchen of our old house while I did the dishes. I see it’s available for streaming on Netflix now. We got a Kindle Fire and it is sweet for streaming Netflix on (if I can ever get it away from my wife & kids).

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  20. George, thanks for that. Here’s the nuns I know;

    Do you believe the church should ordain women as priests?

    I’m hedging here. Eventually, there will be room for that. I do understand that the church teaching is that only men can be priests. I believe firmly in the equality of men and women.”

    Your parents were appointed to a commission on birth control during the Second Vatican Council in Rome. How did that affect them?

    “When they first went over to Rome, my parents believed in the traditional church teaching that birth control was intrinsically wrong. But my mother thought they should find out what Catholic families had to say about it. She read these heart-wrenching letters from faithful Catholics about the difficulties of life without birth control. They completely changed their views.”

    “Why remain a Catholic?

    “I believe “the church” is not the hierarchical structure; it’s all of the people. We are the church. People sometimes think Catholics all think the same. But there is tremendous diversity, and Catholicism has an appreciation for that. So while I respect the church structure, it’s become too inbred and doesn’t reflect the richness of the church.”

    What do you tell Catholics who pray for change in the church?

    Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the priest and paleontologist, said that we have to believe in the slow work of God. And the Catholic Church works very slowly.”

    Sean: But never mind her, the CTC boys know what’s really going on around the throne.

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  21. Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church says this in chapter three: “Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held. This is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church, whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith.” (http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html)

    The 20 ecumenical councils before it are still infallible, like the ecumenical council of Trent that declared that Catholics with faith can lose salvation from unrepented mortal (grave) sin.

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  22. Still reckoning:

    One of the most astonishing things about the Catholic Church is the almost universal indifference of her members (including her clergy) to the sacred liturgy as such. Sure, many parish parking lots are full on Sunday mornings. Many of the laity are “involved” in one ministry or another. Plenty of socializing goes on around the Mass — sometimes, indeed, with excessive enthusiasm in the pews before and after Mass. Coffee hours are not unknown across the land. And priests work very hard, often at thankless tasks. But when it comes to being “thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 14) or “living a liturgical life” (cf. SC 18, 42), the evidence for it is nada.

    It was one of the great complaints of the Liturgical Movement prior to the Council that Catholics, generally speaking, did not possess an intimate knowledge of the treasure of their liturgy or cherish a particularly intense desire to live “under the sign” of liturgical seasons and feasts. A combination of clericalism and growing secularization had removed many of the faithful from close contact with the sacred mysteries conducted in the church, and a rift appeared to yawn between the social aspect of Christianity, its mission in the needy world of today, and the ritual enactment of age-old, august ceremonies. In spite of a whirl of contrary currents in the aula, the view prevailed at the Second Vatican Council that the liturgy is the fons et culmen of the Church, the “font and apex” (or “source and summit”) of the Christian life — a conclusion that would surely have sounded fairly strange back then, but not quite as strange as it does now, when it is well-nigh incomprehensible.

    Have we not known Catholics who, in spite of their sincere faith, don’t seem to “get it” when it comes to the liturgy? People who could not possibly agree with the statement that it is the “source and summit” of who they are, what they do, why they live, where they are going, and how they will get there? It seems that Cardinal George was so right when he once quipped: “American Catholics are Protestants who go to Mass on Sundays.” A nefarious combination of individualism and collectivism prevents many Catholics, regardless of their level of education, from perceiving the loss of the liturgical spirit in the context of the Ordinary Form, the loss of the primacy of the transcendent and of adoration. It impedes them, too, from longing for something more authentically Catholic and reaching out for it even when it is available to them in their own neighborhood. The individualism makes us wear blinders and settle for a minimum criterion, namely, “what works for me”; the collectivism encourages a herd mentality that blocks common sense, legitimate critical thinking, and the desire for better things.

    In the end, it simply seems that other things are more important in life than the liturgy. It does not come first and last; it does not take precedence and determine the shape of our days, weeks, years. Let’s face it: for such Catholics, Vatican II was wrong about the “font and apex” business, just as far too many might say Paul VI was wrong in Humanae Vitae, or John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.

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