"The Spirit of Vatican II"

.
Human beings really don't communicate very well. Our belief filters interfere with our communication systems.

Local "Catholics" at St Stephen's in Minneapolis are protesting the fact that the Church is requiring them to abide by the rules. They are like baseball players who want "six outs per inning" or football teams who want "six downs to make ten yards." Why? Well its more democratic that way, players can participate more and the players should get to make more decisions. The big hitters no doubt will want steroids legalized too. The pitchers (there are more of them) would probably vote no).

By invoking the "Spirit of Vatican II", the unwritten doctrines of the Second Vatican Council (1963-65), many Catholics have taken their parishes into their own hands, generally with the leadership and willingness of their priests and sometimes even their bishops, and implemented changes in liturgical, devotional, architectural, musical and other aspects of Catholic beliefs and practices.

Thousands of churches were trashed by removing altar rails, statues and images that were considered old fashioned.

The vernacular languages replaced Latin in the liturgies even though the use of Latin was still required. On December 4, 1963, Pope Paul VI promulgated Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The document commands that "the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites" (36.1). The Council Fathers then add:

But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants (36.2).

Guitars replaced organs in direct contravention to the requirement that "The pipe organ is to be held in high esteem in the Latin Church, for it is the traditional musical instrument, the sound of which can add a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lifts up men's minds to God and higher things". SC VI #120)

Priests became masters of ceremonies instead of celebrants of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, telling jokes and ad libbing the sacred words. They sometimes even turned over their responsibilities to their parishioners to give homilies and even attempting to say portions of the Mass to foster more lay participation.

Parish Councils are sometimes known to dictate to pastors as to what is to be done in the parish.

The privacy of the confessional for that sacrament was replaced by "group therapy sessions" where you just thought about your sins and had them forgiven.

Many millions still think those were the good things engendered by the Spirit of Vatican II.

They forget about other things brought about by the "Spirit's" unwritten doctrines.

Thousands of priests, bishops, archbishops and maybe even a cardinal, deacons, seminarians, nuns and teachers became involved in the child sexual abuse scandal, 80% of the incidents involved men abusing teenage boys , some men abusing women and girls, and some men abusing pre-pubescent boys. Some smaller number incidents involved incidents men with pornography and activities of adults. In addition to the horror and harm that it has cost the abused, these sexual liberation demonstrations have cost the Church and its insurers about three billion dollars in compensatory damages so far. And the lawsuits from the 60s and 70s are still being filed. Governments are removing the statute of limitations restrictions on civil cases.

As awful as that sounds, what is even more awful is the fact that willfully or negligently, many bishops transferred known offenders from parish to parish to other dioceses in efforts to protect them from prosecution and get them out of their hair. Psychologists and insurance companies share in that guilt also.

Hundreds of thousands of bishops, priests, deacons, brothers and sisters left their dioceses and religious communities.

The religious education of Catholic children almost came to a halt in these past forty years.

The vast majority of the Catholic secondary schools that remain and colleges and universities no longer are much more than Catholic in name only. [I know a student who will graduate from a Catholic college in the Spring having taken only one class in religion.]

In 1968, a few years after the Council ended, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that artificial contraception was contrary to Catholic teaching. ("The Pill" had just gone on the market a few years earlier). Virtually all Catholics refused to comply with that teaching of the Church.

Women chose to mess up their bodies so that they could fully participate in the sexual revolution and the freedoms of feminist doctrines. The size of the Catholic family dropped from four or five children down to one or two. One would think that the jury is still out on the effects of the pill.

It is said that the Catholic Church is the largest denomination in the United States. Ex-Catholics are said to be the second biggest "denomination" when taking both those those who have joined another denomination and those who aren't going to church at all into account.

The millions who join evangelical protestant parishes where the entertainment in the Sunday morning religious service is more like what they are used to seeing on television or at rock concerts. They claim they "get more out of such services." They are not aware that worship of God involves giving thanks to God, not having a good time.

Those Catholics who are not going to church at all any more are not marrying under the auspices of the Church, or even of the government, nor are they having their children baptized.

The vast majority of todays Catholics, uneducated as they have been by the Church, no longer go to Confession. But they still go to Communion, really believing that they have not sinned grievously.


I'm not happy with how slow the Church has moved in reacting to the abuses of the "Spirit of Vatican II." But I have come to understand that when you are part of a 2,000 year old organization, you participate on a different time scale than the one in which you live your ordinary life.

As an example, Martin Luther distributed his 95 Theses against policies of the Church in the year 1517. It took twenty-eight years before the Council of Trent (1545-1563) was even convened, and it wasn't until 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War in which millions were killed (including 30% of the German population) that Europe was again at peace.