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3. Novelties in Vatican II teaching
Fr. Gleize has made
an extensive study of the problems with Vatican II, particularly in
his reply to Msgr. Ocariz,
A Crucial question. First, Vatican II was a
unique council in that it refused to engage the solemn magisterial
infallibility. It also intended to study and expound doctrine, said
John XXIII, not only “according to the literary formulations”
but also “following the research methods of modern thought.” But this
intent to express the faith by following the principles and methods of
a new school of thought opposed to very foundation of reason and faith
were condemned 15 years earlier in Humani Generis (#15):
…that will permit
of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy,
whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other
system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done,
because they hold that the Mysteries of Faith are never expressed by
truly adequate concepts, but only by approximate and ever changeable
notions, in which the truth... is necessarily distorted.
On at least four
points, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are obviously in
logical contradiction to the pronouncements of the previous
traditional Magisterium. This is the doctrine on religious liberty (Dignitatis
Humanae #2), on the Church (Lumen Gentium #8), on ecumenism
(Lumen Gentium #8; Unitatis Redintegratio #3), on
collegiality (Lumen Gentium #22). Hence, it is impossible to
interpret them in keeping with the other teachings contained in the
earlier documents of the Church’s magisterium. Vatican II has thus
broken the unity of the magisterium, to the extent that it has broken
the unity of its object.
4. Other disturbing
questions
It is hardly a
secret any longer that many dealings
took place before the Council. De Mattei, in his
History Never Written on the Council, explains
at great length the meeting at Metz of Cardinal Tisserant with Nikodim,
where he pleaded with the Communists to send the Orthodox bishops in
exchange for silencing any condemnation of Communism. Cardinal Bea
likewise embarked upon an extended world tour to meet with Protestants
to ask them what they wanted from the Council, and the Secretariat
(soon promoted to the rank of a Commission) for the Unity of
Christians– which became their platform and de facto the Trojan
horse used to bring down the Holy City’s walls.
Many of the watered-down
teachings of Vatican II are the fruit of these promises with this
Commission. The Roman authorities asked the Jews and the Freemasons
what they wanted. They demanded respectively that the term ‘Deicide’
applied to their race be deleted and that religious liberty be
consecrated.
These arrangements
raise some questions which, someday, the pope will have to address.
Would Nicea have been an authentic Catholic magisterium if the papal
legates had asked Arius what he required
of the Council? Would Trent have turned out to be an authentic
Catholic Magisterium if the bishops had asked Luther and Calvin what
texts they wanted to have authenticated?
De Mattei is not
short of arguments to explain the power struggle at the Council, which
gave the upper hand to the modernistic Rhine alliance.Wiltgen likewise
expresses it clearly in his book entitled
The Rhine flows into the Tiber. This avant-garde
wing was dominated by neo-modernists like Kung, Schillebeeckx, de
Lubac, Congar, but was really dominated by the arch-heretic Rahner.
This explains also why, because of the resistance of the conservative
wing, many texts are filled with ambiguity, and sometimes
contradiction, because they had to reach a compromise, at the expense
of uniformity, let alone at the expense of truth!
The same author, de
Mattei, relentlessly asks whether the Council can be properly
understood without being placed in its historical context, both
antecedent and subsequent. For him, the reception of the Council as an
era of Christian Revolution speaks volumes
as to what the conciliar
popes, fathers and texts meant it to be. A historian would find it an
enigma to pretend that the makers of Vatican II had no intention and
no means to stop the effervescence of doctrinal and liturgical
novelties which erupted then and there.
Thus, the
post-Council is emblematic of a rupture with the past. And this
becomes problematic for the ‘hermeneutic of continuity.’ Pope Benedict
indeed wonders: “Why was the reception of the Council, in
great parts of the Church, reached with such difficulty?... The
problems of the reception came from the confrontation of two opposite
hermeneutics.” This double hermeneutic is proof enough that, far
from clarifying the doctrine, this Council has at least obscured it.
Iota Unum (#48)
explains that the very fact conservative
theologians strive to disculpate the Council from equivocity is
a sign that something is not quite right!
5. Contrary
magisterial teaching
Finally, some
incoherence is readily perceived if
one peruses the Council texts and compares them with Church Tradition.
Is it impertinent to wonder whether we can speak of continuity in the
magisterium when one accepts the following propositions side by side? |
