Vortex: The New Pope and Vatican II

Let us pray that our new pope becomes the one who corrects the errors that have come into the Church because of misinterpretations of Vatican II. If we keep pretending the documents of Vatican II were God’s gift to the Church in the 20^th century and beyond, traditional Catholicism will truly be left to a small remnant.

Michael Voris has lots of good points here:

The script:

When Pope Benedict freed the traditional Latin Mass from the stranglehold of liberal bishops and weak-kneed establishment types who think the Latin Mass is the biggest bogey man to hit the Church in the last 1400 years, he opened up a much larger debate than just a particular worship style.

The debate is shaping up to be one over Vatican II. Now, to be certain, almost every debate and issue in the Church in the past 50 years has happened against the backdrop of the drama of what transpired in Rome between 1962 and 1965.

Quietly lurking in the background of every clash – from ordinary parish council meetings from which hymnals to purchase for the congregation to diocesan policies regarding who’s allowed to speak on church property – has been the interpretation of the council.

Much of what happened at the council has been shoved down people’s throats in a manner reminiscent of a prison guard domineering a prisoner. All kinds of things have been done in the NAME of the council that the council never said a word about, much of it evidenced by untold abuses in the Mass.

But more than just visible examples, there are the even more dangerous philosophical ideologies that betray the very nature of the Church. There is the indifferentism that has seized many clergy and by extension many, many laity with regard to the superiority of the Catholic faith.

That belief now reigns supreme in many chanceries around the world – even if it is unspoken most of the time; it still hangs in the air and is precisely what is inhaled on a daily basis.

Hand in hand with that is the incredibly stupid notion that we can have a reasonable hope that no one goes to Hell. What a boorish position to maintain – boorish because it directly contradicts the words of Our Blessed Savior Himself who flat out says in St.

Matthew’s gospel that on the last day He will separate the sheep from the goats and will say to the goats, “Depart from me accursed into everlasting fire”.

But this combination of beliefs that, one, no one, or almost no one, really goes to Hell; and two, that Catholicism isn’t really that special has proved to be a near deadly one-two knockout punch for hundreds of millions of Catholics.

And it all stems from the battle over Vatican II. Benedict himself said that what happened in the wake of Vatican II:

…the misrepresentations of the council were so dominant that they “created so many calamities, so many problems, so much suffering: seminaries closed, convents closed, banal liturgy …”.

The majority of Catholics today look with suspicion on anything that began BEFORE 1965 – the dreaded Pre-Vatican II days and any writing from any pope before Blessed John XXIII is treated with disdain.

Many Catholics today – including many young well-intentioned Catholics – have been raised to think of the Church as something that came into being only since 1965; that the preceding 19-hundred plus years were kind of a dress rehearsal for the full blossoming that we have only now reached.

This is taught in classes that lay people take in parishes and seminaries all over the United States…if not directly, then indirectly. Popes prior to the 20th century are rarely mentioned, their writings are never or only very rarely referenced.

It is the Modernists in the Church that have created what Benedict rightly called a “rupture”, and they have ridden that rupture all the way to the bank as they have cashed in on a near total re-making of the Church.

Young Catholics today – ones who are involved in youth ministries and the like – who are very well-intentioned and willing to give the Church a chance, know next to nothing.

They have been weaned on emotions and feelings and warm and fuzzy liturgies from which they learn nothing.

They have been taught to ignore anything that came before Vatican II and quietly suspect anyone who speaks this message as some kind of subversive who has time-traveled to the present from the torture chambers of the evil and wicked inquisitors of the 16th century.

And of course, what else can you expect. The soft-minded clergy who want to be popular among this set have not told them the whole truth, have not imparted even a portion of the authentic faith, have told them almost no Church history; in short, they have created a generation of 20- and 30-somethings who don’t know that they don’t know.

And the caricature of those who DO know as some kind of pre-Vatican II troglodytes: mean, judgmental, uncharitable is communicated INFORMALLY in front of classes of students, and formally in quiet discussions in hallways and coffee lounges and rectories.

This attitude has become institutionalized to such a degree that it will be impossible for the new pope to ignore it. In fact, whatever he says and does will be viewed PRECISELY through this prism by the “new church” gang down at the local chancery or the local parish.

As he was leaving office, Pope Benedict cleared the decks for this work to get underway – the work of taking back the council and asserting what it ACTUALLY said. It did not say, let’s have an army of Eucharistic ministers at Mass; let’s have lay people giving homilies; let’s have altar girls; let’s receive communion in the hand; let’s turn the altar around and face the people; lets stand up for reception of Holy Communion; let’s have nuns hike up their habits and eventually toss them; lets teach dissent in the seminaries; let’s allow a flow of homosexuals into the priesthood – thus creating a powerful and vindictive sub-culture; let’s rip every statue and piece of sacred art out of our churches and replace them with tasteless twisted pieces of metal that even the artist can’t figure out what it is; let’s rip out the communion rails; let’s get rid of the notion of sacrifice and replace it a meal on a table; let’s dump Latin and treat it like it’s illegal; let’s get rid of

Gregorian chant and substitute it with guitars and drums and protestant-style Christian rock bands; let’s dump confession because no one really sins anymore; and let’s dump the teaching on sin because Hell is so blasé and medieval.

None of this – not one blessed thing – did Vatican II mandate or even begin to anticipate.

The council fathers would die a second death if they were to come back today and look what hash was made of their council.

Could even the most well-intentioned Catholics today talk intelligently about grace and the distinction between sanctifying and actual grace, for example – and more importantly, why knowing that distinction and living by that knowledge could spell the difference between eternal life and eternal damnation?

Benedict says as much when he talks about the “rupture”. A tremendous rupture has occurred in the wake of Vatican II and the future of the Church in the west may very likely rest on the shoulders of that man who steps out on that loggia when his former brother cardinals have done their duty.

What many people do not know is that Pope Benedict was the last active bishop who ACTUALLY attended the second Vatican council. With his retirement, the next pope will be truly be the first of the NEXT generation – the first of the post-Vatican II era of popes.

Pray that the Holy Spirit sends us the Pope we need, not the pope we deserve.