Table of Contents
Vatican II – Introduction
Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962. He died in 1963, and his successor, Pope Paul VI, continued the Council which ended on the 8th December, 1965.
Vatican II was the biggest Ecumenical Council in history with over 2,000 bishops attending.
The intent of the Council was to give directives for the life of the Church. It was to be a Pastoral Council.
Normally there are statements on dogma at Ecumenical Councils, but the pope decided against defining dogma. Yet the Council ended with dogmas.
A Revolution
Vatican II started as a Pastoral Council, but ended with dogmas that revolutionized the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Suenens even compared it to the French Revolution, saying that Vatican II was:
“1789 in the Church.”
Fr Yves Congar compared Vatican II to the Communist revolution in Russia:
“The Church has peacefully undergone its October Revolution.”
Pope John XXIII using less secular language called for Vatican II to be a “New Pentecost.”
The Modernists changed the heart of Catholicism: changing doctrine and liturgy. This influence has continued since Vatican II to the next destructive step: the change of morals in the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church had, post-Vatican II, a new form of teaching imposed on the Church, opposite to what the previous popes had taught. The relationship between the bishops and the pope was changed, giving bishops doctrinal authority.
Lumen Gentium introduced new understanding on the priesthood, worship, conscience and liberty. Beliefs that previous popes condemned and considered heresy.
New Ideas as to ecumenism, about how the Church related to non-Christian religions, and even atheists were also adopted.
The post-Vatican II Church is now a different Church than it was before Vatican II, both in teaching and in Liturgy.
The Modernist Attack
The Modernist attack is the Devil’s attack on the Church from within, through the Modernist ideology. This is carried out through a disorientation starting with an attack on the Church’s doctrine and then follows this up with an attack on the Church’s morals. The Vatican II Council 1965 was the means to this end. Doctrine is crumbling and now we at the point where we are experiencing destroyed morals.
The abuse and scandals in the Catholic Church we see today are a direct result of the Modernists victory at Vatican II.
The Catholic Church is in a deep crisis. We read daily about sexual abuse scandals within the Church. Other denominations have their scandals, like the Hillsong movement, but none are on par with the Catholic Church. The reason for this is not celibacy (Catholic priests have been celibate for millennia) the reason is that the theological and philosophical principles of the Catholic Church, well defined by Thomas Aquinas have been abandoned since the late 1960s, post-Vatican II.
This has resulted in the fundamental, stabilizing and basic Catholic morals and doctrines being exchanged for a chaotic and fluid Modernist philosophy, that can be changed at the whim of the individual.
To understand the crisis in the Catholic Church, we need to understand Modernism, as this is the festering cancer in the Church.
What is Modernism
Modernism refers to a philosophical and cultural movements from the mid 1800s to the end of WWII. It arose out of the Enlightenment and humanism where rationality and scientific reason, became the guiding principles within western culture.
In the Catholic Church Modernism is the movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the mid 1800s and early 1900s. Before we had a God centered culture, relying on absolute truths. With Modernism reason becomes the source of universal truth.
Science becomes the paradigm through which all true knowledge can be known and understood.
Modernism is a difficult philosophy to pin down as it is a a loose gestalt of liberal theological opinions, which constantly keeps morphing into a new forms. A “gestalt” is something that has particular qualities when you consider it as a whole, but which are not obvious when you consider only the separate parts of it. That is why it is so difficult to pin it down.
This modernist mentality that pervades the Church today is more a changing set of attitudes rather than a coherent philosophy. But some basics are:
i) The idea that truth can change over time. Absolute truth is discarded. Therefore Catholic truth can change over time.
ii) Words are used to confuse and obfuscate the issues the Modernists are planning on changing. A well defined word such as “sin” is substituted by another word, thereby they nullify the concept’s meaning. They justify their actions with sentimental terminology that sounds positive and good:
“Allowing us to be surprised by the God of surprises.”
“Dogmatically unprejudiced.”
“A less rigid attitude.”
“A greater openness.”
“Needing a new balance.”
“Pastoral solicitude.”
“Emphasizing mercy.”
iii) It is destructive in its very nature.
iv) It is “outcome ” based.
Pre-Vatican II, a given situation, a social phenomenon, or an historical event in our lives was interpreted through the unchangeable doctrine of the Catholic Church (the moral/doctrinal lens), based on Biblical truth consistent over the last 2 millennia.
Post-Vatican II a situation in our lives is outcome based, so the situation is assessed to find the best outcome. We start with the lived experience of those in the world around us and fit the doctrine and morals to suit the outcome we want. We interpret various Church documents and passages from Scripture to build a theology or new pastoral practices that takes these real-life experiences into account.
To illustrate this, The hyper-modernist Jacques Dupuis says the old (deductive) method is now replaced by a new (inductive) method, which he says follows from Vatican II’s Optatum Totius.
Dupuis says,
“It is no longer a question of going from the principles to concrete application, but in the opposite direction, or taking as a point of departure the reality as experienced today with the problems it raises, to search for – in light of the revealed message and through theological reflection – a Christian solution to these problems.”
Jacques Dupuis, Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, (2001), p. 14
A practical example comes from The Synod on the Family, in 2015.
Past synods tended to start with church teaching and talk about how it could be applied to the world. This follows the classical philosophical and theological method that the bishops learned in their seminaries. What happened within the synod was a more inductive way of reflecting, starting from the true situation of people and trying to figure out what’s going on here. The synod participants are finding that the lived experience of people is also a theological source, what we call a theological source, a place of theological reflection.
They reinterpret well entrenched and established doctrine to work out a pastoral solution in light of secular cultural attitudes.
Pre-Vatican II
The Catholic Church has its foundation on Biblical doctrine applied to an objective external reality.
By the end of the Second World War the “New Theology” was affecting the Catholic Faith.
In 1946 Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange put it in a nutshell when he said:
“The current crisis in the Church has not been a crisis of faith, but rather of a grave malady of intellect, which conducts itself on the tracks of liberal Protestantism and through relativism to absolute skepticism.”
Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange 1946
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s solution is Thomism, the theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.
“Thomism corresponds to the profound needs of the modern world because it restores the love of truth for the sake of truth itself. Now, without this love of truth for itself, it is not possible to obtain true infused charity, the supernatural love of God for the sake of God Himself, nor to arrive at the infused contemplation of God sought for Himself, that is, at the contemplation that proceeds from the living faith enriched by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, first of all, knowledge and wisdom.”
Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
This incipient cancer of the modernists’ changing truth has been creeping into the Catholic church since the late 1800s. Cardinal Newman wrote against it.
Pope Pius IX said this about it:
“There is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none they do not strive to corrupt.”
“They have reached that pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true nature of the religious sentiment.”
And:
“That in the midst of this great perturbation of men’s minds from the insidious invasions of error from every side, you may see clearly what you ought to do and may perform the task with all your strength and courage.”
Pope Pius XI had to repeat this defense against the modernist corruption of truth. In 1924 he said:us XII in 1946 continued defending the Catholic faith from this modernist attack. This time it was called the “New Theology.”
Catholicism’s New Theology
In the December 19, 1946 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Pope warned that what was being trumpeted as a “new theology” would end up undermining the Faith:
“There is a good deal of talk about a new theology,” he declared, “which must be in constant transformation, following the example of all other things in the world, which are in a constant state of flux and movement, without ever reaching their term. If we were to accept such an opinion, what would become of the unchangeable dogmas of the Catholic Faith; and what would become of the unity and stability of that Faith?”
This turned out to be the ‘new reality” after Vatican II.
We are now in a place where Catholic thinking has been turned upside down. The “diabolic disorientation is almost complete. According to Traditional Catholic Doctrine for 2,000 years, Christian unity means the conversion of all Christians to the Catholic Church.
With “New Theology,” Cardinal Kurt Koch, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, can say things like:
“The Catholic Church and other Christian communities need a conversion to the ecumenical search for Christian unity.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch
And that:
“The witness of God’s love must be given in an ecumenical communion.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch
Cardinal Koch considered Vatican II to be:
“A repositioning of the compass.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch
And it has succeeded. We have seen Pope John Paul II kissing the Koran, on May 14, 1999, when Pope John Paul II bowed to the Qu’ran, and kissed it. Was the Pope aware that the Koran denies the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Was the Pope aware that there is a long history of Catholic theologians who have made mention of the Koran:
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Thelogica, Pt. II-II, Q. 12, A. 1, Obj. 2.:
“…if anyone were to… worship at the tomb of Mahomet, he would be deemed an apostate.”
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Basel, Session 19, Sept. 7, 1434:
“Moreover, we trust that with God’s help another benefit will accrue to the Christian commonwealth; because from this union, once it is established, there is hope that very many from the abominable sect of Mahomet will be converted to the Catholic faith.”
Francis Xavier, May, 1546:
“The evil [of Islam] was introduced by some Mahometan caicizes (ministers of religion), who came from Mecca in Arabia, where the accursed body of Mahomet is honored with great superstition.”
Francis of Assisi (1210):
“We have come to preach faith in Jesus Christ to you, that you will renounce Mohammed, that wicked slave of the devil, and obtain everlasting life like us.”
And then the Modernists
Pope Francis continues this modernist tradition by stating:
“The Koran is a book of peace,” and “Islam is not a violent religion.”
For the first time in Vatican history, Pope Francis has allowed the reading of Islamic prayers and Koran readings at a gathering in the Vatican City.
Fr Jacques Dupuis said the purpose of dialogue is not to convert “the others” to Catholicism, but rather to help “a Christian to become a better Christian, a Hindu a better Hindu.”
This sounds like Billy Graham at the end of his ministry when the worldly Western cultural Modernist thinking crept into Billy Graham’s ministry.
“They proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched.”
Pius X on modernists.