The Church Since Vatican II

by Michael Davies

I HAVE BEFORE ME a recent letter from an Irish bishop. I had better not mention his name as the sentiments he expresses are not likely to win him an award as the most popular prelate of the year in any poll conducted among his fellow bishops. "It seems to me," he says, "that ordinary Catholics here want to keep the old traditions—as indeed does the Pope himself. For too long we have been sold an anti-Catholic style of ecumenism by the media. If we don't wake up to the danger soon, it can be for the next generation a case of one religion being as good as another—and for the next generation after that, why worry about belonging to any religion at all?"

"If we don't wake up to the danger soon . . ." warns the bishop—but what danger? If we are to believe what the Catholic media inform us, if we are to believe what most of the Catholic clergy tell us, including the bishops, perhaps above all the bishops, we are blessed generation, blessed because we have the privilege of living during the great Vatican II renewal.

This brings me to the subject of goldfish. I understand that there is a most effective method of killing goldfish which can be employed by tender-hearted people who do not wish to inflict pain upon these colorful little creatures and yet, for some compelling reason, wish to dispose of them. I had better point out, in order to avoid the wrath of any goldfish-lovers, that I have never experimented to discover whether the method actually works. I can look any goldfish in the eye without the least tremor of conscience! The method is as follows: heat up the water in which the goldfish is disporting himself very, very slowly, degree by degree—over a period of days if possible. The goldfish will continue on his merry way, evincing not the least sign of discomfort and then, almost imperceptibly, he will be floating upside down—dead, stone dead.

Many Catholics today, most Catholics perhaps, are like goldfish swimming in a bowl in which the temperature is now reaching a very high level. Spiritually, to all intents and purposes, many are now floating on their backs. The Catholic Faith which once meant so much to them has died completely, they exist as so many spiritual zombies, proclaiming themselves to be Catholics, but professing, in fact, what Cardinal Newman condemned as the "religion of the world." Some of those here tonight will be like goldfish whose bowls have had their temperatures raised to a fairly high level, and it will not be easy for me to get through to them. Like a goldfish, they will not realize that anything is wrong. In fact, they may well be convinced that everything is better than it ever has been. These are the Catholics who actually believe that we are witnessing a renewal. If they believe that, then they have passed the stage where they can be helped by anything short of a dramatic divine intervention. But there may be others swimming in water which is only tepid; if so, it may be possible for me to help them to "wake up to the danger" while there is still time. It will be my task to convince them that there really is a danger to which they should wake up, not soon, but immediately; and to suggest some appropriate reactions to this danger.

The Catholic Church

Before discussing the Church since Vatican II we need to be clear in exactly what we mean by the Catholic Church. As Christians we believe ourselves to have an eternal destiny. Other creatures on our planet live, then die, and are no more. But we have been brought into being by an omnipotent Creator to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next. We cannot love someone we do not know, and we cannot serve Him unless we know His will for us. The Christian religion is unique in claiming that God Himself became man, that God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. We believe that on the altar of the Cross, as Priest and Victim, He offered Himself in atonement for our sins; that He rose again from the dead, and, with the body which had been placed: in the tomb, He ascended into heaven to prepare a place for those who follow Him. All Christians believe this, but as Catholic Christians we believe something more. We believe that the Incarnation did not end when Our Lord ascended into heaven, but that it has been continued in the Catholic Church—which is the Mystical Body of Christ. The Catholic Church, in its most profound reality, is an extension of the Incarnation throughout the nations and the centuries. The Catholic Church today is Jesus Christ among us fulfilling the mandate entrusted to Him by His Father—a mandate which He in turn entrusted to His Church. This mandate is to save the whole human race without distinction of time and place.

It is because the Church is Christ in the world that we are bound to say that there is no salvation outside the Church, because there is no salvation outside Christ. It is because the Church is Christ in the world that we are bound to say that it is without spot or wrinkle. However, in using the Mystical Body to continue His work of salvation Our Lord knew that the effectiveness with which it would perform this task would depend upon the zeal and sanctity of its human members. All Catholics are truly members of the Mystical Body, united with Jesus, its Divine Head, and with each other. But because we are human we are imperfect, and this imperfection can affect even those members in the highest positions, not excluding the Pope himself.

Decline and Renewal

Those who are familiar with the history of the Church will know how often its mission has been hampered by the weakness of its human members, and, alas, this weakness has usually been more apparent among the clergy than the laity. Where the laity are lax and decadent it will almost invariably be found that they are being ministered to by a decadent clergy. Hilaire Belloc considered that the greatest proof of the divine nature of the Catholic Church is its survival despite those who have so often governed it. Time and again in the history of the Church we witness declines which would have destroyed a merely human organization, but then a great Pope or a great saint will arise and initiate a process of renewal. For something like a century and a half, from 904 to 1049, the Church suffered a period of abysmal decadence, a period which can be traced back even before the election of the unscrupulous, immoral, and truly terrible Pope Sergius III in 904. But in 1049, a saint was elected to the papacy, St. Leo IX, who was wholeheartedly behind the radical reform movement in the Church inspired initially by the monks of Cluny. St. Leo had a clear policy in mind. He saw that the Church must be reformed from the top. Nothing could be done unless the episcopate was purified. But under his predecessors, unworthy bishops had proliferated throughout the Church, and, had it not been for her divine constitution, they must inevitably have destroyed her.

In the fourth century Pope Liberius showed lamentable weakness in the face of the Arian heresy. He signed an ambiguous semi-Arian formula and excommunicated St. Athanasius, defender of Our Lord's divinity. Once again we can only attribute the survival of the Church to divine protection. For a time it seemed that Arianism had indeed triumphed. Most of the bishops apostatized, or at least temporized. Cardinal Newman pointed out that the faith was preserved in that period primarily by the laity, many of whom remained true to the faith which they had received from the bishops, but which the bishops themselves had abandoned or lacked the courage to proclaim. These faithful Catholics and a few valiant priests had to worship outside their churches in their dioceses, and do so in secret to avoid persecution by their own bishops. St. Athanasius went in secret from diocese to diocese, offering Mass, preaching, consoling, exhorting Catholics to keep the faith that had been handed down to them, and even ordaining priests so that a true Catholic priesthood could continue. Thus the faith was kept alive. Liberius was the first Roman Pontiff not to be canonized, whereas St. Athanasius was raised to the honors of the altar.

In the reign of King Henry VIII, the entire English hierarchy, with one exception, was willing to accept that their adulterous monarch was "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England." The single exception, of course, was Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, now a saint. "The fort is betrayed even of them that should have defended it," said St. John Fisher of his apostate colleagues. St. Thomas More referred sadly to the English clergy as "lacking in grace."

In chapter XXVI, verse 35, of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we find all the apostles affirming that they would die rather than deny Our Lord. In verse 56 of the same chapter we read that when Our Lord was arrested they all left Him and fled. I have heard this referred to as the first collegial decision made by the Catholic hierarchy. Later, as we know, the first pope personally denied Our Lord three times.

I have mentioned these sad facts from Catholic history to stress the point I made earlier, that although the Catholic Church is indeed the Mystical Body of Christ in the world, its mission has often been hampered by the failings of its human members. But however widespread the extent of human weakness within the Church, it can never fail as a whole in its divine mission. It cannot fail because Our Lord has promised to be with it until the end of the world. The Church will continue as a visible, hierarchically governed body until Our Lord comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But this guarantee does not apply to the Church in every country. Whole nations have been lost to the Church and the faith has never returned on any significant scale. At the beginning of the fifth century there was no more Catholic area than North Africa, home of St. Augustine of Hippo. It is now almost entirely Muslim. The Scandinavian countries were once entirely Catholic, now the Church has only a vestigial presence there, and is composed mostly of migrant workers.

Citizens of Heaven

The greatest problem facing the Catholic is that he must be in the world, but not of the world. He is a citizen of heaven, and no more than a sojourner upon earth. Whenever we say the "Hail Holy Queen" we refer to the fact that we are poor banished children of Eve, living here in exile. But I wonder how many of us really mean it? Even the great saint finds it hard to pass through this world unscathed, and for the majority of us who are not saints the question at issue is not whether we are influenced by the world, but the extent to which we have been influenced by it. I am not thinking here primarily of such evident influences as the temptations of materialism, of lust, or of gluttony. The pressure to succumb to such temptations has never been greater than in the present era due to the proliferation and sophistication of the mass media. Television advertising in particular convinces us that we have needs we could never even have dreamt of otherwise, and that our well-being and social status demand that these needs be satisfied without delay, irrespective of cost. I am thinking primarily of intellectual temptations, temptations which weaken our faith or even contradict our faith. These too, of course, are closely bound up with the mass media and take the form generally of a desire to conform to the spirit of the age. There is nothing new about this. In his Popular History of the Catholic Church, Monsignor Philip Hughes notes that already by the end of the third century: "We are seeing the appearance of types that will never cease to reappear throughout two thousand years: Catholics who propose to explain Catholicism by synthesis with the intellectual life of the time."

The Divinization of Man

This problem has been particularly acute since the Renaissance. This word is French and means "rebirth." It refers to the rebirth of interest in classical studies which began in Italy in the fourteenth century. Those engaged upon these studies became known as humanists as their research were concerned with purely human topics, whereas in Europe until that time God had been the focus of almost every aspect of scholarship and art—music, architecture, literature, painting, drama, philosophy, cosmology and, above all, theology, the queen of sciences, were centered upon the Creator. The Creator-creature relationship was axiomatic to every aspect of human thought. God is our Creator, and as His creatures we are inferior to Him, dependent upon Him, and bound to submit to His laws as interpreted to us by His Church. Above all, acceptance of the Creator-creature relationship involves acceptance of the fact that God is perfect while we are imperfect.

Initially there was no conflict between humanism and the Church. Many humanists were also ecclesiastics. But as time passed it became clear that the movement was tending to relegate religion to a level where it had no bearing on the way man lived or the way man thought. This tendency was implicit rather than explicit. It taught that while faith is true in its own domain, the reason is concerned only with what is scientifically demonstrable. The Creator-creature relationship was not formally denied, but attention tended to be focused upon man rather than God. Man was seen as an autonomous being, the focus of truth in a world of which he was the master, and which he had the ability to subdue and perfect, a being capable of building an earthly paradise by his own efforts, a Utopia. In practical terms this led to the divinization of man; the more God's influence was restricted to the sacristy, and the more God was diminished, the more man exalted himself and became his own god. In his book Christian Humanism, Professor Thomas Molnar provides us with the following definition: "Humanism was a doctrine, or network of doctrines, putting man in place of God, and endowing him with virtues he was inevitably to abuse."

Rationalism

This examination of renaissance humanism has, of necessity, been oversimplified. Its true implications were eventually made explicit by the nineteenth century rationalists and in the Marxist religion (it is more accurate to describe Marxism as a religion rather than a political or economic system). Rationalism is the inevitable outcome of humanism. A Catholic submits his beliefs to the judgment of the Church's infallible Teaching Authority—the Magisterium. This word is derived from magister, the Latin word for teacher. A Catholic will submit to the Magisterium even when, if left to his own judgment, he would choose otherwise. Very often difficult personal circumstances, the pressures of society, and popular opinion may tempt a particular Catholic to follow a course of action condemned by the Magisterium—contraception, abortion, divorce—but a true Catholic will submit to the Magisterium no matter how difficult this may be. A rationalist will not submit to any authority external to his own reason—the word rationalist is derived from the Latin ratio, reason. A rationalist makes his own reason the arbiter of what he will or will not believe, for how he will or will not behave. There is no room for God, no room for a Creator-creature relationship in the scheme of things.

Protestantism

Protestantism provides a direct link between renaissance humanism and nineteenth-century rationalism. The sixteenth-century Protestants and their successors today are, in the final analysis, rationalists. They would deny this on the basis that they do submit themselves to an external authority, the Bible. But if pressed they would have to admit that what they mean by this is the Bible interpreted by their own reason. Luther substituted his personal interpretation of the Bible for that of the Magisterium, but he was furious when other Protestants had the temerity to differ from his own theories. He saw nothing incongruous in expecting others to treat his opinion as infallible when he repudiated the infallible authority of the Church. The history of Protestantism has been one of fragmentation from its very inception. Within decades some leaders of the constantly dividing sects felt more animosity towards each other than they did towards the Pope. Every Protestant is the ultimate arbiter for himself of what the Bible does or does not mean. Every Protestant is, in other words, his own pope. The sixteenth-century Protestants rejected much Catholic teaching on the sacraments and the nature of the Church, but they upheld belief in such fundamental dogmas as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. There is virtually no dogma which was not questioned by the nineteenth-century heirs of the Reformation, the so-called higher critics in Germany. Let us examine just one example. Science, they assured us, proves that men do not rise from the dead—therefore the Man Jesus could not have done so. The story of the Resurrection is therefore symbolic. Jesus had such an influence on His followers that this influence lived on after His death, it was just as if He were still there with them. This is the true meaning of the Resurrection, and it was symbolized in the story of the empty tomb.

Modernism

As I said earlier, Catholics living in a pluralistic society cannot remain uninfluenced by the predominating trends within that society, and this is particularly true of academics. The last thing an academic enjoys is to be thought of by his peers as a second class scholar, a man who does not enjoy true freedom of research. At the end of the nineteenth century some Catholic scholars had become convinced that if the Church was to retain its credibility in the coming twentieth century, it must accept at least some of the findings of the higher criticism. They believed, probably in all sincerity, that they were the men with their fingers firmly on the pulse of the age, they were the men who would save the Church from the folly of its obscurantist leaders, and they alone, were the men who guaranteed the Church a future. These men were the Modernists, described by St. Pius X as the most pernicious enemies of the Church, putting into operation their plans for her undoing not from without but from within.

A Saint Intervenes

St. Pius X realized that his first duty as Pope was to guard the Deposit of Faith, no matter what the consequence. He dealt with the Modernists first by attempting persuasion, then placing their books on the Index, then by condemning their errors in his Syllabus Lamentabili and the Encyclical Pascendi, both published in 1907. Those Modernists who would not submit were excommunicated, and to keep those who had not made their opinions public from teaching in Catholic institutions, he instituted the anti-modernist oath in 1910. This brought the fury of so-called modern civilization down upon him, but he succeeded in purging the Church of the public expression of Modernism for three decades.

The Encyclical Humani Generis

Sadly, Modernism had not been totally eradicated from the Church. It had resurfaced again by the nineteen-fifties to such an extent that in 1950 Pope Pius XII felt it necessary to issue an Encyclical, Humani Generis, warning the bishops of the world of certain false trends which threatened to sap the foundation of Catholic teaching. This Encyclical is still in print and is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what is happening in the field of religious education today. In 1950 the opinions condemned by the Encyclical were circulating in a semi-clandestine manner among theologians. Today they provide the basis for the religious instruction given to our very youngest children! Doubt, Pope Pius warned us, was being cast upon the existence of angels, the teaching of the Council of Trent on original sin, and, indeed, sin in general considered as an offense against God. It was being suggested, he complained, that the doctrine of transubstantiation should be revised in a manner which would make the presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist a symbol and no more; it was even suggested that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church were not synonymous. Those subscribing to these errors, the Pope explained, were motivated by an attitude of false ecumenism, "a burning desire to break down all the barriers by which men of good will are now separated from one another." Some had "too ready an ear for novelties" and were "afraid of seeming ill informed about the progress which science has made in our day. At any rate, they are eager to emancipate themselves from Authority; and the danger is that they will lose touch, by insensible degrees, with the truth divinely revealed to us, leading others besides themselves into error."

Marxism

Thus, on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, Modernism was a very potent force among Catholic academics, particularly in continental Europe, though much less so in the English-speaking world. Another powerful movement which inevitably affected the thinking of some Catholic intellectuals was that of Marxism, which, whether we like it or not, is undoubtedly the most influential movement of our century. It is an explicit manifestation of what was implicit in renaissance humanism. It is, in fact, the ultimate stage in man's self-glorification. Renaissance humanists had theorized about constructing a Utopia, a paradise on earth. Marxists have undertaken the task as a practical proposition. Universal happiness will be brought about by creating an economic system which caters for every possible material need of every citizen, and when this has happened religion will wither away. Under previous economic systems, the Marxists argue, the mass of the people had no hope of happiness on earth and so they projected their needs and desires into an illusory life to come. Religion was an opium fed to the people by those who wished to keep them in a state of subservience and deprivation. The fundamental axiom of Marxism's theory of dialectical materialism is that nothing exists beyond matter. Marxism is based on atheism, the repudiation of God.

Democracy

Most Catholics are unaware of the fact that what many people mean by democracy today is as incompatible with Catholicism as Marxism. There is certainly no concept which has influenced the thinking of the non-communist world during this century more than that of democracy, and few Catholics living in the world can have remained free from its influence. I can well imagine that some of you will be asking what on earth there is to criticize in the notion of democracy. Well, it depends on which notion of democracy you are considering, and there is one in particular which the Popes have condemned unceasingly as the most pernicious of all evils. Before explaining what this notion is I will explain what it is not. The Church is prepared to accept any form of government which respects the law of God. It will thus work equally well with an absolute monarch or governments elected on the British model by a popular vote in a free and fair election. This is probably what most British or Irish Catholics mean when they use the term "democracy." But it is not democracy in this sense that the Popes have condemned. They are not concerned with how a government is chosen but in whose name it governs. They condemn absolutely the notion that a government acts in the name of the people, and that our legislators are delegates of the People. Not so, say the Popes. All authority is derived from God, including that of rulers. They derive their authority from God and govern in His name even if chosen to do so by an election based on universal suffrage. Thus, no rulers have the right to enact laws which conflict with the universal law of God, not even if a majority of the people—even an overwhelming majority of the people—supports such a law. Rulers who legalize divorce, contraception, abortion, or unnatural vice are abusing their authority.

The false notion of democracy condemned by the Popes was also implicit in the ideas of some renaissance humanists. If reason is the ultimate arbiter of conduct, then clearly the conclusions of the majority provide the norms by which society should be regulated. This pernicious theory was made explicit in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, enacted by the victorious revolutionaries in France. There is no place in them for the rights of God. The Creator-creature relationship has been consigned to oblivion. Man is truly autonomous at last. This Declaration constitutes a calculated repudiation of the Catholic position, although some individual articles do not conflict with any Church teaching. The revolutionaries had cast God down from His throne and replaced Him with man. They even went to the extent of installing a courtesan as goddess of reason in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and there is no doubt some particular significance in their choice of a member of this profession to fill the role. There is now no authority higher than majority opinion among the people in most of the so-called free world. There are no moral absolutes. If a majority of voters concludes that murdering unborn babies is wrong then this action is indeed murder and must be punished; but, if a majority decides that the act is no more than an exercise of "a woman's right to choose," then abortion ceases to be murder. Unfortunately, the concept of democracy makes no provision for the unborn to register a vote.

Democracy, in the sense condemned by the Popes, is now taken for granted almost everywhere in the free world. Its fruits are apparent in the moral decadence of the western democracies today.

Occult Forces

Another factor in the gradual undermining of Christianity which preceded the Council is the influence of occult forces conspiring directly to destroy the Church. Some Catholics see the hand of freemasonry in every adverse event and trend, others scoff at the idea that an organized conspiracy exists. It is known from Masonic documents that they intended to infiltrate the Church and destroy her from within; it is also known that they intended to use moral corruption as a means of undermining Christian society. But because Masonry is an occult organization, a secret society, it is impossible to decide or to prove the extent to which present events are a direct result of its machinations. What cannot be denied is that what Masons said would happen is happening, but conclusive proof that it has happened as a direct result of the Masonic conspiracy is hard to come by. Masons, however, played a key role in the French—and most other—revolutions.

It should be added that, as the Popes have always taken pains to point out, not all Masons are engaged in a conspiracy against the Church. In English-speaking countries most Masons, particularly those in the lower degrees, are members for business and social reasons; they think of Masonry as being no more than a philanthropic mutual benefit society. Such men are often practising Protestants, including many clerics, and they insist on the essentially-religious nature of Masonry. But Masonry is syncretic; it will not postulate one faith as having greater validity than another, which is equivalent to a denial of truth in any religion. Its Great Architect is no more than a symbol for the common consciousness of mankind working inexorably towards a condition of universal brotherhood under masonic control.

In his Encyclical Humanum Genus, condemning Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII condemned its fundamental tenet as that of naturalism, and naturalism in this sense brings together all the facets of rationalism set in motion by the renaissance which I have described so far. Pope Leo wrote:

The key phrase in this passage is that "they deny the existence of any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of the authority of his office." This anti-authoritarian attitude received considerable impetus in Western Europe as a result of the Second World War and the expansion of totalitarian communism. The very concept of authority came to be looked upon with disfavor, which is not really surprising in view of the repellent nature of the fascist and communist dictatorships. There has been a marked aversion for authority among young people in many countries from the fifties onwards, an attitude which is a reflection of the same trend among the liberal thinkers who exercise such influence in the media. The Second World War had also led, again not surprisingly, to a widespread desire for unity and brotherhood—particularly among the European countries which had suffered so much during the war and which were to be so influential during the Second Vatican Council, notably France, Holland and Germany. Anything which caused division was looked upon with disfavor. Thus the concept of ecumenism was the order of the day. Doctrines which divided Christians should be minimized or discarded; it was what united the different communions that mattered. Christ said that He had come to bring truth into the world; but for ecumenists, if truth causes division then it too is expendable. This universal good will was reflected in large scale efforts to relieve material want in what had become known as the Third World. The Catholic Church has been second to none in its concern for the corporal works of mercy carried out in the name of Our Lord. But this was a new phenomenon, a desire to relieve material want totally unrelated to evangelization, in other words, pure philanthropy. Evidently, there was a great deal of Christian compassion in the support given by Catholics to organizations dedicated to eliminating material poverty, but there was a disquieting trend in that material deprivation was seen as the ultimate if not the only evil. There were even those who felt that material aid was not the ideal solution to the problems of the Third World, it could even be a hindrance. The solution to material deprivation was a change in the system of government. Christians could best help the world's poor by changing unjust political systems and, in practical terms, this could only mean a socialist, that is, a marxist direction.

The Eve of the Council

This brings me at last to the Second Vatican Council. I felt it necessary to provide this long preamble in order to set the Council in its historical perspective. The movements and ideas I have been describing must inevitably have influenced many of the bishops and theologians attending the Council, and hence would probably be discernible in its debates and in its documents. These ideas would rarely have been held explicitly, even by those from such "advanced" countries as France, Holland and Germany. Yet these ideas permeated the societies in which contemporary Catholics lived, and even bishops could no more remain unaffected by them than could the inhabitants of London have remained unaffected by the notorious smog which tainted her atmosphere up to the middle of this century. Rationalism, Modernism, Marxism, democracy, anti-authoritarianism, naturalism, philanthropy—all these attitudes have a common factor— they are concerned exclusively with this world, with man; they are not concerned with the world to come, with God. Man has come of age. The Creator-creature relationship is a thing of the past.

It was thus almost inevitable that whereas previous general councils of the Church had been concerned almost exclusively with spiritual matters, this one would give much of its attention to material concerns, less attention would be given to God, and more attention to man. This need not necessarily be a bad thing; no one can claim to love God who is unconcerned with the plight of those in material need. But such a concern could be a bad thing if it resulted, on a practical level, in Catholics joining the rest of society in making the relief of material deprivation their primary if not exclusive concern. There would then be nothing remaining to distinguish Catholicism from humanism.

The Second Vatican Council

The First Vatican Council had been suspended with its work uncompleted when Rome was invaded by the victorious armies of the Italian revolution in 1870. It is worth noting that almost every leader in the movement for the unification of Italy was a Mason. On two occasions serious consideration was given to convening another general council to complete the work of Vatican I, once under Pope Pius XI and once under Pope Pius XII. On both occasions the project was dropped, not least through fear that it might be infected by the Modernism which was re-emerging in the Church once more. Cardinal Billot warned Pope Pius IX that a second Vatican Council might be "maneuvered by the Church's worst enemies, the Modernists" who were already preparing a revolution in the Church, "a new 1789." No one quite knows why Pope John XXIII decided to convene a council. He claims that it was the result of a divine inspiration. Others have suggested that the elderly pontiff did not like being thought of as a stop-gap pope and called the council to ensure himself a place in history. Well, he certainly did achieve that! He spoke of opening up the windows of the Vatican to let in a little fresh air, but the effect upon the Church is as if a tornado had smashed through it. Cardinal Heenan told us that the Pope and most of the Council Fathers shared an illusion that they had come together for a short convivial meeting. God was merciful in allowing Pope John to die before witnessing the results of his decision to hold a council.

I must make a distinction here. It is the distinction between the Council itself, and the Council as an event, and it is an important distinction. We will first consider the Council in itself, that is, in the teaching found in its sixteen official documents. These documents contain much sound and even inspiring teaching, but some are banal and full of platitudes, and in some places there are unfortunate ambiguities. There was considerable tension between the conservative and progressive Fathers, and where agreement could not be reached compromise texts were drawn up, which each side could interpret in its own way.

Where Pope John XXIII was concerned, there was no question but that his Council should uphold orthodoxy. In his opening speech he stated:

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian Doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously . . . to transmit that doctrine pure and integral without an attenuation or distortion which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts has become the common patrimony of men.

That was the Pope's intention. The result was somewhat different.

Pope Paul VI Protests

"I often wonder," wrote Cardinal Heenan in 1968, "what Pope John would have thought had he been able to foresee that his Council would provide an excuse for rejecting so much of the Catholic doctrine which he wholeheartedly accepted." The solemn closure of the Council took place in December 1965. By 1967 Pope Paul VI was so alarmed at tendencies appearing throughout the Church that he spoke out in terms reminiscent of St. Pius X in the Encyclical Pascendi, to which I have already referred. St. Pius X described the original Modernists as "partisans of error" working within the "very bosom" of the Church where "they put into operation their designs for her undoing." Pope Paul VI lamented the fact that: "In the very bosom of the Church there appear works by several teachers and writers who, while trying to express Catholic doctrine in new ways and forms, often desire rather to accommodate the dogmas of the Faith to secular modes of thought and expression than be guided by the norms of the teaching authority of the Church."

In 1968 he stated openly that these deviations from orthodoxy were being justified in the name of Vatican II:

Sadly, with very few exceptions, Pope Paul VI tended to do no more than lament abuses. If he had followed the example of Pope St. Pius X and excommunicated those who refused to return to orthodoxy after repeated admonitions, then the situation of the Church today might be very different. There is a paradox here, a tragic paradox. While Pope Paul VI deplored the abuses and deviations from orthodoxy perpetrated in the so-called "Spirit of Vatican II," he was inhibited from taking effective action because, in his own way, he was a prisoner of that very same spirit. I will try to explain why.

The Council as an Event

I have already said that we can consider the Council in two ways, in itself and as an event. It was the Council as an event which was primarily responsible for generating the ubiquitous spirit of Vatican II. I have shown in my book, Pope John's Council, and I think that few if any commentators on the Council would dispute this, that the most influential people at Vatican II were not the Council Fathers, the bishops, but the expert advisers they brought with them, the periti. This was certainly the opinion of Douglas Woodruff, the outstanding Catholic journalist in England during the post-war era, and the Editor of The Tablet when it was a Catholic journal. Vatican II, he wrote, "has been the Council of the periti." Peritus, plural periti, is the Latin word for an expert adviser. These were the men brought to the Council by the bishops to offer them expert theological advice. In the case of some of the prominent European theologians, they were the very men against whom the Encyclical Humani Generis had been directed. But their views were precisely the views which representatives of the media covering the Council found sympathetic, the very views which coincided with the spirit of the post-war era, man rather than God as the focus of our attention. Some of the periti were given a pop-star build-up in the media. Hans Küng provides a typical example. He and those who thought like him were presented as fearless champions of freedom and enlightenment, men who would save the Church by making it relevant in the second half of the twentieth century; and by relevance they meant that the Church must adopt as its principal concern those priorities currently preoccupying the leaders of secular thought. This meant that the Church must have as its primary concern not life in the next world but life in this; the Church must focus the attention of its members not on avoiding sin and practising virtue in order to avoid hell and attain heaven, but in combatting poverty, injustice and inequality wherever they are to be found. And in striving to achieve these objectives, Catholics must work with men of any belief or none. Thus not even communism could be condemned. Four hundred and fifty of the Fathers attempted to have a specific condemnation of atheistic communism included in the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, but their identically worded amendments were suppressed by an act of calculated and arrogant fraud and so could not be debated. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a specific condemnation of atheistic communism by the Vatican since the Council.

The attitudes I have been describing are not found primarily in the Council documents, although they can be discerned there with the help of hindsight, particularly in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. No, these attitudes became widespread as a result of what I have been terming "the Council as an event." The Liberal periti, some of whom made it clear later that they were neo-modernists, were able to spend months together in Rome during the years of the Council, living in great comfort at the expense of the ordinary faithful. Instead of being somewhat isolated individuals, often under suspicion, who needed to express their ideas with great caution, they found themselves among dozens of like-minded theologians, and, moreover, the heroes of the hour. They were idolized by the media, they were soon having discussions, official and unofficial, with theologians from other countries, and even giving lectures to the bishops. They were the men who drafted the documents for which the bishops voted, and, as Bishop Lucey of Cork and Ross, Ireland, complained the periti were, in reality, more powerful than the bishops. They did not, as I have already explained, succeed in getting many of their ideas spelled out explicitly in the Council documents, but sadly, and I say this in all seriousness, the Council in itself, in its official documents, was of far less significance for the future of the Church than the Council as an event. Hundreds of theologians and bishops returned to their own countries in 1965 with a totally different attitude to the faith from that which they had brought to Rome in 1965. They wouldn't dispute this, in fact they would glory in the fact. They were the men who had "seen the light."

Bishop Adrian's Testimony

Bishop William Adrian of Nashville, Tennessee in the USA, notes how first the American theologians, and then many of the bishops, were converted by the European periti. "Some conservative American bishops," he wrote, "following their second rate periti, joined the revolutionary group to bring about whatever their mentors thought best. The European periti, who really imposed their theories upon the bishops, were themselves deeply imbued with the errors of Teilhardism and situation ethics, which errors ultimately destroy all divine faith and morality and all constituted authority."

Bishop Adrian then drew attention to the error which lies at the basis of the confusion in the post-conciliar Church. Please pay particular attention to these words: "They make the person the center and judge of all truth and morality irrespective of what the Church teaches. It is the root of the evil of this disrespect for authority, divine and human."

The Bishop was correct, the person becomes the center and judge of all truth and morality irrespective of what the Church teaches. Man, not God, becomes the ultimate arbiter of truth, the ultimate arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Let me quote a few more words from Bishop Adrian:

The Spirit of Vatican II

These words were written in 1969, but I am sure they express what many of us feel, that is, totally alienated from what is presented to us today as "Catholic culture." We simply cannot recognize this Faith in most of the religious textbooks imposed upon our children in so-called Catholic schools today; we cannot recognize it in what is imposed upon us as Catholic liturgy in many of our churches; we cannot recognize it in the prefabricated socio-political pseudo-religious claptrap emanating from the commissions which seem to have taken over the government of the Church from the bishops in so many countries today.

And what is the justification for all these aberrations? There is a blanket response to any complaint you will make: you are opposing the Second Vatican Council. Bear in mind that by 1968 Pope Paul VI had protested publicly at the already established practice of invoking the Council to justify "dangerous and sometimes reckless interpretations." In many cases a change imposed in the name of the Council is diametrically opposed to what the Council actually mandated. I will restrain myself from going into great detail on the extent to which this is the case where the liturgy is concerned. Do you regret the fact that in many of our churches Gregorian Chant has been replaced by hymns in what purports to be a folk idiom, often with words and music of almost heroic banality? Dare to complain and you will be castigated as an anti-conciliar rebel. But did you know that Vatican II actually ordered that Gregorian Chant should become the norm for sung Masses? Did you know that there is not a word in any conciliar document ordering or even recommending the entire Mass in the vernacular, Mass facing the people, standing for Communion, Communion in the hand, lay ministers of Communion, thrusting the tabernacle aside to an obscure corner?