WILL THE NEXT POPE DEAL WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH’S MAJOR PROBLEM FOR THE PAST 60 YEARS, HER OWN CANCEL CULTURE?!

What the American elections can show the current leadership of the Church from the top down is that the cancel culture of the last many years has been a dismal failure and is rejected by a landslide of those with any common sense. The Catholic Church has had its own virulent cancel Culture since 1964 propmoted by clericalism and a lust for power over rank file Catholics. That needs to be addressed in the future papacy.

Let’s face it, the major problem with the implementation of Vatican II, in particular its fluid and failed “spirit”, is that this implementation canceled so much of what constituted Catholic identity for the clergy, the religious and the laity of the pre-Vatican II era.

A small clericalism caste and cadre of bishops and theologians from their on-high position and by manipulating the work of the Holy Spirit for their own narcissistic privileges, were able to cancel the manner in which the Church had existed since the major reforms of the Council of Trent. 

The spirit of Vatican II clericalists, canceled the manner in which the Mass had been celebrated for over 1,500 years, but codified or standardized by the Council of Trent. They canceled the manner of living religious life and tried to cancel the sacramental aspect of the clergy turning them from worship and prayer to being social workers for the poor, something proper for religious who are not clergy and certainly for the laity.

The spirit of Vatican II tried to cancel the hierarchical nature of the Church and authority of the college of bishops in union with the pope.

What Vatican II’s poor implementation did was to cancel what had previously been understood as constituent to Catholic identity and proposed and then dictatorially imposed it on laity who accepted this imposition solely on the pre-Vatican II appreciation they had for Church authority, especially the pope and bishops. They didn’t like it but they were obedient pray, pay and obey Catholics.

St. Pope John Paul II and especially Pope Benedict XVI tried heroically to end the cancel culture of the Church in the post-Vatican II era. They did it slowly with non-dictatorial edicts. They proposed and enabled the ending of the cancel culture but they did not impose it on all. 

The apex of the genius of Pope Benedict XVI was and is Summorum Pontificum, that enabled a return to liturgical tradition of the pre-Vatican II era while encouraging the reforms of the Liturgies but now within continuity with the past not in a breach of the past or worse yet, canceling that past.

With the dismal and unfortunate abdication of Pope Benedict, a 1970’s ideologue was elected to the See of Peter as the new pope. We have seen since 2013 a return to the spirit of Vatican II’s cancel culture, the one most blatant was and is the canceling of the two papacies of St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. The apex of this cancelation was the dictatorial canceling of Pope Benedict’s centerpiece of his papacy, Summorum Pontificum and the resulting resentment of the current papacy and its 1970’s agenda. 

The next pope will have to be a redeemed Donald Trump who will restore the papacies of the previous two popes but in continuity. Pope Benedict’s reform in continuity is the way forward and that must be revived!