Spiritual Fog of Vatican II

“Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better.” __ Citation: The words of Dietrich Von Hildebrand, who was, nevertheless, a supporter of the Vatican II religion but felt compelled to make such a statement about the New Mass. Quoted by Michael Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 1980, p. 80.

INTRODUCTION: THE SPIRIT OF THE COUNCIL

I think in reflecting back on the overall spirit that permeated the Second Vatican Council one might be struck by the fact that the overall mood was led by an unbridled desire for ecumenism, peace with the world at any cost, and ostopolitik or detente with those those who opposed us and were rightly considered heretics prior to the Council. It was a ‘false peace’ established not for the help and protection of the Catholic peoples but was in fact a complete surrender to the whole of our progressive  modernist world. In this regard, I think the above quote from Dietrich von Hildebrand may have limited the scope of how he might have viewed the ruinous results of this Screwtape Council’s overall theme; which of course used the liturgy as its primary means to rob Catholics of their culture; one might say it was their weapon of ‘mass (Mass) destruction’.

The Second Vatican Council was an Ecumenical Council but with a difference. In the previous 20 Councils of this type, the Councils were called to settle a matter of heresy, prevent a schism, to pronounce a new Dogma to be infallibly held or to generally protect the Church and Her Children from being misled by the modernist world and other threats to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

But this Council would be different; it was purely pastoral in nature and was not going to pronounce any new dogmas or warn of any clear and present danger to the Church and Her followers. However, it was not as if there were no dangers that needed to be expressed at the time; especially Communism, Modernism and Freemasonry which were running rampant in the world and had infiltrated the Church by many of the theologians of its day not to mention highly placed prelates and even ordinary pastors. Basic morality was breaking down and threatening not only Christian life but the very ethos that bound entire nations together. But it seems that ecumenism was to be bought at any price; even the price of the souls of Mother Church and Her hundreds of million sons and daughters. Instead of defending the Church against heresy it as though the Church was suing the World for terms of peace.

“In a 2007 book called The Metz Agreement, veteran French essayist Jean Madiran gathers a number of sourced claims, testifying that a deal was hatched during Soviet-arranged secret talks in 1962. The meeting, Madiran says, took place in Metz, France, between Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodox Church’s then “foreign minister,” and Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, a senior French Vatican official. Metropolitan Nikodim was, according to Moscow archives, a KGB agent.

Various sources have since confirmed that an agreement was reached, instructing the Council not to make any direct attack on Communism. The Orthodox then agreed to accept the Vatican’s invitation to send a number of observers to the Council.”__ Read more here: Catholic News and World Report.

We also know that the original schema as drawn up for the Council were rather benign and one must wonder what the Church would have looked like had the progressives not taken control of the Council after its first session; for these first documents were in complete agreement with what had been stated prior to the Council and a condemnation of Communism was planned to be included within the documents. One also wonders if they might have made mention of both Modernism (battled against for about a 100 years) and Freemasonry which the Church had been fighting since its beginnings in the early-18th century and was a large reason for the French Revolution and its persecution of the Catholic Faith. These heresies were at least clear and present dangers to the Church which have only worsened since the close of Vatican II. One might say that the Church even capitulated in its rejection and opposition against these threats.

There was also a novel idea which took root within the Council of a collective Church; a collective redemption and salvation. It, of course, would have to abandon the idea that the objective Truth was in its entirety to be found in the One True Church. All flavors of religion and even non-religion were to be included in this collectivism and nobody was excluded. A globalist view was emerging which see quite prominently in the mainstream of Catholic teaching these days.

“. . . totalitarian ideology is not alone in sacrificing the individual to the collective; some of Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmic ideas, for instance, imply the same collectivistic sacrifice. Teilhard subordinates the individual and his sanctification to the supposed development of humanity.” __ Dietrich von Hildebrand.

So nobody can discount the thoughts of Teilhard de Chardin which exerted a strong influence upon the Council though he died some 7 years before the Council. His spirit lived on in the framers such as Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Cardinal Bea et al.

TURNING THE CHURCH FROM TRADITION TO MODERNISM

“When I read the documents relative to the Modernism, as it was defined by Saint Pius X, and when I compare them to the documents of the II Vatican Council, I cannot help being bewildered. For what was condemned as heresy in 1906 was proclaimed as what is and should be from now on the doctrine and method of the Church.” (Jean Guitton, Portrait du Père Lagrange, Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1992, pp. 55-56). Read more here.

A new era of the Church was being constructed while the 2000 year old Church was belittled and scoffed at. Our new Church would be up to date and modern as we embarked upon the aggiornamento (updating) called for by the Council. It would be a Church of dialogue, ecumenism and above all a Church that listens rather than a Church that teaches. We would now be in the world without passing judgment on the world. One could say that the old enemies of the Church, ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ were no longer reasons to avoid worldliness or the ‘near occasion of sin’.  You will rarely hear either of these statements used today within hallowed walls of a parish.

This new globalist and collective sense of humanity led us from true charity to secular humanism, from nation states to open borders, from proclaiming the True Church to proclaiming the ideals of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). In short, we have turned the ideals of those who wished the complete destruction of the Catholic Church into being our own ideals as well. Ideals whose origin was to be found in the heresy of Freemasonry.

If that was not enough the sense of a new egalitarian spirit overcame us as well especially in adopting market socialism if not outright communism or marxism. Besides the Liberation Theology that is now lauded, one need only view the sellout of the underground Catholic Church in China and the recent beatifications of radical leftists to get a sense of how far this cancer has spread.

In a few words, ‘what once was up is now down and what once was down is now up’. The Church has been stood upon its head.

THE COUNCIL’S USE OF A SPIRITUAL WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

“[Evelyn] Waugh’s words in response to this revolution are arresting: “Church-going is now a bitter trial,” he wrote. Elsewhere he said, “the Vatican Council has knocked the guts out of me.” To a friend, he wrote, “I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the Faith doggedly without joy.” In another letter to a cleric, he sought to know the least he was “obliged to do without grave sin.” This is remarkable, coming from one of the most famous Catholic writers of the 20th century, one who had previously adored the Mass.” __ Read more here.

Neither the people nor the priests petitioned Rome for a change in the liturgy. For the liturgy in use for many centuries had produced countless saints and martyrs and theologians who are still the backbone of what we continue to believe; St. Thomas to this day is the most widely referenced theologian in the Catholic Church and cited more than any others in the new Catechism of the Catholic Faith. So why did they feel that this was such an important mandate for the Council to address?

Was it perhaps that it was too authentically Catholic? Too much of a feature of Catholic identity; our common Catholic Culture? One need only ask the question how one would go about destroying a culture, a nation. For the things that bind a culture together are primarily language (in this case Latin), traditions (no more meatless Fridays and few processions on feast days), music (Gregorian Chant being the identifiable music for the Catholic) and devotions which have somewhat been restored and hopefully will help us recover that which has been destroyed after the Council.  So if you attack these you attack not only the culture but the way we believe and the way live: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi or how we pray, is how we believe, is how we live. Since the change in the prayer of the Church following Vatican II we don’t need to look far to see that the way we believe and the way we live has changed radically. Our beliefs and our tolerance of immorality is almost identical to that of world at large. We no longer understand or transubstantiation nor do we recognize Christ in the Eucharist and we divorce at the same rate as protestants, accept same sex marriages, fornication outside of marriage and a host of other things that no Catholic would ever have accepted prior to the Second Vatican Council.

So was the reason for the changes to make the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass indistinguishable from a protestant ‘service’ and to minimize our focus on the Sacrifice during the Liturgy so that we would not scandalize the protestants? Annibale Bugnini who designed this liturgy seemed to think that this was what was needed and such a change was good for the Church: “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.”  – Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, main author of the New Mass, L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.

So, once again, how would destroy the Church if you were satan?  Would the nuclear option be the destruction of how we pray, believe and live? And would not the Mass be the logical place to accomplish this diabolical assault on the Faith?

Since the Novus Ordo was promulgated the fruit has been the loss of vocations, the emptying of pews and the dumbing down of the laity and the priesthood in their below par formations; Canon 249 has been neglected by our bishops which states the following.

Can. 249 The Charter of Priestly Formation is to provide that the students are not only taught their native language accurately, but are also well versed in latin, and have a suitable knowledge of other languages which would appear to be necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of their pastoral ministry.

Did we violate the mandate of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first document of the Council?

36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.

But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.

Do we experience this in the normal Novus Ordo Liturgy today? Of course not. There was always obfuscating language and loopholes planted throughout the documents of the Council to give the bishops the necessary wiggle room to evade these norms.

How about communion on the hand? The bishops voted no, resoundingly at the Council. But we have it now. So how did we get it you might ask. I will leave that to your investigative skills but it isn’t pretty. How also did we get lay readers (male and female) and how did they violate the Vatican rule that if they were to be used that they could not do so from the sanctuary? Maybe its because the sanctuary is no longer that holy space reserved for the priest (which they like to call a presider these days) and his altar boys. And today we have female altar boys which is a outrage since they were always regarded as young men who might be led toward thinking of the priesthood for a vocation. It was a privilege extended to them and it was taken with a seriousness and a sense of awe. All of this has changed in the spirit of Vatican II; a spirit of egalitarianism and a distorted understanding of the Council’s wish to increase the ‘active participation’ of the laity at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

We could list literally hundreds of changes including the rewriting of other Rites of the Church which seems, ironically to have one thing in common amongst most of them; the absence of the exorcism that once took place in the Rites before a Blessing was given to a sacred thing or a sacred ministerial duty. How convenient when we have abandoned the spiritual realm for a realm that is at home in a fallen world that we were mandated to teach and to bring them the teachings of the True Church.

God have mercy on our soul but we allowed this to happen by allowing ourselves to become complacent about our education in the faith. It is not simply the hierarchy or our parish priests that bear this burden of closing a blind eye to the obfuscation of truth and the destruction of our Catholic Identity; though many will have much to answer for at their particular judgment.

Immaculate Heart of Mary have mercy on us. Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us. Saint Joseph pray for us. Saints Peter and Paul pray for us. St. Michael the Archangel drive this diabolical infiltration from the Church and restore the Bride of Christ to once again be resplendent in this world; without spot or wrinkle.