Our diocese canceled our annual priests’ retreat due to Covid-19 issues with our retreat house in Jacksonville, Florida. We are asked to find an alternative to this retreat. Thus I am doing a private, kind of self-directed retreat this week at a beautiful place of nature. I am following the schedule we use for our diocesan retreat. My retreat master is Bishop Barron. I am using selected videos from his vast number of videos.
Last night, at my retreat conference, Bishop Baron spoke about Vatican II and the polarization in the Church today which is both religious and political but interconnected.
Like Bishop Baron, I am not amongst those who are verging in the direction of schism, true schism, who reject Vatican II altogether or reject portions of it. It is an ecumenical council headed by the Pope and the bishops in union with him and holds a place of authoritative pride. Those who disagree with this defined teaching of the Church (about ecumenical councils) place themselves on the road to schism.
My retreat master did not go into it specifically, but he did make a point about the actual Council and how it was implemented. He spoke of anecdotal evidence that he himself experienced after the council that anyone his age, which is a bit young than me, can certainly confirm.
Thus, I prefer, like Bishop Baron, to uphold Vatican II and its integrity and rather critique its manner of implementation. And I prefer to critique the lack of critique from bishops of the Church concerning Vatican II’s implementation that has led to about 12 % of Catholics attending Mass, a gauge about the success or failure of a Council’s implementation.
I support Pope Benedict’s vision for Vatican II which he enunciated very clearly and his papacy gave witness, especially his liturgical vision, his call for a more ‘universal” Liturgy in terms of style and language and his call that Catholic laity and clergy be faithful to the Church by witnessing to the Light of Christ in the world.
We must reach those who are alienated from God or know Him not, with the medicine of truth, even if that Medicine tastes bitter to them. It is here, that the implementation of Lunmen Gentium of Vatican II combined with a miserable implementation of the reformed liturgy, has undermined the actual Council.
When you have the National Chismatic Reporter, pro-abortion Catholic politicians evangelizing the world with a heresy rather than truth, and the bishops of local dioceses where these things originate doing nothing, that undermines Vatican II pure and simple.
It is up to bishops who supervise their priest and religious who work in their dioceses to make sure a heresy is not being witnessed by any Catholic in their diocese as it goes against one of the most important documents of VAtican II, Lumen Gentium. They need to call them out, be it a pubic person like a Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi or a Michael Voris on the other end or fascist Catholics on the far right of things.
And when it comes to the post-Vatican II liturgy and any liturgy accepted by the Church today, to include the EF Mass, the Ordinariate’s Mass, the different rite Masses in the Latin Rite as well as Eastern Rite Liturgies, bishops must model reading the black and doing the red and expecting their priests and parishes doing the same. Lumen Gentium and Sacrosantum Concilium are inter related in this regard. A corruption of the Mass and other liturgies is a corruption of Vatican II and its implementation.
What say you?
5 comments:
VatII opened the Church's windows so Grace would stream out into the world. Onyist thing is that the world swept into the Church and blew out all the candles!
Fr -
Do you hear yourself? Out of respect, I am trying not to be critical but, your retreat could possibly become consumed by VII. The Eastern Church has freed me, personally, of agonizing over VII, the damage it did, how its implementation was hijacked etc. VII, VII, VII....all I've heard from the Roman Church for my nearly 50 years on this earth. I wish there would be a VIII to clarify and repair VII so we all could get through the rest of life without hearing VII again and maybe unclutter, even if a little, the collective mind of the Western Church. Please enrich yourself in whatever way you feel would be best for your own spirituality and that of your ministry but, if it was me, I would limit how much time I spend on VII. To me, and in the most unschismatic way possible, too much time has been spent on something that no one seems interested in fixing/implementing properly from both a leadership and macro perspective.
I humbly welcome criticism of what I have written if I in any way am not understanding your objectives/goals properly.
In regard to Pope Benedict XVI's vision for Vatican II:
Pope Benedict XVI, via his 2005 A.D. Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, acknowledged that Pope Saint John XIII, via the 1962 A.D. Opening Address of Vatican II, established the "hermeneutic of reform" in continuity.
Pope Benedict XVI noted also that Pope Saint Paul VI, via the December 7, 1965 A.D. "Discourse for the Council's conclusion," promoted the "hermeneutic of reform" in continuity.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
I've said it before Father, I really WANT Vatican II to make sense, but it's just too messy and, ultimately messed up. For instance, the whole "subsists in" the Catholic Church is such a wordy exercise of convoluting the obvious. You cannot convince me that we worship the same God as the Muslims do. Extra Eccelesium Nulla Salus is contradicted too many times. Either you are Catholic or not, and this "imperfect communion" stuff once again contradicts what we've always held before VII. Between all the reminders of "supremacy of conscience" and the dark allies of Indifferentism suggested by the documents...It's no-go.
The Church has seriousy wounded herself. I am not saying I deny that Ecumenical Councils are guided by the Holy Spirit. I am saying that this Council doesn't fit the criteria, especially since the lawful authority within the Church was ignored and insulted from the beginning. And, finally, it's all "pastoral" anyway. How binding is that?
No one wants to hate the Church, but sooner or later, we have to have the honesty to admit that this entire experiment, this failed experiment just isn't working. Any decent corporation would have figured it out in six months. Why do we have to wait 50 years?
I honestly believe that faithful priests continue to defend Vatican II since they are priests ordained after that abomination took place so to speak the truth of what happened from start to finish along with all the ambiguity weaves throughout might place a cloud over their ordination.
Father I pray for you and all faithful priests but give it up you are not convince anyone here except Mark Thomas.
I blame my parents generation that sat in the pews after the Bishop’s return and swallowed this garbage and said nothing.
I’m fully Woke to the destruction caused by the Great Abomination of Our Holy Mother Church and the hell its released since.
God help us all
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