Vatican II & Tradition:
The Second Vatican Council in Question
This conference was given by Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, first assistant to Bishop Fellay, at Manitoba University in Winnipeg, Canada, on March 30, 2010. He was invited to address a crowd of non-traditionalists about the Second Vatican Council.
Introduction
Not every valid council in the history of the Church has been a fruitful one; in the last analysis, many of them have been a waste of time. Despite all the good to be found in the texts it produced, the last word about the historical value of Vatican Council II (two) has yet to be spoken.1
Vatican II was an assembly of nearly all the Catholic bishops at the Vatican between 1962 and 1965. From then to now, this council, its documents, and their interpretation have influenced the Catholic Church, and thus also the societies in which the Catholic Church has at least some degree of influence. I want to speak about:
A missed occasion: The unaccomplished promise to answer the modern questions
If we look simply at statistics we realize that the percentage of Catholics who practise their religion has tremendously decreased in the last 40 years. There has been no other period of time in world history in which the religious practice of a single religion has decreased so much without any pressure from the outside than that within the Catholic religion between 1965 and 1985. The decrease of religious practice is a phenomenon that can be recognized worldwide. Together with this collapse of religious practice there developed a change in political thinking. People who stopped practising their faith changed their positions concerning abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, and so on. A good example is Spain, where, at the end of the ’60s, about 90 percent of the people attended Sunday Mass in comparison to a few percent now, as in all the countries of Europe. Spain now has one of Europe’s most liberal laws on abortion and gay marriage; it has also one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, while it was one of Europe’s most conservative societies in the ’60s. The impact of Catholic practice on such matters is scientifically proven, as you surely know. It is quite the same in Quebec, Portugal, or Italy.
If we agree about these facts–they’re obvious–we can look for the reasons. My answer is that Vatican II is the main reason for this development. Vatican II is the main cause for the collapse of religious practice and thus for the swing to leftist, liberal positions in our Western societies.
Why do I think so? First, I say it is the “main cause” because there are other causes as well. In the 1950s, the Western world saw an economic boom which brought wealth to the majority of people. “Wealth to everybody” was a slogan of the German Christian Democrats. Societies changed from agricultural to industrial. People moved from the countryside to the cities. The children, even from the country, had access to higher education. The world changed, and people had big hopes for the future. It was a period of unclouded optimism. This affected Catholic people a lot, even more than the French Revolution; Catholicism was strong among simple people, outside the cities, without higher education. Among the intellectual elite, the spirit was rationalist, atheist, and mostly liberal. For the intellectual elite at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century it was clear: “God is dead.”
In the 20th century things began to change. The better thinkers among the educated people realized the weaknesses of modern ideologies. Both communism and fascism led to moral catastrophes. Perhaps communism had some attraction for the academic youth in the 1920s; it was over when the Iron Curtain came down across Europe. Fascism lost what was left of its false glamour in Auschwitz. So there was a new interest in Catholicism among the educated since the ’50s, but the sociological base remained in the rural population. And this population was caught by modernization in the 1950s. The youth attended universities; they left their villages, went into new professions, and changed their lifestyle by taking up a social career. In this process, the religion of their parents belonged to the world they left, the world from which they desired to free themselves. In a time when the children of the liberal bourgeoisie discovered the Catholic Faith, the children of the Catholic farmers lost this faith, becoming one with them. It’s paradoxical.
This is one reason for the decline in religious practice. But it is not the significant one. The significance is inside Catholicism. Why? Why not compare the decline in religious practice in the Catholic Church with other Christian confessions and with other religions? Take a look at the Protestant communities within the USA. Here we had the same starting point: religion was strong in the rural areas, in the so-called “Bible Belt,” away from the liberal coasts and the big cities. The younger people tried to emancipate themselves from the lifestyle of their parents, and also from their values. It was the Vietnam War which gave the pretext for this movement of protest and emancipation. The burning of the “Stars and Stripes” was the symbol of this protest. Sexual promiscuity, rock music, the “spirit” of Woodstock, were part of life for these young people. Sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, but surely not Jesus Christ, confession, and Sunday Mass. So far, there was no difference between Catholics and Protestants. But at the end of the ’60s, and in the beginning of the ’70s, this brave new world of flower power and marijuana began to lose its innocence. People didn’t just smoke marijuana any more; they moved to cocaine and heroin. They became addicted and some very popular rock stars died. The political movement became more radical. It wasn’t “flower power” any longer; it was hard, dirty, ugly, and uncomfortable. Anyone who didn’t want to understand nevertheless woke up at least when AIDS arrived in the early ’80s.
If you look at the Protestant communities in the USA, you realize that they increased in correlation to this development. When the hippie wave went away, when the party was over and the headache came, the Americans went back to their religion. In 1980 Ronald Reagan became president, and he was the first president since the 1950s who preferred a religious rhetoric. He was backed by the new Christian movement, the Christian Coalition and so on. There are some statistics about these Protestant groups. They all show the same thing: that those groups which were strict in their teaching and morals had success, while those which had tried to adapt the spirit of “flower power,” sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll did not. There is a significant movement from so-called “liberal” Protestant communities like the Episcopal Church towards conservative groups, which we call “evangelical.” In politics you see it in the pro-life-movement: even senators from the Democrats called President Obama for a guarantee that no public money from his health care plan be used for abortion. And he gave it. There is no way to make politics against the religious majority in today’s USA.
It is quite similar in the Islamic world. Until the Islamic revolution in 1979, young, urban people tried to be like their counterparts in the West, similar in style, morals, and atheism. The Arabs fought the Israelis not for religion, but for national ideology. But since the ’80s, things have changed completely. Religion became the most important political issue in the Islamic countries. Either Islamic parties are in charge, or the secular governments are confronted with strong Islamic opposition movements and try to overcome them by religious politics.
Now compare this to Catholic countries. There, a religious renaissance did not happen. Why not? Because the Church had changed. The Catholic Church had adapted to the spirit of the ’60s. And when the former “flower-power” kids realized how primitive this spirit was, there was no church which correlated with this insight. So the flower-power kids in Catholic countries became nihilists, cynics, but not Christians. They stayed agnostic, not to protest against religion, but because the (Catholic) religion did not affect them. They have no religion, but they know that they should have one. A very left-wing German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, formulated it very well: “There is a consciousness for the missing.”
Why doesn’t Catholicism affect these people? You have two possible ways to answer this question: First, that the Catholic religion is something stupid, outdated, or nonsensical. If you choose this answer you must explain why evangelical Christianity in the USA or Islam is doing as well as it is. The other possible answer is to say that the Church is in bad shape.
The Catholic religion is still the answer to the questions of life. I believe that the Catholic Faith is the only way to heaven. This is true at all times, under all lifestyles, be it that of a farmer in the Middle Ages, a merchant in renaissance Venice, or a student in today’s Winnipeg. If you prefer this answer you may ask what the reason is for the current situation in the Church. All churchmen, both on the right and the left, answer that Vatican II is the road map for today’s ecclesiastical politics.
The Way to the Council
We spoke about the change in Western society in the 1950s. The Church had to find an answer to the new challenges. The first attempt to do so was under Pope Pius XII, who modernized the Church in a very clever way. He used new techniques, but didn’t forget the risks and negative developments which social change brought with it. In all, he remained strictly within Catholic doctrine. This Pope was very successful in his time. Most of the Western European governments were run by Christian Democrats during that time; he had a big influence on the academic debate in the ’50s. He was surely the most powerful pope of modern times.
Unfortunately, many of Pius’s reforms were not adopted by the local churchmen in their everyday work. The Church had grown cold. Both priests and lay people were self-satisfied. They did not realize the social change which was in progress. Some proposed a Council. Pius XII was very sceptical; there was a lack of competent and orthodox theologians; he knew the risk of how such an assembly could get out of control.
His successor John XXIII was brave or naive enough–decide on your own–to call for a Council. He was one-sidedly optimistic. Modern theologians2 began to speak about a necessary reform of the Church. They didn’t understand by “reform” a true reform of hearts and minds, a true interior conversion and renewal. They were determined to change the structure of the Church and its doctrine: a true revolution.
So Vatican II began. Pope John XXIII gave the starting shot with his “aggiornamento”–to live and teach according to the times. “We have to update the Church,” he said, “to the new living conditions in the modern world, making us acceptable to modern man.”3 A completely wrong and a particularly naive illusion was expressed in the longest document of Vatican II, “Gaudium et spes.”4 Forty years later, Pope John Paul II would speak about “the silent apostasy...”
The Roman curia prepared documents for the Council which followed the spirit of Pius XII’s reforms, profoundly rooted in Catholic doctrine. Unfortunately, a group of bishops–foremost from France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands–called for further reforms. They led the way and combined their subversion with theological positions which were in contradiction to the Catholic doctrine of Pius XII. This group strove that the prepared documents be rejected. Instead of these documents new schemas were made.5
The first concerned the liturgy.6 The Roman liturgy was in Latin. There were different reasons for that. One is uniformity throughout the world, which manifests the unity of Christians. Another is that Latin is a language which doesn’t change anymore, so it is timeless. But the language is not the most important element of a rite. The order of the Catholic rite in its structure comes out of the third century and was finally defined in the 16th century. Like a “dogma” of Catholic liturgy is the known sentence: “Lex orandi est lex credendi ”–The way we pray is the way we believe. All liturgical rites, prayers, chants, ceremonies, which make up even the whole liturgical year are a perfect expression of the faith; the liturgy, i.e. the Catholic ritual reflects the Catholic Faith. On the other hand, this saying expresses that any change of the prayers in any rite or liturgy will necessarily change the faith or the doctrine expressed in the liturgy.
The most complete and unmitigated expression of the Catholic faith is the Mass, “the Mass of all time,”7 because the Church believes “quod semper, quod ab omnibus, quod ubique”8–what has been believed always, by everyone, everywhere.
What’s the Catholic teaching about the Mass? There are sacrifices in all religions. But the idea of sacrifice has been realized in a unique and decisive way in the immolation of Christ on the Cross. The agonizing and bloody death of Christ is an exterior act whereby His interior oblation is expressed. “He offered Himself because He willed to do so.” He offered Himself to suffering and death of His own free will. It is love, expressed in obedience, that is, in the total offering of His human will to the divine will, which gave value to His bloody immolation on the Cross. His act of offering is of itself an expiation, the perfect reparation for the sin of mankind. Jesus accomplishes the sacrifice in the name of all men–“propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem.” 9 He is the Priest of mankind in the most rigorous sense.
The Mass is a sacrifice only because of its relation to the sacrifice of the Cross. The Council of Trent says: it is the same sacrifice because it is the same Priest, the same Victim, offered in another manner; at the Mass, this same sacrifice is offered in a sacramental and symbolic way. The Mass is the sacrament of the sacrifice of the Cross in so far as the latter continues to exist. The Mass makes the Cross present once again. That is why the Council makes it clear that the Mass possesses all the virtue of the sacrifice of the Cross and applies its fruits to us. Christ Himself is contained in the Eucharist, exercising this power and applying it here and now to all those who share in the Eucharist. Christ died for everyone, but to be saved and justified we have to believe in His redemption and salvation; we have to accept the power of His sacrifice. That’s the reason why we have to believe in the Faith and to attend Holy Mass.
Is it a coincidence that the first document in Vatican II–as we said–speaks about liturgical reform, about a liturgy updated to modern times? Or inversely, why create a new Mass? By the way, it’s plain and simply false to say that the Council didn’t want a new Mass; that the Novus Ordo Missae, the Mass of Pope Paul VI, was a posterior creation, not the idea of Vatican II. That’s wrong. It is the Mass of the Council; the Council wanted the new Mass. Archbishop Annibale Bugnini was appointed in 1964 to create the Novus Ordo Missae, the New Rite of Mass. Nineteen sixty-four was during the Council! In the commission elaborating the new Mass there were six Protestant theologians among the Catholic experts. You understand the Protestants gave their opinions.
Again, why a new Mass? Now, more than 40 years later, we can objectively notice that the ideas of the Council are conveyed by the New Rite of Mass. That was the best way to spread all the novelties like ecumenism, religious liberty, liberalism, collegiality, and so forth. But already at that time, during the Council, there existed a main idea, a guiding-light: Bugnini’s objective for the new Mass was to “remove everything which could be even the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren or could cause them any displeasure.”10 We can quote also what Jean Guitton said.11 What is the displeasure for the Protestants? Sacrifice!
To put it in a nutshell: What is the Protestant theology about the Mass? The Mass of Martin Luther is the so-called “German Mass.” Andreas Karlstadt,12 Luther’s friend, wanted to de-catholicize the Mass. In 1521, at Christmas, he celebrated the German Mass in secular clothes and gave communion under both species; he used the vernacular. The next day, Karlstadt got engaged. After that many monks and nuns left their cloisters. Why such a violent alteration of the “Mass”? Behind it we find the Protestant theology about the Mass: There is no longer a sacrifice (expressed rather with the meal, both species, in the vernacular) or any priesthood (secular clothes, marriage).
The new Mass was to be like the Protestant mass. When the new Mass started, the faithful saw a protestant Mass. Archbishop Lefebvre gave a set of conferences entitled “The Mass of Luther.” Why? The new Mass is not only a Protestant mass; the theology of the new Mass goes further; in fact we have a new theology. With the concept of the Paschal mystery there is no longer a sacrifice; the Redemption is reduced to only one day–the paschal mystery.13 And with the theory of universal salvation, everybody is “saved and justified.”14 Everybody goes to heaven. The basis for this new theology is the concept of the “anonymous Christianity” and “anonymous Christians” by Karl Rahner, the most important Catholic theologian on Vatican II. With his “new theology” the Church no longer needs any mission, any conversion, any apostolate; the Church is no longer the unique “Ark of the Covenant,” but merely one way between other ways, churches, and religions. Because everybody is already redeemed (and justified), nobody understands the necessity of the Sacrifice. Consequently, we need a new Mass! With the New Theology, you cannot understand the old Mass, the meaning of expiation or the remission of sins.15
And consequently, immediately after the Council, the Catholic Mass, the so-called “old Mass” was condemned. In 1967, the Missa normativa–a test or trial Mass–was presented by Annibale Bugnini, secretary to the Congregation for Divine Worship on the occasion of a bishops’ synod in Rome. Most of the bishops rejected the project because it did not correspond to what the majority of bishops at the Council desired. But the Pope and all the reformers wanted a completely new Mass. On April 3, 1969, the New Mass was imposed by Paul VI. Priests were not to say any other Mass than the Missa normativa. In May 1976, on the occasion of a consistory, Paul VI demanded that henceforth only the New Mass be celebrated. A low resistance to the New Mass started. Only in Spain was an opposition formed: Over 1,000 priests from Spain appealed to Rome: “Let us keep the Mass!” Bugnini’s answer: “The Mass is abrogated forever!”
So I accuse Vatican II for being the reason for the loss of faith within the Church. Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, once pointed out that the “destruction of liturgy” is the main reason for today’s crisis in the Church. And when he was named Pope he did the right thing: he allowed the celebration of the Mass in the pre-Vatican II rite.16 But as long as the majority of priests and local bishops prefer the Vatican II rite, as long as in the seminaries and Sunday sermons and catechism the Mass is not really explained, the crisis will remain. It is very easy to destroy the Faith, but it is hard to rebuild it.
I bring such attention to the liturgy since it is the most relevant change Vatican II brought about. It affects all of the faithful. And you can explain, by this, the whole Council. Under these conditions and this road map the Council published documents which were ambiguous. It was clear that a change, a reform was intended, but the documents remained unclear as to how these reforms should be realized. For both the faithful and the clergy, the old doctrine lost its validity. An uncontrolled change began; everyone felt responsible for making a new religion and putting the old aside. In the name of the Council one could justify the greatest nonsense, such as the destruction of church interiors, usually into a wretched style, or the different new teachings. The wish to break with one’s roots was exaggerated with an obsession to change everything in church. The result was a complete change in the every-day practice of parishes.
This change prevented a Catholic renaissance once the optimism of the ’60s had gone, when the party was over and the people looked for stable values. The Church which such searchers found was highly-influenced by the wrong ideas of the 1960s and hence couldn’t convince those who had just turned away from these ideas.
Vatican II against the Catholic Tradition: Our Reproaches against the Council
First of all, it’s not a question of conservatism; it’s a question of truth. He who is Catholic is conservative and up to date (progressive, if you want!) at the same time. To the Catholic belongs a conservative spirit, the preservation, and, just as well, the development of all the richness of what we have to preserve, the richness of Tradition as a whole. In fact, that’s true progress.
We do not deplore that in the Council and in the “post-conciliar era” (the time after the Council with all the liturgical and theological reforms) something new has happened, because “the father of the house brings new and old from his treasure” (Mt. 13:52). We deplore only that this new treasure is wrong. We do not deplore that a train departed, we deplore that it has gone in the wrong direction. We say, the train has to go back again, so that it can then go in the right direction.17
True progress is a development of what has been received and, hence, includes preservation. Conservatism and progress are dimensions of the ecclesiastical existence which enclose themselves and cause each other. The Catholic does not search for the truth, like the Council document “Gaudium et spes” says (Article 16). Such thinking is a direct attack against the truth (the truth is Jesus Christ Himself.) It’s incorrect and wrong. In fact, it looks in the already revealed truth for deepening and enlargement. Clearly that fatal mistake of the Council is found in the encyclical “Ut unum sint ” (Art. 33) of John Paul II, where he says: “In the understanding of the council the ecumenical dialogue has the character of a common search for the truth.”
The Catholic Church and she alone is founded by God. Christ said to Peter “And I say to you: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18). Therefore, the Catholic Church taught in all ages that it is exclusively identical with the Church of Jesus Christ; briefly: The Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ. This equation founds the Catholic claim to absoluteness; she alone is a means of salvation which is expressed in the dogma: “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus–outside the Church there is no salvation.”
From this traditional self-image of the Church follows the true ecumenism which was represented in the Church by all Christian ages up to the Second Vatican Council. Pius XI explains in his encyclical Mortalium Animos: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.”18
The Council presents a completely different self-image of the Catholic Church. The Council witnessed a formidable about-turn which Paul VI described as follows: “It is possible to say that the bishops as a whole set themselves to learn and to listen, and many were surprised how in four years their point of view changed and broadened, how they sometimes accepted what before the Council they would have judged unacceptable or too rash [!].”19
By the way, the Second Vatican Council, in contrast to Vatican I and to the Council of Trent, was only a pastoral council, i.e., we don’t have a strict obligation to accept any of the new ideas it proposed.
Now we will state some central points, which were, for the bishops, “unacceptable before the Council,” using the mode of expression of Pope Paul VI.
As everyone knows, the Council wanted to change the relation of the Catholic Church to the world and to other religions. However, the traditional self-image of the Church stood in the way of this intention, which is why they departed from it. The focus of the Catholic self-image is the continual doctrine of the Church, according to which the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church is one and the same. The Council wanted to revise this doctrine, and decided against it in order to be able to realize the ecumenism of the Council! Therefore, one no longer said that the Catholic Church “is” the Church of Christ [est ], but that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church [subsistit in]. With the turning away from “est” the Council carried out a serious break with the traditional doctrine of the Church.
This turning away from the traditional self-image of the Catholic Church opened the door to the ecumenism which the Council introduced in contradiction to the traditional doctrine. The consequence is a new claim of salvation for all the other confessions and religions; from now on they are ways to salvation; from now on they are true churches.
With the awarding of a mediation of salvation to other communities (the Protestants included), the Council abandons the truth about the Catholic Church and teaches that no “church” has the full truth, but only elements of the truth.
The turning away of the pastoral council from the traditional self-image of the Church entailed not only a basic change of the relation of the Church to other Christian communities, but also a basic change of the attitude toward non-Christian religions, which is explained in the Decree Nostra Aetate. The high esteem for non-Christian religions which is expressed in this pastoral council document is incompatible with traditional teaching, according to which these religions are aberrations. Therefore, Jesus Christ Himself and the Church have directed a global mission to save all from sin and error.
The Catholic Church taught that these non-Christian religions have a number of natural truths (to respect the elderly, to help those who are in misery, to be wise in one’s behavior, prudent in one’s actions, etc.). Secondly, those religions sometimes have elements, which are remnants of the primitive revelation of God. And finally, sometimes they have taken elements from the Catholic Church (for example, Islam, which confesses one, unique God, takes this belief from the Christian religion).20
But on the other hand, these non-Christian religions not only do not lead to salvation, but very often are in themselves obstacles to finding the truth, systems of resistance to the Holy Ghost.
Such a misguided sympathy of Vatican II toward the other religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, etc.) leads necessarily not only to religious indifferentism, but to a destruction of the supernatural order. There is no longer any concern for faith and sanctifying grace; it is replaced by campaigns against racism, by manifestations for peace in the world, taking care of the environment, developing technology, social progress, etc.21 “Apostleship does not mean to make Muslims or Buddhists into Christians, but to make them better Muslims and better Buddhists” was a slogan of a popular German theologian.
Concerning the other religions, the Council used words which are on the very limits of Catholic thinking. If you take the Bible, one thing is clear: the rejection of pagan religions. But the Council finds many warm words for pagan religions in the sense that these religions can do a lot for conserving peace on earth and other strictly secular problems. This was misunderstood as an acceptance of other religions even in religious aspects, in such a way that all religions are valuable even for salvation, that they are just different ways–maybe not as powerful as Catholicism is–but valuable in God’s plan.
Here the Church did a lot to support this misunderstanding, which is a clear attack on the basis of Christianity and the First Commandment. In 1986, Pope John Paul II invited leaders of nearly all non-Christian religions to Assisi, an Italian town, for common prayer for peace. He gave them Catholic chapels for their religious ceremonies. So there was a statue of Buddha, for instance, on a Catholic altar, on the tabernacle, and the cross was taken away. One must understand this as an acceptance of Buddhism as another way to God. But if anything goes, why remain Catholic? People lost their Catholic minds. They lost their trust in the promise of salvation, which Christ has given to the Christians and only to the Christians in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me.”
The change of direction of the Council in this area led greatly to the breakdown of the apostolate and was replaced by interreligious dialogue. Such behavior is very far from the apostolic order of Christ: “Go ye unto all nations and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptised, will be saved: he who does not believe, will be condemned” (Mk. 16:15-16).
“One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and throughout all, and in us all.”22 The Catholic doctrine up to Vatican II on the question of religious liberty says that there is only one God, one Redeemer, and one Church. This God, this Redeemer, and this Church must be recognized by every creature, each and every individual, and also by social bodies: families, schools, States.23 They have to recognize Our Lord, basing their constitutions, laws, and their lives on Him. This means that all countries, especially those with a majority of Catholic citizens, should officially recognize Our Lord and His Church as the only true religion, and put limits to the public manifestations of other religions.
With Dignitatis Humanae we have an inversion of values. The Truth, who is a person, Jesus Christ, has no longer the right to reign in parliaments, governments, and constitutions, in courts and schools. He has to be silent; He is put on the same level with other religions, opinions, and errors. The pastoral Council asked and demanded that no religion should be hindered from spreading its errors, that every religion is to be treated with equality before the law. “This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom” (No. 2). So, religious freedom would be a natural right. “This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in religious matters no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs” (No. 2). We agree because nobody can be forced to embrace the Faith. Faith is an interior act. What is new follows: “Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly ” (No. 2).
The consequence is an unlimited freedom even of choice in moral matters (abortion, euthanasia, etc.). With the Council’s religious liberty, anyone can have the right to act against the law of God, or, if you want, the unlimited freedom of conscience is more important than God’s will or law. The old doctrine taught: a State can only tolerate evil. Our Lord said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me” (Jn. 14:6). “I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (Jn. 18:37). “Pilate answered: ‘What is truth?’” (Jn. 18:38). The Council teaches that governments have chosen Barabbas.
What is the problem with true religious liberty? Liberties are only for individuals, not the State. Freedom is given to the single human being. Those who have freedom also have this human dignity. The State has no human dignity. The State is committed to save and protect this dignity of each citizen, on the one hand. But it is also committed to the eternal order of things on the other hand. A State can’t love; the State is not free. It’s the single person who is free. The State is committed to truth and justice. And God is true.
That sounds very academic, doesn’t it? Maybe it was so in the 1960s. But it is not any longer. In Switzerland, my home country, the people have decided in a referendum to forbid the construction of minarets, which are the towers of mosques from which the muezzin calls the Muslims to prayer. In France, President Sarkozy plans to abolish the burka, a sack under which extreme Muslims hide their wives and daughters, not because they’re ugly, but to discriminate against them. All over Europe the courts are tackled with the problems of the wearing of the head scarf by Muslim women in public buildings, of Muslim parents who are not willing to allow their children to go swimming in school, and so on. The Western countries are confronted with the aggressive claims of other religions, especially Islam. These States have found that religious liberty in the sense of Vatican II is not possible; there must be limits.
In the 1960s those questions were not of interest. But now we have to ask ourselves who we are. Who Are We? is, by the way, a book by Samuel Huntington, who best described the rise of religion at the end of the Cold War as the “Clash of Civilizations.” When the book came into debate in the ’90s, most Western politicians and intellectuals, who had learned that God is dead and hence, were focused on secular questions such as social discrepancies, tried to ignore Huntington’s analysis. After 9/11 things changed. Religion is a reality, and it influences public life. The Western world has seen a fundamental cultural change since the 1960s.
This was caused in large part by the collapse of the biggest religious institution in the West, the Catholic Church. Because the majority of people here were Catholic, and the majority of Catholics lost their faith, our politics and our societies lost their orientation. Now we are faced with the question of how to answer the claims Islam is making. So we must ask ourselves who we are. Are we just consumers? What are our principles? I’m sure that no one who tries to answer this question can do it without considering Christianity. So after some decades of godlessness we will see the return of Jesus Christ. To prepare for this it is important to understand how the Catholic Church could have come into such a crisis.
There is no way to the Father but by Jesus Christ. That is not really clear to today’s Catholics, be they clergy or laymen. So we have a lack in basic Catholic consciousness. But people who don’t know what is Catholic can’t act in a Catholic way. They can’t vote for Catholic positions because they don’t know what the Catholic position is and so on. “The Faith is evaporating,” said Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, and he is right. In the short period after Vatican II, the Faith has evaporated in nearly every aspect. And thus Catholic positions in politics, about abortion, gay-marriage, the value of a family, sex education in school, and so on, have gone away.
So I ask you to do two things: First, take religion into consideration when analyzing politics and the history of recent decades. Religion influences people a lot, and people make politics. My thesis is: the developments of the last 40 years and today’s politics are only to be understood when taking the collapse of Catholicism into consideration.
Secondly, research the influence Vatican II has had on this development. My thesis from the beginning was: Vatican II is not the only, but the main cause for the collapse of the Church. Don’t stop with this thesis. Go further and investigate how Vatican II caused the collapse, and in which ways. I gave you some ideas. To understand such a religious crisis is important in a time when religion obviously is back in business. And as in the West it will be the Christian religion which will dominate–otherwise the West wouldn’t be the West any longer–it is necessary to research the developments within Christianity.
At last, I want to speak to you as a priest: God will come back. The renaissance of both religion and its institution, the Church, can be taken as a certitude. Maybe today it is still a bit avant-garde to promote a Catholic standpoint, but shouldn’t young academics and universities always be avant-garde? The time is right for this, as the Church is in a deep crisis, unfortunately. So, as you know in the financial market, they say: buy when the price is low. The Catholic Church is surely a “blue chip,” and now, at the end of the period of Vatican II, the price is low, but expectations and potentials are high.
Just a word of what I expect in the upcoming years: The Pope will make clear that Vatican II has never propagated a break and a rupture with the doctrine of all Christian centuries. He will reject the wrong interpretation24 which has made Vatican II to be the basis of a new religion. He will defeat the spirit of the 1960s, at least 30 years too late; but what are 30 years for the Church? Catholicism will become popular at first among the educated people, who are searching for the sense of life. The ordinary people are fallen into brutal hedonism; unfortunately, you can’t build a society on alcohol, sex, and consumption. Ernest Hello (1828-85), a French writer and philosopher, said: “The only true problem is that we aren’t saints.” The importance of religion will increase, and it won’t be the religion of Vatican II, but that of all time.
Thank you very much.
1 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 378.
2 Cf. Franz Schmidberger, Time Bombs of the Second Vatican Council (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2005), p. 5.
3 Ibid.
4 Gaudium et Spes: “The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time...”; Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, December 7, 1965.
5 Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (1967).
6 Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, December 4, 1963.
7 As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre habitually said.
8 The famous saying of St. Vincent of Lerins.
9 The Credo: “For us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven.”
10 Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.
11 Jean Guitton, an old friend of Paul VI, related in 1993, “that the pope wanted, in full awareness, to remove from the Mass what could displease the Protestants.” Max Thurian, one of the six experts said: “Nothing in the new Mass can really displease a Protestant.” In: Katechismus der Krise der Kirche by Fr. Matthias Gaudron (Rex Regum, 1997), p. 93. Cf. Just as quote, ibid., p. 106.
12 Andreas Rudolf Bodenstein, or Andreas Rudolff-Bodenstein von Karlstadt, often simply called “Karlstadt” (1482-1541), was a 16th-century German Protestant reformer.
13 Cardinal Wojtyla, Sign of Contradiction [French edition quoted] (1977; Communio-Fayard, 1979), pp. 31, 119.
14 Ibid.
15 A few years ago, statistics in Germany showed that 95 percent of practising Catholics believe the Catholic Mass and the Protestant Supper are the same!
16 Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007.
17 Fr. Hans Milch, cited in Das Konzil muss auf den Prüfstand:Der Standpunkt der Actio Spes Unica zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil.
18 Paragraph 10.
19 Jean Guitton, The Pope Speaks: Dialogues of Paul VI with Jean Guitton (1967; New York: Meredith Press, 1968), p. 215.
20 Cf. Schmidberger, Time Bombs, p. 16.
21 Ibid.
22 Eph. 4:5-6.
23 Cf. Schmidberger, Time Bombs, p. 23.
24 He promotes the so-called “hermeneutic of continuity.” See the address to the Curia on December 22, 2005.
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