Archbishop Raymond Burke, Cardinal designate, speaks about his seminary days. Press here for a synopsis of his interview.
In a nutshell, I believe the Cardinal Designate, Archbishop Burke, captures the essence of what the "spirit" of Vatican II was and you guessed it, it doesn't have anything to do with what Vatican II was actually all about. This quote is the nutshell of the problem we have faced since 1968:
“1968 was the symbolic year of the Paris student riots,” Archbishop Burke recalled, “but that whole rebellion against authority entered into the seminary too and in an unfortunate coincidence, coincided with the implementation of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.”
“What happened in my judgment was more of this rebellion against authority,” he added, “than the actual reading and studying of the documents of the Council and following them.”
Listen to the interview by pressing the symbol of listening at the end of Vatican Radio's actual synopsis of the interview.
My comment: The Sulpicians who ran Theological College next to Catholic University where Archbishop Burke attended from 1968 to 1970 also ran the seminary I attended in Baltimore, Maryland between 1976 to 1980. They experienced during the period of 1968 to 1975 the most radical purging of the pre-Vatican II model of seminary training and truly went into "meltdown" mode and disintegration. But thankfully, by 1976 the seminary personnel and the Sulpicians began to realize the folly of their type of rebellious renewal and how dangerous the hermeneutic of rupture was for them and the Church at large although the rupture theology did not go away entirely, but my experience of the seminary was not as rebellious as it was just a couple of years prior to my arrival. What Archbishop Burke describes is quite true and quite unfortunate and hopefully a lesson learned.
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