Vatican II, Before and After
Web Master's
Note: As we prepare to publish this article
on the world wide web, we learn that the Russian KBG thug, -----who was
never prosecuted for his crimes against humanity, but is instead
celebrated as a "friend" by POTUS [Bush & Company]----- now
head of Russia, is preparing to have the Russian government take
authority over Catholic doctrine and curtail Catholic activities even
more than is now the policy [The Catholic Church is not permitted to
evangelize, for instance]. We immediately recall what Fr. Paul Kramer
wrote in his Fatima piece, "FATIMA: The Impending Great
Chastisement Revealed in the Third
Secret
of Fatima", wherein he quoted the nephew of the Fatima seer, Sr. Lucy:
" . . . the
nephew
of Sister Lucy, Father Jose dos Santos Valinho, who plainly stated his
view on February 14, 2003 on the Italian TV program Enigma,
that
the third part of the secret is closely connected to the second
part.
It concerns the Church: war, persecution and the loss of faith.
There
will be a universal crisis in the Church and in the whole world."
Barbara Anderson's, Vatican II, Before and After, is a timely reminder
of this dire warning, in the form of a synopsis of the devastation in
the vineyard.
Advertisers often use a
comparison of before and after to sell
their products. Before is the horrible example; after is the
marvelous
desired result of using the product.
Vatican II is not often viewed in
a before and after light. To appreciate what has come after
Vatican
II, it is useful to examine what the Church was like before Vatican
II. This examination is for the American Church. Statistics
show a
quantitive decrease in membership, vocations, and conversions, plus
monetary assets after Vatican II. Even casual observation shows a
decrease in trust, respect and moral certainty. Many of those
outside
the Church did not like us, but they respected our moral certitude and
steadfastness. The general public's view of a priest, for
example,
went from Bing Crosby's portrayal of a slightly whimsical, but
loveable, cleric, to a current view of distrust of priests, in general,
and a disdain for the bishops who were not good shepherds in weeding
out child molesters in their midst.
By any measure, the Church
has suffered after Vatican II.
Before, churches were full and more were being built, schools were
overflowing and multiplying, seminaries assured a robust priesthood as
they spilled out and more were created, nuns were predominant in
schools that taught excellent scholastics and matching knowledge of,
and love for, Catholicism. All this growth was provided by
the average
Catholic in the crowded pews of the time. These same Catholics
were
soon told that they did not know what was happening at Mass, that they
needed a friendlier (no Latin) liturgy, and a New Orientation.
(New,
deeper application insures best results!) The same Catholics that
sacrificed so much for their faith were told they didn't understand
that faith and that Vatican II would give them a different look at
their faith, a New Orientation.
Statistically, the resuls
are disastrous. The number of
Catholic priests has fallen from 58,000 to 45,000. By 2020 there
will
be 31,000 and half will be over the age of 70. In 1965, 1,575 new
priests were ordained, but in 2002, the number fell to 450. At
present, some 3,000 parishes are without priests. Between 1965
and
2002, the number of seminarians fell from 49,999 to 4,700, a decline of
over 90 percent. Since 1965 two thirds of seminaries opened have
closed their doors. (A look at the reasons for the steep decline
of
priests will come later in this article.) The number of Catholic
nuns,
180,000 in 1965, has fallen by 60 percent. Since the close of
Vatican
II the number of teaching nuns has fallen 94 percent. Their
resolute
obedience to orthodoxy and recognition of their vital role in educating
Catholics has been replaced by mostly lay people, some of whom are not
even Catholic. When one sees a nun today, if one even recognizes
a
nun, the impression one is more likely to get is that of a professional
businesswoman. About half the Catholic high schools open in 1965
have
closed. Almost half of the 4.5 million students in those schools
in
the mid-1960s are gone. A great treasure has been lost.
Now, only 10
percent of lay religious teachers accept the Church's teaching on
contraception, 53 percent think a Catholic woman can get an abortion
and remain a good Catholic, 65 percent say Catholics have the right to
divorce and remarry, and a New York poll reported that 70 percent of
Catholics aged 18 to 54 believe that the Holy Eucharist is just a
"symbolic reminder" of Jesus. Only one in four Catholics
attends Mass
on Sunday today, while in 1958 three out of every four Catholics did so.
The Church has always had
dissidents and pre-Vatican II was no
different. Prominent clergy were counted among them, and the
names of
some were Hans Kung, Dominique Chenu, Edward Schillebeeckx, Henri d
Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Yves Congar. The conceit of dissidents
has
always been that they alone hold truth, they are more educated, more
sophisticated in faith, and even more discerning of the revelations of
the Holy Spirit than the Pope and the Magisterium. These itchy
spirits
embraced a New
Theology. (It's new, improved, gets your house
cleaner!) Many popes through the ages have condemned modernism in
strong language, but it keeps popping up, renamed. Vatican II was
claimed for the New Theology. Some of the previous named
dissidents
had been reprimanded by the popes in the past and mild sanctions were
levied, but these sanctions were equivalent to an ecclesiastical slap
on the wrist. One of the worst offenders was Hans Kung, who
was
censored by the Vatican for heretical views. Those views include
the
following: rejection of the Church's infallibility, the suggestion that
any Baptized person has the power to confect the Holy Eucharist, the
claim that bishops do not receive their teaching authority from Christ,
the denial that Christ was "consubstantial" with the Father, and the
undermining of unspecified doctrines concerning the Virgin Mary.
He
was not reprimanded for other heterodox tenets, found in one of his
most famous books, "On Being a Christian", that denied the bodily
resurrection of Jesus (p. 350), denied that Christ founded the
institutional Church, (p. 109), denied the Divinity of Christ (p. 130),
dismissed the miracles of the Gospel (p. 233), and denied that the Mass
is the re-presentation of Calvary (p. 323).
While these are not
currently widely recognized names to many
Catholics, it is important to know what this group of dissidents
thought and spoke, since they came to heavily influence the tone of
Vatican II. It has even been claimed that this school of thought,
led
by certain bishops and "periti" (experts) "hijacked" Vatican II.
Out
of the famously described "open windows" of the Church went orthodoxy
and the teachings of the great and inspirational St. Thomas, along with
the popes' warnings against modernism. (It's new, modern,
replaces
your old, worn-out model.) It's especially important to realize
that
the influence of the named modernists and their current disciples still
permeates the teaching-texts of Catholic seminaries and
universities.
Their teachings have served as the principal formation for priests,
religious, theologians and Catholic college students.
A promotion of ecumenism
was ushered in. The New Theology
demanded that Catholics dialogue and collaborate with Communists,
Muslims, heretics, and schismatics (excepting the schism of Archbishop
Lefebvre, who clung to the pronoucements of previous popes and would
not accept ecumenism). Vatican II was the first such gathering to
omit
the condemnation of Russia and Communism in general. Ignoring the
warnings of Pope Leo XIII, Pius IX, Pius X and Pius XI, who said we
could not refrain from condemning this incomparable evil, the
Vatican-Moscow Agreement, or Ostopolitik,
was struck. Simply put, the
agreement called for a moderating of the harsh treatment by the Soviets
against Catholics, in return for the Church's soft pedaling
condemnation of Communism. This agreement assured the presence of
two Communist observers, which was only assured if Communism was not
condemned, or even mentioned. This was the ultimate ecumenism.
Longstanding enemies of
the Church, the Freemasons, were
delighted at what they saw as an adoption of their thinking.
Representative of Freemasons' thoughts, Yves Marsaudon of the Scottish
Rite praised the ecumenism ushered in at Vatican II. He said
"Catholics . . . must not forget that all roads lead to God. And
they will
have to accept that this courageous idea of freethinking, which we can
really call a revolution, pouring forth from our Masonic lodges, has
spread magnificently over the dome of St. Peter's". And, "One can
say
that ecumenism is the legitimate son of Freemasonry". Freemason
Jacques Mitterand approved, and wrote: "Something has changed within
the Church, and replies given by the Pope to the most urgent questions
such as priestly celibacy and birth control, are hotly debated within
the Church itself; the word of the Sovereign Pontiff is questioned by
bishops, by the faithful, by priests. For a Freemason, a man who
questions dogma is already a Freemason without an apron''.
The accuracy of their
braggadaccio could be questioned, except
that their observations have proven correct, to a large degree.
Another bitter enemy of
the Church, Communism, gained mightily
from the council, in that it was not condemned there. The council
would compromise the moral liberty of the Church by pretending that the
most systemized form of human evil in human history did not exist, even
though, at the very moment that the council opened, the Soviets were
persecuting, imprisoning and murdering millions of fellow
Catholics.
The persecution goes on today, as Communists never keep their
bargains. The Faustian bargain added to the misery wherever
Communism
had taken over, without the considerable moral pressure of the Catholic
Church no longer proclaiming it to the world. In the early '50s,
Bella
Dodd, a former high-ranking official of the American Communist Party,
said "In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in
order to destroy the Church from within". These men were to be
ordained and rise to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors
and Bishops. A dozen years
before Vatican II Dodd
stated that: "right now they are in the
highest places in the Church". Bella Dodd turned against the
Communist
Party and exposed it. She converted to Catholicism shortly before
her
death. Her testimony has been confirmed by Soviet
defectors. Ex-KGB
officer Anatoly Golitsyn defected in 1961, and forecast with 94%
accuracy happenings in the Communist Bloc. He confirmed that this
"penetration of the Catholic and other Churches is part of the party's
'general line' in the struggle against religion". Hundreds of
files
smuggled into the West tell about the KGB cultivating and financing the
close relationships with "progressive" Catholics and financing their
activities. One wonders where those eleven hundred priests are
today
and how far up the clerical ladder they have risen. Opening the
windows let in more of the world than was anticipated by some in
the
Church. (Revolutionary! Win new friends and influence
people!)
Since priests are the
lifeblood of the Church, an examination of
the priesthood before and after Vatican II proves instructive.
Priests
were generally trusted by the public and given due respect. Even
non-Catholics recognized the collar as belonging to one who would help
people. A body blow has been dealt to that image.
Unfortunately, the
blow has been delivered by those who should have known better.
Some of
the American Bishops, ever on the cutting edge of Political
Correctness, permitted homosexuals in the priesthood. After all,
(the
thinking went), priests were called to chastity, and the priesthood
would be a good place for them. As has been shown by the
aggressive
promoters of this orientation, homosexuality did not lend itself to
chastity. As soon as enough of them were accepted, they began an
aggressive effort to weed out what they perceived as traditional
candidates, as those traditionalists were the ones who would threaten
their power in the seminaries.
This clique of homosexuals
was named "The Lavendar Mafia" by
Father Andrew Greeley, who was well aware of the group and those who
protected and promoted them. It included an underground of
liberal
faculty members who set out to change the doctrines, dogma and mission
of the Church. (Try it! Put a little spice in your
life!) Others had
their own agendas. Sometimes, candidates to the priesthood had to
pass
a "gatekeeper", which very often was a nun in the vocations
office.
All too often, this nun was of the "progressive" persuasion and was
fixated on promoting women to the priesthood. A candidate who did
not
agree didn't pass the "gatekeeper". Practices designed to keep
orthodox men out and to advance homosexuals is extensively outlined in
Michael Rose's book, "Goodbye, Good Men". One can wonder how many
wonderful young men were turned away because they were orthodox.
The
"gatekeeper" nuns and their like-minded successors bear responsibility
for weeding out the priests so desperately needed now, and whose loss
they bemoan as they press for married and women priests. This is
like
the man who murdered his parents and then complained that he was an
orphan. The monetary cost of settling suits brought by victims of
sexual predators in just three dioceses, Spokane, Washington, Portland,
Oregon and Tucson, Arizona since 1950 is approximately $840 million
dollars. More suits have been added recently. Aside from the
draining
of dollars, the moral cost has been devastating. Nobody can know
how
many possible conversions have been lost, how many Catholics have been
so sickened as to leave the Church, and the cost of loss of prestige
and
image of a once-esteemed Church.
In spite of the seminarian
drought, notable seminaries have
always blossomed and produced priests. These seminaries have been
administered by orthodox bishops who are loyal to the Pope and
the
Magisterium. They instill a spirit of sacrifice that is rare in
today's materialistic society. Michael Rose, in his book, quotes
one
such nourishing bishop, Elden F. Curtiss, Archbishop of Omaha,
Nebraska, who spelled it out succintly:
"It seems to me that the
vocation 'crisis' is precipitated by people who want to change the
Church's agenda, by people who do not support orthodox candidates loyal
to the magisterial teaching of the Pope and bishops, and by people who
actually discourage viable candidates from seeking priesthood and vowed
religious life as the Church defines these ministries. I am
personally
aware of certain vocations directors, vocations teams and evaluation
boards who turn away candidates who do not support the possibility of
ordaining women or who defend the Church's teaching about . . .
birth control, or who exhibit a strong piety toward certain devotions,
such as the rosary".
The promotion of Vatican
II goes on. Those who know little of
the actual happenings there still tout it as a great turning point in
the Church. A relatively few Catholics realize, for instance,
that at
Vatican II no dogma was defined and no heresy condemned. Some say
that
cause and effect cannot be proven. Some say that America's slide
into
secularism was the cause of the Church's decline. Others counter
that
the slide was greased by a Church that went missing in action.
However, the close proximity between Vatican II and the general decline
of the Church is a compelling "coincidence". What was promised,
deeper
faith and becoming more attractive to the world, has not been realized.
(New, improved, the world
will love you!) Rarely has so much
hype been expended for something which produced so much less than
advertised.
Barbara Anderson
In the Year of Our Lord,
July 17, 2005