Cardinal George C. Pell speaks about the unexpected aftermath of the Church following Vatican II:
Pope Paul VI appointed no bishops who were opposed to the ethos of Vatican II, and for various reasons the good bishops appointed in Holland were overwhelmed, tossed aside by the liberal gales. This brings me to another contemporary fact, which I never anticipated as a young seminarian in Rome during the Council or as a young priest. The now aged liberal wing of the Church, which dominated discussion after the Council and often the bishops and the emerging Church bureaucracies, has no following among young practicing Catholics, priests or religious. This is not only true in Australia, but everywhere in the Western world. In these different countries dominated by a secular media and intelligentsia, liberalism has no young Catholic progeny.
On reflection we should not find this surprising, as growth is tied to Gospel fidelity, to faith, love and sacrifice. After Vatican II many of us overestimated our cultural strengths and underestimated the virulence of anti-Christian forces. You need strong Christian foundations to participate productively in “open dialogue”. Without these roots the end of the road is agnosticism.
Haven't I been blogging about this too?
4 comments:
Organisations behave remarkably like the individuals that compose them. The scion of the Church had a 'better idea' and lived to see it through.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.”
S. Clemens
rcg
I can't think of much, inside The Church or out of it, that was a product of the 1960s that will survive my lifetime. Pretty much everything that decade produced in it's anti-establishment generational tantrum has been proven to be an intellectually bankrupt idea.
Thank God that time heals all wounds.
"You need strong Christian foundations to participate productively in “open dialogue”. Without these roots the end of the road is agnosticism."......It's just that simple....
Cardinal Pell is an exceptionally good Bishop, but his velvet hammer approach to the dissident Priest appeared to have been dashed off. He should have hammered home the necessary teaching to hammer head on the points raised by the dissident Priest.
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