BOMBSHELL: IT IS CLEAR TO MANY, THAT POPE LEO'S HERMENEUTIC CONCERNING VATICAN II IS THAT OF POPE BENEDICT XVI AND POPE BENEDICT'S CLEAR DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE COUNCIL OF THE MEDIA (WHICH CORRUPTED VATICAN II BUT EMBRACED BY SO MANY) AND THE COUNCIL OF THE FATHERS, YET TO BE IMPLEMENTED!

Silere non possum has this to say about Pope Leo's catechesis on Vatican II and it is good news:

Vatican City - "After the Jubilee Year ... we begin a new cycle of catechesis that will be dedicated to the Second Vatican Council and the re-reading of its Documents". With this choice, Leo XIV inaugurates today his first Wednesday catechesis after the closing of the Holy Door, marking a precise passage: as long as the horizon of the Jubilee Year lasted, the Pope has remained within an already started path; now he opens a new path, which he intends to structure in a cycle and which touches a point that is particularly close to his heart. It is a decisive choice to read the pontificate of Leo XIV: it says of its desire for unity for the whole Church and confirms that continuity that many observe with increasing evidence between the Augustinian Pope and the pontiff who loved Augustine most, Benedict XVI.

 Benedict XVI described a “Council unto himself”, perceived by the world through categories external to the faith, with a political reading: power struggle, oppositions, reduction of the Council to partisan dynamics. From there derive, in its analysis, translations and trivializations: the liturgy read as an activity of the community and not as an act of faith; the idea of participation understood as external activism; the intelligibility transformed into banality; the Scripture treated as a historical book only; a reception in which the “Virtual Council” ends up being stronger than the real Council. And Benedict lists concrete consequences: closed seminars, closed convents, trivialized liturgy. Leo, today, seems to tell us that the task of the Church is to work so that the real Council, with its spiritual strength, is really realized.

 The point, then, is that Leo XIV chooses to start right now - after the closing of the Jubilee - a cycle on Vatican II because he considers it decisive for the orientation of the Church. Pope Leo's catechesis is not a commemoration: it is a method. Returning to the Documents, taking the Council as a criterion of discernment, accepting tradition and at the same time questioning the present, “reaching the world” bringing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of love, justice and peace. It is also a call to dismantle misunderstandings that have become, over time, almost automatic reflections.  

Leo XIV means that the Council has not “closed the closets”, has not denied a liturgical tradition, has not asked to abolish the previous Missal, has not established that Latin can no longer be used. None of this. Vatican II has delivered precise indications, and those indications are found in the texts, not in the “hearsay.” Only in this way - returning to the Council of Documents - can a real path of communion be reconstructed in the Church: not to uniform everyone, but to put everyone in a position to walk together, with a shared and finally verifiable basis. In this sense, the first catechesis of Wednesday after the closure of the Jubilee is not only the beginning of a series. It is the choice to reopen an essential construction site: to put the Church back before the texts, because from the comparison with those texts passes a truer understanding of the present and a clearer responsibility towards the future.

Silere non Possum reminded me of the fantastic "off-the-cuff" but quite coherent talk Pope Benedict gave the priests of Rome prior to His Holiness leaving the papal office. It is very long and you can read it in full at the Vatican website by pressing its title. But below the title is what Pope Benedict decried as the misinterpretation of Vatican II by going with the Council of the Media rather than the Council of the Fathers. The entire talk, while long, gives a brilliant real history of the Council!

I believe that Pope Leo accepts Pope Benedict's assessment and wants to steer the Barque of Peter back to the Council of the Fathers, not the council of the media!

MEETING WITH THE PARISH PRIESTS AND THE CLERGY OF ROME

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

Paul VI Audience Hall
Thursday, 14 February 2013

[Video]

 The last part of that marvelous long elocution:

Pope Benedict: I  would now like to add yet a third point: there was the Council of the Fathers – the real Council – but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council apart, and the world perceived the Council through the latter, through the media. Thus, the Council that reached the people with immediate effect was that of the media, not that of the Fathers. And while the Council of the Fathers was conducted within the faith – it was a Council of faith seeking intellectus, seeking to understand itself and seeking to understand the signs of God at that time, seeking to respond to the challenge of God at that time and to find in the word of God a word for today and tomorrow – while all the Council, as I said, moved within the faith, as fides quaerens intellectum, the Council of the journalists, naturally, was not conducted within the faith, but within the categories of today's media, namely apart from faith, with a different hermeneutic. It was a political hermeneutic: for the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different trends in the Church. 

It was obvious that the media would take the side of those who seemed to them more closely allied with their world. There were those who sought the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression "People of God", power for the people, the laity. There was this threefold question: the power of the Pope, which was then transferred to the power of the bishops and the power of all – popular sovereignty. Naturally, for them, this was the part to be approved, to be promulgated, to be favoured. 

So too with the liturgy: there was no interest in liturgy as an act of faith, but as something where comprehensible things are done, a matter of community activity, something profane. And we know that there was a tendency, not without a certain historical basis, to say: sacrality is a pagan thing, perhaps also a thing of the Old Testament. In the New Testament it matters only that Christ died outside: that is, outside the gates, in the profane world. Sacrality must therefore be abolished, and profanity now spreads to worship: worship is no longer worship, but a community act, with communal participation: participation understood as activity. These translations, trivializations of the idea of the Council, were virulent in the process of putting the liturgical reform into practice; they were born from a vision of the Council detached from its proper key, that of faith. And the same applies to the question of Scripture: Scripture is a book, it is historical, to be treated historically and only historically, and so on.

We know that this Council of the media was accessible to everyone. Therefore, this was the dominant one, the more effective one, and it created so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering: seminaries closed, convents closed, banal liturgy … and the real Council had difficulty establishing itself and taking shape; the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council. But the real force of the Council was present and, slowly but surely, established itself more and more and became the true force which is also the true reform, the true renewal of the Church. It seems to me that, 50 years after the Council, we see that this virtual Council is broken, is lost, and there now appears the true Council with all its spiritual force. And it is our task, especially in this Year of Faith, on the basis of this Year of Faith, to work so that the true Council, with its power of the Holy Spirit, be accomplished and the Church be truly renewed. Let us hope that that the Lord will assist us. I myself, secluded in prayer, will always be with you and together let us go forward with the Lord in the certainty that the Lord will conquer.