The Challenges of Vatican II
This dialogue features some of the contentious issues which have surfaced following the end of the Second Vatican Council. Art Sippo's comments are in blue.
My problems revolve around the very mixed message that the pope's prayer meeting at Assisi sent to the world, as well as all of the false ecumenism that is tolerated under the guise of charity. I'm simply not sure that the Church really believes anymore that being Catholic is all that important. It may say it, but its actions send a different message. Further, if Vatican II was not a radical break with what came before it, why are most bishops so adamant in their refusal to allow the Tridentine mass to rear its head again? Seems like something very new is blowing in the Church and, like Paul VI, I'm not sure its the Holy Spirit.
In the centuries before Vatican II, the Papacy was a relatively insular and European institution which conducted itself with a triumphalist manner more consistent with Medieval society than with modern political realities. "Ecumenism" was seen as an attempt to create a "one world church" apart from Catholic unity which is impossible according to both Scripture and Tradition. The world began changing in the 19th Century and small concessions were made to modernity by various Popes. Pius VII rehabilitated Galileo, abolished the Inquisition & its procedures performed "under duress," and established the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pius IX began dealing with the new "democracies" (with the exception of the Masonic puppet state in Italy) instead of lamenting the fall of the old monarchies and began to entertain the possibility that some who were formally outside of Catholic Unity might be saved. Leo XIII with the cooperation of Anglican clergy and scholars seriously considered the possibility that Anglican Orders might be valid (he concluded they weren't). He also wrote the first social encyclical (Rerum Novarum: "Of new things") which applied Catholic teaching to the complex problems of the new capitalism that had replaced the old economic structures. He was also the founder of the Pontifical Biblical Commission whose interpretations of the studies of sacred scripture included both a qualified reception to modern scholarship and a defense of traditional Catholic exegesis. St Pius X insisted on communion at a young age and encouraged frequent communion. Pius XI made peace with the Italian government, wrote numerous encyclicals dealing with the modern situation including ones on education (including rules for Catholic sex ed), the new media, the threat of modern resurgent paganism (ie, Naziism in the encyclical "Mit Sorge Bremmer"), and Birth Control. Pius XII liberalized the communion fast, began stating that the future of the Church was in league with the western democracies, and began the first real attempts at ecumenical outreach.
Most radical traditionalists ("trads" for short) forget these things and more which the Popes prior to VCII did. There has been a slow process of the Catholic Church coming to grips with modern social, political, and international realities. For some reason the trads prefer their Popes to be authoritarian, triumphalist, intolerant, and dyspeptic in the company of anyone other than "solid" Catholics. That really hasn't been possible for quite a long time and poor Pius XII's record is often sanitized by selective memory so that he may be hailed as the last great bigot to occupy the chair of Peter.
Vatican II was just the crisis point for problems which had been brewing for a long time. Theological dissent was rampant at the turn of the Century and only kept at bay by the shrewd actions of several Popes from Pius IX through Pius XII. The problems seemed to be under control but this was only cosmetic. As VCII formally ended the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Church set out into a different direction from that of confrontation with the unbelieving world. She tried to integrate herself into the emerging world culture as a partner with other religious and political groups in human endeavor to create a workable future for all of mankind in its diversity.
While it might have been considered "politically correct" to keep talking as if the Church's only international concern was missionary conversion, this was a naive anachronism. Most people in the world today will live and die in the religion into which they were born despite all of our evangelism. To any true Catholic heart with a thirst for lost souls, this is a tragedy. But it is also reality and the Catholic Church cannot ignore this. If all we do is to act like misanthropes and literally trash or ignore other people religions, we isolate ourselves from the rest of mankind and become more ineffective in our witness before men. This is the preface to my remarks on the Assisi incident.
What I know about Assisi is limited. Apparently, the usual suspects (ie the ultra-traditionalist wing) have put their own spin on the events there without being sufficiently critical about confirming the facts. This is what I understand to have happened:
A non-Catholic group wanted to have a meeting of all world religious leaders to support peace and tolerance. They selected Assisi out of respect for St Francis. The Pope came as a guest and spoke to the group about the Church's commitment to peace. He did not pray with non-Catholic leaders. When he spoke he spoke about Christ giving a credible witness to his own faith.
The incident of Buddhists erecting an idol on the altar in the Cathedral occurred spontaneously and without permission. The tabernacle was not removed as some have said. In most European cathedrals, there never has been a tabernacle on the main altar. When the Franciscan's found out what was happening, they immediately informed the Buddhists that this was not acceptable and the Buddhists apologized and withdrew to another location off Church grounds for their worship.
It is very sad that trads have invented all kinds of wild stories about what happened there. This was an excellent example of true ecumenism when people of different religious backgrounds try to respect their common values and support each other in the pursuit of transcendent truth. This is an opportunity for us to witness about Christ to them without being insulting or overbearing. If we are men of good will and respectful of the prevenient grace that God has poured out on all the world for the sake of Christ, we prepare these people for future evangelization.
I have absolute trust in Christ's promises that the successor of St Peter will be the "Rock" and that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church under his leadership. I am very leery of those people who want to be more Catholic than the Pope. Following their own system to its logical conclusion, they will soon put themselves out of the Church and become nothing more than "protestants of the right." They will be sheep without a shepherd and will only hinder the advance of the gospel.
That is enough for now. I look forward to hearing from you.
It is a pleasure to meet you. I too have a fondness for Michael Davies. His first book on Archbishop Lefebvre changed my life and helped to bring me back to orthodoxy 18 years ago. I appreciate his clarity and attention to detail. I met him while I was stationed in England and have had the privilege to speak on the same dais with him for the Pro Fide Forum. I have learned quite a bit since then though and I think he is a little too narrow in his focus, especially about Vatican II. But more on that later.
First, I have always thought that Pius X encouraged frequent communion as a reaction to the Jansenism that had marred European spirituality for decades. It began as a positive change but I wonder if another encyclical needs to be released to correct the newer historical imbalances, i.e. the "cheap grace" (Bonhoeffer) that is mirrored in the loss of respect for the Blessed Sacrament, denial of the Real Presence, and comparatively rare confessions among the Catholic population.
St. Pius X's motives were clearly to counteract the excessive rigorism that had pervaded the Church in part because of Jansenism, but also because of the strong Catholic retrenchment in the wake of the modernist revolution. We must remember that the problem of infrequent communion because of a personal sense of unworthiness was rampant in the Middle Ages and that the response of the 4th Lateran Council was to make confession and communion mandatory during Advent and Lent. St. Pius X's initiative must be seen as a significant development in the Church's sacramental life independently of the Jansenists.I agree that there is a need for more Eucharistic devotion today, but it has been the intention of the Popes to encourage frequent communion by ordinary Catholics, not just saints. Remember that grace is not "cheap" but both costly (for Christ) and free (for us)! Our Lord said, "My burden is light and my yoke is sweet." A well rounded devotional life recognizes that we don't need to "pay twice" for what Christ has already bought for us. We must respond in gratitude for what God has given us and never be under the delusion that we must earn the right to the Eucharist. Instead we must strive to be worthy of this great boon that God has given us by responding to it as grateful children to a generous Father. It is gratitude that we need to foster, not a desire to be worthy of the gift for we can never be that.As to the question of the need for more confessions prior to communion, we must be cautious. Technically confession is for the forgiveness of mortal sins. As such if one has not committed a mortal sin it is not required for them to go to confession even during Advent or Lent. It is VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that confession be more frequent, but this is devotional practice and not absolutely necessary for the reception of communion. Those people who do not go to confession regularly should not be judged harshly, for they are making a prudential decision based upon the state of their own souls. For the most part, the high frequency of communions now is probably what it should be and could only be considered scandalous by the more rigorous people. The number of sacrilegious communions is probably higher too, but in proportion to the overall increase in reception. I feel singularly unqualified to judge. I will say that I favor more Eucharistic devotion and more frequent confession as does the Holy Father. My advice is for you and me to advance our own Eucharistic Piety and make sure that we are confessing frequently and encouraging it among others. I make sure that I go with my kids at least twice a month.
Regarding Pius XII's founding of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, I would urge you to listen to a lecture given by Fr. Brian Harrison entitled "Demythologizing the Golden Legend." The "Golden Legend" consists of the myth that Pius XII fully blessed the fruits of modern biblical scholarship. Fr. Harrison explores how the modernist exegetes manipulated Divino Afflante Spiritu to serve their own agenda.
I have heard it and it is very good. (By the way Pius XII didn't found the PBC. Leo XIII did.) I agree substantially with what Fr Harrison says, but I would not lightly dismiss modern biblical scholarship. There is a lot of good work being done today even among Protestants. There is tendency by some trads to disagree with the conclusions of a scholar based solely on some flaw in his "philosophic presuppositions" which I think is dangerous and defamatory. Not every valid conclusion of a competent biblical scholar requires a belief in inerrancy if the methods followed in his work are otherwise good in themselves. It is particular conclusions that should be judged not presuppositions on the part of the scholar. We must remember though that we Catholics are committed to inerrancy and to the basic reliability of Scripture. Even so, we are not fundamentalists and we reserve for ourselves some "room to maneuver" in biblical interpretation in accordance with the PBC guidelines published earlier in this century. As Fr Harrison noted in his talk, the historicity of some biblical books such as Judith was questioned even by the solid Catholic scholars in Pius XII's time without any censure.
The last sentence of your paragraph cries for clarification. Is "poor" Pius X being labeled a "bigot" by you as well as his usual critics? I'm unclear on what you're saying about him and why.
(It was Pius XII, not Pius X.) What I was saying is that some trads misrepresent Pius XII as an intolerant rigid traditionalist and caricature him AS IF he were a narrow minded bigot, and then consider this twisted portrait as if it were desirable. I admire Pius XII and will hear nothing against him other than that he was a saintly man who was less than perfect but more than merely good. The extreme trads like to play off their rigorist caricature of Pius XII against their own demonized caricatures of John XXIII, Paul VI, JPI, and JPII. I will hear none of that either. Each Pope's character is different, but all of them supported orthodoxy in their own fashion. In particular, JPII is probably the most theologically knowledgeable and brilliant of any popes in recent memory. No one can hold a candle to him, not even Pius XII.
I only wish Michael Davies could join us in this discussion since he is not only a trained historian but qualifies as an eloquent defender of their position.
I am afraid that Michael Davies doesn't do justice to the history of the liturgy. Davies is not a historian. He is a school teacher with a flair for rhetorical argument. On the liturgy, he does not put the facts together correctly. Like many trads he tries to pretend that the Latin Liturgy remained almost unchanged from the 4th Century onwards. This is not true. I reminded Michael the last time we met that the Latin Rite had the largest number of variant forms of any rite in Christendom. It was the Eastern Rites that tended to be conservative and to remain unchanged in form or language for centuries. The situation at the time of the Council of Trent saw almost a dozen major usages (ie liturgical variants) throughout Latin Rite Europe including Roman, York, Hereford, Sarum, several forms of the Gallican, Ambrosan, Benedictine, and others. Liturgical uniformity was never considered a value in the West as it was in the East. Local variation instead was the norm though all usages retained the Latin language. The forced implementation of the Roman Missal upon the rest of the Latin Rite was done piecemeal over 2 centuries as a reaction to an emergency situation as the Protestants created numerous vernacular rites. VCII actually reinstituted the western tradition of local liturgical variation which had been suppressed during the Counter- Reformation.
I also think that the criticisms of men like R. Coomaraswamy in his "Problems With the New Mass" (Tan Publishers) and his better still "The Destruction of the Christian Tradition"( Perennial Books London, stocked and distributed by TAN upon request) have yet to be fully answered.
I am sorry. Coomaraswamy is a light-weight and most of what he says is nonsense. His critiques are superficial. Michael Davies’s critiques are more sophisticated and important. Even so, I would take exception to some of them.
First, though the problems that Vatican II faced "had been brewing for a long time" I trust that you will agree that those problems have in no way been tamed by the Council. Some of them, like modernism, have become even more pronounced.
I disagree. The Council Documents amply refute the modernist errors of which you speak. Every major papal document since VCII and the Catechism of the Catholic Church quote extensively from the Council documents. These documents are good and sound theologically. It is just that they are ignored by the modernists who prefer the "spirit" of VCII to the actual documents themselves. I blame most of our problems on Paul VI's ineptitude in handling the modernists. JPII has done a lot to reverse the trend (including more sound selections for the episcopate) but he inherited a Church in disarray and has spent 20 years trying to reign in the rebels. Had JPII been Pope at the close of VCII, we would not be in the mess we are in now.
Further, the theological dissent that the Church witnessed at the beginning of the century would today be termed a very loyal opposition compared to Catholics for a Free Choice, the feminist theology of a Rosemary Reuther, or the Biblical exegesis of a John Dominic Crossan, etc.
I don't agree. For their day, heretics like Reimarus, Tyrrel, and Loisy were as horrific as anything we have today. The difference is that today, many Bishops have lost control over their own dioceses and other allegedly "Catholic" institutions. There is also support from non-Catholic religions and secular groups (gov't and media) for any dissent against Papal authority.
I think that the Church, in attempting to embrace the world, received an unexpected bear hug in return... [etc]
True enough. There was to much naive optimism initially under Paul VI and to much laxity tolerated with people who had made permanent vows. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we should not have taken the more integral stance. It just means we should have done it differently. John, hindsight is always more critical and discerning than foresight. Besides, I would submit that had things been as hunky-dory as some trads claim, the situation would not have deteriorated as quickly as it did. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.
Why evangelize if much of our current theology reminds me of Huxley's book, "The Perennial Philosophy?"
I don't know whose "theology" you are referring to. It certainly does not apply to JPII or to the numerous good Catholic scholars (Scott Hahn, Standford Caldecott, John Millbank, Fr. James Schall, Card. Ratzinger, Germain Grisez, Ralph McInerney, Janet Smith, etc.) who are still publishing solid Catholic material. The dissembling of dissenters is not "our" theology.
If all religions are like the five blind men describing an elephant by the different areas they are able to touch, it seems to me that we should spend less time evangelizing and more time listening.
No, John, we should evangelize AND listen. Our non-Catholic friends are not stupid and we have quite a bit to learn from them just as our spiritual ancestors did with regard to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Cicero. There actually was a time when disagreeing with Aristotle was considered by some almost tantamount to heresy. Evangelization is not about winning an argument or rebuking ignorant heretics and pagans. It is proclaiming Christ by our lived witness using our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. We cannot proclaim what we do not ourselves have and believe. Regressing to "pre- conciliar" triumphalism is not evangelization. It is rejection of the Holy Spirit's mandate from VCII. If you do that, you have implicitly denied all the presuppositions about the Magisterium which made you a true Catholic BEFORE VCII. Not a viable choice.
This is the unspoken message of so much of our post Council theology.
It is not what the Magisterium has said in its teachings. THAT alone is true post-conciliar theology.
Ecumenical commissions release reports on a monthly basis that seem to make any martyr for, say, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist to seem like a dated, deluded fool.
Ecumenical dialogues are NOT Magisterial documents. They are the working papers of theologians and I can guarantee you they are not fully accepted by the other side either. They have their uses and their limitations. If they upset you, ignore them and read only papal encyclicals and other official documents. Even more important you must receive these Magisterial documents with full submission of heart and will as prescribed by VCI, VCII, and the papal encyclicals.
Lastly, in the face of the above considerations, I probably find myself less "leery of those people who want to be more Catholic than the Pope." My sense is that many of those people are more "preservationist" than" conservative."
No, John, "reactionary" and "rebellious" are the words you are looking for. The only thing worth preserving is our loyalty to the Vicar of Christ because he alone has the charism of infallibility. I have studied theology as an amateur for 23 years and I can tell you that reactionary trads are preserving nothing if they rebel agasint papal authority. Everyone else who thought they were more Catholic than the Pope -- Eastern orth, prot, old cath, jansens -- has foundered on the sholas of their own pride.
They yearn for the transcendence and sense of the numinous that the Church has foolishly allowed to pass into history.
They yearn for the pleasures and consolations of the illuminative way but cannot stand the aridity of the Dark Night of the Soul. Please don't confuse the Catholic religion with feeling good and proud. We need to get over that. Read something on the Dark Night and the purgative way in Catholic mystical theology. That is where we are. That is why being a trad is spiritually immature. We must embrace the Dark Night to be purged of our sensual desire for consolations so that we may follow God by faith, in hope and through love without the need to be affirmed beyond our trust in Him. The numinous is a sensual trap of Satan used to confuse the carnally minded. Beware!
As a convert of 20 years, I did not grow up with the older liturgy, but I have viewed it infrequently with the eyes of a newcomer and I now know why so many Catholics feel angry and betrayed.
Davies gives you that sense in his work. But I am a cradle Catholic and I served as an altar boy in the Tridentine ritual for 5 years before the vernacular liturgy was implemented. It was not the Golden Age the trads tell you it was. The Mass was not said in Latin but in mumbles. Priests would rush through the Latin prayers in 15 minutes and God help you if you didn't keep up with them. They never gave you enough time to do the Latin responses and so most of us stopped reciting them and just mumbled for the required amount of time. Sometimes entire sections of the secret prayers were just deleted and no one knew but the few of us who were paying attention. At one Mass I attended, the priest FORGOT the consecration and no one did anything until after the Mass was over. I could go on with other horror stories. Please don't be naive. The new liturgy was needed. BELIEVE ME! For all of its faults, it made us all take the Mass seriously again. I am pleased that the 1570 Roman Missal is being preserved, but I know that we can never go back again.
Time may prove the unquestioning majority that followed such a Zeitgeist to be further on the fringe of any Catholicism worthy of the name than any "protestants of the right."
Whether you fall out on the left or the right it makes no difference. Out is out. Stay with the Pope! Get on his bandwagon! Carry on his programs! Pay no attention to dissembling Bishops or dissenting theologians.
On a personal note, I am a convert to the Church of 20 years. I am burdened with the cross that any Catholic seeking the Transcendent while living in the Diocese of Richmond must continually bear.
Toledo ain't much better. ;-)Remember, John, Carmelites and Carthusians separate themselves from the world to more perfectly contemplate God in Christ. If you are looking for transcendence, don't look for it in fancy liturgies or Chruch architecture or in triumphalist rhetoric. Contemplate Jesus Christ right where you are, and remember his words on the cross: "Eloi, eloi, lama sabbachtani." THAT is the true Catholic spirituality, and it gives us our ultimate choice: either take up your cross and follow him or put down that cross and walk with him no more.
Art Sippo
The Catholic Legate
February 2, 1998